Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

The trial came off at the Old Bailey, and the prosecutor was represented by a rising barrister called Mr. Hardinge Giffard. That rising young barrister has, in so far as the Bar is concerned, risen and set many a day ago. He is now Lord Halsbury. The jury found for the persecuted Hebrew. The Hon. John was sentenced to certain months in gaol as a first-class misdemeanant, and ordered to pay a heavy fine. Defendants in cases of the kind were not so closely watched in those days as they are in the present year of grace, and when Mr. Colborne was called upon to receive sentence he was nowhere to be found. Having a very clear notion of the sort of verdict the jury would give, he had skipped over to France earlier in the day.

John had carried with him across the Channel a new and enlarged edition of “The Vampires,” and he at once set about issuing copies by post to advertisers desiring to acquire a work about which the trial had set all the town talking. To stop this fresh persecution, plaintiff was willing to accept any sort of terms in reason. All that Mr. Colborne desired was liberty to return to his native land, to obtain cancellation of the excessive interest on his bills, and to live thenceforth in peace with all men. His friends were enabled to arrange terms on this basis, and John was free to prosecute those schemes for improving the condition of his fellow-man to which he purposed to devote his energies. His schemes were fated to “gang agley.” He joined the Egyptian army, and died in action. It was probably the kind of death he would have wished, for, however he may have proved wanting in other qualities, no one ever doubted his high courage.

Chinery, in his club promotions, aimed at higher game. He had served as Consul-General in a West African State, was a member of the Reform and the Devonshire, was a convinced Liberal, and had a wonderfully good connection. Owing to these circumstances, he was able to muster a much stronger committee than others who had started before him in the club industry. His first venture was the Empire Club. For this establishment he had acquired what the auctioneers call “eligible” premises. He got a lease of the house in Grafton Street, Piccadilly, which had been the last home of Lord Brougham. Men like the late (and great) Marquis of Dufferin became members. Viscount Bury was President of the club. A large membership, including many leading colonials, was assured. The management was reliable, the cellar unimpeachable, the house dinner (always presided over by a colonial Governor-General or some other potentate interested in our overseas Empire) became a welcome feature, and a long spell of prosperity seemed to be ahead of us. But our hopes did not reach fruition. Something went wrong with the accounts, and the Empire closed its doors.

The festive Chinery, in no whit discouraged, started on fresh promotions. None of them achieved the brilliant reputation of his original venture, and Chinery himself died a broken man.

At one time I belonged to a club called the Wanderers, in compliment, I suppose, to the Travellers, which was nearly opposite. The club-house occupied the corner, on the other side of Pall Mall, corresponding to that of the Athenæum. This was a comfortable and well-found establishment. Tod Heatley, the wine-merchant, was supposed to be interested in it; but it passed through many vicissitudes, and went under many names, till it was eventually devoted to more profitable purposes. Although the Wanderers had always other and higher pretensions, it was essentially a Bohemian club. A mixture of such pretensions with such actualities should be foredoomed to failure. In clubland the Wanderers was known as “The Home for Lost Dogs.”

Chief among the genuine Bohemian clubs is the Savage Club, whose home is on the Adelphi Terrace. Although the Bohemianism of this famous club is mainly traditional, it preserves the good custom of general communication among members, and encourages that spirit of playful geniality which is inseparable from the idea of Bohemianism. But the Savage Club of to-day is a very different thing from the same association as I knew it in 1870. This, indeed, will be admitted by the official historian of the club, Mr. Aaron Watson, whose admirable monograph on the Savage leaves nothing for any future writer to tell concerning the genesis and early struggles of the Savages.

I was a guest at the Savage on about half a dozen occasions in early years, and I once passed a few hours with Christie Murray in its new and more abiding home.

It was on a dull November day, and Pat Macdonald and I were walking westward from Fleet Street. We had taken Covent Garden on our way. “Let’s see if there’s anybody in the Savage Club,” he said casually, as we left the central avenue of the market, under the shadow of St. Paul’s, of the convent garden. To me the invitation was delightful. Often I had heard of the celebrated resort of actors, authors, and musicians. With the rest of the world, I had become impressed with the idea that election to this coterie was extremely difficult. I had read with much interest the first issue of “The Savage Club Papers,” and it came upon me as a surprise that my friend Macdonald, whose contributions to literature were of the most tenuous character, should be a member, and that he should hold his membership so lightly.

Soon I discovered the reason, and this, by the way, is a rather interesting morsel of history which has escaped the vigilant eye of Mr. Aaron Watson. In those early and unsophisticated days, when a man was put up for membership at the Savage, he was given the run of the club until the date of the next election; and some men are by nature such excellent company that a club existing above all other things for congenial companionship will be apt to regard the claims of the professionally unqualified candidate as above those of the highly qualified man who happens to be a dull dog. This month of probation afforded the good fellow—“the clubbable man” of Dr. Johnson—the opportunity of asserting his claims; and although the committee was bound by its first rule, which provided that only men professionally connected with literature, the drama, or the arts, should be eligible, when they got the chance of electing a man of Macdonald’s erudition, humour, and powers of conversation, they were not likely to give that chance away. It was a strange rule, but it worked well. In those days there was no place in a club forced to forgather in a single room for men who could not talk well and laugh loudly.

Under the guidance of my friend, I crossed to the right through the inevitable slush and vegetable refuse, and we were soon mounting the steps that led to Evans’s Hotel. With the celebrated Supper-Room beneath the hotel I was already acquainted, but I had never before visited the hotel. Nor did I for a moment imagine that the club which occupied so large a place in my fancy and my esteem occupied rooms on licensed premises. The Savage Club was in possession of the room on the left of the hall as you entered the hotel. It had originally been the coffee-room, and was one of the principal apartments in the building. Evans’s Hotel is now the National Sporting Club. It was first the Falstaff, and to fit it for its new purposes considerable structural alterations were necessary, including a small private theatre, now abolished, but the lines of the old home of the Savages can still be made out.