The Recollections of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman of the Craft January 1st 1781 Feast of Saint Sylvester Weather: Deep, crisp, even, etcetera Outlook: Improving, hopefully Ring out the old; Ring in the new! Or vice versa…

Sylvester, as every schoolboy knows, was made bishop of Rome in the year 314 and is credited with having baptised the emperor Constantine. Other than this highly improbable feat, almost nothing is known about him but that has not deterred a lodge of Freemasons naming themselves after him on the grounds that their inaugural meeting was held on his feast day.
    It seems odd to me that a lodge should meet on New Year’s Eve, but if one insisted on so doing, one might have expected them to call themselves the Auld Acquaintance or the Neo Annum or something of that sort, but the facts remain that Sylvester does and that they didn’t, so there. Further it might be supposed, quite reasonably, that a lodge that does meet on the evening of the last night of the year might order its affairs in such a way that their business would be concluded in good time for the brethren to disperse to see in the new with their families and friends… No. Sylvester holds its installation meeting on December 31st, the lodge being tyled at eleven o’clock in the evening precisely. By tradition, the duly elected, humble representative of King Solomon must be placed in his chair on the stroke of midnight in order that the minutes (no pun intended) may show that the lodge was, with the turning of the year, reborn and formed anew. Appealing, if gently eccentric, thought Lightfoote when he first heard of it; greatly eccentric, thinks Lightfoote now.
    How did Lightfoote hear of the strange and singular Lodge of Sylvester? He’d invited a young fellow called Stacey to join him for supper at The Antlers Club and the boy had failed to arrive. It turned out that Master Stacey had allowed himself to be gulled into viewing some engraved prints of an highly questionable nature in some dungeon in Duke Street, plied with strong drink and induced to purchase a series entitled Beyond the Pail or The Dairymaid Undone, but I digress. As I loitered in the lobby, I noticed that another lurked likewise. I didn’t recognise him and, on making polite enquiry, discovered that he was a guest who’s inviter had failed to make the rendezvous. We shook hands and, in so doing, revealed that each of us was brother to the other. Lightfoote’s course was clear, particularly as the supply of jugged hare might at any moment be exhausted: Sir Victor Mortimer became my dining partner.
    If one could choose at birth whose snout might sit next to one’s own in the trough of life, it would be Mortimer’s, for a more amenable tablemate a man could scarce imagine.

The Perfect Guest

He ate hardly a mouthful of meat, sweet, or bread,
But he paid close attention to all that I said;
Of the wine and the brandy he took scarce two sips,
But he chuckled at every one of my quips.

I must gather these verses together at some point; men have made fortunes from lines nowhere near as neat as this: Spenser, for one. Where was I?
    Mortimer… By the end of the meal I had gladly accepted his invitation to attend his lodge’s installation meeting. The following morning I informed Mrs. Lightfoote, who chuckled not. I was informed that elaborate arrangements were already in place for a lavish, new year celebration. I countered that, with six weeks to go, her plans could hardly be far advanced. I shall not attempt to employ this gambit again.
    I was still limping slightly when the cab dropped me off in an alleyway down below The Strand at half past ten on December the thirty-first. There was a sound of revelry that night, as one might imagine, but the silence that enveloped me as I stood before the door of Sylvester’s sanctum was positively sepulchral. I raised my hand to knock but the door swung open, groaning, to reveal Sir Victor, smiling and bidding me enter. Within, the brethren were gathered and ready. I could not help but observe that the lodge appeared to be in need of an injection of new blood; not one of them was under seventy and many were considerably over! Their manners were courtly but they were all, like Mortimer, pale and wan, even their regalia was worn and threadbare, like those beeswing banners one sees, sad-hanging in cathedral churches.
    The lodge was opened in due form and the minutes were read; I wondered when they might last have had an initiate; I wondered, come to that, when last they’d entertained a guest. The current master was absent, on business overseas, apparently, and so a (very) senior past master was to conduct the proceedings. The ancient, doddering candidate for the master’s chair was presented and the ceremony of his installation proceeded accordingly, leading inevitably and inexorably to the crowning moment when he was placed in the Master’s chair, at which point a sudden, violent draught extinguished the candles and the room was plunged into utter and profound darkness. In the silent, breathless moment that followed I heard all the bells of London strike the hour: a new year was born. Flints were struck and wicks relit and my surroundings gradually became visible again. The aged brethren around me smiled indulgently, all was well, and then my gaze fell upon the new master. Seated in Solomon’s chair was a boy who looked no older than the aforementioned absentee Stacey. I blinked and rubbed my eyes but it was no apparition, the face that grinned back at me, and winked, was as smooth and unblemished as that of a Dresden figurine.
    As the ceremony proceeded I was struck cold, during the address to the master, by the suggestion that the inferior brethren of the lodge were of too generous a disposition to envy his preferment - or were they merely biding their time.
    At the conclusion of the meeting, Mortimer informed me that he was looking forward to his second term as master, in just a few years time. It seems that masters of Sylvester are in the habit of disappearing, following their installation, often going abroad for extended periods, but, my host assured me, they always return, eventually, just as he had.
    I have been invited to join this lodge but I am reluctant so to do; the prospect worries me strangely. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks; perhaps I’m getting old…. If so, so be it.