Harp Alley is a little nagged passage nestling under the heavy shadows of Drury Lane Theatre. None of the merchants who pursue business in the reeking enclosure can be truthfully described as doing a roaring trade. A manufacturer of spangles, who has hidden his commercial light under the bushel of Harp Alley, does a brisk business during the months preceding Christmas—his stock being in great demand for the decoration of the gorgeous characters of Pantomime. No one ever stops at the old book shop, where the same old plays which were offered ten years ago in a box at a penny each are offered at a penny still. And a steel engraving of David Garrick as Richard the Third, greatly perturbed by apparitions, has during the same interval failed to find a purchaser at half-a-crown. There is an old clothes shop in the Alley, owned by an adventurous speculator of the Semitic persuasion, where you can borrow a dress suit for the evening, and become a magnificent swell on the new hire system.

The best trade done in Harp Alley is done by the owner of the “Piping Bulfinch”—a public-house much resorted to in the present day by scene-shifters, stage carpenters, property men, and other humble ornaments of the British Drama, with a fine capacity for four ale and bad language. At the time of this story, the inner bar of the “Piping Bulfinch”—a reserved space with a door marked “private”—was the resort of certain actors and authors having a greater wealth of brain than of pocket. In those days the cuff-shooter was not, and a jeune premier would be satisfied with something less than the wages of an ambassador. Only the very superior sort of actor and manager and dramatic author belonged to a Club. The rank and file met unostentatiously in bars, and did their business or criticised their neighbours over “goes” of gin and whiskey, or half pints of ale and stout. I do not intend to mention here the names of those who were wont to meet of an afternoon at the “Piping Bulfinch.” Some are dead. Some are alive and famous. Others are alive and wrecks. And all of them seem desirous to forget the struggling period when they patronised the snug but sombre hostlery in Harp Alley.

Informally established as a rÉunion, this little society became known to the outer world, and the gentle layman penetrated to the recesses of the inner bar and forced his babbling company upon the playwright and the player. So that in self-defence the mummers and the drama-makers hired from the landlord of the “Piping Bulfinch” a large room that opened off the public bar. Towards defraying the expenses, each member of the coterie subscribed one shilling per week. They had a room of their own. They were now a Club; and that is the true history of the establishment of the Otway—for such was the style and title which these able but impecunious men of genius gave to this Association, when shrinking from contact with the profane vulgar, they withdrew behind the closed door of their own private and particular room.

And every Wednesday came to be known as Sawdust Day.

In those days of struggle what small incidents afforded interest and even excitement! and the weekly advent of the man bearing the sack of sawdust which was to be sprinkled on the floor of the Club-room, was looked forward to with keen enjoyment. He was a strange reflective man—the man who bore in this weekly sacrifice to respectability—this thin and shifting substitute for a carpet—this indoor Goodwin sands. But he greatly prized the opportunity afforded him of entering the Club. He laughed respectfully (to himself) at the jokes which were bandied about. He accepted with gratified smile the chaff which was levelled at him and at his sawdust. He became indeed a part of the Club itself, and lengthened his weekly visit as much as possible, always discovering, when it appeared time to go, some refractory spot on the floor which required replenishing and smoothing. The Sawdust man may have been a broken down dramatist, a poor poet whose literary wares were a drug in the market; and here in this bright association of wits and good fellows he found solace once a-week.

Twelve happy months sped over the grey locks and closely shaven features of the Sawdust man. And the fifty-two days of congenial fellowship—so, poor man, he chose to consider it—compensated for the three hundred and thirteen other days upon which he sprinkled the yellow refuse among the unsympathetic feet of the market-men in the public-houses about Covent Garden. Pride, we are credibly informed, led to the overthrow of the Prince of Darkness; and Pride entering into the bosom of a new member of the Otway led to eventual decline and fall of that remarkable society. In an evil moment it was proposed at a meeting of the Committee that the Club-room should be carpeted! After a long and angry discussion the resolution was carried by a bare majority. The carpet was purchased, and the poor dealer in the waste of the saw-pits was dismissed for ever from the only Paradise of which he had any knowledge.

Not unchallenged, however, was the innovation. A few days after the dismissal of the weekly visitor, the following letter was received by the Secretary of the Club. It was duly affixed to the notice-board above the mantel-piece, where for some time it afforded the greatest amusement to the members, and was provocative of many facetiÆ on the part of the chartered wags. But there were some of the older ornaments of the Otway, I think, who regarded the document with some misgiving, and counted it as an ill omen. Here is the text of the Awful Denunciation:—

“To the Otways.

“Pride comes before a fall.

“Beware! You are haughty now. You will soon be humble. My curse is upon you. For you have driven me forth into the world—alone. May your Club be overrun by outsiders. May money rule you instead of brains. May your skill fail you and your wit wither away. May you be abandoned by the pewter and the pipe. May your plays be damned, and your articles rejected. And aping your betters, may you become the laughing stock of the world. [Signed]

“The Sawdust Man.”

