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]