London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
gentlemen's club founded in 1868. Located in fashionable and historically significant Mayfair, its membership, past and present, include many prominent names.
Changing premises
Initially calling itself the New Club, it grew rapidly, outgrowing its first-floor rooms overlooking
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson comm ...
at 9 Spring Gardens and moving to the second floor. It then moved to 15
Savile Row
Savile Row (pronounced ) is a street in Mayfair, central London. Known principally for its traditional bespoke tailoring for men, the street has had a varied history that has included accommodating the headquarters of the Royal Geographical ...
in 1871, where it changed its name to the Savile Club, before lack of space forced the club to move again in 1882, this time to 107 Piccadilly, a building owned by
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery
Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian, (7 May 1847 – 21 May 1929) was a British Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from March 1894 to June 1895. Between the death o ...
. With its views over
Green Park
Green Park, officially The Green Park, is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the southern part – the core part – of the City of Westminster, Central London, but before that zone was extended to the north, to take in Marylebo ...
it was described by the members as the "ideal clubhouse". However, after 50 years' residence, demolition of the building next door to create the Park Lane Hotel caused the old clubhouse such structural problems that, in 1927, the club moved to its present home at 69
Brook Street
Brook Street is an axial street in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. Most of it is leasehold, paying ground rent to and seeking lease renewals from the reversioner, that since before 1800, has been the Grosvenor Estate. Named ...
in Mayfair, a house built with leases granted by the
Duke of Westminster
Duke of Westminster is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 and bestowed upon Hugh Grosvenor, 3rd Marquess of Westminster. It is the most recent dukedom conferred on someone not related to the ...
in the mid 1720s. In 1850,
Edward Digby, 2nd Earl Digby
Edward Digby, 2nd Earl Digby (6 January 1773 – 12 May 1856), known as Viscount Coleshill from 1790 to 1793, was a British peer.
Digby was the eldest son of Henry Digby, 1st Earl Digby, and Mary Knowler. He succeeded his father in the earldom in ...
commissioned
Thomas Cundy II
Thomas Cundy the younger (1790 – 15 July 1867) was an English architect, son of another architect of the same name. He joined his father's practice and ultimately succeeded his father as surveyor of the Grosvenor Estate, and held the posit ...
to add the Doric porch to No 69, satisfying a Victorian desire for greater privacy as well as warmth. This was the former home of "Loulou" Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, a
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left.
__TOC__ Active liberal parties
This is a li ...
cabinet minister. The building, a combination of 69 and 71
Brook Street
Brook Street is an axial street in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. Most of it is leasehold, paying ground rent to and seeking lease renewals from the reversioner, that since before 1800, has been the Grosvenor Estate. Named ...
, owes its extravagant dix-huitième interior to Walter Burns, the brother-in-law of financier
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...
, who commissioned William Bouwens van der Boijen of Paris to adapt it for his wife Mary to entertain in suitable style. It thus includes an elegant hall, a grand staircase and a lavish ballroom.
Savilians
Savile Club members are known as Savilians and the Club's motto of ''Sodalitas Convivium'' implies convivial companionship. The traditional mainstays of the Savile are food and drink, good conversation, playing bridge and poker, and Savile Snooker. This is a 19th-century version of the game, whose rules were first written down in the mid-20th century by Stephen Potter. It is a form of volunteer snooker, with some unusual features (the brown ball is spotted behind baulk on the opposite equivalent of the black spot, and counts eight; yellow and green are not used, "push shots" are allowed, fouling a ball with one's tie has no penalty, and sinking two reds at once means a score of two, for example).
The dining-room includes two long club tables, derived from the Club's original
table d'hôte
In restaurant terminology, a ''table d'hôte'' (; ) menu is a menu where multi-course meals with only a few choices are charged at a fixed total price. Such a menu may be called ''prix fixe'' ("fixed price"; ). The terms set meal and set menu ...
