So universal has been the superstition regarding the number thirteen at table, that it has long been a matter of etiquette in France to avoid having exactly that number of guests at dinner-parties. The Parisian pique-assiette, a person whose title corresponds to the English “trencher friend” or “sponger,” is also known as a quatorzième, his chief mission being to occupy the fourteenth seat at a banquet.
The ancients, we learn, had ideas of their own regarding the proper size of festive gatherings, their favorite number of convives being between three and nine, the number of the Graces and Muses respectively.[545]
Opinions have differed as to whether misfortune were likely to befall the whole company of thirteen persons rash enough to dine together, or only the one leaving the room first after the repast. All evil, however, was supposed to be averted by the entire company rising to their feet together. It has been wittily remarked that the only occasion when thirteen plates at table should cause disquietude is when the food is only sufficient for twelve persons.
At the thirteenth annual dinner of that unique organization, the Thirteen Club, held in New York city, January 13, 1895, at 7.13 o’clock, P. M., the custodian delivered an address in which were recounted the circumstances of the club’s formation. So prevalent was the apprehension of evil likely to result from the assembling together of thirteen persons that, when at length the requisite number were seated at table, it was found desirable to lock the doors of the banquet-room, lest some faint soul should retire abruptly.
Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, in his “Forty-One Years in India” (vol. i. p. 24), mentions a circumstance occurring in his own experience, which affords evidence, were any needed, of the falsity of the superstition in question. On New Year’s Day, A. D. 1853, Lord Roberts was one of a party of thirteen who dined together at a staff-officers’ mess at Peshawer, on the Afghan frontier. Eleven years later all these officers were alive, the greater number having participated in the suppression of the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, during which several of them were wounded.
In Italy shrewd theatrical managers have found it expedient to change the number of Box 13 to 12A, and in many streets of Rome and Florence one may search in vain for house-numbers between 12½ and 14. A gentleman of the writer’s acquaintance, living in Washington, D. C., sent a formal petition to the authorities asking leave to change the number of his house, for the sole reason that it contained the ominous figures.
As an illustration of the popular distrust of the number thirteen among the villagers of the Department of Ille-et-Villaine, France, may be cited the following custom, which is in vogue in that district. Children are there usually taught the art of knitting by devout elderly women. The little ones are first seated in a circle, and, to facilitate the work, on the completion of the first round of knitting they are made to repeat the following words: “One, the Father;” at the close of the second round, “Two, the Son;” and so on, as follows: “Three, the Holy Spirit; the four Evangelists; the five wounds of our Lord; the six commandments of the church; seven sacraments; eight beatitudes; nine choirs of angels; ten commandments of God; eleven thousand virgins; twelve apostles;” and at the close of the thirteenth round, the children mention the name of Judas.[546]
This remarkable and unreasonable prejudice against an innocent number seems to pervade all classes and communities. The possession of intelligence and culture is no effective barrier against it. Arguments and reasoning are alike vain. Even at this writing, an evening journal records that at a recent meeting of a newly elected board of aldermen in an enlightened city of eastern Massachusetts, one of the members objected to casting lots for seats because he did not relish the idea of drawing number thirteen. However, his scruples having been in a measure overcome, he was much relieved to find that the number eleven, which is both uneven and lucky, had fallen to his share.[547]
Brand quotes as follows from Fuller’s “Mixt Contemplations” (1660) in reference to this subject:—