SOME NIGHTS IN NIGHT CLUBS

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 September 1927, Page 9

SOME NIGHTS IN NIGHT CLUBS

Jane Mander Writes of M The Bullfrogs”, "The Night Lighted and "The Hambone”... . / Quaint Sob© Haunts of London ... :

'HAVE always been puzzled about the bad .ViW/fcry' reputation given to 50110 by our novelists. r The murder mystery writers in particular picture it as a place full of disreputable hotels that harbour Bolsheviks plotting to kill off our aristocracy; mongrel Oriental gentlemen who smuggle in dope; international crooks who steal the world’s largest diamonds; eccentric collectors after Tiling vases; money-lenders of highlycompounded interest, and every superlative kind of villain. Its shadowed corners and narrowed streets might well hide nefarious deeds, but who has ever heard of violence in Soho? People shoot each other up in expensive flats in Mayfair, poison each other in the most respectable of

suburban sections, crack each other’s skulls in seaside resorts, throw each other off trains, and strangle each other on farms, but when was there a murder in Soho? This country has, seen some sensational crimes in the last few years, but the place most maligned by our writers in singularly free from all complicity in them. As a matter of fact Soho is one of the most peaceful sections of the city, and foreigners in the quarter, the Jews, the Italians, the Greeks, the Hungarians, and the Chinese are among the most law-abiding of London’s citizens. I like Soho because it is the one place in London that defies the gloom of the British Sabbath. All its restaurants are open on Sunday as on every holiday, and when all other places are most depressing it is most alive. In the old days, when London wasa mere village, Soho was a falconers’ field. It was a fashionable market place in the 18th century, and later became a residential quarter for “the quality.” Thomas Lawrence and Gainsborough both lived in the heart of it, on Greek Street, and Wren designed many of its houses, of which Carlyle House, just off Dean Street, and once owned by the beauty, Mrs. Cornells, is to-day the shop of one of the newest decorating and antique firms. There are still, around and near Soho Square, a few private houses of obviously prosperous ownership, but more and more those are being turned into shops for decorators who seem bent on making this part of London as distinctly their own as Harley and Wimpole Streets are claimed by the medical profession. Hazlett once lived on Frith Street, but the only living writer I know who inhabits the quarter, is Stephen Graham. Old and New Compton Streets (really one street) and Wardour are the main ways of Soho, and opening immediately off them are the fascin-

ating by-ways that the most' interesting restaurants, the most intriguing little shops, and the entrances to some of the smart night clubs. A great number of women in the West End send in to Old Compton Street to buy foreign delicacies. A famous Italian store is that of King Bomba, as ho calls himself, a most urbane gentleman who has the attitude of host to guest when you open his door. Shopping in Soho is always a pleasure. There is such politeness. Nothing is too much trouble. For all these people food is a serious business, and anything pertaining thereto is elevated to the plane of art. This is as far as the stores are concerned. Those in search of .casualness may visit the open market on Rufiert, Brewer and Berwick Streets. On a Saturday night this is one of the sights of London, and is not as wellknown to visitors as it ought to be, for there is no more interesting street market in the city. It has all the character of a foreign market, the good humour, the! 1 informality. The clothing stalls are nearly all run by Jews, as one would expect; the groceries and imported products by Italians and Greeks; the meat, vegetables, flowers and fruit by cockneys. One would hesitate to buy its meat for anything but the cat, and even then one would offer a prayer against harmful results, but many middle-class persons are thankful for the cheap prices of some of its other foodstuffs. In the clothing departments, I am told, there are dependable bargains to be picked up in the way of silk stockings and materials. But the joy of a visit lies in its colour and movement and types.

