There were very few members present on the occasion of this first visit of mine, and I was reminded of the omnipresence of the legal profession on finding that two of them were barristers. One was Mr. Jonas Levy, Chairman of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway; and the other Mr. Hume Williams—not the K.C. and Recorder of Norwich, but the father of that learned gentleman. Another of those present was Henry S. Leigh, the author of “The Carols of Cockayne”—a gentleman whom I came to know intimately. He had the bitterest tongue and sweetest nature of any man I ever met. The arrangements of the room testified to the simplicity of taste observed by those primitive Savages. On the tables that lined the walls were laid out clay pipes of the shape and size with which we associate the name “churchwarden,” and I observed that Leigh was drinking beer out of a pewter pot. There are no pewter pots in the Savage Club nowadays, but neither are there any Leighs.
Whether it was the deadly dulness of the autumn afternoon or my own lack of responsiveness, or whether it was that I had cherished exaggerated expectations, or whether it was the result of a conspiracy of all these causes, I cannot say, but my first visit to the Savage was a disappointment and a disillusion. A year or more went by before I was afforded an opportunity of reviewing my earlier impressions. This time I had no cause to complain of the quality of the entertainment. “Jimmy” Albery, who had recently made his name with “Two Roses”; H. S. Leigh; E. A. Sothern; George Honey, the actor; Arthur Boyd Houghton, the artist; and Andrew Halliday, the author and journalist-dramatist, were among those present. My earlier impressions were at once erased. Never had I been thrown into the society of a number of grown men where such a spirit of fun, of camaraderie, of irresponsibility, and of the joy of life, prevailed and sparkled. They talked in the spirit of schoolboys, but with the point of seasoned wits. It was altogether a delightful experience.
It was at the Savage Club that I first saw the game of poker played. The game had been introduced by some Americans who enjoyed the privileges of corresponding membership in respect of their connection with the Lotus Club, New York. It was shortly made taboo by a ukase of the Portland and Turf Clubs, and disappeared from the card-rooms of all the West End clubs. I have always thought this rather a pity. Poker is one of the best games to be got out of a pack. It calls into exercise other faculties beside memory, judgment, skill, and a nice knowledge of the value of cards. You want to be a bit of a physiognomist. Your own expression should be under control, and your manner absolutely inscrutable. It is in respect of their natural endowment in these qualities that the Yankees make such good poker-players. I became greatly interested in the game, and it was indirectly through my instrumentality that its rules were first published in this country. General Schenk drew up the enactments governing the science of the pastime, at the request of Lady Waldegrave. Lady Waldegrave had them set up in type at Strawberry Hill. She had a few dozen copies printed for the use of her acquaintances. I became the proud possessor of one of these copies. A friend of mine—or perhaps I should say a gentleman whom up to that time I had regarded as a friend—induced me to lend him the brochure to settle some dispute which had arisen between certain correspondents on his paper; for my friend was a rather distinguished writer on the sporting press. I never saw that book again, but to my intense surprise and chagrin I found the whole of the Strawberry Hill rules published in the columns of my friend’s paper, with their place of origin given, and Lady Waldegrave’s authority cited.
The transaction did more harm to the gentleman who had betrayed my confidence than it did to me. In those days an act of the kind would be generally reprobated. Dog did not eat dog when Plancus was Consul. Nowadays I am given to understand that it would be regarded as a bit of smart journalism.
As I write, the memory of that first game of draw-poker comes vividly back to me, and, singular as it may seem to you, it comes back to an accompaniment of music. It was night, and in the supper-room below and at the back the little pale-faced choristers in their Eton suits were singing glees for Paddy Green’s customers. These vocal exercises were resented by grumpy members of the club, but to me distance enhanced the beauty of the singing, and I never hear poker mentioned now, such is the strange influence of the association of ideas, that I do not instantly hear the far-away voices of boys singing:
“Oh, who will o’er the downs with me—
Oh, who will with me ride?
Oh, who will up and follow me
To win a blooming bride?”
Poor words, perhaps; set to old-fashioned glee music, no doubt; introducing in the last line a word rendered vulgar by a merciless modernity, admitted. But, Lord! how sweet the memory of them comes back to me over the years—how inexpressibly sweet, yet how incalculably sad! for nothing but the haunting memory is left. My contemporaries of that time have, nearly all of them, satisfied their curiosity concerning the Great Secret. The pale-faced choir boys have grown to manhood, developing, perhaps, into “fat and greasy citizens.” Only the song remains.
Baker Green, editor of the Morning Post, was a member of the Savage at a somewhat later date. He was a great hulking figure of a man, with a terrible mordant humour of his own, and a devilish solemn manner of stating the most absurd propositions. His monocle was as inseparable from him as that of Sir Squire Bancroft. His peculiar style of humour may be best illustrated anecdotically.
A member who loomed large in the life of the club in the days when the Imperial Institute was being nursed into life was Somers Vine. In respect of his services rendered to the Institute the excellent man received the honour of knighthood. It is to be feared that Baker Green had no great liking for Sir Somers. Of this sentiment on the part of his fellow-member, Vine, it must be supposed, had no inkling, for one evening, bubbling over with hospitality and brotherly kindness, he approached Baker Green in the club.
“I wish, my dear fellow, you would come down and spend a week at my place at Chislehurst,” he said.