the boxing champion Jack Dempsey, who drank there in 1926. No more photographs were added to the display after Victor’s
death.
Before the war, the vicar of St Anne’s church across Dean Street would pop out of the sacristy door and run into the French
for a quick drink in the middle of Sunday service while his congregation was singing a hymn. In the blitz, the church sustained
a direct hit, leaving just the tower standing in the middle of a bomb site; the same bomb destroyed the façade of the French.
Then the traffic began to go in the other direction for it was said that Lucian Freud had found a way to gain access to the
ruined church tower and after lunchtime closing time had taken a dazzling blonde there to make love. Others quickly followed
in his footsteps. Because of its French connections, the pub was a haven for many of the Soho prostitutes until the Street
Offences Act of 1959, which was designed to clear prostitutes from the streets but forced them into the hands of pimps. Up
until the war, a large numberof them were French, easily recognizable by their immaculate clothes, and known as Fifis. They would gather at the French
for a split of champagne, a Pernod or a Ricard. If anyone dare approach them at the bar they would appeal to Gaston for help
and he would immediately intercede. As long as they were in the pub, they would not be bothered. He told Judith Summers they
were ‘lovely girls – the best in the world. In here was sacred. I’d tell the men to hop it.’
In addition to Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, who first went to the French pub in 1949 because he heard it attracted a lot
of artists, there was a group of regulars once typified as ‘artistic gangsters’. The sportsmen and entertainment figures still
frequented the French after the war. Gaston told Judith Summers: ‘The crowd we have now is just a carbon copy of the same
crowd that was coming in 40 or 50 years ago when I was a boy. They are the same type of people… They themselves create an
atmosphere.’ 13 Some
extraordinary things had happened in the French. One day Dylan Thomas and Theodora Fitzgibbon sat at the bar drawing doodles;
then they turned each other’s doodles into a cartoon. They were interrupted when the barman brought them a sheet of paper,
sent by a figure sitting across the room. It was an identical drawing. Dylan immediately grabbed Theodora and rushed out into
Dean Street, where he explained that the man was the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, up to his tricks. He had no wish
to get involved in Crowley’s magical workings.
Upstairs was a small restaurant with French waiters where typical Soho food was served: steak tartare or kidneys washed down
with a rough red Corbières. After a break of many years, it was reopened by Fergus Henderson in 1992 as the French House Dining
Room where he perfected his ‘nose to tail’ dining, specializing in offal and other forgotten elements of British cooking.
(In October 1994 he opened the much larger St John restaurant in Smithfield, and has since become a celebrity chef known for
his warm pig’s head and his roast bone marrow.)
Gaston’s retirement on Bastille Day, 14 July 1989, was celebrated by a huge Soho street party organized by Jeffrey Bernard’s
brother Bruce. Gaston took the signed photographs with him, but not until they had been carefully photographed and replaced
with copies, so that for many years the French retained much of the same atmosphere. The strange metal dispenser that dripped
water through a cube of sugar on a leaflike spoon into a glass of absinthe departed from the bar in the seventies but is still
brought out on special occasions. Visitors still stand at the south side of the bar, while regulars still sip splits of champagne
on Saturday morning at the north side.At the time of writing little has really changed except that the windows are now always open so that the smokers standing
death.
Before the war, the vicar of St Anne’s church across Dean Street would pop out of the sacristy door and run into the French
for a quick drink in the middle of Sunday service while his congregation was singing a hymn. In the blitz, the church sustained
a direct hit, leaving just the tower standing in the middle of a bomb site; the same bomb destroyed the façade of the French.
Then the traffic began to go in the other direction for it was said that Lucian Freud had found a way to gain access to the
ruined church tower and after lunchtime closing time had taken a dazzling blonde there to make love. Others quickly followed
in his footsteps. Because of its French connections, the pub was a haven for many of the Soho prostitutes until the Street
Offences Act of 1959, which was designed to clear prostitutes from the streets but forced them into the hands of pimps. Up
until the war, a large numberof them were French, easily recognizable by their immaculate clothes, and known as Fifis. They would gather at the French
for a split of champagne, a Pernod or a Ricard. If anyone dare approach them at the bar they would appeal to Gaston for help
and he would immediately intercede. As long as they were in the pub, they would not be bothered. He told Judith Summers they
were ‘lovely girls – the best in the world. In here was sacred. I’d tell the men to hop it.’
In addition to Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, who first went to the French pub in 1949 because he heard it attracted a lot
of artists, there was a group of regulars once typified as ‘artistic gangsters’. The sportsmen and entertainment figures still
frequented the French after the war. Gaston told Judith Summers: ‘The crowd we have now is just a carbon copy of the same
crowd that was coming in 40 or 50 years ago when I was a boy. They are the same type of people… They themselves create an
atmosphere.’ 13 Some
extraordinary things had happened in the French. One day Dylan Thomas and Theodora Fitzgibbon sat at the bar drawing doodles;
then they turned each other’s doodles into a cartoon. They were interrupted when the barman brought them a sheet of paper,
sent by a figure sitting across the room. It was an identical drawing. Dylan immediately grabbed Theodora and rushed out into
Dean Street, where he explained that the man was the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, up to his tricks. He had no wish
to get involved in Crowley’s magical workings.
Upstairs was a small restaurant with French waiters where typical Soho food was served: steak tartare or kidneys washed down
with a rough red Corbières. After a break of many years, it was reopened by Fergus Henderson in 1992 as the French House Dining
Room where he perfected his ‘nose to tail’ dining, specializing in offal and other forgotten elements of British cooking.
(In October 1994 he opened the much larger St John restaurant in Smithfield, and has since become a celebrity chef known for
his warm pig’s head and his roast bone marrow.)
Gaston’s retirement on Bastille Day, 14 July 1989, was celebrated by a huge Soho street party organized by Jeffrey Bernard’s
brother Bruce. Gaston took the signed photographs with him, but not until they had been carefully photographed and replaced
with copies, so that for many years the French retained much of the same atmosphere. The strange metal dispenser that dripped
water through a cube of sugar on a leaflike spoon into a glass of absinthe departed from the bar in the seventies but is still
brought out on special occasions. Visitors still stand at the south side of the bar, while regulars still sip splits of champagne
on Saturday morning at the north side.At the time of writing little has really changed except that the windows are now always open so that the smokers standing
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