A good deal of the interest that visitors to London now take in Soho is due to its night clubs. These have become a feature of the quarter since the dancing craze has absorbed so much of the time given up to social life. The largest and most expensive clubs are not exactly in the district. The Embassy is on Bond Street, and the Florida in Burton Mews, and the Kit Kat on the Haymarket. But the Soho clubs have a different history. They are more the property of some particular set and have a character apart from that of mere wealth. They are, indeed, harder to get into than the more expensive places, for their atmosphere and desirability rests on their being kept for a certain type of personality. It is hard to keep an atmosphere inviolate, however, as all managers of these places find. Society to-day is a curiously fluctuating affair, and the place that is called very smart one year mysteriously declines in this respect and another takes its place for the next. At the moment the Night Lights and the Gargoyles are the two leading Soho clubs for smartness, with the Bullfrogs, which is a little more open, next. The Night Lights has a house of its own on Dean Street. It is managed by a man well known in social circles, Eddie Tatem, and by one of those foreign, princesses without whom nowadays no exclusive affair seems complete. The two upper floors of the house are given over to dancing and restaurant space, and both aro linked by a charming musicians’ gallery. The music here is good, being of the quiet restful kind. For the greater part of this season it has included the singing of two artists, Muriel and George, who were formerly in a Paris resort run by Jean Cocteau, and rejoicing in the name translated as “The Bull on the Roof.” The decorations of this club are Italian, cream walls, heavy red velvet curtains and red chairs, with a lot of dull gold about. They were done by Mrs. Dennison, she of the famous case. I am told the dancing floors are among the best in London. The lower one demands evening dress, but for the benefit of members who wish to drop in in a less formal manner the upper floor does not. This gives it something of a Bohemian flavour, though

it is not what is popularly suppose! to be Bohemian at all. Among the well-known titled people who ( are often at this club are Lady Louis Mountbatten, Lord and Lady Portarlington, the Countess of Seafield, Princess Arthur of Connaught, and Cherry, Lady Poynter. One of the features of the place is the handsomeness of all the attendants. The Gargoyles, run by David Tennant, a young society man, is on the top of <a factory at the corner of Dean and ‘Meard Streets in the centre of Soho and' only a few doors from the Night Lights. Passers-by would never sus'pcct its presence, though they might be curious about the cubist decorations in green and white around the narrow door in the side street, and if they happened to look up they might wonder about the roof garden on the top of the old weather-beaten

factory. There is something very x amusing about the places now chosen for some of these clubs. Cheapness occasionally has been a factor in the choice, and space for dancing undoubtedly so, but the idea that any camouflage deceives the police for a moment, is very funny. Anyway the Gargoyles is less secretive than most in its location. The dancing room has a curved roof of silver. But the restaurant is fairly sober. It was done over partly in old English style with an oak-beamed roof and a largo fireplace. The walls are decorated with gargoyles. -A modern note is struck in the glass tables which are lit by coloured fights from beneath. The Bullfrogs, which is round at the back of the Regent Palace Hotel, is a more open club, and its members are more the younger people who have not yet established themselves as celebrities in the arts or fashionable professions. For some reason it is more often raided by the police than the others, and two friends of mine were “nabbed” there the other night and fined for most harmless technical breaches of the rigid ant? often foolish regulations. For the average person the most popular Bohemian club and by far the cheapest, is the Hamboaie, in a basement on Great Windmill Street. For many of the poorer writers and artists it has taken the place, as a talking resort, of the old Cafe Royal. There is no exclusiveness about the Hambone. There are people who would call it crazy, and view with disfavour its impressionist nudes and the ribald rhymes that have been scribbled on its walks. But like all these clubs it is really very harmless. The possibility of the police raiding any of these places at any moment has robbed them of a’l the local colour that the visitor experts to find. They are no more exciting than any public restaurant. The chief reason for the raiding of these places is, of course, to prevent the drinking after hours. But arrests are made for any breach of the regulations. Guests, for example, are not allowed to pay anything, not even a box. of matches. And it was for -innocently paying for cups of coffee that my- friends were arrested at the Bullfrogs. Their escort,- the member who ihad taken them there, was absent from the restaurant for a few minutes, iand had neglected tb tell them they must not show any money. Scenes of the raiding of night clubs come into a great many novels nowadays, but the members of the cluba don’t get half so excited about it as our ’ writers would have us believe. Night clubs are just regularly raided, and the event is taken, as a matter of course.