3) The Red Lion, Poppin’s Court.
Among London’s ‘ lost pubs ‘ The Red Lion, which was tucked away in Poppin’s Court, off Fleet Street, just before Ludgate Circus, is one of the least known, although, as we shall see, it ought to be celebrated. A frequent haunt of writers and journalists working in the Street of Shame, it is the subject of an affectionate portrait in The Book of Fleet Street ( 1931), by Clennell Wilkinson, who wrote for The London Mercury. Clennell christened it ‘ The Compositor’s Arms due to the fact that it stood close the Head Office of the printers’ union. The author was a frequenter of this pub from October 1921 to August 1925, but after he had finished going there he never returned.
‘ It was the discreetist little pub you ever saw…and formed part of the great estate of the Bishops of Ely, stretching southwards from Holborn to the very banks of the river at Blackfriars. But you might go past the entrance to that court without noticing that there was a pub there…’
‘The proprietor, a sturdy forthright fellow, who rather liked to have us about the place—would in fact do anything for us except read us—is now alas, dead. So are George Mair and Jimmy Allison, and Bohun Lynch, and John Freeman, and too many others of his customers of those days. But I like to think that the Perfect Barmaid, who afterward became his wife, is still presiding with that gentle, dignified efficiency of hers, of not over this establishment, then over some other…
The connection between pubs and literature is less marked today than it was in the days when Englishmen could really write. Shakespeare would be utterly puzzled to understand why even now I feel I ought to make some apology for mentioning The ( London) Mercury in this connection; he would be astonished if he could see the thin sneer with which these lines would probably be read by some of his most enthusiastic modern admirers. Big drinks are out of fashion—that’s the truth. If they had served American cocktails in Poppin’s Court—but I digress…’
‘Pubs and literature! I think it was Mr Chesterton who once said that “ public house” and “ music-hall “ were two of the most beautiful words in our language, and that (characteristically) we seem to be more than half ashamed of them. Pubs and poetry !
I have seen James Murray Allinson come into the Compositors’ Arms, and peer
around him in that subdued light , noting the men seated or standing by the bar—J. C. Squire, and Hilaire Belloc, and Edward Shanks, and Martin Armstrong, and perhaps Edmund Blunden, and W. J. Turner, or Mr Chesterton himself. And Jimmy, who never really thought anything mattered in the world but poetry, would heave a sigh of relief, and exclaim joyfully, “ Why, every one if you here is a poet—except poor old Clennell!”
‘Oh, yes; there was an atmosphere. They would even recite their poems noisily; and, while this is a damnable thing at a tea-party, one somehow didn’t mind it there. It seemed natural. It would never bee tolerated in a club, of course; but here it seemed most comfortably at home amid the clink of glasses, and the loud laughter of a story someone was telling at the other end of the bar…’
‘How can I indicate the exact tone of the place ? It was not too brutally robustious. It is true that Jack Squire’s cricket team, the ‘ Invalids’ , was born there; but we were all more or less crocks, or rabbits, and “ invalids” was the master word. Nor did we swallow so very much beer, though it may have seemed a lot to this pallid crème- de -menthe age. It was about this time that one of the brilliant Sitwell trio—God knows which—roundly accused all contributors to The Mercury of drinking too much beer. I never drink beer myself. I dislike it, and it disagrees with me. But, if comes to a choice between beer and vinegar, I know which I prefer…’
‘…It was the chance customer, the man you saw there about once a fortnight, or once a month, or even less, who made the place. There were so many of them. I have seen in that pub during this brief period, excluding names already mentioned: Robert Nichols, Robert Lynd, Maurice Baring, Max Beerbohm, Middleton Murray, J. B. Priestley, E. W. Hornung, Brett Young, E.N. da C. Andrade, Stacy Aumonier, Archibald Marshall, Henry Williamson, Osbert Burdett, John Balderston, both the “ Beachcombers”—that is D.B.W. Lewis and his successor J.B. Morton, a regular and riotous visitor—Lewis Melville, Caradoc Evans, James Bone, Gerald Barry, H. C. Harwood ( every Wednesday, I don’t know why), Ralph Straus, Gerald Bullett, Maurice Hewlett, Iolo Williams, Edward Davison, and dozens of others whose names I cannot at the moment recall…’
‘It was here, too, that I heard J. B. Priestley say, of one of out most trenchant dramatic critics, that he “ always hit out straight from the shoulder, but unfortunately there wasn’t any shoulder “—a penetrating remark. But I don’t think we were particularly witty. The mood was too genial; and true wit is more nearly allied to ill-nature than
Sir Peter Teazle would allow. What we were was truthful. In vino veritas. The tag has a double meaning. The genius of the place was against humbug, and attitudinising, and “ stunts”—especially literary “stunts.” No one can look at a glass of claret, held up to the light, and believe in free verse. There is a foolish theory, imported, no doubt ,from America, that wine excites the brain to exhibitions of extravagance. It does nothing of the kind. It does precisely the opposite. It soothes the intellectual deliriums produced by tea and bread and butter and Sunday-school slops; it restores charity, and urbanity, and a sense of proportion; it destroys envy and hatred; it makes a man see himself and his friends for what they are, and find them good enough. Or it did in Poppin’s Court.’
Many of the names listed by Wilkinson as being occasional customers at the Red Lion were well-known or even famous journalists, novelists, essayists and minor poets. But one names stands out from the crowd. Iolo Williams ( 1890 – 1962) was a journalist with many disparate interests, including book collecting, connoisseurship and natural history. Like many of the other writers mentioned by Wilkinson in his portrait, he wrote for the London Mercury and became the Museums correspondent for the Times He also collected watercolours in his forties at a time when examples could be bought at auctions, junk shops and book barrows for shillings or even pence ( in the same period Geoffrey Grigson bought a pencil drawing by James Ward for pence ). The result of Williams’ connoisseurship was the magisterial Early English Watercolours (1952), which is widely acknowledged as a pioneering work of scholarship in a area of collecting that was then in its infancy.
Clennell Wilkinson did not survive as long as many of his fellow topers. He died in 193, undoubtedly due to all that claret. The pub itself prospered until the digital age took all the journalists away from Fleet Street to Wapping and elsewhere. It closed its doors in 1975 and was never replaced. Today, there is no sign that it ever existed.Luckily, photographs of it have survived and doubtless there are journalists around now who remember it in its heyday.
Postscript. It is rumoured that the Australian creator of Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers, who knew Fleet Street well, borrowed the name of Poppins Court for her famous female character.
R. M. Healey.