WILL WATERPROOF’S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE.
MADE AT “THE COCK.”
O, plump head waiter at “The Cock,”
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.
****
And hence this halo lives about
The waiter’s hands that reach
To each his perfect pint of stout,
His proper chop to each.
He looks not like the common breed
That with the napkin dally;
I think he came like Ganymede,
From some delightful valley.
****
Ah, let the rusty theme alone!
We know not what we know.
But for my pleasant hour, ’tis gone,
’Tis gone, and let it go.
’Tis gone: a thousand such have slipt
Away from my embraces,
And fallen into the dusty crypt
Of darken’d forms and faces.
****
This sketch of the “head waiter at the ‘Cock,’” is the portion of the poem that is the best known and oftenest quoted. But the rest is full of noble, sad pictures.
The region about is a sort of tavern-land; there used to be a strange ramshackle place opposite, “Tom’s,” or “Sam’s,” or “Joe’s,” (we forget which), with the old “Rainbow”; and hard by was “Carr’s”—the older “Carr’s,”—which owed its repute to a sentence in “Household Words,” which praised the “capital cut off the joint, washed down by a pint of good Burgundy.”
You passed through a little squeezed and panelled passage to enter “The Cock,” and at the end of the passage was seen the little window of the “snuggery,” or bar, most inviting on a winter’s night, with something simmering on the hob. There sat one whom we might call “Miss Abbey”—like Dickens’s directress of the “Fellowship Porters”—to whom came the waiters, to receive the good hunches, “new or stale?” which she, according to old unvarying rule, chalked down, or up, on the mahogany sill of the door. All was duly sawdusted. The ceiling of the long, low tavern room seemed on our heads. The windows small, like skylights, opened upon the hilly passage or lane outside. There were “boxes” or pews all round, with green curtains, of mahogany black as ebony. But the coveted places—say about a sharp Christmas-time—were the two that faced the good fire, on which sang a huge kettle. The curious old chimney-piece over it was of carved oak, with strange grinning faces, one of which used to delight Dickens, who invited people’s attention to it particularly. There was a quaintness, too, in the china trays for the pewter mugs, each decorated with an effigy of a cock. On application, those in office produced to you a well-thumbed copy of Defoe’s “History of the Plague,” where allusion is made to the establishment, and also a little circular box, in which was carefully preserved one of the copper tokens of the house—a little lean, battered piece, with the device of a cock, and the inscriptions “The Cock Alehouse,” and “C. H. M. ATT. TEMPLE BARR, 1655.” The Intelligencer, No. 45, contains the following advertisement: “This is to notify that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock Alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmas next, so that all persons whatsoever, who have any Accompts with the said master, or Farthings belonging to the said house, are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July, and they shall receive satisfaction.”
It is a pity to find that there is not the conservative continuity in the line of waiters which should be found in such a place. They seem to come and go—go rather than come. They used to be all “in key,” as it were—had grown stout and old in the service. Latterly, time, in its whirligig changes, had brought round changes almost revolutionary, and we found strange, unsuitable beings in office. One was a dry, wiry man of despotic character, who administered on the new modern principles, unsuited to the easy-going manners of the place. He dealt with the customers in a prompt, almost harsh style. He knew and recognized no distinction between old frequenters and new. I fancy he was not popular. His place was really in the new “restaurants”; but here among the “boxes” and pews, and on the sanded floor, he was an anachronism. With the old habitués he was a perfect fly in the ointment. When he found himself unpopular, he adopted a strange device to recommend himself—the compounding a curious sauce, which he called “Pick-ant,” and which he invited guests to try. It did not much avail him, and death has since removed him to pay his own score.
Mr. Mark Lemon, who had to pass the tavern every day on his road to the “Punch” office, lower down, has laid a scene in one of his novels at the little tavern.
In early days, when the then unknown Tennyson dwelt in lofty chambers up behind the balustraded parapet of No. 57 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (west side), he used to resort to the “Cock” for his quiet five-o’clock dinner, where after a pint of the special port, he probably wrote the famous verses on Will.