The Bohemian Grove
and Other Retreats
the text of this book is printed
on 100% recycled paper
THE.
BOHEMIAN
GROVE
Books by G. William Domhoff
Fat Cats and Democrats (1972)
The Higher Circles (1970)
Who Ruks America? (1967)
C. Wright Mills and The Power Elite
(coeditor with Hoyt B. Ballard, 1968)
The Bohemian Grove
and Other Retreats
A Study in Ruling-Class Cohesiveness
by G. William Domhof f
HARPER TORCHBOOKS
Harper & Row, Publishers
New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London
To Lynne, Lori, Bill, and Joel
STANDAHD BOOK NUMBEH: 06-090395-3
THE BOHEMIAN GROVE AND OTHER RETREATS: A STUDY IN RULING-CLASS COHE-
srvENESS. Copyright © 1974 by G. William Domhoff. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New
York, N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside
Limited, Toronto.
Designed by Janice Stem
First HARPER COLOPHON edition 1975.
1 31 6 1
77 78 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Contents
Prefac
e
1
IX
The Bohemian Grove
1
3
2
Other Watering Holes
60
Do Bohemians, Rancheros, and Roundup
Riders Rule America?
82
Index
vii
Preface
In America, retreats are held by just about every group you
can think of—scouts, ministers, students, athletes, musicians,
and even cheerleaders. So it is not surprising that members of
the social upper class would also have clubs that sponsor such
occasions. Three of these retreats for the wealthy few are the
subject of this book.
Retreats are interesting in and of themselves. They are especially interesting when—like the bacchanalian rites discussed
in this book—they involve elaborate rituals, first-class entertainment, a little illicit sex, and some of the richest and most powerful men in the country.
However, this book has a purpose beyond presenting a
relatively detailed description of three upper-class watering
holes that are of intrinsic interest. Upper-class retreats are also
of sociological relevance, for they increase the social cohesiveness of America's rulers and provide private settings in which
business and political problems can be discussed informally
and off the record. Moreover, their existence is evidence for a
theory heatedly disputed by most social scientists and political
commentators: that a cohesive ruling group persists in the
IX
United States despite the country's size and the diversity of
interests within it.
The material for this book was gathered from club members,
present and former employees of the clubs, historical archives,
and newspapers. Almost all the information presented can be
found in scattered public sources, but interviews were essential
in making sense out of it. Repeated discussions with two interviewees also enriched the account with colorful details and
with a feel for the ethos of the encampments and rides. I am
deeply indebted to these people for their help.
The biographical information, which is the systematic core
of the book, comes primarily from the years 1965 to 1970.
Although post-1970 occupations and appointments are noted
for some of the people discussed, I have not tried to take account of deaths, retirements, and changes in occupational status
after 1970. For this reason, the account is already history in
some sense of the word. However, this presents no problem
from my perspective, for the people mentioned are merely
exemplars of an ongoing social process. I hope readers will
keep this caution in mind when they come across the name of
a deceased or retired person who is spoken of as if he were still
alive or active in his business or profession.
My primary research assistants for this project were Joel
Schaffer, Michael Spiro, and Lisa Young, who carried out the
studies of the social, economic, and political connections of
members and guests. They also combed newspaper and magazine sources for relevant information. Their detailed labors are
gratefully acknowledged, and a special thanks is added to Lisa
Young for her fine drawings, which enhance this book.
I also want to express my thanks for the helpful hints of
writer John Van der Zee, whose research efforts on the first
retreat I discuss—the Bohemian Grove—came to my attention
as I was finishing my research and beginning to write. Although
we have not compared notes, he was helpful to me in several
ways, as I hope I was to him in certain small details. His book
on the Bohemian Grove is entitled Power at Ease: Inside the
Greatest Men's Party on Earth (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1974).
My research on the second retreat discussed, the Rancheros
Visitadores, was aided in its initial stages by the work of
Michael Williams, "Los Rancheros Visitadores," a paper for
my graduate sociology seminar on the American upper class
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the fall of
1970. After the chapter was written, I learned further useful
details from the undergraduate research work conducted by
Peggy Rodgers and Donna Beck of the University of California,
Santa Barbara, and I am grateful to them for sharing their
findings with me.
