when everything in your little world goes wrong; when you can do nothing right; when you have cut yourself while shaving, and it has rained all day, and the taxis have splashed your collar with mud, and you receive an army notice, post-marked on the outer covering buy national war bonds now—in short, when you are fed up, what do you do?
to each man his own remedy. i know one man who, in such circumstances, goes to bed and reads ecclesiastes; another who goes on an evening jag; another who goes for a ten-mile walk in desolate country; another who digs up his garden; another who reads school stories. but my own cure is to board a london tram-car bound for the outer suburbs, and take mine ease at a storied sixteenth-century inn.
where is this harbour of refuge? no, thank you; i am not giving it away. i am too fearful that it may become popular and thereby spoiled. i will only tell you that its sign is "the [pg 156]chequers"; that it is a low-pitched, rambling post-house, with cobbled coach-yard, and ridiculous staircases that twist and wind in all directions, and rooms where apparently no rooms could be; that it was for a while the g.h.q. of charles the first; and that it is soaked in that ripe, substantial atmosphere that belongs to places where companies of men have for centuries eaten and drunken and quarrelled and loved and rejoiced.
you talk of your galleried inns of chester and shrewsbury and ludlow and salisbury, and your thousand belauded old-world villages of the west.... here, within a brief tram-ride of london, so close to the centre of things that you may see the mantle of metropolitan smoke draping the spires and steeples, is a place as rich in the historic thrill as any of these show-places.
but its main charm for me is the goodly fellowship and comfortable talk to be had in the little smoking-room, decorated with original sketches by famous black-and-white men who make it their week-end rendezvous. you may be a newcomer at "the chequers," but you will not long be lonely unless your manner cries a desire for solitude. its rooms are aglow with all those little delights of the true inn that are now almost[pg 157] legendary. one reads in old fiction and drama of noble inns and prodigally hospitable landlords; but i have always found it difficult to accept these pictures as truth. i have sojourned in so many old inns about the country, and found little welcome, unless i arrived in a car and ordered expensive accommodation. it was not until i spent a night at "the chequers" that i discovered an inn that might have been invented by fielding, and a landlord who is and who looks the true boniface.
i had missed the last car and the last train back to town. i wandered down the not very tidy high street, and called at one or two of the hundred taverns that jostle one another in the street's brief length. the external appearance of "the chequers" promised at least a comfortable bed, and i booked a room, and then wandered to the bar. i felt dispirited, as i always do in inns and hotels; as though i were an intruder with no friend in the world. i ordered a drink and looked round the little bar. my company were a police-sergeant in uniform, a horsey-looking man in brown gaiters, an elderly, saturnine fellow in easy tweeds, a young fellow in blue overall—obviously an electrician's [pg 158]mechanic—and a little, merry-faced chap with a long flowing moustache. i scrutinized faces, and sniffed the spiritual atmosphere of each man. it was the usual suburban bar crowd, and i assumed that i was in for a dull time. the talk was all saloon-bar platitudes—this was a terrible war. the rain was coming down, wasn't it? yes, but the farmers could do with it. yes, but you could have too much of a good thing, couldn't you? ah, you could never rely on the english climate.... three shillings a pound they were. scandalous. robbery. somebody was making some money out of this war. ah, there was a lot going on in whitehall that the public never heard about.... so, clutching at a straw, i opened the local paper, and read about a pretty wedding at st. matthew's, and a presentation to mr. gubbins, and a runaway horse in the high street, and a——
then came the felicitous shock. from the horsey man came words that rattled on my ears like the welcome hoofs of a relief-party.
"no, it wasn't euripides, i keep telling you. it was sophocles," he insisted. "i know it was sophocles. i got the book at home—in a translation. and i see it played some time ago in[pg 159] town. ask mr. connaught here if i'm not right." he grew flushed as he argued his rightness. i followed the direction of his nod. mr. connaught was the disgruntled-looking man in tweeds. and mr. connaught set down his whisky, fished in a huge well of a side-pocket, and produced—?dipus rex in the original greek, and began to talk of it.
i sank back, abashed at my too previous judgment. here was a man who, during the half-hour that i had been sitting there, had talked like a grocer or a solicitor's clerk—of the obvious and in the obvious way. it was he who had made the illuminating remarks that there was a lot going on in whitehall that we didn't know anything about, and that you could never rely on the english climate. and now he was raving about sophocles, and chanting fragments to the assembled whisky-drinkers. tiring of sophocles, he dived again into the pocket and produced aristophanes.
the talk then became general. the constable, apparently annoyed at so much latin and greek, thrust into the chatter a loud contention that when a man had finished with english authors, then was time enough to go to the classics. give him[pg 160] boswell's johnson and pepys' diary and a set of dickens written in the language of his fathers, to keep on the dressing-table, within easy reach of the bed, like. the electrician's mechanic couldn't bother with novels; he was up to the neck just now in spencer and h?ckel and bergson, and if we hadn't read bergson, then we ought to: we were missing something. then somehow the talk switched to music, and there followed a dissertation by the police-sergeant on ancient church music and the futility of grand opera, and names like palestrina and purcell and corelli were thrown about, with a cross-fire of "bitter, please, miss fortescue"—"martell, please; just a splash of soda—don't drown it"—"have you tried the beer at the 'hole-in-the-wall?'—horrible muck"—"come on—drink up, there, fred; you're very slow to-night."
"d'you know this little thing by sibelius?" asked the merry fellow; and hummed a few bars from the thousand seas.
"ah, get away with yer moderns!" snapped the police-sergeant. "this debussy, scriabine, schonberg and that gang. keep to the simplicities, i say—handel, bach, haydn and gluck. listen to this;" and he suddenly drew back from[pg 161] the bar, lifted a mellow voice at full strength, and delivered "che faro" from orfeo; and then took a mighty swig at a pint tankard and said that it had just that bite that you only get when it's drawn from the wood.
it took me some time to pull myself together and sort things out. i wondered what i had stumbled upon: whether other pubs in this suburb offered similar intellectual refreshment; whether all the local tradesmen were bookmen and music-lovers; and how to reconcile the dreary talk that i had first heard with the enthusiastic and individual discourse that was now proceeding. i wondered whether it were a dream, and how soon i should wake up. if it were real, i wondered if people would believe me if i told them of it.
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. [pg 162]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 [pg 163]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[pg 164] 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.
[pg 165]
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[pg 166] 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.
jimmy—i hope he won't mind my writing him down as jimmy; you have only to look at him to know that he cannot be james or jim—jimmy radiates cheer; whether in his own inn or in other people's. among his well-smoked furniture and walls men talk freely and listen keenly. there is no obscene reticence, no cunning reserve. [pg 167]unpleasant men would be miserable at "the chequers"; they would seek some other biding-place where self-revelation is kept within diplomatic bounds.
believe me, "the mermaid" was not the end of the great taverns. what things have we seen done and heard said at the bar of "the chequers." what famous company has gathered there on sunday evenings, artists, literary men, musicians, philosophers, entering into fierce argument and vociferous agreement with the local stalwarts. in these troubled times people are mentally slack. they readily accept mob opinion, to save themselves the added strain of thinking; and eagerly adopt the attitude that it is idle to concern oneself with intellectual affairs in these days; so that there is now no sensible talk to be had in bar or club. wherefore, it is a relief to possess one place—and that an inn—where one may be sure of finding company that will join with relish in serious talk and put their whole lives in a jest. such delight and refreshment do i find at this inn, that scarcely a saturday passes but i board the car and glide to "the chequers" in—well, just beyond the london postal district.
