London Calling (9 page)

The London Surrealist Group, just after the war, included Eileen Agar, though she kept her distance from Mesens, who had caused
her problems in the past with his lies and trouble-making; Feyyaz Fergar, the well-known Turkish poet, editor and translator;
the long-faced pipe-smoking French actor Jacques Brunius; Edith Rimmington; and the translator Simon Watson Taylor. After
they had dined, Mesens would usually propose a subject for discussion and sometimes the meeting would break up in noisy argument,
but most meetings were calm, often devoted to games of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ (known to children as ‘Heads, Bodies and Tails’)
in which the Surrealist ideas of chance opposition come into play. This could be a three-part drawing, in which the player
draws a head, then folds it out of sight and the next person draws a body and so on, or a three-part text, where each player
has no knowledge of what the others will write. Melly was astonished to find someone had written ‘Love is fucking.’ A shocking
thing to say in mixed company in the forties. One evening Melly read aloud one of his poems which contained the line ‘You
are advised to take with you an umbrella in case it should rain knives and forks.’ He had collected a handful of cutlery from
the restaurant sideboard and on reaching that line he threw them in the air. The noise was
tremendous as they fell to the floor. The Surrealists applauded loudly but the proprietor, M. Carbonell, was not amused. He
rushed into the room to investigate the source of the noise and threw them all out. Mesens was delighted by this as it gave
him, and the others, an excuse to engage in another Surrealist activity: the ‘gratuitous act’, which in this case was to insult
the proprietor. Naturally the insults were quickly forgotten as the restaurant did not want to lose their custom each Monday
and by the middle of the week normal relations had been restored.

The young George Melly was much taken by Mesens, and even took him to stay with his parents in Liverpool. Melly’s parents
were less impressed by Mesens’ three-hour morning toilet, during which he hogged the bathroom, but by the end of the weekend
it had been arranged that George would work for Mesens at his new gallery on Brook Street and that George’s father would give
him £900 to invest in paintings. Magritte’s
Le Viol
was his first purchase. Even though this is an iconic Magritte work it is unusually misogynistic for him: by replacing her
face with her sex organs the woman’s entire personality is stripped away, rendering her nothing but an object for men’s play.
Sybil Mesens did not like the painting and refused to allow Mesens to hang it at home; this did not mean, however, that she
was puritanical about sex. In 1946, during one of George Melly and Mesens’ long discussions about sex – the surrealists believed
that they should have the right to act out their desires without the constraints of bourgeois society – Sybil interrupted
the seemingly endless conversation by telling George: ‘For Christ’s sake, stop going on about sex. If you want a fuck, George,
come in the bedroom.’ George looked at Edouard, who gave a Gallic shrug of the shoulders and said: ‘Why not?’ Up until that
moment, George had been exclusively homosexual, but he had been informed of what to do by his fellow shipmates and found that
everything went according to plan. At one point Mesens entered the room, naked except for his socks, and in a state of arousal.
‘You are fucking my wife!’ he bellowed, with delight. George and Sybil managed to achieve a simultaneous orgasm, whereupon
George was replaced by Edouard. Watching him in action renewed George’s desire. He wrote: ‘I was particularly impressed by
his orgasm, during which he shouted French blasphemies and rolled his eyes like a frightened bullock cornered in the market
place. Indeed for some years I consciously affected this performance until Mick Mulligan persuaded me that it looked absurd
rather than convincing.’
²³
George replaced Edouard and they continued in various combinations as the evening drew in. It was the first of many threesomes.
As he put it: ‘and so, high above Brook Street, we made love in various combinations and positions while the light faded,
and on many other occasions too.’
²⁴
Mesens was bisexual, and though Melly, Mesens and Sybil had only half a dozen or so threesomes, Melly’s sexual involvement
with Mesens continued for many years. On one occasion when Mesens was away, Melly and Sybil got together but she asked him
to keep it a secret in case Mesens became jealous.

George Melly had arrived in London from Liverpool in 1948 fresh from his National Service in the Navy. His ruddy face was
dominated by his lips, which were wide, fat, wet and red, invariably smiling or talking. His navy haircut was cropped short
at the back so that a plume of well Brylcreemed spikes stood up from the crown of his head like a Mohawk. He wore a very tight
blue suit which sported in the buttonhole a pink celluloid doll with its buttocks turned uppermost.
²⁵
He carried a walking cane, the ivory handle of which was carved into a scene featuring at its centre a terrified, plump crouching
mouse.