As in the past, friends and colleagues have saved me from
a multitude of sins, both substantive and stylistic. In this instance, my most helpful reader was my major informant, who
unfortunately must remain nameless. Other readers with helpful suggestions were Richie Zweigenhaft, a social psychologist
at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Cynthia Merman, my editor at Harper & Row.
My thanks, finally, to the Torchbook Department of Harper
& Row, and to the Research Committee of the Academic Senate, University of California, Santa Cruz, for the financial support that made this project possible, and to Mrs. Charlotte
Cassidy, Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz,
XI
for typing the final manuscript with her usual careful correction
of grammatical and spelling errors.
G.W.D.
University of California
Santa Cruz, California
June 29,1973
Xll
The Bohemian Grove
The Cremation of Care
Picture yourself comfortably seated in a beautiful open-air
dining hall in the midst of twenty-seven hundred acres of giant
California redwoods. It is early evening and the clear July air
is still pleasantly warm. Dusk has descended, you have finished
a sumptuous dinner, and you are sitting quietly with your
drink and your cigar, listening to nostalgic welcoming speeches
and enjoying the gentle light and the eerie shadows that are
cast by the two-stemmed gaslights flickering softly at each of
the several hundred outdoor banquet tables.
You are part of an assemblage that has been meeting in this
redwood grove sixty-five miles north of San Francisco for nearly
a hundred years. It is not just any assemblage, for you are a
captain of industry, a well-known television star, a banker, a
famous artist, or maybe a member of the President's Cabinet.
You are one of fifteen hundred men gathered together from all
over the country for the annual encampment of the rich and
the famous at the Bohemian Grove. And you are about to take
part in a strange ceremony that has marked every Bohemian
Grove gathering since 1880. You are about to be initiated into
the encampment by the Cremation of Care.
Out of the shadows on one of the hillsides near the dining
circle there come the low, sad sounds of a funeral dirge. As
you turn your head in its direction you faintly see the outlines
of men dressed in pointed red hoods and red flowing robes.
Some of the men are playing the funereal music; others are
carrying long torches whose flames are a spectacular sight
against the darkened forest.
As the procession approaches the dining circle, the dim
figures become more distinct, and attention fixes on several
men not previously noticed who are carrying a large wooden
box. Upon closer inspection the box turns out to be an open
coffin, and in that coffin is a body, a human body—real enough
to be lifelike at a glance, but only an imitation, made of black
muslin wrapped around a wooden skeleton. This is the body of
Care, symbolizing the concerns and woes that important men
supposedly must bear in their daily lives. It is Dull Care that is
to be cremated this first Saturday night of the two-week
encampment of the Bohemian Grove.
The cortege now trails slowly past the dining area, and the
men in the dining circle fall into line behind the hooded priests
and pallbearers, following the body of Care toward its ultimate
destination. The entire parade (all white, mostly elderly)
makes its way along a road leading to a picturesque little lake
that is yet another of the sylvan sights the Bohemian Grove
has to offer.
It takes the communicants about five minutes to make their
march to this new setting. Once at the lake the priests and the
body of Care go off to the right, in the direction of a very large
altar which faces the lake. The followers, talking quietly and
remarking on the once-again-perfect Grove weather, move to
the left so they can observe the ceremony from a green meadow
on the other side of the lake. They will be about fifty to a hundred yards from the altar, which looms skyward thirty to forty
feet and reveals itself to be in the form of a huge Owl, whose
cement shell is mottled with primeval green mosses.
While the spectators seat themselves across the lake, the
priests and their entourage continue for another two or three
hundred yards beyond the altar to a boat landing. There the
bier is carefully transferred onto the Ferry of Care, which will
carry the body to the altar later in the ceremony. The ferry
loaded, the torches are extinguished and the music ends. The
attention of the spectators on the other side of the lake slowly
drifts back to the Owl shrine; it is illuminated by a gentle flame
from the Lamp of Fellowship which sits at its base.
People who have seen the ceremony before nudge you to
keep your eye on the large redwood next to the Owl. Moments
later an offstage chorus of "woodland voices" begins to sing.
