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Title: The Gourmet's Guide to London
Author: Newnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
Language: English
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THE GOURMET'S GUIDE TO LONDON
BY
LIEUT.-COL. NEWNHAM-DAVIS
_Author of
"The Gourmet's Guide to Europe"_
NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
1914
PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
[Illustration: THE CHESHIRE CHEESE
_From a drawing by Harry Morley_]
_The pleasures of the table are common to all ages and ranks, to
all countries and times; they not only harmonise with all the other
pleasures, but remain to console us for their loss.--_
BRILLAT SAVARIN.
TO ALL GOOD GOURMETS
PREFACE
In describing in this book some of the restaurants and taverns in and
near London, I have selected those that seem to me to be typical of the
various classes, giving preference to those of each kind which have
some picturesque incident in their history, or are situated amidst
beautiful surroundings, or possess amongst their personnel a celebrated
chef or _maître d'hôtel_.
The English language has not enough nicely graduated terms of praise to
enable me to give to a fraction its value to each restaurant, from the
unpretentious little establishments in Soho to such palaces as the Ritz
and Savoy, but I have included no dining-place in this volume that does
not give good value for the money it charges.
Twelve years ago I wrote a somewhat similar book, "Dinners and Diners,"
which ran through two editions, but when I looked it through last
year I found that there had been so many changes in the world of
restaurants, so many old houses had vanished and so many new ones had
arisen, that it was easier to write a new book than to bring the old
one up to date. Mr Astor very kindly gave me permission to use in this
volume any of the series of "Dinners and Diners" articles that appeared
in _The Pall Mall Gazette_, but it will be found that I have availed
myself very sparingly of his kind permission. The chapters of this
book appeared, with very few exceptions, in _Town Topics_, and I am
indebted to the editor of that paper for his leave to gather them into
book form.
Mr Grant Richards, the publisher of this book, quite agrees with me
that no advertisements of restaurants shall find a place within its
covers.
Should "The Gourmet's Guide to London" find a welcome from an
appreciative public, and should, in due time, other editions of it be
called for, I shall hope to broaden its scope to include in it some of
the hostelries of Brighton and other seaside towns, also those of the
great cities and great ports, and to describe some of those fine old
country inns scattered about the kingdom where good old English cookery
is still to be found in good old English surroundings.
For the French of the menus I do not hold myself responsible. The
kitchen writes the French that it talks and who am I, a mere Briton,
that I should attempt to alter it?
N. NEWNHAM-DAVIS.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I OLD ENGLISH FARE 1
II SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND 6
III A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 12
IV THE CARLTON 19
V TWO LITTLE SOHO RESTAURANTS 26
VI A RAG-TIME DINNER 32
VII THE CAFÉ ROYAL 38
VIII OYSTER-HOUSES 46
IX WHITEBAIT AT GREENWICH 53
X THE CECIL 59
XI CLARIDGE'S 67
XII THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT 73
XIII THE PRINCES' RESTAURANT 81
XIV THE CRITERION 86
XV SOME CHOP-HOUSES 92
XVI SOME GRILL-ROOMS 99
XVII ROMANO'S 105
XVIII IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 115
XIX A REGIMENTAL DINNER 122
XX "JOLLY GOOD" 128
XXI IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE THEATRE 134
XXII THE WELCOME CLUB 141
XXIII GOLDSTEIN'S 147
XXIV THE MITRE 152
XXV IN THE HANDS OF PI(E)RATES 158
XXVI APPENRODT'S 166
XXVII THE BURFORD BRIDGE HOTEL 174
XXVIII THE RITZ 180
XXIX SOME OUTLYING RESTAURANTS 190
XXX THE KING'S GUARD 195
XXXI THE OLD BULL AND BUSH 201
XXXII THE BERKELEY 206
XXXIII THE JOYS OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 214
XXXIV A SUPPER TRAIN 220
XXXV THE ADELAIDE GALLERY 226
XXXVI THE COMPLEAT ANGLER 235
XXXVII ARTISTS' ROOMS 241
XXXVIII THE PICCADILLY RESTAURANT 249
XXXIX THE RENDEZVOUS 255
XL THE PALL MALL RESTAURANT 261
XLI IN JERMYN STREET 267
XLII THE MEN WHO MADE THE SAVOY 272
XLIII THE DUTIES OF A _MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL_ 279
XLIV THE SAVOY TO-DAY 283
XLV THE RESTAURANT DES GOURMETS 290
XLVI THE MAXIM RESTAURANT 294
XLVII BIRCH'S 300
XLVIII A CITY BANQUET 308
XLIX THE CAVENDISH HOTEL 313
L THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES 320
LI THE LIGUE DES GOURMANDS 325
LII THE CAVOUR RESTAURANT 333
LIII VERREY'S 338
LIV THE CATHAY RESTAURANT 345
LV THE WHITE HORSE CELLARS 353
LVI THE MONICO 360
LVII THE ITALIAN INVASION 365
LVIII THE HYDE PARK HOTEL 371
LIX YE OLDE GAMBRINUS 378
LX MY SINS OF OMISSION 384
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
M. ESCOFFIER 24
M. RITZ 184
JOSEPH CARVING A DUCK 276
MRS LEWIS 314
I
OLD ENGLISH FARE
When a foreigner or one of our American cousins, or a man from one of
the Colonies, comes to England, the first question he generally asks
is: "Where can I get a typical good old English dinner?" Good old
English fare is by no means too abundant in London--and old English
fare I would define as being the very best native material, cooked in
the plainest possible manner. We talk of English cookery, though it
should really be termed British cookery, for Irish stew and Welsh lamb,
Scotch beef and cock-a-leekie soup, and even a haggis, can fairly be
included in the comprehensive term.
When men on short commons on an exploring expedition, or on a sporting
trip, or on active service, talk of the good things they will eat when
they get home to England, the first idea that occurs to most of them
is how delightful it will be to eat a good fried sole once again; and
with fried sole may be coupled English bacon, for no bacon anywhere
else in the world is as good as that which the kitchenmaids fry in
thousands of British kitchens. Perhaps the Channel sole and the bacon
of the Southern Counties, Oxford marmalade and Cambridge sausages
belong to the home breakfast-table more than to meals in the haunts
of the gourmet, though the sole plays a most important part in many
dinners, and the Christmas dinner turkey would be unhappy without its
accompanying sausages. It is, however, at lunch-time, the time of
pasties, puddings and pies, that old English cookery is seen at its
best.
I do not know of any eating-house that makes a speciality of the
mutton-chop pudding with oysters, that Abraham Hayward praises so
unrestrictedly, but now and again I meet in restaurants such good
English dishes as Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy pie, which is an
admirable stew of chicken and cabbage; shepherd's pie, in which the
minced meat is covered with a well-browned layer of mashed potato,
I am given sometimes at shooting luncheons. Toad-in-the-hole and
bubble-and-squeak are pleasant memories of my schoolboy days, but if
some Frenchman, who has studied Dickens, asked me where he could eat
the stew described in "The Old Curiosity Shop," which consisted of
tripe, and cow-heel, and bacon, and steak, and peas and cauliflower,
new potatoes and asparagus "all worked up together in one delicious
gravy," I should have to admit my inability to direct him. A fish pie
is excellent at any meal, but a woodcock pie or a snipe pudding, I
think, should be reserved for the dinner-table. The pork-pie now seems
sacred to railway refreshment-rooms, picnics and race-courses. Oysters
are real British fare, though other countries have learned from us
to appreciate them; but I fancy that the old Romans first taught the
gentlemen who clothed themselves in woad tattooings what delicacies
they had waiting for them in their shallow waters. Oysters are
admirable creatures when eaten out of their deep shell, and they play
their part well in oyster soup and scalloped oysters and oyster fries.
And there are many puddings and "made dishes" that would be incomplete
without the presence of oysters in them. Jugged duck and oysters is a
good old British dish, and there are oysters in the majestic pudding of
the Cheshire Cheese. I may perhaps be allowed to suggest to some cooks
who put the oysters into puddings and pies with the other raw materials
that a better way is to cook the dish, then remove the crust or paste,
slip in the oysters, fix the crust again and cook till the oysters are
warmed through.
The typical British dinner most often quoted is that which the Lord
Dudley of the thirties, a noted epicure, declared was a dinner "fit
for an emperor," and it runs thus: "A good soup, a small turbot, a
neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus,
and an apricot tart." Of British soups turtle always takes precedence
in the list of honour, but as the turtle comes from Ascension or the
West Indies, it can hardly claim to be a denizen of these islands.
Hare soup and mock turtle, mulligatawny, mutton broth and pea soup are
distinctively British, though the curry powder in the mulligatawny--a
soup which takes its name from two Tamil words: Mŭllĭgă = pepper, and
Tunni = water--comes, of course, from India. Oxtail soup has a good
British sound, but I fancy that French housewives first discovered the
virtue that there is in the tail of an ox.
Lord Dudley loved a turbot, but other judges of good British dinners
sometimes give the preference to cod. Walker, of "Original" fame, gave
a Christmas Day dinner to two friends, and the fare he provided for
them was: crimped cod, a woodcock a man, and plum pudding. One of the
most typical British dinners I have eaten was that which a gallant
colonel, who very worthily filled the mayoral chair at Westminster,
used to give annually at the Cavour Restaurant. It consisted of
a large turbot, a sucking-pig nicely roasted, and apple pudding.
Roast sucking-pig is a dinner dish better understood in England than
anywhere else in the world, except, perhaps, in China. When the Duke of
Cambridge, brother of George the Fourth, was entertained in princely
fashion at Belvoir, and was shown the menu of a dinner on which a great
French chef had exhausted all his inventiveness, and was asked if there
were any dishes not included in the feast for which he had a fancy,
answered that he would like some roast pig and an apple dumpling, both
good British dishes. His son, the Commander-in-Chief of our days, also
had a liking for pork, and, at one time, word went round the British
army that at inspection lunches it was wise to give his Royal Highness
pork chops. Of course, the British army overdid it, and the old Duke
had so many pork chops put before him in the course of a year that
at last their presence on the menu was far more likely to assist in
the securing of an unfavourable report on a regiment than was their
absence. Gravy soup, a grilled sole, a boiled hen pheasant stuffed with
oysters, and an open tart formed the favourite dinner of a renowned
gourmet of my acquaintance.
Of the made dishes that belong to British cookery, jugged hare, I
think, has the leading place. Yorkshire pudding is as British as
Stonehenge is, and mince pies can claim to be to-day exactly what
they were when the Puritans used to preach against them. Marrow bones
and Welsh rarebits, buck rarebits, and stewed tripe and onions are
old British supper dishes, but the early closing laws have killed the
old-fashioned British supper in eating-houses.
Good British cookery in London has not fared well in its battle against
the invasion of good French cookery, and the number of houses which
made a speciality of British fare has decreased woefully in the last
twenty years. The old Blanchard's and its half-a-crown British dinner
is a memory of the past (for the new Blanchard's turned towards the
goddess A la), and the "Blue Posts" in Cork Street has been converted
into a club. It was curious that the prosperity of this typical old
English house depended to a great extent on a German head waiter; for
Frank, who had all the best traditions of British cookery at heart,
had served under the old Emperor Wilhelm in the great war, and had
been wounded by a French bayonet thrust. There were certain rules of
the house that were excellent. One was that, no matter what orders you
might give beforehand, no fish was ever put near the fire until the man
who had ordered it was inside the building, which ensured it going to
table cooked to the second; and another was that the steaks, which were
a great stand-by of the house, were cut from the mass of beef just in
time to be transferred at once to the grill, thus making sure that none
of the juices should drain away.
But there are still some temples of British cookery left in Cockaigne,
and to some of them presently I will direct your steps.
II
SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND
A wide entrance glowing with light, with Simpson's plain to see, on a
wrought-iron sign above it, is in the great block of the Savoy Hotel
building in the Strand, for the new Simpson's, though it retains all
its old associations and its old manager and its old head cook--Mr
Davey, the polite, white-haired little ruler of the roast, who wears a
velvet cap, and who for forty-six years has seen the joints turn before
the vast open fire in the kitchen--is now under the rule of the great
organisation that controls the Savoy.
Come into the entrance hall, where you can give up your hat and coat
to an attendant; though if you have been accustomed all your life to
take them into Simpson's you will still find in the dining-room stands
on which to hang them. The hall, with its marble pillars, white panels
and groined roof, is light and airy; a staircase runs down from it to
the smoking-room, and another one runs up to the dining-rooms upon the
first floor. There is a tobacconist's stall in it, and if the door
of the expense bar to one side be open you see through it shelves
of bottles and flasks. Through the wide door leading into the big
dining-room you see white-jacketed waiters moving hither and thither,
and white-coated and white-capped carvers pushing the dinner waggons,
crowned with big plated covers, before them, and as a background the
fine fireplace, with its carved wooden overmantel and its little
marble pilasters, and a picture of a knight and lady of Plantagenet
days feasting let into the central space.
Mr N. Wheeler, the rosy-faced manager, white-haired, and wearing the
frock-coat of ceremony, will probably greet you as you go into the
dining-room. He has seen all the various transformations of Simpson's
Chess Divan, which was originally Ries's Divan, and he probably knows
more about good old English fare than any man living. When we have
eaten our turbot and saddle of mutton we will ask him how it is that
these two best of British dishes are sent to table at Simpson's in such
absolutely perfect condition. But before we choose our seats at one of
the tables let us look round the room. The old Simpson's is still fresh
in my memory. The painted garlands of flowers and studies of fish,
flesh and fowl on the walls, glazed to a deep rich colour by the London
atmosphere, the ground-glass windows, the big bar opening into the
room, with Rembrandtesque shadows in its depths; the great dumb-waiter,
which looked like a catafalque, in the centre of the room; the folded
napkins in the glasses on the mantelpiece; the horsehair-stuffed,
black-cushioned chairs and benches; the divisions with brass rails and
dingy little curtains on the rails.
The pens with their brass rails are still in the old place, but they
are modernised pens; the wood is oak, and there is a comfortable
padded back of brown leather to lean against. The eating-room has been
transformed into a banqueting hall. The walls are panelled with light
oak, with pilasters to give variety, and an inlay of lighter wood at
the corners of the panels. There is a white frieze with good modelling
on it, and round the white-clothed tables which fill but do not crowd
the floor space are chairs copied from a fine Chippendale example. A
good old English clock is on a bracket, and fine cut-glass lustre
chandeliers hang from the ceiling. In old days the waiters at Simpson's
were mostly British veterans, and in the upstairs room Charles
Flowerdew, the head waiter, a genial old soul who always offered his
favourites amongst the customers a pinch from his snuff-box, had a
wealth of anecdotes about the great men of the Victorian era who were
habitués of Simpson's. The waiters of to-day are Britons, but they
are young men, and if anyone has doubts whether Englishmen properly
trained can be as quick and silent in the service of a dining house as
foreigners are, I would advise the doubter to eat a meal at Simpson's
and to watch how the waiters do their work. The boys who take round
the vegetables become in time full-blown serving-men. The waiters no
longer wear the dress-coats, heroes of many clashes with sauce-boats
and plates of soup, which used to be the official garb of the British
waiter. They wear white washing jackets, with at the breast a little
black shield, and on it the crest of the house--the knight of a set
of chessmen. All the tips are pooled, with the result that all the
serving-men work for the general good.
And now to look at the bill of fare. There are no such foreign
innovations as _hors d'œuvre_ allowed at Simpson's, where the only
concessions to France are in the wine cellar and that little French
rolls as well as household bread are in the bread baskets. You can
obtain a fish dinner of three kinds of fish for three and ninepence;
but we will order just what we feel our appetite demands, and take
no account of set dinners. If your taste is for turtle soup, a plate
of that luxury will cost you three shillings, but, if one of the
simpler British soups will content you, hare, pea, mock turtle, Scotch
hotch-potch, oxtail, giblet or mulligatawny are priced at one shilling
or one and sixpence. Then comes the important question of fish, and
the choice really lies between a _Sole Souchet_, which Simpson's ought
to write _Zouchet_, boiled codfish and oyster sauce, and boiled turbot
and lobster sauce--the last one of the dishes on which Simpson's
prides itself. Until I chatted with Mr Wheeler on the subject I always
understood that a turbot to come to table in perfection should be hung
for several days, but Mr Wheeler denounces this as rank heresy. A
turbot should be nicked to draw off the blood of the fish, it should
be soaked for twenty-four hours, and then it is ready to be boiled. It
is instructive to watch a real habitué of Simpson's who prefers cod
to turbot when a portly white-clad carver wheels his waggon up to the
table. There must be the right proportion of liver with the fish and
the due quantity of oyster in the sauce, or there will be dire threats
of report to higher quarters. A boiled potato to anyone who knows what
is good English fare is not to be accepted without criticism, and
he would be a bold carver who dared to give the knowledgeable man a
helping of saddle of mutton without a slice of the brown. But before
we go on to the supreme matter of the saddle let me point out to you
that whether you eat sole, or cod, or turbot, it means an item of two
shillings on your bill.
The joints ring the changes on roast sirloin, boiled beef, boiled leg
of mutton, roast loin of veal and bath chap, and saddle of mutton, and
it is the saddle that is the favourite dish. Forty saddles a day is the
quantity consumed at Simpson's, and now that the new room is opened
sixty are required. Simpson's employs a buyer whose duty in life is
to travel about England buying saddles wherever the finest mutton is
to be procured. For fourteen days the saddles hang in the stock-room
at Simpson's in a temperature of 38°, then they are moved for two
or three days to another store, through which there is a current of
air, and then they are ready for the fire. And whether you eat of
the mutton, the beef, or the veal, your portion and the accompanying
vegetables will cost you half-a-crown.
We will not trifle with such kickshaws as _salmi_ of game, or Irish
stew, or jugged hare, and to finish our dinner we will take a helping
of one of the pies or puddings on the bill of fare, or, better still, a
good scoop of Stilton cheese or a wedge of Cheshire.
If you wish to be as British in your drinking as in your eating, there
is cool British ale from the cask, which comes to table in a tankard,
and cider, and the whisky of Scotland and that of Ireland. The house is
also celebrated for its moderate-priced Bordeaux and Burgundy wines,
bottled in the cellars.
If we go upstairs before leaving we can see the dining-room to which
ladies are admitted--a handsome room of white with marble pillars--and
you will notice the great bunches of wild flowers which adorn all the
tables. On this floor there is a smaller private banqueting-room, and
the new white Adams' Room, the double windows of which look into the
Strand on one side and the entrance courtyard on the other. It is a
handsome room, with settees by the window tables, and at night hanging
baskets and lamps on the cornice throw light up to the ceiling to be
reflected down into the room.
Down in the smoking-room on the basement level you will find a little
band of chess-players, faithful to the old Divan, hard at the game,
using the old chess-boards and the huge pieces of the Divan days, and
it may further gratify your love for antiquarian lore to know that
Simpson's stands on the site occupied by the old Fountain tavern, of
which Strype wrote: "A very fine tavern, with excellent vaults, good
rooms for entertainments, and a curious kitchen for the dressing of
meat." It was at the Fountain that the opponents of Walpole held their
meetings and that the Earl of Derwentwater and the other Jacobite
lords on trial for rebellion, being taken daily backwards and forwards
between the Tower and Westminster, made favour with their jailer to let
them halt for an hour to eat what they expected to be their last good
dinner on earth.
III
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE
Doctor Samuel Johnson stands in bronze before St Clement Danes and
faces his beloved Fleet Street. If the great dictionary maker took his
eyes off the book he holds in his hands, got down from his pedestal
without knocking over the inkpot which is perilously near his clumsy
old feet, and started for a walk down the street he loved so well, his
remarks on the changes that have been made by time and the architects
would be instructive. What would he say to Street's Law Courts? And
with what sesquipedalian words would he lament the disappearance of
Temple Bar and the appearance in its stead of the pantomime Griffin?
And how the old man would snort and fume to find the taverns he was
used to frequent altered out of recognition, or moved from their old
places. The Rainbow's lamp would bring him to a halt, for the Rainbow
stands to-day where Farr the barber set up his coffee-house, "by
inner Temple Gate." Farr was "presented," in 1657, as an abuse by his
neighbours, who protested against the smell of the coffee, but were in
reality afraid that the new drink was going to oust canary and other
wines. Johnson knew the old tavern in the brave days when Alexander
Moncrieff was the host, when it still, though its "stewed cheeses"
and its stout were celebrated, called itself a coffee-house, and the
largest room was the coffee-room, with a lofty bay-window at the south
end looking into the Temple. In this bay the table was set for the
worthies who frequented the house, and they could, through a glazed
screen, see all that went on in the kitchen. The old Doctor, reading
on the door-jamb that the Rainbow is occupied by the Bodega Company,
would discourse learnedly on the meaning and uses of a Bodega. He would
note with approval Groom's little coffee-house, a few steps farther
on, which, though it did not exist in his days, for it dates back only
to 1818, is one of the few establishments still existing which lives
by the sale of coffee as a beverage, and prospers on its best Mocha at
threepence a cup.
The Cock in its present condition would puzzle the old man most
consumedly, and he would look across the street to see what has become
of that tavern's old site; but if he went inside the house he would
find that Grinling Gibbons' wood-carving of the cock had flown across
the street, and that in the upper room is the panelling from the old
alehouse in which the festive Pepys drank and sang and ate a lobster
and afterwards "mightily merry" took Knip for a moonlight row on the
Thames. It would be useless to talk to the Doctor of Tennyson and the
plump head-waiter of the Cock, but pilgrims following the footsteps of
those poets who have lunched in Fleet Street will find that the Cock is
still a house where the "perfect pint of stout" and the "proper chop"
are reached out with deft hands to customers, and that no head waiter
unless he be plump is ever engaged for the upper room.
The Devil Tavern, which Ben Jonson made so famous by his Apollo Club,
and which stood between Temple Bar and the Middle Temple Gate, was
bought by Messrs Child, the bankers, in 1787, some years after the
death of Samuel Johnson, when it had fallen into disuse, and was
pulled down and dwelling-houses erected on its site. Ben's "Welcome"
and the Apollo bust were transferred to the bank. The most famous of
all the Johnsonian taverns, the Mitre, was another of the old houses
to fall a victim to bankers, for four years after the Doctor's death
it ceased to be a tavern, became in turn Macklin's Poets' Gallery and
Saunders's auction-rooms, and was finally pulled down that on its site
"Hoare's New Banking-house" should be erected. Joe's Coffee-house
in Mitre Court borrowed the derelict name when the Mitre closed its
shutters, and set up a copy of Nollekins' bust of the Doctor as homage
to his memory.
Opposite to Wine Office Court, the Sage of Fleet Street would stop in
his shamble and would wait for an opportunity to cross the road. If
Doctor Johnson hated the transit of the roadway when the traffic was
but of hackney carriages and the coaches of aldermen and stage coaches
and horsemen, how would he face the hurtling streams of taxi-cabs and
motor omnibuses which nowadays jostle in the road? And what, when he
had crossed the road, would he think of Fuller's little sweet-stuff
shop which, gay with colour, has fastened itself, where there used to
be a dingy wine merchant's office with cobwebbed bottles of old port in
its dim, solemn windows, on the Fleet Street front of the Old Cheshire
Cheese? The new-comer looks like a bright stamp stuck on some musty old
parchment deed. Doctor Johnson would, I am sure, growl as he rolled
through the narrow entrance into the court and on to the door of the
old tavern.
And as he and you and I stand in the narrow doorway and look to the
right at the little bar, a harmony in dark colours with the old china
punch-bowls in their accustomed corner, and glass and pewter and
silver catching reflections of light amidst the black of old oak; and
to the left at the old dining-room kept exactly as it was in Doctor
Johnson's time; and to the front at the old oak staircase leading
to the rooms above, let me explain to you that each white-haired
generation of frequenters of the Cheshire Cheese finds fault with the
arrangements made for the newer generation. When Johnson and Goldsmith
ceased to use the house I am sure that the comfortable gentlemen who
had sat at the long table and had listened to their conversation found
that of an evening the talk had grown dull; and when Colonel Lawrence,
who had carried one of the colours of the 20th Regiment at the battle
of Minden, had been a crony of Goldsmith, and had hobnobbed with him
and with Johnson over the port at the Cheese, died, the company at the
long table must have lamented that all the "good old sort" and the good
old customs were passing away. A sturdy supporter of the Cheese, who
is some fifteen years older than I am, sighs for the days when he was
first allowed to sit at the table where the Deputy-Governor of Newgate
and a head clerk of Somerset House led the conversation. And when I go
into the Cheese nowadays and find that two score belles from Baltimore,
or half-a-hundred pretty Puritans from Philadelphia, have taken
possession of the lower room, are drinking tea with their lunches, are
talking like an aviary in commotion, and are more intent on buying
souvenirs of Johnson than on appreciating the delights of the pudding,
I sigh for the days thirty years ago when the Cheese was a grumpy man's
paradise. I am quite sure that when Mr Dollamore, a host of the Cheese
who has grown to heroic size as seen through the mists of time, died,
people of that day thought that the great pudding would never again
be mixed and carved by a master hand. I look back now to the serious
expression, the sort of expression we all assume as we enter a church
door, that used to come upon the face of smiling Mr Moore as the vast
pudding was carried in and he prepared to pierce its snowy covering.
When Henry Todd, a waiter who entered Mr Dollamore's service two years
before the battle of Waterloo, left the house and his portrait was
painted by subscription and given as an heirloom to be hung in the
dining-room, no one believed that young William Simpson, then just
entering the service of the Cheese, would live to be even a more famous
head waiter, to have _his_ portrait painted to be hung in honour in the
coffee-room, and to give his name to one of the rooms upstairs.
And now, having explained that if an old frequenter of the Cheshire
Cheese sometimes grumbles at changes it is only through affection for
the old house, let us go into the dining-room and sit down and look
around us. We will leave Doctor Johnson's seat at the long table, with
its brass tablet and his portrait above it, for the Shade of the great
man. You shall sit in Oliver Goldsmith's seat with your back to the
windows looking out into Cheshire Cheese Court, roofed in now to make
a second dining-room; I will sit opposite to you, and we will take
note of our surroundings. The approval of the old Doctor can be safely
guaranteed. The sawdust on the floor; the wide grate with a shining
copper kettle on the hob; the old mirror; the churchwarden pipes on the
window-sill; the green-curtained cosy corner by the door, just like the
squire's pew in many old churches; the black-handled knives and forks
arranged in a row of black oak hutches; the willow-patterned plates and
dishes; the queer old receptacle for umbrellas in the middle of the
floor; the wire blinds, and the old tables and oak high-backed settles
are to-day exactly as they were when Johnson in the flesh frequented
the tavern. The "greybeard" and the leathern jack, gifts from Mr
Seymour Lucas, R.A., are quite in keeping with the room, and such of
the pictures as are not old deal with incidents in Johnson's life or
are sketches of the room and of the worthies who have frequented it.
The manager of to-day keeps the house just as it used to be a century
and a half ago, and being so, it is one of the most interesting old
buildings in London.
Upstairs are the kitchen, where the woman cook responds to the verbal
shorthand shouts of the waiters by putting chops and steaks on to the
grill and clanging the oven door as good things to bake go into its
recesses, and other old rooms, in which are some interesting relics of
the old lexicographer, the chair in which he always sat at the Mitre,
and other things curious and quaint, but they must await inspection
till after lunch, for to-day is a pudding day, and the fat waiter with
a moustache is waiting for our orders.
The pudding in its great earthenware bowl stands on a little table
in the middle of the room. It is a triumph of old British cookery.
In it are larks, kidneys, oysters, mushrooms, steak, and there are
ingredients in the gravy which are a secret of the house. There are
many imitations of the Cheshire Cheese pudding, but no such pudding
unless it comes from the Cheshire Cheese kitchen has quite the right
taste and quite the right richness of gravy. There is no stint in the
helpings at the Cheshire Cheese. Any man with an appetite has only to
ask for a "follow" to obtain it, and there are traditions that some men
of mighty capacity have even had three helpings. Monday, Wednesday and
Friday are pudding days. There is generally Irish stew on non-pudding
days, and the Cheese Irish stew is admirable. Marrow bones are another
speciality of the house, and a Cheshire Cheese bone holds much marrow.
The typical Cheshire Cheese meal, however--and I am sure Doctor
Johnson would agree with me--is The Pudding, and the strong Scotch
ale of the house therewith; stewed cheese, which comes to table in a
shallow little pan accompanied by hot toast, and to finish up a bowl
of the Cheshire Cheese punch served from an old china bowl with a good
old-fashioned silver ladle. But beware of drinking too much of this
punch, being deceived by its apparent innocence. I know one man who,
saying it was as mild as mother's milk, drank the greater portion of a
bowl of punch, remarked that he was a boy again, and behaved as a boy,
and not until noon next day came to the conclusion that he was a very
elderly man with a headache.
IV
THE CARLTON
If all the great French chefs all the world over were canvassed for
an opinion as to which amongst them is the greatest cook of the day,
I am sure that the majority of votes would be in favour of M. Auguste
Escoffier, the Maître-Chef of the Carlton Restaurant in London. When
any restaurant is exceeding successful, whether it appeals to popular
taste, or to the taste of the most cultured classes, there is sure to
be amongst those men who have brought it fame or brought it popularity,
some strongly marked personality, a great organiser, a great cook, or,
perhaps, a great _maître d'hôtel_, such as poor dead Joseph was. And
the commanding personality at the Carlton is M. Escoffier, who, had he
been a man of the pen and not a man of the spoon, would have been a
poet, and who, wearing the white cap and the white jacket, makes the
sense of taste respond to the beautiful things he invents, just as
the sense of hearing thrills to the cadence of a poet's words, or the
melody of a great composer's music. And M. Escoffier holds that things
which are beautiful to the taste should be fair to the eye, and should
have pleasant-sounding titles. He, for instance, rechristened frogs,
making them "nymphes," and _nymphes à l'Aurore_ has a place in his
great book on modern cookery.
The following is a typical Escoffier menu. It is for a little supper
after the Opera, and was published in _Le Carnet d'Epicure_, a
magazine, to the pages of which M. Escoffier is a prolific contributor.
Gelée de Poulet aux Nids d'Hirondelles.
Soufflé d'Ecrevisses Florentine.
Côtelettes d'Agneau de Lait Favorite.
Petits Pois Frais.
Ortolans au Champagne.
Salade d'Oranges.
Asperges de Serre.
Pêches à la Fraisette des Bois.
Baisers de Vierge.
Mignardises.
The menu reads as delicately as the dishes would taste. The _baisers
de Vierge_ are twin meringues, the cream perfumed with vanilla and
holding crystallised white rose leaves and white violets. Over each
pair of meringues is a veil of spun sugar. This is worthy of the man
who conceived the _bombe Nero_, a flaming ice, who gave all London a
new _entremet_ in _fraises à la Sarah Bernhardt_, and who added a new
glory to a great singer by creating the _pêche Melba_.
M. Escoffier is a little below the middle height, grey haired, and grey
of moustache. His face is the face of an artist, or a statesman, and
the quick eyes tell of his capacity for command. The quiet little man
who, amidst all the clangour of the great white-tiled kitchen below
the restaurant of the Carlton, seems to have nothing to do except to
occasionally glance at the dishes before they leave his realm or to
give a word of counsel when some very delicate _entremet_ is in the
making, to taste a sauce or give a final touch to the arrangement of
some elaborate cold entrée, has organised his brigade of vociferous
cooks of all nations as thoroughly as Crawford organised the Light
Division of Peninsular fame. There is never any difficulty, for every
difficulty has been foreseen. Only a man who has climbed the ladder
from its lowest rung possesses such knowledge and such authority. M.
Escoffier began his career as a boy in the kitchen of his uncle's
restaurant in Nice. He went to Russia to the kitchen of one of the
Grand Dukes, he served in the Franco-Prussian War as the Chef de
Cuisine to the General Staff of the Army of the Rhine, and he knows the
bitterness of captivity in the hands of an enemy. He was with Maréchal
MacMahon at the Elysée and left the Grand Hotel at Rome when Ritz and
he and Echenard came to London to make history at the Savoy. He writes
with a very pretty wit on subjects connected with his profession,
and he is married to a lady who, under her maiden name of Delphine
Daffis, is well known in France as a poetess, and who has recently been
decorated with the violet ribbon as Officier d'Académie.
If I have given so much space to a sketch of the great Maître-Chef, it
is not that he is the only man of talent amongst the personnel of the
Carlton. M. Kreamer, the manager, is eminent amongst his fellows. In
the restaurant M. Besserer, light of hair, and with a light curling
moustache, is an admirable Maître d'Hôtel, and the Carlton grill-room
(to which I shall give attention when I write of the grill-rooms of
London) owes much of its popularity to its manager, Signor Ventura.
And now for a little ancient history. Her Majesty's Opera House, with a
colonnade surrounding it in which were shops and a little restaurant,
Epitaux's, where the Iron Duke and other famous men gave dinner-parties
in the early Victorian days, stood at the corner of the Haymarket and
Pall Mall. If I wrote of the glories and the disasters of the big
house of song I should have to write a book. When a company bought
the site, and the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre rose on it, the
colonnade disappeared from three sides, and all the shops on those
sides also vanished except the offices of Justerini and Brooks. These
wine merchants held to their old position, and their window front was
encased in the building of the new hotel without the business of the
firm suffering a day's interruption. A cigar store has since then found
an abiding place on the Pall Mall frontage. The name of Epitaux's was
taken by the restaurant next door to the Haymarket Theatre, but was
eventually dropped in favour of a more attractive title, the Pall Mall.
The tall porter outside the entrance of the Carlton in Pall Mall sets
the swing door in motion to let us through; coats and hats, cloaks and
furs are garnered from us as we pass through the ante-room, and then we
are in the palm lounge, that happy inspiration of the architect which
has been copied in other hotels through the length and breadth of the
habitable world. The double glass roof, letting in light but keeping
out draughts, was a novelty when the hotel was built. But, though this
palm court has been copied far and wide, it has never been bettered.
The terrace breaks up pleasantly the great width of floor space. The
tall palms, and the flowers and smaller palms before the terrace, and
the green cane easy-chairs give a sylvan touch to this great hall in
the heart of London; and, as an instance of perfect taste, notice the
little medallions of Wedgwood ware dependent from the capitals of the
creamy marble pilasters.
Up the broad flight of steps we go into the restaurant, a restaurant
the colouring in which is such that it never clashes with the hues
of any lady's dress. The garlands of golden leaves on the ceiling,
the artful use of mirrors and evergreens to give the illusion that
outside the windows north and west there are gardens, the cut-glass
chandeliers converted into electroliers, and giving a soft rosy light,
the brown and deep rose of the carpet, the lighter rose of the chairs,
the gilt cornice, the _œil de bœuf_ windows towards the palm lounge,
all form a perfect setting for charming people eating delicate foods.
The keynote of the restaurant in decoration, as in the dinners which
come from Escoffier's kitchen, is refinement. It is a pity, perhaps,
that there is not daylight to brighten the restaurant from end to end,
and that the electric lamps are always alight; but at dinner-time this
is no drawback. An excellent string band plays on the terrace, but it
is as well at dinner-time to choose a table far enough away from the
musicians to ensure comfortable converse.
And now to describe to you a typical Carlton dinner. It is not easy,
for I have so many memories of so many typical dinners there. Once the
annual banquet of my old regiment was held at the Carlton in a great
space of the restaurant screened off from the other diners. That was a
noble feast! Again a memory comes to me of a silver wedding dinner, for
which the table was decorated with creamy white and light pink roses,
with silvered leaves. Escoffier composed for the occasion a dinner all
white and pink, in which the Bortch was the deepest note of colour, the
_filets de poulets à la Paprika_ halved the two hues, and the flesh of
an _agneau de lait_ formed the highest light in the picture. That was
the second occasion on which M. Escoffier sent to a dining-table the
_pêches Aiglon_, the first occasion being a supper which Madame Sarah
Bernhardt gave to Sir Henry Irving and other stars of our stage.
But most distinctive of all the dinners of ceremony at which I have
been a guest at the Carlton was the dinner which Mr William Heinemann,
the well-known publisher, gave to celebrate the publication by his
firm of Escoffier's great work, "A Guide to Modern Cookery." The
dinner was the idea of the Maître-Chef, who suggested that the best
way to criticise the book would be to invite some of the men in whose
judgment the publisher had faith to eat a dinner cooked by the man who
had written the book. We were fourteen in all, mostly "ink-stained
wretches," and amongst the signatures on the menu, which I religiously
pasted opposite the title-page of my autographed copy of the work, are
those of Sir Douglas Straight and of T. P. O'Connor, of a member of the
great house of Harmsworth, and of other men whose palates are as keen
as their pens.
This was the menu of the dinner and the list of the wines we drank that
30th May 1907:
Melon Cantaloup.
Caviar de Sterlet.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté Froid de Volaille.
Mousseline d'Ecrevisses Orientale.
Jeune Agneau Piqué de Sauge.
Morilles à la Crème.
Petits Pois à l'Anglaise.
Poularde Ena.
Trou Normand.
Cailles aux Raisins.
Asperges d'Argenteuil.
Pêches Sainte Alliance.
Mignardises.
VINS.
Vodka.
Amontillado, Dry.
Berncastler Doctor, 1893.
Heidsieck and Co., Dry, 1892.
Pommery and Greno, Nature, 1900.
Château Lafitte, 1878.
Dow's Port, 1887.
Café Double--Grandes Liqueurs.
[Illustration: M. ESCOFFIER]
The _velouté froid_ is a test dish, for only a master hand can give
it the right consistency without allowing it to become pasty. The
_mousselines_ were beautifully light, each in the form of a cygnet,
surrounding a central figure of a swan. The _poularde Ena_ was the one
dish in the banquet to which, because of its richness, I kissed my hand
and passed it by. The combination of quails and grapes is one of M.
Escoffier's happiest inspirations, and the _pêches Ste Alliance_ is one
of those delicate _entremets_ in which Escoffier excels any other great
chef of to-day, or of the past. The _trou Normand_ is rather a violent
stimulus to appetite, and consists of a liqueur-glass of old brandy.
When M. Escoffier came with the coffee, to ask us what our verdict
was on his dinner, our only difficulty was to find a sufficiency of
complimentary adjectives.
V
TWO LITTLE SOHO RESTAURANTS
AU PETIT RICHE. MOULIN D'OR
There is a little restaurant in Old Compton Street, the Au Petit Riche,
with the outside of which I was acquainted for some years before I
put foot inside it. It so evidently kept itself to itself that I felt
that my presence might be resented. It has little casemented windows
in white frames, and inside the windows are muslin curtains, on a
rail, hung sufficiently high to prevent anyone from looking over them.
Below the windows are green tiles, and above it a stretch of little
panes of bottle-glass in white frames to give additional light to the
rooms inside. A little ground-glass lantern hung outside the door, and
the name of the restaurant was painted over the window, but there was
no bill of fare put up outside, no attempt to draw in a diner unless
he had made up his mind to dine at the Au Petit Riche and nowhere
else. I had been told all about the restaurant by those gallant souls
who experiment at every new eating-place that springs up between
Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, and though all I heard about the
little place was pleasant and interested me, I felt that the Petit
Riche was not anxious to make my acquaintance. But when the Petit Riche
put up outside its windows an illuminated sign and its number, 44, in
big figures, I felt that it had abandoned its haughty reserve and was
beckoning to me, and the rest of London, to come in. And in I went, and
have been going in at intervals ever since, for the little restaurant
is artistic and French and amusing.
When you open the glazed door and go in you are faced by the question:
"On the level or down below?" A door to the right leads into the little
series of rooms on the ground floor, and a flight of stairs plunges
down into the basement. Come, first of all, through the door to the
right. We are in the first of three little rooms, with light-coloured
walls. A row of small tables is on either side of each room, and in the
first room a white desk, with palms on it, faces towards the door. A
score of pretty little French waitresses, Bretonnes all, in white and
black, are bustling about, and Mademoiselle, if she is not sitting at
the white desk, will probably receive you at the door and smile and
pilot you to a table. And I should, before going any further, explain
to you who Mademoiselle is, and tell you the story of the Au Petit
Riche. A good Breton and his wife came to London and established a
little restaurant in Old Compton Street, and with them came their two
very pretty daughters. And they made the Au Petit Riche a corner of
Brittany in London. The chef, who had graduated at the Escargot d'Or,
a big bourgeois house near the Halles in Paris, is a Breton by birth,
and all the merry little waitresses are from Brittany. The elder of
the two daughters married a young journalist and for a while left the
restaurant, but when her father and mother thought that the time had
come for them to retire, she and her husband took up the management of
the restaurant, with her sister to help them. And Mademoiselle, fresh
and smiling, with a bunch of roses pinned to her blouse, is in command
in the upper rooms, while Madame, as gracious as she is handsome, sits
at her desk in one of the lower rooms with a great bowl of flowers
before her, and laughs with the young artists, who form a large portion
of the clientele of the Au Petit Riche, and controls the waitresses,
and sends the waiters, of whom there are two, out to fetch the wine,
which comes from a wineshop a few paces away.
Established at a table in the first of the upstairs rooms, a glance
at the walls will tell anyone that the place is a haunt of artists,
for the pictures are just the omnium gatherum of artistic trifles that
an artist generally puts on the walls of his den. Pencil drawings,
rough things in charcoal, etchings, mezzotints, caricatures, sketches
in colour, Japanese coloured prints--a gallery of scraps at which a
Philistine would turn up his nose, but which look comfortable and
homelike to the eye artistic. And at the head of the _carte du jour_,
which a little waitress holds out to you, there is a good black and
white of the exterior of the little restaurant--there is the atmosphere
of art about the place.
Let us look down the list of dishes and order our dinner. The little
waitress, on chance, has addressed us in French, but if she is answered
in English can carry on a conversation in that language. There are
two soups on the list, _consommé Colbert_, which costs sixpence, no
doubt because of the egg, and _crème Cressonière_, which costs only
threepence, and we will choose the cheaper of the two. Amongst the fish
dishes, the salmon and the sole cost a shilling, but we will choose
the _vol au vent de Turbot Joinville_, which costs ninepence. Amongst
the entrées is an item, two _quails en Cocotte_, for a shilling.
Curiosity prompts me to suggest that we should order this, having in
mind what the price of a single quail is on a club bill of fare, but we
shall be on safer ground in ordering one of the dishes of the house,
the _filet mignon Petit Riche_, which costs a shilling, and with it
some peas, fourpence, and some new potatoes, also fourpence. Amongst
the _entremets_ is a _Pêche Petit Riche_, which the little waitress
strongly recommends, but _beignets de pommes_ at threepence seems to me
a more fitting ending for our repast.
