Coming out of a steamship office here, several years ago, I felt thirsty and asked a bobby where I could get a glass of good ale. He recommended a little “pub” a few blocks away, and there I went. And there I met Isabel. She was behind the bar and she gave me a pewter tankard of ale. I sat down on a cushioned seat and chatted with her while I drank.
Ever since then, when I come to London, the first thing I jot down on my daily list is to drop into the “pub” at 11 a.m. (that’s when it opens) and have my tankard and a chat with Isabel…
These lines are from a travel column in the Times-Union of Albany, New York in 1932. They were product of Bruno Lessing, pen name of Rudolph Edgar Block. Largely forgotten today, Lessing was of a piece with a Liebling, Mencken or Bemelmans – prewar writers who affected an airy, “European” manner. “Mitteleuropa” gets closer to it, in fact.
He was born in New York in 1870, of Jewish parents, and died in 1940 in an Arizona sanatorium. A death notice described him as a respected (New York) Sun and long-time Hearst journalist and author. It commented:
Writing his column took him many times around the world, roaming into strange and out-of-the-way places. He delighted in describing the scenery, life, folklore and gastronomic bits he found in his wanderings.
The piece linked appeared in his column Vagabondia, sometimes billed A Vagabond Abroad.
Lessing is one of many interwar writers who described a normal drinking culture for an America still parched and pinched by National Prohibition, which finally ended in 1933.
The pre-Prohibition Manhattan and Brooklyn alehouses I’ve discussed in these posts were a resort of the writing fraternity then. It seems likely Lessing knew them as well as the innumerable German kellers and beer gardens in Gilded Era New York and New Jersey.
The ale houses were extensions of the British original, so drawing cellar-cool but non-refrigerated beer was business as usual. Perhaps for this reason Lessing did not comment on ale temperature in London, or its low carbonation, as did some observers.
He was an old-time boulevardier, not inclined to micro-analyse cultures anyway. He focused rather on the server, Isabel, in a way that is not done today. While we are better for that, his writing stands as testament to its time.
If “period flavour” means anything we see a cardinal example here.
Note re image: The image above, of Rudolph Block, was sourced from his entry in Wikipedia. Apparently in public domain. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.