(a contrast to the contemporary habit of other clubs, where members tended to eat
à la carte
In restaurants, ''à la carte'' (; )) is the practice of ordering individual dishes from a menu in a restaurant, as opposed to '' table d'hôte'', where a set menu is offered. It is an early 19th century loan from French meaning "according ...
at small separate tables). In the Victorian period, the Savile was known for its freedom of conversation and conviviality.
Evolution
Some traditions have been lost: regular cigar club dinners went with the smoking ban, but have since been revived ''in memoriam'' on the terrace (weather permitting); "the penny game" (a form of bowls, using coins rolled down grooves in the banisters of the grand curving staircase), disappeared with decimalisation; Friday-night candlelit dinners in the Ballroom for wives and girlfriends disappeared with changes in fashions and attitudes. The musical tradition continues, with informal lunchtime and evening concerts, jazz evenings, sponsorship of music students and an annual
St Cecilia's Day
Saint Cecilia ( la, Sancta Caecilia), also spelled Cecelia, was a Roman virgin martyr and is venerated in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden. She became the patroness of music and musicians, ...
concert, where Club members perform. A strong science connection has been revived with regular "Science at the Savile" talks. Others traditions have evolved: the preferred dress is still jacket and tie, but the code has been relaxed slightly to allow for the less formal attire worn in offices today;
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
s are generally banned but can be used in the Club's old telephone area.
Robert Donat
Friedrich Robert Donat (18 March 1905 – 9 June 1958) was an English actor. He is best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's '' The 39 Steps'' (1935) and '' Goodbye, Mr. Chips'' (1939), winning for the latter the Academy Award f ...
*
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall (7 May 1908 – 24 June 1985) was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series '' Appointment with Fear'' ...
Kenneth Haigh
Kenneth William Michael Haigh (25 March 1931 – 4 February 2018) was an English actor. He first came to public recognition for playing the role of Jimmy Porter in the play ''Look Back in Anger'' in 1956 opposite Mary Ure in London's West End ...
*
Sir Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...
Simon Oates
Simon Oates (6 January 1932 – 20 May 2009) was an English actor best known for his roles on television.
Born in Canning Town, east London and moving to Finchley in his teens, Oates trained as a heating engineer for his father's firm befo ...
Simon Ward
Simon Anthony Fox Ward (16 October 194120 July 2012) was a British stage and film actor. He was known chiefly for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 1972 film ''Young Winston''. He played many other screen roles, including those of Sir ...
Art, illustration and cartoons
*
Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British arti ...
John Merton
John Merton (born Myrtland F. LaVarre; February 18, 1901 – September 19, 1959) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 250 films between 1927 and 1959, mostly as a villain. He was the brother of filmmaker André de la Varre a ...
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring ...
*
Val Gielgud
Val Henry Gielgud (28 April 1900 – 30 November 1981) was an English actor, writer, director and broadcaster. He was a pioneer of radio drama for the BBC, and also directed the first ever drama to be produced in the newer medium of televisi ...
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Gilbert Harding
Gilbert Charles Harding (5 June 1907 – 16 November 1960) was a British journalist and radio and television personality. His many careers included schoolmaster, journalist, policeman, disc jockey, actor, interviewer and television presenter. He ...
Quentin Letts
Quentin Richard Stephen Letts (born 6 February 1963) is an English journalist and theatre critic. He has written for ''The Daily Telegraph'', ''Daily Mail'', ''Mail on Sunday'', and '' The Oldie''. On 26 February 2019, it was announced that Let ...
*
Tony Miles
Anthony John Miles (23 April 1955 – 12 November 2001) was an English chess player and the first Englishman to earn the Grandmaster title.
Early and personal life
Miles was an only child, born 23 April 1955 in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birming ...
Michael Powell
Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a seri ...
*
Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger (born Imre József Pressburger; 5 December 19025 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaborat ...
Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Leslie Benjamin (18 September 1893, in Sydney – 10 April 1960, in London) was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of '' Jamaican Rumba'' (1938) and of the '' Storm Clouds Cantata'' ...