There is no long waiting for one's food at the Au Petit Riche; the soup
arrives almost immediately and is wonderful value for threepence. The
_vol au vent_ is an admirable little fish pie, and the _filet mignon_ a
most toothsome morsel of meat, while the _beignets_ are all that they
should be. The little waitress, when we have arrived at the _filet
mignon_ stage of the dinner, asks with the utmost solicitude: "Do you
like eet?" and I have replied for both of us "Very much indeed." At the
table to one side of us are a young couple whose dinner has consisted
of curried chicken and plum pudding au Rhum, and at the table to our
other side, two ladies are eating a typical woman's dinner of _hors
d'œuvre_, poached eggs and spinach, and a vanilla ice. The Au Petit
Riche finds room on its small _carte du jour_ for dishes to suit all
tastes.
The little waitress brings the total of the bill on a bit of green
paper; and having finished our dinner, and having paid for it, we
will go down into the lower rooms before leaving the restaurant. In
the lower rooms every table is always occupied, and I fancy that the
habitués of the restaurant prefer them to the upper ones. One of them
is decorated with golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue ground, and another
is an admirable representation of the kitchen of a Breton farmhouse,
crockery and all complete. There is a great buzz of talk in these lower
rooms, and Madame la Patronne, sitting at her desk amidst the tables,
takes her share in the conversation and attends to the making out of
the bills at one and the same time.
If you go to the Au Petit Riche in the right frame mind you will be
abundantly amused and interested, and you will get wonderful value for
the very small sum your dinner will cost you.
And now for my other little restaurant in Soho. It is the Moulin d'Or
at 27 Church Street. When Karl Thiele, who was in the employ of Peter
Gallina at the Rendez-Vous Restaurant, married the pretty book-keeper
at the Richelieu Restaurant, they determined to set up in business
on their own account, and took a ground-floor room in Church Street,
gave it a good-looking window, put a row of little trees outside, hung
baskets of ferns within, and christened it Le Moulin d'Or, hoping that
their mill would grind golden grist. It was a doll's house restaurant
when I first discovered it two years ago, and the great ambition
then of its proprietor and proprietress was that they might in time
become sufficiently prosperous to add the first-floor room to their
establishment. They have prospered, and when I lately went to dine
there I found that the lower room with a restful green paper had been
increased in size by taking in the passage, and that upstairs is a new
restaurant room also with green walls and a large window, the dream
realised of the young couple. And not only have these improvements
and additions been made, but quite close to the Moulin d'Or there
has been put up a wonderful windmill with electrically lighted sails
which revolve, and below it a hand pointing in the direction of the
restaurant and a transparency whereon see inscribed the prices of the
_table d'hôte_ meals, luncheon, and dinner, and supper, for the Moulin
d'Or has both its _carte du jour_ and its _table d'hôte_ meals. For
half-a-crown, on the occasion of my last visit, I could have eaten
_hors d'œuvre_, made my choice between a _consommé_ and a _crème soup_
and partaken of salmon, _filet de bœuf_, roast chicken and caramel
cream, but I preferred to turn my attention to the _carte du jour_,
and ordered _crème Suzette_, 6d.; _truite au bleu_, 1s. 3d.; _escalope
de veau Viennoise_, 10d.; _haricots verts_, 6d.; and an _omelette au
Rhum_, 10d., all very well cooked and served piping hot. The restaurant
has not yet a wine licence, but for all that a special wine is reserved
for it at a neighbouring wineshop, an excellent light burgundy,
_Château Villy_, at 4s. 6d. a quart, and 2s. 6d. a pint, and, besides,
there is a quite comprehensive wine list. Karl Thiele and his wife,
looking for new kingdoms to conquer, have moved to Brighton, where they
are established in St James's Street, and the new host at the Moulin
d'Or is M. Combes, a very young man, assisted by a very young wife.
They are, in spite of their youth, maintaining the reputation of the
house for good cookery.
VI
A RAG-TIME DINNER
AT THE IMPERIAL RESTAURANT
My little French cousin who has married the Comte de St Solidor (if
that is not his exact title it is, literally, next door to it) has
brought her Breton husband across the Channel to make the acquaintance
of his English relatives, and is desperately anxious that he shall not
be depressed by London. He is a jolly, round-faced Frenchman, with
a rather straggly light beard and a great head of intractable light
hair, and, were it not that he cannot speak a word of our language,
might pass for a young Yorkshire squire. My little French cousin
was particularly afraid that Robert, that is his first name, would
suffer all the tortures of ennui on Sunday, for her mother, who was
English-born, had told her that the English in England spend their
Sunday afternoons, when they are grown-up, in singing hymns, and
when they are children in repeating aloud the catechism. I told my
little cousin to have no fear, that London Sundays are no longer what
they were when her mother was a child, and I offered to take charge
of Robert and herself on their first Sunday in London, from after
lunch-time till bed-time, and to try and keep them amused.
I asked my little French cousin whether rag-time had penetrated to
Brittany, and she, pitying my ignorance, told me that at Dinard, last
summer, they had talked to rag-time music, and bathed to it, and had
even played syncopated _chemin de fer_ to it, as well as danced to
it. But, when I asked her if at Dinard she had ever eaten to it, she
said, "But no," and gave a mimetic sketch of eating food to the air of
"Everybody's doing it now," which was very funny. That settled where
we should dine on Sunday, and I wrote off at once to the Imperial
Restaurant to secure a dinner-table for four, and asked another cousin,
a British one, to complete the _partie carrée_.
The afternoon of Sunday caused me no anxiety. Robert is devoted to
music, so I took him and the Comtesse to the Queen's Hall to one of Sir
Henry Wood's concerts, and on to the Royal Automobile Club to tea, and
neither of them showed any sign of being oppressed by Sabbath gloom.
At ten minutes past eight I was waiting in the vestibule between the
street entrance and the restaurant, where a marble bust of the late
King Edward smiles at each customer who enters. I had ordered my
dinner, a very simple one--_potage Germiny, truites au bleu, noisettes
de mouton,_ new peas and potatoes, ham and spinach, asparagus, and a
_bombe_, and a magnum of Goulet, 1900, to drink therewith. For ten
minutes I sat in the window-seat watching pretty ladies and men of all
ages and types pass through the vestibule, give up their coats and
cloaks, shake hands, and go in little coveys into the restaurant. The
orchestra in the distance was sawing away at an operatic overture, the
ante-room was comfortably warmed, and as dinner was the only event
of the evening I did not fidget because my little cousin delayed in
her coming. I was not the only solitary man waiting. In front of the
fireplace stood a beautiful young man, with sleeve-links and studs and
buttons to his white waistcoat that must have cost a fortune. Now and
again he glanced at the clock, a work of art, in which a gilded cupid
points with a finger to the revolving girdle of hours on a vase, and
when he had ascertained how late _she_ was already he surveyed the
other human creatures about him with tolerant pride and slight hauteur.
I have no gift of telepathy, but I was quite sure that he was waiting
for some very beautiful lady of the stage, and pitied those of us who
had no such divinity to be our guest.
The British cousin arrived to time, and not very long afterwards my
French cousins appeared. She looked at the clock and declared that they
were late because Robert could not find his evening studs, and Robert
laughed, as men do when called upon to substantiate a white fib told by
their wives. She had asked me whether she ought to dine in her hair, or
in a hat, and I had answered that either way would be quite correct.
She had decided not to wear a hat in order to be quite English, and she
looked entirely charming. I could not help glancing at the beautiful
young man who monopolised the fire to see what he thought of my star
guest. He was slightly interested, but he answered my glance by one
which meant "Wait and see."
I had secured a corner table at a reasonable distance from the band,
which occupies a platform about half-way down the room, and we
enthroned the little cousin on the chair in the angle, so that she
could see everybody and everything in the room. Every table but one was
occupied, and that I knew was reserved for the beautiful young man whom
we had left looking with a frown at cupid's finger. My little French
cousin was in high spirits, and Robert acted as an amiable chorus.
She recognised that the room was French--it is a copy of one of the
salons at Fontainebleau, and perceived that the pictures of cupids,
which are between the round windows and the tall casemented glasses,
were inspired by Boucher. She liked the carved marble mantelpiece and
the crystal and gold electroliers. I was called upon to tell her who
everybody was at the other tables, and I launched out recklessly into
fiction. I knew by sight a dozen of our fellow-diners, and the rest
I described as M.P.'s and ladies of title, officers of the Household
Brigade, and divettes of the Gaiety, Daly's, the Lyric, and the
Shaftesbury, which they probably are, celebrated painters and prima
donnas, according to their appearance. My British cousin choked over
a bone of the trout, so he said, but my little French cousin and her
spouse were much impressed by my exhaustive acquaintance with all the
celebrities of my native city, which was just the effect I wished to
produce.
Little Oddenino, going the round of the tables, saying a word or two to
all his clientele, came to our corner, asked if all was as it should
be, took up the menu, and lifted his eyebrows. Of course I know that
to follow the _noisettes_ by ham was inartistic, but being in the
vein of romance I said that my little French cousin was passionately
fond of ham, and demanded it at all her meals, and not that I prefer
ham to mutton, which would have been the truth. The little man bowed
and smiled and passed on; My cousin asked who he was, and when I
replied, "Oddy," she inquired if it was he who would presently make
the rag-time. Pleased to be on bed-rock truth at last I gave her a
shorthand sketch of Oddenino's career; how Turin is his native town;
how he opened one of the great hotels at Cimiez, and earned the thanks
of the late Queen Victoria and a fine tie-pin when she stayed there;
how he was manager of the East Room at the Criterion, and of the Café
Royal, and from the latter restaurant stepped two doors farther down
Regent Street and built the Imperial Restaurant. I described story
upon story of banqueting-rooms that are to be found on the Glasshouse
Street side, and how Freemasons--good, charitable British Freemasons,
not troublesome political French Freemasons--feast in them in great
numbers every night in the year. I sketched out the little man's other
ventures, and I ended by telling her that Oddenino is a man of much
consideration in the Italian colony in London, and has been decorated
by his king. Surely she did not expect a Cavaliere to make rag-time
music? And my little French cousin said "assuredly not."
When we had come to the _noisettes'_ stage of our dinner the beautiful
young man whom we had left waiting in the vestibule came in--alone. He
looked as gloomy as Hamlet, and held in his hand a letter, which he
tore into small pieces and thrust into the ice pail beside his table.
"The poor animal!" said my little cousin pityingly. "He is dining with
an excuse." He drank two glasses of champagne in quick succession, and
then felt strong enough to sup his soup.
About this period a change came over the music of the band, which had
conscientiously worked off the barcarole from "Hoffman," a Viennese
waltz and a minuet. A clean-shaven young man, Mr Gideon, the clever
composer of the rag-time successes who had been eating his dinner
like the rest of us, took his place at the piano, and the orchestra
subordinated itself to his leadership. Mr Gideon can make the piano
speak as few men can, and my little French cousin and Robert both
pricked up their ears and even let the asparagus get cold in their
new-found interest. When Mr Gideon, dispensing with orchestral aid,
sang "Honolulu," and here and there a girl's voice joined in the
refrain, my little cousin turned sharply to me. "Ought one to sing?"
she asked, and I told her that it was as she pleased. She listened with
all her ears to catch the words, and at last trilled out with the rest:
"Ma onaleuleu oné leu," and then laughed at her own boldness.
A quarter of an hour later my little French cousin, with both elbows on
the table, a cigarette between her fingers, and sipping at intervals
some _crème de menthe_, was singing "Hitchy Koo" with the best of
them, and Robert was booming away harmonising a bass _bouche-fermeé_
accompaniment. It was curious how this general singing brought together
those who dined. We had been separate little parties before, but the
humanity of song made us into one big friendly audience. Even the
beautiful young man recovered his spirits sufficiently to try to start
an eye flirtation with my little cousin.
The heat in the room grew and the atmosphere thickened with tobacco
smoke, but we all sat on till close on eleven o'clock, when the
vestibule doors were opened to let out the smoke and let in the cold
air, and the ladies put their stoles round their necks, and the men
called for their bills. Mine, including cigars and liqueurs, came to
exactly a guinea a head.
Before bidding me good-night my little cousin, speaking for herself and
Robert, said that they had well dined and had amused themselves, and
that the Britannic Sunday was not frightening. But I told her that all
our Sunday entertainment was not yet at end, that Robert, when he had
taken her home to their hotel, was going to drink a whisky-and-soda
with me at the club, and that then I would take him on to an hospitable
house, where _chemin de fer_ is played, and that if there was no police
raid she would see him back about five A.M.
My little French cousin looked at me to see whether I was serious,
laughed in my face, and taking Robert by the arm led him to the taxi
that was waiting for them.
VII
THE CAFÉ ROYAL
One of the questions people are fond of asking and, like "jesting
Pilate," do not stay to have answered, is, "Which is the best place in
London at which to dine?" This is generally only a prologue to their
opinion on the subject, but when it is an inquiry, and not an overture,
I always reply by another question, "Whom are you going to take out to
dine?" for there are so many "best places" that the selection of the
right one depends entirely on what are the tastes of the person, or
persons, you wish to please.--If a man were to answer _my_ question
by saying that he wished to entertain some bachelors of his own ripe
age and ripe tastes, and that he would like to go somewhere where the
food is very good, the rooms comfortable, and where there is no band to
interfere with conversation, I should diagnose his case at once as a
Café Royal one.
The Café Royal is pleasantly conservative, and it is more like a good
French restaurant of the Second Empire than is any other dining-place
I know in London. Its fame has reached to all other countries in
the world, and a French waiter who hopes to become in due time a
manager looks on an engagement at "The Café" as a step in his career.
Therefore, if ever you feel inclined to be tight-fisted in the matter
of tips to the waiters at the Café Royal, reflect that you may meet
them again where their good word can help to make a meal comfortable
for you. Once in Paris, when I went to dine at Maire's, far up the
boulevards, a restaurant into which I had not been for years, I was
surprised to be received as though I was the prodigal son of the
establishment, a _maître d'hôtel_ taking especial care to find a
pleasant table for me, and suggesting various dishes from the _carte du
jour_, which shaped into a dinner after my own heart. I asked him if I
had ever seen him before, and he replied: "I waited on monsieur at the
Café Royal in the days when he used to drink the _Cliquot vin rosée_."
I pause here to sigh regretfully over the memory of that _cuvée_ of
Cliquot, at which many men shied because of its colour, but which was
the most delightful wine that ever came from the great house of the
widow of Rheims. On the first occasion that I entered the restaurant
of the Esplanade Hotel in Berlin, feeling rather like a boy going to a
new school, I was received by a _maître d'hôtel_ who knew that I liked
a table at the side of the room, suggested to me three of the lightest
dishes on the _carte_ as my dinner, and told me that he remembered that
at the Café Royal I always asked for the table in the far corner of the
first room and that I liked short and light dinners.
It may be that in a few years, when the Quadrant of Regent Street must
be rebuilt, and all the other houses in it will be obliged to conform
in some respects to the Piccadilly Hotel, the sample building of the
new style, the Café Royal as we know it to-day may be altered in
appearance and in the arrangement of its rooms, but I hope that this
will not happen in my time. It was the first restaurant at which I
learned the joys of dining out in pleasant company--a _sole Colbert_,
a _Chateaubriand_ and _pommes sautés_, an _omelette au rhum_ and a
bottle of good Burgundy was my idea of a suitable dinner in those my
strenuous days, and I have for the house all the affection I have for
old friends. The influence of Madame Nicols is against any unnecessary
change. An old lady with white hair and dressed in black walks every
day through the rooms of the Café Royal, and the habitués know that
this is Madame Nicols on her tour of inspection. She still gives
personal supervision to the work in the linen-room, as she did in the
early days of the café, and her wish is that everything should remain
as much as is possible as it was when M. Nicols was alive.
There is a romance in the history of most restaurants that have existed
for any length of time, and the rise of the Café Royal from small
beginnings is interwoven with the Franco-Prussian War and with the rise
and destruction of the Commune. On 11th February 1865 M. Daniel Nicols,
who had been in the wine trade at Bercy, that part of Paris where the
great wine depots are, opened a modest little café-restaurant in the
lower part of Regent Street. It occupied the space where the entrance
and hall now are. A photograph of the front of the house at that time
is extant, showing the plate-glass window with a broad brass band below
it, and on the glass in white letters announcements of the good things
to be found within. In front of the modest doorway stands M. Nicols,
looking very proud of his establishment, while two of his friends lean
gracefully against the pilasters of the entrance, and the head waiter
stands respectfully a step or two farther back. On the little balcony
before the windows of the entresol stand the ladies of M. Nicols'
family. The interior of the window was in those days decked with
salads and with any foods that looked tempting, to catch the attention
of the passer-by. In fact, it was just such an unpretentious little
restaurant as any young foreigner coming to London and determined
to make a competence might start nowadays hoping that Fortune would
turn her wheel in his direction. But most young foreigners do not
have the chance, or the judgment, to establish themselves in Regent
Street. I have a dim memory when I was a schoolboy of being impressed
by some stuffed pheasants in the Café Royal window, and at the time
of the great war I was first taken inside it to meet there a distant
connection of my family, a Buonapartist, who had been one of the
Empress's ministers during the short period when the Government of
France fell into her hands and had gone into exile when the Republic
was proclaimed. Those are my first two recollections of the Café Royal.
It was the flood of non-combatants and political exiles, business men,
authors and actors; Red Republicans, Monarchists, and Buonapartists,
whom the war and the political upheavals in France sent over to this
country, that made the fortune of the little restaurant. However
they might differ as to the colour of their politics, they were all
Frenchmen, they all sighed for the blue skies of France; they found
in the Café Royal a little corner of their beloved native land, and
they naturally all gravitated to it. The house was much too small for
the number of its frequenters, when, fortunately, the old Union Tavern
in Glasshouse Street came into the market, was bought, and converted
into the café as we know it, with its painted ceiling and its wealth
of gilding, and the restaurant and the private dining-rooms were
established on the other floors. This was the first of many extensions
and alterations. A building on the Air Street side was absorbed,
and a billiard-room established on the ground floor, but very soon
the billiard-tables were given marching orders, and the space they
occupied was turned into a grill-room. An enlargement of the kitchen,
the installation of a lift on the Air Street side, the making of a
little ante-room and cloakrooms outside the restaurant--before this
improvement any man waiting for a lady who was going to dine with him
did so in the passage leading to the café or on the stairs--and the
construction somewhere very near the roof of a masonic temple and a
ballroom were all additions.
M. Nicols and Madame Nicols gave personal attention to all details, and
the experience M. Nicols had gained at Bercy was of great use to him in
laying down the fine cellar of wines, particularly of red wines, which
is the great pride of the house. To draw a very fine distinction, I
would say of the Café Royal that it is a restaurant to which gourmets
go to drink fine wines and to eat good food therewith, while at other
first-class restaurants gourmets go to eat good food and to drink
fine wines therewith. The only cellar of red wines that I know which
can compare with that of the Café Royal is the cellar of Voisin's in
Paris. The wine-list of the Café Royal is splendidly comprehensive,
and in its pages are to be found all the fine wines grown in Europe,
even Switzerland being recognised, and the wines of the Rhone Valley
above the Lake of Geneva being given a place in the book. M. Delacoste,
the first manager I remember at the Café Royal, under M. Nicols, was a
great authority on wines, and he bought so largely that there came a
time when M. Nicols recognised that his clients with the utmost good
will could never drink all the wine laid down for them, and sold a
portion of it by auction. Other managers of the Café Royal have been
Wolschleger; Oddenino, who was appointed when M. Nicols died in 1897,
and during whose tenancy of the post many of the improvements in the
house were made; Gerard, mighty of girth, who had been in the kitchen
of the Café Anglais under Dugleré, and who moved on to the Ocean Hotel,
Sandown; and now Judah, who had been manager of the Cecil, and who
keeps a very steady hand on the tiller. M. Judah, on the occasion of
the visit of the President of the French Republic to London in 1913,
was created an officer of the Order of Mérite Agricole.
Sportsmen have always had a special affection for the Café Royal. The
men who were prominent in the revival of road-coaching were all patrons
of the restaurant, and any night you may see half-a-dozen well-known
owners of race-horses dining there. The Stage, the Stock Exchange, and
Literature also have a liking for the old house, and hunting men love
it.
When I mentioned it as the ideal place for a dinner of bachelor
gourmets, I did not mean that men do not bring their wives and sisters
and sweethearts there. They do. But the Café Royal does not lay itself
out to capture the ladies. I never heard of anyone having afternoon tea
there, and when a lady tells me that she likes dining at the Café Royal
I always mentally give her a good mark, for it shows that she places in
her affections good things to drink and good things to eat before those
"springes to catch woodcock," gipsy bands in crimson coats, and palm
lounges.
In the great gilded cage of the restaurant and the big room the windows
of which open on to Glasshouse Street, the custom is to eat the lunch
of the day, or to select dishes from it, while dinner is an _à la
carte_ meal. If one entertains a lady at dinner one probably orders a
dinner which canters through the accepted courses, and I have by me the
menu of such a one:
Hors d'œuvre Russe.
Pot-au-feu.
Sole Waleska.
Noisette d'agneau Lavallière.
Haricots verts à l'Anglaise.
Parfait de foie gras.
Caille en cocotte.
Salade.
Pôle Nord.
And with this dinner we drank a good bottle of St Marceaux.
But men when they dine together think little of the rightful sequence
of courses, and order what their taste prompts them to eat. I have
dined at the Café Royal, and dined well on _moules Marinières_--and
one can eat _moules_ at the Café without fear, half a cold grouse, a
salad and a _petit Suisse_ cheese. When the ham is a dish of the day it
always tempts me, for the Café Royal hams are princes of their kind,
and the cold _mousses_ that the _chef de cuisine_, M. François Maître,
makes are beautifully light. The specialities of the cuisine of the
Café Royal are _œufs Magenta, œufs Wallace, homard Thérmidor, sole
Beaumanoir, filet de sole Simone, darne de saumon à l'Ecossaise, truite
Dartois, turbotin Paysanne, poularde bisque, faisan Carême, perdreau à
la Royal, caille Châtelaine, poulet sauté Sigurd, suprême de volaille à
la Patti, tournedos Figaro, noisette de pré salé moderne, côte d'agneau
Sultane, filet de bœuf Cambacères, selle d'agneau favorite._
Down in the café a _table d'hôte_ meal is served, wonderful value
for very few shillings, but I am not smoke-proof, and I like eating
my meals without the taste and smell of tobacco added to them. The
grill-room is always full, and perhaps more solid eating, of juicy
fillets and grilled chops and cutlets, is done there than anywhere else
in the house, except in the banqueting-rooms. I have banqueted with
the Bons Frères, a club of cheery connoisseurs who like their dinner
to be light and the songs that follow it also to be airy, in the great
gilded banqueting-room with, as part of its decoration, many crowned
N's, which might stand for Napoleon, but really indicate Nicols; I
have dined in smaller rooms with the Foxhunters' Lodge, and with many
other groups of good Freemasons and good diners; I have assisted at "Au
Revoir" banquets without number, and I know when I am bidden to feast
in a private room at the Café Royal that I shall be given a good dinner
on sound if perhaps conservative lines. This menu of a banquet given
not long since, which is typical, will convey more what I mean than
many words of description:
Natives.
Petite Marmite.
Saumon Sauce Genévoise.
Blanchailles.
Caille à la Cavour.
Jambon d'York aux Petits Pois.
Caneton de Rouen à la Presse.
Salade d'Orange.
Asperges Sauce Divine.
Bombe Alexandra.
Friandises.
Os à la Moëlle.
Café.
Dessert.
VINS.
Graves Monopole, Dry.
Heidsieck and Co., 1898.
Louis Roederer, 1899.
Ch. Le Tertre, 1888.
Martinez Port, 1884.
Denis Mouniés, 1860.
Liqueurs.
As a final word of praise for the Café Royal, let me record that just
as many of its waiters grow grey-headed in its service, so the steps of
any man who is a lover of good cheer and who has been an habitué of the
restaurant seem unconsciously to lead him to its doors. It was my first
love amongst the restaurants, and--well, you know how the proverb runs.
VIII
OYSTER-HOUSES
The great catastrophe of my life, I think, was that the first oyster
I ate was a bad one. I was at school for a year or two at Dedham, as
a preparation for Harrow, and Dedham is in Essex, and not far from
Colchester. An old man used to wheel a barrow of oysters to the playing
field, and dispensed his shell-fish at a penny an oyster. One day when
I was in funds I thought that I would begin to enjoy the luxuries of
life, and bought an oyster. That oyster was a bad one. Not just an
ordinary bad oyster, but of a superlative badness, the most horrible
oyster that any small boy ever tried to swallow--and failed. The memory
of that oyster kept me for many years from making a second attempt.
When I was first bidden to a Colchester oyster feast and sat amidst
Cabinet Ministers and mayors and aldermen in their robes of office,
and generals and admirals all pitching into the bivalves like winking,
I, to the great surprise of the waiters, ate twice as many oysters
as any alderman present. Had I been given an opportunity of making a
speech after lunch I should have told the assembled company that my
unparalleled feat in the absorption of Colchester natives that day was
my revenge for the horrors of the first Colchester oyster I tried to
eat one sunlit spring afternoon on the Dedham playing field. I have not
yet been invited by a Mayor of Whitstable to accompany him to sea to
eat oysters afloat on the first day of the dredging season, but I have
eaten many oysters plain and oysters scalloped at the "Bear and Key,"
and I never have had a grudge against any individual Whitstable oyster,
so there is no injury to redress.
All this, I know, should be reserved for my autobiography; but as I am
never likely to autobiograph myself it has to be set down here.
And now to talk of some of the oyster-houses of London. If on the "Roof
of the World," the great tableland of Thibet, one British explorer met
another British explorer, and the first man suddenly said "Scott's!"
the second man inevitably would answer "Oysters," for Scott's window at
the top of the Haymarket, with its little barrels of oysters and its
crimson lobsters reposing on beds of salad stuff, and its big crabs
lying on their backs and folding their vandyke-brown claws, as if in
pious meditation, over their buff stomachs, is one of the landmarks of
London. The old Scott's, before the fire that gutted it, has faded from
the memory of most Londoners, and the new building, with its pillars,
which are apparently of mother-o'-pearl pressed into black marble,
with bands of ornamental brass about them, and its red blinds and
red-shaded lamps in the upper storeys, is accepted as being the hub of
the West End of London, just as the old one was. Inside the doors are
the two marble-topped counters with piles of plates upon them, and on
their fronts long napkins hanging from rails. Behind the counters men
in white jackets are busy opening oysters and pouring out tumblers of
stout and glasses of Chablis all day long. There are on the counters
stacks of thin slices of brown bread and butter and other stacks of
sandwiches of various kinds of fish and plates of prawns of coral-pink.
I know of no better place than this wide oyster hall of Scott's for a
theatre-goer to eat a very light meal before going early to a theatre
when he intends to sup luxuriously after the show. Scott's, though
its shell-fish are its trump cards, desires to be all things to all
men, and to all women. It possesses a "dive" in its basement with tiled
walls, on which Japanese fish swim in and out through Japanesy weeds,
and behind the oyster hall is the grill-room, shut off from draughts by
a great glass screen, in which a white-clothed cook stands with a table
of viands at his elbow, turning the chops and steaks, sausages and
rashers on the big grill. Upstairs there is an _à la carte_ restaurant,
where all kinds of luxuries are obtainable, and Scott's is a very
popular place at which to sup after the theatre.
If you would like to see how popular oysters are with Londoners at
lunch-time, come with me to the Macclesfield in the street of that
name leading out of Shaftesbury Avenue. When "Papa" De Hem first took
over the Macclesfield it was just a public-house in the Soho district,
but "Papa," who is a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, and who was
through the Siege of Paris, brought the thorough methods of an old
soldier to bear upon the house. He turned all the old clientele out of
its doors, and, though he kept a bar in the premises, it was by selling
very large quantities of Whitstable oysters at a price that left him
a very small profit that he saw his way to a fortune. Journalists and
actors and artists and other dwellers in the realms of artistic Bohemia
soon learnt of the new resort. Dagonet chatted of it in _Mustard and
Cress_, Pitcher told tales concerning it in _Gals' Gossip_, and took
the chair at the smoking concerts for charities held in the grotto
upstairs, and as the prices have been kept rigorously low, and as the
oysters have always been excellent, the Macclesfield is now one of
the most popular oyster-houses in London. Come in through the glass
door, and you find on one side the long bar, and on the other side
little tables, at which every seat is occupied by lunchers who are
eating Whitstables on the deep shell, or oyster stew, or oysters
fried, or oysters grilled, or broiled lobsters, or the mayonnaise
of lobster which is one of the specialities of the house. There are
luncheon dishes of meat and fowl also obtainable, but when I go to the
Macclesfield I go there to eat shell-fish, and am not to be turned
from my purpose by any roast chicken or grilled chop. We are not in
the least likely to find a vacant seat at any of these first tables,
so we will move on into the wider space where is the oyster bar, with
men in white behind it, busy with their oyster knives, and behind them
a background of barrels of Meux's stout. Here is the entrance to the
grotto--an entrance beautified by trellis-work and Japanese lanterns.
The walls of the grotto are of oyster-shells, with here and there an
irregular piece of mirror showing through, and all Papa De Hem's best
customers have written their names on the oyster-shells. The tables
in the grotto are set close together, and there are two of them in a
snug corner, towards which every customer first makes his way, only
to find nine times out of ten that there is no place for him. The
waitresses bustle about, and the proprietor has a word to say to all
old friends. Upstairs on the first floor is another grotto, larger than
the downstairs one, and quieter, and here ladies are often brought to
lunch.
Stout is the classic accompaniment to oysters, and it is possible to
eat the bivalves actually in the shadow of Meux's great Horseshoe
Brewery, for the Horseshoe Tavern next door has an oyster dive down in
the basement, just below its grill-room. On the way down to the dive
you pass the great spirit casks of the Horseshoe safely placed behind a
grille, the biggest cask of all being that of the ten-year-old "Annie
Laurie" whisky, which holds 1000 gallons. The oyster bar resembles a
horseshoe in shape, and behind it is a wall of small kegs of Meux's
stout. The Horseshoe is a good old-fashioned British house, with one of
the largest open fires in London, and I remember that once when there
was an especially splendid haunch of venison to be cooked for a party
of gourmets Mr Baker was approached, and the venison feast was held at
the Horseshoe.
Rule's Oyster-house, in Maiden Lane, in the window of which are two
huge shells from Singapore and many big champagne bottles, is a house
of many associations with the men of the pen of Victorian days. Albert
Smith was the demigod of the establishment. Mark Lemon, Douglas
Jerrold, Henry Irving, Besant and Rice, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins,
Yates and Sala were some of the men who used to eat oysters in Maiden
Lane and who have accorded appreciation of them. There are busts and
portraits on the walls of the rooms of many theatrical celebrities, and
in one room is a fine collection of Dighton caricatures.
White's and Gow's, in the Strand, both old-established fish and oyster
houses, each deserve a word, and the Chandos, over against the National
Portrait Gallery, gives its oyster-eating patrons six oysters, a glass
of stout, and bread and butter for a shilling.
Sweeting's, in Fleet Street, is especially dear to me, because of
its sawdusted floor. The front of the house has been set back in the
widening of the street, but the house remains very much as it was. By
the marble-topped counters are wooden stools, on which the lunchers
perch like sparrows, and besides the oysters there are fish snacks and
big lobsters, and on one of the counters is a selection of sandwiches
of all kinds. Upstairs there are two floors of dining-rooms for people
who want something more solid than oysters or sandwiches.
No chapter on oyster-houses would be complete without reference to
Driver's in Glasshouse Street, and Wilton's in King Street, both
houses which supply the clubs and great restaurants with oysters, and
which, as well, open oysters for hungry customers at their counters.
At Driver's a little screen of stained glass only partially conceals
the oysters which are spread out on the broad space behind the glass.
On the door is the simple legend, "Driver, Oysterman," and inside
are three black-coated men opening oysters behind the counter. In a
little glass box sits a lady cashier. This in old days used to be where
Mrs Driver sat, and could always spare time for a smile and a word
to an old customer. On the wall behind the counter is a board with
the orders for oysters contained by clips, and two shelves, on which
are rows of big shells, showing wide surfaces of mother-o'-pearl. A
little staircase leads to an upper room, where sybarites can sit and
eat oysters and caviare and bread and cheese, and there is a little
table downstairs tucked away behind the staircase; but I am one of the
stalwarts who have always stood at the counter at Driver's to eat my
oysters and to wipe my fingers afterwards on the pendant napkins.
Behind Wilton's plate-glass windows there are warrants suitably
framed, and the proprietor is generally to be seen either behind his
counting-desk or the little oyster bar in the spacious shop. Wilton's
at one time used to purvey Irish oysters, as well as other British
varieties, but the supply was so uncertain that they have been taken
off the list.
If I have omitted to give the prices of the oysters at the various
oyster-houses, it is because they vary so much. One can buy native
oysters in the shops at Whitstable for 1s. a dozen, or 1s. 9d. for
twenty-five. By the time they arrive in London their cheapest price is
1s. 6d. a dozen, and the specially selected ones, which are sometimes
called "Royal Natives," cost as much at some oyster-houses as 3s. 6d.
a dozen. Seconds, Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Portuguese are each a step
lower down in price. American oysters are to be obtained in Paris at
Prunier's, but I know of no house in London at the present time which
imports them. Ten years ago they were obtainable at two of the houses.
IX
WHITEBAIT AT GREENWICH
Gone are the great days of the whitebait dinners at Blackwall and
Greenwich. No longer does _The Morning Post_ ever publish such a
paragraph as this, "Yesterday the Cabinet Ministers went down the
river in the ordnance barges to Lovegrove's West India Dock Tavern,
Blackwall, to partake of their annual fish dinner. Covers were laid
for thirty-five gentlemen," which appeared on 10th September 1835. No
longer is there a great rivalry between the two Greenwich taverns, the
Trafalgar and the Ship. The Ship still remains and the whitebait have
not deserted the Thames, but though at intervals I read paragraphs that
fish dinners are still to be obtained at the Ship, I never meet anyone
who has journeyed to Greenwich to see whether this is so, and the last
time that I went there to dine my reception was so chilly that I have
not experimented again. But the account of that dinner may interest
as showing what a Greenwich fish dinner was in the days of good King
Edward.
* * * * *
It was pleasant to see Miss Dainty's (of all the principal London
theatres) handwriting again. She had been very ill--at the point of
death, indeed--owing to a sprained ankle, which prevented her going
to Ascot, for which race meeting she had ordered three dresses, each
of which was a dream. When was I going to take her out to dinner? The
parrot was very well, but was pecking the feathers out of his tail.
She had some new pets--two goldfish, whose glass bowl had been broken
and who now lived in a big yellow vase. The cat had eaten one of the
lovebirds, and was ill for two days afterwards. The pug had been
exchanged for a fox-terrier--Jack, the dearest dog in the world. Jack
had gone up the river on the electric launch and had fought two dogs,
and had been bitten over the eye, and had covered all his mistress's
white piqué skirt with blood; but for all that he was a duck and his
mother's own darling.
This, much summarised, was the pretty little lady's letter, and I wrote
back at once to say that the pleasure of entertaining a princess of
the blood-royal was as nothing to the honour of her company, and if
the foot was well enough, would she honour me with her presence at
dinner anywhere she liked? And, as the weather had turned tropical, I
suggested either Greenwich or the restaurant at Earl's Court.
For Greenwich the fair lady gave her decision, and then I made a
further suggestion: that, if she did not mind unaristocratic company,
the pleasantest way was to go by boat.
This suggestion was accepted, and Miss Dainty in the late afternoon
called for me at a dingy Fleet Street office. I was delighted to see
the little lady, looking very fresh and nice as she sat back in her
cab, and I trust that my face showed nothing except pleasure when I
perceived a small fox-terrier with a large muzzle and a long leash
sitting by her side. Miss Dainty explained that as she had allowed her
maid to go out for the afternoon she had to bring Jack, and of course I
said that I was delighted.
We embarked at the Temple pier on a boat, which was as most river
boats are. There were gentlemen who had neglected to shave, smoking
strong pipes; there were affable ladies of a conversational tendency
and there were a violin and harp; but there were as a compensation all
the beautiful sights of the river to be seen, the cathedral-like Tower
Bridge, the forest of shipping, the red-sailed boats fighting their way
up against the tide, the line of barges in picturesque zigzag following
the puffing tugs; and all these things Miss Dainty saw and appreciated.
There was much to tell, too, that Miss Dainty had not written in her
letter, and Jack was a never-failing source of interest. Jack wound
his leash round the legs of the pipe-smoking gentlemen, was not quite
sure that the babies of the conversational ladies were not things that
he ought to eat, and at intervals wanted to go overboard and fight
imaginary dogs in the Thames.
Arrived at Greenwich, at the Ship (the tavern with a rather dingy
front, with two tiers of bow windows, with its little garden gay with
white and green lamps, and with its fountain and rockery which had bits
of paper and straws floating in the basin), I asked for the proprietor.
Mr Bale, thick-set, and with a little moustache, came out of his room,
and whether it was that Fleet Street and the Thames had given me a
tramplike appearance, or whether it was that he did not at once take a
fancy to Jack, I could not say, but he did not seem overjoyed to see
us. Yet presently he thawed, told me that he had kept a table by the
window for us, and that our dinner would be ready at six-thirty as I
had telegraphed.
In the meantime I suggested that we should see the rest of the house.
"Would it not be better to leave the dog downstairs?" suggested Mr
Bale, and Jack was tied up somewhere below, while we went round the
upper two storeys of dining-rooms--for the Ship is a house of nothing
but dining-rooms. It is a tavern, not a hotel, and there are no
bedrooms for guests. We went into the pleasant bow-windowed rooms on
the first floor, in one of which a table was laid ready, with a very
beautiful decoration of pink and white flowers, and in the other of
which stand the busts of Fox and Pitt. We looked at the two curious
wooden images in the passage, at the chairs with the picture of a ship
let into their backs, and at the flags of all nations which hang in the
long banqueting-room; and all the time Jack, tied up below, lifted up
his voice and wept.
I asked if Jack might be allowed to come into the dining-room and sit
beside his mistress while we had dinner, giving the dog a character
for peacefulness and quiet for which I might have been prosecuted
for perjury; but it was against the rules of the house, and Mr Bale
suggested that if Jack was tied up to a pole of the awning just outside
the window he would be able to gaze through the glass at his mistress
and be happy.
A fine old Britannic waiter, who looked like a very much reduced copy
of Sir William Vernon-Harcourt, put down two round silver dishes,
lifted up the covers, and there were two _souchés_, one of salmon
and one of flounder. I helped Miss Dainty to some of the salmon and
filled her glass with the Pommery, which, after much thought, I had
selected from the wine list. But she touched neither; her eyes were on
Jack outside, for that accomplished dog, after doing a maypole dance
round the pole, had now arrived at the end of his leash--and incipient
strangulation. Miss Dainty went outside to rescue her pet from instant
death, and I, having eaten my _souché_, followed. Jack wanted water,
and a sympathetic hall porter who appeared on the scene volunteered
to get him a soup-plateful, and tie him somewhere where he could not
strangle himself.
The _souchés_ had been removed, and some lobster rissoles and fried
slips had taken their place. Miss Dainty took a rissole and ate it
while she watched the hall porter put Jack's plate of water down, and
I made short work of a slip and was going to try the rissoles when
Jack, in a plaintive tone of voice, informed the world that something
was the matter. His mistress understood him at once. The poor dear
would not drink his water unless she stood by; and this having been
proved by actual fact, Miss Dainty, with myself in attendance, came
back to find that whiting puddings and stewed eels had taken the place
of former dishes.
Miss Dainty took a small helping of the eels, looked at it, and then
turned her eyes again to Jack, who was going through a series of
gymnastics. I ate my whiting pudding, which I love, in fevered haste,
and had got half-way through my helping of eels when Miss Dainty
discovered what was the matter with Jack. The boys on the steps below
were annoying him, and the only way to keep him quiet would be to give
him some bones. The sympathetic hall porter again came to the rescue,
and Jack, under his mistress's eye, made fine trencher play with two
bones.
There was a look of reproach in the veteran waiter's eye when we came
back and found that the crab omelette and salmon cutlets _à l'indienne_
were cooling. I tried to draw Miss Dainty's attention away from Jack. I
told her how Mr Punch had called her Faustine, and had written a page
about her; but when she found there was nothing to quote in her book of
press notices she lost all interest in the hump-backed gentleman.
With the advent of the plain whitebait a new danger to Jack arose.
A turtle was brought by three men on to the lawn and turned loose,
and Miss Dainty had to go out and assure herself that Jack was not
frightened, and that the turtle was not meditating an attack upon him.
The turtle was found to be a harmless and interesting insect, and
having been shown, with practical illustrations, how the beast was
captured by savages, Miss Dainty took great pity on it, collected water
in the soup-plate from the fountain, poured it over its head, and tried
to induce it to drink, which the turtle steadfastly refused to do.
The veteran waiter was stern when we returned and found the devilled
whitebait on the table. I told him to bring the coffee and liqueurs and
bill out into the garden, because Miss Dainty, having been separated
from her dog so long, wanted to nurse and pet him.
This was the bill: Two dinners, 14s.; one Pommery, 18s.; two liqueurs,
1s. 6d.; coffee, 1s.; attendance, 1s.; total, £1, 15s. 6d.
We sat and watched St Paul's stand clear against the sunset, and Miss
Dainty, her dog happy in her lap, suddenly said: "If you give this
place a good notice, I'll never speak to you again."
"Why?" I replied. "The whitebait was delicious, the whiting pudding
capital, the omelette good. I liked the fried slips and the rissoles."
"Yes, perhaps," said Miss Dainty, with a pout. "But they wouldn't let
me have my dog in the dining-room!"
X
THE CECIL
I wonder whether Jabez Balfour, the genius who jumped at Park Lane and
landed on Broadmoor, ever comes to London from his country retreat,
where, under another name, he earns his daily bread, and looks at
the great palaces which were one of his money-spinning schemes and
notes the changes that are made in them. He certainly would scarcely
recognise to-day in the modern Hotel Cecil the great red-brick and
stone block of chambers and flats which first grew up, some seventeen
or eighteen years ago, next to the Adelphi Terrace overlooking the
Embankment Gardens. A company with some very distinguished gentlemen
on the list of the directors was formed to buy the great building, and
they have worked with indomitable perseverance to make a house that was
not intended to be an hotel into one of the most comfortable hotels
in London, and to popularise a restaurant which at first refused to
respond to their efforts.
The Cecil Restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, with
M. Bertini, a clever, quick-eyed, bearded Italian as manager, and M.
Coste, who was one of the greatest of the great chefs of the close of
the Victorian era, in command of the kitchens. But the company had been
in too great a hurry to begin to earn money, and the arrangements were
not yet working quite smoothly when London that dines and thinks about
its dinners was first asked to sit in judgment on the new dining-place.
