Nothing could have been more decorous than the tone that pervaded our frugal meal; nothing so incapable of giving offence to Exeter Hall opposite; the door of our retreat was intentionally kept ajar, yet despite these precautions I was one day informed that the manager declined to let the room for two, but that three would always be welcome.
“The School Board is on the warpath,” was my inward comment, and I never entered the place again. The “correct” old hypocrite is long since dead; the scene of these innocent repasts has long since been demolished, and the sweet lady who honoured me with her company has long since had a prefix to her name and become the proud mother of a subaltern in the Guards.
The inauguration of the Civil Service Stores, and the subsequent appearance of the Army and Navy Stores, gave the first fillip to that union between the Army and trade which the abolition of purchase and the changes in public opinion have since developed to such an extent.
Captain MacRae, late director-general in Victoria Street, who in the sixties was a plodding captain of foot, set the fashion by turning his sword into a tape-measure, and having taken the plunge lost no time in converting a general officer (some say his parent) into a laundry-man. Then followed the rush that saw bonnet shops and costumiers springing up in every fashionable street, and as Kitties and Reillys and Madges looked favourably on the military, the crop of Mantalinis increased and multiplied, and penniless officers became well-to-do men-milliners and accepted authorities on things military amid their new clientèle. And so the last nail was driven into that class distinction that was one of the chief characteristics of the long-ago Sixties.
Whilst on the subject of hostelries, a reference to Lane’s will not be amiss. This unique establishment was in St. Alban’s Place, and was affected by the rowdier class of youngsters, with a sprinkling of permanent residents in various stages of delirium tremens. Dirty and apparently never swept, the rooms might best be described as cosy. The beds, however, were scrupulously clean, and as the majority of the lodgers spent a considerable portion of their existence between the sheets, apple-pie order reigned in this department, ready for any emergency by night or day.
The ruling spirit was old John, an octogenarian in shiny snuff-coloured tail suit and slippers, who apparently never slumbered nor slept, and whom no human eye had ever seen otherwise attired. Assisted by two youngsters of fifty—Charles and Robert—this extraordinary trio knew the habits and tastes of every one; not that eating was extensively indulged in; and beyond the best of joints for dinner, and bacon and eggs for breakfast, the staple consumption for all day and all night might briefly be described as brandy and soda, rum and milk, whilst the more sedate confined themselves to sherry and bitters before breakfast, and a glass of brandy in their tea. How human nature stood such persistent floodings of the system seems beyond comprehension, yet nothing seemed to occur beyond revellers being periodically chaperoned to bed, and now and then an ominous long box being smuggled upstairs, and one hearing a day or so after that “the Captain” had had his last drink, and had been duly gathered to his fathers.
Even in those long-ago days the brevet rank was frequently assumed by ex-militia ensigns, but not to the same extent nor by such sorry specimens as twirl their moustaches in these more enlightened times and stand on the doorstep of the Criterion.
Whisky at this period was literally an unknown beverage in London—possibly because the supply could never have equalled the demand, or more probably because science had not yet evolved the diabolical concoctions that now do duty for the wine of bonnie Scotland. And so it came to pass that the staple drink at Lane’s was brandy and soda. Come in when one chose, there stood battalions of soda with brandy in reserve, and rarely did a wayfarer return at the small hours without calling for a libation from old Peter. Occasionally, after an unusual run, the supply might become exhausted, but no temptation could induce the old janitor to retail what had been reserved on “special order.” “What, give you that one? Why, it’s the Captain’s; every morning at five I takes it to his bedside, and if he’s asleep in the smoking-room I gives him a sniff of it, and he follows me to his room like a dog.”
Visiting the “Cheshire Cheese” not long since, I was struck by the marvellous change that the advance of civilisation (!!) had effected in that most cosy and unconventional of rooms. The steaks and puddings are still as good as ever, but the rollicking Bohemians, bristling with wit, with churchwardens and brown ale that one met at every table, have long since been replaced by their modern prototypes who sip their beer out of a glass, call for a serviette in evidence of a trip to Boulogne, and bolt after depositing a penny on the table. And where are the jolly old waiters in rusty tail-coats, shambling along in their carpet slippers, who never inquired how many “breads” you had had nor what had won the 3.40 race? And the Americans who now invade the place are not an unalloyed blessing, as males and females appear to consider it a sine quâ non to flop on to the seat where Doctor Johnson is once supposed to have sat, in order to be able to tell poppa and momma in the old Kentucky home how, if they could not rub shoulders with the mighty living, they had at least rubbed something with the mighty dead. This aspiration is indeed almost a disease with these Transatlantic trotters, and one rich and pronounced snob, despite his wealth, who lives amongst us, is known to pay for reliable information of the movements of European heirs-apparent in order to meet them by accident (!) and perhaps secure some fragment of recognition. The sequel is usually to be found in an inspired paragraph (4d. a word) hinting at possible alliance between the two families, which in its turn is flatly contradicted!
“Blood,” some genius discovered, “is thicker than water”—and the most unobservant must admit that some of it is very thick indeed.