The Gourmet's Guide to London

by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis

For Greenwich the fair lady gave her decision, and then I made a further suggestion: that, if she did not mind unaristocratic company, the pleasantest way was to go by boat.

This suggestion was accepted, and Miss Dainty in the late afternoon called for me at a dingy Fleet Street office. I was delighted to see the little lady, looking very fresh and nice as she sat back in her cab, and I trust that my face showed nothing except pleasure when I perceived a small fox-terrier with a large muzzle and a long leash sitting by her side. Miss Dainty explained that as she had allowed her maid to go out for the afternoon she had to bring Jack, and of course I said that I was delighted.

We embarked at the Temple pier on a boat, which was as most river boats are. There were gentlemen who had neglected to shave, smoking strong pipes; there were affable ladies of a conversational tendency and there were a violin and harp; but there were as a compensation all the beautiful sights of the river to be seen, the cathedral-like Tower Bridge, the forest of shipping, the red-sailed boats fighting their way up against the tide, the line of barges in picturesque zigzag following the puffing tugs; and all these things Miss Dainty saw and appreciated. There was much to tell, too, that Miss Dainty had not written in her letter, and Jack was a never-failing source of interest. Jack wound his leash round the legs of the pipe-smoking gentlemen, was not quite sure that the babies of the conversational ladies were not things that he ought to eat, and at intervals wanted to go overboard and fight imaginary dogs in the Thames.

Arrived at Greenwich, at the Ship (the tavern with a rather dingy front, with two tiers of bow windows, with its little garden gay with white and green lamps, and with its fountain and rockery which had bits of paper and straws floating in the basin), I asked for the proprietor. Mr Bale, thick-set, and with a little moustache, came out of his room, and whether it was that Fleet Street and the Thames had given me a tramplike appearance, or whether it was that he did not at once take a fancy to Jack, I could not say, but he did not seem overjoyed to see us. Yet presently he thawed, told me that he had kept a table by the window for us, and that our dinner would be ready at six-thirty as I had telegraphed.

In the meantime I suggested that we should see the rest of the house. "Would it not be better to leave the dog downstairs?" suggested Mr Bale, and Jack was tied up somewhere below, while we went round the upper two storeys of dining-rooms—for the Ship is a house of nothing but dining-rooms. It is a tavern, not a hotel, and there are no bedrooms for guests. We went into the pleasant bow-windowed rooms on the first floor, in one of which a table was laid ready, with a very beautiful decoration of pink and white flowers, and in the other of which stand the busts of Fox and Pitt. We looked at the two curious wooden images in the passage, at the chairs with the picture of a ship let into their backs, and at the flags of all nations which hang in the long banqueting-room; and all the time Jack, tied up below, lifted up his voice and wept.

I asked if Jack might be allowed to come into the dining-room and sit beside his mistress while we had dinner, giving the dog a character for peacefulness and quiet for which I might have been prosecuted for perjury; but it was against the rules of the house, and Mr Bale suggested that if Jack was tied up to a pole of the awning just outside the window he would be able to gaze through the glass at his mistress and be happy.

A fine old Britannic waiter, who looked like a very much reduced copy of Sir William Vernon-Harcourt, put down two round silver dishes, lifted up the covers, and there were two souchés, one of salmon and one of flounder. I helped Miss Dainty to some of the salmon and filled her glass with the Pommery, which, after much thought, I had selected from the wine list. But she touched neither; her eyes were on Jack outside, for that accomplished dog, after doing a maypole dance round the pole, had now arrived at the end of his leash—and incipient strangulation. Miss Dainty went outside to rescue her pet from instant death, and I, having eaten my souché, followed. Jack wanted water, and a sympathetic hall porter who appeared on the scene volunteered to get him a soup-plateful, and tie him somewhere where he could not strangle himself.

The souchés had been removed, and some lobster rissoles and fried slips had taken their place. Miss Dainty took a rissole and ate it while she watched the hall porter put Jack's plate of water down, and I made short work of a slip and was going to try the rissoles when Jack, in a plaintive tone of voice, informed the world that something was the matter. His mistress understood him at once. The poor dear would not drink his water unless she stood by; and this having been proved by actual fact, Miss Dainty, with myself in attendance, came back to find that whiting puddings and stewed eels had taken the place of former dishes.

Miss Dainty took a small helping of the eels, looked at it, and then turned her eyes again to Jack, who was going through a series of gymnastics. I ate my whiting pudding, which I love, in fevered haste, and had got half-way through my helping of eels when Miss Dainty discovered what was the matter with Jack. The boys on the steps below were annoying him, and the only way to keep him quiet would be to give him some bones. The sympathetic hall porter again came to the rescue, and Jack, under his mistress's eye, made fine trencher play with two bones.

There was a look of reproach in the veteran waiter's eye when we came back and found that the crab omelette and salmon cutlets à l'indienne were cooling. I tried to draw Miss Dainty's attention away from Jack. I told her how Mr Punch had called her Faustine, and had written a page about her; but when she found there was nothing to quote in her book of press notices she lost all interest in the hump-backed gentleman.