CLUBS AND FRATERNITIES: HUMOROUS, GROTESQUE, AND SOCIAL.

T is not my intention to descant upon the brilliant company of wits and poets who assembled at the "Mermaid" and enjoyed the "wit combats" of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; nor upon the "merry men" who met at the "Rose" in the days of "glorious John"; nor upon the more formal gatherings which took place at "Button's," and were honoured by the dignified presence of Addison; nor upon the symposia of that famous "Literary Club" which boasted, among its members, of a Johnson, a Burke, a Goldsmith, and a Sir Joshua Reynolds. With these we are all familiar, and most of us, I suppose, at some time or another, have sought to call them up before "the mind's eye, Horatio." Why was not the phonograph of earlier invention? My object in the present paper is to speak of some less familiar clubs, orders, and fraternities; and particularly of those whose characteristics were social rather than literary, together with others which were satirical or humorous in origin or intention.

About the time that the boy Alexander Pope was introduced to Dryden at Will's coffee-house, which the author of "The Hind and. Panther" then frequented, there flourished in Paris, opposite the Comédie Française, a café of considerable repute, established by F. Procope, a Sicilian, about 1687. The Café Procope became the acknowledged rendezvous of dramatic authors and men of letters, and was patronised by the ingenious Lamotte, the witty Piron (who was nothing, not even an Academician), and the brilliant young Arouet, afterwards famous as M. de Voltaire, the finest wit and most trenchant satirist the world has ever seen. There they discoursed upon all things, human and divine; and in order that they might speak the more freely, and with less danger from the suspicions of police spies, they invented a kind of argot for their own use. Thus Marmontel and Bourdin eventually agreed that M. de l'Étre should mean the Supreme Being; Javotte should stand for religion; and Margot for the soul.

Piron was also a member of the "Cellar Club," which sprang

into existence about the middle of the last century; but as it assumed the character of a literary tribunal, it scarcely falls within my present scope. "The Cellar," says a contemporary letter-writer, "is the name given to a café which is very much the mode, and is situated in a small vault, skilfully fitted up, in the garden of the Palais Royal. Agreeable saunterers, the habitués of the opera, and more especially all lovers of good ices, of which the sale here is prodigious, patronise it at different hours of the day. Some men of letters visit it for the purpose of spoiling their digestion; and constitute a critical tribunal, from which, however, one can always appeal to that of common sense, though its decisions generally produce a temporary impression." After the hurly-burly of the Revolution had subsided, several attempts were made to resuscitate this gay and lettered society under such designations as those of "Dîners du Vaudeville," "Réunion du Caveau moderne," and "Soupers de Momus"; but none of them enjoyed more than a transient existence.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a well-to-do widow, Madame Doublet de Persan, who lodged in an outside room of the Convent des Filles Saint Thomas, whence she did not once emerge in a period of forty years, daily collected around her a tolerably numerous circle of distinguished men. The principal were the Abbé Legendre, Piron (who seems to have been as clubable a man as Dr. Johnson), the two brothers Sainte-Palaye, Chauvelin, Mirabaud, Falconet, and others, whose names will scarcely awaken any memories in the mind of an English reader. Each of these "parishioners "the réunion was known as la Paroisse, or the Parish-arrived at the same hour, and occupied the same fauteuil, which was placed in the salon under his own portrait. Then, in a large bureau, lay two registers, in which the news of the day was recorded after it had filtered through the table of the company. One of them was set apart for doubtful, and the other, which, I suppose, was considerably the smaller, for well-authenticated facts. The evening was wound up with a supper, which was usually of a very lively character. At the end of the week the registers were condensed into a kind of journal entitled "Nouvelles à la Main" -the private speculation of Madame Doublet's secretary and valetde-chambre. As it assumed a political complexion, at the time of the quarrels between the Court and the Parliament, the police, by way of a warning to the Parishioners, arrested the valet-de-chambre and imprisoned him for a few da having survived most of

Madame Doublet died in 1772, nembers of the Paroisse. To the

materials which they had accumulated in their registers, L. P. Buchaumont has been largely indebted in his curious and valuable work, "Mémoires Secrets, pour servir à l'Histoire de la République des Lettres en France depuis 1762," published in 36 small volumes between 1777 and 1789,

It was about this time that the Marquise de Turpin founded the Order of the Round Table, which included Favart, Voisenon, and Boufflers among its chevaliers, and produced, as a memorial of its existence, "La Journée de l'Amour," a beautifully printed work, copies of which are now seldom met with. I may also refer to "Les Dîners du Bout du Banc," given by the celebrated actress, Mdlle. Quinault, and the soirées of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin, and others.

Continuing my notes on the French Clubs and "Orders," in alphabetical rank, I first take that of "Les Chevaliers de l'Aimable Commerce" (Friendly Intercourse), founded in 1724. The "Chevaliers de l'Ancre " were an offshoot from the order of "La Félicité." The Anchor has been assumed as a club name by more than one English society, as, for instance, the Anchor Society of Bristol.

