But nowadays, apart from the birds of passage who pass a night in the huge station caravanserais, does anyone put up in the City? Only a few “commercials,” such as I saw lunching at Williamson’s, on the very excellent “ordinary” of lamb, green peas, new potatoes, cauliflower, cherry tart and cheese, winding up with coffee, liqueur and a fat cigar, over which they discuss the latest prices, and the latest sporting news. Williamson’s, in fact, does not cope with modern notions--“Take it or leave it” is their motto. The all-invading business girl has not yet dared to put her nose in here--she would probably create a revolution if she did. But if you want to get right back into the atmosphere of Dickens, in a place where electric bells, smart waitresses, music, flappers and foolish ideas of the value of time are not, conscript a friend and take a meal at the Old Mansion House. Coming out into Bow Lane, on the right, at the opposite corner where Watling Street crosses it, you will find the Old Watling Restaurant, one of the first houses built in London after the Great Fire: a very delightful example of its kind, with its dormer windows and heavy-beamed ceilings. In Cheapside, at No. 37 at the corner of Friday Street, where Messrs. Meakers carry on a business appropriate enough to the shop that tradition assigns to John Gilpin, is another house that claims, on the insufficient evidence of an undated cutting from the _Builder_, to have been standing even before the Fire. Everything goes to refute this story. The very beautiful staircase dates from the Restoration period, the brickwork is similar to that of other buildings erected at this time, but, more than this, it is quite certain that the house stands on the site of the older “Nag’s Head,” a tavern with an overhanging timbered structure, that may be seen in a print of Cheapside showing the procession to welcome Marie de Medici when she came in 1638 to visit her daughter Henrietta Maria. The sign on the frontage now is no Nag’s Head, but a Chained Swan, once the heraldic badge of King Henry IV., but debased, like so many other noble devices, to become the sign of a hostelry. Innkeepers were fond of calling their houses after the swan, for this poor bird has always had an undeserved reputation for being fond of strong drink; on the other hand, it holds a special place in English history, for when Edward III., jousting at Canterbury in 1349, put on his shield the device of a white swan with the motto: Hay, hay, the wythe Swan, By Gode’s Soule I am thy man, this was the very first time that the English tongue was used at Court since the Conquest, and the White Swan made fashionable a language that has since spread all over the world. At the sign of the “Chained Swan” is certainly the most interesting house in Cheapside. Quite probably it was really the first to be erected in the City after the Fire, as it is a four-storied house of some importance.