But I have wandered somewhat wide of the matter in hand, which was to afford a little idea of the principal members of the staff among whom Robert Williams became enrolled.
Fleet Street—the thoroughfare itself, I mean—has undergone considerable change since those days. Nearly all the Dickens features have been shorn away from it, and the Dickens-land that impinged upon it has ceased to be recognizable. From the West we then entered Fleet Street through Temple Bar. In the north wing of that historic but obstructive gateway an old barber plied his calling. He reminded me of Mr. Krook in “Bleak House.” He was never what you would call quite sober. His face was blotched and fiery with his excesses, and his hand that held the razor trembled so violently that one wondered how he got through the day without wounding some of his customers. Once the operation commenced, however, the trembling ceased, and the razor sped unerring, steady, expert. What became of the old fellow when Temple Bar was taken down I have never heard. He would hardly, I imagine, have survived his disestablishment.
Sir Henry Meux bought the old structure, and had the Bar erected again as one of the entrances to Theobald Park. I have no doubt that Lady Meux had a word to say in the matter, for Lady Meux was a “sport” all over. I first knew her as Valerie Reece, of the Gaiety Theatre, where she was noted as being the most high-spirited of an extremely high-spirited lot. Her early days at Theobald Park were remarkable for some sporting events of a novel and exciting kind. Thus—or so the story went—her ladyship ordered a cargo of monkeys from India, and had the unfortunate Simian immigrants let loose in the park. As they fled gibbering from branch to branch, the determined little sportswoman took pot-shots at them, and had good fun while the supply held out.
Close by Temple Bar stood the old “Cock” Tavern. It was a snug, smelly, inconvenient, homely, stuffy, and (I should imagine) hopelessly insanitary old crib, much resorted to by barristers at lunch-time, for the chops and steaks were excellent. The “Cock” port was also reputed above reproach, but I never quite acquired the port habit, and should not like to obtrude my opinion; but I “hae ma doots.” The tavern will live for a while in Tennyson’s lines:
“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.”
And one notes here that Tennyson owns up to the barbarous custom of drinking port at five o’clock in the afternoon! Well, the “Cock” has gone by the board. A curious incident disturbed its declining days. A carved rooster was the sign of the tavern, and stood over the narrow entrance in Fleet Street. While the owner was under notice to quit his building, the sign was stolen one night, and has never been recovered from that day to this. Another “Cock” Tavern has been opened on the opposite side of Fleet Street, and lower down. This place also displays as its sign a carved rooster, which is believed to be the original from over the way. But it is not the original bird. That ancient fowl has become the property of the great American people. The wonder to me is how they missed collaring Temple Bar!
The widening of Fleet Street by throwing back the building line of the south side has naturally involved the removal of a good number of landmarks; and even where the widening has not been carried out, one observes, with certain pangs of regret, the disappearance of some well-beloved feature. The banking-house of Hoare (“Mr. W.,” as the squeamish lady called him) still stands, the carved wallet in its forefront bearing witness to the “pride that apes humility.”
But Gosling’s, as I knew it, is gone. Gosling’s I have always identified with Tellson’s in “A Tale of Two Cities.” “It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. . . . After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacity with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street.” The description exactly fits Gosling’s before it got itself a new façade and became the mere branch of a bigger bank. And the Dickens Fellowship should have looked to it, and preserved for the nation this memorial of the master.
Close by was a shop for the sale of mechanical toys, in the window of which a steamer laboured heavily in a sou’-westerly gale, the rolling waves kept in a state of agitation by clockwork, and the whole effect being particularly real and naturalistic. The proprietor of this scientific toy-shop was eventually attacked by the virus that runs through Fleet Street. He became a newspaper proprietor, and a successful one. His translation happened in this way: Young Kenealy, son of the eminent but erratic counsel for the Claimant, founded a paper called Modern Society. His pious object was to rehabilitate his late father, and this could only be accomplished by reopening the whole of the dreary Tichborne case, of which the public was heartily sick. The paper did not pay, and it was eventually acquired, as a property, by the owner of the clockwork ocean. He, worthy man, had no axe to grind. He retained the services of a pliant editor, and made the organ a vehicle for that sort of gossip which goes down so well with suburban matrons. The paper went up by leaps and bounds. The new proprietor gave himself airs, dressed the part, exhibited himself in the Park, and in a brief period had managed to shed all traces of the obsequious Fleet Street tradesman. He crossed the bar years since—perhaps in his mechanical steamer—but his paper persists to this day.
At the corner of Chancery Lane, and above the shop of Partridge and Cooper, was a new restaurant called “The London.” The proprietor was a sanguine man, but made the mistake of being a little before his time. The Fleet Street men of his period preferred to lunch and dine uncomfortably. The owner of “The London” did us too well, and attended too scrupulously to the nicer amenities of the table. We tried the establishment, and then returned to our husks. Outside the new restaurant stood a burly commissionaire, with puffy red cheeks and purple nose. When the restaurant closed its doors for ever, the commissionaire remained, eager to perform the errands of all and sundry. He was rather a picturesque old fellow, and was for a long time one of the features of that end of the street. He wore a red shako, which added greatly to the picturesqueness of his appearance, and I should not be surprised to learn that in private life he drank heavily.