I went into Fleet Street one Sunday morning last November [1882] with my
camera lucida to see whether I should like to make a sketch of the gap
made by the demolition of the Cock Tavern. It was rather pretty, with an
old roof or two behind and scaffolding about and torn paper hanging to an
exposed party-wall and old fireplaces and so on, but it was not very much
out of the way. Still I would have taken it if it had not been the Cock.
I thought of all the trash that has been written about it and of
Tennyson’s plump head waiter (who by the way used to swear that he did
not know Tennyson and that Tennyson never did resort to the Cock) and I
said to myself:
“No—you may go. I will put out no hand to save you.”