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Authors: Margaret Powell
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dominoes. Then in the private bar would be the kind of people who
didn’t want to go in the public bar where the language and the people were too strong and salty for them, but nevertheless didn’t want to mix with what they thought were the snooty ones
in the saloon. The saloon bar was a mixture. You’d get the working-class people who when they’d finished their work would dress themselves up and go there as well as the well-to-do who
used it as a matter of course. We used to go in the private bar during the week because it was cheaper, but at a weekend we dressed ourselves up and always went in the saloon. It was a sort of
class and dress consciousness.
Although they weren’t the same kind of places they were still friendly and cheerful. Full of people, especially at weekends, and they’d still got the mahogany and mirrors and brass
beer handles – the impedimenta of a pub. Barmaids were in the ascendancy, and to have a barmaid instead of a barman made a vast difference. They were bright, cheerful girls, often peroxided
or hennaed which was all the go in those days, and with the beer or spirits they dispensed a fund of good humour. They’d listen to you; if you had a hard-luck tale, they’d be
sympathetic, or if you told them a bawdy story they’d screech with laughter. They were all things to all people and they added sort of another dimension to the pub.
I don’t know how they stood socially. It sounds terrible to compare them to prostitutes – they weren’t of course – but just as there is a type of man who likes
prostitutes and prefers them to anyone else, so there was a type of man who liked barmaids. But never in a million years would they ever have dreamt of marrying them. They loved them, called them
‘sweetheart’, told them things they’d never have told their wives, shared their business troubles, their office jokes, and you know how obscene office jokes are, laughed with them
and teased them and often bought them presents. They treated them I suppose as a wealthy man might his kept woman, and they expected the same things from her, except of course the sex bit, but
marry them – never.
Christmas in the local used to be like the old childhood Christmases. The decorations, Christmas trees and a spontaneous kind of gaiety. The landlady would come round with the gin bottle for the
ladies, and the landlord would dispense free beer to the men. In the local Albert and I used in Chelsea it was a mixed kind of pub – rich and poor – but all knew each other, and
although Albert and I didn’t join any of the large parties it wasn’t because we wouldn’t have been welcome. It was just that we didn’t accept from people drinks that we
couldn’t afford to return. And people respected that. But you could talk to anyone in there. You didn’t feel ostracized because you weren’t in a position to buy a round. And the
talk was interesting and friendly. You could either pass the time of day or have half an hour’s intelligent conversation – so that for very little money you could have an enjoyable
social evening.
I suppose pubs really started to change after the last war, and that change is now almost complete. Occasionally you’ll come across one of those pubs that’s still got the glass, the
mahogany and a whiff of the old atmosphere, but you are made to feel an alien – an unwelcome stranger. I suppose the landlord doesn’t want you because the pub might become popular. Then
he’d have to employ staff, the brewers would raise the rent, he’d lose the regulars he’s used to and the way of life that suits him. And the customers think on the same lines.
They’ve seen what’s happened in other pubs and they don’t want it to happen there – and who’s to blame them.
I think that television was the beginning of the end of pubs as we knew them, as television has been the death of so many things. I remember when it first came in how the pubs tried installing
didn’t want to go in the public bar where the language and the people were too strong and salty for them, but nevertheless didn’t want to mix with what they thought were the snooty ones
in the saloon. The saloon bar was a mixture. You’d get the working-class people who when they’d finished their work would dress themselves up and go there as well as the well-to-do who
used it as a matter of course. We used to go in the private bar during the week because it was cheaper, but at a weekend we dressed ourselves up and always went in the saloon. It was a sort of
class and dress consciousness.
Although they weren’t the same kind of places they were still friendly and cheerful. Full of people, especially at weekends, and they’d still got the mahogany and mirrors and brass
beer handles – the impedimenta of a pub. Barmaids were in the ascendancy, and to have a barmaid instead of a barman made a vast difference. They were bright, cheerful girls, often peroxided
or hennaed which was all the go in those days, and with the beer or spirits they dispensed a fund of good humour. They’d listen to you; if you had a hard-luck tale, they’d be
sympathetic, or if you told them a bawdy story they’d screech with laughter. They were all things to all people and they added sort of another dimension to the pub.
I don’t know how they stood socially. It sounds terrible to compare them to prostitutes – they weren’t of course – but just as there is a type of man who likes
prostitutes and prefers them to anyone else, so there was a type of man who liked barmaids. But never in a million years would they ever have dreamt of marrying them. They loved them, called them
‘sweetheart’, told them things they’d never have told their wives, shared their business troubles, their office jokes, and you know how obscene office jokes are, laughed with them
and teased them and often bought them presents. They treated them I suppose as a wealthy man might his kept woman, and they expected the same things from her, except of course the sex bit, but
marry them – never.
Christmas in the local used to be like the old childhood Christmases. The decorations, Christmas trees and a spontaneous kind of gaiety. The landlady would come round with the gin bottle for the
ladies, and the landlord would dispense free beer to the men. In the local Albert and I used in Chelsea it was a mixed kind of pub – rich and poor – but all knew each other, and
although Albert and I didn’t join any of the large parties it wasn’t because we wouldn’t have been welcome. It was just that we didn’t accept from people drinks that we
couldn’t afford to return. And people respected that. But you could talk to anyone in there. You didn’t feel ostracized because you weren’t in a position to buy a round. And the
talk was interesting and friendly. You could either pass the time of day or have half an hour’s intelligent conversation – so that for very little money you could have an enjoyable
social evening.
I suppose pubs really started to change after the last war, and that change is now almost complete. Occasionally you’ll come across one of those pubs that’s still got the glass, the
mahogany and a whiff of the old atmosphere, but you are made to feel an alien – an unwelcome stranger. I suppose the landlord doesn’t want you because the pub might become popular. Then
he’d have to employ staff, the brewers would raise the rent, he’d lose the regulars he’s used to and the way of life that suits him. And the customers think on the same lines.
They’ve seen what’s happened in other pubs and they don’t want it to happen there – and who’s to blame them.
I think that television was the beginning of the end of pubs as we knew them, as television has been the death of so many things. I remember when it first came in how the pubs tried installing
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