The first roughnesses soon wore off; M. Bertini was an admirable
_maître d'hôtel_--I have lost sight of him of late years, but I think
he went for a time to South Africa, and he made a short appearance as
proprietor of a small restaurant in the Haymarket--and M. Coste, "the
old man," as the rest of the staff affectionately called him behind his
back, sent out through the doors that separate the kitchen from the
restaurant little dinners that delighted the palates of connoisseurs.
This propinquity of kitchen to restaurant is a great advantage. As you
sit at your table in the Cecil Restaurant you can, if you listen for
it, hear the voices of the men who call out the orders to the cooks--an
unceasing chant, a hymn to Gastronomy, and as a result no dish ever
comes cold to table at the Cecil Restaurant.
What, however, was radically wrong at first with the Cecil Restaurant
was its decoration. It is a very large, very high pillared hall, with
a glazed balcony overlooking the Victoria Gardens, and big windows on
the west giving a glorious view of Westminster; but its decorations
were at first too sombre in colour. The panelling was of walnut wood,
a large square of deep crimson velvet was embroidered with the Cecil
arms, the great mantelpieces of purple-grey Sicilian marble conformed
to the quiet scheme of colour, and the pillars and great window
casings all harmonised in the minor key. The mantelpieces are all
that remain to-day of the original scheme of colouring, and they are
scarcely noticeable amidst the shimmer of pink and white and gold.
A minor drawback was that the restaurant had no ante-room, and that
a dinner-giver had to await his guests in the bustling hall of the
hotel. People who dined at the Cecil Restaurant in those days praised
the cooking, and had nothing except good words for the attendance and
wine, but they said it was not "cheery." Nine out of ten ladies or men
did not trouble to analyse their feelings, but it was the coldness of
their surroundings that affected them.
To tear down all the decorations of a newly built hall is an heroic
remedy which no board of directors would willingly face, and before
this was done other less expensive remedies were tried. A separate
entrance for the restaurant was made in the courtyard, and a lounge
built and quite charmingly decorated. M. Paillard, the great Parisian
restaurateur, crossed the Channel and became for a time manager of
the restaurant, making with M. Coste in the kitchen a remarkable
combination of talent. A Roumanian band, fierce-looking gentlemen in
embroidered garments, who had been sensationally successful at one of
the great exhibitions in Paris, were imported, were perched up on a
rostrum and made the roof reverberate with their czardas. The services
of "Smiler," a curry-cook of great renown, were exclusively retained
for the Cecil. (Sherry's in New York offered "Smiler" large sums of
money to transfer his services, and he crossed the Atlantic with a
little band of underlings of his own nationality. "Smiler" travelled
first class, and the reporters on the other side not unnaturally
took him to be an Indian Prince on his travels. "Smiler" did not
undeceive them, and enjoyed for some days all the privileges given
to royalty in a republic. Then he reported at Sherry's.) Mr Hector
Tenant, the managing director of the Empire, joined the Cecil board,
and a series of variety performances after dinner on Sundays filled
the big restaurant to its holding capacity on those evenings. Harry
Lauder, concerning whose talent and fine voice everybody was talking
at that time, sang, I remember, on one of those occasions. But there
must have been some excellent reasons for not continuing these variety
performances, for after a time they ceased.
At last the board took its courage in both hands and redecorated
the restaurant from floor to ceiling. It is now a hall of white and
gold and pink. The panels are of Rose du Barri silk, the pillars are
gleaming white, while the frieze is of the lightest blue. A dark rose
carpet gives relief to this shimmering, shining restaurant, and in its
centre is a handsome table of many tiers for fruit and sweet things,
a table of gilt sphinx heads and many electric lamps. The waiters
wear knee-breeches; the band plays in an ante-room. The redecorated
restaurant at once jumped into the affections of the world that dines,
and further to add to the good temper of this place of butterfly
colouring, the directors engaged as the _maître d'hôtel_ in charge
of the restaurant, M. Califano, who is known to the patrons of the
Cecil as "Sunny Jim." One of the advantages with which M. Califano has
been endowed by Nature is a smiling face, and some wit at the time
that "Sunny Jim" was a favourite figure on all the hoardings, gave M.
Califano his nickname.
To complete their work of betterment, the board added to the restaurant
and hotel the new palm court, a sumptuous lounge, upholstered in
powdered blue and gold, which has eaten up more than a half of the
great forecourt of the Cecil. This forecourt, which was almost of
the size and shape of a Roman hippodrome, was a great comfort in
past days to the cabdrivers of London, for there was unlimited room
in it for them to wait to take up guests at the hotel; but it was a
great waste of space. The new palm court is a very splendid place,
and besides giving the restaurant a noble reception-room, it has shut
away from the hotel all the noise of the street and all the bustle of
the reception hall. It has, however, done away with the most American
spot in London, the space of paving outside the front entrance of
the Cecil which used to be known as "The Beach." Here used to be cane
chairs and rocking-chairs and piles of luggage, and a newspaper stall,
and in the summer-time pretty girls sunning themselves, and waiters
hurrying to and fro with cold drinks and long straws in them; and the
American guests of the hotel who loved the brightness and the bustle
of the spot christened it "The Beach," and preferred it to any of the
gilded parlours inside the hotel. The new palm court, however, in a
stately manner, has taken the place of "The Beach" as a meeting-ground
for the hotel guests. Mr Kaiser, the general manager of the Hotel
Cecil, tells me that the building of this fine lounge has been of
benefit to the restaurant as giving a finishing touch to its comforts,
and I have no doubt that this is so, for dining in the restaurant, I
found it comfortably filled by people staying in the hotel, and guests
from outside, and "Sunny Jim" told me of the vast numbers whom on
such special occasions as Christmas and New Year's Eve he manages to
accommodate in the restaurant and balcony.
I ate the Cecilian dinner, a seven-and-sixpenny _table d'hôte_ meal,
which I found quite excellent. This is the menu:
Huîtres Natives on Hors d'Œuvre.
Consommé Princesse.
Crème Parisienne.
Filets de Sole Carême.
Quartier d'Agneau Arléquine.
Pommes Macaire.
Caille en Cocotte au Jus d'Ananas.
Salade.
Asperges, Sauce Hollandaise.
Glacé à l'Andalouse.
Friandises.
The delicate sauce with the sole, the neatness of the garnish of the
vegetables with the quarter of lamb, the plumpness of the quail and
their contrast of taste with the pine-apple, would have assured me that
the kitchen is in first-class hands, even had I not known that M. Jean
Alletru, a chef who stands very high in the estimation of his brother
chefs, had succeeded M. Coste, when that great man retired.
I might have spent a shilling less and have eaten an alternative dinner
without the oysters in it, or I might have taken advantage of an
arrangement by which anyone dining at the Cecil can pay a fixed price
for his or her dinner, and choose practically anything they like from
the _carte du jour_, which is a very ample one, and which generally
contains some of the _spécialités_ created by M. Alletru. This is the
list of these _spécialités_ and a couple of very pretty little dinners
can be arranged from amongst them, the only thing needed in addition
being a soup. _Tomate en surprise au caviar, turbotin Prince de Galles,
filet de sole Clarence, timbale de truite froide Norvégienne, ris de
veau St Cloud, caille à la Salvini, poitrine de volaille Providence,
selle d'agneau Cecil, poularde à la Jacques, fraises Tetrazzini,
bouteille de champagne en surprise._
I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that a
_maître-chef_ can receive is that which comes from his brothers in art,
and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel
Cecil and their _chef de cuisine_ than that the Ligue des Gourmands,
the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they
held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier,
placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who,
with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier
had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which
there were three hundred guests present, in preference to that of
any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great
banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the
perfection of a dinner of ceremony. The _Dodine_ and the _Fraises
Sarah-Bernhardt_ were the two sensational dishes of the feast, but
it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting
without being heavy:
Hors d'œuvre.
Petite Marmite Béarnaise.
Truite Saumonée aux Crevettes Roses.
Dodine de Canard au Chambertin.
Nouilles au Beurre Noisette.
Agneau de Pauillac à la Bordelaise.
Petits pois frais de Clamart.
Poularde de France.
Cœur de Romaine aux Pommes d'Amour.
Asperges d'Argenteuil Crème Mousseline.
Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt.
Dessert.
Café--Liqueurs.
Bénédictine.
Whether the Cecil was the first of the great banqueting houses to
effect a reform in the service of public banquets I am not sure, but it
was at the Cecil that I first found that such a reform had taken place.
In old days it was the custom for the waiters to trail a dish along the
whole length of a banqueting-table, and the salmon, which went up the
room a noble-looking fish, came down five minutes later to starvation
corner, a head, a tail and a skeleton. It was at the Cecil that I
first noticed the breaking up of the tables into manageable sections
of guests, with a waiter and his aids to each section, and the dinner
served straight from the kitchen to that section. The restaurant and
the banqueting halls and the private dining-rooms by no means exhaust
the list of the accommodations of those who dine that the Cecil
affords. There is below the Rose du Barri room another one, the Indian
room, decorated in Oriental fashion with blue and yellow tiles, and in
this a grill dinner and a _table d'hôte_ dinner are both served, and
when this room overflows another equally spacious room is opened and
becomes the grill-room.
(As I correct the proofs of this chapter news comes to me that "Sunny
Jim" will in 1914 become a joint partner in the management of the St
James's Palace Hotel in Bury Street and will give special attention to
its restaurant.)
XI
CLARIDGE'S
I reach back in memory farther in touch with Claridge's than with any
other hostelry in London, One of the stories of her early life that my
mother often told me when I was a small boy was how my grandfather,
as crotchety an elderly widower as ever ruled an Indian district,
when he finally retired from the service of John Company, arrived in
London with his bullock trunks and sandalwood boxes lined with tin, his
bedding rolled up in bundles, his guns, his fly-whisks, and palm-fans,
and all the strange paraphernalia that an Anglo-Indian official
gathered about him in those days. With him came his faithful bearer,
and an ayah, and his little pale daughter, and they all descended at
Claridge's Hotel--though perhaps in those days it might have been
Mivart's. The first great grief of the little girl's life was that
the "Nabob," as my grandfather was called in the family, delivered a
"hookum" to the manager of the hotel that an English nurse must be
provided directly for his small daughter, as the ayah ought to return
at once to her own country, and my mother was obliged to say good-bye
to her devoted Indian attendant. My first personal introduction
to Claridge's was when, as a schoolboy, I was invited by another
schoolboy, who wished to show off, to go with him to visit a German
_Graf_, a nobleman with a very long string of minor titles, whose
greatest glory was that he owned a castle on the Rhine. The _Graf_ was
very polite to the two little English boys, and talked to us in very
bad English; and when we took our departure he saw us to the door as
though we had been persons of the greatest importance. Mr Claridge,
wearing a skull-cap of velvet, happened to be in the hall as we passed
through, and I remember well the beautiful bow that he gave to the
Count. Mr Claridge's bows were celebrated; they were of a different
depth, according to the rank of the person to whom he bowed, and there
was even a delicate difference in the salute that he gave to a Serene
Highness to that with which he welcomed a Royal Highness. Claridge's in
those days consisted of half-a-dozen houses connected with each other,
and the best rooms in these houses formed the suites where the various
royalties who patronised the hotel lodged, Mr Claridge and his staff
of servants being always on the watch that the privacy of his guests
should not be invaded. On one occasion, when a famous caricaturist took
a room at the hotel, Mr Claridge waited on him and informed him that
he must transfer his custom elsewhere, for, though he, Mr Claridge,
was a great admirer of the artist's talent, and decorated the walls of
some of the rooms with his work, he could never allow a royal personage
to be caricatured within the walls of his hotel. Not that Mr Claridge
himself always spoke too respectfully of the great ones of the earth.
Archbishop Temple used to tell a story that when in 1846 the Pope
seriously thought of taking refuge in England, Mr Claridge remarked
that he was so full up with kings and royal dukes that he could only
offer his Holiness a small back room, but that, being a bachelor, he,
the Pope, would probably not mind.
The old Claridge's was pulled down and the new Claridge's built in
the nineties, and I remember the opening day, when a great crowd of
fashionable people came to look at its _salons_ and ballroom and
restaurant, and the royal suite. The india-rubber roadway in the
entrance, then a novelty, was much admired, and the six footmen in the
hall, in their state livery, looked mighty splendid. Mr D'Oyly Carte,
who more than anyone else had been the moving spirit in the creation of
the new hotel, was wheeled about in a chair through the crush of pretty
ladies and distinguished gentlemen, for he was then very ill.
The new Claridge's soon found its own particular atmosphere, an
atmosphere of perfect serenity. The little army of footmen, who were
too gorgeous for ordinary occasions, were reduced in numbers, and now
only one superb being in plush and silken calves moves about the hall
and arranges the papers in the reading-room. The inner hall, with
its pillars and walls of white, and its reflected light, is a most
comfortable lounge in which to sit after dinner and listen to the
orchestra, and out of this open two rooms, one of Wedgwood blue with
Wedgwood designs on it, and the other of old gold. The restaurant has
been considerably altered since its first opening, for it has been
divided into two rooms, the colouring of it has been brightened, and at
night an abundance of light is now thrown on to the painted ceilings
from cunningly concealed lamps. The bases of the great arches which
support the roof are cased in dark oak, with an inset of olive wood;
the carpet is of rose and grey and the chairs are of green leather with
the arms of the hotel stamped upon it.
It is a restaurant in which dinner takes its right place as one of the
tranquil pleasures of life. The music of the band is never too loud,
the fine napery and the admirable glass are pleasant to the touch, the
flowers in the silvered stands of the table lamps give an agreeable
touch of colour, the cut glass of the pendent electroliers sparkles,
and the first and the second _maîtres d'hôtel_, M. Invernizzi, who
comes from the Palace Hotel, at St Moritz, to London for the season,
and M. Castelani, who is a permanency at Claridge's, are tactfully
attentive, while M. Gehlardi, the manager of the hotel, walks through
the rooms during the course of dinner to bow here and there at a
table, and to assure himself that all is well. It is the clientele
of Claridge's that has made its atmosphere, for the well-dressed,
good-looking, quiet people who dine at the tables, put a comfortable
distance apart, are folk whose names bulk largely in the Society
columns of the newspapers, and the list of the diners on any given
night in Claridge's Restaurant would be for the most part a string of
titles. Good manners are in the air, and I do not think that even the
rawest plutocrat could be unmannerly amidst such surroundings.
On the night that I last dined at Claridge's, I had written beforehand
asking that a table for three should be reserved for me, and I had
intended to give my guests the larger of the two dinners of the
restaurant, the twelve-and-six one, which runs through the usual
courses, and which is by no means a set dinner, for any dish which does
not exactly match the fancy of a dinner-giver is changed for another to
suit his whim or his palate. But I found that a special little feast
had been ordered for me by M. Gehlardi, and the menu of it was as
follows:--
Melon Cantaloup.
Bortch à la Russe.
Filets de Sole Newnham-Davis.
Noisette d'Agneau aux Fines Herbes.
Petits pois frais. Pommes Noisettes.
Coq en Pâte.
Salade de Romaine à l'Estragon.
Fraises Parisienne.
Friandises.
The _chef de cuisine_ at Claridge's is M. Maurice Bonhomme, who had
passed through the kitchens of two great Parisian restaurants, the
Café de Paris, and Ledoyen's, in the Champs Elysées, before he came to
London. He is a chef of high repute, and these are the specialities
of his kitchen:--_filet de sole Tosca, suprême de sole Pré Catalan,
Coulibiac de saumon, suprême de volaille d'Orléans, cailles Hacchi
Pacha, Coq en Pâte Claridge's, pêches Caprice, fraises Delphine_.
Of the dishes of my dinner, the excellent _Bortch à la Russe_ was
served as it is in Russia, with little _pâtés_ to break into it. The
list of these _pâtés_ in the menu of a Russian dinner is often a long
one. The _filet de sole_, which M. Bonhomme paid me the compliment of
christening to my name, is a quite admirable _sole poché au Madère_,
with all the fumet of the fish retained and served with sliced
_champignons_ and _pointes d'asperges_. I sent my very best compliments
to M. Bonhomme on his masterpiece. The _coq en pâte_ is an ornamental
dish, for the fowl stuffed with all manner of rich things is encased in
a paste shaped like a cock, crest and all. The outer covering is broken
before the bird is carved. It is a dish of almost terrifying richness.
Quite a number of the great people of the land give their banquets at
Claridge's, and out of the sheaf of the menus of these feasts I select
one of the Surrey Magistrates' Club Dinner, which shows that our Solons
across the Thames dine and wine with much discretion and taste:
Royal Natives.
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Monte-Carlo.
Bisque de Crabes.
Turbotin braisé au Champagne.
Whitebait diable noir.
Selle de Béhague à l'Estragon.
Haricots verts de Nice.
Pommes nouvelles au Beurre.
Timbale à la Galoise.
Caneton d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise.
Salades d'Oranges.
Asperges vertes Sauce Hollandaise.
Pêches Melba.
Friandises.
Bonne Bouche.
VINS.
Oloroso Fine Old.
Piesporter, 1904.
George Goulet (mag.), 1900.
Moët et Chandon.
Dry Imper., 1904.
Dow's 1896.
Courvoisier Brandy.
Fine Champagne, 1865.
I wonder how a club dinner of magistrates of fifty years ago would
contrast with such a dinner as the above.
XII
THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT
Old "Rats," which is the disrespectful title by which most of his
friends call Major-General Sir Ulysses Ratbourne, late of the
Bundlekund Fusiliers, was holding forth to his crony, Colonel
Bunthunder, late of the same distinguished regiment, in the hall of
the Cutlass and Cross-bow Club as I passed through it, and the General
paused for a second in his denunciation of Radicals and Socialists
to say that he wanted to have a word with me, and then finished his
peroration. Colonel Bunthunder muttered: "Very true, very true," and
went on into the smoking-room shaking his head sorrowfully, and the
General turned to me.
"Look here, my lad"--anyone under seventy is "my lad" to the
General--said he, "I want you to give me a bit of advice."
I said the correct platitude, and awaited developments.
"My nephew Bill, the one in the Hussars, has just married, and he and
his wife are coming up to town, and I want to know where to take 'em to
dine."
I reeled off the list of the half-dozen most fashionable restaurants;
but the General cut me short. "Ay, my lad, that's all very well; but
the girl that poor old Bill's been and married is a vegetarian. What
d'ye say to that, now?"
The General had put into the word "vegetarian" just the tone of
astonished disgust he would have employed had he told me that the young
lady was a militant suffragette; but I did not echo that at all. "Take
them to the Eustace Miles Restaurant in Chandos Street," I advised;
"and whatever your niece's fads may be, you can give her what she wants
there."
Old "Rats" thanked me with the chastened thankfulness that men show
when given the address of a specialist for some obscure disease of
which they think they are a victim, wrote the address down on a card,
and went after Colonel Bunthunder into the smoking-room to tell him all
about it.
It occurred to me, however, directly the old General had left me, that
I was sending him to a restaurant into which I had never myself been,
and concerning which I knew nothing, except that I always look into its
windows and at its bill of fare whenever I pass down Chandos Street;
and, therefore, in order that I might be able to give the old man some
detailed information from my own experience, I went next day to Chandos
Street to lunch.
Before I set down what my experiences were, I wish to express my
personal admiration for the single-mindedness of Mr Miles and his
wife in doing the work they have set themselves to do. That Eustace
Miles, half trained, went into a tennis court to defend his title of
amateur world champion against a young American gentleman trained to
the second, and that he made a fine fight for the championship with
the odds desperately against him, shows that a diet of non-flesh food
doesn't kill pluck or stamina. And before the authorities asked Mrs
Miles not to send the E.M. soup barrow down to the Embankment on winter
nights, as they wished to clear that thoroughfare of derelicts, she
and her helpers had done much to feed the hungry and to reclaim some
of those who were not irreclaimable, which shows that a kind heart
thrives on Emprote and Protonnic and Compacto, and the other meatless
foods with strange names. Lastly, that the Eustace Miles Restaurant
celebrated last year the seventh anniversary of its opening, shows that
London wanted such a restaurant, and that it has kept its clientele.
The big windows of the Eustace Miles Restaurant are "dressed" as if
they were shop-windows. Sometimes they are full of tins and packets
of the non-flesh foods arranged in piles and pyramids; sometimes they
look like the windows of a book shop, piles of literature and charts
of the human frame being in evidence; and sometimes boxing-gloves
and foils and pictures of young men holding themselves upright and
sticking out chests as full as those of pouter-pigeons draw attention
to the fact that a physical school high up in the building is one of
the Eustace Miles activities. Sometimes the windows look like those
of a pastry-cook's shop, and sometimes they bristle with copies of
_Healthward Ho!_ the monthly magazine which Mr Miles edits. Always
outside the door in a glazed case is the bill of fare for the day
printed in red and green type, and I have often wondered what "Egg and
Mushroom Fillets and Duxelles Sauce with Asparagus and New Potatoes
(N.)," or "Pinekernel Quenelles and Onion Sauce with Spring Cabbage
and Potatoes (N., F.U.)," or "Hazel-nut Sausages and Gravy with
Cauliflower and Roast Potatoes (N., F.U.)," taste like, and what the
capital letters after each dish mean. Now, however, there was no reason
to linger and look at the card. I was about to plunge into the great
unknown, to sample the dishes with strange names, and to learn the
secret of N.N. and F.U.
A commissionaire, looking just like other commissionaires, though he,
like all the other employees of the restaurant, eats the food of the
restaurant, opened the door to me and gave me a card for my bill, and
my first impression was that I was in a Food and Cookery Exhibition,
for in front of me was a stall piled high with tins of Emprote and a
cash desk with a little model of the E.M. barrow by it, a stall for
pastry and biscuits, and a book-stall; but beyond this first line of
defence I saw little tables with white cloths on them, and many people
sitting at them, and I walked on looking for a vacant seat. I came to a
table with only one occupant, and sat down; a little waitress in a neat
brown dress put the red and green printed bill of fare into my hand,
and I found myself suddenly faced by a puzzle to which the purple ink
_carte du jour_ of a small provincial French restaurant is as ABC is to
a jig-saw puzzle. However, in larger print than anything else on the
card was the announcement that a half-crown _table d'hôte_ luncheon and
dinner was served, so I said to the waitress in an offhand manner, as
though I were an habitué: "I'll take the half-crown lunch, please." She
never budged. "Compacta _croûtes_ or roasted cashews?" she asked me,
and I gasped out, "Compacta," and wondered what on earth I was going to
eat.
Then, while the little waitress had gone to get me the first instalment
of the unknown, I looked down the menu and made up my mind which of the
two soups, the two entrées, the two sweets and two savouries I would
order when the waitress came back again, and then turned my attention
to the room and the people at the tables. There is a suggestion of a
gymnasium about the restaurant, for it is a high room with a broad
gallery running round it about half-way up its height, and it is
lighted by a great space of skylight. All the boarding, and there
is a good deal of it, is painted dark green, and on the walls is a
dark green and white paper. A tea-stall, green and white, and a long
buffet of green wood, with pots of flowers on it, are at one end of the
restaurant; the floor is covered with oilcloth, with strips of crimson
cocoa-nut matting laid over it, and there are flowers in vases on the
little white-clothed tables which occupy all the floor space below and
in the gallery. There is a sense of airiness and spotless cleanliness
about the place. Big notices draw attention to the Normal Physical
School and other of the Eustace Miles activities, and a request to
gentlemen not to smoke till after six P.M. was just above my head.
The people at the tables were just like the people one sees at any
other restaurant where the prices are not high--ladies who might be
stenographers, or country cousins up for a day's shopping, young
men who, I daresay, are bank clerks--a good, level, healthy-looking
gathering. A man with clear blue eyes and a close-clipped white
beard sat down in the seat opposite to mine, and ordered something
without looking at the menu; a youngster in golfing kit took the other
unoccupied place at the table, and a wrinkle came across his forehead
as he plunged mentally into the intricacies of the _à la carte_ sheet,
until the waitress helped him by pointing with her pencil to some dish
printed in red ink, and he joyfully assented to her suggestion. A young
man brought in a bull-dog on a leash, and the dog was petted on his
progress up the floor by all the little waitresses.
The waitress who had me in her charge returned with the Compacto
_croûtes_, two little angles of hot toast with something spread on
them, and she took my order for the next course, of lettuce and
sorrel _potage_, and for some ginger ale, which I ordered as having a
vague feeling that it would be in keeping with the meal. The Compacto
had a far-off taste of potted meat, and I had noticed that it was
labelled N., F.U., which a note at the top of the menu told me meant
nourishing and free from uric acid. The dishes marked N.N. are "Very
Nourishing." The lettuce and sorrel soup, when it came, was distinctly
to be commended, a trifle thin, perhaps, but having the taste of the
vegetables in it, and being excellently hot. This also, I was pleased
to see, was noted as N. and F.U.; and had I been subject to gout,
which--"touch wood," I am not, I should have been eating an admirable
non-gouty meal. Then came what on the menu was described as a main
dish. It was asparagus and lentil timbale, cucumber sauce, stuffed
vegetable marrow and new potatoes _sautés_. I rather hope that this
will not be the main dish that old "Rats" will stumble up against when
he takes his niece to dine at the Eustace Miles Restaurant, for the
timbale did not seem to me to have any strong taste of asparagus in
it--perhaps the lentils had killed it. The stuffed vegetable marrow was
rather a watery delicacy, but I ate up the _sautés_ potatoes, feeling
quite glad that I knew what their taste was going to be. The next dish,
however--honey shortbread and stewed apricots--I can unreservedly
praise; the shortbread was excellently light and the stewed apricots
were good things of their kind. I had told the waitress that as a
savoury I would have _matelote_ eggs on toast, but I cancelled that
order, for I look on savouries as superfluities, and ate some cheese as
a finish to my repast.
The little waitress totalled up my bill on the card that the
commissionaire at the door had given me, and I was making my way to
the pay-desk when I saw in a corner by the book-stall a lady engaged
in opening letters; and, thinking that this must be Mrs Eustace Miles,
I asked her if such was the case, and when she said "Yes," introduced
myself. She welcomed me to the restaurant, explained that her husband
was away playing a championship game at tennis, and said how sorry she
was that she had not met me before I lunched, as she would have liked
to suggest to me the dishes that best suit anyone making their first
essay on non-flesh foods. I told her, however, that I had wished to
make my first attack just as any other meat-eating member of the public
would do, and I was very glad to be able to compliment her on the
cook's soup and the shortbread. I had bought at the book-stall the May
number of _Healthward Ho!_ and had carried off from the dinner-table
a sheaf of leaflets giving information concerning the restaurant and
the _salons_, and in addition to these Mrs Miles gave me a leaflet
describing the exhibit that the then chef of the restaurant, Mr Blatch,
N.C.A., sent to the Food and Cookery Exhibition in 1910, and which
won a gold medal there, and an account of the _déjeuner_ at which M.
Escoffier and the editor of _Food and Cookery_ and _The Catering World_
were present, and which was described by the latter in glowing terms,
"excellent," "delightful" and "delicious" being adjectives used for
every course. This was the menu of the feast:
Milk Cheese and Celery Mayonnaise.
Salsify and Barley Cream Soup.
Cashew Nut Timbale and Cranberry Sauce.
Nut and Vegetable en Casserole.
Vegetables (Conservatively Cooked).
Jamaican Fruit Salad.
Devilled Compacto.
It was recorded that M. Escoffier very much enjoyed the devilled
Compacto, and praised the work of the chef who had prepared the
_hors d'œuvre_ and the entrées. As, however, since the date of this
_déjeuner_, which was in March 1910, M. Escoffier has given the world
his famous _Dodine_, and his not less famous _Poularde Poincaré_, he
was evidently not weaned from the errors of flesh-eating by his visit
to the Eustace Miles Restaurant, nor shall I be lured away by any
stuffed vegetable marrow from creamy salmon and plump quails.
But I shall say no word to dissuade old "Rats" from going to dine at
the Eustace Miles Restaurant, for I am quite sure that what he will eat
there will certainly do him no harm, and if he chooses F.U. dishes may
probably do him a lot of good, but I should like to be present when the
old man first looks down the green and red bill of fare of the day and
finds himself faced by all the strange new dishes, for his remarks will
be worthy of the occasion.
XIII
THE PRINCES' RESTAURANT
When the house for the Royal Institute of Painters in Water
Colours--that classic stone building with busts of great painters
in the ovals that ornament its façade, busts on which the sparrows
perch and watch the traffic in Piccadilly--was put up in the early
eighties, there was space below the galleries for some shops and for
a large hall. It occurred to somebody, probably M. Benoist, whose
great charcutier's shop was just over the way, that Princes' Hall was
eminently suitable to be a dining-room, and Princes' Restaurant came
into existence, M. Benoist being the moving spirit, his brother-in-law,
M. Fourault, being the manager, and M. Azema, a chef of much fame,
being at the head of the kitchen.
Princes' Restaurant, as I first remember it, was not the beautiful room
it is now. The painted ceiling with its concealed lights, as fine an
example of this kind of art as we have in London, was a later addition;
the garden outside the windows of the restaurant had still to be made,
and I think that the windows which look towards St James's Church were
not in the great room when it was first built. The hotel, which has
an entrance in Jermyn Street, and in which there are some noble rooms
for banquets and balls, was another afterthought. The lessees of some
of the shops on the Piccadilly front were bought out before the palm
garden, in which impatient gentlemen wait for ladies who are late, and
where satisfied diners smoke their after-dinner cigars and drink their
coffee, could be made, and comparatively lately communication has been
established between the restaurant and the galleries above, in order
that when there is a ball in the picture-hung halls the dancers can
troop down to sup below.
If Princes' Restaurant and Princes' grill-room and Princes' Hotel are
like Rome in that they were not built in a day, they are very good to
look upon in their finished state. The restaurant has a great height,
and the early diners can smoke there without the least taint of tobacco
greeting the later comers. Its ceiling is, as I have already written,
a beautiful example of decorative art, and a bill of exceeding length,
the sum total of which astonished me when I was told how many figures
it comprised, was paid for this embellishment. Its walls are creamy
in colour, the curtains are of soft pink, and the tall windows south
and east are reflected in mirrors, looking like other windows on the
northern side, where the space is not occupied by the Palm Lounge. A
musicians' gallery runs along the western side, and the doors into the
kitchen are below this, but the red-coated musicians have forsaken
their aerie, which now forms a way to ballrooms and galleries, and have
found a snug corner on the floor of the restaurant. There are some fine
marble statues of nymphs on pedestals and palms and banked-up plants
and flowers in the restaurant, and the general effect suggests that one
has stepped out of London greyness into some Southern clime where all
is light and bright and spacious. At night the electroliers are shaded
so as to give a mixed golden and pink light, which is most comfortable
to the eyes, and is, I am sure, very becoming to the complexions of the
ladies, and the carpets and the upholstering of the chairs carry on
the harmony of deep rose and pink.
The history of the present success of the Princes' Restaurant is the
story of the triumph of the short dinner over the long one. As a
lunching place Princes' was a great success from the day its doors
first opened. The ladies of Mayfair and Belgravia and Tyburnia found
that it was comfortably near their shopping centres, and the little
ladies of the stage also liked to lunch there. The musical comedy
ladies monopolised the first half-dozen tables to the right as one
entered, leaving the rest of the tables to the other ladies, and Stage
looked at Society's hats, and Society looked at Stage's furs, and no
doubt each envied what the other wore. But for quite a while--it seemed
a long while to the shareholders--Princes' did not find its destiny
as a dining place. M. Benoist wished it to be a great _à la carte_
restaurant such as he has made the restaurant of the Hermitage at
Monte Carlo, but for some unexplainable reason diners did not flock to
Princes' to eat expensive dinners, nor did a long _table d'hôte_ dinner
tempt them. At last it was determined that new methods should be tried
and new men came on to the Board of Directors to try them, that very
energetic and very successful organiser, Mr Harry Preston, of Brighton,
being one of them. A short theatre dinner became the trump card of the
restaurant in the evening, the Princes' ballrooms became the scene of
most of the dances organised in theatreland, and when the company began
to earn an annual dividend for its shareholders the advantages of brief
dinners became very apparent to them.
This was the dinner of the day that I took a lady to eat at seven
o'clock on an evening on which Sir George Alexander produced a new play
at the St James's:--
Hors d'œuvre à la Russe.
Petite Marmite Henri IV.
Crème Lamballe.
Suprême de Saumon Doria.
Agneau de Pauillac à la Grecque.
Boutons de Crucifères aux Fines Herbes.
Chapons à la Broche.
Salade.
Biscuit Glacé au Chocolat Praliné.
Friandises.
This was the six-and-six theatre dinner of the day, not too long to be
eaten during the hour that theatre-goers allow themselves for a meal,
and quite long enough for those for whom dinner is the one event of an
evening. M. Roux, the _maître d'hôtel_, who has been at the Princes'
for eighteen years, also showed me the menu of a half-guinea dinner
which the Princes' holds in reserve should the little dinner not be
impressive enough for some of its clients. The dinner was excellently
cooked, and the tiny _pilau_ which came to the table with the lamb
would have caught the appreciative attention of any gourmet, and
assured me that M. Génie, the present head of the kitchen, who had
previously won his spurs at the Carlton and the Brighton Metropole,
and had at one period learned all there is to learn in Egypt, the land
of _pilau_, is a worthy successor to M. Azema and M. Granvilliers. The
lady who dined with me was much impressed by the two Pierrots sitting
on the moon, a work of art which came to table with the _biscuit_, and
was enthusiastic as to the playing of the orchestra. I thought myself
that the musicians insisted a little too much that their music and not
my conversation was what the pretty lady had come to Princes' to hear,
but the question of music in a restaurant is a matter on which the
gentler sex and the denser one are never in accord and the managers
of most establishments find it a thorny question. If an orchestra of
distinction is engaged nothing in the world will persuade its head that
his music should be merely an accompaniment to conversation, and the
opinion concerning music of a young man who has so much to say to a
pretty girl that a dinner never lasts long enough to allow him to say
it all, is very different to that of a bored husband, who has nothing
in particular to remark to his wife after they have reached the soup
course.
At seven, when we commenced our dinner, two other tables were already
occupied. By half-past seven the room was comfortably full, and at a
quarter to eight, when we left to go to the St James's, diners were
still coming in to their tables. Most certainly what the dwellers in
the leafy lanes of Mayfair and by the snipe-ground of Belgrave Square
required was a restaurant in Piccadilly, where they can dine well and
at not too great a length, nor at too great a price, on their way to
the theatre, and Princes' has at last given them what they wanted.
XIV
THE CRITERION
The East Room at the Criterion is a trophy of one of woman's victories
over man, for it was one of the first, if not the very first,
restaurant-rooms designed and decorated to harmonise with feminine
frocks and frills, and made beautiful that mankind should bring
beautiful womankind there to eat things delicate. In the sixties,
restaurants were few and far between, and were mostly places where
men dined without their feminine belongings. But all this was changed
in the seventies, and the East Room did its full share in persuading
man that it added pleasure to a good dinner in a restaurant to be
faced by a pretty woman. The East Room of to-day is twice the size of
the one that Messrs Spiers and Pond first built, and its decoration
of white and gold, and panels painted with Watteau subjects, its
harmony of greys and pink in carpets and furniture and curtains, its
ante-room with old French furniture, and the satisfactory arrangement
by which the music of the orchestra, perched in a gilded cage above
the big entrance hall, comes softened by distance to the diners in
the East Room, are all happy second thoughts. But the East Room was,
in 1873, when it was first opened, the dining place to which every
lady asked her husband to take her, and it has held its own against
ever-increasing competition through the years. Its windows look down
on the rush and swirl of Piccadilly Circus, a wonderful scene either
by day or night, and it adds to the pleasure of an unhurried meal to
watch the hurry of thousands of one's fellow-creatures.
At one period, after the extension of the building, there were two East
Rooms, a dividing wall being where the arches and curtains now are. The
one of these nearest the grand staircase was a strictly _à la carte_
restaurant, while in the other, approached through a corridor, a _table
d'hôte_ meal was served. The East Room of to-day smiles on both classes
of diners. When a man sits down at his table there at dinner-time,
M. Kugi, the _maître d'hôtel_, puts before him the _carte du jour_,
an ample one, with any special delicacies in larger print than the
others, and also lays on the table the menus of the half-sovereign and
seven-and-six _table d'hôte_ dinners, and it is his experience that
the greater number of diners look at the _carte du jour_ and then,
mistrusting their own judgment, order one or the other of the _table
d'hôte_ meals.
This was the menu of the seven-and-six dinner one night when I dined at
the East Room at a tiny dinner-party, before going to the theatre down
in the cellars of the big building to see the play running there:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Rossolnick.
Crème aux huîtres.
Truite de rivière Dona Louise.
Selle d'Agneau Mascotte.
Pommes nouvelles.
Poularde du Surrey à la broche.
Salade.
Parfait au moka.
Friandises.
Dessert.
It was a very well-selected, well-served dinner. Had we chosen the
half-guinea dinner we should have had an addition to this menu
of _cailles à la Grecque_ and _chou de mer, sauce vierge_. The
_Rossolnick_, with its flavour of cucumber, was excellent, the trout
were fresh and firm, and the Surrey fowl as plump as any foreigner
from Mans. M. Auguste Pannier, the chef of to-day, is worthy of the
great men who have preceded him in the kitchen of the East Room. And
not only have there been great cooks, but great managers as well at
the Criterion, with the East Room as the particular object of their
care. Oddenino, Mantell, Gerard, who all moved on to other posts, were
predecessors of M. Emile Campenhaut, the manager of to-day, as was
also M. Lefèvre, whose health broke down, but whom I remember as being
an enthusiast on the subject of the art of cookery, a man who brought
plenty of brain power to bear on the subject of delicate food. I think
that the best of the many dinners I have eaten _à deux_ in the East
Room was one ordered in consultation with him, and I subjoin it as a
good specimen of an East Room _à la carte_ feast:
Caviar.
Consommé à la Diane.
Filets de sole aux délices.
Suprêmes de volaille grillés.
Carottes nouvelles à la crème.
Laitues braisées en cocotte.
Cailles à la Sainte-Alliance.
Salade de chicorée frisée.
Croûtes à la Caume.
Soufflé glacé à la mandarine.
The _caille à la Sainte-Alliance_, in imitation of Brillat Savarin's
_faisan à la Sainte-Alliance_, consisted of a truffle in an ortolan,
the ortolan being in the quail. The _Croûte Caume_ is an admirable
banana dish in which the tastes of the banana and pine-apple and
apricot and kirsch all mingle.
The East Room is, of course, only one of the many restaurant-rooms
in the great stone building. Immediately under the East Room are the
Marble Restaurant and the grill-room. The Marble Restaurant, in old
days, when men of position did not think it undignified to stand at a
bar and drink brandy and soda, was the Long Bar, and a wonderful sight
this bar, running the whole length of the building, used to be at
midnight, crowded with Londoners of all the leisured classes and with
a score or more of good-looking barmaids in black behind the bar. When
the habits of the men of London began to change, and the Long Bar did
not draw so many devotees, the firm of Spiers and Pond was not quite
convinced for some time that the "palmy" days of the bars were gone,
and they made the Long Bar one of the most beautiful saloons in London,
decorating it with marbles and inlay of Venetian glass. That beautiful
saloon is now the Marble Restaurant, in which a five-shilling _table
d'hôte_ meal is served, and where singers on Sundays discourse music to
the diners.
The American Bar had its period of great success, and in the
grill-room, which formed part of the bar's surroundings, chops and
steaks, unsurpassed anywhere in London, used to be grilled. But
the character of some of the habitués of the American Bar was too
pronouncedly sporting to be altogether satisfactory, and the American
Bar passed away from the front part of the building as the Long Bar
did. There is a buffet now at the Jermyn Street side, but it is no
longer the haunt of the gentlemen who were so overwhelmingly devoted to
sport. The grill-room, without the American Bar, is a very flourishing
section of the Criterion. It differs from most other grill-rooms in
having plenty of sunlight and fresh air, and has this distinctive
feature, that there is an American cook in its kitchen and that
American dishes can always be obtained there even when they are not
on the bill of fare. I have eaten clam broth, terrapin, dry hash,
scalloped sweet potatoes, and Graham pudding, when dining there with
Americans.
The Criterion contains a score of banqueting-rooms, including a
huge one at the top of the house, where a statue of Shakespeare
looks down upon the diners. The West Room, which is now one of the
banqueting-rooms, has been used by the management for many experiments.
For a long time a _Dîner Parisien_ was served there, and as its cost
was only five shillings, and as one got a great deal of very good
food to eat for that sum, I used to patronise it very regularly in my
subaltern days, when a dinner in the East Room could not be budgeted
for. At one time it was given over to the vegetarians, and good-looking
damsels in art clothing brought the diners dishes of nut cutlets and
vegetable steaks; but the nut-eaters did not hold possession of the
room for long.
It is not easy to-day to associate the great stone building in
Piccadilly Circus with the revels of miners in an Australian township.
But it was in Melbourne, during the gold fever, that the seed was sown
which blossomed into the big stone house in the centre of London. Felix
Spiers and Christopher Pond were both young Englishmen. Felix was born
in one of the old houses on Tower Hill, which was then the office of
the General Steam Navigation Company, whose agent his father then was.
The family of the Spiers moved to Paris, and young Felix was put into
a banking house, where he remained until he was eighteen. Then he went
to Melbourne, with the gold fever upon him, to make his fortune. In
Melbourne, he met young Christopher Pond, also an Englishman, and also
determined to make his pile. Spiers had become, for the time being, a
wine merchant, an experience which later was to serve him to excellent
purpose at the Criterion, for he laid down some admirable wine there,
amongst it some hock which as long as it lasted I used to drink in
preference to any other wine on the Criterion list. The miners were
spending money in Melbourne as though it were water, and the Theatre
Royal, Melbourne, received much of the golden shower. It occurred to
young Spiers and young Pond that it would be a profitable undertaking
to start a restaurant next door to a theatre, and they established, in
Collins Street, the Café de Paris. Their next enterprise was to become
caterers for the Melbourne and Ballarat Railway. They were full of
ideas in those days, and one of these was to bring out to Australia
a team of English cricketers and to tour them as a speculation. This
was the thought of which the test matches were born. Spiers and Pond
came to England intending to persuade Charles Dickens to make a great
reading tour in Australia, and then it was that they espied the
nakedness of the land in regard to railway catering. Dickens came to
their aid with his attack on Mugby Junction, and he wrote an article in
_All the World_ entitled "The Genii of the Cave," in which he described
the then novelty of the "Silver Grill" under the arch at Ludgate
Circus, which Spiers and Pond established. The Criterion was the pet
child of the two great caterers. It rose on historic ground, for it
occupied the site of the old "White Bear," which had been a celebrated
coaching-house, one of those fine old inns of many galleries. The
theatre was opened four months later than the restaurant; but it was
not until 1879 that Sir Charles Wyndham, with whom so many of its
successes are associated, took over sole management, though he had been
a partner for the previous three years with Mr Alexander Henderson in
its control.
