Social Victorians/London Clubs/Savage Club

Logistics

 * The Savage Club is one of the London Clubs. It was named for the poet Richard Savage.
 * At Lancaster House, in the Savoy, as of c. April 1881 (Watson 157).

Flourished

 * Founded c. 1857 (Halliday ix)
 * In existence in May 1887, when performers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West visited.

Related Events

 * The American Exhibition, which opened on 6 May 1887

Events

 * Weekly house dinner (Moses 57)
 * 11 July 1883, fancy-dress (or costume) ball at the Savage Club to fund a fellowship for the Royal College of Music, the Savage Club Scholarship (Watson 229). The Prince and Princess of Wales were present. The ball was held at the Albert Hall, and besides the Savages there were about four thousand visitors and spectators present (229). There was a "Buffalo Dance," and people were dressed in costumes that included eagle feathers.
 * 1884, Ismail Pasha, ex-Khedive of Egypt was entertained by the Savage Club, possibly controversial (Watson 163). Aaron Watson was seated opposite Ismail Pasha, who spoke French during the dinner (163).
 * 28 May 1887, performers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West visited.

Critical Perspectives from Layton and Sala
Whilst the Savages developed an American-Indian theme in club décor and events they hosted, this has little to do with the name; they wanted to eschew monikers that smacked of status. Richard Savage was a penniless writer of Johnson's time who has imprisoned for debt. It was talent and wit that mattered. ... Bill Cody (Buffalo Bill, who took along Red Shirt and his fellow Indians in 1887)19. ...

The Savage Club was about smoke, mirrors and ubiquitous misogyny – Sala used to joke, "A club is a weapon used by savages to keep the white women at a distance". Amidst the fumes of cigars and whisky, "blue books" 21 were passed round, some of them no doubt the work of the cartoonist Linley Sambourne. The latter had his own photography studio and laboratory, used on a weekly basis for figures in his Punch cartoons but also for photographing nude young women in sexually explicit poses. After convivial Saturday dinners, you might also be treated to visits to or from actors and actresses once the theatres had closed. 

Membership

 * Mr. E. J. Goodman (Watson 166), joined in 1874, "Honorary Secretary from 1880 to the year of the 'Autocrat's' visit to London."