Then a spotlight illuminates the tree you've been watching,
and there emerges from it a hamadryad, a "tree spirit," whose
life, according to Greek mythology, is intimately bound up
with the tree in which it lives. The hamadryad begins to sing,
telling the supplicants that beauty and strength and peace are
theirs as long as the trees of the Grove are there. It sings of
the "temple-aisles of the wood" that are made for "your delight," and implores the Bohemians to "burn away the sorrows
of yesterday" and to "cast your grief to the fires and be strong
with the holy trees and the spirit of the Grove." 1
With the end of this uplifting song, the hamadryad returns
to its tree, the chorus silences, and the light on the tree fades
1. Charles K. Field, The Cremation of Care (1946, 1953), for these
and following quotes. A copy of this small pamphlet can be found in
the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
out. Only natural illumination from the moon and stars remains, and it is time for the high priest and his many assistants
to enter the large area in front of the Owl. "The Owl is in his
leafy temple," intones the high priest. "Let all within the Grove
be reverent before him." He beseeches the spectators to be
inspired and awed by their surroundings, noting that this is
Bohemia's shrine. Then he invokes the motto of the club,
"Weaving spiders, come not here!"—which is a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is supposed to warn
members not to discuss business and worldly concerns, but only
the arts, literature, and other pleasures, within the portals of
Bohemia.
The priest next walks down three large steps to the edge of
the lake. There he makes a flowery speech about the ripple of
waters, the song of birds, the forest floor, and evening's cool
kiss. Again he calls on the members to forsake their usual concerns : "Shake off your sorrows with the City's dust and scatter
to the winds the cares of life." A second and third priest then
recall to memory deceased friends who loved the Bohemian
Grove, and the high priest makes yet another effusive speech,
the gist of it being that "Great Nature" is a "refuge for the
weary heart" and a "balm for breasts that have been bruised."
A brief song is sung by the chorus and suddenly the high
priest proclaims: "Our funeral pyre awaits the corpse of Care!"
A horn is sounded at the boat landing. Anon, the Ferry of
Care, with its beautifully ornamented frontispiece, begins its
brief passage to the foot of the shrine. Its trip is accompanied
by the music of a barcarole—a barcarole being the song of
Venetian gondoliers as they pole you through the canals of
Venice. As one listens to the barcarole, it becomes even clearer
that many little extra touches have been added by the Bohe-
mians who have lovingly developed this ritual over its ninetyfour-year history.
The bier arrives at the steps of the altar. The high priest
inveighs against Dull Care, the archenemy of Beauty. He
shouts, "Bring fire," and the torchbearers (eighteen strong)
enter. Then the acolytes quickly seize the coffin, lift it high
above their heads, and carry it triumphantly to the pyre in
front of the mighty Owl. It seems that Care is about to be
consumed by flames.
But not yet. Suddenly there is a great clap of thunder and a
rush of wind. Peals of loud, ugly laughter come ringing down
from a hill above the lake. A dead tree is illuminated in the
middle of the hillside, and Care himself bellows forth with a
thundering blast:
"Fools! Fools! Fools! When will ye learn that me ye cannot
slay? Year after year ye burn me in this Grove, lifting your
puny shouts of triumph to the stars. But when again ye turn
your feet toward the marketplace, am I not waiting for you,
as of old? Fools! Fools! To dream ye conquer Care!"
The high priest is taken aback by this impressive outburst,
but not completely humbled. He replies that it is not all a
dream, that he and his friends know they will have to face
Care when their holiday is over. They are happy that the good
fellowship created by the Bohemian Grove is able to banish
Care even for a short time. So the high priest tells Care, "We
shall burn thee once again this night and in the flames that eat
thine effigy we'll read the sign: Midsummer sets us free."
Dull Care, however, is having none of this. He tells the high
priest in no uncertain terms that priestly fires are not going to
do him in. "I spit upon your fire," he roars, and with that there
is a great explosion and all the torches are immediately extin-
guished. The only light remaining comes from the small flame
in the Lamp of Fellowship.
Things are clearly at an impasse. Care may win out after
all. There is only one thing to do: turn to the great Owl, the
totem animal of Bohemia, chosen as the group's symbol primarily for its mortal wisdom—and only secondarily for its
discreet silence and its nightly prowling. The high priest falls
to his knees and lifts his arms toward the shrine. "O thou, great
symbol of all mortal wisdom," he cries. "Owl of Bohemia, we do
beseech thee, grant us thy counsel!"
