Part 17

It was not merely in the evenings that taverns were then resorted to. There was a petty treat, called a ‘meridian,’ which no man of that day thought himself able to dispense with; and this was generally indulged in at a tavern. ‘A cauld cock and a feather’ was the metaphorical mode of calling for a glass of brandy and a bunch of raisins, which was the favourite regale of many. Others took a glass of whisky, some few a lunch. Scott very amusingly describes, from his own observation, the manner in which the affair of the meridian was gone about by the writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House. ‘If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence assumed the honour of leading the band; when away they went, threading the crowd like a string of wild-fowl, crossed the square or close, and following each other into the [John’s] coffee-house, drank the meridian, which was placed ready at the bar. This they did day by day; and though they did not speak to each other, they seemed to attach a certain degree of sociability to performing the ceremony in company.’

It was in the evening, of course, that the tavern debaucheries assumed their proper character of unpalliated fierceness and destructive duration. In the words of Robert Fergusson:

‘Now night, that’s cunzied chief for fun, Is with her usual rites begun.

* * * * *

Some to porter, some to punch, Retire; while noisy ten-hours’ drum Gars a’ the trades gang danderin’ hame. Now, mony a club, jocose and free, Gi’e a’ to merriment and glee; Wi’ sang and glass they fley the power O’ care, that wad harass the hour.

* * * * *

Chief, O CAPE! we crave thy aid, To get our cares and poortith laid. Sincerity and genius true, O’ knights have ever been the due. Mirth, music, porter deepest-dyed, Are never here to worth denied.’

All the shops in the town were then shut at eight o’clock; and from that hour till ten—when the drum of the Town-guard announced at once a sort of license for the deluging of the streets with nuisances,[135] and a warning of the inhabitants home to their beds—unrestrained scope was given to the delights of the table. No tradesman thought of going home to his family till after he had spent an hour or two at his club. This was universal and unfailing. So lately as 1824, I knew something of an old-fashioned tradesman who nightly shut his shop at eight o’clock, and then adjourned with two old friends, who called upon him at that hour, to a quiet old public-house on the opposite side of the way, where they each drank precisely one bottle of Edinburgh ale, ate precisely one halfpenny roll, and got upon their legs precisely at the first stroke of ten o’clock.

The CAPE CLUB alluded to by Fergusson aspired to a refined and classical character, comprising amongst its numerous members many men of talents, as well as of private worth. Fergusson himself was a member; as were Mr Thomas Sommers, his friend and biographer; Mr Woods, a player of eminence on the humble boards of Edinburgh, and an intimate companion of the poet; and Mr Runciman the painter. The name of the club had its foundation in one of those weak jokes such as ‘gentle dullness ever loves.’ A person who lived in the Calton was in the custom of spending an hour or two every evening with one or two city friends, and being sometimes detained till after the regular period when the Netherbow Port was shut, it occasionally happened that he had either to remain in the city all night, or was under the necessity of bribing the porter who attended the gate. This difficult _pass_—partly on account of the rectangular corner which he turned immediately on getting out of the Port, as he went homewards down Leith Wynd—the Calton burgher facetiously called _doubling the Cape_; and as it was customary with his friends every evening when they assembled to inquire ‘how he turned the Cape last night,’ and indeed to make that circumstance and that phrase, night after night, the subject of their conversation and amusement, ‘the Cape’ in time became so assimilated with their very existence that they adopted it as a title; and it was retained as such by the organised club into which shortly after they thought proper to form themselves. The Cape Club owned a regular institution from 1763. It will scarcely be credited in the present day that a jest of the above nature could keep an assemblage of rational citizens, and, we may add, professed wits, merry after a thousand repetitions. Yet it really is true that the patron-jests of many a numerous and enlightened association were no better than this, and the greater part of them worse. As instance the following:

There was the ANTEMANUM CLUB, of which the members used to boast of the state of their hands, _before-hand_, in playing at ‘Brag.’ The members were all men of respectability, some of them gentlemen of fortune. They met every Saturday and dined. It was at first a purely convivial club; but latterly, the Whig party gaining a sort of preponderance, it degenerated into a political association.

