Queen Elizabeth Slipped Here
AFTERTHOUGHT
By JOHN WELLS
THERE was an evocative heap of horse dung out- side the Elizabethan Rooms of the Gore Hotel in Queen's Gate, and we were welcomed up the steps by a smiling Hun- garian in knee-breeches and a green doublet with spectacles and neatly Brylcreemed hair. Inside, the receptionist sat at a table by a guttering candle, her breasts laced rather unnaturally high in a tight Elizabethan bodice, and greeted us in a demure Tunbridge Wells voice. 'Good evening, sir; good evening, mistress. You will be feasting upstairs at the long table. You thight like to leave your cloak down here'—she indicated a doorway marked 'Coats' —'and if you would care to partake of a beverage beforehand, the bar is on your right.'
Upstairs in the candle-lit Banqueting Room most of the guests appeared to have already arrived, and there were only four places left at the end of the long table. The floor underfoot, in black shadow, was thinly scattered with single pieces of rather brittle reed, the table loaded with thick, dripping candlesticks and an assort- ment of, heavy wooden platters and pottery mugs. A wench approached from behind, tied a white linen bib round my neck, and tucked it into the back of my collar. She explained to us that when a toast was drunk to the new arrivals we should reply by drinking from the smaller mug in front of us, which contained an Elizabethan aperitif called mead, spelt M E A D, and crying 'Wassail.' Almost immediately, the wench's shrill voice was heard proposing our health, a blur of flushed faces wrapped in bibs and for the most part wearing spectacles turned towards us, and there was a roar of 'All Hail,' followed by less authentic cries of 'There you go' and 'It cer- tainly is.'
Sitting on our left was a heavily-built Ameri- can medical student in a pale-grey suit with thick black eyebrows. His name, he told the older man opposite, was Diamond. The older man, bald and sleepy-eyed, said that his name was Solomon. He introduced his wife, a fat lady in a black dress, who smiled. They came from Louisville, Kentucky. The younger man said that was a remarkable thing, because he and his friend, a smaller man with bright brown eyes and a winning smile, also came from Louis- ville, Kentucky. They shook hands without en- thusiasm across the wide table and began dis- cussing possible mutual acquaintances. Mrs Solomon said she knew a Mr Diamond in Las Vegas, but then she imagined there must be quite a lot of Diamonds in the United States.
At this point the wench returned to tell us that in Elizabethan times the courses were called removes, that we should be eating various Elizabethan dishes—which turned out to be quite good—including Elizabethan hors-d'oeuvre and syllabubs: as spoons had not been invented in this century, we should drink our soup straight from the wooden bowl, making as much noise as possible, and dunking pieces of the torn rye bread in the dish in front of us. In a few moments the minstrel would sing, and we should applaud not by clapping, but by banging on the table. We were also asked to remain silent during the songs, as the lyrics of the period always con- tained double meanings. In conclusion, she said with a rather austere sauciness that if we wanted anything within reason we should call for a wench.
We were now joined by two American ladies from Chicago, Miss Willie and Miss Eleanor, who occupied the last two seats at the table. They had just arrived from Shannon, and had lost a piece of luggage. The minstrel entered. A pale man in a loose white shirt with floppy fair hair, he sang several songs of transparent inno- cence in a slightly adenoidal Home Counties accent, accompanying himself on the guitar. The guests continued to listen in silence for the rest of the evening, always chuckling evilly at the faintest hint of Elizabethan smut. In the inter- vals between the minstrelsy, the volume of con- versation, perhaps stimulated by the honey- flavoured mead and rough claret, increased con- siderably. Mr Solomon showed us photographs of his grandchild, the candle-light between courses grew thick with the sweet smoke of American cigarettes, and I was fined a silver coin by one of the wenches for not leaving- enough of the tinned pressed boar's head for the poor of Kensington. She explained that it was for the Sunshine Homes for the Blind, and officially imposed by the King. I asked who the King was. She indicated the head of the table: `The Master of the Revels. The big fat chap at the end with glasses. I'm afraid it's rather gone to his head.'
The only other non-American group, a little farther up the table, became so filled with drunken daring that they began to toast `La Suisse frangaise,' refusing convivial offers to drink to the United States because of Vietnam. There was a murmur of muffled anger and outrage, and Mrs Solomon said philosophically that she guessed you would find anti-American feeling almost every place nowadays.
Unabashed, however, at the end of the even- ing—we had been given little clay pipes to smoke—the King rose to his feet, his spectacles flashing in the candle-light, and roaring. He would like, he said, to thank all the people who had given us such a nice time. When that lovely young girl—he was referring to one of the older wenches—had kissed him on the lips it had taken him back thirty years. There was a rising wave of table-thumping and applause, but he fought his way through it. Thirty years, he repeated with some nostalgia, to the first time he had ever kissed his wife. He was, he continued, making a self-deprecating dab into the air in front of him before adjusting his spectacles, and he thought that he was tight enough to admit it, a Judge of the Supreme Court in the State of New York, and he'd never presided over such a nice bunch of bastards.
At this point the cheering flowed over into spontaneous song, first 'Roll a Silver Dollar,' and then 'Old Macdonald Had a Farm,' and through a drunken babel of 'Quack Quack Here, Quack Quack There,' we found our way to the cash desk. The wench said it wasn't such a bad job, although they were sometimes naughty and pinched your bottom. Inside the Banqueting Room the minstrel watched gloomily as Miss Willie embarked on a quavering high-pitched soprano solo. The bill, the wench reminded us, came to three guineas each, plus whatever per- centage we would like to leave as a gratbity. I wish she hadn't used the word percentage: it almost broke the Elizabethan spell.
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