The French House: a small pub of which tall tales are told

Francis Bacon was a regular, Orson Welles and Errol Flynn tasted wine in its cellar during WWII and Dylan Thomas is rumoured to have once left the manuscript of Under Milk Wood under a chair there.

For many Londoners, Soho has lost much of its charm over the past few decades. Transformed by gentrification and redevelopment, its old bohemian character has been largely obliterated. But a few remnants of the Old Soho still remain, as a vivid reminder of the area’s rich social and cultural heritage. One of these is The French House, a small pub with a big history, which has played host to some of the most famous names of the twentieth century and beyond.

Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Augustus John, Peter Blake, Robert MacBryde, Jeffrey Bernard, Malcolm Lowry, John Mortimer, Tom Baker, Suggs from Madness, and Carl Barât of The Libertines, have all been regulars at one time or another. Orson Welles and Errol Flynn tasted wine in the pub’s cellar during WWII, Brendan Behan wrote large parts of The Quare Fellow there, and Dylan Thomas is rumoured to have once left the manuscript of Under Milk Wood under his chair after a few too many drinks. Even Salvador Dalí has passed through its doors on at least one occasion.

Unchanged for decades, its walls are lined with pictures of Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, alongside long-forgotten boxers and stars of the French music hall. Famously, it only serves beer in half pints, while its politely enforced rule of “no machines, no music, no television, and no mobile phones” keeps the modern world largely at bay, encouraging its customers to engage in the simple art of conversation and the sharing of stories.

Indeed, so many stories have attached themselves to The French House over the years that it’s sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction. But that’s scarcely important when it comes to a place like this, where truth is less important than the tales themselves, and the people who tell them.

The French House in Soho

London’s French Quarter

At its height, Soho was the beating heart of the capital’s cultural life, home not only to its theatre district but also the British film industry and some of the city’s most iconic music venues. Nearby Denmark Street was London’s equivalent of Tin Pan Alley, and Chinatown is just a few steps away. It was the centre of London’s Red-Light district, and has been a focal point for the city’s Queer community for more than a century. Eccentrics, artists, and criminals have rubbed shoulders in its many drinking dens over the years, giving Soho a bohemian reputation that survives to this day, long after its more outré elements have been squeezed out.

Located at the bottom of Dean Street, between Shaftesbury Avenue and Old Compton Street, The French House was (and still is) right in the middle of all this and has always attracted an eclectic and unconventional crowd of creative types and social outsiders, from writers, painters and actors to prostitutes and gay men looking to meet like minded souls at a place which welcomed non-conformity. “Going to the French'' even became Queer code for those who wanted to be discreet about where they were heading off to for the evening.

Soho also used to be known as London’s French Quarter, with a large immigrant population adding to the area’s rich diversity. By the late 19^th Century, new arrivals from France could visit the area and scarcely know that they’d left home. They could stay in French hotels, buy bread from a French bakery on Carnaby Street, milk from a nearby Crèmerie parisienne, and eat a “Parisian dinner” at The Cambridge, a self-styled grand café-restaurant français. They could have suits made at a French tailor’s, get their clothes cleaned by a French laundress, and even get a chic “Parisian haircut” at Monsieur Toupet’s. There was a French bookshop, a French newsagent, a French church on Soho Square, and even a French funeral parlour. You could live and die a Frenchman in Soho without ever crossing the Channel again.

Oddly, however, one of the least French things about Soho is The French House itself. Originally known as The York Minster, it was opened 1891 by a German national, Christian Schmitt, who ran the pub until his death in 1911. Three years later, his wife Bertha sold it to Victor Berlemont, a French-speaking Belgian with a large, Poirot-like moustache. But, since WWI had just begun, it seemed more pragmatic to emphasise the Frenchness of the new owners, and this was something that would be maintained forevermore. It just stuck.

And, despite its name, the York Minster certainly seemed to attract French customers. It was apparently a brawl there between a group of rowdy French sailors in the 1920s, during which they smashed pint glasses over each other’s heads, that inspired Victor to implement his “no pints” rule, which has stayed in place for more than a century.

During WWII the pub became the unofficial headquarters of the Free French forces, perhaps attracted by the fact that it was one of the few places in London that served wine at the time, as it was such a rare commodity during the war. It’s even rumoured that Charles de Gaulle wrote his famous “à tous les Français” speech in the upstairs restaurant in 1940, but there’s no real evidence to support this – it’s just one of the many wonderful stories that have been woven into its fabric over the years

A legendary landlord for a legendary pub

The York Minster retained its reputation for Frenchness long after the last of the resistance fighters had gone home. Long before it changed its name officially, people began referring to it as The French Pub, or more often simply The French. In 1951 Raymond Postgate included it in the very first volume of his Good Food Guide, writing “Outside, this looks like an ordinary pub; inside it becomes the 'Maison Berlemont,' a French auberge with shelves full of Pernod, Byrrh, Amer Picon, Suze, Cap Corse, Mandarin, and so on. Upstairs there is a small room in which you will get the authentic, best cuisine bourgeoise: for an hour or so you are back in a small Paris restaurant.”

Many years later, the writer John Mortimer recalled, “There was a time… when you could have a perfectly good steak and brie with tarte aux pommes in a room over The French House served by two extremely resentful old French waiters and save yourself the fare to Paris”.

Victor ran The French until his death in 1951, when his son Gaston (who was born in the room above the pub) inherited the licence, and it was he who cemented its reputation as a Soho institution. With his enormous moustache, pastis-drinking, and polite hand-kissing, Gaston was always known for his “Gallic” charm (despite having a British passport and serving in the RAF), and quickly became a legendary character, making sure that all his customers were treated with the utmost courtesy, even when he was forced to eject them after one glass of wine too many.

The pub officially changed its name to The French House in the 1980s. Another myth suggests that this happened in 1984, after a curious mix-up following a devastating fire at the real York Minster. Before long, donations to help repair the cathedral began arriving at the pub, much to Gaston’s confusion. Wanting to be honest, he forwarded the money to the cathedral, only to be told that they’d been receiving cases of claret intended for him for years, after which he finally decided to change the name. It’s a great story but, again, not entirely true. The pub was actually renamed in 1981, three years before the fire.

When Gaston finally retired, he chose the Frenchest date he possibly could - July 14^th, 1989, the 200^th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille - and was given a suitably epic send-off. In a normal year, Bastille Day would barely register on the London calendar, but on this occasion the southern part of Dean Street was closed to traffic all day, people danced in the street and sang the Marseillaise, while empty champagne bottles piled up along the pavement outside the pub. Not bad for a British-born citizen of Belgian descent.

The French House today

After Gaston’s retirement, Lesley Lewis took over as landlady (only the fourth person to run The French since 1891) and she’s been there ever since, making sure that the pub’s essential character doesn’t change. Her only major intervention was replacing the red linoleum on the bar with British oak to match the rest of the interior, although even then she had to “bash it up a bit” to keep it in tune with the rest of the pub. The same pictures still hang on the walls, it still attracts the same eclectic crowd, and it’s still a great place to meet up for a chat without being surrounded by people plugged into their phones. The only concession to change is that, every April 1^st, the pub now serves pints, with all the proceeds going to charity. And not even Gaston could argue with that.