EJ Odell by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson [Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums]

THE recent spat over the admittance of women to membership of the Garrick Club has now been resolved with the entry of the two Dames, Judi Dench and Sian Philips.

However, another less publicised debate involved the continued occupancy of a room at the National Liberal Club (in Whitehall Place) by the Savage Club. The NLC ruled that unless the Savage allowed female membership they would be evicted from the premises. They refused and became (temporarily) homeless.

Originally founded in 1857 at the Crown Tavern, Drury Lane, the Savage Club has had a wide range of members including Charlie Chaplin, Prince Philip, Dylan Thomas, Sergei Rachmaninov (who donated his Steinway piano to the members), Old Mother Riley, Lord Kitchener, and Arnold Ridley (of Dad’s Army).

Despite this decidedly mixed line-up there can be few members odder than EJ Odell (1828?-1928).

Odell was an almost permanently out-of-work actor with shoulder-length straggly hair and white beard, who habitually wore a shabby sombrero and a threadbare frockcoat that had turned green with age.

His fellow actor Sir Seymour Hicks wrote of him: “The chief thing about Odell was that he was old.

He worked at becoming old very hard and with great success.” Hicks’ theory was that: “I do not believe that Odell was ever born … I believe that when the Savage Club was started they found him there.”

Each evening he would install himself at the bar where he consumed all the Irish whiskey and cigars he could freeload from the other members, despite being “abominably rude” to all and sundry. He had the knack of demanding a loan with the air of conferring an honour on the hesitant creditor. When one member reminded Odell of a £5 loan owing for months, Odell rasped: “You want it back? Well, I haven’t finished with it yet.”

In spite of his behaviour, Odell was adopted as the venomous mascot of the Savage Club. Curious about where he lived, some members secretly followed him one night only to find that Odell doubled back to the club itself where the servants allowed him to sleep on a sofa.

When, after some social outrage, the Savage Club committee expelled him from the premises, sympathisers parked a hired carriage in the street outside. Odell resided there, his feelings assuaged by gifts of food hampers and whiskey, until his reinstatement.

On one of his rare sorties into employment Odell became a member of the cast at the Haymarket Theatre in the 1880s. As a professed despiser of the upper classes, he found himself at odds with the refined and well-groomed set of younger performers around him. The leading lady, the rather haughty Miss Linda Dietz, had a particular aversion to the decrepit old curmudgeon and refused to talk to him socially.

One night, just before the Easter break, some of the company were in the green room discussing where they were to spend the holiday. One cast member announced that he was going to Badminton to stay with the Duke of Beaufort, another said that he had been invited to hunt with the Quorn, while a third admitted that “the dear duchess would be most distressed” if he did not pop up to Chatsworth House. Another actor turned to Linda Dietz: “And where are you going for your holiday, Miss Dietz?” Before she could reply, Odell, with the most lascivious leer in his considerable repertoire, broke in: “Oh, we’re not goin’ to tell anyone where we’re goin’, are we, sweetie?”

This appears to have been his last theatrical engagement as he spent his remaining 40 years propping up the club bar. Feeling sympathetic to the old man’s lack of a home King Edward VII, also a Savage Club member, arranged that Odell should be provided with a room at the Charterhouse.

Unfortunately, the rules of this institution required that all its inhabitants should be indoors by 10pm. Odell, a committed night owl, totally ignored this instruction. When he received a courteous reminder of the rule from the Master of the Charter­house Odell exploded with rage: “The insolent young puppy!” The “young puppy” in question was a retired general aged 82.

Age did not mellow Odell, nor the years soften. One night King George V dined as the Guest of Honour at the Savage Club. After the meal he sat in the most comfortable chair in the smoking room. Unluckily it happened to be Odell’s favourite perch. Arriving late at the club Odell, now in his 90s, spotted the intruder and marched across yelling furiously: “Out of my chair, sir! Get out, d’ye hear! AT ONCE!” The king apologised and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.

When Odell died in 1928, aged at least 100, his fellow Savage members affixed a brass plate to this chair inscribed “Here Odell Sat”. It remains in the club to this day. At the time of his death he was thin to the point of being almost skeletal. Seymour Hicks wondered whether Odell’s last grim joke was to leave his body to the College of Surgeons.

• Adapted from Neil Titley’s book The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip. Available at Daunts, South End Green. www.wildetheatre.co.uk