XV
SOME CHOP-HOUSES
Many of the City chop-houses nestle together in the alleys and courts
between Cornhill and Lombard Street. There, on either side of one of
the narrow little passages, you will find Simpson's Chop-houses, with
pleasant grey-green walls to their rooms and a window in which simple
food, cooked and uncooked, is shown as bait to draw in the hungry
passer-by; and there in Castle Court is the George and Vulture, which
is also Thomas' Chop-rooms, which dates back to 1660, is proud of its
Dickens' traditions, and is more ambitious in its bill of fare than
most of the chop-houses.
There also, in Chance Alley, is Baker's Chop-house, which, that there
may be no mistake as to its pretensions, describes itself on a board at
the Lombard Street entrance to the alley as a tavern, and a chop-house,
a coffee-house, and soup-rooms. It is a dignified little house, which
bears its years well--it was founded in the seventeenth century--and
which, with its two bow-windows with small panes of glass and its glass
door in between, commands confidence even before one has crossed the
threshold. Inside one of the windows are wire screens to give privacy
to the company in the house, but the other window begs all men to
look in and see the fish and the joints, the vegetables, the salad
stuff, and, perhaps, a loin of cold beef, samples of what the larder
contains. Beyond this rampart of good things edible you may see dames
and damsels attired in black, busy in a glassed-in little room drawing
beer, taking payment from satisfied customers for what they have eaten,
and a grave gentleman, with white hair and beard, making entries in
a large ledger; for the little portioned-off space you are looking
into serves as bar and counting-house, some old punch-bowls on a shelf
giving it its right old-world note.
Once inside the door you find yourself in as snug and cosy an
eating-house as you can find in London. The ground floor is partitioned
off into many boxes. There is one to your left as you come in, the
counting-house being on your right, and two, one of them with a curtain
to give it privacy, facing you, and another just beyond the grill,
and yet another one below the round clock in a black frame which is
on the back wall. The partitions and the walls are of wood panelling
painted and grained to resemble light oak, but whoever the craftsman
was who worked at it with feather and comb, he must have passed away
long ago, for the painting, like everything else in the house, has
been mellowed by time. The partitions are carried up high wherever
there is any possibility of a draught reaching anyone sitting in one
of the boxes, and in the high partitions the top panels are of glass.
There are pegs for hats and coats on the wall and a stand for umbrellas
near the fireplace. The fireplace, a big grill in a stone frame, is in
one of the side walls, and close in front of it, his body partially
sheltered by a wooden screen, stands the cook, white-bearded and in
white cap, white jacket and apron. At his elbow is a compartment,
a big box without a lid, in which are chops, steaks, and all other
things grillable, and any man who thinks he is a judge of a raw chop
or steak, looks over into this box before he finds a seat for himself,
and indicates to the cook which particular fragment of red meat he
wishes to have prepared according to his liking. Above the fireplace
is a framed water-colour picture of the outside of the house, and on
either side of this work of art are pewter plates in a splendid state
of polish. The other interesting work of art on the walls is a portrait
of "James," who was a waiter at Baker's for thirty-five years. James
was, I imagine, early Victorian. He has a benign appearance, and his
watch-chain is almost as large as a cable. The waiters of to-day are
as British as James was, and they go about their business with much
quickness and dexterity. To complete my description of the lower room
at Baker's, I should add that there is sawdust on the floor, and that a
narrow staircase, the steps of which are covered with lead, leads up to
the rooms on the other floors.
You will have seen written in little frames on one side of the
counting-house window looking into the chop-room some of the dishes
of the day that are ready--curried chicken, Irish stew (one-chop and
two-chop portions), stewed steak, and the like, and your waiter will
tell you of other good things--pies and puddings, each a portion for
one--that are ready. If you are for something from the grill, you make
your selection from the cook's stores. If a cut from the joint is to
your taste, you go upstairs to the big room on the first floor, where
there are red walls and no partitions.
A basket of great chunks of household bread is on the white-clothed
table at which you find a place; your chop, if you have selected
a chop, will come to you on a willow-patterned dish, and you will
transfer it to a willow-patterned plate. In old days all meat at
Baker's used to be served on pewter. But if the four plates over the
fireplace are the only survivors of the pewter set, your beer will
be brought you in a pewter tankard, and most of the glass is of old
pattern. When you come to the cheese stage your slice of Cheddar and
pat of butter are both excellent. Indeed all the food at Baker's is
good. No eating place which does not give good food at reasonable
prices ever survives in the City, and Baker's has seen nearly three
hundred years pass away. Who the original Baker was who gave his name
to the chop-house no one knows, but a guess is made that he was a
relation of that Mr Baker who was Master of Lloyd's Coffee-House in
Lombard Street in 1740, and who carried to Sir Robert Walpole the news
of Admiral Vernon's taking of Portobello, being suitably rewarded as a
bringer of good tidings.
The customers of Baker's Chop-house are excellent walking
advertisements of the house. They all seem to be prosperous City
men, young and old; they are well groomed and they look well-fed and
contented.
When you have finished your meal at Baker's you leave twopence by your
plate as the waiter's tip, you give the grill-cook another penny, if
you have eaten grilled fare, as you pass him on your way out, and then,
pausing at the wicket of the counting-room, you recite to the lady who
faces you the things you have eaten and what you have imbibed, and she,
doing a sum of mental arithmetic, tells you instantly what you have
to pay. As a souvenir of the house she will give you a post card, if
you ask for it, carrying a miniature copy of the work of art over the
fireplace.
But there are chop-houses in London outside the City limits, and I
know of three of them within arrow-flight of Piccadilly Circus. There
is Snow's, for instance, in Sherwood Street, almost in the Circus.
Snow's has a reputation for its steaks, and I know men who declare
that the best bacon and eggs in the world are those brought in between
two plates from the kitchen and placed on the tables at Snow's. It has
lately been rebuilt, and is a modern reproduction of a Tudor house,
its three little gables and the green gallery before its upper windows
being very picturesque. The old tables and the old partitions are in
their old places in the lower rooms, but the walls of glazed tiles and
the curved brass hangings for coats and hats are scarcely Tudor. The
company at Snow's at its busy times of the day is a curious mixture.
Your neighbour at table may be a clergyman up from the country, or the
man who shaves you at Shipwright's round the corner, or a young artist,
or a taxi chauffeur.
Stone's in Panton Street, which dates back to 1770, is another
chop-house, though it is better known as a wine-house. It has its
coffee-room, where good, plain grilled food is obtainable, though it
rather sinks the title "chop-house" in the more aristocratic "_à la
carte_ restaurant." Stone's has always been a favourite resort of men
of the theatre.
Not very many Londoners know of the Sceptre Chop-house, Number 5
Warwick Street, a little street which runs parallel, on the east, to
part of Regent Street, for it is not in a main thoroughfare. It is
a typical early Victorian chop-house, and it used to be a haunt of
Charles Dickens when he was making his first successes as an author.
The front of the house has been newly painted, but the interior remains
as it was in 1830, when it first opened its door. Its window is frosted
half-way up to obviate the necessity for blinds, with a pattern and
announcements that the house supplies chops and coffee left in plain
glass amidst the frosting. I warrant that window created considerable
enthusiasm in Warwick Street in 1830. At least three of the
proprietors, past and present, of the Sceptre have their names recorded
on the front of the building. Sanders' name is almost obliterated on
the length of brass that forms the window-sill, and shows faintly on
the glass of the door. Gosling is preserved to memory by his name in
gold letters over the door, while Purcell's is very large above the
window. Inside, the long room is a harmony of quiet colours. There
is brown boarding half-way up the walls, and above that green that
rests the eye. By the door is an enclosed cosy corner, with a mirror
in an old black frame over the fireplace. All down the room are low
mahogany partitions with seats cushioned in black. The tables are of
mahogany, polished by constant rubbing of the waitresses' napkins, and
no tablecloths ever hide the deep colour of the old wood. At the end of
the room is a screen of three arches of dark wood. The two side arches
are filled with panelling and mirrors; but through the centre arch can
be seen the kitchen with its sawdusted floor, its ranges of plates
and dishes, and the cook and the cookmaids in print dresses going
about their work. The waitresses in black dresses and white aprons
and caps bustle up and down the room and in and out of the kitchen. A
stove heats the long room, and glazing in the roof gives it light. A
staircase of black wood leads to the upper rooms, and by the doorway
into the street is a little compartment, no larger than a sentry-box,
which is the pay-desk.
The food at The Sceptre is of the simplest kind, and a haricot chop or
roast chicken are about its highest flights. Your soup, mutton broth,
or mock turtle or kidney costs you 4d. or 6d., according to the size
of the soup plate. You can pay 9d. or 10d. for your chop and 10d. for
your steak. A cut from the joint, for The Sceptre gives you a choice of
three joints, is a 9d. matter; but you can get a very ample helping of
apple tart for 3d. It is under the heading of entrées that The Sceptre
puts such high flights of cookery as curried mutton and rice, boiled
tripe and onions, Irish pie and mixed grill.
Many men distinguished in art and music and literature have felt, and
still feel, the fascination of The Sceptre Chop-house. You may, very
likely, amongst the company at the old mahogany tables, see one of the
brightest writers on _Punch_, or our greatest living painter of battle
pictures, or the man who composed "In the Shadows."
Upstairs are two delightful old rooms, browned by time and the London
climate, with old wooden shelves, old clocks, old brass candlesticks,
old chairs and tables. In one corner of the front room, by a window,
stands Dickens' chair, for it is here, so the tradition of the house
has it, that Dickens used to come in his early days to write, and it
was in this corner that many of his "Sketches by Boz" were jotted down
on paper. The Sceptre was a spruce, new little house at this period of
Dickens' life, and probability as well as tradition is on the side of
its having been one of his early haunts.
XVI
SOME GRILL-ROOMS
The modern grill-room we owe, I think, to the Americans, for the
travelling American, who has his own very sensible ideas as to what
comfort is, does not wish every night of his life to attire himself in
a "claw-hammer" evening coat, but he feels that without that garment
he would be out of place in the restaurant of any of the fashionable
hotels. The grill-room gives him an excellent dinner, just as long or
just as short as he likes, served quickly, in luxurious surroundings,
and he can dress as he likes, to eat it. An American always knows what
he wants, asks for it, and keeps on asking until he gets it. Quite a
number of Britons of both sexes wanted all the conveniences of the
grill-rooms long before the modern grill-room came into existence.
(Hard-working men of business who had not time to go home to the
suburbs to change their clothes, men of the theatre, authors and
managers who work late in the evening, actors and actresses who like
a very light meal before going to the theatre, and to sup after their
work without wearing gorgeous raiment, and a host of other people who
get their living by their brains.) But they had not the pertinacity of
the American in demanding what they wanted.
Quite the beginning of the modern grill-room was that silver grill
which Messrs Spiers and Pond established some time in the sixties under
the arch at Ludgate Hill; but I look to the little grill-room in the
old Savoy Hotel in the days before the new building had pushed through
to the Strand as being the ideal of a modern grill-room, and I always
measure any grill-room of to-day by the standard of that little place
of good eating. It was small, and its windows looked up an unlovely
cul-de-sac of which it formed the end. The people who controlled the
Savoy Hotel and the Savoy Theatre all used it as their own dining-room;
the general public scarcely knew of its existence; the food there was
excellent. Besides the chops and steaks and other real grill-room fare,
there were always one or two savoury entrées kept hot in metal pots and
pans on a miniature hot plate in the middle of the room, and when the
_maître d'hôtel_ brought over one of these and took off the cover under
one's nose, the savour of its contents alone gave one an appetite.
The present Café Parisien at the Savoy, which the russet-bearded
Gustave steered to a great success, is the legitimate successor to that
other grill-room which was hidden away in the midst of the building,
but it has not the charm of discovery felt by those who used the old
grill-room. The Café Parisien, which has its entrance in the Savoy
forecourt, where gorgeous servitors in French-grey uniforms of State
take one's coat and hat just as they do if one is going to spend one's
money in the restaurant, is a great Adams room painted a very light
grey, with _portières_ of light pink, and with chairs and carpets of
a deeper rose. It has a little space outside, a _terrasse_, as the
French would call it, which is railed off from the courtyard by a white
trellis, over which roses are trained. This is a very pleasant spot in
hot weather, if so be that no motor sighing out deep breaths of petrol
is standing in the vicinity. This Café Parisien is a place of pleasant,
clean-shirted Bohemianism, much patronised by the aristocracy of the
theatre. There is an elaborate _à la carte_ menu with stars against
those dishes which are ready. A man in a hurry can eat a four-course
dinner here in half-an-hour without risking indigestion, but a couple
who wish to talk over their meal can make a cutlet and an ice an excuse
for sitting out an hour.
The grill-room of the Princes' Restaurant, to which one descends from
an entrance in Piccadilly, is a comfortable white room, with white
pillars and mirrors in the panelled walls, where quite good food is
served, and where there are always the dishes of the day ready as well
as the chops and steaks, kidneys and sausages, and other legitimate
grill fare. The Brussels carpets and the dark leather of the chairs are
restful to the eye, and the lights in the crystal bouquets which hang
from the ceiling are not too glaring.
Almost across the way, in the great building of the Piccadilly Hotel,
quite an unpretentious entrance and a small staircase with marble walls
lead down to the grill-room. There is a lift by the stairs which is
much used by the people coming up from the grill-room, though only
lazy folk use it to go down there. This unpretentious entrance and
staircase are the portals to a suite of very high, very spacious rooms,
running the full length of the building. There are pilasters with
gilt capitols; and casemented mirrors in the walls. The electroliers
holding imitation candles give abundant light. The grill is behind a
great glass screen; carvers in white wheel about big joint waggons
and a Turk in gorgeous raiment is ready to make Oriental coffee. The
deep rose of the carpet contrasts with the white of the walls. At a
multitude of tables are hundreds of people of every comfortable class
in life, from the bank clerk to the field-marshal, and from the typist
to the duchess, eating meals simple or elaborate, just as they will.
This grill-room, like most of the others, caters for every taste; for
there is an elaborate _carte du jour_, two _table d'hôte_ luncheons
at half-a-crown and three-and-six, and a _table d'hôte_ dinner at
five-and-six. Electric fans keep the atmosphere pure. This grill-room
is all day long a very busy place, and as many as five hundred dinners
are served nightly.
Of the Criterion grill-room, the great airy hall on the ground floor of
the building, I have already written in another article.
On the other side of Piccadilly Circus the Monaco has a grill-room with
light buff walls and light buff marble pilasters. Its entrance gives
on to Shaftesbury Avenue. Near by is the Trocadero grill-room, down to
which a staircase of green and grey marble descends, and which, with
its walls of grey marble and gold and buff, its mirrors, its hammered
copper-work, its great grill and its orchestra, is handsome almost to
the point of gorgeousness. A _table d'hôte_ dinner is served here, as
it is now in most modern grill-rooms.
In Regent Street the Café Royal possesses a heavily gilded grill-room,
with entrances through the café and from Air Street, a grill-room in
which the best _entrecôte_ and the best pint of Burgundy in London
are obtainable; and on the other side of Regent Street, its entrance
hidden away in that dead little road, Haddon Street, is the grill-room
restaurant of the New Gallery Cinema Theatre, in the basement of
that establishment. It consists of two rooms, panelled with oak and
hung with copies of old tapestries. From these it takes its name Les
Gobelins. Mr Goetz, of the Vienna Café, opened this little place of
refreshment, and there were always Austrian and German dishes on its
bill of fare, but it has now changed hands, and M. Victor, late of the
Imperial and Les Lauriers, is in command. Its cookery remains very good.
The Carlton grill, which has its own entrance in the Haymarket, is
as good a specimen of the grill-room of to-day as one could select to
show to anyone who wished to understand the differences between the
chop-houses of yesterday and the grill-rooms of to-day. The staircase
which leads down to it is oak-panelled. In the little ante-chamber
where hats and coats are given up there is a newspaper stall, and in
another ante-room are easy-chairs, dark green in colour, and small
tables with tops of burnished copper. The grill-room itself is all
white, little pilasters breaking the smooth sides of the walls. Blue
china stands on the shelves, a Cromwell clock ticks on a bracket, and
at one side of the room are arched recesses with stained glass windows
at the back of them. The lights in the electroliers burn here day and
night, but the atmosphere is never stuffy. A glass screen keeps the
heat of the grill from the room, and in front of this screen are piles
of crimson tomatoes, and chops and steaks of deeper red, and mushrooms
yellow, grey and warm brown, a harmony in reds and greys. Its _carte
du jour_ is all-embracing, and some of the dishes are always ready. M.
Ventura is the presiding spirit in this grill-room. He knows the tastes
of his clientele and which tables they prefer, and when there are no
unoccupied tables and people have to be turned away, as sometimes
happens, or asked to wait in the ante-room until tables are free, his
grief is really heartfelt.
At the very gateway of the Strand the Grand Hotel has a popular
grill-room, walled with shining tiles of white and buff; the Cecil has
a great Indian room of blue and yellow tiles; and, indeed, every big
hotel from the great pile of the Kensington Palace, in the west, to the
hotel of the Great Eastern Railway in Liverpool Street in the east, has
its grill-room, the simplicity of the fare and the fact that the raw
material is always on view to the diner before it is placed on the
grill being a guarantee of the quality of the meat.
Most of the restaurants also have their grills.
Romano's turned its old kitchen into a reproduction of a room in a
Russian farmhouse with horns on the walls and an icon up in a corner,
and even at one time carried realism to the point of putting the
waiters in this part of the establishment into white blouses with red
sashes at the waist, the dress the Tartar waiters in Moscow wear. You
get the restaurant food in this grill-room at about half the restaurant
prices. A new electric grill has been installed in this Russian room
which grills just as well and far more quickly than a charcoal or a
coal grill.
The Frascati, in Oxford Street, has a grill-room on the ground floor
with walls of white marble veined with grey, and with mirrors in
Oriental frames; and at the entrance to Tottenham Court Road the
Horseshoe has an excellent grill above its oyster saloon.
The Holborn shows originality in devoting a grill-room to ladies,
and in the old Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, which now
calls itself the Connaught Rooms, there is in the basement a large
grill-room, with a choice of three joints at luncheon time as well as
an extensive _carte du jour_, a grill which is much patronised by the
lawyers from Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the evening a dinner is served
in a smaller room, and I have dined there before going across the way
to the Kingsway Theatre. Those who dine are, I think, mostly connected
in some way or another with Freemasonry, and the talk that goes on at
the tables has reference to high offices in the Craft and Mark, to
"raising" and "passing," and to that ancient and sacred ritual which
ladies still believe to be in some way connected with a red-hot poker.
XVII
ROMANO'S
Alfonso Nicolino Romano, a head waiter at the Café Royal, in 1874
bought with his savings a small fried fish shop in the Strand,
converted it into a bar and restaurant, and in addition to his own
name on its front added Café Vaudeville, for it was, and is, almost
next door to the Vaudeville Theatre. Romano's in those days possessed
a central window flanked by two doors, one leading into the bar and
the other to the rooms above. In the window as an ornament was a small
aquarium which contained goldfish, and those fish must have lived
exciting, if short, lives, for the patrons of the bar tried to feed
them with cigar ash, lemon rind, burnt almonds, and torn-up notepaper,
and it is even said that "Hughie" Drummond, one of the most amusing and
most reckless of the clean-shirted Bohemians who made "the Roman's"
known all the world over, tried to take a swim with them.
Romano was a curly-haired, humorous, quick-witted little Italian who
talked a strange Anglo-Italian jargon--"Pore ole Romano e got badda
addick this morning" his usual morning greeting, was an example of
it--and who was on the easiest terms of familiarity with most of his
clients without ever overstepping the line. He had not very many
rules as to the conduct of his business, but one from which he never
departed was that he would under no circumstances make a reduction
in the total of a bill. He would give an aggrieved customer some of
the very best "cognac" of the house or split a bottle of the most
expensive champagne with him or ask him to dinner next day, but what
he would not do was to reduce any item in the account. One of the
most frequent forms of verbal invitation given by "The Roman" was to
a Sunday midday inspection of his cellars in the Adelphi arches. "You
coma see my cellars, Mister So-and-So Eskwire, best in London" was the
actual wording. Romano had come from a good school, and he laid down an
excellent cellar. The food in the restaurant was also beyond reproach.
Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists,
coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town--for those
were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be
seen standing up in a place of refreshment--was the restaurant. It was
little more than a corridor, a long, narrow room with space for one
line of tables only; but at those tables used habitually to sit the
merriest gathering of good fellows, and I include the ladies in that
term, that ever came together in a London restaurant. There were witty
journalists such as Shirley Brooks, "Pot" Stephens, "Jimmy" Davis,
and "Shifter," and there were men of the theatre--Cecil Raleigh, for
instance, and "Charlie" Harris, who when the waiter called the order
for his dinner down the speaking-tube always added himself "pour le
patron," for Romano, who lunched and dined at the table nearest the
bar door, was not likely to get a tough steak or a thin quail. There
were Guardsmen, such at "The Windsor Warrior," "Billie FitzDitto,"
"Haddocks," and "The Bonetwister," and men about town, of whom Hughie
Drummond and Fred Russell were perhaps the best known, and coaching
men, "Dickie the Driver" and "Swish" and "Partner," who used to
delight in bringing jolly old Jim Selby to dine; and Arthur Roberts,
then at the very top of his form, and "Mons" Marius, as representatives
of the actor fraternity. And around this kernel of good-fellowship
formed a fringe of other good fellows who came and went, men from
the country, men from the far parts of the world, soldiers, sailors,
planters, explorers, country squires. It was rather a clannish
gathering, for everybody seemed to know everybody else at the line of
tables, and people who were not taken into companionship, no difficult
matter if they were kindred souls, felt "out of it," and went elsewhere.
Between the Gaiety Theatre and Romano's there grew up an indefinite
alliance, and golden-hearted Nellie Farren would lunch there when a new
burlesque was in rehearsal, and "the Child" and dear "Jack" St John
and others of the principals looked with favour on the restaurant, and
on Lord Mayors' days made a brave show of beauty at the windows of the
first floor. The Gaiety Girls of those days, splendid women and jolly
good fellows, who enjoyed life, and by their beauty and sociability
helped other people to enjoy life, lunched and supped at the Roman's.
I have a dozen names at the tip of my pen, but if I wrote them down I
should stray into a gossip over the ladies of the burlesque and light
opera stages in the seventies and eighties, and should require columns
and columns of space to deal adequately with such a subject. Most
of them married, and, as the fairy tales have it, "lived happy ever
after." And the "halls," we didn't call them variety theatres then,
were also represented at the Roman's. Jolly, humorous Bessie Bellwood
lunched there five days out of six, though she kept the Roman humble
by asserting that she preferred the tripe and onions at Chick's to
anything his kitchen could produce, and when she was in good anecdotal
form kept everybody near her tremulous with laughter. And the sisters
Leamar, who used to sing a duet as to Romano's being "a paradise, sure,
in the Strand" and added the information that "the wines and the women
are grand," naturally paid frequent visits to the restaurant to assure
themselves that the description was a correct one.
The Roman gathered about him a staff which exactly suited the tone of
the restaurant, proof thereof being that so many of them remain in
its service to this day. M. Luigi Naintre, the manager of Romano's,
has climbed the ladder of promotion steadily through all the grades
at the restaurant, and though for a while after Romano's death he
wandered into other folds, one of the first acts of the company which
now controls the restaurant was to ask him to come back to it. Long
experience has taught him the art of making each frequenter of the
restaurant believe that the establishment is maintained entirely to
meet his or her taste and whims, and he is essentially the right man in
the right place. M. Minola, his second in command, also graduated in
the "Roman" school. The cellarman, L. Bendi, and the wine-butler, L.
Villa, have been in the restaurant as far back as I can remember.
I must pass quickly over the fire which burned down the old Romano's
and its rebuilding on the site of the old restaurant and on that of
another house next door. The panelled hall and, in the restaurant, the
Moorish arches with the pictures of the Bosphorus seen through them
were features of the new building, and remain to-day as they then were.
In the nineties Romano died of pneumonia, contracted by standing one
cold winter day outside the restaurant door with no great-coat on, and
the restaurant came under the Court of Chancery.
The Court of Chancery was not at all sorry to hand over its duties to
a company, with Mr Walter Pallant, the then chairman of the Gaiety
Company, as its chairman, which was formed to purchase the restaurant.
Mr "Teddy" Bayly, who as a patron of the restaurant had helped
materially in making the fortune of the Roman, became manager, and
Luigi was appointed as second in command. When Mr Bayly left Romano's
for a restaurant of his very own M. Luigi mounted one rung more of the
ladder of promotion and was appointed manager.
The first business of the company, after giving the building "a wash
and brush up," was to find a chef of celebrity and experience to take
charge of the kitchens. They found in M. Ferrario exactly the man for
whom they were looking. M. Ferrario had learned his art under M. Coste
in the kitchens of the Cecil, and when he himself became the commander
of the kitchens of a restaurant of the first class he showed that he
had used his powers of observation, that not only did he know all that
there was to be learned concerning the _haute cuisine française_,
but that he had an open mind with regard to the cookery of all other
nations. The _mouzakkas_ that M. Ferrario sends from his kitchen are
the best I have eaten outside Bucharest. He makes a ground-nut soup,
the one delicacy that Nigeria has added to the cookery book, quite
admirably, and Romano's is the only restaurant that I know of in Europe
where one can eat a Malay curry cooked as it is cooked in Malaya and
served in the Malay fashion, with sambals and with shining Malayan
shell spoons for the rice. What substitute M. Ferrario has found for
the fresh cocoa-nut pulp which is the foundation of all Malay curries
I do not know, but he has found something which replaces it admirably.
In the winter at lunch-time north countrymen say that Romano's
Lancashire hot-pot is the real thing, and there is another British
luncheon dish, gipsy-pot, which I eat at Romano's, a savoury stew of
chicken and cabbage and other vegetables and other meats, which I find
exceptionally good.
But perhaps I had better give you in detail what are the specialities
of Romano's kitchen. They are, for lunch: Malay curry of chicken,
Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy-pot. For dinner: _poule au pot, bortch à
la Russe, potage Normande, potage Nigérienne, filets de sole Romano,
filets de sole Sportive, sole au plat aux courgettes, sole à la crème,
truite George V., poulet nouveau Valencienne, perdreau Romano, mousse
de volaille au curry,_ the last being an admirable _mousse_ with just a
far-away reminiscence of India, a sort of dream of all the good curries
of the East, in it.
If I gave you the menus of all the nice little dinners for two of which
I have been one of the participators at Romano's I should fill a fat
volume. But here is a little spring dinner which will serve my purpose
very well:
Crevettes Roses.
Fumet de Volaille aux œufs Filés.
Filets de Sole Sportive.
Epaule de Pauillac Bergère.
Petits Pois Nouveaux à la Crème.
Asperges d'Argenteuil.
Sauce Divine.
Fraises Diva.
And the wine I drank with this was a bottle of 1900 St Marceaux, which
was the choice of the lady who honoured me with her company. The
_filets de sole Sportive_ are soles which bring to table with them just
a dream of Chablis, and which are nobly backed up by crayfish.
The old Romano's in its first period was very clannish. The new
Romano's, though it is a comparatively small restaurant, finds room for
all men and all ladies who love good food and who like the slightly
Bohemian, pleasantly Parisian, atmosphere of the "Paradise in the
Strand." I have seen a duchess dining at one of the corner tables,
and I do not suppose that there is a man about town, from dukes to
the latest emancipated Oxonian, who does not know Romano's and its
ways. The clientele varies with the different meals. At lunch-time,
particularly, if there are rehearsals in progress at the Adelphi or the
Gaiety or any of the other light opera or revue theatres, a host of
pretty little ladies go to Romano's and very probably the "Governor"
and the librettists and composers, and a stage director or two, will
be lunching at a corner table. Half-a-dozen other managers are sure
to be somewhere in the restaurant, and there will be ladies not of
the stage, and solicitors, and barristers from the Law Courts and a
plaintiff or two, and a journalist or two, a very interesting _salmis_
of the stage world and the business world and the world of Law, with a
good seasoning of men from the far parts of the world, and men about
town and soldiers and sailors. At dinner little parties going on to
the theatre finish their feasts about the time that the habitués of
the restaurant, who are going on nowhere or to a variety theatre, make
their appearance. At supper-time the stage is once again the most
strongly represented element, and there is no restaurant in Paris which
can show at this hour prettier faces or more unforced gaiety. The
bright young spirits from the 'varsities all love Romano's, but Luigi
has a wholesome fear of the "Twenty-firsters," as the boys call their
coming-of-age feasts, and the numbers at these gatherings at Romano's
are kept within very strict limits.
There is one happy young Oxonian who absolutely defeated Luigi at
a birthday feast. He had been solemnly warned that the spirits of
his party must not rise too high, and he and they had all behaved
with quite suspicious decorum during supper. The band had finished
playing, and the bandmaster, on departing, had locked the door of the
pulpit-like Moorish bandstand that projects high up into the room.
When closing hour came and all the guests were moving out except the
party of young Oxonians Luigi told them that they also must take their
departure. But their leader begged to be allowed to sit on for a few
seconds longer, even though the lights were turned out. Out went the
lights, and then here and there a single light was put up again that
the waiters might see to pile the chairs on the tables and put the
restaurant into its night attire. Luigi, looking at the supper-party,
thought that their numbers had diminished, and from the bandstand came
the sound of someone playing the piano. In the two seconds of darkness
the giver of the feast had performed a really wonderful gymnastic
feat. Jumping off from the back of one of his guests, he had climbed
up into the bandstand and had taken his seat at the piano. The door
was locked and the key gone home with the bandmaster; his fortress
was unstormable, and he was in complete possession. For a quarter of
an hour or so he played little selections at the piano, inquiring of
Luigi, who stood below, what were his favourite airs, and it was only
when his musical repertoire ran out that he climbed out of his aerie
and dropped to the floor.
On occasions, generally on the evening of first nights at the theatres,
when an extension has been obtained, suppers at Romano's sometimes
end in little dances. But the great dance of the year at Romano's
is the "Twelfth Night," one which is not so much a party given by
the restaurant as a party given to themselves by the habitués of the
restaurant. All the tables for this night are secured weeks in advance,
each host pays for his own party, but Romano's supplies all the toys
and the presents, the masks and tambourines, and anything new in
trifles that is to be bought in any city of the world. The shops of
Paris and Vienna are ransacked to provide novelties for this evening.
The spirit of Paris always hovers above Romano's, but this particular
night in its fun without rowdiness is the most Parisian night of the
year.
Romano's as it now is is very different in its arrangements from the
restaurant that the company took over from the Court of Chancery. What
was the linen room is now a gallery, which is nicknamed the "Bird
Cage," looking down on to the restaurant. The kitchen has been taken
away from below the restaurant and put behind it, and where the kitchen
was is now a grill-room with lattice-work arbours decked with vines and
a vista leading up to a little fountain. The whole scheme of decoration
of the restaurant is now of the lightest of light Moorish design, the
details being copied from the Alhambra at Granada. The most important
change of all is the disappearance of the old bar, a bar which in its
day made history, its place being taken by a little waiting-room,
which is a reproduction in most of its details of the Henri IV. room
in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A good deal of loving care has been
bestowed on all the details of the decoration and equipment of the
restaurant. Look at the brass handles on the doors leading into the
hall, and you will see that they are admirable works of art. In the
same way the napery put on the table at dinner-time before coffee is
served is well worth a glance. Some of the china is quite beautiful
in pattern, and the gilt finger-bowl brought you at dessert is very
probably a copy of some of the loot taken by Attila and now preserved
in the Budapest museum.
Banquets are sometimes given at Romano's in the private room looking
down on the Strand, which has been shut off from the balcony, and no
better indication of the type of these could be given than by setting
down the menu of the latest dinner of the Wine Connoisseurs' Club, at
which there were forty guests:
Cantaloup Glacé.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté de Volaille Duchesse.
Truite George V.
Ris de Veau aux Perles Noires.
Selle de Béhague aux Primeurs.
Pommes Ideal.
Granite au Clicquot.
Poularde Flanquée D'Ortolans.
Salade Romaine.
Asperges Vertes, Sauce Divine.
Pêches Orientales.
Mignardises.
Paillettes au Parmesan.
Dessert.
The _Truite George V._ which has a place in this menu is one of the
specialities of the house. It is a salmon trout, braized in port,
served cold on ice with sliced oranges and a luscious jelly.
Little Romano used to allude to his cellars, as I have written, as
"best in London," and the restaurant has always had a celebrity for
the great choice of champagnes of the great brands and great years it
offers its patrons. Most of the profits made during the last few years
have been expended on champagnes, and no restaurant in London is better
prepared to face that champagne famine which will so soon be upon us.
XVIII
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
One of our legislators had very kindly asked me to dine with him at
the House of Commons, at eight-fifteen P.M., and had told me that he
would meet me at the public entrance. When I mentioned his name to the
civil young policeman at the outer door he touched his helmet and said
that my host had just gone through, so I followed on his tracks. I went
past Westminster Hall, which was in splints, for the ceiling was under
repair, and along that other great hall where statesmen of the past
stand looking their very best in marble. There were two lines of the
public sitting on the benches in between the marble statues, no doubt
hoping eventually to obtain admission to the Strangers' Gallery, for it
was the winding-up night of the Marconi debate. I mentioned my host's
name to every policeman I came across, because I found that when I
did so they touched their helmets and looked pleased, and I am always
delighted to give inexpensive pleasure to any policeman.
In the public lobby the legislator, who, incidentally I may mention,
is Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, found me and took me in the
direction of the dining-rooms. We passed the new fireplace that the
House of Commons has presented to itself, quite the most tasty thing
in fireplaces I have ever seen, with a sort of glorified ingle-nook
seat on either side of it. I peeped through the glass door into the
members' dining-room with its handsome panelling, and the Ministerial
Room, where some fine portraits hang on the walls, and eventually we
went down the staircase with the good napkin panelling on either side,
looked at that other staircase which was in course of construction
for the convenience of lady guests, came to the long corridor where
the photographs taken by Sir Benjamin Stone hang, and going down it
had glimpses through open doors of dinner-parties in which ladies
predominated, all mighty merry, and twittering like the birds in an
aviary. From the chairman's own room, which he occasionally lends to
his brother members, sallied forth a Ministerial Whip, who seized my
host by the arm, held an open wine list before him as though they
were going to sing hymns out of the same book, and asked him what
champagne he ought to order for his guests. That knotty point being
settled I gave up my hat and coat to an attendant, and followed my
host, who threaded his way through the tables in the largest Strangers'
dining-room to his own particular dining spot in a recess which
commands a view of the whole of the room.
It is an exceedingly pleasant dining-room. The walls are of panels of
grey and white, framed in light wood, with on them good prints in black
frames, the gifts of M.P.'s who love their House just as ordinary men
love their pet clubs. The four-square pillars which support the roof
are painted cream colour; light is thrown up on to the ceiling from
glass electroliers, shaped like round shields, and here and there a
palm and some green screens give a restful note of cool colour. At
one end of the room a clock on the wall reminds M.P.'s of the passing
time, and at the other end, on a roll of paper, which passes through a
wooden frame, is printed the name of the member who at the moment is
addressing the House. The windows of this pleasant dining-room look
out on to the terrace and across the river to the great hospital,
behind which the sky still held some of the rose of sunset. There were
dinner-parties innumerable being held in the room, and the manager
informed us later that he had been obliged to tell many would-be hosts
that he could not find room for their parties.
A great debate means a gala night in the dining-rooms of the House, and
had I not known where I was, looking at the pretty and smartly dressed
ladies and their smiling hosts, I should have thought that I was in one
of the smaller dining-rooms of one of our great restaurants. Here and
there amongst the guests and the dinner-givers were faces I recognised,
and the legislator told me during the course of our dinner who were the
other hosts at the different tables, for he probably knows personally
more men of all the different parties than does any other member of the
House.
"I have ordered a very small dinner," said my host, as a waiter brought
us a pot of caviare ensconced in a basin of crushed ice, and this was
the menu of the said small dinner:
Caviare.
Consommé d'Aremberg.
Homard Sauté Paillard.
Noisettes d'Agneau aux Primeurs.
Pommes Suzon.
Cailles de Vigne sur Canapés.
Salad Cœur de Laitues au Citron.
Asperges Anglo et Française.
Sauce Mousseline.
Pêches Flambées.
Dessert.
The lobster was an admirable dish, the rice served with it being a
corrective to the exceeding richness of the liquid, and when the
chairman and myself had eaten it with great relish I suggested to him
that part of the pleasure it had given us was the fact that neither
of us ought to have touched it at all, for the chairman had only just
recovered from a second bout of influenza, and my tame doctor would
have had a fit if he had known that I made a clean plate of such a rich
delicacy. The dinner throughout was admirable, and I asked my host who
was the _chef de cuisine_, and what was his history. The chef to the
House, he told me, is M. Roux, who looks to M. Escoffier as the great
master under whom he learned his art.
My host had told me to ask him any questions I liked concerning the
catering and the management of the kitchens and dining-rooms, and I
learned that the committee consists of sixteen members drawn from
every party in the House, and that it meets once a week; that the
allowance made by the House for the upkeep of its dining-rooms is £2600
a year, and that the turn-over is usually about £17,000 a year, but
that in 1912, being an exceptionally busy one, it rose to £25,000. I
also learned that there is always first-class specialist advice ready
to be called in, for no matter what subject is under discussion--be
it tablecloths, or cutlery or glass--there is sure to be amongst the
members of the House someone who is the highest authority on the
subject, and who willingly comes to the assistance of the Kitchen
Committee.
When I began to ask questions about the regular House dinner and
about that celebrated shilling dinner of which the outside public
hear so much, the Chairman sent for the manager, a young man who has
stepped from the post of assistant into the full-blown dignity of the
managerial frock-coat, and asked him to show me the menus of the day
and the wine list. There was a tone of pride in the manager's voice
when he said that 300 dinners had been served that evening in the
upstairs rooms, and he also told me the number of the guests in the
downstairs rooms--186, I think he said, in all. The shilling dinner,
of which about 150 are served each night, consists of fish or entrée,
or joints, two vegetables, bread or plain toast, a pat of butter
and Cheddar or Cheshire cheese. There is also a vegetarian dinner
ready at a quarter of an hour's notice, from six till nine o'clock,
which on that particular night consisted of _crème d'asperges, œufs
a la tripe, carottes à la crème,_ or _haricots verts au beurre_ or
_macaroni Milanaise,_ and cheese and butter. And there is a half-crown
dinner of the day of four courses, vegetables and cheese and butter.
Sixpence table money is charged for guests. This is the menu of the
five-shilling dinner of that day, and it reads to me a very good one:
Melon Glacé.
Consommé Froide or Crème d'Asperges.
Filets de Sole Dejazet.
Quartier d'Agneau à la Broche.
Pommes Fondantes.
Petits Pois au Beurre.
Cailles de Vigne Casserole.
Salade Romaine.
Bombe Fraisalia.
Croustades Maltaises.
Dessert.
There is also a grill menu and a long list of cold joints. To make the
list of menus complete, the manager showed me that of the two-shilling
dinner, which is ready at six o'clock, served in the dining-room of the
Press Gallery. Later on in the evening I was shown the separate kitchen
which serves the dining-room of the Gallery and saw that it was as well
organised as is everything else in the kitchen department of the House.
Looking through the wine list, I noticed that some of the sherries have
come from Windsor Castle, Marlborough House and Sandringham; the most
expensive of these being that--bottled 1875--from Windsor, for which
12s. 6d. a bottle is charged. But a glass of Amontillado costs no more
than 4d. Sixpence a glass is the lowest price charged for any port, and
the most expensive on the list is Cockburn's 1847, bottled 1850, which
is a guinea a bottle. There are some 1898 champagnes still on the list,
and some 1900. The wines of 1904 make the longest list, Veuve Clicquot
heading the roll at 13s. 6d. a bottle; Heidsieck Dry Monopole, Pommery
and Greno, Pol Roger, Moët and Chandon, Krug and Monte Bello varying in
price from 13s. 6d. to 10s. a bottle. The brand Deutz and Gelderman is
represented by pints at 6s. 6d., and the magnums of Monte Bello cost
18s. 6d.
Our dinner finished and all the questions that I could think of asked
and answered, my host took me out on to the terrace to drink our
coffee. All the light of the sunset had died out, and the long lines
of lamps on the Embankment across the river were shining brilliantly.
Across Westminster Bridge the tramcars, all blazing with light, were
passing and repassing each other, an effect I commend to Mr Arthur
Collins for use in some future Drury Lane production. The terrace
itself is dimly lighted by gas lamps, but this half light, pleasant and
in keeping with the solemn mystery of the great, dark river that flows
past, seems to frame fittingly the brilliance of the wonderful night
scene. Little groups of ladies were about the tables in that centre
space where members may dispense hospitality. The talk of the men who
came to speak to my host was all of what was in progress in the chamber
of debate upstairs, of the pity of it that no agreement had been come
to and that a division was necessary, of the admirable speech that Mr
Balfour had made in the afternoon, and such-like matters.
I felt that I had kept my host too long from his place and wished to
bid him good-night there and then, but he said that though he had
failed to obtain a ticket for me in the afternoon to hear the debate,
he would try again; so upstairs we went, and he left me in charge, in
the Members' Lobby, of a benign old gentleman with a pointed white
beard and wearing knee-breeches, while he went inside to see what he
could do. He returned waving a card, the white-bearded gentleman looked
even more benign, and took my hat and coat, and I was sent with the
card up a little flight of stairs. In perfect comfort I listened to
Mr Bonar Law making his points on the Unionist side, rapping with his
finger-nails on the big box on the table as he did so, and then heard
Sir Edward Grey, tucking his right hand under his frock-coat as though
that garment pinched him below the arm, reply for the Government;
watched the members stream out for the division, heard the numbers read
out, and saw the end of an historic debate.
A most pleasant and interesting evening.
XIX
A REGIMENTAL DINNER
AT THE TROCADERO
The Commissionaire at the centre entrance to the Trocadero greets me
with "Regimental dinner, sir? First floor, leave your coat and hat to
the right." A very intelligent man this commissionaire, an old soldier
who knows another old soldier when he sees him. I leave my coat and
hat as directed, ascend in the lift, and am disgorged into a corridor,
the walls of which are covered with an inlay of gold Venetian glass
tesseræ, pay the very small sum that subscribers to the Regimental
Dinner Club are mulcted, and go into a screened-off space of the large
banqueting-room in which the feast is to be held. Here two score
gentlemen, old and young, most of them with a bar of miniature medals
on the lapels of their evening coats, are talking, laughing, moving to
and fro, and shaking hands with great heartiness. It is by no means a
_mauvais quart d'heure_ these minutes of assembling before a regimental
dinner, for old friends who see each other only once a year meet
then, and the inquiries as to each other's health and prosperity and
happiness are no formal compliments, but a real desire to know how the
world wags with old comrades in arms.
