I 2 2 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Convivialii
CHAPTER XII.
THE OLD EDINBURGH CLUBS.
Of Old Clubs, and some Notabilii of Edinburgh Life in the Last Century--The Horn Order-The Union Club-Impious Clubs-Assembly of
Birds-The Sweating Club-The Revolution and certain other Clubs-The Beggars? Benison-The Capillaire Club-The Industrious Company-
The Wig, asculapian, Boar, Country Dinner, The East India, Cape, Spendthrift, Pious, Antemanum, Six Feet, and Shakespeare
Clubs-Oyster Cellars-? Frolics ?-The ?Duke of Edinburgh.?
As a change for a time from history and statistics,
we propose now to take a brief glance at some old
manners in the last century, and at the curious and
often quaintly-designated clubs, wherein our forefathers
roystered, and held their ? high jinks ? as
they phrased them, and when tavern dissipation,
now so rare among respectable classes of the community,
? engrossed,? says Chambers, ?? the leisure
hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting even
the most stern and dignified. No rank, class, or
profession, indeed, formed an exception to this
rule.?
Such gatherings and roysterings formed, in the
eighteenth century, a marked feature of life in the
deep dark closes and picturesque wynds of (( Auld
Reekie,? a sobnpet which, though attributed to
James VI., the afore-named writer affirms cannot
be traced beyond the reign of Charles II., and
assigns it to an old Fifeshire gentleman, Durham of
Largo, who regulated the hour of family worship
and his children?s bed-time as he saw the smoke
of evening gather over the summits of the venerable
city.
To the famous Crochallan Club, the Poker and
Mirror Clubs, and the various golf clubs, we have
already referred in their various localities, but,
taken in chronological order, probably the HORN
ORDER, instituted in 1705, when the Duke of
Argyle was Lord High Commissioner to the
Scottish Parliament, was the first attempt to constitute
a species of fashionable club.
It was founded as a coterie of ladies and gentlemen
mostly by the influence and exertions of
one who was a leader in Scottish society in
those days and a distinguished beau, John, thud
Earl of Selkirk (previously Earl of Ruglan). Its
curious designation had its origin in a whim of the
moment. At some convivial meeting a common
horn spoon had been used, and it occurred to the
members of the club-then in its infancy-that this
homely implement should be adopted as their
private badge; and it was further agreed by all
present, that the ?Order of the Horn? would be a
pleasant caricature of various ancient and highlysanctioned
dignities.
For many a day after this strange designation was
adopted the members constituting the Horn Order
met and caroused, but the commonalty of the city
.
?
put a very evil construction on these hitherto unheard
of reunions ; and, indeed, if all accounts
be true, it must have been a species of masquerade,
in which the sexes were mixed, and all ranks confounded.?
The UNION CLUB is next heard of after this,
but of its foundation, or membership, nothing is
known ; doubtless the unpopularity of the name
would soon lead to its dissolution and doom.
Impious clubs, strange to say, next make their
appearance in that rigid, strict, and strait-laced
period of Scottish life; but they were chiefly
branches of or societies affiliated to those clubs in
London, against which an Order in Council vas
issued on the 28th of April, 1721, wherein they
were denounced as scandalous meetings held for
the purpose of ridiculing religion and morality.
These fraternities of free-living gentlemen, who were
unbounded in indulgence, and exhibited an outrageous
disposition to mock all solemn things, though
cenhing, as we have said, in London, established
their branches in Edinburgh and Dublin, and to
both these cities their secretaries came to impart
to them ?as far as wanting, a proper spirit.?
Their toasts were, beyond all modern belief,
fearfully blasphemous. Sulphureous flames and
fumes were raised in their rooms to simulate the
infernal regions ; and common folk would tell with
bated breath, how after drinking some unusually
horrible toast, the proposer would be struck dead
with his cup in his hand.
In I 726 the Rev. Robert Wodrow adverts to the
rumour of the existence in Edinburgh of these offshoots
of impious clubs in London ; and he records
with horror and dismay that the secretary of the
Hell-fire Club, a Scotsman, was reported to have
come north to establish a branch of that awful community
; but, he records in his Analecta, the secretary
?fell into melancholy, as it was called, but
probably horror of conscience and despair, and at
length turned mad. Nobody was allowed to see
him j the physicians prescribed bathing for him,
and he died mad at the first bathing. .The Lord
pity us, wickedness is come to a terrible height ! ?
Wickedness went yet further, for the same gossipping
historian has among his pamphlets an account
of the Hell-fire Clubs, Sulphur Societies, and Demirep
Dragons, their full strength, with a list of the