Charles Rycroft
Charles Frederick Rycroft (; 9 September 1914 – 24 May 1998) was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He studied medicine at University College London, and worked briefly as a psychiatrist for the Maudsley Hospital. For most of his caree ...
Richard Arnell
Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell (15 September 191710 April 2009) was an English composer of classical music. Arnell composed in all the established genres for the concert stage, and his list of works includes six completed symphonies (a seventh w ...
Ron Goodwin
Ronald Alfred Goodwin (17 February 19258 January 2003) was an English composer and conductor known for his film music. He scored over 70 films in a career lasting over fifty years. His most famous works included ''Where Eagles Dare'', ''Battle ...
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely r ...
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclass ...
Leo Abse
Leopold Abse (22 April 1917 – 19 August 2008) was a Welsh lawyer and politician. He was a Welsh Labour MP for nearly 30 years, noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce l ...
Humphry Berkeley
Humphry John Berkeley (21 February 192614 November 1994) was a British politician and author. He was noted for his three changes of parties and his early support for gay rights.
He is also remembered for a series of hoax letters he sent as fi ...
Bryan Magee
Bryan Edgar Magee (; 12 April 1930 – 26 July 2019) was a British philosopher, broadcaster, politician and author, best known for bringing philosophy to a popular audience.
Early life
Born of working-class parents in Hoxton, London, in 1930, w ...
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
Maurice Druon
Maurice Druon (23 April 1918 – 14 April 2009) was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Française, of which he served as "Perpetual Secretary" (chairman) between 1985 and 1999.
Life and career
Born in Paris, France, Druon was the s ...
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne (; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English writer best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as for children's poetry. Milne was primarily a playwright before the huge success of Winni ...
John Pudney
John Sleigh Pudney (19 January 1909 – 10 November 1977) was a British poet, journalist and author. He was known especially for his popular poetry written during the Second World War, but he also wrote novels, short stories and children's fict ...
*
Anthony Sampson
Anthony Terrell Seward Sampson (3 August 1926 – 18 December 2004) was a British writer and journalist. His most notable and successful book was '' Anatomy of Britain'', which was published in 1962 and was followed by five more "Anatomies", upd ...
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
*
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon is a fictional character created by John le Carré who features in le Carré's 1974 novel ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy''. He is a senior officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service who serves as a Soviet mole. The novel follows ...
, the aristocratic
polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
and
British intelligence
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and d ...
agent at the heart of
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
's novel ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
'', and William French, wine merchant and
Master of Wine
Master of Wine (MW) is a qualification (not an academic degree) issued by The Institute of Masters of Wine in the United Kingdom. The MW qualification is generally regarded in the wine industry as one of the highest standards of professional knowle ...
(failed), in
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law an ...
’s ''
The Dog Who Came in from the Cold
''The Dog Who Came in from the Cold'' is the second online novel by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. In the first series, the author wrote a chapter a day, starting on 15 Sep 2008, the series running fo ...
.''
See also
*
List of gentlemen's clubs in London
This is a list of gentlemen's clubs in London, United Kingdom, including those that no longer exist or merged, with an additional section on those that appear in fiction. Many of these clubs are no longer exclusively male.
Extant clubs
Defun ...
References
Bibliography
*Garrett Anderson, ''"Hang Your Halo in the Hall!": The Savile Club from 1868'' (The Savile Club, 1993)
* Anon, ''The Savile Club 1868–1958'' (privately printed for members of the Club, c. 1958)
*Anon, ''The Savile Club 1868–1923'' (privately printed for the committee of the Club, 1923)
*Robin McDouall, ''Clubland Cooking'' (Phaidon Press, 1974)
*Clive Aslet, ''Seduced by the dix-huitième: 69-71, Brook Street, Mayfair W1, the Home of the Savile Club'' (Country Life, 2014)
*Amy Milne-Smith, ''London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late-Victorian Britain (''London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). .
*
*Matthew Parris, ''Great Parliamentary Scandals'' (Robson Books, 1995)
*
*