The screens that divide the room in two are withdrawn and the company
take their places at the table in no set order, though the veterans
all try to sit next to some old friend of their soldiering days and
the subalterns cling together in little swarms at the far ends of the
table. The room in which we are dining, the Alexandra, is panelled to
a man's height with dark marbles, with central squares of light marble,
and there are at one end pillars of black wood fluted with gold.
It is a room with a dignity of its own. Through the lace-curtained
windows can be seen the electric advertisements on the other side
of Shaftesbury Avenue, advertisements which set forth in a blaze of
alternating red and green and white light the virtues of somebody's
whisky and somebody else's cigarettes, and through the open windows
come the roar of the traffic and the hoots of the motor horns. We
are dining on the very hub of London. The table for the dinner is of
horseshoe shape, with another length of table running up the centre.
There are candles with pink shades, and pink flowers in vases and
strewn on the table in garlands. The Major-General, who is the full
Colonel of the regiment, who served in it for many long years, and
was at one time the Adjutant of one of the battalions, sits at the
top of the bend of the horseshoe, and chance, not precedence, has put
me on one side of him. The two Brigadier-Generals who are amongst
the diners, each of whom wears, as our chairman does, his C.B. cross
at one end of his long bars of miniature medals and decorations, are
somewhere farther down the curve of the horseshoe, and brevet colonels
and subalterns and captains and lieutenant-colonels and majors all sit
where fancy leads them, some of the seniors to talk to the son of an
old friend, a boy who has just joined, some to talk polo, or fishing,
or gardening, or shooting, or the iniquities of the Land Tax with
friends of like tastes.
A Regimental Dinner ought to be described by some lady novelist who
has never been to one and is in no way hampered by any unromantic
facts. Grizzled men bearing the scars of old wounds should talk to
each other of midnight marches and fierce charges and hand-to-hand
combats, and tell the tale over their port of how Billy Bright Eyes,
the curly-headed drummer of Company B, won the Victoria Cross on some
day of awful slaughter. Unfortunately for picturesqueness' sake the
grizzled men talk about nothing of the kind. The man who could narrate
as moving stories as ever Othello dropped into Desdemona's willing ear
tells his next-door neighbour of the fishing in Norway he has taken
this year and of the advantages of travelling to it from the port in a
motor car instead of going on the old country conveyances. The man who
really earned a V.C. in South Africa, though there were no lookers-on
to write glowing accounts to headquarters, is discussing with another
man of many battles the advantages of Waterloo over other late-bearing
strawberry plants, and laments that there are no pears this year on
any of his trees. Tales of a big night at mess in "The Shiny," when
a Highland regiment, passing through, was entertained at a dinner
which only ended when the pipes were playing "Hey Johnnie Cope" in the
grey before sunrise, may stray casually into the conversation, and a
regretful word or two may be said that the regimental polo fund in
India had not enough ready money to buy a certain pony which would just
have won a match for the regiment in an important tournament. Cricket,
polo, grouse moors, the coming hunting season, the present play at the
Gaiety, the merits of the various revues are the things talked about,
and "shop" is almost as rigidly excluded from the conversation as
though the dinner was taking place in the regimental mess.
The length of a regimental dinner is as difficult to curtail as is that
of a City feast or a Masonic banquet, for any manager of a restaurant
or any _maître d'hôtel_ considers it to be an "important" meal, and
believes that the guests will not think they have dined satisfactorily
unless they have eaten prodigiously. But the three officers who manage
our Regimental Dinner Club are happily men of the world as well as old
soldiers, and they insist that the dinner shall be ordered to please
the tastes of those who dine, and not of those who serve the dinner.
This is the menu of the Trocadero dinner. The little circle of beef
offered to each man is the only heavy dish in it, and the chicken with
its tempting stuffing is the only rich dish that it contains:
Melon Glacé.
Hors d'œuvre de Choix.
Tortue Claire.
Truite de Rivière au bleu, Beurre fondu.
Pommes nature.
Poularde du Mans Favorite.
Médaillon de Bœuf Rossini.
Spoom au Kummel.
Caille de Vigne sur Croustade.
Salade Romaine.
Asperges nouvelles, Sauce Maltaise.
Fraises à la Zouave.
Corbeille de Friandises.
Pailles au Parmesan.
Dessert.
Café.
VINS.
Punch.
Johannisberger, 1900.
Chas. Heidsieck, 1904.
Moët et Chandon, 1904.
Château Branaire Ducru, 1900.
Dow's 1890 Port.
Courvoisier's 1831 Brandy.
The menu, according to custom immemorial, is decorated with the crests
of the regiment, with the date of its raising, 1572, and with a little
picture of the uniform of the regiment in the year 1684, when the full
privates wore black boy-scout hats, bands such as barristers still
wear, and coats with very long skirts.
Twenty years ago no regimental dinner could have been held without
interminable speeches, which were sometimes listened to with scant
patience by the subalterns, who wanted to get to the Empire or the
Alhambra before the performance ended. Nowadays there are no speeches,
at all events at our dinner, and the only toast proposed is that of
"The King." After this loyal toast has been drunk and the cigars
lighted, all formality vanishes, every man moves from his place and
goes to talk to those of his old friends who have been out of earshot
during dinner; the subalterns make inquiries as to whether the Cabaret
Club or the Four Hundred Club is the most amusing place in which to
keep awake after all the restaurants are shut, and as eleven o'clock
comes some of the guests go off to the Service clubs, some have to
catch last trains, and the commissionaire downstairs has a busy time
whistling for taxis.
There is not much ancient history to delve into with regard to the
Trocadero Restaurant. Part of it stands on the ground which, when Great
Windmill Street was a cul-de-sac, before Shaftesbury Avenue was made,
was occupied by the Argyle Dancing Rooms, familiarly known as "The
Duke's." "The Duke's" played its part in the night life of London in
the sixties and seventies, when Kate Hamilton's and the other night
houses still existed in the Haymarket, and though there were occasional
rows there, some of the officers of one of the Household cavalry
regiments being on one occasion marched off to the police station,
it was on the whole a well-conducted establishment, with an admirable
orchestra to play dance music. But the spasm of morality which passed
over London towards the end of the last century swept the Argyle Rooms
out of existence, and their proprietor, Mr "Bob" Bignell, converted
the vacant rooms into the Trocadero Music Hall. Mr "Sam" Adams was the
next proprietor of the music-hall, and then Mr Joseph Lyons, who was
not yet a knight, saw the possibilities of the site for a restaurant,
and gave a very large price for the old hall. The Trocadero Restaurant,
when it first was built, was only half as large as it is now, for that
red-brick portion of it which faces Shaftesbury Avenue was a nest of
flats and chambers, and the conversion of this building when Lyons &
Company bought it, into restaurant premises, was an architectural feat.
Where the old building ends and the additions begin can be clearly seen
by the difference in the architecture.
It is a curious fact that Sir Joseph Lyons, the head and mainspring
of the great organisation which controls the scores of restaurants
and hundreds of tea-shops belonging to Lyons & Company, wished in his
youthful days to be an artist, and that his amusement now, whenever he
has any leisure, which he rarely has, is to paint sunsets.
XX
"JOLLY GOOD"
A HALF-GUINEA DINNER AT THE TROCADERO
No account of the Trocadero would be complete without an allusion to
the _table d'hôte_ dinners which are served in the great hall of the
restaurant, and I do not think that I can do better than reprint the
account of a half-guinea dinner I gave there some ten years ago to a
small Harrow boy. The Mr Lyons of the article is now Sir Joseph, and
I fancy that the Messrs Salmon, who are now County Councillors and
members of many other important bodies, are too busy to show even
such an important person as a young Harrovian all the glories of the
restaurant. But in all essentials the half-guinea dinner of to-day at
the Trocadero is much as it was ten years ago. It was excellent then
and is excellent now.
* * * * *
I dined one day early last week at the Trocadero, a little specially
ordered _tête-à-tête_ dinner over which the chef had taken much
trouble--his _Suprêmes de sole Trocadéro_ and _Poulet de printemps
Rodisi_ are well worth remembering--and while I drank the Moët '84,
cuvée 1714, and luxuriated in some brandy dating back to 1815, the
solution of a problem that had puzzled me mildly came to me.
An old friend was sending his son, a boy at Harrow, up to London to
see a dentist before going back to school, and asked me if I would
mind giving him something to eat, and taking him to a performance
of some kind. I said "Yes," of course; but I felt it was something
of an undertaking. When I was at Harrow my ideas of luxury consisted
of ices at Fuller's and sausages and mashed potatoes carried home in
a paper bag. I had no idea as to what Jones minor's tastes might be;
but if he was anything like what I was then he would prefer plenty of
good food, combined with music and gorgeousness and excitement, to
the most delicate _mousse_ ever made, eaten in philosophic calm. The
Trocadero was the place; if he was not impressed by the dinner, by the
magnificence of the rooms, by the beautiful staircase, by the music,
then I did not know my Harrow boy.
Jones minor arrived at my club at five minutes to the half-past seven,
and I saw at once that he was not a young gentleman to be easily
impressed. He had on a faultless black short jacket and trousers, a
white waistcoat, and a tuberose in his buttonhole. I asked him if he
knew the Trocadero, and he said that he had not dined there; but plenty
of boys in his house had, and had said that it was jolly good.
When we came to the entrance of the Trocadero, an entrance that always
impresses me by its palatial splendour, I pointed out to him the veined
marble of the walls and the magnificent frieze in which Messrs Moira
and Jenkins, two of the cleverest of our young artists, have struck out
a new line of decoration; and when I had paused a while to let him take
it in I asked him what he thought of it, and he said he thought it was
jolly good.
Mr Alfred Salmon, in chief command, and the good-looking _maître
d'hôtel_, both saw us to our table, and a plump waiter whom I remember
of old at the Savoy was there with the various menu cards in his hand.
The table had been heaped with roses in our honour, and I felt that all
this attention must impress Jones minor; but he unfolded his napkin
with the calm of unconcern, and I regretted that I had not arranged to
have the band play "See the Conquering Hero Comes" and have a triumphal
arch erected in his honour.
I had intended to give him the five-shilling _table d'hôte_ meal;
but in face of this calm superiority I abandoned that, skipped the
seven-and-six _table d'hôte_ as well, and ordered the half-guinea one.
I had thought that three-and-sixpennyworth of wine should be ample for
a growing boy, but having rushed into reckless extravagance over the
food I thought I would let him try seven-and-sixpenny worth of wine. I
personally ordered a pint of 277, which is an excellent wine. I told
Jones minor that the doctor told me not to mix my wines, and he said
something about having to be careful when one got old that I did not
think sounded at all nice.
While we paused, waiting for the _hors d'œuvre_, I drew his attention
to all the gorgeousness of the grand restaurant, the cream and gold,
the hand-painted ceiling-panels, on which the cupids sport, the
brocades and silks of the wall-panels, the broad band of gold of the
gallery running round the room, the crimson and gold draperies, the
glimpse of the blue and white and gold of the _salon_ seen through the
dark framing of the _portières_; I bade him note the morocco leather
chairs with gold initials on the back, and the same initials on the
collars of the servants. It is a blaze of gorgeousness that recalls
to me some dream of the Arabian Nights; but Jones minor said somewhat
coldly that he thought it jolly good.
We drank our _potage vert-pré_ out of silver plates, but this had no
more effect on Jones minor than if they had been earthenware. I drew
his attention to the excellent band up above, in their gilded cage. I
pointed out to him amidst the crowd of diners two ex-Lord Mayors, an
A.D.C. to Royalty, the most popular low comedian of the day, a member
of the last Cabinet, our foremost dramatic critic and his wife, and one
of our leading lawyers. Jones minor had no objection to their presence,
but nothing more. The only interest he showed was in a table at which
an Irish M.P. was entertaining his family, among them two Eton boys,
and towards them his attitude was haughty but hostile.
So I tried to thaw him while we ate our whitebait, which was capitally
cooked, by telling him tales of the criminal existence I led when I was
a boy at Harrow. I told him how I put my foot in the door of Mr Bull's
classroom when it was being closed at early morning school time. I told
him how I took up alternate halves of one exercise of rule of three
through one whole term to "Old Teek." I told him how I and another bad
boy lay for two hours in a bed of nettles on Kingsbury race-course,
because we thought a man watching the races with his back to us was Mr
Middlemist. And I asked him if Harrow was likely to be badly beaten by
Eton in the coming match at Lord's.
This for a moment thawed Jones minor into humanity. Harrow, he said,
was going to jolly well lick Eton in one innings, and before the boy
froze up again I learned that the Headmaster's had beaten some other
house in the final of the Torpid football matches, and several other
items of interesting news.
The _filets mignons_, from his face, Jones minor seemed to like; but
he restrained all his emotions with Spartan severity. He did not
contradict me when I said that the _petites bouchées à la St-Hubert_
were good; but he ate three _sorbets_, and looked as if he could tackle
three more, which showed me that the real spirit of the Harrow boy was
there somewhere under the glacial surface, if I could only get at it.
Mr Lyons, piercing of eye, his head-covering worn a little through by
the worries of the magnitude of his many undertakings, with little
side-whiskers and a little moustache, passed by, and I introduced the
boy to him, and afterwards explained the number of strings pulled by
this Napoleon of supply, and at the mention of a "grub shop in every
other street" Jones minor's eyes brightened.
When Jones minor had made a clean sweep of the plate of _petits fours_,
and had drained the last drops of his glass of Chartreuse, I thought I
might venture to ask him how he liked his dinner, as a whole. This was
what he had conscientiously eaten through:
Hors d'œuvre variés.
Consommé Monte Carlo. Potage vert-pré.
Petites soles à la Florentine. Blanchailles au citron.
Filets mignons à la Rachel.
Petites bouchées à la St-Hubert.
Sorbet.
Poularde de Surrey à la broche.
Salade saison.
Asperges nouvelles. Sauce mousseux.
Charlotte russe.
Soufflé glacé Pompadour.
Petits fours. Dessert.
He had drunk a glass of Amontillado, a glass of '89 Liebfraumilch,
two glasses of Deutz and Gelderman, a glass of dessert claret, and a
glass of liqueur, and when pressed for a critical opinion, said that he
thought that it was jolly good.
Impressed into using a new adjective Jones minor should be somehow. So,
with Mr Isidore Salmon as escort, I took him over the big house from
top to bottom. He shook the chef's hand with the serenity of a prince
in the kitchen at the top of the house, and showed some interest in the
wonderful roasting arrangements worked by electricity and the clever
method of registering orders. He gazed at the mighty stores of meat and
vegetables, peeped into the cosy private dining-rooms, had the beauties
of the noble Empire ballroom explained to him, and finally, in the
grill-room, amid the surroundings of Cippolini marble and old copper,
the excellent string band played a gavotte, at my request, as being
likely to take his fancy.
Then I asked Jones minor what he thought of it all, and he said that he
thought it jolly good.
I paid my bill: Two dinners, £1, 1s.; _table d'hôte_ wine, 7s. 6d.;
half 277, 7s.; liqueur, 2s. 6d.; total, £1, 18s.; and asked Jones minor
where he would like to go and be amused. He said he had heard that the
Empire was jolly good.
XXI
IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE THEATRE
KETTNER'S LE DINER FRANÇAIS
I know as a result of my early training in Miss Woodman's school for
the "sons of the nobility and gentry" in Somerset Street, off Orchard
Street, that a piece of land almost entirely surrounded by water is
called a peninsula. But I was never instructed in any school as to
there being a special name for a theatre almost entirely surrounded by
restaurants. If there is such a name it should be applied to the Palace
Theatre, for restaurants have sprouted up about it just as grass grows
round the foot of a tree.
Of this group of restaurants two at least that I know deserve special
mention, one as having been the pioneer of clean restaurant kitchens
and the other, a very cheap restaurant, as having made the fortune
of one restaurateur and of being in the course of making the fortune
of his successor. Kettner's, in Church Street, was the first small
restaurant that dared to show its kitchen to all comers at a time when
the kitchens of most little foreign restaurants were places of horror.
M. Auguste Kettner was a chef who had learned his art in his native
country, and who, as an investment of his savings, started a small
restaurant, in 1867, in Church Street, Soho. Those were the days before
Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the slums, before Cambridge
Circus was made, before the Palace Theatre was built, and when Soho was
a maze of little streets. So puzzling to a stranger was its geography
that the district inspired W. S. Gilbert to write a "Bab" ballad
concerning Peter the Wag, the policeman with a taste for practical
jokes who always sent the people who asked the way of him in the wrong
direction. Retribution came to Peter when he lost his way near Poland
Street, Soho.
"For weeks he trod his self-made beat,
Through Newport--Gerrard--Bear--Greek--Rupert--Frith--Dean--Poland Streets,
And into Golden Square."
Kettner's was discovered by a correspondent of _The Times_, and the
readers of the Thunderer, which in those days took very meagre notice
of the amusements and enjoyments of life, were surprised to be told
of a little restaurant in the centre of Soho where the kitchen was
as clean as a new pin and where excellent food was to be obtained at
surprisingly cheap prices. That article made the fortune of Kettner's
just as other articles in less august papers have made since then the
fortunes of other restaurants. Journalists, artists and actors, the
swallows who herald prosperity, came to the restaurant, and George
Augustus Sala, the author, who was a _fin gourmet_, with a knowledge of
the practical side of cookery as well, became the great patron of the
restaurant.
In the early seventies, as a young subaltern with a microscopic income
and a desire to make it stretch as far as possible, I used often to
dine at Kettner's. It was a real chef's restaurant in those days, an _à
la carte_ establishment where one ate one or two dishes quite admirably
cooked, and where a walk through the kitchen and an inspection of the
larder always preceded or followed a dinner. I never hurried over a
meal to be in time for the rising of the curtain at a neighbouring
theatre, for there were no neighbouring theatres then, but enjoyed
my dinner to the uttermost. M. Kettner then was so successful in
business that he was gradually absorbing house after house, and his
restaurant, instead of being in one little house, occupied the ground
floor of several houses, doors being driven through the party walls.
The private rooms on the first floor were favourite dining places of
couples who wished to be _tête-à-tête_, and I fancy that when the
popularity of such little dinners at restaurants was dimmed it was a
blow to the restaurant in Church Street. I have always thought myself
that the almost entire disappearance of the small private dining-room
from restaurants coincided with the building of innumerable houses of
flats, and that the dinners which used to be given in the _cabinets
particuliers_ are now eaten in flats.
In 1877 two events of great importance to M. Kettner happened: he wrote
his "Book of the Table" and he died. His table book, of which a second
edition has recently been published, is a curious mixture of very
useful recipes and scraps of information concerning all matters under
the sun that can in any way be connected with cookery. Achilles, for
instance, is brought into the book that reference may be made to the
Achilles statue in Hyde Park, and then to the great Duke of Wellington,
of whom the story is told that his cook, Felix, left his service in
despair because the Duke could not distinguish between a dinner cooked
by an artist and one horribly mauled by a kitchenmaid.
When at the height of his fame and prosperity M. Kettner died and left
a widow, and Madame Kettner, when her days of mourning had passed,
married M. Giovanni Sangiorgi, who also became her partner in the
business, a kindly man who keeps a watchful eye on the restaurant which
is now controlled by a company. The restaurant was in comparatively
late years rebuilt and an entrance hall given to it, and the two rooms
to the right of the hall were in 1913 very tastefully redecorated,
but it still retains its characteristic of being several small houses
joined together. The first sight that greets one's eyes on entering the
hall is a view of the kitchen, generally with a cook in white clothing
busy about his work as the centre of the picture, and those who lunch
and dine are, as of yore, asked to walk through the white-tiled,
beautifully clean domain of the chef. A grill-room now forms part
of the establishment, and the character of the meals is changed in
that _table d'hôte_ dinners at various prices are the trump cards of
the establishment. I fancy that the propinquity of the Palace, of
the Shaftesbury Theatre, and now of the Ambassadors' may have had a
great deal to say to this change, for when I dine at Kettner's before
going to the Palace or the Shaftesbury I can see that most of my
fellow-guests are theatre-goers. A three-and-six _table d'hôte_ dinner
in the grill-room and five-shilling and seven-and-six ones in the
restaurant are the early evening meals of the establishment, and below
is quite a fair specimen of the menu of the five-shilling dinner. It
is the one I ate on the last occasion that I made a pilgrimage to see
Madame Pavlova dance. The quail was fat and tender, and the _crème
Victoria_ a good soup:
MENU
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Bortsch.
Crème Victoria.
Turbotin Bercy ou Blanchaille.
Poulet Poëlé Derby.
Côtelette de Mouton Maréchale.
Pommes Nouvelles.
Caille Rôtie.
Salade.
Glacé de Moka.
But Kettner's now has to encounter many rivals, for young men such
as Kettner himself was when he made the fame of his restaurant are
following his example, and all the Soho district bristles with little
restaurants which give wonderfully good food for the small prices
they charge. Kettner's will always, however, be famous for showing
its clients a spotlessly clean kitchen when such kitchens were the
exception, and this excellent custom and example it maintains to-day.
The other noticeable restaurant of this group is one founded by M.
Roche, which bears in large letters on its front "Le Dîner Français,"
and which occupies the ground floor of No. 16 Old Compton Street.
A story I have been told of the origin of the restaurant is rather
picturesque. M. Roche was a baker and _pâtissier_, and one day two
Frenchmen came into his shop and asked where they could get a good
French meal. M. Roche replied that he and his family were about to
eat their midday meal, and that if the strangers from his native land
cared to join them he would be delighted. The two Frenchmen enjoyed
their midday meal so thoroughly that they asked to be allowed, during
their stay in London, to take all their meals at the bakery, paying
their share, and M. Roche's establishment gradually changed its
character, becoming a full-blown restaurant. That M. Roche served his
apprenticeship under Frederic at the Tour d'Argent in Paris does not
militate against the probability of this story. M. Roche, having made a
fortune in Old Compton Street, returned to France and bought an hotel
near Granville. _Le Dîner Français_, from which the establishment
takes its name, was always an eighteen-penny meal, and continued to
be so under the present proprietor, M. Béguinot, until the epidemic
of "lightning strikes" came in the spring of 1913, when, to cover
the extra expense entailed by giving cooks and waiters their weekly
holiday, the price was raised to one-and-nine. M. Roche always had the
reputation of buying the best material in the market, and M. Béguinot
has maintained this reputation. The restaurant at dinner-time is
generally filled to its holding capacity, and as many as four hundred
dinners are sometimes served on one evening. The restaurant is narrow,
but it runs far back, three rooms being thrown into one. The walls are
of cream colour, with a skirting of deep orange; the floor is covered
with oilcloth; the knives are black-handled, but cheapness in M.
Béguinot's establishment does not mean dirt, for everything is as clean
as clean can be, and the waiters, who all talk excellent English, wear
shirts and aprons as clean as the walls. Near the door in the first of
the rooms are two long tables, and at these any man who is by himself
takes a seat.
For one-and-nine one is given a choice of either _hors d'œuvre_
or soup, fish, an entrée and an _entremet_, and there is quite
a reasonable choice of dishes under each heading. I dined at M.
Béguinot's restaurant one Sunday night, and Sunday is by no means a bad
day on which to dine there, for the rooms are then less crowded than
on weekdays, and, sitting at one of the long tables, I selected from
the _carte_ of the dinner cold _consommé_, fried sole, sweetbread and
spinach, and an ice. The _consommé_ was reasonably strong, the sole
was really a little slip, but quite fresh and well fried; the small
sweetbread was excellent, and the diminutive portion of ice was all
that it should be. There was a liberal supply of bread on the table,
and the crisp sound of the cutting of the long yards of bread at a side
table was almost continuous throughout dinner. When I had finished my
meal I certainly did not feel full to repletion, but it sufficed.
My neighbour on one side of me had ordered a _hors d'œuvre_, and the
globule of butter given him with his two sardines was a tiny one. He
followed fish with fish, and I noticed that the slice of cold salmon
of a pale pink came from the tail end. He followed my suit in ordering
sweetbread, and finished his meal with a tartlet. I was extravagant in
my order for wine, for, passing over the elevenpenny Graves and the
next wine on the list, I recklessly commanded a pint of Sauterne, which
cost me 1s. 10d., so that my bill came to 3s. 7d., and I got very good
value for my money.
My fellow-guests on Sunday night were a selection from all the
respectable classes, little parties of ladies, married couples and that
contingent from the artistic colony which is always to be found in
every Soho restaurant.
XXII
THE WELCOME CLUB
In the days when I was still an enthusiastic amateur actor, I was once
"cast" for the insignificant part of an aged peasant--the organiser
of the performance assured me that though there were only a dozen
lines in the part, it nevertheless "stood out"--and in a smock-frock,
a pair of second-best trousers tied up with hay-bands, fishing boots,
a bandana handkerchief round my neck, a long, straggly white beard, a
red nose and an old tall silk hat, brushed the wrong way to give it the
appearance of beaver, I depicted the rude forefather of the village. I
spoke in a trembling, squeaky voice and I was addressed by the lads and
lasses, yes, and even by the noble old squire and by the black-browed
villain, as "Granfer." The part did not, apparently, stand out enough
to catch the notice of our audiences, but to those who played with me
that drama of village life I have remained "Granfer" to the present
day, and every summer I ask three of them, my Pet Grandchild, my Tiny
Grandchild and Little Perce to dine with me one evening at the Welcome
Club and to go the round of the side-shows afterwards, that being very
much the sort of entertainment that every real grandfather ought, I
think, to give his grandchildren.
I made my acquaintance with the Welcome Club in the year that it was
first built, at the beginning of all things at Earl's Court. Mr Alec
Knowles was the first secretary of the club. The idea of the Welcome
Club, of which distinguished foreigners could be made honorary members,
originated at the great Chicago Exhibition, in the grounds of which
there was a club of this name.
The trees that were planted in front of the lawn of the club have grown
to a good size now, but even more picturesque than the formal lines
of planes are the thorns and other old trees which were on the ground
before the makers of the exhibition gardens took things in hand, and
which were left there. Year after year, additions and improvements have
been made to the Welcome Club. What was originally a dining-room and a
lawn has become a club-house in a garden. The long shelter, a pleasant
place in which to dine on a summer's evening, has been enlarged more
than once, and now, with its alcoves, each a tiny dining-room, with
vines growing up its supports and flower beds edging its railings, it
pleases the eye of the artist and architect as well as the eye of the
diner. On the other side of the club-house is a pretty drawing-room
for ladies, and Time, which always works in sympathy with a clever
architect, has done its share in deepening the colour of the tiles, in
bringing the lawn to velvety perfection, and in drawing up the young
trees inch by inch. Never before have the garden beds been so gay with
flowers as they were in 1913, and the interior of the club-house has
been brightened up to concert pitch.
To organise the staff of a club that is only open for four months in
the year is no easy matter, for the pick of _maîtres d'hôtel_ and cooks
and waiters do not as a rule care to accept engagements that only last
for a third of a year. A club as far from its bases of supply as is
the Welcome cannot arrange its catering so easily as can clubs in the
centre of London, which have their fishmonger's and butcher's shops
just round the corner, and a wet or a cold night means almost empty
dining-rooms at Earl's Court. Difficulties, however, only exist to
be overcome, and Mr Payne, the chairman of the Earl's Court Company,
determined that it shall no longer be said that it is impossible to get
a good dinner in any exhibition, has brought all his energy to bear on
the problem, and with Mr Charles Bartlett, as secretary, with a Bond
Street firm of caterers responsible for the personnel and material
and with M. G. Thuillez in charge of the club kitchens, I think that
Mr Payne made good his promise. I certainly have never before at the
Welcome Club eaten a dinner so satisfactory in every way as the one I
gave one fine evening last July to my three grandchildren.
I had written word to the secretary, an old friend, saying on what
evening I was coming to dine and asking him to give the manager a hint
whether to reserve for me a table in the dining-room or the shelter,
according to whether the evening was warm or cool. The weather that day
was fine, but the temperature kept about the temperate line. As the
manager was unable to guess whether the ladies would find the shelter
chilly and as there was that evening no great rush for tables, he
reserved until I should appear upon the scene, a table for four in the
dining-room and another for the same number in one of the alcoves of
the shelter.
When I came to the club, five minutes before the hour of dinner, I
opted at once for the table in the alcove, looked at the menus of
the _table d'hôte_ dinners, one a five-shilling one and the other a
seven-and-six one, and chose the latter, ordered my wine, a magnum of
Krug, and then sat in one of the big wicker chairs on the lawn and
waited for my guests.
The scarlet-coated band of an infantry regiment had taken their
places in the band pavilion in the centre of the gravelled space and
the bandmaster was rapping on his music stand to command his men's
attention. There were already many people sitting on the circle of
seats which surrounds the pavilion. Away to the left men in dress
clothes and ladies in evening frocks were going in little parties into
the Quadrant Restaurant, and opposite to the Welcome Club, with the
breadth of the open space in between, there were groups of men about
the American bar and the tea pavilion. The great tower, which is part
of one of the mountain railways, loomed big to the right, but the
cars that run on the rails had for a time ceased to rattle and splash
through the stream of real water which forms part of the scenery. The
flying machines still farther to the right were also still for the
moment, the wire hawsers which support them looking like the rigging of
a ship. Presently I saw my three guests approaching, having come into
the gardens by the most westerly entrance, and we were soon seated in
the alcove, where an electric lamp hung from the ceiling and another
lamp on the table was alight, though the sun had only just set. This
was the menu of the dinner that we ate:
Melon Rafraîchi.
Consommé Tosca.
Crème Bonne Femme.
Turbot Bouilli Sauce Homard.
Tournedos Doria.
Pommes Rosette.
Noix de Ris de Veau en Cocotte Demidoff.
Sorbet Mandarinette.
Caneton d'Aylesbury rôti au Cresson.
Salade Cœur de Laitue.
Glacé Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
Our conversation naturally enough drifted on to stories of amateur
acting; but not until my Tiny Grandchild had first described a deed
of heroism she had done while staying at a country house. In the
dead of the night she heard a bell ring continuously, and assuming
that burglars were in the house and had carelessly set an alarm bell
ringing, she woke up her husband in the next room and proposed that
they should there and then rouse all the inmates of the house and
capture the burglars. But her husband looked at his watch and as
an amendment suggested that, as the ringing was probably an alarum
clock, set by a diligent housemaid, instead of alarming the household
it would be better for my T. G. to sleep out her beauty sleep. We
re-christened the daring lady "The Little Heroine" as we supped our
_crème bonne femme_ and declared it to be good. With the _tournedos_
my imperfections of memory with respect to "words" were cast into my
teeth, and especially of a sentence. I introduced into _His Excellency
the Governor_, when, as Sir Montague, I declared to Ethel that I would
"dower her with the inestimable guerdon of my love," words that Captain
Marshall never wrote. And, further, it was recalled that most of us who
had played together in this comedy, and its author, went one evening to
see Mr H. B. Irving and Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Mr Dion Boucicault and
Mr Marsh Allen and others play the comedy, and how a shout of delight
went up from our row of stalls and puzzled our neighbours sorely when
Mr Irving, primed, no doubt, by Captain Marshall, declared that he
would dower _his_ Ethel with the "inestimable guerdon" of _his_ love.
To change the subject I drew the attention of my three grandchildren to
their surroundings, for there are a few minutes of supreme loveliness
at the Welcome Club when the light is fading from the western sky and
all the electric lamps suddenly spring into brilliancy. The tower of
the mountain railway no longer appears to be a thing of wood and
canvas, but stands a great, dark, solid mass against the sky, with
the twinkle of some letters of electricity upon its battlements. In
the trees on the lawn, lamps, red and blue and golden, shimmer like
fireflies; all about the bandstand are garlands of white light, and the
flying machines, shadows dotted with coloured light, go swinging round
in the distance.
When we had finished our dinner we sat in contentment for a while on
the lawn, listening to the music of the band and drinking our coffee,
and then, as an aid to digestion, went in to The Hereafter side-show,
almost next door, where skeletons dance and a bridge swings and rocks
over a torrent of painted fire; and then on to the booths where the
china of "happy homes" can be broken up at a penny a shot, where the
two ladies did desperate execution against the kitchen service. And
next to the revolving cylinders, where we watched enterprising young
gentlemen stand on their heads involuntarily, and to the variations
on hoop-la stalls, at one of which we all tried unsuccessfully to win
watches. And on to the summer ballroom; and to the bowl-slide; and
finally, as the supreme digestive, we all four went down the water
chute, I taking the precaution of leaving my tall hat below in charge
of the gate man: for one year going down this chute my Tiny Grandchild,
being shot into the air by the bump on the water, descended on my hat,
which I held in my hand, and turned it into a good imitation of an
accordion.
XXIII
GOLDSTEIN'S
HORS D'ŒUVRE.
Smoked Salmon. Solomon Gundy.
Olives.
SOUPS.
Frimsell. Matsoklese.
Pease and beans.
FISH.
Brown stewed carp. White stewed gurnet.
Fried soles. Fried plaice.
ENTRÉES.
Roast veal (white stew).
Filleted steak (brown stew).
POULTRY.
Roast capon. Roast chicken.
Smoked beef. Tongue.
VEGETABLES.
Spinach. Sauerkraut.
Potatoes. Cucumbers.
Green salad.
SWEETS.
Kugel. Stewed prunes.
Almond pudding.
Apple staffen.
When I looked at the above I groaned aloud. Was it possible, I thought,
that any human being could eat a meal of such a length and yet live? I
looked at my two companions, but they showed no signs of terror, so I
took up knife and fork and bade the waiter do his duty.
The _raison d'être_ of the dinner was this: Thinking of untried
culinary experiences, I told one of the great lights of the Jewish
community that I should like some day to eat a "kosher" dinner at a
typical restaurant, and he said that the matter was easily enough
arranged; and by telegram informed me that dinner was ordered for that
evening at Goldstein's and that I was to call for him in the City at
six.
When I and a gallant soul, who had sworn to accompany me through thick
and thin, arrived at the office of the orderer of the dinner, we found
a note of apology from him. The dinner would be ready for us, and his
best friend would do the honours as master of the ceremonies, but he
himself was seedy and had gone home.
On, in the pouring rain, we three devoted soldiers of the fork went, in
a four-wheeler cab, to our fate. The cab pulled up at a narrow doorway,
and we were at Goldstein's. Through a short passage we went towards
a little staircase, and our master of the ceremonies pointed out on
the post of a door that led into the public room of the restaurant a
triangular piece of zinc, a Mazuza, the little case in which is placed
a copy of the Ten Commandments. Upstairs we climbed into a small room
with no distinctive features about it. A table was laid for six. There
were roses in a tall glass vase in the middle of the table, and a
buttonhole bouquet in each napkin. A piano, chairs covered with black
leather, low cupboards with painted tea-trays and well-worn books on
the top of them, an old-fashioned bell-rope, a mantelpiece with painted
glass vases on it and a little clock, framed prints on the walls, two
gas globes--these were the fittings of an everyday kind of apartment.
We took our places, and the waiter, in dress clothes, after a surprised
inquiry as to whether we were the only guests at the feast, put the
menu before us. It was then that, encouraged by the bold front shown by
my two comrades, I, after a moment of tremor, told the waiter to do his
duty.
I had asked to have everything explained to me, and before the _hors
d'œuvre_ were brought in the master of the ceremonies, taking a book
from the top of one of the dwarf cupboards, showed me the Grace
before meat, a solemn little prayer which is really beautiful in its
simplicity. With the Grace comes the ceremony of the host breaking
bread, dipping the broken pieces in salt, and handing them round to his
guests, who sit with covered heads.
Of the _hors d'œuvre_, Solomon Gundy, which had a strange sound to me,
was a form of pickled herring, excellently appetising.
Before the soup was brought up, the master of the ceremonies explained
that the Frimsell was made from stock, and a paste of eggs and flour
rolled into tiny threads like vermicelli, while the Matsoklese had in
it balls of unleavened flour. When the soup was brought the two were
combined, and the tiny threads and the balls of dough both swam in a
liquid which had somewhat the taste of vermicelli soup. The master of
the ceremonies told me I must taste the pease and beans soup which
followed, as it is a very old-fashioned Jewish dish. It is very like a
rich pease-soup, and is cooked in carefully skimmed fat. In the great
earthenware jar which holds the soup is cooked the "kugel," a kind of
pease-pudding, which was to appear much later at the feast.
Goldstein's is the restaurant patronised by the "froom," the strictest
observers of religious observances, of the Jewish community, and we
should by right only have drunk unfermented Muscat wine with our
repast, but some capital hock took its place, and when the master
of the ceremonies and the faithful soul touched glasses, one said
"Lekhaim," and the other answered the greeting with "Tavim." Then,
before the fish was put on the table, the master of the ceremonies told
me of the elaborate care that was taken in the selection of animals
to be killed, of the inspection of the butcher's knives, of the tests
applied to the dead animals to see that the flesh is good, of the
soaking and salting of the meat and the drawing-out of the veins from
it. The many restrictions, originally imposed during the wandering in
the desert, which make shell-fish, and wild game, and scaleless fish
unlawful food--these and many other interesting items of information
were imparted to me.
The white-stewed gurnet, with chopped parsley and a sauce of egg and
lemon-juice, tempered by onion flavouring, was excellent. In the brown
sauce served with the carp were such curious ingredients as treacle,
gingerbread and onions, but the result, a strong, rich sauce, is very
pleasant to the taste. The great cold fried soles standing on their
heads and touching tails, and the two big sections of plaice flanking
them, I knew must be good; but I explained to the master of ceremonies
that I had already nearly eaten a full-sized man's dinner, and that I
must be left a little appetite to cope with what was to come.
Very tender veal, with a sauce of egg and lemon, which had a thin,
sharp taste, and a steak, tender also, stewed with walnuts, an
excellent dish to make a dinner of, were the next items on the
menu, and I tasted each; but I protested against the capon and the
chicken as being an overplus of good things, and the master of the
ceremonies--who, I think, had a latent fear that I might burst before
the feast came to an end--told the waiter not to bring them up.
The smoked beef was a delicious firm brisket, and the tongue, salted,
was also exceptionally good. I felt that the last feeble rag of an
appetite had gone, but the cucumber, a noble Dutch fellow, pickled
in salt and water in Holland, came to my aid, and a slice of this,
better than any _sorbet_ that I know of, gave me the necessary power to
attempt, in a last despairing effort, the kugel and apple staffen and
almond pudding.
The staffen is a rich mixture of many fruits and candies with a thin
crust. The kugel is a pease-pudding cooked, as I have written above,
in the pease and beans soup. The almond pudding is one of those moist
delicacies that I thought only the French had the secret of making.
Coffee--no milk, even if we had wanted it, for milk and butter are not
allowed on the same table as flesh--and a liqueur of brandy, and then,
going downstairs, we looked into the two simple rooms, running into
each other, which form the public restaurant, rooms empty at nine P.M.,
but crowded at the midday meal.
Mr Goldstein, who was there, told us that his patrons had become so
numerous that he would soon have to move to larger premises, and may
by now have done so, and certainly the cooking at the restaurant is
excellent, and I do not wonder at its obtaining much patronage.
What this Gargantuan repast cost I do not know, for the designer of the
feast said that the bill was to be sent to him.
I think that a "kosher" dinner, if this is a fair specimen, is a
succession of admirably cooked dishes. But an ordinary man should be
allowed a week in which to eat it.
XXIV
THE MITRE
AT HAMPTON COURT
We all know that in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love, but it is not such common knowledge that in the early
summer the thoughts of a man of mature age turn with equal agility to
duckling and green peas. And with duckling and green peas I always
associate the Mitre at Hampton Court. So it came to pass that I asked a
crony of like tastes to myself to meet me on a spring Sunday at Hampton
Court in the late afternoon, and suggested that we should walk in the
gardens of the Palace and see the rhododendrons, which were then in
great beauty, and that we should afterwards dine at the Mitre, sup
green pea soup and eat duckling and green peas.
The Mitre is the most typically late Georgian, or early Victorian,
inn that I know of in the neighbourhood of London, and its great
attraction is that it has kept the old cookery, the old furniture, the
old pictures, the old china, the old plate, and last, but not least,
the old manners. It has been quite unconscious of the changes in the
outside world, it knows nothing of electric light and such newfangled
ideas, there are no French rolls to be found in its bread baskets, and
its ducklings are spitted and roasted before an open fire, being well
basted the while.
This, very briefly, is the history of the Mitre. It is the direct
successor of the Toy Inn, an old house which stood on Crown property,
and the lease of which expired about the year of the battle of
Waterloo. The Toy was pulled down, and Mr Goodman, and Mr Sadler with
him, were obliged to look for a new home in which to carry on the old
traditions. This they found in three houses standing together near the
wooden bridge (alas and alack that the picturesque old bridge has given
place to the dull-red iron horror which was built in 1865!), and one of
the charms of the Mitre is the quaint irregularity of its architecture,
the brown bricks and red tiles of its face turned towards the Palace,
its white face and slate roof on the river side, the great wistaria and
the ivy knitting together all the various features.
And parenthetically I wish to protest against the hiding away of the
Mitre from the view of the people as they cross the bridge, or of those
who row or go by launch or river. Just in front of the Mitre Hotel is
an eyot, which I believe is Government property. The willows on this
have been allowed to grow so high that they entirely blot out the
view from the river of the white face of the Mitre, and the long row
of windows of its banqueting-room; and equally, of course, the trees
obstruct the view of the river from the delightful little bowling-green
with ivied arches which is between the hotel and the backwater. If,
whoever he is, the Government official who has this eyot in his charge
will walk across the Hampton Court bridge or sit for ten minutes on the
lawn before the Mitre he will, I am sure, require no further prompting
to order the pollarding of the trees.
Mr Goodman came to the three old houses and put up the name of the
Mitre in golden letters, and gave orders that the pillars that support
the great bow-window on the first floor should be painted as though
they were of very variegated marble, and with him from the old inn
he brought the little glass bow window which looks out from the bar
parlour into the Mitre hall, and he also brought with him all the old
Spode china from the Toy. Some of the original china is still preserved
at the Mitre, and whenever new plates and new dishes are required
Messrs Copeland, the successors to Spode, make them in the old moulds,
though those moulds are now wearing out; and the plates from which the
guests of to-day eat their lunches and dinners are identical with those
that came across the Green from the Toy. After a while Mr Goodman moved
on to the Whitehall Hotel, a big white-faced house which looks out on
to the Green, and which abuts on Cardinal Wolsey's old stables, and Mr
Sadler the First reigned in his stead.
It was Mr Sadler the First who bought the old Sheffield plate which
makes such a brave show at the banquets at the Mitre, tureens in which
the soup comes to table, and the platters on which the fish is served.
