Statutes for a (frigid) singing club in early Bohemian Paris. Very rare.

Raffet, Auguste. La Société des Frileux a pour but principal de continuer, pendant l’hyver seulement, la réunion des Joyeux. [Paris], s.n., [1835]. Single-sheet lithograph [39.1 x 26.9 cm], signed “Raffet” on the stone. Only minor wrinkling and staining, small stamp to lower left corner, traces of mounting tape on verso. A fine example of this unusual and very rare print. 
 
Very rare first and only edition of this charming, separately issued lithograph providing the programme for the Paris social/singing club La Société des Frileux (‘Society of the Frigid’) for the winter season of 1835-36. Heading the sheet is a droll sketch by the artist Auguste Raffet (1804-1860) depicting members of the Frileux dressed in heavy coats, huddled around a stove, looking none too merry. Ephemeral items from this and similar societies — valuable as records of daily life in 19th-century Paris — survive only in very small numbers today.
 
The Frileux were one of the most notable of the early Parisian goguettes, or singing societies, groups which met regularly at cafés or restaurants to eat, drink, play games, and, indeed, sing, and who had their heyday between from the 1820s to 1890s. The lithograph describes how the club was to meet at 59 rue de Sèvres, at the premises of the wine merchant Guignet, to hold a banquet on the first Tuesday of the month and to engage in singing/drinking/gaming on Fridays, Saturdays and remaining Tuesdays. The document outlines dates, times, prices, etc., and offers some humorous ground rules, e.g., that it is expressly forbidden to sing a song more than twice (no matter who wrote it or how good it is), and, above all, that there is to be no talk of politics, “because it’s annoying.” 
 
In the summertime, the Frileux decamped for the outskirts of Paris and restyled themselves as ‘La Société des Joyeux.’ There they met at the guinguette (a sort of outdoor cabaret) of a certain Mère Saguet, near the Moulin de Beurre, in what at the time was the Commune of Vaugirard.
 
Raffet and his teacher Nicolas Toussaint Charlet (1792-1845), both members of the Frileux/Joyeux, are remembered principally for their numerous patriotic lithographs of the Napoleonic campaigns (and so we see the need for prohibitions on political talk at the club). Charlet is depicted here top-hatted and warming his hands over a small bucket of coals. The corpulent fellow with his feet in the stove is the bon vivant Jacques-Vincent Billoux, whom Charlet in 1840 depicted in another (also very rare) lithograph for the Frileux/Joyeux society. 
 
OCLC locates two examples of this rare print, at the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
 
* Hector Giacomelli, Raffet, son oeuvre lithographique et ses eaux-fortes, pp. 50-51, no. 98; E. Baillet, Chansons et petits poèmes, avec préface: fragments de l’histoire de la Goguette; S. M. Whiting, Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall; Emile de Labédollière, Le nouveau Paris, histoire de ses 20 arrondissements, pp. 221-23.
 
 
Full transcription: 
 
La Société des Frileux a pour but principal de continuer, pendant l’hyver seulement, la réunion des Joyeux.
Son Siège est établi chez M.r Guignet, M[archan]d de vins Traiteur, Rue de Sèvres, n.o 59. au coin de la Rue S.te Placide.
Le premier Mardi de chaque mois, du 1.er novembre au 1.er mai, les Frileux sont convoqués pour un Banquet lyrique dont le prix est invariablement fixé à 4 f. 25 c.s (café compris). A six heures précises, à table — Puis ouverture des chants et continuation d’i-ceux jusqu’à extinction de poumons naturels. 
Il expressément défendu, quelsque soient d’ailleurs son mérite et son auteur, de chanter plus de Deux fois la même chanson — durant chaque session des Frileux.
Surtout Point de Politique parceque c’est embêtant.  
Pour entretenir leur douce et franche confraternité, les Frileux ont leurs petites Soirées les Mardi, Vendredi et Samedi. A Sept heures, le Vin sur table et le piquet à 4 — 1. sou la Marque — Qui touche mouille — Les non-joueurs payent autant que ceux qui ont pris le plus de marques.
A dix heures 1/4, on arrête les frais des opérations de la Société, tout expressément au comptant.
En résumé, 1er mardi, Banquet. Mardi, Vendredi et Samedi, soirées amicales, gaies et pas cher! 
Et voilà !!