THE "THIRTEEN CLUB" DINNER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9455, 10 March 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE "THIRTEEN CLUB" DINNER.

A REMARKABLE FUNCTION.

The annual dinner of the "Thirteen Club" (writes our London correspondent) book place under the presidency of Mr. Harry Furniss, the genial Punch artist, laab Saturday evening, January the 13th. The object of the club is to display supreme contempt for all popular superstitions. This was done by means of all sorts of grotesque extravagances. The serving of dinner was announced by the breaking of a mirror instead of the beating of a gong, and the company, wearing for the most part green ties, and having as button-holes miniature skeletons and peacocks' feathers, marched in a solemn procession under a ladder into the dining-room. Here, as far as possible, they were arranged in thirteens at tables. Knives were regularly crossed, peacocks' feathers adorned the serviettes, models of skulls served as receptacles for fairy lights, and toy skeletons took the place of flowers as table decorations; while each diner found before him a coffin-shaped salt-cellar, furnished with a model gravedigger'a spade as a spoon, and bearing on a slab, shaped like a tombstone, under a death's head and cross-bones, the following inscription :— " To the memory of many senseless superstitions killed by the London Thirteen Club, 1894."

Bub this was not all. The menu card, designed by Mr. Furniss, was in keeping: with the other arrangements, as also was the nomenclature of the various dishes. There were, for instance, such delicacies as "Pieuvre Sauce Vendredi," "Poulets au Chat INoir," "Cotelette de Veau a la Pleine Lune," " Boeuf Sauce Fer & Cheval," and " Pouding au Spectre." As to the actual proceedings, the diners, in accordance with the custom of the club, helped each other to salt, and, at a given signal, they spilt salt together. They also, on the invitation of the chairman, broke in company the small hand-glass with which each member of the gathering was provided. The chairman proposed the toasb of the " Royal Family," in thirteen words, and then the Houses of Parliament. Mr. Furniss was in capital form, and created much laughter by his references to the inauspicious circumstances attending the Parliamentary history of the Home Rule Bill. The measure, he pointed out, was introduced on February 13; its first reading was thrown out on a Friday, and yet, he slyly remarked, no one could say that it was. an unlucky scheme. The proceedings terminated with a final spilling of salt, and pocket-knives were given by the chairman without the usual protective return being made.

An absurd unrehearsed inoidenb of the dinner, however, was the appearance of the local undertaker on the scene in the sober garb of his order. This person had been invited by telegram by some Cambridge University wag to waib on Mr. Furniss shortly after seven o'clock for orders, and, in blissful ignorance of the character of the " Thirteen Club," he obeyed the summons, of course only to find himself the victim of a hoax. However, lie took the affair in good part, and having distributed his business cards amongst those members of the company who were anxious to test the genuineness of the incident, departed ladon with some of the' emblems of the feasb, as trophies of his visit. And so evervone was made happy!