Six o'clock was the hour at which I had asked my crony to meet me on
the steps of the Mitre that we might consult together as to the menu of
our dinner, and I found him waiting for me chatting to Mr Sadler, the
elder of the two sons of Mr Sadler the First, and in the background was
Bagwell, the head waiter, who is a model to all British head waiters.
He has the appearance and the comforting manner of a high dignitary of
the Church, and I am quite sure would wear knee-breeches and an apron
and rosetted tall hat with as good grace as any bishop in the land. The
oldest inhabitants of Hampton Court, when I have sung Bagwell's praises
to them, have said to me: "Ah, but you ought to have known Smith," the
head waiter who flourished some thirty years ago. But to them I reply
that not having known Smith it is a comfort to me to be acquainted
with Bagwell. Bagwell had on a card a suggested menu for our dinner,
which ran thus:--Green Pea Soup, Grilled Trout, Stewed Eels, Duckling
and Green Peas and New Potatoes, cold Asparagus and Gooseberry Tart.
The eels I looked upon as a superfluity, though they are one of the
dishes of the house and are kept alive in the hotel in tanks until the
moment comes for their sacrifice. I also parried the suggestion that
sweetbreads should be included, for I hold that a duckling, if he be
a good duckling, well roasted and filled with savoury stuffing, is so
good a dish that he requires no supplement of any kind.
When at seven we returned from our walk through the gardens of the
Palace a table had been spread for us in the bow-window, whence the
view of the river, and the house-boats, and the towing path, and the
walls of the Palace Gardens, and the big trees and the old gates, is a
very splendid thing. A quiet-footed, quiet-mannered waiter was ready
to attend on us, and on the table were the shining cruets and a little
loaf and a slab of beautiful butter, and to the tick of half-past seven
the soup in a plated tureen was put in front of me.
The soup was excellently hot and of a strength unusual in a vegetable
soup. It had, I fancy, been laced with all manner of good things. It
made an excellent commencement to the dinner. The trout, a fine salmon
trout, of a beautiful pink, came straight up from the grill on a plated
dish, and with it the Tartar sauce in a plated boat. When the cover was
taken off from the duckling, set down before me to carve, the sweet
savour of good roasting and the perfume of the stuffing gratified the
sense of smell. And that duckling was as tender as a duckling should
be, and the peas were large and cooked to the requisite degree of
softness, and the apple sauce was excellent. That our plates were the
old Spode plates, soft blue in their pattern, and that the knives and
forks and spoons were all of an old pattern, were all tiny points of
enjoyment. The asparagus was good green English asparagus, and the
crust of the gooseberry pie was of meringue-like lightness.
At the table to one side of us in the big bow sat a couple who were
also dining on duckling and drinking a bottle of champagne, for the
Mitre has an excellent cellar of wines at prices far below those of
London restaurants, and at the table on the other side were two ladies
and three men who had been on the river and had brought river appetites
and river good spirits to table with them. Farther back in the room
were other little parties of diners. I had asked host Sadler some
questions about the Masonic banquets which are held in the red-walled
rooms the windows of which overlook the bowling-green, and after our
dinner was finished he brought me a little sheaf of menus of banquets,
and he also brought a bottle of the old Cognac of the house, which
he was anxious that we should taste. I looked through the menus, and
the following of a banquet of the Bard of Avon Lodge seemed to me to
be that of a distinctly English feast. It has in it the _matelote_ of
stewed eels and the braised sweetbreads for which I did not find room
in our little dinner for two:
SOUP.
Purée of Asparagus. Spring.
FISH.
Grilled Trout. Sauce Tartare.
Stewed Eels en Matelote.
ENTRÉE.
Braised Sweetbreads.
REMOVES.
Roast Fore Quarter of Lamb.
French Beans.
Ducklings. Peas.
Asparagus.
SWEETS.
Gooseberry Foule. Cream.
Madeira Jellies.
Iced Pudding.
DESSERT.
My crony and I sat sipping the old brandy, talking at intervals, and
watching how the daylight gave place to the afterglow, how the people
on the towpath thinned in numbers to single figures, and the homeward
bound boats on the river became fewer and fewer. As the light died out
the river became a sheet of dull silver, and the colour of the old
brick walls of the Palace gardens and its out-buildings grew to deeper
and a deeper purple, and the great trees became warm black silhouettes
against the darkening sky and the lights in the house-boats moored by
the bank began to throw reflections into the stream.
Everything, even a spring evening at Hampton Court, must come to an
end, and at last I called for my bill. The dinner was eight shillings
a head, and so moderate had we been in our summer beverages--the
old brandy was host Sadler's contribution--that the total came to a
sovereign.
We walked along the path up the river in the cool of the evening till
we could see the lights in Garrick's Villa, and then my crony and I
bade each other good-night and went our separate ways.
XXV
IN THE HANDS OF PI(E)RATES
THE CONNAUGHT ROOMS
When it was decided by the contributors to _Printer's Pie_ to entertain
their editor, "The Pieman," a little committee of artists and writers,
with the editor of _The Tatler_ as secretary, considered various plans
for giving Mr Hugh Spottiswoode a dinner with unusual surroundings.
[Illustration]
A decision was arrived at that the contributors to the _Pie_ should
become Pi(e)rates, for one night only, and in that guise should
entertain the Pieman in a pirate haunt, and then the next question
was the choice of a dining place and the difficult matter of finding
the proprietor or manager of a restaurant who would enter thoroughly
into the spirit of the burlesque and would provide a real pirate feast
with blood-curdling piratical surroundings. A member of the committee
suggested Mr George Harvey, who controls the Connaught Rooms in Great
Queen Street, as the very man, and to the next meeting of the committee
Mr George Harvey came, quiet, humorous and resourceful, and when he
heard the outlines of our scheme he smiled, and said that he thought he
quite understood what we wanted.
It was essential to the success of our little joke that the guest of
the evening should know nothing of the reception he would get, and when
the Pi(e)rates were informed that the dress of a bold buccaneer was
to be the wear at dinner at the Connaught Rooms, they were entreated
to keep this a secret from the Pieman. Strangely enough, the secret
was kept; he had no inkling of what was going to happen to him. When,
heralded by a commissionaire, he came up the grand staircase of the
restaurant, faultlessly attired in his best evening clothes, he gave
a jump when the Master-at-Arms of the Pirates, attired in the levee
uniform of a pirate king, suddenly appeared before him with drawn
cutlass and a ferocious look, and told two stalwart members of the
pirate gang to "Arrest that man!"
If it would interest you to know who the pirates are, when they are not
pirating, you have only to look at the contents pages of _Printer's
Pie_ and you can there read the list of the authors and artists who
were busy between seven and eight o'clock one Friday, in a little
room in Great Queen Street, transforming themselves from fairly
respectable members of society into the most shocking criminals that
ever went to sea. There were pirates of all kinds, all centuries and
all classes. There were gentlemen pirates with nickel-plated revolvers;
one pirate of particular ferocity from the Barbary Coast had given
himself an emerald-green complexion; another pirate, who feared that
his good-natured face might belie his costume, carried on his breast
a large placard with a photo on it for identification purposes, and
the legend "I am an [adjective] pirate." Some of the pirates wore
long false noses; many of them had the skull and crossbones on their
jerseys; cocked hats with feathers were quite fashionable wear, and no
belt had less than three pistols stuck into it. One writer of humorous
short stories came as an old growler cabby, explaining that cabmen were
the only pirates that he had ever met. The chairman of the dinner, who
had been selected for that onerous post because, as the designer of the
covers of all the _Printer's Pies_ he had always come first amongst its
contributors, had added an Afghan sheepskin coat to his other piratical
garment--luckily for him the night was very cold--and was attended by
a minor pirate, who carried on a long stick a triangular lantern as a
sign of authority.
When the pirates' prisoner was arrested he was requested to step into a
little boat on wheels, the doors of the ante-room were flung wide open
and the boat was dragged into the presence of the pirate Captain, who
stood in the centre of the room, with the pirate band playing "Down
Among the Dead Men" on silvered papier-maché instruments to his left,
and to his right the pirate crew flourishing pistols and cutlasses. The
little boat paused for a moment while the pirates gave a blood-curdling
boarding yell, and then continued its career at hydroplane pace into
the dining-room, with the pirates following after.
The Crown Room had become a pirates' lair prepared for a feast. The
walls had been shut out by scenery representing sea and mountain; the
floor was an inch deep in sawdust; in the corners of the room were
plantations of palm-trees, with parrots in cages in the midst of them.
These parrots missed the opportunity of their lives, for they were so
stunned by the noise the pirates made at their meal that they never
uttered a single scream.
At one side of the pirates' lair was a great dhow, such as one sees
sailing in and out of Aden. It was really a stage for the band and the
after-dinner performers, but it had been converted into a dhow. In its
tall stern a piano was housed; it had high bulwarks, a tall mast and a
great lateen sail. From the mast-head flew the "Jolly Roger," and in
the rigging was a huge red lantern.
A dozen round tables had been prepared for the pirates, with sheets
of brown paper laid on them as tablecloths. The room was lighted by
candles stuck into bottles and set on the tables. Of knives and forks
there were none apparent; the salt was great lumps of the rock variety,
the mustard was in teacups and the pepper in screws of brown paper.
The menu, which is reproduced at the head of this chapter, was written
with an inky stick on torn bits of brown paper, and each pirate's place
was marked for him by a card with blood spots on it. Every table had a
big card in a split cane set up to mark a pirate locality. There were
Skeleton Cove and Murder Gulch, Coffin Marsh, Gallows' Hill, Cannibal's
Creek, Dead Man's Rock and others, and the ship's officers, the roll of
which included the Stale Mate, the Hangman, the Powder Monkey and the
Ship's Parrot, presided each at a table. The first mate sat next to the
Captain, and it was his business to wave a black flag over his great
commander's head at intervals, and to beat constantly a big drum which
was concealed under the table.
The waiters at the feast looked even greater ruffians than the
feasters, which is saying a great deal. They were the most shocking set
of criminals and marine cut-throats that ever carried a dish of salt
junk. Most of them had black eyes; their bare arms were wondrously
tattooed, and they all smoked short clay pipes as they went about
their work. The pirates, because of their superior station, smoked
long churchwardens, of which, and playing-cards, there was a plentiful
supply scattered about the tables. One waiter entered so thoroughly
into his part that he danced a little hornpipe as he took round the
dishes.
When the feast had commenced with oysters, the pirate waiters suddenly
produced a supply of knives and forks, and menus of what the real
dinner was. Below is the menu of the real dinner, and an excellent
dinner it was. Pirates who had known better days nodded to each other
approvingly across the table when they had eaten the fish dish, which
was exceptionally good. Mr George Harvey most certainly has succeeded
in regilding the faded glories of the Freemasons' Tavern and in putting
the Connaught Rooms, which is the title of the rebuilt house, very
firmly on the dining map of London.
Huîtres Royales.
Consommé Excelsior.
Timbale de Sole Archiduc.
Poularde Hongroise.
Nouilles au Parmesan.
Noisette de Pré-Salé Montmorency.
Pommes Anna.
Faisan en Cocotte à la Truffe.
Salade Jolly Roger.
Jambon d'York au Champagne.
Poires St George.
Friandises.
Barquettes de Laitances.
Dessert.
Café Double.
The band, a real string orchestra, in white jackets, on the deck of
the dhow, played rag-time melodies and other inspiriting airs, and
occasionally made itself heard above the noise with which the pirates
settled down to their feast. The big drum was always in action, and
somewhere outside the hall a waiter shook a sheet of theatre-thunder
in a vain attempt to equal the noise of the drum within; pistols
were discharged in all parts of the lair, and the pirate with an
emerald-green complexion, whenever he thought the Captain looked dull,
walked over to his table and fired a pistol into his ear to cheer
him up. When this failed to attract the Captain's attention, a large
cracker was set fire to under his chair.
One of the groups of pirates, thinking that the band were having far
too peaceable a time, suddenly drew pistols and cutlasses, boarded the
dhow, and put the musicians to the sword, which delighted the fiddlers
very much. There was also dancing during the dinner, for two of the
pirates, wishing to give a real society touch to the function, rose
and performed a wild Tango in and out of the tables. That was not the
only dance, for a fat carver, who wore a conical white cap and white
garments plentifully besprinkled with gore, had stood during the early
stages of dinner and had looked on at the pirates' antics, being much
amused thereat. One of the pirates, thinking that a spectator ought to
have some share in the active work of the fun, seized him and forced
him to dance, and dance the carver did, with such good will that he
finally tired the pirate out, and remained, perspiring and smiling, the
victor in the dance.
When dinner was over the guest of the evening was tried by
court-martial. He was accommodated with a chair in the centre of
the room and given a cigar and a drink; a wide circle of candles in
bottles was put about him to give light to the proceedings, and all the
pirates sat in groups in the sawdust, the master-at-arms, with drawn
cutlass, behind the prisoner, the accuser, a picturesque ruffian, and
the prisoner's friend, an equally forbidding scoundrel, and the pirate
Captain being the only individuals standing up. This grouping formed
a really striking picture, and I have no doubt that many artistic
eyes took in its possibilities. The accusation brought against the
prisoner was that he had paid income tax (groans from the pirates),
that he was even suspected of paying super-tax (yells of fury from the
pirates), that he kept tame animals, notably Welsh rarebits, and that
he fed them. The pirate Captain had already warned the prisoner that
his sentence had been determined upon, and therefore that it was no
use for him, or anybody else on his behalf, to plead his cause; but
the prisoner's friend had a speech ready, and loosed it off, making
the case very much blacker against his client than it had been before.
Sentence was then duly pronounced, but as the pirate Captain had
mislaid the plank on which the victim was to walk, and as the goldfish
which were to represent sharks had been left downstairs, the doom of
the victim resolved itself into the presentation to him of a pair of
silver hand-cuffs with a tiny watch at the end of one of them.
After the court-martial, the pirates gave themselves and their guest an
entertainment. One pirate sang admirably; another pirate, whose name,
I think, before he went to sea, was Walter Churcher, told excellent
stories, and a third pirate went through the whole performance that the
flashlight photographer inflicts on good-natured diners, his apparatus
being a whisky bottle and a tin mug, and then handed round photographs
he pretended to have taken of our guest.
There was more fun to come, but as midnight was drawing near, and as I
belong now to the early-to-bed sect of sea-wolves, I departed quietly.
The lift boy at my flat, when he saw the brick-dust of my marine
complexion, said to me, as he took me up: "Good gracious, sir, whatever
has happened to your face?"
It was a great night altogether!
XXVI
APPENRODT'S
I had been, like every other Londoner, aware of the coming of
Appenrodt's shops into the panorama of the London streets; but I had
never gone into one of the Appenrodt establishments until a year ago,
and it was the dread of the armour-plate sandwich of the buffets that
sent me there.
I often, when I am going to an early first night at the theatre, cut
matters so fine as to dinner that I have only time to eat a couple of
sandwiches at a buffet, and as often as not the barmaid, knowing that I
am not a regular customer, does a feat of sleight of hand and gives me
the roof, the two top sandwiches of the pile. If I protest I am assured
that they were fresh-cut not a quarter of an hour ago, and being a
moral coward in such matters, I eat them. If I postpone my sandwich
meal until after the theatre a second thickness of armour-plate has
been added to the bread.
One evening, walking home after the theatre to my flat in the wild
north-west, I became aware when I reached Oxford Circus that I was
very hungry. Through the windows of Appenrodt's shop at Oxford Circus
I could see men in white jackets very busily slicing bread and making
sandwiches for the people who sat at the little tables. I went in,
ate a couple of ham sandwiches which had been made for me before my
eyes, and blessed the name of Appenrodt, for they were all that a ham
sandwich should be.
When Appenrodt's headquarters at No. 1 Coventry Street were a-building
I watched with interest the putting in of the big plate-glass windows,
and after its completion I looked whenever I passed at the big _cartes
du jour_ which are put up outside wherever there is space for them. One
evening, on my way to a club in the Leicester Square district to dine,
I found, just as I arrived at the Coventry Street corner, that I had
cut my time very close, and that if I dined at the club I should not be
in my place at the rising of the curtain. I looked at the big bills of
fare outside Appenrodt's, and went up into the restaurant on the first
floor to see whether I could get there a quickly served meal. I had an
excellent plate of _chicken consommé_, a cut from one of the joints of
the day--roast veal and bacon--and a rice pudding. I found this simple
food quite excellent, and I got to my theatre in plenty of time.
My first experience led me on to other dinners in Appenrodt's
restaurant on the first floor, and I found that the dishes, without
exception, were admirably cooked, and that the soup and the _soufflé
omelette_ with which I now always begin and end a repast at Appenrodt's
are noticeably excellent. There is plenty of choice, for the menu of
the day comprises four soups, ten fish dishes, at least the same number
of entrées, some of these being those that Germans love, vegetables and
sweets in due proportion, four joints at lunch-time and the same number
at dinner.
This is a typical dinner that I ate one night at Appenrodt's, and these
are the prices I paid for the dishes:--_crème conti_, an excellent
white soup, 6d.; _suprême de brill Dugleré_, 1s. 6d.; _pilaff de foie
de volaille à la Grecque_, 1s. 3d.; and _omelette Mylord_, which is a
form of _omelette surprise_, 1s. 6d.; and I drank therewith a pint of
Rhenish sparkling muscatel with all the taste and bouquet of the grape
in it.
The restaurant is all white and gold, and has a low ceiling, but as
it has a row of windows on two sides I have no doubt it will be quite
cool in summer. The curtains to the windows are of some pleasant
straw-coloured material, with pink spots on it; the carpet is dark. A
glass screen is in front of the lifts which bring the dishes down from
the kitchen at the top of the house. There are two staircases, one, the
main one, from Coventry Street, and another one from Wardour Street,
leading up to the restaurant. The waiters are mostly Germans, who speak
good English, and who have the bearing of drilled men. I have no doubt
that Mr Appenrodt, who at one time sacrificed a growing business to go
back to Germany to do his military training, does not engage any of his
countrymen who have shirked their years of service. The only drawback
to the restaurant that I have noticed is an unavoidable one owing to
the construction of the house, that the personnel of the coffee kitchen
have to pass through the restaurant coming and going about their work.
The people who dine in the restaurant at Appenrodt's seem to belong
to all classes. When I have dined there early I have seen amongst the
customers men and ladies whom I recognised as belonging to the Variety
profession, and who eat an early meal before going to the theatres
where they perform. Many of Appenrodt's countrymen and countrywomen
dine in the restaurant, and the black-coated classes of respectable
Londoners and their womenfolk have already found out how good the food
is there.
Having seen all these things, and feeling sure that Appenrodt, with
his many shops and his restaurants, meant a new power come into the
centre of London, I became curious as to the owner, or owners, of the
name and asked whether it was just a _nom de fantasie_ or whether there
really is such a person in the flesh as a Mr Appenrodt. I was assured
that there was a Mr Appenrodt and that if it would gratify my curiosity
to talk to him he would be very pleased to meet me.
And so it came that I met Mr Appenrodt in his own restaurant, and found
him to be a very quiet, patently sincere German gentleman, with a round
face, pleasant, steady eyes, hair a little thin on the top and a large
dark moustache. He told me across a luncheon-table the story of his
life, and I was able to assure him that other people besides myself
would find the history of his early struggles in England an interesting
one.
He was born in Berlin in 1867, and, having been a clerk in a Hamburg
shipping agency, came to this country when he was nineteen years old to
learn the English language. He soon found a billet in a City office, as
correspondence clerk at a pound a week, and he determined to stay in
England, though his father, who was a spirit distiller, wished him to
return to Germany and the distillery.
When he was twenty years old he thought he knew London well enough to
engage in business on his own account. His father would not help him,
but he had £2000 left him by his mother, and with this he engaged in
various speculations, the thought of which now moves him to hearty
laughter. He wanted to induce the English to smoke the German students'
long pipes and to use washable india-rubber playing cards.
These and other such brilliant ideas made a very serious inroad on
his capital. He held, amongst other agencies, one for a manufacturer
of preserves, and this brought him into touch with German provision
shops. These shops were all tucked away in little side streets in the
Soho district, and Mr Appenrodt thought that there would be a good
opening for German _delicatessen_ if it was possible to show them in
better premises and with more appetising surroundings. He opened in
a basement at the corner of Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street a
shop, in a room about twenty feet square. At that time there were no
light refreshment places in the City except the A.B.C. shops, and Mr
Appenrodt soon had a large clientele for his little shop. He saw that
there was a fortune to be made in catering for the wants of the middle
classes, but before he experimented on a larger scale he went back to
Germany to serve his one year of military service, having sold his
little business to a man who transferred it to some licensed premises
and made a fortune by it.
When Mr Appenrodt came back, having completed his term of military
service, he found that his luck in the City had petered out, for not
one of the shops he opened in succession proved to be a success. The
last straw was a shop in the Commercial Road, which seemed likely to
eat up all the funds he had left. But it was during this last attempt
that his luck turned. He engaged a young lady as shop assistant, and
she brought him good luck and success; and his love story, for it
was a love story, led up to the right ending of all love stories, a
happy marriage. And he backed his luck, for he and his wife made a
last bold bid for fortune by taking a shop in the West End, at the
corner of Coventry Street and Whitcomb Street. This venture proved an
instantaneous success. Mr Appenrodt and his wife at first did all the
work themselves, and their business hours were from nine A.M. until one
the next morning. They had no afternoons or evenings off, and worked
all and every Sunday.
Easier times came, assistant after assistant was engaged, and one
branch after another was opened. Not all of these proved successes, but
in spite of minor set-backs, the firm of two continued to flourish
more and more, and has now the big shop and restaurant at Coventry
Street, eight branches in various parts of London and a big depot in
Paris. Mr Appenrodt has refused many offers to turn his undertaking
into a company. He looks on his five hundred employees as his family,
and is not willing to put them at the mercy of strangers.
That was Mr Appenrodt's story to me across the table, and when I asked
him questions he amplified his personal history in various ways. He
told me how the Parisian depot came to be established: that one day he
met a former employee, one of his own countrymen, who talked French
like a native of France. He knew his man, and he told him that he
was just going over to Paris, and that if he could find a suitable
shop to let there, he would take it and put his old friend in as his
partner and as the manager. He found the shop, put his friend into
it, and it has proved a most successful speculation. He told me of
the various obstacles he had to overcome in building his premises in
Coventry Street; of the large sums he expended to buy out the owners
of the three houses he required and of the difficulties he experienced
in obtaining a licence to sell beer and other liquors; how at last
he bought two public-houses and surrendered their licences, and how
the Licensing Magistrates then gave him permission to serve alcoholic
drinks, but only with food. His prices, Mr Appenrodt told me, are fixed
as being the lowest prices at which he can sell first-class food and
make a reasonable profit on it without looking to any profit from the
drinks that are sold, for no pressure whatever is put on the patrons of
his restaurant to drink anything stronger than water.
I asked Mr Appenrodt what his special hobby was, and he told me
that it was to buy public-houses and to turn them into Appenrodt
establishments, which, if you come to think of it, is as true a work of
reform as any that is being carried out in London.
He and his wife, he went on to say, love the work they do. They go
together frequently to the firm's factory in the country, where
workmen, many of them imported from Germany, make the sausages, the
glassed delicacies and other specialities of the house, and on fine
days to the farm they own at Hendon, a picturesque tract of country
through which the River Brent flows, where they breed pigs for the
pork sausages--though English pork is so firm that Dutch pork or other
foreign porks must be mixed with it to make it bind--and fowls and
other farm produce.
Before I said good-bye to Mr Appenrodt he asked me if I would like
to see the kitchen and other parts of the house, and I said "With
pleasure," for I never think that the final word can be said regarding
a restaurant until one has seen the kitchen that supplies it. We
went upstairs to the top of the house, passing on the way a room in
which half-a-dozen women were peeling potatoes for the potato salads,
potatoes specially imported from Germany, for English potatoes crumble
too easily to be satisfactory material. And eventually we came to a
big kitchen at the top of the house, very airy and very clean, where
a French _chef de cuisine_ rules over cooks of all nationalities.
Descending again, we went into the basement to look at Appenrodt's
_Keller_, decorated after the German style with landscapes and figures,
where two bands play alternately all the afternoon and evening,
and where good Germans, and Englishmen who like good German beer,
congregate to eat simple food and drink the produce of Austrian and
German hop-fields.
And finally I walked round the big shop on the ground floor, where at
the marble counter the men in white were busy cutting sandwiches, and
Mr Appenrodt explained to me the beauties of the glassed delicacies and
the great variety of sausages of all countries, and as he took up one
after another, sausages of majestic size, products of Germany or Italy,
cut so as to show a section, and smaller sausages in glass jars, and
bunches and packages of sausages, and Swiss sausages in a shape to take
up very little room in a knapsack, I felt coming over me exactly the
same feeling that I experience when a collector of beautiful china, or
priceless lacquer or wonderful metal-work explains to me the beauties
of his collection, a feeling that I too want to collect that particular
kind of curio. If I were much in Mr Appenrodt's company I feel quite
sure that I should become an enthusiastic amateur in the matter of
sausages.
XXVII
THE BURFORD BRIDGE HOTEL
One of the pleasantest short runs out of London by motor car is to
Box Hill and the little hotel which lies just below it. In summer
the most picturesque way of getting to the hotel is either by one of
the Brighton coaches, which make it their lunching place, or by the
coach which goes to Box Hill and back in a day. And by no means an
uncomfortable, and certainly the cheapest, way of going down to the
hotel is to do as I did one Sunday--journey by the L.B. & S.C. Railway,
getting glimpses of Epsom and the great rolling common land of Ashtead,
of little rivers, and old mills, and wooded downs, on the way.
The Burford Bridge Hotel, which takes its name from the wide brick
bridge near by, over the River Mole, stands alongside the high
road where it curves from the hill-side down to the level. It is a
picturesque building, for when the Surrey Trust, of which more anon,
took the house, it was a mere wayside inn. It has been gradually built
on to, and is now more a group of houses of white rough-cast and slate
roofs than one house. It has rambling tiled-roofed stables and a
garage alongside it, and is surrounded by tall trees. Behind it, just
where the hill begins to rise, are its gardens, with turf terraces and
geraniums in terra-cotta pots on white pedestals. A great cedar stands
in the midst of one of the lawns and another lawn is a bowling-green.
Some of the trees on the hill-side stretch out great branches which
give shadow to the garden-seats.
Creepers climb over the house, there are rose-bushes by the paths, and
out beyond the bowling-green an orchard of old fruit-trees is on the
banks of the Mole, a brown stream in which the weeds wave gently as it
moves with a pleasant rustle through the down country on its way to
join the Thames. There are two dovecotes in the garden of the hotel,
and the flutter of white wings in the sunlight is pretty to see. Behind
the gardens is Box Hill, one part of which is steep, grassy down scored
with white footpaths, the other half stony slopes so steep as to be
almost cliffs, up which the woods and undergrowth climb. On the Sunday
of my visit the dark green of these woods was scarcely touched by the
russet and orange of the autumn tints.
In the old portion of the house there are small rooms on the ground
floor, and above, a dozen little bedrooms with flower-boxes in their
windows and bell-pulls hanging by the fireplaces; for though there is
electric light all over the house, the old-fashioned bell-pulls and
the long line of bells in the corridor have been left as an old-world
touch. Out into the garden there juts a newly built part of the house,
with a large dining-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above. The
dining-room is panelled with chestnut wood to within a couple of feet
from the ceiling. It has on one side recesses, one of which forms an
ingle-nook for the fireplace, and opposite to them, in the wall facing
the garden, are many French windows which give on to the lawns. At one
end of this pleasant room is a great bow-window looking down the length
of the lawns and orchard, and the tables in this bow are the ones most
sought after. The strips of red carpet on the polished wooden floor
deaden the sound of the feet of the waiters as they go to and fro, the
chairs are handsome ones of red leather, and as they bear on their
backs a scroll with "The Gaiety" on it, I presume they were bought when
the Gaiety Restaurant breathed its last.
All the classes for which the old inn, turned hotel, caters are
provided for. There is a refreshment-room for the chauffeurs, a bar for
the rustics. There is also a very pleasant sanctum, which I should have
called the bar parlour, but which is dubbed the lounge, in which are
the heads of some of the foxes killed by the local pack of hounds, and
a photograph of a meet at the hotel, some coaching prints, a picture
of a racehorse and its jockey, some little stags' heads which were
in the house when it was bought by the Trust, a grandfather clock,
some Japanese bronzes and Wedgwood vases, some old-fashioned wooden
arm-chairs and some big leather ones. It is in this comfortable room,
with a long stretch of window looking on to the road, that the worthies
of the neighbourhood assemble to talk over local politics and other
important matters. There is a little ante-chamber to the dining-room
with comfortable seats in it, a coffee-room and a drawing-room which
runs the full width of the old house and is the room in which the
ladies staying in the house sit after dinner.
The Surrey Public House Trust, which bought the Burford Bridge Inn,
and in whose hands it has become one of the most flourishing small
country hotels in England, is an association of noblemen and gentlemen
of Surrey who have bought a dozen inns and hotels in the county, and
who run them on the sanest and soundest possible lines. The sale of
alcoholic drinks is not looked to as the principal source of profit,
and as none of the houses owned by the Trust are tied houses, the
goods, eatable and drinkable, are purchased in the best and cheapest
markets. The company has as its manager at Burford Bridge Mr "Mike"
Hunt, who comes of the family who were the lessees of the Star and
Garter at Richmond in its palmy days. Mr Hunt, plump, light-haired,
with a moustache somewhat resembling that of the German Emperor, knows
all there is to know of hotel management, and the eight and a half
years he has been at Burford Bridge are the years in which the hotel
has risen to its present fame. He knows pretty nearly every motorist
who uses the Brighton road, and is a keen supporter of local sport.
The road to Dorking at certain times of the day, especially on Sundays,
is alive with motor cars and motor cycles, and the cars at lunch-time
and at tea-time cluster in front of the hotel like swarming bees. In
the big dining-room the lunch that is served is an excellent one.
There is a choice of two soups, one thick, one clear; fish--on this
particular Sunday there were some excellent lobsters--a great choice
of cold meats and one hot meat dish, and a choice of puddings. A cut
from the cheese is the ending of lunch, and then a cup of coffee served
under one of the trees on the lawn. Half-a-crown is the charge made for
this very ample meal.
If you are making a day of it, as I did on this Sunday, it is pleasant
in the afternoon to stroll past the station, near which a little wooden
chapel stands thatched with reeds, and on through country roads where
the little roses of the brambles were turning to blackberries, and past
garden hedges where the box and holly mingle, out towards Updown Woods.
Once away from the clatter and roar of the main road one is soon in the
heart of the most beautiful country in Surrey, and one comes back to
the hotel, when the rush of the motors returning to town is lulling,
to find a little blue mist coming up from the valley before the distant
wooded hills, and all the rooks winging their way homeward to their
rookery in the great trees, and in the broad meadow by the Mole across
the road, scores and scores of rabbits out for a frolic.
This is the dinner that I ate on that Sunday evening at Burford Bridge:
Consommé à la Reine.
Thick Giblet Soup.
Boiled Turbot, Sauce Hollandaise.
Roast Leg of Mutton.
French Beans. Potatoes.
Roast Duckling or Roast Partridge.
Salad.
Beignets Soufflés.
Tartlets Confiture.
Cheese, etc.
The giblet soup was excellent, the turbot fresh, and, though the
mutton might have been the more tender for another day of hanging, the
partridge and the salad were capital and the _beignet_ made with a very
light hand. The price of the dinner was 4s. 6d., and I drank with it a
pint of Rüdesheimer, which cost me 2s. 9d.
A large party of ladies and men who were staying in the hotel had a
table in the centre of the big room and were very merry over their
meal. Two pretty girls and a young man, motoring up to London, who
stopped at the hotel to eat a dinner on their way, two pleasant-faced
ladies staying at the hotel, and various couples of men, were some of
the diners that night. After dinner I watched the departure of the
motorists, who were completing their journey up to London, sat for a
while by the fire in the drawing-room, for there was sharpness in the
September night air, and at ten o'clock, gently tired by my afternoon's
walk on the hills, went up to bed in a clean little bedroom with some
good old prints on its walls. Next morning the sound that woke me was
the cawing of the rooks on their way to the fields.
XXVIII
THE RITZ
The Ritz Hotel and Restaurant will keep in the remembrance of Londoners
the name of the foremost _hôtelier_ of our days, M. Ritz, a man whose
genius is written across Europe and America, from Paris to Frankfort,
from Biarritz to Salsomaggiore, from Lucerne to Madrid, from Budapest
to New York. Too much quick brain work unfortunately has broken down M.
Ritz's health, and he is never likely to take any share again in the
control of the hotels which bear his name. He was the man who first
taught the mass of the rich English how to dine in cultured comfort in
their own capital; yet to the great majority of those who benefited
by his perfect taste and his genius for giving unostentatious luxury
to the gourmets of the world he was an unknown personality. Duchesses
and actresses, legislators and actors, explorers and curates, all are
known to the public by their photographs in shop windows and in the
newspapers, but I never saw a photograph of Ritz in a Regent Street
shop or in a journal.
It was by chance that he first came to England. When the Savoy Hotel
was opened M. Ritz was manager of the Hotel National at Lucerne and of
the Grand Hotel at Monte Carlo: Mr D'Oyly Carte found him at the Grand
Hotel, and asked him if he would come to the Savoy for six months to
put the restaurant in order. He came, bringing with him M. Escoffier,
who had been chef at the Grand. Ritz at the Savoy made the supper
after the theatre the popular meal it still continues to be, though it
is, thanks to the Early Closing Act, a scramble to eat five-shillings'
worth of food in half-an-hour, and he also discovered, while at the
Savoy, that if a restaurant wishes a large number of its guests to
be of the softer sex a band is a necessity. He saw that an Austrian
band, engaged at the suggestion of Mr Hwfa Williams, kept the diners
half-an-hour longer at their tables over their cigars and coffee, and
that ladies soon came to consider a dinner unaccompanied by music
a tame feast. For the music, often over-loud, to the accompaniment
of which I eat my meals in most restaurants, I am not in the least
thankful to M. Ritz; but the majority of diners, especially those in
petticoats, if such things exist nowadays, think differently.
The fight to obtain music at restaurants on Sundays was one of M.
Ritz's great battles. I remember the days, not so very long ago, when
a band could not play on Sunday in a restaurant unless some individual
dinner-giver engaged it to play for his guests, and had no objection
to the other diners listening to it. Another advance made by Ritz was
the obtaining of newly baked bread for those who lunched and dined
at the Savoy restaurant on a Sunday. The baker who at first supplied
this bread broke some law or some regulation in doing this, and was
summoned; but M. Ritz, not to be beaten, established a bakery in the
hotel to supply the bread. Other restaurants followed suit. He had
an enormous facility for quick work, no detail was too small for
him, and when he had made up his mind that a thing should be done he
took unlimited trouble to have it carried out. At one time, when he
managed the Carlton, he could not understand why the coffee made there
should not be quite up to the level of the coffee at his hotels on
the Continent. He tried every experiment possible, brought water from
all parts of England, took every precaution against the dampness of
our climate, and finally asked one of the Rümpelmayers, the great
pastrycook family of the south of France, to come to London to advise
him in this matter.
I used to see M. Ritz at this period of his life very often, and used
to chat with him on matters of _gourmandise_. Very slim, very quiet,
with nervous hands clasped tightly together, he would move through the
big restaurant seeing everything, saying a word under his breath to a
head waiter, bowing to some of the diners, staying by a table to speak
to others, possessing a marvellous knowledge of faces and of what the
interests were of all the important people of his clientele. There was
a maxim, he said, which should be carved in golden letters above the
door of every _maître d'hôtel_, and that maxim was, in English, "A
customer is always right," and he always bore this in mind. Whenever
at that period M. Escoffier invented a new dish a little jury of
three, M. Escoffier, Madame Ritz and M. Ritz, used to sit in judgment
on it in solemn conclave before it was allowed to appear on a menu
in the restaurant. I once asked Madame Ritz, who has been M. Ritz's
real helpmate and counsellor throughout his married life, to what
quality she attributed her husband's success in life, and she answered,
"sensibility," giving the word its French meaning.
M. Ritz had a talent for doing the right thing at the right time in
the right way. I once saw him in the early morning on the platform
of the station in Rome. He looked, as he always looked, as though he
had come out of a band-box, well-shaved and well-brushed, the ends of
his moustache pointed upwards, his whiskers brought down to the level
of his mouth, wearing those dark garments of extreme neatness which
one always associates with the manager of hotels. He was the one male
person on the platform that morning who was not dishevelled, nor tired,
nor unshaven; but he had raced across the Continent as fast as trains
could carry him to be there to receive a duke and duchess who were
going to stay at the hotel in which he had an interest.
A _coup du maître d'hôtel_, of which he told me afterwards with a
smile, was the method by which he put a large luncheon-party of ladies
on easy terms with each other. It was a luncheon given at the Carlton
and attended by the ladies who were sending the hospital-ship out to
South Africa during the Boer War. Many of the ladies did not know each
other well, and M. Ritz, exceedingly anxious that the luncheon should
be a success, feared that they might not be easily conversational, so
at the commencement of the feast he took round a bottle of Château
Yquem and suggested to each lady that a little glass of white wine made
a good beginning to lunch. In two minutes every lady was chatting most
pleasantly to her neighbours whether she had ever seen them before
or not. Of the determination of M. Ritz in his early days to learn
everything that was to be learned in the restaurant world, I remember
one instance, told me by his wife. He held a well-paid post in one of
the smart Parisian restaurants, but left it to go to Voisin's at a
smaller salary, because he thought there was more to be learned in the
good old restaurant in the Rue St Honoré than in the other place of
good cheer.
[Illustration: M. RITZ]
But it is of the Ritz Restaurant, not of Ritz himself, that I am
writing in this chapter. I have read that the Ritz has swallowed up
the site of the old "White Horse" cellars, from which so many of the
coaches used to start, but the White Horse cellars had crossed the road
a century and a half before I began to know my London. The Isthmian
Club-house at one time occupied the portion of the site overlooking the
Green Park, and when the Club moved on to other quarters it became the
Walsingham, part chambers, part restaurant, one of the group of houses
and hotels which stretched from the Green Park to Arlington Street.
When M. Gehlardi managed the Walsingham, and M. Dutru was its chef,
there was no better dining place in London.
The great white stone building of the Ritz, with its arcaded front and
its entrance to the restaurant and ballrooms right in the middle of the
arcade, is a comparative new-comer to London, in that it was opened
in 1906. It is a building, inside and out, of the Louis XVI. period,
with every modern luxury added. The Winter Garden, where one awaits
one's guests, is a delightful place of creamy marble pillars and gilt
trellis-work, casemented mirrors, carved amorini and a fountain with a
gilt lead figure of "La Source" looking up at the golden cupids poised
above her. The little orchestra of the hotel plays in this Winter
Garden, and its music in no way interferes with the conversation in the
restaurant.
The restaurant itself may be said to be dedicated to Marie Antoinette,
for the gilt bronze garlands which hang from electrolier to
electrolier, forming an oval below the painted sky, were designed to
represent the flower decorations at one of Marie Antoinette's feasts,
and though the garlands have been much lightened, for at first they
were too heavy in design, they are still reminiscent of the poor
little queen who lived such a merry life and met so sad an end. It
is a restaurant of soft colours, of marbles, cream and rose and soft
green, of tapestried recesses and of handsome consoles in the niches.
Towards the Green Park long arched windows look on to one of the
pleasantest prospects in London, and below these windows and between
them and the Park is a little forecourt, in which a green tent is
pitched when a great ball is to be held in the suite of rooms below
the restaurant, and where on hot summer evenings dinner is served in
the open air. At one end of the restaurant is a gilt group of Father
Thames contemplating an exceedingly attractive lady who represents the
Ocean. Everything in the restaurant is of the Louis XVI. period, and
the Aubusson carpets and the chairs and all the silver and the china
and the glass used in the restaurant and the banqueting rooms harmonise
with that period.
The restaurant is not a very large one, and sometimes tables for its
guests are set in the Marie Antoinette room with which it connects,
and in that portion of the corridor which forms an ante-room. But
though it is not of a very great size, the Ritz has a most aristocratic
clientele. Royal personages often lunch and dine there, and diplomacy
regards it as its own particular dining place, for tables are retained
by the secretaries and attachés of two of the Embassies, the German and
the Austrian, and, I fancy, by a third one also.
Lady Amalthea had very graciously said she would dine with me at the
Ritz, so I went in the afternoon of a hot day to interview M. Kroell,
the manager, who stepped across Piccadilly from the Berkeley to succeed
M. Elles, who, for a time, managed both the Ritz in Paris and the Ritz
in London. With M. Kroell was M. Charles, the manager in charge of the
restaurant, and I asked that I might be given that evening a little
dinner for two, not of necessity an expensive dinner, but one suitable
for a warm evening, and I sent my compliments to M. Malley, the _chef
de cuisine_, and said that I hoped that I should find some of the
specialities of his kitchen amongst the dishes.
M. Malley came from the Ritz at Paris when the London Ritz was
first opened, having acquired his art at the Grand Véfour and the
Café Anglais. He presides over a very spacious range of white-tiled
kitchens, in which all the rooms which should be hot are divided by
a wide corridor from the rooms which should be cold, and he has a
talent for the invention of new dishes, amongst these being a very
splendid dish of salmon with a _mousse_ of crayfish, which he has
named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a reminiscence of his days at
Vichy, and his _pêches Belle Dijonnaise_, of which more anon. Russian
soups are one of the specialities of the Ritz kitchen, and there is a
Viennese pastrycook amongst the members of M. Malley's brigade, who
makes exquisite pastry. The late King Edward had a special fancy for
the cakes made at the Ritz, and a supply used to be sent to Buckingham
Palace, but M. Elles told me that this was a State secret, for M.
Ménager, the King's chef, might not have liked it to be known that
anything from another kitchen entered Buckingham Palace.
As I had left my dinner in the safe hands of the experts, so I also
left the question of the champagne we should drink, only asking that it
should be one recommended by the house.
Before going on my way I reminded M. Kroell that on the last occasion
that I had word with him he was presented with a miniature in
brilliants of the order bestowed on him by the King of Spain, and I
asked him if he had been awarded any other decorations. M. Kroell
laughed, and then modestly owned to the German military medal, and
as he told me this he involuntarily squared his shoulders as an old
soldier.
Lady Amalthea arrived with military punctuality (she is a soldier's
wife) in the best of spirits, wearing a dream of a dress, and her
diamonds and turquoises. A table had been kept for us at the upper end
of the room, where Lady Amalthea could both see all the guests and be
seen by them. She ran through a little selection from Debrett as she
took her seat, having scanned most of the diners as she came in, and I
was enabled to add to this by identifying a group at one of the tables
as some of the Peace Delegates from the Balkans.
