Forty years ago this English summer, Australia was stricken by a cultural catastrophe. The damage to national morale has reverberated down the decades. It has contributed to the implosion of Australian cricket and the loss of the Ashes, now irrevocable. The disaster occurred when the only two intellectuals in the convict settlements both bought one-way tickets to London.
Forty years on, Clive James is marginally the better known. But from the outset, Roxy Beaujolais (née Jean Hoffmann: New South Wales meets New Orleans) has been part of the va et vient. For a time, she ran the front of house at Ronnie Scott’s. She then decided that she wanted to be a salonniere and worked out how to make that precarious career a practical possibility. She became an ale-wife, and now has the perfect premises: the Seven Stars in Carey Street, behind the law courts.
Roxy is a striking figure: the girl who puts the ‘bon’ into embonpoint. She would make an excellent Marschallin, despite the Chernobyl-pink hair colour. One has the impression that Barry Humphries is in charge of the make-up department. The Stars’ real landlord is Tom Paine, a long black moggy with yellow eyes. He would look good on a broomstick, though it might have to be a stout one.
There has been an alehouse on the site since at least 1602, probably under the same name. Inns were called the Seven Stars to honour the seven provinces of the embattled Netherlands, and to attract Dutch seamen. It is pleasant to think that the odd sea-beggar might have enjoyed a dop here after a fight with Spanish warships in the Flanders Roads. Since those days, alas, the architecture is changed, changed utterly. A terrible respectability was born, as the whole area was poshed up during the building of the law courts. Later on, Carey Street was the home of the bankruptcy court. No doubt many a defendant used the Stars to console himself with some liquefaction in the course of his liquidation.
The interior of today’s Seven Stars was designed by Roxy’s husband, Nathan Silver, who taught architecture at Cambridge, and who has the gift of making a small space active and comfortable. The bar is the size of a railway carriage; ascending to the offices is a bit like climbing the Old Man of Hoy. But on a pleasant day in full term, judges and barristers spill out into Carey Street. Sometimes, it becomes an eastward extension of the bar at the Garrick. The Stars is also a rendezvous for the choirs of Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church, St Bride’s and St Bartholomew the Great. They do not always feel like singing, but when they do, the results can be entrancing. At other times, Roxy might put on something 18th-century as a gentle background: nothing to stop a man from folding his legs and having his talk out — with the help of stimulants.
Roxy and her ale-wenches serve an excellent pint of Adnam’s. The food is both hearty and thoughtful. Although the menu changes constantly according to Roxy’s fancy, it is always interesting. Well-hung, Scottish, the beef is as it should be and there are sound cheeses. It is the sort of meal you would be happy to eat at a dinner party.
Adnam’s also supplies the Champagne and Roxy is forever foraying to Provence or the Minervois in pursuit of good and reasonable bottles. But when I lunched there the other day, the principal red was southern-hemisphere: a Gouguenheim Malbec which was thoroughly drinkable. The Argentinians may fantasise about the Falklands and they have never really recovered from the blood-poisoning of Peronism. But they are improving as wine-makers. I have not yet come across a disappointing Malbec.
I have rarely come across such an enticing pub. Talk, ambience, music; beer, wine, food; Tom Paine, Roxy: the Seven Stars is a special place. Please do not go there. It is full enough as it is.
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