• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘That,’ said Angus quietly, ‘is a Jacobite circle. The one in the blue jacket is called Michael somebody-or-other and he’s the one I’ve met before. I was in a pub over the other side of town, the Captain’s Bar, in South College Street, near the university. It’s a funny wee place, very narrow, with a bunch of crabbit regulars and a smattering of students. Not the sort of place one would have gone in the old days if one objected to being kippered in smoke. I was there with an old friend from art college days who liked to drink there. Anyway, there we were when in came that fellow over there, Michael, and another couple of people – a lang-nebbit woman wearing a sort of Paisley shawl and a man in a brown tweed coat. Jimmy, my friend from art college, knew the woman in the shawl, and so we ended up standing next to one another and a conversation started. It was pleasant enough, I suppose, and we bought each other a round of drinks. Then Michael looked at his watch and said that they had to go, but that we were welcome to go along with them if we had nothing better to do. Jimmy said: “I suppose you’re off to one of your meetings.” And Michael laughed and said that they were, but that we would be welcome too. There would be something to eat, they said, and since we were both feeling hungry, we agreed to go.

‘And that,’ said Angus, ‘is how I became aware of that particular circle of Jacobites, and their strange interest in things Stuart. Would you like to hear about what they get up to? Will you believe me if I tell you?’

Matthew nodded. ‘I would like to hear, and yes, I will believe you. You don’t embroider the truth do you, Angus?’

Angus smiled. ‘It depends,’ he said.

31. Edinburgh Clubs

‘We went off with these three,’ said Angus. ‘Michael, the woman in the shawl and the man in the brown tweed coat. A motley crew, I must admit.

‘I asked Jimmy what sort of meeting we were heading for, but he didn’t answer directly. “Edinburgh’s full of all sorts of clubs,” was all he said. Which was true, of course. We all know that Edinburgh’s riddled with these things, and always has been. Back in the eighteenth century, there were scores of them. The Rankenian Club, for example – Hume was a member of that. That was intellectually respectable, of course, but some of the clubs were pretty much the opposite of that. You’ve heard of the Dirty Club, perhaps, where no member was allowed to appear in clean linen. Or the Odd Fellows, where the members wrote their names upside down. And there was even something called the Sweating Club, the members of which would enjoy themselves in a tavern and then rush out to chase whomsoever they came across and tear his wig off, if he was wearing one. The idea was to make the poor victim sweat. Very strange.

‘Burns belonged to a club, you know. He joined the Crochallan Fencibles, as poor Robert Fergusson had joined the Cape Club before him. He so enjoyed that – Fergusson did – and his life was to be so brief. I still weep, you know, when I see his grave down in the Canongate Kirkyard. He could have been as great a poet as Burns, don’t you think? Burns certainly did.

‘Speaking of the eighteenth century, there were some clubs which would never have survived into Victorian Scotland because of the onset of prudery. There’s the famous Beggar’s Benison club, which started in Fife, of all places – not a place we immediately associate with licentiousness. I really can’t say too much about that club, Matthew; decency prevents my describing their rituals, but initiation into the membership was really shocking (if one is shocked by things like that). What is it about men in groups that makes them do that sort of thing, Matthew? Of course they felt that London was trying to take away all the fun – the English had imposed a new monarchy, and a Union to boot. What was there left for Scotland to do but to turn to the older, phallic gods?

‘So there have always been these clubs, and of course old habits die hard. There