"She was my first love. We had not seen each other for years! Thanks. I'll have some more brandy. Hot this time, with some sugar, please."
The following week _The London Library_ appeared. I bought it, and read "The Duke's Oak," all about Lord Briarrose and Lady Betty Buttercup and the runaway horses. The tree with the one branch gave the title to the story, and the Dashing Duke of Broadacres was the aristocratic acrobat--my friend the author!
[Illustration: FROM A SKETCH BY HERBERT JOHNSON.]
The Savage Club is a remnant of Bohemian London. It was started at a period when art, literature, and the drama were at their lowest ebb--in the "good old days" when artists wore seedy velveteen coats, smoked clays, and generally had their works of art exhibited in pawnbrokers' windows; when journalists were paid at the same rate and received the same treatment as office-boys; and when actors commanded as many shillings a week as they do pounds at present. This typical trio now exists only in the imagination of the lady novelist. When first the little band of Savages met they smoked their calumets over a public-house in the vicinity of Drury Lane, in a room with a sanded floor; a chop and a pint of ale was their fare, and good-fellowship atoned for lack of funds. The Brothers Brough, Andrew Halliday, Tom Robertson, and other clever men were the original Savages, and the latter in one of his charming pieces made capital out of an incident at the Club. One member asks another for a few shillings. "Very sorry, old chap, I haven't got it, but I'll ask Smith." Smith replies, "Not a cent myself, but I'll ask Brown." Brown asks Robinson, and so on until a Croesus is found with five shillings in his pocket, which he is only too willing to lend. But this true Bohemianism is as dead as Queen Anne, and the Savages now live merely on the traditions of the past. His Majesty the King, when Prince of Wales, was a member of the Club, and an Earl takes the chair and entertains my Lord Mayor with his flunkeys and all. The Club is now as much advertised as the Imperial Institute, but the true old flavour is no more. No doubt some excellent men and good fellows are still in the Savage wigwam. Some Bohemians--a sprinkling of those Micawbers, "waiting for something to turn up"--keep up its reputation, but in reality it is only Savage now in name.