Then we settled down to the infinitely important matter of seeing what
the dinner was that M. Malley and M. Charles in counsel had arranged
for us.
This is the menu, and though at first sight it seems a long one for two
people it is an exceedingly light dinner, and we neither of us ate the
tiny cutlets which were the _gros pièce_ of the feast. The wine to go
with it was a bottle of Roederer 1906:
Melon.
Consommé Glacé Madrilène.
Filet de Sole Romanoff.
Cailles des Gourmets.
Côtes de Pauillac Montpensir.
Petits Pois.
Velouté Palestine.
Poulet en Chaudfroid.
Salade à la Ritz.
Pêche Belle Dijonnaise.
The melon, delightfully cold, struck the right note in a dinner for a
hot evening; the Madrilène soup, beautiful in colour and flavoured with
tomato and capsicum, carried on the summer symphony; the Romanoff sole
was quite admirable, served with small slices of apple and artichokes
and with mussels, the apple giving a suspicion of bitter sweetness as
a contrast to the flesh of the fish. M. Charles happened to be near
our table at this period, not, I think, quite by chance. I assured
him that if there was such a thing as a gastronomic nerve M. Malley's
creation had found it. The quails formed part of a little pie brought
to table in a pie-dish of old blue willow pattern, and with them were
coxcombs and truffles and other good things. The _poulet en chaudfroid_
was a noble bird, all white, and in it and with it was a pink _mousse_
delicately perfumed with curry powder, a quite admirable combination.
The Ritz salad is of _cœurs de romaine_, with almonds and portions of
tiny oranges with it. Last of the dishes in the dinner came the _pêche
Belle Dijonnaise_, which is one of the creations which have made the
fame of M. Malley, and which will become historical. It is a delightful
combination of peaches and black currant ice with some cassis, a
liqueur of black currants, added to it, and it is called _Belle
Dijonnaise_ because of the old Burgundian proverb: _A Dijon, il y a du
bon vin et des jolies filles_.
I do not doubt that many people dined well in London on that hot June
evening, but this I will warrant, that no two people, however important
they might be, or whatever they paid for their dinner (my bill came to
£2, 10s.), dined better than did Lady Amalthea and I at the Ritz, and I
make all my compliments to M. Malley.
I should not do the Ritz full justice if I did not refer to the
banquets which are served in the Marie Antoinette room and in the great
white suite below the restaurant. As typical of the Ritz banquets I
give you the menu of one that Lord Haldane gave to the foreign officers
visiting London in June 1912, and I also give the accompanying wines:
Caviar d'Esturgeon.
Kroupnick Polonaise.
Consommé Viveur Glacé en Tasse.
Timbale de Homards à l'Américaine.
Suprême de Truite Saumonée à la Gelée de Chambertin.
Aiguillette de Jeune Caneton à l'Ambassade.
Courgettes à la Serbe.
Selle de Veau Braisée à l'Orloff.
Petits Pois. Carottes à la Crème.
Pommes Mignonette Persillées.
Soufflé de Jambon Norvégienne.
Ortolans Doubles au Bacon.
Cœurs de Laitues.
Asperges Géantes de Paris, Sauce Hollandaise.
Pêches des Gourmets.
Friandises.
Mousse Romaine.
Tartelettes Florentine.
Corbeille de Fruits.
VINS.
Gonzalez Coronation Sherry.
Berncastler Doctor, 1893.
Château Duhart Milon, 1875.
Heidsieck Dry Monopole, 1898.
G. H. Mumm, 1899.
Croft's Port, 1890.
La Grande Marque Fine, 1848.
The dinner looks at first glance to be an exceedingly long one, but it
is also an exceedingly light one, the saddle of veal being the only
substantial dish of the feast. The _aiguillettes_ of duckling from one
of the special dishes at the Ritz, and the _soufflés_ and the _mousses_
that come from the Ritz kitchens are always ethereal. This banquet is
an excellent example of a feast which is important without being heavy.
XXIX
SOME OUTLYING RESTAURANTS
In calling the restaurants about which I write in this chapter
"outlying" ones, I do not mean that they are in the far suburbs, but
only that they are some little distance from Nelson's Column, which I
take to be the centre of restaurant land, and that each of them is in a
part of London having its own entity--Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Sloane
Square and Bloomsbury.
* * * * *
Rinaldo, in the days when he was at the Savoy, used to stand at the
desk by the door and tell us all as we came in what tables had been
reserved for us. Of course, as _maître d'hôtel_, he had other duties,
but as he knew my whims concerning the position of my table, and as
he always sent me just where I wanted to be, I have him in grateful
remembrance for doing this. When he left the Savoy he set up on his own
account at No. 15 Wilton Road, which is just opposite Victoria Station,
and there, I am glad to say, he still flourishes. He is no longer quite
the slim Spanish don with a peaked black beard that he used to be, but
proprietorship has a waistcoat-filling effect on restaurateurs, and
time softens black hair with streaks of grey.
Rinaldo's restaurant is quite spacious, a high and airy room with
plenty of light. Its walls are of pleasant grey with decorations
in high relief in the upper part, and on the stained glass of the
sky-light are paintings of game and fruit. Baskets of ferns in the
shape of boats hang from the roof, and there are always bunches of
roses on the tables. Behind a screen at the far end is the service
bar where the wines are served out, and in the centre of the room is
a very appetising table of cold meats and fruit; the melons and other
things that should be kept cold being on a long box of broken ice;
the mushrooms reposing in big wooden baskets; the crayfish and the
egg-fruit and the other delicacies, according to seasons, all being set
out with exceptional taste and looking very tempting.
Quite an aristocratic clientele lunches and dines at Rinaldo's
restaurant. Many of the great people of Belgravia like to lunch in a
restaurant which is no great distance from their homes; the Monsignori
from the neighbouring Roman Catholic Cathedral often go there, and
quite a number of gourmets who like the Italian dishes--for Rinaldo,
though he looks like a Spaniard, is an Italian--of which there are
always some on the bill of fare, are very constant patrons.
The restaurant has an extensive _carte du jour_, and most people who
lunch there prefer to order that meal from the card, though there is a
two-shilling lunch for those who are in a hurry. On the _carte du jour_
which I took away with me on the last occasion I lunched in Wilton Road
I found amongst the entrées _ris de veau financière, Vienna schnitzel,
côte de veau Napolitaine, bitock à la Russe, entrecôte Tyrolienne_ and
_fritto misto à la Romaine_, which shows that the restaurant caters for
many nationalities and many tastes. My lunch on this occasion--it was a
warm summer day--consisted of a slice of cantaloup melon, 9d.; _fritto
misto_, 1s. 6d.; a cut of cheese; an iced _zabajone Milanaise_, 1s.,
and a cup of coffee, which is always excellent at Rinaldo's, and which,
disregarding his early bringing-up--for Italians never allow metals to
touch coffee--Rinaldo pours out of a fascinating little metal pot. A
three-and-six dinner is the dinner of the house, and Rinaldo explained
to me that this rarely contains Italian dishes; for Englishmen in the
evening find them rather difficult to digest. This is a menu, taken by
chance in the autumn, of the dinner of the restaurant:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Tosca.
Crème Portugaise.
Turbot Bouilli. Sce. Homard.
Filet d'Hareng Meunière.
Mignonette d'Agneau Marigny.
Grenadine de Veau Clamart.
Grouse rôti.
Salade.
Choufleur au Gratin.
Glacé Napolitaine.
Mignardises.
* * * * *
Gretener, who is the proprietor of the New Albert Restaurant, 77
Knightsbridge, also, in the past, scored good marks in my memory, for
he was manager of that very difficult proposition, the restaurant
of the Gare Maritime at Boulogne, and during his reign there it was
always possible, by giving him warning beforehand, to get an excellent
luncheon excellently served. As most of the business of that restaurant
is to put the greatest amount of food in the shortest possible time
into travellers who keep one anxious eye on the train outside, or to
cater for big parties of excursionists at the cheapest possible rate, a
manager must have a soul for the gastronomic art to keep his restaurant
under these conditions a place of delicate cookery. When M. Gretener
and his pretty wife came to England they established themselves at a
restaurant in Knightsbridge, which has a tessellated pavement and walls
of ornamented glazed tiles with mirrors at intervals, and a ceiling on
which cupids in high relief gambol on medallions with a blue ground.
A stained glass window is at the far end of the restaurant, a wide
staircase leads to the first floor, and under the staircase is a little
glassed-in serving-room. M. Gretener has collected a very faithful
clientele, and he also sends out meals to the dwellers in the houses
of flats which abound in Knightsbridge. In the summer-time many people
who go out of a morning to Hyde Park, strangers in the land, French,
Germans, and Italians amongst them, see Gretener's as they go through
the Albert Gate and make it their lunching place. A three-shilling
dinner is the dinner of the house, but whenever I have been there I
have ordered my meal _à la carte_ from the very moderately priced card
of the day, and this is a typical bill. _Crème Lentils_, 8d. Mayonnaise
of Salmon, 2s. _Noisette d'agneau Doria_, 1s. 6d. _Haricots verts
sautés_, 6d., and _Bavarois chocolat_, 4d.
* * * * *
The Queen's Restaurant, No. 4 Sloane Square, is one to which I often
go when there is a first night at the Court Theatre, for it is only
just across the road from that house. Its proprietor, M. Coppo, who
learned his business at the Café Royal, bustles about his restaurant
with a napkin under his arm doing the work of _maître d'hôtel_. The
restaurant, with cream-coloured walls and mirrors in white frames,
consists of several rooms thrown into one, the part by the entrance
door being narrow and just holding two rows of tables, while at
the back there is plenty of space. The clientele, on the occasions
that I have been there, has been a mixture of all the comfortable
classes--Guards' officers from the neighbouring barracks, fashionable
people of both sexes from Sloane Street and its neighbourhood, dramatic
critics making a hurried meal before going to the theatre, business
men, and an artist or two from the Chelsea studios. M. Coppo gives his
patrons a set dinner, the price of which, I fancy, is 3s. 6d.; but
I have always ordered my dinner from the _carte du jour_, and I have
found the food to be quite reasonably cheap and good.
* * * * *
I wonder how many people of the tens of hundreds who take their books
to Mudie's to be exchanged know that the Vienna Café just across the
road is an excellent place at which to lunch. In the upstairs rooms
I have eaten, in the middle of the day, Austrian and German dishes
excellently cooked, and there is a Viennese cheese cake which is a
speciality of the house for which I have a liking, and with a slice
of which I have always ended my meal. The coffee of the house is the
excellent coffee made in the Austrian manner, and at tea-time the Café
down below is always crowded with people, especially ladies, who like
the Viennese cakes and pastries that they obtain there.
XXX
THE KING'S GUARD
ST JAMES'S PALACE
"The best dinner in London, sir!" was what our fathers always added
when, with a touch of gratification, they used to tell of having been
asked to dine on the Guard at St James's; and nowadays, when the art
of dinner-giving has come to be very generally understood, the man who
likes good cooking and good company still feels very pleased to be
asked to dinner by one of the officers of the guard, for the old renown
is still justified, and there is a fascination in the surroundings that
is not to be obtained by unlimited money spent in any restaurant.
Past the illuminated clock of the Palace, the hands of which mark
five minutes to eight, in through an arched gate, across one of the
courts, and in a narrow passage where a window gives a glimpse of
long rows of burnished pots and pans, is a black-painted door with,
on the door-jamb, a legend of black on white telling that this is the
officers' guard.
Up some wooden stairs with leaden edges to them, stairs built for
use and not for ornament: and, the guests' coats being taken by a
clean-shaved butler in evening clothes, we are at once in the officers'
room.
It is a long room, lighted on one side by a great bow-window, flanked
by two other windows. At the farthest end of the room from the door
is a mantelpiece of grey and white marble. The walls are painted a
comfortable green colour, and there are warm crimson curtains to the
windows. There are many pictures upon the walls; and a large sofa,
leather-covered arm-chairs, and a writing-table in the bow of the
window give an air of comfort to the room. A great screen, which, in
its way, is a work of art, being covered with cuttings of all periods,
from Rowlandson's caricatures to the modern style of military prints,
is drawn out from the wall so as to divide the room into two portions.
On the door side of the screen stands in one corner the regimental
colour of the battalion finding the guard, and here, too, are the
bearskin head-dresses of the officers.
On the fireplace side of the screen is a table ready set for dinner,
the clear glass decanters at the corners being filled with champagne,
a silver-gilt vase forming the centre-piece, and candles in silver
candelabra giving the necessary light. By the fireplace the officers of
the guard, in scarlet and gold and black, are waiting to receive their
guests.
In addition to the officers of St James's guard, the adjutant and
colonel of the battalion that finds the guard, the two officers of the
Household Cavalry on guard at the Horse Guards and some of the military
officials of the Court have a right to dine. But it is rarely that all
entitled to this privilege avail themselves of it, and the captain and
officers of the guard generally are able to ask some guests to fill the
vacant chairs.
As, on the stroke of eight, on the evening I am writing of, we sat down
to dinner my host told me that he had ordered a typical meal for me.
This was the menu:
Potage croûte-au-pot.
Eperlans à l'Anglaise.
Bouchées à la moëlle.
Côtelettes de mouton. Purée de marrons.
Poularde à la Turque.
Hure truffée. Sauce Cumberland.
Pluviers dorés.
Pommes de terre Anna.
Champignons grillés.
Omelette soufflée.
Huîtres à la Diable.
The spatchcocked smelts, the boar's head, with its sharp-tasting sauce,
and the _soufflée_, I recognised as being favourite dishes on the
King's Guard.
On this evening the wearers of the black coats, as well as the red,
had served his Majesty, at one time or another, in various parts
of the world, and our talk drifted to the subject of the various
officers' guards all over the British world. In hospitality the castle
guard at Dublin probably comes next to the guard at St James's, for
the officers of the guard fare excellently there at the Viceregal
expense. The Bank guards, both in the City of London and at College
Green, have compensating advantages, and the officers' guard at Fort
William, Calcutta, has helped many an impoverished subaltern to buy a
polo pony. The story goes that some rich native falling ill close to
the gate of Fort William, the subaltern on guard took him up to the
guardroom and treated him kindly, and in consequence, in his will, the
native left provision for a daily sum of rupees to be given to the
subaltern on guard. These rupees are paid to the officer minus one,
retained by the _babus_ as a charge for "stationery," and though all
the little tin gods both at Calcutta and Simla have exerted themselves
to recover for the subaltern that rupee, the power of the _babu_ has
been too strong and the imaginary stationery still represents the
missing rupee. We chatted of the Malta guard, with its collection of
pictures on the wall; of dreary hours at Gibraltar, with nothing to do
except to construct sugar-covered fougasses to blow up flies; and of
exciting moments at Peshawar, when the chance of being shot by one's
own sentries made going the rounds a real affair of outposts.
Then I asked questions about the gilt centre-piece, which is in the
shape of an Egyptian vase with sphinxes on the base, and was told that
the holding capacities of it were beyond the guessing of anyone who
had not seen the experiment tried. Some of the other plate which is
put upon the table at the close of dinner is of great interest. There
is a cigar-lighter in the shape of a grenade given by his late Majesty
King Edward, a silver cigar-cutter, a memento of an inter-regimental
friendship made at manœuvres, and a snuff-box made from one of the
hoofs of Napoleon's charger Marengo. Which hoof it was is not stated on
the box, but the collective wisdom of the table decided that it must
have been the near hind one. Excepting on days when the Scots Guards
are on guard, the Sovereign's health is not, I believe, drunk after
dinner--though I fancy that King Edward, when Prince of Wales, dining
on guard, broke through this custom. The regiment from across the
Border was at one time suspected of a leaning towards Jacobitism, and
while the officers were ordered to drink his Majesty's health they were
not allowed to use finger-glasses after dinner, lest they should drink
to the King over the water.
Dinner over, the big sofa is pulled round in front of the fire and
a bridge-table claims its devotees. I asked my host to be allowed
to inspect the pictures which pretty well cover the walls. The most
important is an excellent portrait of Queen Victoria in the early part
of her reign. It is the work of "Lieut.-Col. Cadogan," and was begun
on the wall of a guardroom--at Windsor, I fancy. The surface of the
wall was cut off, the picture finished, and it now hangs, a fine work
of art but a tremendous weight, in the place of honour. There is an
admirable oil-colour of the old Duke of Wellington, showing a kindly
old face looking down, a pleasant difference from the alert aquiline
profile which most of his portraits show. There are prints of other
celebrated generals, mostly Guardsmen, and an amusing caricature of
three kings dining on guard. It is a very unfurnished guardroom, with
a bare floor, in which their Majesties are being entertained, but the
enthusiasm with which the officers are drinking their health makes up
for the surroundings. A key to the print hangs hard by, but the names
attached to the various figures are said to have been written in joke.
Many of the pictures are sporting prints and hunting caricatures; but
the original of _Vanity Fair's_ sketch of Dan Godfrey is in one corner;
and a strange old picture of a battle, painted on a tea-tray, hangs
over the door.
On either side of the looking-glass, above the mantelpiece, are the
list of officers on duties and the orders for the guard, the latter
with a glass over them, which is supposed to have been cracked in
Marlborough's time. Some very admirably arranged caricatures, with
explanatory notes, are bound into a series of red volumes and kept in a
glazed set of shelves, and these, with a number of blue-bound volumes
of _The Pall Mall Magazine_, form the greater portion of the library
available for the officers on guard.
As the hands of the clock near eleven, the butler, who has been handing
round "pegs" in long tumblers, takes up his position by the door.
Military discipline is inexorable, and we (the guests) know that we
must be out of the precincts of the guard by eleven o'clock. We say
good-night to our hosts, and as we go downstairs we hear the clank of
swords being buckled on.
Outside in the courtyard a sergeant and a drummer and a man with a
lantern are waiting for the officer to go the rounds.
XXXI
THE OLD BULL AND BUSH
There is no side of London life that has died out more completely, so
far as the upper classes are concerned, than the visits to the old
tea-gardens which used to be the resort of the well-to-do classes from
the days of King Charles II. up to the beginning of the last century.
Bagginnage Wells, to which Nell Gwynne first brought the bucks, is only
a name now, but Coleman, in his comedy, _Bon-ton_, defined good tone as
to
"Drink tea on summer afternoons
At Bagginnage Wells with china and gilt spoons."
Sadler's Wells was a tea-garden with a music-room before Rosoman
pulled down the building to put up a theatre. White Conduit House used
to take fifty pounds on a Sunday afternoon for sixpenny tea tickets,
and its white bread was considered a great luxury. The bowling alleys
of Marylebone Gardens were famous; and there were tea-gardens and a
bowling-green at the Yorkshire Stingo, opposite Lisson Grove. Kilburn
Wells advertised that its gardens and great room were adapted to the
use of "the politest companies," and at Jenny's Whim there was a great
garden, in different parts of which were recesses, and in a large piece
of water facing the tea alcoves big fish and mermaids showed themselves
above the surface. The Apollo Gardens in the Westminster Road, and
Cuper's Gardens opposite Somerset House, were amongst these old places
of amusement, most of which are now only names. There is, however, at
the present time a tavern with tea-gardens of the old-fashioned kind
quite close to London, which, besides its picturesqueness, has other
recommendations which give it a right to inclusion in a "Gourmet's
Guide."
The Bull and Bush at North End, Hampstead, which is the tavern to
which I refer, has no very long history behind it. It was a farmhouse
when Jack Straw's Castle and the Spaniards were inns with tea-gardens
attached, the gardens of the latter house being laid out in the formal
Dutch style, which became fashionable after the Revolution. Tradition
has it that the Bull and Bush was at one time Hogarth's house, and Mr
Austin Dobson, who garnered information from all quarters into his book
on Hogarth, admits the claim of the house to this distinction, but
thinks that it was a house to which Hogarth went for "a visit." There
are long periods in Hogarth's life, before his father-in-law, Sir John
Thornhill, forgave him for his elopement with his daughter and took
the young pair to live with him in the family house in Covent Garden,
of which no record has been kept, and I should like to imagine that
the blue-eyed, bold young artist carried away the girl he loved to the
farmhouse on the breezy common to spend their honeymoon there, and that
he and she together planted the ring of fir-trees in the garden which
are still called "Hogarth's firs." The house ceased to be a farm, and
became a place of refreshment in later days, and W. H. Pyne (Ephraim
Hardcastle), in his collection of essays, "Wine and Walnuts," tells
of an imaginary excursion made to the Bull and Bush by a party which
included Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sterne and Garrick, and
puts in Gainsborough's mouth praise of the creamy milk and the fine
Dutch damask to be found at the little inn.
And the great Victorian painters and writers followed the example of
their predecessors in going on jaunts to the Bull and Bush, for when
Harry Humphries, a great favourite with all men of the pen and brush,
was the host of the house, Dickens used to frequent it, and George
Augustus Sala, Clement Scott and E. L. Blanchard, and those two great
_Punch_ artists, George du Maurier and Charles Keene, and many more of
a like kidney.
There is no difficulty in finding the old inn to-day, for at the
flagstaff and the pond which mark the western end of the long, bare
backbone of the common (from which London can be seen below to the
south in its veil of smoke, and on clear days the Surrey hills beyond,
while to the north are the hills and fields of the great landscape that
stretches from Harrow round to Hainault) the North End road plunges
down, with common land, furze and undergrowth and big trees and grassy
knolls to one side, and on the other old oaken park palings and big
trees.
Just where the road first dips a blind fiddler stands, and all day
long he plays one air, and that air is Kate Carney's song, "Down
by the old Bull and Bush." The inn itself is almost in the shadow
of a big mansion, Pitt House it is called, to which the great Lord
Chatham retired when he suffered from his nerve storms, refused to
see any of his fellow-ministers and could not even bear the presence
of a servant, his food being passed in to him through a panel in the
door. In the road to one side of the inn a peripatetic photographer
generally establishes his studio. The Bull and Bush is a white-faced
building with a slated roof, standing a little back from the highway,
and behind it and on both sides of it are many trees. It is an old
house with a big window to its large room on the first floor and nice
old-fashioned bow-windows with small panes to the two bar-rooms on
the ground floor. One of these bar-rooms is a real snuggery adorned
with sketches by some of the artists who have made themselves at home
in the inn. Various large boards set forth that lunches, dinners and
teas are obtainable; that the name of the host is Mr Fred Vinall; that
there are private dining-rooms, a coffee-room and billiards; and that a
two-shilling ordinary is ready every Sunday from two to three o'clock.
This "ordinary," which I believe is a very noble feast for the money
charged, is held in the big room upstairs.
The gardens are at the back of the inn, and though summer is the real
time to enjoy the attractions of the arbours at the Bull and Bush, it
is quite pleasant when the new leaves are covering, in the spring, the
trees with the lightest green, or on a still, autumn day when the tints
around the lawn are all russet and copper, to drink tea on the little
terrace behind the house in the centre of which is a great stone vase
for flowers and at which little tables with red and white and yellow
and white covers are set for the tea-drinkers. The tea is excellent,
and though the slices of bread and butter are thick they are of fine
bread and the freshest of butter. When spring merges into summer the
green bowling lawn, with turf as thick and level as a carpet, also has
its quota of cane chairs and little tables, and the rustic arbours all
around it, on the roofs of which are boxes of flowers, are also all
occupied. The waiters are kept busy carrying cakes and bread and butter
and tea and stronger beverages all through a summer day to the little
family parties who take their ease in the garden of their inn.
As a neighbour to the bowling-green is the platform which serves as
an out-of-door dancing floor when Cinderellas are held on summer
evenings, and as the flooring on which the chairs are put when a
concert is given on a little stage which is to one side of this planked
space. In the middle of this dancing and theatre floor is the circle
of firs which bears Hogarth's name. There are electric lights on the
terrace and amidst the trees and round the lawn and dancing floor.
Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays are the days on which the concerts
or the dances are generally held in summer.
Mr Fred Vinall, short in stature, genial in manner, with close-clipped
grey beard and moustache, has just as distinguished friends amongst
players and artists and men of the pen as any of his predecessors. He
has revived the old pleasures of the tea-gardens of a hundred years
ago, and to see the gardens of the Bull and Bush on a warm summer
evening is to learn that Londoners can take their evening pleasures out
of doors with cheerful mirth and with sobriety as well.
And now at last I come to the reason why the Bull and Bush should be
recommended to gourmets not only as a place where Londoners can be
seen amusing themselves sanely, but as a place of excellent eating.
Mrs Vinall, wife of the host of the old inn, Belgian by birth, has all
the talent of a Cordon Bleu, and if warning is telegraphed or written
to the inn of the coming of a party of gourmets, a lunch or a dinner,
admirably cooked under Mrs Vinall's supervision, will be ready for
the gastronomers, the table set in the open air, and they will, I am
sure, eating in the invigorating air of Hampstead Heath food admirably
cooked, thank me for having told them of a lunching and dining place
clear of the London smoke.
XXXII
THE BERKELEY
The pleasant, white-faced hotel, with its restaurant on the ground
floor, which faces the Ritz across Piccadilly, stands on classic
ground, for it was at the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street that
Francatelli, the great cook and _maître d'hôtel_, pupil of the even
greater Carême, was in command of the St James's Restaurant and the
hotel of that name which in the middle of the last century stood first,
with no _proxime accessit_, amongst the restaurants of the capital.
Nowadays we take our great French cooks in London for granted; they
are part of the life of London. But in the fifties Clubland was still
a little astonished and flattered that the great chefs were willing to
desert their own country to dwell amidst the fogs and rain of England,
and restaurants were comparatively rare, and few of them were of a
very high class. Hayward, who first published his "Art of Dining" in
1852, gives in his book little biographies of Ude and Francatelli,
and alludes rather slightingly to Soyer, who was the third of the
trio of very great cooks. Disraeli, who had enough of the artistic
temperament in him to assign to gastronomy its proper place amongst
the pleasures of life, recorded the dismissal of Ude from Crockford's
in the following words:--"There has been a row at Crockford's, and Ude
dismissed. He told the committee he was worth £4000 a year. Their new
man is quite a failure, so I think the great artist may yet return
from Elba." The "new man" was Francatelli, and he was so far from
being a failure that when it was thought that Buckingham Palace should
possess the greatest cook in England the position of chief cook and
_maître d'hôtel_ to the Queen was offered to him. He did not find the
position a comfortable one, and resigned at the end of two years. For
a time he lived in retirement, but in the sixties he once more placed
himself on the active list, and took charge of the St James's.
In doing so he was following the example of Soyer, who, in the fifties,
established a restaurant in Gore House, which had been the residence
of Lady Blessington. Soyer expected that the Great Exhibition would
send a crowd of rich people to his restaurant, and many great people
patronised it, but in the end he lost £7000 by his venture. Hayward
says concerning him that "he is more likely to earn immortality by his
soup kitchen than by his soup," alluding to the soup kitchens that
Soyer as a Government Commissioner established at the Royal Barracks in
Dublin during the great famine in Ireland.
In 1868, when "The Epicure's Year Book," an attempt to copy Grimod de
la Reynière's "Almanach des Gourmands," was published by Bradbury and
Evans, Francatelli was at the zenith of his fame at the St James's, and
the anonymous author, in that book, who wrote the chapter on "London
Dinners," after paying a compliment to British fare, saying that Wilton
and Rule are not afraid of comparison with any oyster dealers in the
world, and extolling the flounders and steaks of the Blue Posts in Cork
Street, declares that cookery "such as Ude once served at Crockford's
and his successor Francatelli is now serving at the St James's Hotel,
Piccadilly, is not reached by any other hotel or tavern in London." As
it may interest my readers with a taste for antiquarian lore to know
which were the restaurants recommended in the sixties for good plain
food, I continue the quotation. "At the Ship and Turtle in Leadenhall
Street, or at Birch's (Ring and Brymer), on Cornhill, the turtle is
cooked with perfect art; and the punch would satisfy the author of
'Le veritable art de faire le Punch.' The fish, at the fish dinner at
Simpson's in Cheapside, is admirable. Nay, you may have a chop broiled
under your nose, at Joe's, behind the Royal Exchange, that shall defy
criticism. At Simpson's in the Strand; at the Albion, by Drury Lane
Theatre; at Blanchard's (ask for his Cotherstone cheese), in Beak
Street, Regent Street, the Earl Dudley's neck of venison, duckling with
green peas, or chicken with asparagus--the main elements of his dinner
'fit for an emperor,' are to be bought excellently well cooked. The
Rainbow, in Fleet Street, is a well-known, good, plain house; and a
grill well cooked and served, where Messrs Spiers and Pond have put up
their silver gridiron, at Ludgate Hill, is a new illustration of London
plain cookery. The London, in Fleet Street, is an admirable house;
cheap, and yet where there are--a rare thing in the City--well-kept
tables. This house publishes its menus in the evening papers. Our
oyster shops have no rivals in the boastful capital of gastronomy.
Take Pim's, for example, in the Poultry, where there are perfect
oysters, and the luncheon delicacies of our modern day. But when the
ambitious diner glances along the line of entrées, even in the best
of the houses I have cited, he is in danger. In the City, the Albion
is the best kitchen for elaborate dishes, and the dinners given here
are smaller than the crowds which meet over huddled, flat, and chilled
dishes at our great public dinners. Yet nobody would for one moment
think of comparing the most carefully prepared dinner for sixty with
such a menu as Francatelli prepares for half-a-dozen in Piccadilly."
From this general damnation, however, the author exempts Willis's, in
King Street, St James's, where, he says, the mutton pies of the Old
Thatched House Tavern may still be eaten; Epitaux', in Pall Mall; the
Burlington, in Regent Street; Verrey's and Kühn's, in which places
"very respectable French cookery is to be had."
"The Epicure's Year Book" gives amongst its menus of remarkable dinners
of 1867 one of the "Epicure" dinner served at the St James's. The
_dîner à la Russe_ was in those days ousting the dinner in the French
style, in which the dishes were placed in three services or relays
upon the table and carved by host and guests, and such an epicure as
Captain Hans Busk, who was the gourmet _par excellence_ of the sixties,
gave his guests at the United University Club very much such a dinner
as men eat to-day, though his dinners were of too many courses. But at
the Mansion House the first and second and third services were still
adhered to. Francatelli, though conforming to the new style, made
concessions to the old school, as this menu shows. His French was a
little shaky, for he did not know when "_à la_" should be used and when
it should not be used:
Les Huîtres.
_Potages_.--La purée de gibier à la chasseur; à la Julienne.
_Poisson_.--Les epigrammes de rougets à la Bordelaise; le saumon à la
Tartare.
_Entrées_.--Les mauviettes à la Troienza; les côtelettes à la
Duchesse; les medaillons de perdreaux à la St James; le selle de
mouton rôtie.
_Legumes ... Salade._
_Second Service_.--Le faisan truffé à la Périgueux; la mayonnaise de
crevettes; les chouxfleurs au parmesan; la charlotte de pommes; le
gâteau à la Cérito.
The St James's was not by any means the first hostelry at the corner
of Berkeley Street, for in the stage-coach days a coffee-house--the
Gloucester, I think--occupied the site, and some of the coaches for the
west used to start from it; but I have already given you a fill of the
history of the forerunners of the Berkeley, and will come at once to
recent years and the modern building.
M. Diette, who was one of the men who awakened London from its
mid-Victorian gluttony and taught Londoners to dine lightly and dine
well, was for a time at the Berkeley before he went to the Continent
to make the Hotel du Palais at Biarritz a very splendid place of
entertainment. He died recently at Le Touquet, where one of his many
sons-in-law, M. Recoussine, is in command of two of the big hotels. In
1897 there were many alterations and additions made to the Berkeley,
the restaurant was almost doubled in size, and when M. Jules was
manager of the hotel and Emile was in charge of the restaurant, and
M. Herpin was _chef de cuisine_, the Berkeley was, as it is now, one
of the "best places" at which to dine in London. The restaurant in
those days was panelled with light oak, and the ante-room, by the
entrance, was all old gold. Jules was translated to the Savoy and now,
as a proprietor, is comfortably settled at the Maison Jules in Jermyn
Street. M. Kroell was another manager who stepped from the Berkeley
to a larger hotel, having only to cross the road to reach the Ritz.
Mr Raymond Slanz, the manager who controls the Berkeley in this year
of grace, is as eminent as any of his predecessors. He is young,
energetic, and has brains, which he has used unsparingly in keeping
the Berkeley abreast of the times. He is the most cosmopolitan of
managers, for he has gained his experience all over the Continent, in
England, America and South Africa. He has been the architect of his
own fortunes, for when he first came to London he started his upward
career from the position of extra waiter at the Savoy. The restaurant
to-day is all white; its walls have a deep white frieze, with on it
in relief a wood through the trees of which a mediæval hunting party
thread their way, half the animals that came out of the Ark being afoot
in this wonderful preserve. There is some gold ornamentation just below
the frieze and on the casings of the windows, and gilt electroliers are
in the centre of the panels. Shields of semi-opaque glass and lamps
hidden by the cornice throw light up on to the ceiling and there are
gilt capitols to the fluted columns. The rose and grey of the carpet
and the rose of the chair cushions form a pleasant contrast to the
white. The ante-room in which a string band of musicians in gorgeous
uniforms play has the same decoration as the restaurant. The Berkeley
restaurant flourishes so satisfactorily that more tables are wanted,
though it is comparatively lately that a new room was added, and the
space occupied by the cashiers is to be thrown into the restaurant.
M. Arturo Giordano, who is generally known as "Arthur" and who used
to oscillate between the Palais at St Moritz and the Berkeley, is now
permanently in charge of the restaurant, and M. J. Granjon, who came to
London from the Grande Cercle Républicain, and who has been created a
Chevalier of the Order of Mérite Agricole, is the _chef de cuisine_.
One warm July evening I found myself at eight o'clock dinnerless in
Mayfair. I was to have dined with friends at their house, but on
arriving there found that my hostess had been taken suddenly ill and
that dinner was the last thing concerning which the household was
troubling itself. My room under these circumstances was more welcome
than my company. My favourite table in my favourite club would, I
knew, be occupied by somebody else; the Berkeley was the nearest
restaurant, and I accordingly walked there and found one of the small
tables at the far end of the room unoccupied. At the Berkeley there
is always a _carte du jour_ with an abundant choice of dishes, those
ready being marked with a cross. It is the custom of the house, and
a very good one too, to allow the diners to choose their own dinner
from the _carte_ and to charge them half-a-guinea or twelve and six,
according to whether the dinner is a long one or a short one. I was in
the course of ordering a short dinner and had selected _rossolnik_, a
Russian soup, some turbot, a wing of a chicken _en cocotte_, and was
hesitating over the various _entremets_, when Arthur espied me, came to
my table and took matters into his own hands. He asked to be allowed to
alter my menu slightly in order that some of the specialities of the
house might play a part in it. I was nothing loth, for my dinner under
those circumstances became interesting, and I was prepared to consider
critically any of M. Granjon's creations that Arthur might put before
me. This was the menu:
Melon Cantaloup.
Crème Raymonde.
Turbotin Beaumarchais.
Suprême de Volaille Bagatelle.
Velouté Châtelaine.
Pêches Glacés Hortense.
The soup was a cream of chicken, delightfully soft, a very gentle
introduction to what was to follow. The _turbotin Beaumarchais_ is a
noble dish, a strong white wine sauce with the essence of the fish
in it, and sliced truffles, and mushrooms and carrots being served
therewith, parsley, and just a suspicion of onion. The _suprême de
volaille Bagatelle_ I recommend to anyone who, like myself, is
occasionally warned off red meats by sundry twinges, as being a dish
of fowl which is interesting and not in the least vapid. Asparagus and
mushrooms and truffles go with it, and the principal ingredients of the
sauce are port and cream reduced. The _entremet_ consisted of peaches
and grapes, raspberries, and a cream ice with, I fancy, more than one
liqueur added, the whole forming a noble _Coupe-Jacques_, served in a
silver bowl. My dinner being a short one, I had plenty of appetite left
for this admirable fruit dish.
The Berkeley, both the hotel and the restaurant, always seem to be a
stronghold of the country gentleman. If I heard that an M.F.H. of my
acquaintance whom I wished to see was in town and I did not know his
address, the hotel to which I should telephone first to ask whether he
was staying there would be the Berkeley, and no doubt the wonderful
frieze of the restaurant is a compliment to the mighty hunters who
stay in the hotel. Many squarsons and the higher ranks of the clergy
are amongst the patrons of the Berkeley, and whenever I dine at the
restaurant it seems to me that it ought to be the week of the Oxford
and Cambridge or Eton and Harrow cricket matches, for I always see
amongst the guests at the dinner-parties pretty girls with complexions
of cream and rose, the sisters of Varsity lads and public schoolboys,
country maidens whom I always associate with "Lord's," light and dark
blue ribbons, and wild enthusiasm.
I have never dined at the Berkeley without coming away a pleased man,
and the dinner that M. Granjon cooked for me when I was dinnerless
in the wilderness which borders the Green Park sent me away from the
Berkeley rejoicing.
XXXIII
THE JOYS OF FOREIGN TRAVEL
THE RESTAURANT GUSTAVE
There are one or two tales of wonderful discoveries of excellent little
restaurants in unexpected places abroad that, with variations, I hear
over and over again from travelled folk.
One of these stories is a motoring one. The scene is usually the south
of France, and a long day's journey, an early _déjeuner_, a breakdown
in some desolate spot and a long delay before the damage could be
repaired are the preliminaries, all told at considerable length. Then
comes a harrowing description of the oncoming of darkness, of the
discovery that the town at which the travellers intend to spend the
night is still many, many kilometres away, of a shortage of petrol, of
the faint feeling that comes through lack of food. A shower of cold
rain, or mud up to the axles, a broken-down bridge or a swollen stream
generally come into the story at this period to lead up to the sense
of relief, described with rapture, which the travellers experience
when, at a turning of the road, a light is seen at a distance. This is
found to be the window of a little inn, quite unpretentious outside,
with a sanded floor inside, everything quite clean, the host a retired
_maître d'hôtel_ who had in his time been a waiter in Soho, and talks
a little English, the hostess an excellent cook. And then the story
ambles along to its happy ending with the description of the _soupe à
l'oignon_ which is put on table, over which a clean napkin is spread,
of the delicious savour it emits and how beautifully hot and strong it
is, of the grilled wings of a chicken which follow; of an _omelette au
confiture_, which the cook herself brings to table; of country wine
and country butter; a long stick of bread and some cheese made on a
neighbouring farm. And the "tag," in a dozen words, tells how the
chauffeur, who has also been well fed, finds a fresh supply of petrol,
and how the contented travellers reach at midnight the town where they
intend to sleep.
The scene of another story is a minor cathedral town in Italy or Spain,
and the tale commences with a vigorous denunciation of the principal
hotel in the place: stuffy rooms, vile food cooked in rancid oil; an
impudent head waiter and an unhelpful hall-porter. The central division
of the story deals with a long day of sight-seeing; a midday meal of
sandwiches, "horrid things made of the ham of the country and coarse
bread"; and a terrifying adventure when, having lost their way in a
network of streets, the ladies of the party are stared at by some
horrible unshaven men who say un-understandable things in patois, and
then laugh. The tale concludes thus:--"Just as we thought that we
should have to pay one of the impudent little boys to show us the way
back to that disgusting hotel we turned a corner, and there we saw a
clean little restaurant with little trees in front of the window and a
bill of fare, with lots of nice things on it quite cheap, hanging on
the door-post."
There are unlimited variations on the above, and the tale can take from
two minutes to three-quarters of an hour in the telling, according to
the volume of guide-book gush and the amount of lip-smacking over the
food that is introduced into it.
But why go to France, Italy or Spain to obtain these materials for
a story? The circumstances can be exactly reproduced in London. The
preliminaries are to eat nothing between breakfast and dinner-time and
to tire yourself out with exercise. Then, if you wish to indulge in the
motoring adventure, engage the most rickety taxi-cab to be found on any
stand and drive round and round the inner circle of Regent's Park until
the inevitable breakdown occurs. When, after a quarter of an hour's
delay, the chauffeur says that he is ready to go on again, tell him to
drive to Soho Square, then to go down Greek Street, and to stop when he
comes to the Restaurant Gustave.
Or if it is the cathedral city incidents you would like to live through
once more, start in a worn-out condition from Golden Square, and make
your way in a zigzag through the narrowest streets and alleys you can
find to St Anne's, Soho, which is big enough to be a second-class
cathedral, and go on, still zigzagging, till you reach Greek Street and
Gustave's.
And this is what you will find when you get there. A little restaurant
with a chocolate face and with a plate-glass window, on which the fact
is announced that it is an _à la carte_ establishment. Two little trees
are in front of the window--little evergreen trees are fashionable just
now in Soho--and the name "Gustave" is well in evidence above, with an
electric lamp to throw light upon it. Inside the window a long lawn
curtain gives privacy to the restaurant. The card of the day, with
half-a-hundred names of dishes written in black ink, hangs in a brass
frame by the door.
Go inside, and you find yourself in a little room--a French gentleman
who went on my recommendation to Gustave's described it to me
afterwards as a _boîte_--with cream-coloured walls and a chocolate
skirting. A counter, to which the waiters go to fetch the dishes, with
a girl behind it very busily engaged, is at one side of the room.
Oilcloth is on the floor, and a little staircase leads to the first
floor. Eleven tables are in this room, all of them generally occupied,
mostly by French people; but there is a second smaller room on beyond,
which holds four tables, and on the two occasions lately that I have
dined at Gustave's I have found one of these tables vacant.
Everything is very clean at Gustave's, and if the napery is thin and
the glass is thick, that is quite in keeping with the travel story.
The people at the other tables are probably French. They belong to
the respectable classes, and they behave just as well as though they
carried innumerable quarterings on their escutcheons. A young waiter
puts the _carte du jour_, with an ornamental blue border, on the table
in front of you, and Monsieur Gustave, who, napkin on arm, bustles
about his little restaurant, comes to give advice, if needed, as to a
choice of dishes.
Gustave--who must not, of course, be confused with that other Gustave
who was manager of the Savoy, and who is now at the Lotus Club--is a
little Frenchman, with a moustache, who is very wide awake. He has a
sense of humour, and he talks excellent English. He was for a time at
an hotel in Hatton Garden, and at the Restaurant des Gourmets before he
came to Greek Street.
The first item on a bill of fare that I took away, with me reads: "½
doz. Escargots, 8d.," but long ago, at Prunier's in Paris, I tried to
attune my palate to snails, and failed, so on this particular night I
did not even consider their inclusion in my dinner. Nor did I dally
with _hors d'œuvre_, though I might have had sardines, or _filets
de hareng_, or _anchois_, or _salmis_ for twopence. But I ordered
soup, and I think I went up in Gustave's opinion when I preferred
three-pennyworth of _soupe à l'oignon_ to _pot au feu_ at the same
price. There were three fish dishes on the card, _moules Marinières_,
6d.; _merlan frit_, 6d.; _sole frit_, 10d.; and Gustave recommended the
_moules_ as being a dish of the house, and having come in that morning.
