Though handsome, he belonged to the Ugly Club. This club was dedicated
to deformity. The members agreed to fight, not about a beautiful woman,
but about an ugly man. The hall of the club was adorned by hideous
portraits--Thersites, Triboulet, Duns, Hudibras, Scarron; over the
chimney was AEsop, between two men, each blind of an eye, Cocles and
Camoens (Cocles being blind of the left, Camoens of the right eye), so
arranged that the two profiles without eyes were turned to each other.
The day that the beautiful Mrs. Visart caught the small pox the Ugly
Club toasted her. This club was still in existence in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, and Mirabeau was elected an honorary member.

Since the restoration of Charles II. revolutionary clubs had been
abolished. The tavern in the little street by Moorfields, where the
Calf's Head Club was held, had been pulled down; it was so called
because on the 30th of January, the day on which the blood of Charles I.
flowed on the scaffold, the members had drunk red wine out of the skull
of a calf to the health of Cromwell. To the republican clubs had
succeeded monarchical clubs. In them people amused themselves with
decency.

* * * * *

There was the Hell-fire Club, where they played at being impious. It was
a joust of sacrilege. Hell was at auction there to the highest bidder in
blasphemy.

There was the Butting Club, so called from its members butting folks
with their heads. They found some street porter with a wide chest and a
stupid countenance. They offered him, and compelled him, if necessary,
to accept a pot of porter, in return for which he was to allow them to
butt him with their heads four times in the chest, and on this they
betted. One day a man, a great brute of a Welshman named Gogangerdd,
expired at the third butt. This looked serious. An inquest was held, and
the jury returned the following verdict: "Died of an inflation of the
heart, caused by excessive drinking." Gogangerdd had certainly drunk the
contents of the pot of porter.

There was the Fun Club. _Fun_ is like _cant_, like _humour_, a word
which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper is to salt. To get
into a house and break a valuable mirror, slash the family portraits,
poison the dog, put the cat in the aviary, is called "cutting a bit of
fun." To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning
by mistake, is fun. It was fun to cut a square hole