Free The Complete Simon Iff by Aleister Crowley

is very painful.”
    King Edward VII, also, was in this group, with the letter from his secretary: “His Majesty commands me to inform you that greatly as he appreciates the good wishes and loyalty of the president and members of the Hemlock Club, he cannot possibly take an oath declaring himself a Republican, or a Jacobite, as he understands is necessary to comply with Rule Forty-nine.”
    There were many other curious rules in the Club; for example, a fine of a guinea for failing to eat mustard with mutton; another of Five Pounds for quoting Shakespeare within the precincts of the Club. The wearing of a white rose or a plaid necktie was punishable with expulsion; this dated from the period when it was heretical to be a Jacobite but dangerous to display it.
    Many other customs of the Club were similarly memorial; the Head Porter was always dressed in moleskin, in honor of the mole whose hill tripped the horse of William The Third; members whose Christian names happened to be George had to pay double the usual subscription, in memory of the Club’s long hatred of the Four Georges; and at the annual banquet a bowl of hemlock was passed round in the great hall, decorated for the occasion as a funeral chamber; for it was always claimed that Socrates was the real founder of the Club. There was a solemn pretence, every year, of a search for the “missing archives of the Club.” On November the Fifth there was a feast in honor of Guy Fawkes; and on the eleventh of the same month the Lord Mayor of London of the year was burnt in effigy.
    Such is the club to which Macpherson suddenly found himself invited. He felt that now he could marry; he would have something to boast of to his grandchildren!
    II
    But, as things chanced, Macpherson nearly missed the dinner after all. He would have called off anything else in the world. But he couldn’t give up that! However, it was a very sorry Scotsman who appeared at the door of the Club. In keeping with the general eccentricity of the place, the entrance to the Club was mean and small, almost squalid; a narrow oaken door, studded with iron. And no sooner had he reached the great open space within than the Head Porter called him aside, saying in a whisper, “Excuse me, Sir, but the Hanoverian spies are everywhere. Allow me to relieve you of your necktie!” For Macpherson had worn the Tartan of his clan all day. He was accommodated with a selection of the latest neckwear. This trifling matter subdued him most effectively; he felt himself transported to a new strange world. It did him good; for to the very steps of the Club he had been obsessed by the calamity of the day.
    Simon Iff received him with affability and dignity, offered him a cigarette, and proceeded to show him the Club. Macpherson was intensely awed; he was in a kind of private edition de luxe of Westminster Abbey. He resolved to put on all his panoply of Scottish culture. At the memorial chamber he exclaimed aloud: “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!” He was enchanted with the Whistler portrait. “A true Scot, Mr. Iff!” he said. “He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again!”
    “True, very true!” replied Iff, a trifle hastily. Before Aubrey Beardsley the Scot grew more melancholy than ever, “For he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally,” he cried. They came to the portrait of Keats, a Severn from Sir Charles Dilke’s collection. “I weep for Adonais — he is dead,” said the banker. “Thank Heaven!” murmured Iff to himself, hoping that all would now be well. But his luck was out: he brought the next blow upon himself. “Some have doubted the autograph of Thomson here,” he said. Macpherson was determined to shine. “Never fear!” he said, “that’s the man’s fist. Do we not know the sweet Roman hand?” And he added: “I am but mad nor’ nor’ west; when the wind is southerly, I know