In addition to his job in the London Gallery, for two or three evenings a week he was the vocalist with Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia
Jazz Band, using a battered biscuit tin as a megaphone which, according to him, gave perfect amplification to his traditional
country blues. The Magnolia Jazz Band sounded surprisingly authentic considering that, rather than having grown up in the
Mississippi delta, Melly was a public schoolboy, educated at Stowe, and Mick Mulligan had been educated at Merchant Taylor’s
and worked during the day as the director of a wines and spirits distributor. George rented a room in Chelsea in a house belonging
to the writer Bill Meadmore. They got on well except when George allowed so many people to sleep on his floor that Meadmore
could not get into the shared bathroom; then, his patience at an end, he would run into George’s room and order everyone out.

The Barcelona’s prices were reasonable, and it attracted an artistic crowd. Regulars included Jacob Epstein and the thriller
writer Leslie Charteris, who mentioned the restaurant in several of his ‘Saint’ books. There was usually a knot of Surrealist
painters and sculptors arguing loud and long at a corner table, some of whom tried to improve on the wall murals with sketches
of their own. With most sorts of olives, olive oil, and even rice and flour in short supply, most of the ingredients for Spanish
food were unavailable. Mr J. Carbonell did his best, and even managed to save some Machurnudo ‘La Rive’ Fino dry Spanish sherry
all through the war, then offered it at three shillings a glass when peace was declared.

The younger crowd went to Wheeler’s, Francis Bacon’s favourite restaurant. It was just half a block down the street from the
Colony Room and round the corner from the French pub. It quickly became the meeting place of the
so-called ‘School of London’ artists: Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews and whoever else Bacon invited
to join in his entourage in the procession from the French or the Colony to Old Compton Street. The proprietor was Bernard
Walsh, a large genial man with a striking laugh and sometimes known as Mr Wheeler. The war made his fortune: oysters were
not rationed and he could easily serve them below the five-shilling limit on the cost of a meal imposed by government restrictions.
He managed to get a drinks licence to go with the food and, though he was away in the armed forces, his wife kept the place
open throughout the Blitz, continuing to serve Pyfleets, West Merseys and Whitstables even as Old Compton Street was half
destroyed by bombs.

Their oysterman, Tim from Brighton, could open 400 shells an hour and 600 if pushed during a really busy period. Walsh managed
to keep his cellar filled with Chablis, champagne, hock, beer, stout and of course draught Guinness, but the place was never
cheap. After the war Bernard Walsh opened up the disused second floor and began to serve hot food. Because of its proximity
to the Colony Room, the Gargoyle, the French and the Coach and Horses, Wheeler’s became the obvious place to eat for Francis
Bacon, Colin MacInnes, Lucian Freud, Frank Norman and the other Soho bohemian intellectuals who could afford it. There were
rows of polished teak tables with check tablecloths, often stolen by customers to use as neckerchiefs. A row of high chairs
at the bar was filled with oyster eaters. In the years after the war one regular customer came in to swallow six dozen in
a sitting, three days a week. The manager was Peter Jones, who presided over the place in a dark funeral director suit. The
back lounge had its own small bar and claretcoloured settees in the waiting area, where the menu could be studied. The walls
were decorated with paintings of fish and other maritime creatures. The large green menu contained thirty-two sole dishes
as well as turbot and lobster but no desserts. The head chef was Mister Song, a Chinese. Francis Bacon always asked after
his health just to hear him say: ‘Mustn’t glumble.’
²⁶
Bacon was often broke and signed the bill. Walsh trusted him implicitly, knowing that when he sold a painting he would settle
up, which he always did. Bacon also promised to give him a painting but when he did – a small self-portrait – Walsh didn’t
like it and quickly sold it, receiving £17,000.
²⁷

In the fifties and early sixties the all-male Thursday Club used to meet in a small top-floor room to eat oysters and lobster
thermidor and drink brandy. The club was the idea of the photographer Baron – Sterling Henry Nahum – who was famous for the
sex orgies he organized at his flat in Piccadilly. Baron would have loved the swinging sixties but he died in 1956. The club,
however,
continued. Well-known members included Prince Philip, Gilbert Harding, James Robertson Justice, Michael Eddows, MP, Iain MacLeod,
MP, the leader of the House during the Profumo affair, and Stephen Ward, a key player in the same affair.

