Page 18 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

18 An Account of the

Count Lavezari, Venetian Resident, admitted June 6th, 1787.
Sir Nicholas Nugent, Bart., admitted 1785.
Baron de Starck.
Sir John Ingleby, Bart.
This Lodge continues to meet numerously and respectably on the 2nd
Friday in the month, at the Thatched House Tavern, St. James’s Street.
The present Officers are:

The Chevalier B. Ruspini, R.W.M.
5
William Blackstone, Esq., S.W.
Samuel Beazley, Esq., J.W.
Charles Carpenter, Esq., Treasurer.
Mr. Simon Stephenson, Secretary.
Thomas Tinson, Esq., Mas. Cer.

Does the Secretary’s “Mr” imply a clerk or scrivener whom the other members
did not think up to their standard of gentility?
If this list be compared with that in Appendix A, taken from the Grand Lodge
Register, many of the dates show discrepancies; which are correct cannot now be
said. Eight of the names are not in the Register and several are misspelt.
Nothing is known of the special motive which prompted the founding of
the Lodge. The name, unique among English Lodges, suggests a connection with
literature and the arts, and among the early members were Cipriani and Zoffany,
the painters, Bartolozzi, the engraver, Carlini, the sculptor, and J. Christian Bach,
the elder Cramer, C. F. Abel, and other musicians, most or all of whom were
personal friends.
At a time when the Classics formed so large a part in a polite education it is
strange that so few Lodges took their names from this source; but Lodges then
were frequently unnamed, or distinguished only by the names of the taverns or
other places where they met. The Lodge is so fortunate as to have a copy of one
of the rare official engraved lists of Lodges under the Grand Lodge of England
(Moderns), for the year 1776; among the English Lodges there named there is

5 Son of the late able Commentator on the Laws of our Country.