Afterwards the battle-painter and myself went upstairs into the ladies' dining-room, a fine room, which is lighter and fresher than the gentlemen's dining-room below, and there we had coffee and chatted with Charles Flowerdew, the head waiter, one of the real head waiters as they knew them in the old days, and listened to his stories and took a pinch of snuff out of his presentation snuff-box. And here Mr. Crathie, tall, clean-shaved, except for narrow side whiskers, with a white head of hair in which a ruddy tint still lingers, found us, and under his guidance we went farther upstairs and peeped through the glass doors into the room where half a dozen games of chess were being played. Mr. Crathie, who has been proprietor and, later, managing director of Simpson's for half a long lifetime, told us something of the history of the place, how it originally consisted only of a cigar-shop on the ground floor and the chess divan above, how he purchased it and formed it into a small company, and how now a larger company was to have control of it.
Before we left the old-fashioned house, about which the steam of saddles of mutton seems to cling, we looked in on the Knights of the Round Table, who have their club-room at Simpson's, who possess a wonderful collection of portraits of past worthies of the club, and a unique book of playbills, whose motto is, "I will go eat with thee and see your Knights," and who once a week dine together off plain English food at the round table, one piece of mahogany, from which they draw their name.
1st March.
Since I wrote the above, Simpson's has been acquired by a company which has also taken over The Golden Cross Hotel, Trafalgar Square. The old place has in no way been altered by its new masters, who believe in letting well alone. Charles Flowerdew has left the upper room, and retired with, I trust, a comfortable competency; but William, who for many years was head waiter at the Cock, and has as fine a store of reminiscences as any old-fashioned waiter to be found in London, now serves in the lower room, and is in himself a mine of amusing information.