3-071-136 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Savage Club Entertainment at the Royal Albert Hall: some costumes at the ball, 1883. 'T. W. Cutler the real M.C.; A Japanese Young Savage; Out of the Bill; Aesthetics; A Hard Worker for the Tombola; "This way to supper please"; Policeman X;... The costumes were probably the most varied ever seen together, and many were remarkably artistic, accurate, and splendid. Our Sketches of some of these can give but a limited idea of the extraordinary variety of the impersonations...there were, besides the Savages proper, a Japanese prince, a Chinese mandarin, an Afghan chief, a n*gger from the Gold Coast, a Californian gold-digger, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, and semi-barbarians from all parts of the globe; as well as Pierros, Figaros, Mephistopheles, and Punchinellos, nuns, fishwives, and vivandières, matadors, cooks, and cardinals, and a thousand historic and histrionic personages. To the revived interest in art (and therefore costume) we should attribute the remarkable accuracy that distinguished the "get up" of many of the motley throng. In this respect the Red Indian savages were specially noteworthy. Their stalwart chief, Mr. T. J. Gullick, the artist and art-critic, spared no pains to organise an exact representation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.