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Village life
Jeffrey Bernard
Some time last year I made a rather hurried and hackneyed .contribution to the Observer colour magazine's series on London's villages. They asked me to write an introduction to the piece on Soho, my old stamping ground, and I trotted out the usual stuff about Mozart having lived there,Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan having got drunk there, and for that I plead guilty and crave the reader's indulgence and beg his forgiveness. After all, there must have been something newish or slightly different to say about the place but if I couldn't come up with it I'd hoped the researcher who wrote the guide to the shops, pubs and restaurants might have done so. Now the series has been published in book form by Arrow Books at £1.95, called Village London, and a second look at it all has got me feeling very uneasy.
Under the heading 'Where to Drink' they have got it very nearly all wrong. I suppose, and I'm very probably wrong too, that the missionaries they sent into Soho were those posh Sunday newspaper journalists who buy the occasional avocado and lump of garlic in Rupert Street Market but who do most of their plonk tippling in Islington to the background strains of Vivaldi. (If that's how they come over to me, it can't be all my fault.) How else could you possibly recommend anyone to drink in a pub like the Duke of Wellington in Wardour Street? Someone has written, 'Wide range of bright beers from Scottish and Newcastle Breweries. Bar walls have panels showing famous (or infamous) family tartans and windows have inset coloured glass clan crests. Imposing stag's head overlooks large comfortable bar.' Well, I suppose that to some members of the NUJ that might sound frightfully amusing and look frantically exciting, but it's really very near boozing's rock bottom. Nearly every Younger's pub in the land has tartan wall panels, they being part of the trademark, and once you have seen a Royal Stewart or a Hunting McGregor through a glass darkly you've seen them all. I worked in the tattiest of Younger's pubs once near Leicester Square and even the cockroaches wore kilts. Newcastle Brown must be just about the most overrated beer there is and if the place has got coloured glass clan crests — so what? Not mentioned is the 'French Pub' and yet recommended is the Intrepid Fox, surely one of the most boring and depressing pubs in the area. Someone's right about the Avenue Pub, though, the one next to the fire station in Shaftesbury Avenue. It is 'anonymous', and thank God for that, although they mean to mock.
I suppose that the trouble with this sort of guide exercise is that outsiders miss so much and insiders are slanted by years of cultivated bias. Well, what would you say about Stratford-on-Avon? Crawling with American tourists? Full of ghastly souvenir shops? Not really. You would defeat the purpose of the book. On the other hand, it ,would be quite fun to do a 'downbeat' guide to almost anywhere and I'd like to write that in a glossary to Village London. Rupert Street Market is a pretty good example of what I mean. A super market indeed, but what a marvellous example too of the myth of the lovable, cheery and generous Cockney. With very, very few exceptions, you will find, once you get to know them all quite well, that your lovable Cockney barrow boy is a hard nut who'd be delighted to smash your face in should you have the impertinence to squeeze a tomato for firmness as is the practice on the Continent. In the same way, Fenella Fielding's admirable essay on Bayswater is only marred by her romanticism. Where she sees secret agents and the deposed king or so I see a sleaziness that the discerning tourist and visitor should be able positively to savour.
What in heaven's name did I ever mention Mozart and Dylan Thomas for? Soho's got nothing to do with them. Perhaps we were all touched the day we wrote our intros. Cohn Welland obviously was when he got stuck into Barnes. He says it is a family place where the kids chat to the local coppers. Well, even if it's -nice for the Barnes police to find their level it's a dreadful place full of very serious actors and writers like Colin Welland.
No, I really do feel awful about what I have written about Soho. It's a dump. I spend all of my working time there, but it's a dump. The governor of the Swiss Tavern — another pub not mentioned —summed it up quite nicely when referring to his own establishment. Someone asked him if he was ever troubled by mice. `No, we have got no mice here,' he said. 'The rats have eaten them all.' Well, of course, we haven't got any more Wolfgangs or Dylans or Brendans left in Soho. The Ruperts, Nigels and Amandas have eaten them all. In fact, you could say, and I should have said it, Soho is the elephants' graveyard.
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