“There is insanity in Sawdust,” said Gadsby, after he had read the startling anathema.“More drunk than mad, I expect,” suggested the charitable Tapham.

“Swallowed his own sack, perhaps,” added Ponsonby, in defence of the latter theory.

But old and judicious Otways shook their heads and sighed. The Sawdust man had become a part of their artistic career. His removal affected them. His curse depressed them beyond measure. On the morning after the receipt of the Curse, the members arriving at the Club found out in the upper panel of the door the word

Ichabod.

No one was ever able to ascertain when or how this amateur wood-carving had been accomplished. It was a mystery. But it led to this result. Senior members of the Otway entertained some fine old crusted superstitions, and after this handwriting on the door began to agitate for a removal to more commodious apartments. And now the curse began to work. For in order to keep up the more commodious rooms, and to pay for the increased service, there were necessitated two things. In the first place, an increased entrance fee and subscription, and in the second place, a certain healthy relaxing of the first rule of the Club, whereby all those who were not professionally connected with art, literature, or the drama, were rigorously excluded.

In two years from the date of the instalment of the Club in its more commodious chambers, the institution had grown marvellously in respectability, but it had lost its character, and was now a collection of individuals of the most various and most nondescript kind. And at the end of the last of those two years, a gentleman was elected to membership, who worked with the utmost good-will to efface what little traces of Bohemian beginnings still clung about the Otway. About this person or his antecedents little was known. He was immensely wealthy. He had suddenly acquired his money. And his qualification as a member of the Club was a work on Papua and New Guinea, which had been eagerly welcomed by the learned societies, had been solemnly reviewed by the Quarterly, and which was known by several to be the work, not of the new member at all, but of a Museum hack named Geyser, who for a consideration in hard cash, permitted Mr. Thistleton—that was the new member’s name—to figure on the title. Appended to his name were the letters F.R.G.S., and other formidable distinctions which it may be presumed, can also be obtained by the common commercial operation known as exchange and barter.

Shortly after the advent of this great man, questions arose as to the propriety of drinking beer out of pewter in the Club-rooms. And as Mr. Thistleton was always ready to stand a bottle of wine to anybody who cared to call for it, the consumption of beer fell steadily off, and it became in time, the very worst possible sort of form for an Otway to be seen imbibing the produce of hops. Clay pipes had long ago been disestablished by a by-law of the committee. Cigars at ninepence and a shilling were supplied for the post-prandial smoke. And it was an understood thing that members should always dine in evening dress. When this rule came into force, it occasioned the withdrawal of some old Otways, who, although eminent in their particular walks of literature and art, hadn’t got a single dress-suit among ’em. The places of these talented but socially incomplete persons were speedily filled by gentlemen who, if devoid of genius, were possessed of dress suits of the very latest design, and had gold and silver and precious stones. And the flash of a diamond is, I take it, a much more agreeable scintillation than the flash of the greatest wit in the world.

Mr. Thistleton not only elevated the members of the Otway by means of champagne of great price; he endeavoured to give them reflected glory by inviting to the house-dinner personages of repute in Society. A Cabinet Minister once dined with him. At another time, an Indian Prince, dressed in the most gorgeous Oriental toggery, sat down to the Otway repast. Indeed, there seemed to be, practically, no limit to his influence with the great ones of the earth, and it was apparently his delight to exert that influence, with a view of introducing his brother members to all that was esteemed, wealthy, and wise, in London Society.

At last there visited England an Indian Prince, compared to whom the other Indian princes were mere nobodies. This mighty potentate was in due course brought down to the Otway, and was graciously pleased to express his approval of all that he saw and heard. And the Club, in order to show its appreciation of the compliment of the wise man from the East, invited him to a banquet. Princes have an awkward habit of making requests that are commands. And when dinner was over this dusky heathen had induced the members of the Club to guarantee him a donation of five thousand pounds, towards his fund for providing tom-toms for the Nautch girls of Hindustan. Their solemn word was given to their copper-coloured guest. There was no retreating from their promise. The sequel is soon told. In order to raise the amount the effects of the Otway were offered at public auction. All the members attended the sale, and watched their works of art, their luxurious furniture, their rare wines, and their ninepenny cigars disappear under the hammer of the auctioneer.

Mr. Thistleton bought in everything. He bid with a persistency and a viciousness that astonished the man in the rostrum. When the last article was knocked down to him, he turned upon his late fellow-members, now dissolved and houseless, and with a demoniac shout of derisive laughter cried, “I am avenged.” He had grown a beard, and he had become rich, two wonderful disguises. But there was no doubt about it. It was the Sawdust Man.