The inspirational music of the "Fire Finale" now begins, and
an aura of light glows about the Owl's head. The Owl is going
to rise to the occasion! After a pause, the sagacious bird finally
speaks. No fire, he tells the assembled faithful, can drive out
Care if that fire comes from the mundane world, where it is
fed by the hates of men. There is only one fire that can overcome the great enemy Care, and that, of course, is the flame
which burns in the Lamp of Fellowship on the Altar of
Bohemia. "Hail, Fellowship," he concludes, "and thou, Dull
Care, begone!"
With that, Care is on his way out. The light dies from the
dead tree. The high priest leaps to his feet and bounds up the
steps, snatches a burned-out torch from one of the bearers, and
relights it from the flame of the Lamp of Fellowship. Just as
quickly he ignites the funeral pyre and triumphantly hurls the
torch into the blaze.
The orchestral music in the background intensifies as the
flames leap higher and higher. The chorus sings loudly about
Dull Care, archenemy of Beauty, calling on the winds to make
merry with his dust. "Hail, Fellowship," they sing, echoing the
Owl. "Begone, Dull Care! Midsummer sets us free!" The wail-
ing voice of Care gives its last gasps, the music gets even
louder, and fireworks light the sky and fill the Grove with the
reverberations of great explosions. The band, appropriately
enough, strikes up "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town
Tonight." Care has been banished, but only with a cast of 250
elders, priests, torchbearers, shore patrols, fire tenders, production managers, and woodland voices.
As this climax approaches, some fifty minutes after the march
began, the quiet onlookers on the other side of the lake begin to
come alive. After all, it is a night for rejoicing. The men begin
to shout, to sing, to hug each other, and dance around. They
have been freed by their priests and their Owl for some good
old-fashioned hell raising. They couldn't be happier if they were
hack in college and their fraternity had won an intramural
football championship.
Now the ceremony is over. The revelers, initiated into the
carefree attitude of the Bohemian Grove, break up into small
groups as they return to the camps that crowd next to each
other in the central area of the Grove. It will be a night of storytelling and drinking for the men of Bohemia as they sit about
their campfires or wander from camp to camp, renewing old
friendships and making new ones. They will be far away from
their responsibilities as the decision makers and opinion molders of corporate America.
Jinks High and Jinks Low
The Cremation of Care is the most spectacular event of the
midsummer retreat that members and guests of San Francisco's
Bohemian Club have taken every year since 1878. However,
there are several other entertainments in store. Before the
Bohemians return to the everyday world, they will be treated to
plays, variety shows, song fests, shooting contests, art exhibits,
swimming, boating, and nature rides. Of all these delights, the
most elaborate are the two Jinks: High Jinks and Low Jinks.
Among Bohemians, planned entertainment of any real magnitude is called a Jinks. This nomenclature extends from the
earliest days of the club, when its members were searching for
precedents and traditions to adopt from the literature and entertainment of other times and other places. In the case of
Jinks, they had found a Scottish word which denotes, generally
speaking, a frolic, although it also was used in the past to refer
to a drinking bout which involved a matching of wits to see
who paid for the drinks. Bohemian Club historiographers, however, claim the word was gleaned from a more respectable
source, Guy Mannering, a novel by Sir Walter Scott; there the
High Jinks are a more elevated occasion, with drinking only a
subsidiary indulgence.2
In any event, the early Jinks at the Grove slowly developed
into more and more elaborate entertainments. By 1902 the High
Jinks had become what it is today, a grandiose, operetta-like
extravaganza that is written and produced by club members
for its one-time-only presentation in the Grove. The High Jinks,
presented on the Friday night of the last weekend, is considered the most important formal event of the encampment.
Most of the plays written for the High Jinks have a mythical
or fantasy theme, although a significant minority have a historical setting. Any moral messages center on inevitable human
frailty, not social injustice. There is no spoofing of the powersthat-be at a High Jinks; it is strictly a highbrow occasion. A
2. Robert H. Fletcher, The Annals of the Bohemian Club (San Francisco: Hicks-Judd Company, 1900), Vol. I, 1872-80, p. 34.
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