A prominent author was startled by the ferocious tone of the debate. “Some of the rhetoric,” she said, “was scary.” A wealthy art collector stopped logging into his e-mail account, for fear of discovering yet another new screed. And by the end, an acclaimed cultural critic could barely stand to look at people she had once considered close friends. “I just try not to think of what they said when I see them,” she said.

The 164-year-old Century Association in Midtown Manhattan, the country’s pre-eminent club of arts and letters, trumpets itself as a sanctuary for civilized discussion of literature, music and theater.

But these days, it is home to something far less polite: a gut-wrenching, at times acerbic internal battle over the rights and privileges of its female members, a matter that was supposed to have been resolved decades ago when the club granted admission to women.

At issue is whether the Century — which has counted Brooke Astor, Henry Kissinger and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis among its members — should sever ties with a prestigious, all-male club in London, called the Garrick, that allows women to enter only in the company of men.