The PIOUS CLUB was composed of decent, orderly citizens, who met every night, Sundays not excepted, in a _pie-house_, and whose joke was the _équivoque_ of these expressions—similar in sound, but different in signification. The agreeable uncertainty as to whether their name arose from their _piety_, or the circumstance of their eating _pies_, kept the club hearty for many years. At their Sunday meetings the conversation usually took a serious turn—perhaps upon the sermons which they had respectively heard during the day: this they considered as rendering their title of _Pious_ not altogether undeserved. Moreover, they were all, as the saying was, _ten o’clock men_, and of good character. Fifteen persons were considered as constituting a full night. The whole allowable debauch was a gill of toddy to each person, which was drunk, like wine, out of a common decanter. One of the members of the Pious Club was a Mr Lind, a man of at least twenty-five stone weight, immoderately fond of good eating and drinking. It was generally believed of him that were all the oxen he had devoured ranged in a line, they would reach from the Watergate to the Castle-hill, and that the wine he had drunk would swim a seventy-four. His most favourite viand was a very strange one—salmon skins. When dining anywhere, with salmon on the table, he made no scruple of raking all the skins off the plates of the rest of the guests. He had only one toast, from which he never varied: ‘Merry days to honest fellows.’ A Mr Drummond was esteemed poet-laureate to this club. He was a facetious, clever man. Of his poetical talents, take a specimen in the following lines on Lind:

‘In going to dinner, he ne’er lost his way, Though often, when done, he was carted away.’

He made the following impromptu on an associate of small figure and equally small understanding, who had been successful in the world:

‘O thou of genius slow, Weak by nature; A rich fellow, But a poor creature.’

[Illustration: The Watergate.]

The SPENDTHRIFT CLUB took its name from the extravagance of the members in spending no less a sum than fourpence halfpenny each night! It consisted of respectable citizens of the middle class, and continued in 1824 to exist in a modified state. Its meetings, originally nightly, were then reduced to four a week. The men used to play at whist for a halfpenny—one, two, three—no rubbers; but latterly they had, with their characteristic extravagance, doubled the stake! Supper originally cost no less than twopence; and half a bottle of strong ale, with a dram, stood every member twopence halfpenny; to all which sumptuous profusion might be added still another halfpenny, which was given to the maid-servant—in all, fivepence! Latterly the dram had been disused; but such had been the general increase, either in the cost or the quantity of the indulgences, that the usual nightly expense was ultimately from a shilling to one and fourpence. The winnings at whist were always thrown into the reckoning. A large two-quart bottle or tappit-hen was introduced by the landlady, with a small measure, out of which the company helped themselves; and the members made up their own bill with chalk upon the table. In 1824, in the recollection of the senior members, some of whom were of fifty years’ standing, the house was kept by the widow of a Lieutenant Hamilton of the army, who recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at Holyroodhouse, when the play was the _Spanish Friar_, and when many of the members of the _Union Parliament_ were present in the house.

[Illustration: Tappit-hen.]

The BOAR CLUB was an association of a different sort, consisting chiefly of wild, fashionable young men; and the place of meeting was not in any of the snug profundities of the Old Town, but in a modern tavern in Shakspeare Square, kept by one Daniel Hogg. The _joke_ of this club consisted in the supposition that all the members were _boars_, that their room was a _sty_, that their talk was _grunting_, and in the _double-entendre_ of the small piece of stone-ware which served as a repository of all the fines being a _pig_. Upon this they lived twenty years. I have, at some expense of eyesight and with no small exertion of patience, perused the soiled and blotted records of the club, which in 1824 were preserved by an old vintner, whose house was their last place of meeting; and the result has been the following memorabilia. The Boar Club commenced its meetings in 1787, and the original members were J. G. C. Schetky, a German musician; David Shaw; Archibald Crawfuird; Patrick Robertson; Robert Aldridge, a famed pantomimist and dancing-master; James Neilson; and Luke Cross. Some of these were remarkable men, in particular Mr Schetky. He had come to Edinburgh about the beginning of the reign of George III. He used to tell that on alighting at Ramsay’s inn, opposite the Cowgate Port, his first impression of the city was so unfavourable that he was on the point of leaving it again without further acquaintance, and was only prevented from doing so by the solicitations of his fellow-traveller, who was not so much alarmed at the dingy and squalid appearance of this part of Auld Reekie.[136] He was first employed at St Cecilia’s Hall, where the concerts were attended by all the ‘rank, beauty, and fashion’ of which Edinburgh could then boast, and where, besides the professional performers, many amateurs of great musical skill and enthusiasm, such as Mr Tytler of Woodhouselee,[137] were pleased to exhibit themselves for the entertainment of their friends, who alone were admitted by tickets. Mr Schetky composed the march of a body of volunteers called the Edinburgh Defensive Band, which was raised out of the citizens of Edinburgh at the time of the American war, and was commanded by the eminent advocate Crosbie. One of the verses to which the march was set may be given as an admirable specimen of _militia poetry_:

‘Colonel Crosbie takes the field; To France and Spain he will not yield; But still maintains his high command At the head of the noble Defensive Band.’[138]

[Illustration: ‘AULD REEKIE’ from Largo.

