the Judge and Jury Society, have left the Garrick’s Head in Bow Street, and now hold their Forensic Sittings at the celebrated Coal Hole Tavern, Fountain Court, Strand, every Evening.
Do not forget to remember
THE COAL HOLE
in the Strand.
Law was the proprietor of the establishment, and he “flared up” to some tune, so far as the production of suppers required flaring. And suppers were both numerous and excellent at the Coal Hole; the stewed or scalloped oyster, the devilled kidney, the broiled bone, and the modest “rabbit” receiving considerable attention during the progress of the mock trials. Subsequently the Coal Hole became a resort for journalists and actors, who used to be admitted to a snug old room behind the bar; but all that is changed now, an ambitious landlord having modernised the place and driven forth its old habitués. Not by violence or through incivility, but by means of plate-glass, electro tankards, and other goods, the unwonted and unwelcome aspect of which has made wanderers of the old warm-hearted coterie. Why will people “restore” and improve the few comfortable old taverns still left about London, and drive honest folk from the snug and unpretending corners they have occupied for years? This same restoration is shortsighted and impolitic. The houses become nondescript; they are too modern, and perhaps too respectable, for the old customers, not glaring and gassy enough for the new; and so they stand, with just sufficient about them to remind us of the joys that are past, and not enough to tempt us to renew them in the future.
Turning from taverns, coal-holey