London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers, wherever you are. It’s Saturday, October 18th. And here we go, here’s today’s London fix.
First of all, looking back – well, listening back – at yesterday’s piece, I think I could have made a better fist of the derivation of the word tawdry. So here’s an addendum that, I trust, will get us over that line.
If you tuned in to yesterday’s London Calling episode, you’ll recall it was about St Etheldreda. Aka St Audrey. And for some closure – that cant word – to the St Audrey, try this little sidebar to the story.
When St Etheldreda (or St Audrey) was young, before she took the veil, she had a taste for fine things – necklaces, jewels, trinkets. In particular, she was fond of wearing necklaces and laces of fine silk wearing around her throat. They were the fashionable accessories of an East Anglian princess.
Years later, as abbess of Ely, she developed a tumour or swelling on her neck, which eventually led to her death in 679. According to Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, she interpreted that suffering as divine retribution for her youthful vanity – for “the needless adornment of her neck.”
In Bede’s words (paraphrased): she rejoiced in her illness, saying it was a just punishment for her early love of jewels.
So when her cult grew after her death, and the Ely fairs were held on her feast day, the pilgrims bought cheap necklaces and ribbons in her honour – St Audrey’s laces. Over time, these devotional trinkets became mass-produced, gaudy, and a bit tatty – but still sold in her name.
And so, through one of those delicious English linguistic somersaults, “St Audrey’s” became “tawdry.”
The word itself carries that twist of irony: the saint who learned to renounce vanity gives her name to shoddy showiness.
Ok, so let’s wave goodbye to St Etheldrede.
And say hello to some cats. And one cat in particular.
But for a warm-up act, how’s about a piece or two of cat lore and cat wisdom. Did you know, for example, that Bouncer, the resident cat at the Garrick Theatre, was once named as a shareholder. And the great P.G. Wodehouse certainly had their number. He said, “cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods.”
Cut from that same cloth is Anne Enright’s observation that “cats only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.”
Last word, though, to the great American novelist, Mark Twain, who adored cats. Twain said, “if man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”
And that brings us to London, 1898. And sure enough, Mark Twain was in London in 1898. And what’s more, he dined at the Savoy. In those chandeliered rooms where superstition and style shared the same table. How very apt. But let’s a take a bigger look at the London of 1898.
London. 1898. Queen Victoria still on the throne, empire at full swagger. The streets rumbling with hansom cabs and the first brave motorcars coughing through the fog. Kipling’s Jungle Book on every bookshelf, Oscar Wilde has just been released from prison, and the Waterloo & City line had opened earlier in the year – “The Drain,” Londoners called it.
The city was half gaslight, half electric bulb. A world perched between Dickens and modernity.
And down on the Strand, the Savoy Hotel gleamed like the future. Electric lights! Lifts! Hot and cold running water! The place where high society came to dine, flirt, and be noticed.
And it was here, in that brand-new palace of civilisation, that superstition sat down to dinner.
One autumn evening, a South African diamond millionaire named Woolf Joel threw a dinner party at the Savoy. Fourteen guests, fine food, fine wine. Then – disaster – one guest cancelled. So they sat down, thirteen in all.
Someone made the usual nervous joke about the curse of thirteen: whoever first rose from the table would die. Joel laughed. “Nonsense,” he said, and stood up first.
Weeks later, he was shot dead in Johannesburg.
London gasped. The Savoy’s management decided, quite sensibly, that they’d never host a table of thirteen again.
For a while, the solution was simple but awkward – a waiter would be pressed into service as the fourteenth guest, sitting silently with an empty plate. Not exactly discreet.
Then, in the 1920s, the hotel’s resident designer Basil Ionides came up with something better – something with flair.
Enter Kaspar.
Ionides had a cat carved from a single block of London plane wood. Sleek, black, and perfectly poised. He gave him a shining lacquered coat, glass eyes that caught the light, and a little napkin knotted neatly round his neck.
They called him Kaspar.
From that moment on, whenever thirteen dined at the Savoy, Kaspar was summoned. The waiters would carry him in with ceremony, seat him at the vacant chair, set him a full place with cutlery, glass, and a saucer of milk.
No one spoke to him, but everyone felt safer. The curse of thirteen was gone – elegantly dispelled by a cat in evening dress.
And, being the Savoy, they did it with utter style.
Kaspar quickly became a celebrity. Guests adored him. Even when the numbers were fine, people began asking for him to join them.
When Winston Churchill’s dining club, The Other Club, met at the Savoy, Kaspar was always invited. Churchill loved the idea of a silent fourteenth guest – the perfect British mix of superstition and good manners.
Then came the Second World War, and the legend took a twist.
A group of high-spirited RAF officers, full of champagne and mischief, decided to “liberate” the cat. They smuggled him out under a raincoat – a daring catnap that caused uproar. The Savoy was furious. Churchill intervened. Kaspar was returned – a little scuffed, an ear chipped, but safely home.
He’d earned his war wounds. And his reputation.
A hundred years on, Kaspar is still the Savoy’s most charming resident. When a dinner party of thirteen turns up, the maître d’ brings him out with due ceremony. He still gets his napkin, his milk, and his moment.
Kaspar. He’s sleek, shining, watchful. Makes you want to purr.
He’s been polished, photographed, toasted, and adored – and he hasn’t aged a day since 1926.
Kaspar’s legend lives on in the menus, the cocktails, even the children’s books. There’s a Kaspar Martini, a Kaspar Club Sandwich, and a whole generation of guests who’ve come just to see the cat who never blinks.
There’s something very London about it all – a city that can build Tube tunnels and telephone lines yet still flinch at thirteen at table. Kaspar sits right at that crossroads of civilisation and charm. Half joke, half ritual, entirely delightful.
He’s the purring proof that good manners can outwit bad luck.
And you have to hand it to the Savoy: only they could take a superstition, carve it out of wood, and make it look sophisticated.
So here’s to Kaspar – the black cat with impeccable table manners and the longest dinner reservation in London.
He’s survived world wars, redecorations, and the decline of napkin etiquette. He’s seen dukes, divas, diplomats, and debutantes come and go. And he’s still sitting there, calm as ever, ready to rescue the next table of thirteen.
Because only in London – only at the Savoy – could superstition wear a bow tie, take its seat, and make it look like style.
And on that note let’s get some of my London Walks colleagues in on the act. Ann first. Because of her walk called Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History. It’s the only Cat Walk in London and it just might be the only cat walk in the world. A whiskered wander through London’s history, it pads out once a month. The next outing is November 16th. And hugely to the point, Ann takes the group into the Savoy and they meet Kaspar.
And for the record, Kaspar also figures in Isobel’s Cool Cats Online virtual tour. Cool Cats Online isn’t regularly scheduled but it can be booked privately. And the Savoy and Kaspar also figure in Jan’s Inside Covent Garden Walk and Andrew’s Westminster at War Walk. And Alison’s Unexpected London Walk. So there you go – you’re all primed. I trust you’re purring contentedly away. Tail giving the occasional flick, paws poised, dreaming of Savoy chandeliers and Kaspar’s napkin.
———————————-
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com.
Home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £25 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Jack the Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians, university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.