Then, as now, people bemoaned the loss of cheap clubs and cafés and as far back as 1946 people like Stanley Jackson were complaining
that Soho was no longer what it used to be. He wrote then:

If you are in search of the Bohemianism of the novels, Soho will disappoint you today. The restaurants in Old Compton Street
cater for the film people, the shopkeepers, business men, bookies and visitors who don’t mind paying a cover charge for a
‘Continental’ atmosphere. They are too dear for the struggling artists, writers and musicians who used to line their stomachs
for a florin at the Chat Noir, then cross the road to the Café Bar and chatter until midnight over a couple of mugs of Brazilian
coffee. Now they find it cheaper to live in Chelsea, Pimlico or Hampstead.
²⁸

People, of course, are still saying the same thing today.

‘Just like home – filthy and full of strangers.’

RONNIE SCOTT
describing his jazz club onstage

A favourite destination for art students such as myself, hitching up to London and in need of an address to meet people, was
Jimmy’s on Frith Street. Hitch-hiking could be slow, but it was usually possible to make London in time to meet someone at
Jimmy’s for lunch. Jimmy Christodolous opened his restaurant in August 1949 and it quickly became another haven for those
seeking escape from the grim reality of post-war Britain. Housed in a white tiled barrel-vaulted basement with whitewashed
walls it was cheap and very Continental. There were plain wooden chairs and gingham tablecloths. Wine was served in virtually
unbreakable glass tumblers, and half a loaf of bread was slapped down beside each diner. Jimmy’s specialty was moussaka, salad
and chips followed by thick sweet Greek coffee. Jimmy used to stand at the kitchen door, beneath the ‘No smoking’ sign, chewing
on a cigar, surveying his slightly grubby domain.

The cheap cafés and restaurants were one of the chief attractions of Soho, and one that features in many fifties memoirs was
the Torino on the corner of Dean Street and Old Compton Street. Mr and Mrs Minella always opened the Torino at 8.30am on the
dot. The marble-topped tables were so much a home for exiled Spanish Republicans, anarchists and communists plotting the overthrow
of Franco that it became known in some circles as the Madrid. Others referred to it as the Avant-Garde café because so many
artists and designers hung out there. The prices were rock bottom and the kindly Minellas even extended credit. Here, also,
could be found the staff of David Archer’s bookshop, the drinkers from the French in need of solids and gay couples seeking
a change from the As You Like It on Monmouth Street.
The playwright Bernard Kops and his wife Erica were regulars, as were Paul Potts and Colin MacInnes.

It was the cafés where the Soho bohemians really racked up the hours. They were cheaper than pubs, and the rent was the price
of a cup of coffee every hour. One much frequented was the French on Old Compton Street; as it was only a short walk from
the French pub, any confusion over a proposed rendezvous was easily corrected by visiting both. The French café was described
by Quentin Crisp as ‘a human poste restante… cosy, friendly, poverty stricken people, ill-equipped to live’, some of whom
he did not expect to live through another winter.
¹
He was, of course, one of them, sitting proudly at a table strewn with crumpled newspapers, with posters for poetry readings
and jazz clubs tacked on to the wall behind him, a faint smile on his lips, eyebrows arched, the two great waves of purple
hair giving him a strangely streamlined look. George Melly said that Crisp had ‘the courage of a lioness’ to walk the streets
dressed and looking as he did. Melly first met Quentin Crisp at the Bar-B-Cue restaurant on the King’s Road, Chelsea. Melly:
‘Being in Chelsea he was unshaven and rather grubby, the nail varnish on both finger and toe nails, peeping through gilt sandals,
cracked and flaking, his mascara in need of attention, his lipstick of renewal.’ He had, Melly said, ‘a wicked wit’. Crisp
was an exhibitionist with his mincing gait, and his silk scarves, velvet jackets and wide-brimmed hats. He was a great raconteur,
and preferred the cafés to the pubs, saying that on the days he was not working as an art school model he would have happily
whiled away the time from midday to midnight in the Scala and other cafés on Charlotte Street, drinking pale weak coffees,
as long as he could find people to listen to him talk.
²
He cruised through the streets of post-war London like a galleon in full sail, before eventually moving to New York City,
where he found a more congenial home. In his own 1976 publicity handout he described himself by saying: