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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V

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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
Volume 5 Page 122
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