In the early seventies all the hotels, and almost all the restaurants, supplied nightly the heavy meals that then represented the national taste. In an earlier chapter I have alluded to the Rainbow in Fleet Street, and to the Albion in Russell Street, Covent Garden. These were typical. Simpson’s in the Strand was run on the same lines. This was a very famous house of its kind. I have not visited the place since it was rebuilt during the alterations at the Savoy. But it carries on the old tradition, I understand; that is to say, a customer can still have his slabs of fish and his thick cuts from the joint, but he is granted an option. He may have his food served in daintier guise. The smoking-room at Simpson’s was a great rendezvous for men who knew good whisky and were judges of a cigar. For the cigar divan next door to the restaurant was really part of the concern. It was in that little smoking-room that I first met Charles Kelly, the actor. He became the second husband of Ellen Terry, and was one of the most charming men I have ever known. His real name was Wardell, and he had thrown up his commission in a crack cavalry regiment to “go on the stage.” Simpson’s was celebrated for something beside its typical old English fare, its excellent whisky, and its incomparable cigars. In a certain upper chamber at Simpson’s there were accustomed to meet all the most eminent chess-players of the day. Steinmitz and Blackmore could be found there on most afternoons. And, although it was known in the outside world that they could be seen without any let or hindrance on the part of the proprietor, their privacy was never invaded. Only amateurs of the game entered the chess-room. Your true Londoner differs in this from the citizens of other towns: he never intrudes where he is not wanted. As to the restaurant below, the dinner there was served in a square saloon at the back of the building. The joints were trundled up to the customers on “dumbwaiters” running on castors. The meal was of the usual heavy, stodgy description. The older diners ate heartily, and, as a rule, suffered horribly from dyspepsia. The waiters breathed hard, exhibited signs of a bibulous habit, and possessed the largest feet of any men I have seen either before or since.