At Evans's

An illustration from the book 'London: a Pilgrimage' by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872. Evans's Music and Supper Rooms were at 43 King Street, Covent Garden. Formerly the home of the dramatist, Sir Thomas Killigrew, the building became a hotel in 1774. In the 1840s W.C Evans converted the dining room into a music and supper room. Jerrold muses how the entertainment used to be 'coarse and profane... in the days when Mr. Green [who took over from Evans] presided in an underground room, at the head of a long table, and you could hardly catch the sharp features of the noble earl opposite to you, for the tobacco cloud... Vulgarity woke roars of laughter; and the heads of the first families rapped the tables with their empty tumblers, calling for the slang chorus, once again.' By 1872 the entertainment was far more sedate: 'Now we sit at Evans's at marble tables, with prim waiters at hand' and the singers 'chirp nothing more harmful that the "Chough and Crow". The comic business is that of the Christy Minstrels (sentimentalists, with ripples of laughter breaking upon them): then comes a Professor Carolus with the India-rubber young Caroluses - who are de rigueur.' Evans's had closed by 1880.