The Order of "La Boisson" was instituted at Avignon, in 1700, by De Pesquières, and was in considerable repute. It had its official organs, edited by Morgier and the Abbé de Charnes, with the title of "Nouvelles de l'Ordre de la Boisson, chez Museau Cramoisi, aut Papier Raisin." Its members assumed nicknames analogous to that of their purple-nosed printer, such as Frère des Vignes, Frère Mortadelle, Natif de Saint-Jean Pied-de-Porc, Dom Barriquez Caraffa y Fuentes Vinosas, M. de Flaconville, and the like. This kind of fooling has always been popular in Club-land. The books advertised in their gazette were in perfect harmony with the general character of its contents, as "Introduction à la Cuisine, par le Frère le Porc"; "Remarques sur les Langues mortes, comme langues de Bœuf, de Cochon, et autres"; "Recueil de plusieurs pièces de four, par le frère Godiveau"; "La Manière de rendre l'or potable, et l'argent aussi, par le Frère la Buvette"; "L'Art de bien boucher les bouteilles, impression de Liège"; "L'Itinéraire des Cabarets, œuvre posthume de Tavernier"; "De Arte Bibendi, auctore Frère Templier," and so on. These titles remind me of some of Thomas Hood's happy efforts in the same direction.

One or two extracts from the political and general intelligence furnished in the veracious columns of the "Nouvelles " will suffice to indicate its character :

"Lisbon, February 20, 1705.-The Archduke gave a superb

masked ball, which was attended by the Admiral of Castile, and several Portuguese nobles. He was dressed as a king, and in that disguise was recognised by nobody. The Admiral took part in 'Les Folies d'Espagne,' which is the ordinary dance."

"Brussels, June 28, 1707.-The allied army lies encamped near Tirlemont, where it drinks nothing but beer, and the Duke of Vendôme's army near Gembloux, where it drinks nothing but wine, which leads to a large influx of deserters from the former into that of the latter. At a fête given in London, vast projects were discussed for limiting the exorbitant power of France. People spoke of foraying to the very gates of Rheims, and of carrying off all the champagne for Queen Anne's consumption; cutting in pieces the army of Philip V., and conducting Charles III. in triumph into his good city of Madrid. The day was spent in building châteaux en Espagne, which next day were all overthrown by the arrival of two couriers, the first bringing news of the defeat of the allies at Almanza by the Duke of Berwick; and the other of the loss of a large number of ships captured or sent to the bottom by the French. It is impossible to describe the astonishment of the English, a people very haughty and obstinate in their belief in their power. The Queen eagerly demanded if Alicante had been taken, and when informed that it was on the point of falling, appeared so concerned that it is evident that town was very dear to her. [Observe this and the preceding allusion to Queen Anne's supposed love of wine.] Since this news arrived trade has been completely disorganised; money has disappeared; liquors are half as dear again; and wine no longer circulates in London any more than exchequer bills. A large committee has just been formed to consider the best means of securing a supply of wine."

"the

Earl Stanhope remarks that the victory of Almanza, as first gleam of returning fortune," was hailed with great delight, not only by the subjects of Louis in his own dominion, but by all his partisans in Europe. Their hopes, however, were dashed to the ground in the following year by Marlborough's great victory at Oudenarde.

Sometimes the news in the "Drinker's Gazette" was given in a versified form, and the following quatrain attained a very wide popularity:

A la barbe des ennemis,

Villars s'est emparé des lignes;
S'il vient à s'emparer des vignes,
Voilà les Allemands soumis.

Which may be roughly Englished as follows:

In the beard of his foes

Villars seized on their lines;

If he seize on its vines,

Down Germany goes!

The allusion is to the successes in Germany of Marshal Villars in 1703, when he defeated the Imperial forces at Hochstadt.

It is to the credit of the members of "l'Ordre de la Boisson" that their statutes prohibited intemperance, and also entered a caveat against lewdness of talk. Said the Grand Master :

Dans nos hôtels, si d'aventure

Un frère salit ses discours
Par la moindre petite ordure,

Je l'en bannis pour quelques jours.
Que si ces peines redoublées

Sur lui ne font aucun effet,

Je veux que son procès soit fait,

Toutes les tables assemblées.

The philosophy accepted by the members found a true and emphatic expression in the following quatrain:

Je donne à l'oubli le passé,

Le présent à l'indifférence :
Et, pour vivre débarrassé,
L'avenir à la Providence.

"I dedicate the past to forgetfulness, the present to indifference, and, that I may live free of care, I trust the future to Providence not altogether an unwise code of conduct, as the world goes!

The "Régiment de la Calotte."-At the beginning of the eighteenth century, some officers of the Court, including Aymon, one of the royal household, and de Torsac, an exempt of the gardes du corps, conceived the idea of founding, under this name, a society whose object it should be to chastise, by means of light and airy ridicule, the faults and oddities of conduct, style, and language which came to its knowledge. And immediately they inscribed on its roll of members all who were distinguished by the singularity and eccentricity of their speech and actions. When a man had committed, said, or written a foolish thing, they sent to him forthwith a calotte, or in other words a stinging epigram, which covered him with ridicule, or perhaps they despatched a brevet de calottin in verse, and thenceforth he was considered to be enrolled in the regiment of skull-caps. If such a regiment were formed in our London society to-day, its muster-roll would speedily attain to enormous proportions! There VOL. CCLXVIII. NO. 1911.

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