PAGE 152.]

Mr Schetky was primarily concerned in the founding of the Boar Club. He was in the habit of meeting every night with Mr Aldridge and one or two other professional men, or gentlemen who affected the society of such persons, in Hogg’s tavern; and it was the host’s name that suggested the idea of calling their society the ‘_Boar_ Club.’ Their laws were first written down in proper form in 1790. They were to meet every evening at seven o’clock; each _boar_, on his entry, to contribute a halfpenny to the _pig_. Mr Aldridge was to be perpetual _Grand-boar_, with Mr Schetky for his deputy; and there were other officers, entitled Secretary, Treasurer, and Procurator-fiscal. A fine of one halfpenny was imposed upon every person who called one of his brother-boars by his proper out-of-club name—the term ‘sir’ being only allowed. The entry-moneys, fines, and other pecuniary acquisitions were hoarded for a grand annual dinner. The laws were revised in 1799, when some new officials were constituted, such as Poet-laureate, Champion, Archbishop, and Chief-grunter. The fines were then rendered exceedingly severe, and in their exaction no one met with any mercy, as it was the interest of all the rest that the _pig_ should bring forth as plenteous a _farrow_ as possible at the grand dinner-day. This practice at length occasioning a violent insurrection in the _sty_, the whole fraternity was broken up, and never again returned to ‘wallow in the mire.’

The HELL-FIRE CLUB, a terrible and infamous association of wild young men about the beginning of the last century, met in various profound places throughout Edinburgh, where they practised orgies not more fit for seeing the light than the Eleusinian Mysteries. I have conversed with old people who had seen the last worn-out members of the Hell-fire Club, which in the country is to this day believed to have been an association in compact with the Prince of Darkness.

Many years afterwards, a set of persons associated for the purpose of purchasing goods condemned by the Court of Exchequer. For what reason I cannot tell, they called themselves the Hell-fire Club, and their president was named the Devil. My old friend, Henry Mackenzie, whose profession was that of an attorney before the Court of Exchequer, wrote me a note on this subject, in which he says very naïvely: ‘In my youngest days, I knew the Devil.’

The SWEATING CLUB flourished about the middle of the last century. They resembled the Mohocks mentioned in the _Spectator_. After intoxicating themselves, it was their custom to sally forth at midnight, and attack whomsoever they met upon the streets. Any luckless wight who happened to fall into their hands was chased, jostled, pinched, and pulled about, till he not only perspired, but was ready to drop down and die with exhaustion. Even so late as the early years of this century, it was unsafe to walk the streets of Edinburgh at night on account of the numerous drunken parties of young men who then reeled about, bent on mischief, at all hours, and from whom the Town-guard were unable to protect the sober citizen.

A club called the INDUSTRIOUS COMPANY may serve to show how far the system of drinking was carried by our fathers. It was a sort of joint-stock company, formed by a numerous set of porter-drinkers, who thought fit to club towards the formation of a stock of that liquor, which they might partly profit by retailing, and partly by the opportunity thus afforded them of drinking their own particular tipple at the wholesale price. Their cellars were in the Royal Bank Close, where they met every night at eight o’clock. Each member paid at his entry £5, and took his turn monthly of the duty of superintending the general business of the company. But the curse of joint-stock companies—negligence on the part of the managers—ultimately occasioned the ruin of the Industrious Company.

