THE OLD CITY CLERKS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 27

THE OLD CITY CLERKS

A formal banquet in Mansion House or Guildhall, with Mayor and Corporation in ample evidence, or else a hurried sandwich in a crowded bar—these are what most people think of when "lunch in the City" is mentioned, writes J. Blomfield in'the "Daily Telegraph."

One happy day recently I was the guest for lunch of the clerk of a small but ancient city company. For evermore lunch in the City means for me something • very different and infinitely more pleasant.

Quiet as of a college room in some old Cambridge court, the service of an ancient but efficient waiter, and talk which rippled gently from side to side of the mahogany table, were my lot. From the walls of the little room in that company's house looked down a benefactor or two of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in a cabinet at the side were flagons from which these old gentlemen of the past were wont to drink, even as we were drinking beneath their eyes. They would have been taking something more heady, but not more delicious, than the Richbourg which washed down plentifully and aromatically our simple fare.

Simple? Yes, for half the charm was the combination of simplicity and richness. The chairs on which we sat and the table round which they were placed were alike simple and uncovered. They had done duty, though, for centuries, and in the sale room would bring riches.

The wine which came up for us from the old cellar below was of a vintage for which you would ask in vain at your fashionable restaurant, and the glasses from which we sipped it were beautiful and ancient. Never did food taste better. The meal closed with cheese and biscuits, but cheese such as you may never meet save: at a good club on a lucky day. One of those days, I mean, when the Wensleydale is just right and the old members are out of town.

The clerk whose guest I was seemed

a natural part of these surroundings. Only Charles Lamb or Dickens could have done him justice on paper. He is a combination of simplicity, lore, courtesy, and the past: Living in restless times of rush and progress, he does not belong to them. He endures the customs and fashions of his own day, but he thinks and lives in those of bygone centuries.

Therefore we did not talk of currencies, or Test matches, or films or dictators. These are not fit associates of Burgundy quietly and persistently swallowed during a couple of hours taken from the business of the day for refreshment of mind and body. Much more suitably, he told me quaint histories of predecessors in his ancient office and little romances associated with the house.

My host himself, it appeared to me, will some day be an historic character. He has at the top of the house a bedroom at his disposal "in case of need." The need, I gathered, arises on most nights of the week. Nor can I imagine my old friend neglecting that bedroom and taking the Tube to his home in the suburbs. How hurried and foolish must we all seem to him as we jostle and squeeze each other in the train, and how far removed his neighbours in Upper Loganberry from his daily companions of the days of the Stuarts.

Blessed, I say,, is the City of London, which shelters and nourishes, almost unseen and unknown, a number of worthies like this old clerk. Quietly, industriously, politely, and efficiently they carry out the duties which are their lot. •

Almost unconsciously they carry in their heads knowledge and ..'antique lore which might furnish a dozen professors and a score of novelists. It is at the disposal of every friendly person whom they happen to meet, but it is thrust at no one, and it is held with a dignity and quiet pride which are fragrant of the long past which has gone to its making. May "progress" nev:r touch these City Clerks!