Out and About London

by Thomas Burke

But soon I dismissed all speculation, for by a happy chance I was drawn into the circle. Some discussion having arisen on beer and its varying quality, a member of the company produced a once-popular American pamphlet, entitled Ten Nights in a Bar-Room; whereupon I handed round a little brochure of my own, compiled, for private circulation, from contributions by members of that London rambling Club, "The Blueskin Gang," and entitled Ten Bar-Rooms in a Night. This pleased the company, and I at once became popular and had to take my part in the gigantic beer-drinking. Then the merry-faced little fellow slipped away, and quickly returned to counter my move with an old calf-bound seventeenth-century book, The Malt-Worm's Guide: a description of the principal London taverns of the period, with notes as to the representative patrons and the quality of the entertainment, material and moral, offered by each establishment; every page adorned with preposterous but captivating woodcuts.

On my suggesting that "The Blueskin Gang" might compile a similar guide on the London bars of to-day, each member of the company burst in with material for such a work. We decided that it would be impossible to follow the model of The Malt-Worm's Guide for such a work, since the London taverns of to-day are fast shedding their individual character. Formerly, one might know certain houses as a printers' bar, a journalists' bar, a lawyers', and so on. The "Cock," in Fleet Street, remains a rendezvous for legal gentry, and the taverns between Piccadilly and Curzon Street are still "used" by grooms and butlers; and two Oxford Street bars are the unregistered headquarters of the furniture trade. And do you know the "Steam Engine" in Bermondsey, the haunt of the South-Eastern Railway men, where gather engine-drivers, firemen, guards and other mighty travellers? A pleasant house, with just that touch of uncleanliness that goes with what some people call low company, and produces a harmony of rough living that is so attractive to matey men. And the Burton they used to sell in old times—oh, boy—as my American friends say—even to think of it gives you that gr-rand and gl-lor-ious feelin'.

But these places make the full list. The war has largely obliterated fine distinctions. The taverns of the Strand and its side streets, once the clubs of the lower Thespians, have become the rendezvous of Colonial soldiers. The jewellers who once foregathered at the Monico, have been driven out by French and Belgian military; and Hummum's, in Covent Garden, into which you hardly dared enter unless you were a market-man, has become anybody's property.

While I named the taverns of central London and their pre-war character, others of the company threw in details of obscure but highly-flavoured houses in outlying quarters of the city to which their business had at times occasioned them, with much inside information as to the special drinks of each establishment and its regular frequenters. I saw at once that such a work, if produced, would exceed the bulk of Kelly's Post Office Directory, but the discussion, though of no practical value, gave me a closer view of the idiosyncrasies of the company. The lover of Sophocles liked loud, jostling bars, reeking with the odour of crowded and violent humanity, where you truly fought for your drink; where no voice could be heard unless your ear were close upon it, and where you had barely room to crook your elbow: such bars as you find in the poorer quarters, as seem, at first acquaintance, to be under the management of the Sicilian Players. The electrician preferred a nice quiet house where he could sit down—no doubt to think about Bergsonism. The musical police-sergeant had no preferences in the matter of company or surroundings; the quality of the beer was all his concern. The horsey-looking man liked those large, well-kept, isolated suburban bars where you might find but two or three customers with whom you could have what he called a Good Old Talk About Things.

At closing time I discovered that the little merry-faced fellow was the host; indeed, I had placed him in some such capacity, for his face might have been preserved on canvas as the universal type of the jovial landlord.

"You're staying here, aren't you? Come through to my room for a bit. Unless you want to get off to bye-bye."

I didn't want to get off to bye-bye. I wanted to know more of this comic-opera inn. So I followed him to his private room, and I found it walled with books—real books, such as were loved by Lamb—The Anatomy of Melancholy, Walker's Original, The Compleat Angler, an Elizabethan Song-book, Descartes, Leopardi, Montaigne, and so on. The piano in the corner bore an open volume of Mozart's Sonatas; and this extraordinary Boniface, having "put the bar up," seated himself and played Mozart and Beethoven and Schumann and Isolde's "Liebestod," and morsels of Grieg, until three o'clock in the morning, when I climbed to my room.

On the way he showed me the King Charles room and the delightful eighteenth-century mezzotints on the stair-case walls, and the secret way from the first floor to the yard. From that night our friendship began. I stayed there the following day and for two days more, and pulled his books about, and roamed over the many rooms, and met the company of my first night in the bar.

I was charmed by the air of intimacy that belongs to that bar, deriving, I think, from the sweet nature of the host. You may stay at popular inns or resplendent hotels, and make casual acquaintance in the lounges, and exchange talk; but it is impossible, in the huge cubic space of such establishments, to come near to other spirits. You do not meet a man in town and say: "What? You've stayed at the 'Royal York'? I've stayed there too," and straightway develop a friendship. But you can meet a stranger, and say: "What? You know 'The Chequers?' D'you know Jimmy?" and you fall at once to discussing old Jimmy, the landlord, and you admit the stranger to the secrets of your heart.