s 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.

[Illustration: THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN AS A SAVAGE.]

I was not thirty when I ceased to be a member. I had been on the
committee, and had taken an active part in matters concerning it, until
it changed its character and lost its true Bohemian individuality, and
being a member of the Garrick Club, I found matured in it the element
the Savage endeavoured at that time to emulate. Although I am still in
my forties, few of those with whom I smoked the calumet of peace round
the camp fire at a great pow-wow in the wigwam of the excellent Savages,
alas! remain.

The old Grecian Theatre in the City Road was the nursery of many members
of the theatrical profession, and authors too. Two well-known members
of the Savage Club, Merritt and Pettitt, were writers of the common
stuff necessary for the melodramas of the kind connected with their
names. Merritt would have made an equal fortune if exhibited as the
original fat boy in "Pickwick," or as a prize baby at a show. I suppose
my readers are aware that it is not necessary to be a baby in order to
be exhibited as one, for I recollect, in my Bohemian days, going down to
Woolwich Gardens when the famous William Holland was manager of them,
and accidentally strolling into a tent outside of which was a placard,
"The Largest Baby in the World! 6d." I was not expected,--and the "Baby"
was walking about in his baby-clothes, with little pink bows on his
shoulders, smoking a horrible black clay pipe. He was the dwarf
policeman in Holland's pantomime in the winter-time!

[Illustration: "ANOTHER GAP IN OUR RANKS."]

Merritt would have made a capital prize baby. He was tall, very stout,
and possessed of a perfectly hairless, baby's face and a squeaky little
voice. I shall never forget a prize remark this transpontine author made
in the Savage Club, when an editor rushed in and said, "Have you heard
the news? Carlyle is dead!" Merritt rose, and putting his hand on his
chest, squeaked out, "Another gap in our ranks!"

[Illustration: "JOPE."]

A peculiar figure in Bohemia in those old days was "J." Pope, known as
"Jope," brother of the late celebrated K.C