3-070-563 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Savage Club Entertainment, Royal Albert Hall: Mr. Eaton Faning conducting the Savage Dance, 1883. 'Music, specially composed for the occasion, by Messrs. C. J. Hargitt, F. H. Cowen, and Eaton Faning, was provided...a chosen band of over thirty "Savages," in the garb and war-paint of North American Indians, supplied an appropriate element of wild barbaric picturesqueness...Of...[the Buffalo Dance] we have given an Illustration. In this we have been much assisted by the photographs of single figures and groups, taken instantaneously by the Van der Weyde Light. Mr. Van der Weyde, who is a member of the Savage Club, devoted the proceeds to the funds of the Royal College of Music. The costumes worn at the ball were probably the most varied ever seen together, and many were remarkably artistic, accurate, and splendid...the garb of many if not most of the members who took part in the Barbaric Procession and Buffalo Dance were either genuinely Indian, or as close an imitation as could be desired. The dress of the Chief (who appears in our engraving of the Buffalo Dance) was, in the words of a contemporary, "a marvel of barbaric design".' From "Illustrated London News", 1883.