About 1790, a club of first-rate citizens used to meet each Saturday afternoon for a _country dinner_, in a tavern which still exists in the village of Canonmills, a place now involved within the limits of the New Town. To quote a brief memoir on the subject, handed to me many years ago by a veteran friend, who was a good deal of the _laudator temporis acti_: ‘The club was pointedly attended; it was too good a thing to miss being present at. They kept their own claret, and managed all matters as to living perfectly well.’ Originally the fraternity were contented with a very humble room; but in time they got an addition built to the house for their accommodation, comprehending one good-sized room with two windows, in one of which is a pane containing an olive-dove; in the other, one containing a wheat-sheaf, both engraved with a diamond. ‘This,’ continues Mr Johnston, ‘was the doing of William Ramsay [banker], then residing at Warriston—the tongue of the trump to the club. Here he took great delight to drink claret on the Saturdays, though he had such a paradise near at hand to retire to; but then there were Jamie Torry, Jamie Dickson, Gilbert Laurie, and other good old council friends with whom to crack [that is, chat]; and the said cracks were of more value in this dark, unseemly place than the enjoyments of home. I never pass these two engraved panes of glass but I venerate them, and wonder that, in the course of fifty years, they have not been destroyed, either from drunkenness within or from misrule without.’[139]

Edinburgh boasted of many other associations of the like nature, which it were perhaps best merely to enumerate in a tabular form, with the appropriate joke opposite each, as

THE DIRTY CLUB No gentleman to appear in clean linen. THE BLACK WIGS Members wore black wigs. THE ODD FELLOWS Members wrote their names upside down. THE BONNET LAIRDS Members wore blue bonnets. THE DOCTORS OF FACULTY CLUB { Members regarded as Physicians, and so { styled; wearing, moreover, gowns and { wigs.

And so forth. There were the CALEDONIAN CLUB and the UNION CLUB, of whose foundation history speaketh not. There was the WIG CLUB, the president of which wore a wig of extraordinary materials, which had belonged to the Moray family for three generations, and each new _entrant_ of which drank to the fraternity in a quart of claret without pulling bit. The Wigs usually drank twopenny ale, on which it was possible to get satisfactorily drunk for a groat; and with this they ate souters’ clods,[140] a coarse, lumpish kind of loaf.[141] There was also the BROWNONIAN SYSTEM CLUB, which, oddly enough, bore no reference to the license which that system had given for a phlogistic regimen—for it was a douce citizenly fraternity, venerating ten o’clock as a sacred principle—but in honour of the founder of that system, who had been a constituent member.

The LAWNMARKET CLUB was composed chiefly of the woollen-traders of that street, a set of whom met every morning about seven o’clock, and walked down to the Post-office, where they made themselves acquainted with the news of the morning. After a plentiful discussion of the news, they adjourned to a public-house and got a dram of brandy. As a sort of ironical and self-inflicted satire upon the strength of their potations, they sometimes called themselves the _Whey Club_. They were always the first persons in the town to have a thorough knowledge of the foreign news; and on Wednesday mornings, when there was no post from London, it was their wont to meet as usual, and, in the absence of real news, amuse themselves by the invention of what was imaginary; and this they made it their business to circulate among their uninitiated acquaintances in the course of the forenoon. Any such unfounded articles of intelligence, on being suspected or discovered, were usually called _Lawnmarket Gazettes_, in allusion to their roguish originators.

In the year 1705, when the Duke of Argyll was commissioner in the Scottish parliament, a singular kind of fashionable club, or coterie of ladies and gentlemen, was instituted, chiefly by the exertions of the Earl of Selkirk, who was the distinguished beau of that age. This was called the HORN ORDER, a name which, as usual, had its origin in the whim of a moment. A horn-spoon having been used at some merry-meeting, it occurred to the club, which was then in embryo, that this homely implement would be a good badge for the projected society; and this being proposed, it was instantly agreed by all the party that the ‘Order of the Horn’ would be a good caricature of the more ancient and better-sanctioned honorary dignities. The phrase was adopted; and the members of the _Horn Order_ met and caroused for many a day under this strange designation, which, however, the common people believed to mean more than met the ear. Indeed, if all accounts of it be true, it must have been a species of masquerade, in which the sexes were mixed and all ranks confounded.[142]

FOOTNOTES

[130] Lord Grange, whose _Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice_ was published in 1833.

[131] Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being tried before them.

[132] This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench as Lord Eldin.

[133] It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair wearers.

We are told, in a curious paper in the _Edinburgh Magazine_ for August 1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in good company.’

[134] The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the [South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:

‘When big as burns the gutters rin, If ye ha’e catched a droukit skin, To Luckie Middlemist’s loup in, And sit fu’ snug, Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin, Or haddock lug.’

At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of the worst character. This went under the convenient name of _frolic_.

[135] The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the overwhelmed passenger.’

[136] This highly appropriate popular _sobriquet_ cannot be traced beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now, bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’