Looking down the list of entrées to find something sufficiently bizarre
in taste to match the commencement of my dinner, I hesitated over a
_pilaff_, which would have cost me 8d., almost plumped for a _râble de
lièvre_, which meant an outlay of 1s., and then, remembering that it
was Christmas-time, as near as possible ordered a _boudin_, which is
the sausage that all good Frenchmen eat once a year at the _réveillon_
suppers on Christmas Eve. But I remembered the nightmare that followed
the last _réveillon_ supper to which I went in Paris, and, passing
over all the entrées, ordered nothing more exciting than a wing of
chicken, 1s., and a _salade chicorée_. A _crème chocolat_, 4d., was my
_entremet_.
The onion soup proved to be excellent--quite strong and quite oniony,
which, as I was not going into polite society that evening, could
offend no one. The mussels quite justified M. Gustave's eulogium,
but as I did not eat the whole bowlful, and left some of the savoury
liquid, M. Gustave, with an expression of concern on his face, came
to my table to ask whether I had found any fault with the dish. I
assured him that my appetite, not the mussels or the cook, was alone
to blame. The wing of the chicken was plump and tender, and had I
paid half-a-crown it could not have been better. The _crème chocolat_
certainly tasted of chocolate, if the cream was not a very pronounced
feature in it.
It was a very excellent meal--at the price--and had I carried out the
starvation and strong exercise and vivid imagination preparation that
I have so strongly recommended to you, instead of lounging out to tea
in the afternoon with a pretty lady and eating tea cake and sugary
things at five o'clock, I should have recorded all the beautiful things
about the little restaurant that I hear in the travel stories.
XXXIV
A SUPPER TRAIN
One day last year I ate two meals under roofs owned by the Great
Eastern Railway Company.
I lunched in the dining-room of the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool
Street, a splendid, airy room, light grey and gold, with brown
Scagliola marble columns. The tables in this dining-room are set a good
distance apart, rather a rare luxury in the City, where space is very
limited; one is not forced to overhear the conversation of the people
dining at other tables, and waiters do not kick one's chair every time
they pass. The people lunching seemed to be a happy blend of visitors
staying in the hotel and City men who had come in from their offices,
but there was none of that breathless hurry-scurry that I always
associate with a lunch in the City.
A curious piece of furniture, glass above, wood below, caught my eye
as we went into the room. It looked at a distance like a jeweller's
showcase, and I asked my host if it was that. He laughed and told me to
inspect the jewels that it contained. It was a sideboard for the cold
meats, showing them, but at the same time keeping the dust from them.
It is cooled by ice. It is such a happy idea that the Carlton Club has
copied it.
This is the menu of the lunch that I might have eaten in its entirety
had I chosen:
Consommé Pluche.
Potage Solferino.
Boiled Salmon, Caper Sauce.
Fried Fresh Haddock.
Omelette Alsacienne.
Grilled Kidney, Vert Pré.
Roast Haunch of Mutton, Red Currant Jelly.
Roast Veal à l'Anglaise
(Or choice of cold meats).
Cabbage. Tomatoes.
Boiled and Lyonnaise Potatoes.
Roast Partridge and Chips.
Damson Pudding. Baked Custard.
Stewed Apricots.
Cheese. Radishes. Watercress.
I know of old that the cookery at the hotel is excellent, for I have
often lunched both there and at the Abercorn Rooms, next door, so I did
not feel in honour bound to form myself into a tasting committee of
one, and to go through the menu. I ate salmon and partridge and damson
pudding, and found them excellent. On the menu I saw that the price of
the lunch was 3s. 6d.
My host, being a Freemason of high degree, asked me if I had ever seen
the Masonic temple in the Abercorn Rooms, and as I said that I had not
we crossed on the first floor from the hotel to the rooms, and, meeting
Mr Amendt, the manager of all the Great Eastern catering enterprises,
on the way, he showed us the temple, splendid with panels of onyx and
columns of delicately tinted marble, the lamps of onyx, dish-shaped
and throwing their light up to the ceiling, seeming to me to be the
most beautiful things of their kind I have ever seen in a temple. Mr
Amendt, having his master key in his pocket, took us through many
ante-rooms and small banqueting-rooms, with pictures by Lely of some
of the beauties of Charles II.'s Court on the walls, and we looked in,
on my way to the street, at the great Hamilton Hall, a replica of the
banqueting-room of the Palais Soubise, where the waiters, lunch being
finished, were putting the chairs upside down on the tables, and at the
grill-room, named after the county of Norfolk, which, with its violet
marble pilasters and its paintings of City celebrities--Nell Gwynne
being cheek by jowl with such eminent respectabilities as Whittington
and Gresham--is at night one of the pleasantest little banqueting-rooms
in which I have ever feasted.
As I said good-bye to my host and to Mr Amendt, I remarked that I
should be at Liverpool Street again early next morning, as I was going
down to Southend for the week-end, and that if I had not been due at a
London theatre that night I should have enjoyed sleeping in the fresh
sea air. Whereon Mr Amendt pointed out to me that I could perfectly
well go to the play and catch the supper train down to Southend at
midnight. If this suited me I had only to telegraph to the hotel at
which I was going to stay, and Mr Amendt said that he himself would
order my supper for me. It all seemed to fit in so admirably that I
said, "Thank you very much," and sent off my telegram at once.
I had abundant time to change my clothes after the theatre, and taxied
down to Liverpool Street Station through the deserted City streets.
At the station, however, there were many people on the platforms, the
refreshment rooms blazed with light, and scores of little parties in
them seemed to be partaking of midnight tea. I found that a table had
been reserved for me in the restaurant car of the Southend train,
and a white-jacketed waiter told me that my supper would be served
immediately the train started, and that a compartment in the carriage
next to the restaurant car was at my disposal. Mr Amendt had been even
better than his word.
Waiting on the platform, I watched another train, a suburban one, on
the next line of rails, fill up. Bare-headed ladies, clutching in
their hands the programmes of the theatres to which they had been,
came sailing along; little messenger boys, their evening's work
over, climbed into the carriages, and one gentleman, who evidently
thought his time for rest had arrived, took the whole of one side of a
third-class compartment to himself, lay down, and went at once to sleep.
When the suburban train had left, a few minutes before midnight, the
stream of passengers set towards the Southend train, and I wondered
which of them were going to be my fellow-supperers in the restaurant
car. A party consisting of an elderly gentleman--I am sure he was an
uncle, for he had the good-natured look that all genuine Dickensy
uncles acquire--had evidently brought up two nieces and a little
schoolboy nephew to see some play. They were returning in the highest
of spirits, and got into the restaurant car at once, the uncle asking
whether his champagne had been properly iced. A clergyman with a paper
bag in his hand, which I think must have contained sponge cakes, looked
regretfully at the car, and told the guard that had he known that it
was running he would not have brought his supper with him. I saw nobody
else who was an obvious supperer, but when the whistle blew and the
flag was waved, and the train started, I found that in the section of
the restaurant car where my table was there were two elderly ladies at
one of the tables, a young man in spectacles at another, the good uncle
and his little party at the third and that the fourth was reserved for
me. There was on my table a little bunch of chrysanthemums in a glass
vase with a heavy foot to prevent it from overturning, and I noticed
with appreciation several devices for holding in their places cruets,
water bottles, salt cellars and glasses should the train at express
pace threaten to shake things off the table. This was the menu of the
supper that Mr Amendt had ordered for me:
Lobster Mayonnaise.
Mutton Cutlets Reform.
Roast Grouse. Straw Potatoes.
Salad.
Omelette au Confiture.
Devilled Sardines.
Cheese. Biscuits. Butter.
Watercress. Lettuce. Celery.
Black Coffee.
Like my lunch earlier in the day, the Great Eastern offered me more
than I had sufficient appetite to cope with. I found the _mayonnaise_
excellent, and did full justice to the grouse, the _omelette_ and
the devilled sardines. The young man in spectacles, I could see, had
ordered for his supper fried cod and a glass of porter; the elderly
ladies were drinking tea and eating cake; and the uncle and his little
party were, like myself, eating a sumptuous meal.wAs I ate my supper the train rushed through the East of London, and
Bethnal Green and Stratford were patches of lighted windows in the
darkness, but when we were out of the zone of bricks and mortar and in
the country there was a full moon high above, and fields and trees all
grey and shadowy in the mist that was rising.
The two elderly ladies had gone back to their compartment, the young
man in spectacles paid his bill, and I judged from this that we must
be nearing Southend, and asked for mine. The waiter bowed politely and
informed me that I was the guest of the Great Eastern Company. As I
could not argue with such an indefinite thing as a railway company, I
had to accept the situation, and therefore I cannot set down how much
the excellent meal I ate should have cost me.
When the train ran in to the terminus at Southend it certainly did not
seem to me that I had been travelling for an hour.
XXXV
THE ADELAIDE GALLERY
There is no story of the success of a London restaurant more
interesting than that of the Adelaide Gallery, which is more generally
known as Gatti's.
The first Gatti to come to this country from the Val Blegno in the
Ticino Canton of Switzerland, on the Italian side of the Alps, was
the pioneer of penny ices in England, and his shop in Villiers Street
by the steps leading down to the steamboat pier below Hungerford
Market was for the sale of these ices and _gaufres_, the thin batter
cakes pressed in a mould and baked, a delicacy the small children of
Continental countries love, but which has never ousted the British
penny bun for its pre-eminence in these islands. When Hungerford Market
was swept away to give space for the building of Charing Cross Station,
its name, however, being perpetuated by the bridge, the first Gatti's
was re-established under the arches of the station and became in due
course the Charing Cross Music Hall.
To the Gatti of Villiers Street and the Arches came from their native
village two of his young nephews, Agostino and Stefano--the wags of
the later Victorian days called them Angostura and Stephanotis. They
determined, as soon as they felt their feet, to launch out on their
own account. They leased the derelict Adelaide Gallery, which had its
entrance in Adelaide Street, converted it into a café restaurant after
the Continental pattern, and opened it on 21st May 1862. So juvenile
were these enterprising young Swiss that the younger brother could not
legally sign the lease, being under twenty-one. The Adelaide Gallery
was then right in the centre of the triangle of buildings bounded by
King William Street, Adelaide Street and the Strand: it was parallel
to the Lowther Arcade, and the entrance to it was by a narrow corridor
from Adelaide Street, a street named, of course, after King William the
Fourth's queen.
The gallery had been built in 1832 as the Gallery of Practical Science,
at a time when object lessons in science were considered essential
for the improvement of youthful minds; and in the long gallery, which
is now a part of the restaurant, were working models of shaft wheels,
while down its centre ran, waist-high, a long tank with a suspension
bridge across it and a lighthouse in its midst. In this tank, working
models of steamboats with very long smoke stacks puffed up and down.
A gallery ran round this long hall and had pictures on its walls and
models on stands of the various forms of architectural pillars. The
Polytechnic, opened six years later, which this generation still
remembers in its Diving Bell and Pepper's Ghost days, was run on
similar lines. The gallery became subsequently a Marionette theatre, a
casino and the home of some negro minstrels, but it never settled down
successfully to any form of moneymaking until the young Gattis started
it on its career as a café restaurant. An habitué of the Gallery in
its scientific or in its casino days would only recognise the building
to-day by its arched ceiling and by the circular openings in the roof
for light and air.
Agostino and Stefano Gatti put marble-topped tables in the Gallery,
couches against the walls and chairs on the other side of the tables,
and in the basement they made billiard-rooms. Chops and steaks and
chip potatoes, the last a novelty to London, were the trump cards of
their catering. At first the magistrates, possibly suspecting that the
casino might be revived under another name, refused the Gallery a music
licence, but that was granted later on in its existence. The Adelaide
Gallery as a restaurant was a direct challenge to the old chop-houses.
It gave very much the same fare under more airy and more cheerful
conditions, and the Londoners took a wonderful fancy to the "chips."
My earliest memory of a visit to the Adelaide Gallery is a schoolboy
one, for I was taken there to sup after seeing Fechter play in _The
Duke's Motto_ at, I think, the Lyceum. I ate on that occasion chops and
tomato sauce, went on to pastry, and finished with a Welsh rarebit--a
schoolboy has no fear of indigestion. I came to know the restaurant
very well in the eighties, when I was quartered at Canterbury and at
Shorncliffe for a spell of home service. I got at that time as much fun
out of life in London as a Captain's pay and a small allowance would
permit. I had sufficient knowledge of matters gastronomic to know that
I received excellent value for my money at Gatti's, and the ladies to
whom I used to give dinners said that they liked Asti Spumante and
Sparkling Hock just as well as champagne--and perhaps they really did,
bless them.
Early in the eighties most of the improvements made to the Gallery had
been completed, and the restaurant ran right up to Adelaide Street and
down to the Strand. Whether the entrance and new rooms on the King
William Street side had then been made I forget, but if they had not
been they soon after came into existence. One special friend of mine in
those days was the big man in uniform who stood at the Strand entrance,
and whose constant companion was a large St Bernard dog. The big man
always had a cheerful turn of conversation, and if by any chance I
grew impatient because a lady whom I expected to dine did not appear,
he would console me by saying that "probably nothing worse than a cab
accident has happened." The St Bernard in its old age grew snappy, and
eventually, when it had come back twice from new homes which had been
provided for it, had to be destroyed. Both Messrs Agostino and Stefano
Gatti were still alive in those days, grave-faced, pleasant gentlemen,
who lunched together and dined together at a table not far from the
entrance to the kitchen, and who when their meals were finished, sat at
a semicircular desk and took the counters from the waiters as they had
done ever since the first days of the restaurant.
I was somewhat later to make their acquaintance, and this was how
it happened. Little "Willie" Goldberg, who was known to all the
English-speaking world as The Shifter, was a man of brilliant ideas,
which he rarely had the patience to carry into effect. I received
one morning from him a telegram asking me to meet him at ten minutes
past one at the Strand entrance of Gatti's, adding that it concerned
a matter of the highest importance, which would bring much profit to
both of us. I arrived at Gatti's in time, and was met at the door by
The Shifter, who told me that the Gattis wanted a military melodrama
for the Adelphi, that theatre being their property; that he had thought
of a splendid title for a soldier play; that he and I would write it
together; that the Gattis had asked him to lunch to talk the matter
over; and that he had suggested that I should come too. Then we hurried
into the restaurant. We lunched with Messrs Gatti, and when, after
lunch, they very gently said that they were ready to hear anything that
we might have to tell them, The Shifter disclosed the title, which
pleased them, and then sat back in his seat as though the matter was
settled. The Messrs Gatti asked for some slight outline of the play,
but The Shifter put it to them that an advance of authors' fees should
be the next step in the business. This, the Gattis said, was not the
way in which they transacted the business of their theatre, whereon The
Shifter closed the discussion by saying farewell. When we were outside
in the street again, I suggested that the next thing to do would be to
get out a scenario to submit to the Gattis; but The Shifter was in high
dudgeon; he wrinkled up his long nose in haughty scorn and then said:
"These Gattis don't understand our English ways of doing business"--and
that was the beginning and the end of our great military melodrama. But
I had made the acquaintance of the Gattis, and was always afterwards on
very pleasant terms with them.
It is not within the scope of this article to deal with the Gattis'
enterprises in theatres, but the tale of their purchase of the
Vaudeville Theatre should be told as an instance of their kindness
of heart. Amongst the many Gatti enterprises was the establishment
of a great electric-light-distributing business. This began with a
very small installation in the cellars of the Adelaide Gallery, and
increased and increased until it is now one of the greatest electric
light companies in London. At one time the electric light plant was
established in a building just behind the Vaudeville Theatre, and Mr
Tom Thorne, the actor, whose management had not prospered greatly,
told the Messrs Gatti that his ill-success of late was owing to the
noise the engines made behind the stage. Messrs Gatti, to obviate this
grievance, bought the theatre, or at least as much of it as is freehold.
There always has been a strong theatrical element amongst the clientele
of Gatti's, and the authors who wrote the Adelphi melodramas--Dion
Boucicault, Henry Pettitt, George R. Sims, Robert Buchanan and
others--used constantly to be amongst the people lunching and dining
in the Gallery. In their theatrical enterprises the Gattis never
forgot the Adelaide Gallery, and the one thing essential in an Adelphi
melodrama was that it should conclude in time to allow the audience
to sup at the restaurant. All the black-coated classes patronised the
Gallery, from the comfortable business man, who got as good a chop
there in the evening as he did in his City restaurant in the middle
of the day, to the little clerk who took the girl he was engaged to
there because she liked the music and the brightness of the place. The
country cousins all knew Gatti's, and knew that it was a place where
they would get a good meal at a reasonable price, and that no advantage
would be taken of their ignorance of London charges. Salvini, the great
actor, used to take his meals at Gatti's when he was in England, and
the great Lord Salisbury had a fondness for a chop and chips, and used
to gratify it by going to the Adelaide Gallery. An old Garibaldian, a
fine, white-haired old gentleman in a slouch hat and a long, threadbare
cloak, was the most remarkable of the clientele of Gatti's in the early
eighties; he was evidently very poor and one dish with him constituted
a meal, but because he had fought as a red-shirted hero, the waiters
at Gatti's treated him with more deference than they would show to any
prince, and took the copper he gave as a tip with as much gratitude as
they would have expressed for the gold of the millionaire.
The Gatti's of to-day has adapted itself to modern requirements,
but it caters for much the same class as of yore, and its food is
still excellent material, well cooked, though there is a great deal
more variety now than there was in the old chops and chips days. It
retains, however, all its old democratic ways. Its clients choose
their own tables and their own seats, hang up their own coats and then
catch the attention of the waiter who has charge of the table. The
restaurant--cream and gold, with French grey panels in its roof--has
now four entrances: the Adelaide Street one, two in King William
Street and one in the Strand. While the main restaurant remains an _à
la carte_ establishment with a plentiful choice of dishes, including
a list of grills, there is a _table d'hôte_ room at the King William
Street side, a handsome hall with a gilded roof and pink-shaded
electroliers, which throw their light up on to the ceiling. The latest
addition to the dining-rooms is a banqueting hall, reached by marble
stairs from King William Street. It is a handsome and well-proportioned
room, with a musicians' gallery at one side, and an ante-room half-way
up its stairs, and it holds one hundred and fifty feasters quite
comfortably.
At the same little table where their father and their uncle sat,
the two Messrs Gatti of to-day--John (ex-Mayor of Westminster) and
Rocco--sit, young copies of their predecessors, in that one of them
has kept a plentiful head of hair, whereas the other one has been less
conservative. They give the same attention to the business of the
restaurant that the original Gattis did, but the semicircular desk has
vanished and the work of taking the counters is now done by deputies on
either side of a great screen which stretches before the wide entrance
to the kitchen. Mr de Rossi, dapper and energetic, is the manager of
the restaurant, and it is always a comfort to me that when I lunch or
dine under the musicians' gallery the _maître d'hôtel_, whom I have
known for thirty years, comes and gives me fatherly advice as to the
choice of dishes for a meal.
The kitchen of the Adelaide Gallery is one of the few in London that
possess a large open fire for roasting, and its Old English cookery
is, therefore, always good. It caters, however, for all nationalities,
and as an indication of what its prices are, and of the variety of its
fare, I cannot do better than give you the list of entrées I find on
the _carte du jour_, which I took away the last time I dined at Gatti's:
_Carbonnade de bœuf à la Berlinoise_, 1s. 2d.; _lapin sauté Chasseur_,
1s. 4d.; _vol-au-vent de ris d'agneau Financière_, 1s. 6d.; _pieds
de porc grillés Sainte Menehould_, 1s. 2d.; _fegatino di pollo alla
Forestiera_, 1s. 4d.; _terrine de lièvre St Hubert_ (cold), 1s. 9d.;
_côte de veau en casserole aux cèpes_, 1s. 9d.; _tournedos Rouennaise_,
2s.; _chump chop d'agneau, purée Bruxelloise_, 1s. 6d.; _tête de veau
en tortue_, 1s. 6d.; _salmis de perdreaux au Chambertin_, 2s.; _langue
de bœuf braisée aux nouilles fraîches_, 1s. 6d.; _escalopes de veau
Viennoise_, 1s. 6d.; _mironton de bœuf au gratin_, 1s. 4d.; _côtelettes
d'agneau Provençale_, 2s.; _pigeon St Charles_, 2s. 6d.; _noisettes
de pré-salé Maréchal_, 1s. 9d.; _entrecôte Marchand de Vin_, 2s. 6d.;
_demi faisan en casserole_, 4s.
And here is the menu of the five-shilling dinner I ate one Friday in
October in the _table d'hôte_ room, in company with many people, who
were evidently going later to theatres:--
Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne.
Consommé Julienne.
Crème d'Huîtres.
Turbotin d'Ostende Réjane.
Anguilles Frites. Sce. Tyrolienne.
Côtelettes de Volaille Pojarski.
Petit Pois au Sucre. Pommes Comtesse.
Faisan Ecossaise Rôti en Casserole.
Salade Sauté.
Glacé Mokatine.
Délicatesses.
Gatti's, like every other restaurant of standing, has its own special
dishes, and some of these were included in a lunch which I ate with
Messrs John and Rocco Gatti when they were good enough in a chat we had
to refresh my memory in regard to the early days of the restaurant:
Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne.
Zéphire de Sole Adelaide.
Suprême de Volaille Royal.
Asperges vertes. Sce. Chantilly.
Perdreau Rôti à la Broche.
Cœur-de-Laitue à la Française.
Cerises Montmorency Sarah-Bernhardt.
Corbeille de Délices.
Café.
The _zéphire de sole Adelaide_ is an admirable _filet de sole_
and oysters therewith; the breast of the chicken was served with
an excellent white sauce; and the _entremet_ was worthy of the
distinguished tragedienne after whom it is named.
The wine list at Gatti's is a document to be carefully studied. The
Gattis of the previous generation laid down some very fine wines,
and clarets and Burgundies of the great years of the end of the last
century are to be found in the Adelaide cellars. The champagnes of
great years and of great houses are priced far lower than they are
to be found on the lists of fashionable restaurants, and there is
some old cognac in the cellars to which I take off my hat whenever I
am privileged to meet it. It was bought by the Gattis at the time of
the Franco-Prussian War, when stocks of old brandy were sold at low
prices. It is marked so as to show a profit on the purchase-money--not
at its worth--and I know of no better brandy at any London restaurant,
whatever price customers may choose to give.
XXXVI
THE COMPLEAT ANGLER
I deserted, shamelessly and openly deserted, but I had an excuse.
When we started, a boatload of men in a launch from above Boulter's
Lock on a still, hot summer Sunday afternoon, the sky was grey above
and the river and Cliveden Woods were all in pleasant shadow; but when
we were come to Odney Weir and Cookham Ferry the sun broke through the
clouds and sucked them up, and at Bourne End the river sparkled and the
sails of the sailing-boats tacking up the long stretch below Winter
Hill gleamed in the sunlight. It was as hot an afternoon as we ever get
in England, and as we steered into the eye of the sun the glare hurt my
eyes, and there was no dodging it. When we came to the Compleat Angler,
just below Marlow Bridge, and lay alongside its green lawn, with the
flower beds and rose-trees right at the garden edge, I looked at the
people sitting on the rustic chairs by the rustic tables in the shadow
of the line of trees that acts as a screen against the western sun, and
the villagers who loll the Sunday through on the railing of the bridge
and stare at the hotel, and I thought how pleasant it would be to sit
in the shade until dinner-time came, to eat that meal with the burble
of the water falling over the weir in my ears, and afterwards to go
back to town by a late train. So I deserted openly and shamelessly.
The Compleat Angler is a very old inn, so old that no one knows when
it was built. But it was very probably in existence when the bodies
of Warwick, the King-maker, and his brother Montacute were carried to
Bisham Abbey to be buried. An engraving of a hundred years ago shows
the old inn with a rope walk by its side, where the gardens of the
hotel now stretch on the bank of the swift stream below the weir. The
old wooden bridge which the present suspension bridge has replaced
started at the angle of land by the weir, an angle now covered by the
dining-room of the hotel, and it was under this bridge--not the present
one--that a legendary hero of gastronomy, the Marlow bargee, ate the
Puppy Pie.
In the pre-railway days the Compleat Angler looked for its patrons
amongst the fishermen and the simple folk who gained their living
on the river. The hotel to-day is one of the most comfortable
old-fashioned riverside inns between Oxford and London, an inn that
stoutly upholds its old English characteristics. The brown roofs of
the old building and its old brick walls are still there, and the
old fruit-trees of the orchard give shade on its lawn; but new wings
have been built on as the custom of the hotel has increased, and the
great stretch of delightful garden behind the hotel, from which there
is a glorious view of the Quarry Woods, must be a comparatively new
addition. Mr Kilby, the present landlord, his face tanned by the river
air and river sunshine, his hair and moustache almost white, has been
in possession of the house for twenty-two or twenty-three years; but
before this time it had been in the hands of one family from generation
to generation, right back into the misty past. Mr Kilby has kept the
hotel Old English in character in all essential particulars. There
is good black old oak panelling in the little hall, and Jacobean
furniture and an old grandfather clock, and on its walls, in glazed
cases, are monster perch and other giants of the Thames caught at
Marlow, and engravings of local celebrities and local magnates of past
days; while in the dining-room are caricatures by Gillray and other
wielders of the pencil in Georgian days. The gardens, kitchen garden
and flower garden and lawns, behind the house, are also delightfully
English, for the flowers that grow there are the Old English flowers,
roses and lilies, stocks and pinks, ladies'-slippers and cherry pie,
and a host of others, flowers that are old friends and which fill the
air with scent on a hot afternoon. There are roses everywhere around
the Compleat Angler. Those who land from their boats pass under a great
arch of roses, and in the garden the roses climb over many bowers--for
"pergola" is a word I hesitate to use in writing of this Old English
pleasance. Honeysuckles grow up the supports of the verandah that gives
shade to the windows of the dining-room, and there are bright flowers
in all the window-boxes. Above all, there is the charm of the river,
the indescribable freshness that always comes with tumbling water, the
delight of the long, trembling reflections thrown by the trees and the
spire of the church across the river, the grace of the white-clad girls
who punt upstream and of the swans that sail quite secure by the edge
of the weir, and the pleasant "lap, lap" of the water as the launches
cut through it. If I wished in one hour to give an American friend an
idea of the charm of the Thames I would take him to the chairs under
the great willow that stands by the weir in the grounds of the Compleat
Angler, and when he had sat in this shade for half-an-hour watching the
calmness of the river and the eddies of the weir stream, the rushes,
the reeds, the trees, the long line of wooded hills, the swans and the
boats, if he did not understand what the Thames is to an Englishman,
I should despair of him. If I was interested in a young couple who
were hesitating on the brink of matrimony, and I wished to push them
into it, I would invite them to take tea with me on the lawn of the
Compleat Angler, and when the sun dropped low and the shadows of the
trees lengthened and the air grew heavy with the scent of the roses, I
would leave them together for an hour, and if in that hour the man had
not proposed I would consider him a base deceiver, a heartless wretch
incapable of sentiment.
In the late afternoon, when the bells of the church were ringing for
evening service, I walked up the High Street, in which the lads of the
village and the lasses all in white were abroad, and looked at Marlow's
sole antiquarian relic--the stocks, which stand in an enclosure of turf
and trees and flower-beds. I continued my pilgrimage to Shelley's house
in West Street, and then on over the wooden bridge of old grey wood to
the Lock.
The sun had set and the west was all opal with the dying light when
I came back to the lawn of the Compleat Angler. The launch that had
lain the afternoon through by the steps was gone, with its load of
merry people, and the motor cars were all off on their return journey
to London. Only the people staying in the hotel remained. It was
dinner-time, but I was loth to leave the open air, for the hush of the
evening had fallen. I could hear faintly the sound of a hymn being sung
in the church, and that sentimentality, which is not religious feeling,
but which is akin to it, had fallen upon me. I was at peace with all
mankind. I forgave the architect who designed Marlow Church tower for
the triviality of his Gothic; I had no rancour against the tailor who
took three weeks to make me three white evening waistcoats; I could
think kindly of the people who send me insufficiently stamped letters
from abroad, and I could remember that even the income-tax collector is
a fellow-man. Had there been anyone by to whom I could recite poetry
I would have been prepared to quote Herbert to my purpose, but the
only companionable soul available at the moment was a friendly Irish
terrier, and terriers have no soul for verse.
At last I went in to dinner. A corner table in the biggest of the three
dining-rooms, a real summer-house, its walls being all windows, had
been reserved for me, and from my seat I could look across the river to
one side and on to the weir stream on the other. The light of day was
not all gone, and I hardly needed the shaded lamp which kept company on
the table with a great bunch of sweet-smelling flowers from the garden.
I had not ordered any special dinner, but ate the _table d'hôte_ meal
of the house, the charge for which is six shillings. It was a good
English dinner, and my only complaint regarding it is that there were
some tags of unnecessary French upon the menu card. This, in plain
English, was the dinner I ate and enjoyed:
Thick Mock Turtle.
Salmon.
Clear Butter Sauce.
Braised Ham.
Broad Beans.
Madeira Sauce.
Roast Chicken.
Chip Potatoes.
Green Peas.
Raspberries and Cream Ice.
I might have added a savoury to this, but I like to end my dinner
with a sweet taste to linger on my palate. My bill altogether came to
seven-and-six.
Feeling contented with myself, and life, the Compleat Angler, and my
fellow-men, I sauntered to the railway station in time to catch the
nine-forty train back to London.
XXXVII
ARTISTS' ROOMS
DIEUDONNÉ'S. PAGANI'S
There used to be two little rooms in London restaurants with walls
made interesting by the signatures of great artists of song and colour
and sculpture and music, who, some of them, had sketched little scenes
above their names, and others had dotted down a few notes of music.
One of these little chambers was the sitting-room of Madame Dieudonné,
in Ryder Street. Madame Dieudonné was an old French lady who kept a
boarding-house much patronised by the great artists who came over to
London from France. In her kitchen was an admirable chef, and the fame
of the _table d'hôte_--a real _table d'hôte_ in its original sense,
for Madame always sat at the head of her own table--was so great that
people who loved good cooking used to ask permission to be allowed
to dine at it. But Madame Dieudonné did not give this permission
to all comers, and it was necessary that the would-be guest should
be presented to Madame and should obtain from her an invitation to
her circle before a place was laid for him. Any special favourites
amongst the guests were asked by Madame to come after dinner into her
sitting-room, there to drink coffee and to chat, and amongst these
favourites were the great musicians, and the great actors and great
painters of her own land, who stayed at the boarding-house. When
any man, or any lady, was asked for the first time into this holy of
holies, he or she placed a signature upon the wall and any further
embellishment that came to mind. Gradually the middle portion of the
walls became a perfect treasure-house of autographs.
Madame Dieudonné died, and her circle was broken up, the old
lodging-house became a hotel, and when M. Guffanti, its present owner,
brought his great energy to bear upon it, it soon became prosperous.
Alterations were made, the white room on the first floor, with its
panel pictures of gallants and ladies in silks and brocades, which is
now used for banquets, was constructed, and when Madame Dieudonné's
little room was thrown into what is now the entrance hall, the workmen
destroyed the signatures on the walls, evidently regarding them as mere
dirt, in spite of all the precautions M. Guffanti had made to preserve
them, and the only remembrances left of the stately old lady who used
to sit at the head of her own table is in the name of the hotel and
restaurant.
Dieudonné's has flourished exceedingly, and M. Guffanti, his hair
a little thinner on the top of his head than when first I made his
acquaintance, but with the same majestic curve to his moustache ends,
and possessing the same invincible energy, has increased the size of
his hotel by taking in several other houses.
The Dieudonné's of the present day is a large building of white stone
and red brick, always very spick and span, and decked out with flower
boxes. The restaurant on the ground floor is a fine room in the Adams
style, a very light grey in colour, with some of the ornamentation just
touched with gold. At one end are three large bow-windows, and at the
other end there is a musicians' gallery for the orchestra. On the side
walls the ornamentation suggests doorways with mirrored panels, pink
shades on the electroliers have subdued the light, which, when the room
was first built, I found too white and too brilliant, and the lamps on
the tables are also pink-shaded. The carpet is of a deep rose, and the
white chairs are also upholstered in that colour. It is a very pleasant
dining-room, and the people who dine there are all pleasant to look at,
and do good food the compliment of going dressed in becoming garments.
I very rarely dine at Dieudonné's without seeing a ladies' dinner-party
in progress, for Dieudonné's has always been a favourite dining place
of the gentler sex since the early days when Giovanini, the old _maître
d'hôtel_, with bushy eyebrows and Piccadilly weepers, used to consider
any ladies without an escort as being put under his special and
fatherly protection.
Dieudonné's chiefly relies on two _table d'hôte_ dinners, one the opera
dinner, at six-and-six, and the other the Dieudonné dinner, at eight
shillings. On the last occasion that I dined at Dieudonné's before
going on to the Russian Opera at Drury Lane I ate the opera dinner,
the menu of which I give below. It was the day of President Poincaré's
state entry into London, and that event is celebrated by two of the
dishes in the dinner:
MENU.
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Consommé à la Française.
Crème de Laitues aux Perles.
Saumon d'Ecosse Poché.
Sauce Mousseline.
Pommes Nature Concombres.
Côtes de Pré-Salé Poincaré.
Canetons d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise.
Petits Pois Nouveaux.
Coupe Entente Cordiale.
Friandises.
The Dieudonné dinner on this day only differed from the shorter one by
the inclusion in it of _escaloppes de ris de veau George V._
The other restaurant which created and retains an artists' room is
Pagani's, in Great Portland Street, in the immediate neighbourhood of
the Queen's Hall and St George's Hall. When, in 1871, Mario Pagani
opened a little shop, which became a restaurant, in a house in Great
Portland Street, the German Reeds were in possession of St George's
Hall, with, I think, Corney Grain, as a newly risen star, in their
company. The Queen's Hall had not been built and St James's Hall,
the site of which is now occupied by the Piccadilly Hotel, was the
musical centre of London. M. Pagani, being an Italian, gave his
customers Italian cookery, and very good Italian cookery too, and the
journalists and the painters and the singers soon heard of the new
little restaurant where there were always Italian dishes on the bill of
fare. Pellegrini, the _Vanity Fair_ cartoonist, and Signor Tosti were
two of the first patrons of the restaurant. Mr George R. Sims, doyen
to-day of literary gourmets, loved the restaurant as it was in its
early state, and wrote of the good Italian food to be obtained there,
and his portrait, on a china plaque, occupies, rightly enough, the
centre of one of the walls up in the artists' room. In 1887 M. Mario
Pagani retired, and for a time his brother and his cousin carried on
the restaurant; the latter, M. Giuseppe Pagani--left, in 1895, in sole
control--taking as partner M. Meschini, the latter of whom eventually
became the sole proprietor, bequeathing, when he died, the restaurant
to his widow and to his son.
Pagani's in the forty odd years of its existence, has increased in size
to an extraordinary extent, and the building, with its elaborately
ornamented front of glazed tiles with complicated figures in the
pattern and ornaments of Della Robbia ware, its squat pillars of
blue and its arches, luminous at night with electric light, differs
immensely from the little, stuffy Italian restaurant that it originally
was. It has a second entrance now in a side street, and a Masonic
banqueting-room, and a lift, and its restaurant on the ground floor is
a very large one and always reminds me of those great establishments
that I see in the German cities. It is a very comfortable restaurant,
and its brown walls, its mirrors with trellis-work and creepers painted
on them set in brown wooden frames, and its ceiling painted in quiet
colours, all give a sense of cosiness. There is in this downstairs
restaurant a dispense bar, which looks very picturesque seen through a
glazed screen, and just by this screen is the entrance from which the
waiters stream out from the kitchen carrying the dishes ordered by the
patrons of the restaurant, which they show as they pass to a clerk. To
dine habitually at Pagani's at a table facing the kitchen entrance is
to obtain a complete knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the Italian
waiter. He is not run into a mould as a French waiter is, but retains
many individualities. He always wears a moustache, and is pleasantly
conversational with his fellows and with the customers.
In its early days, the cookery at Pagani's was Italian and nothing but
Italian, but with ever-increasing prosperity the scope of the kitchen
has broadened, and now most of the dishes on the _carte du jour_ have
French names. The head cook, however, is a good Italian, M. Faustin
Notari, who has climbed the ladder of promotion to the top during the
twenty years he has been in the kitchens of Pagani's, and there are
always some Italian dishes on the bill of fare. The following are the
dishes that I most frequently see on the card:--_Minestrone, minestrone
alla Genovese, zuppa alla Pavese, filetti di sole alla Livornesse,
spaghetti,_ and Macaroni done in every way possible, _ravioli al sugo_
or _alla Bolognese, gnocchi alla Romana, fritto misto alla Tosti,
ossi buchi, arrostino annegato,_ and I generally finish my dinner at
Pagani's with a _zambaglione_. Pagani's has its specialities of the
house apart from Italian dishes, and when I have dined, as I often do,
as one of the committee of an amateur dramatic club, in the Artists'
Room, I generally find _poulet à la Pagani_--a very toothsome way of
cooking the domestic fowl--on the menu of our little feasts. _Filet
de sole Pagani_ is another excellent dish, an invention of the house.
_Poule au pot_ and _cassôlet à la Provençale_ and the _bisque_, and
the _bortsch_ at Pagani's are always excellent. The diners whom I see
at the other tables downstairs at Pagani's all seem to me to belong
to that very pleasant world, artistic Bohemia. The great singers of
the opera and the great musicians who play at the Queen's Hall go
there to lunch and dine and sup, and their artistic perception is not
confined entirely to music, for I notice that they generally bring
very pretty ladies with them to eat the good dishes of the restaurant.
A little touch of Bohemia that always pleases me at Pagani's is the
boy who comes round with a tray selling cigars and cigarettes. The
restaurant-rooms on the first floor used, in the early days when
Pagani's was quite a small place, to be the rooms to which the sterner
sex used to take ladies to dine, and there was a particular corner by a
window with a tiny conservatory in it which was the favourite spot in
the room. The gentler sex now dines everywhere in the restaurant, but
in the first-floor rooms, with pleasant red walls, glazed screens put
between the tables give a sense of privacy.
The Artists' Room is on the second floor, just on the top of
the staircase. There is not room for many people in it, and the
dinner-parties held there must of necessity be small ones. But there is
no room in any restaurant in London which is in itself so interesting
as this one. The walls are almost entirely covered with signatures
and sketches and caricatures; there is a large photograph, framed and
autographed, of Sir Henry Irving as Becket; there are drawings by
Dudley Hardy and three or four caricatures, including one of himself,
drawn by Caruso. There is a photo of poor Phil May in riding kit on
a horse; there is the menu of the dinner given by the artists of the
Royal Opera at Covent Garden to Mr Thomas Beecham. On the mantelpiece
stand some good bronzes of English and French Volunteers, and the
menu of a banquet given by Pélissier, the head of the Follies, to his
friends, and his invitation to this feast, which commences in royal
style: "I, Gabriel," etc., and ends with the earnest request, "Please
_arrive_ sober," have been honoured with frames. Mademoiselle Felice
Lyne's autograph records one of the latest successes in opera. There
are two smoked plates with landscapes drawn on them with a needle, and
there is the medallion in red of Dagonet I have already mentioned. The
name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye
as soon as any other inscription on one of the sections of the wall
covered with glass; but it is well worth while to take the panels one
by one, and to go over these sections of brown plaster inch by inch.
Mascagni has written the first bars of one of the airs from _Cavalleria
Rusticana_, Denza has scribbled the opening bars of "Funiculi,
Funicula," Lamoureux has written a tiny hymn of praise to the cook,
Ysaye has lamented that he is always tied to "notes," which, with a
waiter and a bill at his elbow, might have a double meaning. Phil May
has dashed some caricatures upon the wall, a well-meant attempt on the
part of a German waiter to wash one of these out having resulted in the
sacking of the said waiter and the glazing of the wall, Mario has drawn
a picture of a fashionable lady, and Val Prinsep and a dozen artists
of like calibre have, in pencil, or sepia or pastel noted brilliant
trifles on the wall. Paderewski, Puccini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti,
Plançon, De Lucia, Melba, Mempes, Tosti, Kubelik, Tschaikovsky, are
some of the signatures.
XXXVIII
THE PICCADILLY RESTAURANT
It was a chance remark made by "The Princess," as three of us sat at
lunch one Saturday in the open air at the Ranelagh Club, that nowhere
in Central London was there an open-air dining place, that led me to
ask her and "Daddy," her husband, both of them my very great friends
(which is the reason that I permit myself to call them, as the Irish
would say, "out of their names"), to dine with me one night in July,
weather always permitting, in the open air within fifty yards of
Piccadilly Circus.
Walking down Piccadilly, and looking up at the façade of the great
Piccadilly Hotel, a building which has something of the nobility of
a Grecian temple, and something of the heaviness of a county jail, I
had noticed that a grey tent had been put up on the terrace, half-way
up to the heavens, behind the great pillars and the gilded tripods,
and I knew that this meant that as soon as the evenings were warm the
restaurant would cater on the terrace for those who like to dine in the
freshest air obtainable in muggy London.
Some form of covering is a necessity for any roof garden in Central
London, not as a protection from rain or cold, but to deliver diners
from the plague of smuts. Some day, when electricity and gas have
between them driven coal far outside the boundaries of the capital,
it will be possible for Londoners to breakfast under the plane-trees
planted on their roofs, and to look, while they eat, at the roses
climbing on the trellis-work which hides their little pleasance from
the neighbours on the next roof; but in this present year of grace an
open-air meal within the three-mile radius necessitates the blowing of
smuts off each plate as soon as it is put on the cloth, and a great
portion of the conversation of the table talk centres round the black
smudges to be wiped off the diners' noses. The Piccadilly, by pitching
its tent on its terrace, has gone as near to open-air dining as is
possible in our London atmosphere.
It was well that I had added the provision "weather permitting" to
my invitation, for on the evening that my two guests motored up from
their old manor-house near Richmond the sky had clouded over, a misty
rain was falling, and the temperature had dropped to November level.
The dinner-table that would have been reserved for me on the terrace
was cancelled, and a table for three laid in the restaurant of the big
hotel--that very handsome saloon panelled with light wood, with gilded
carving in high relief on the panels, with a blue-and-gold frieze, and
elaborately decorated ceiling and casemented mirrors--a saloon which
is a noble example of Louis XIV. decoration. I had ordered my dinner
beforehand, taking care to include in it some of the specialities of
the kitchen of the Piccadilly, and had interested in the designing of
the little feast M. Berti, the restaurant manager, and the _chef de
cuisine_, M. Victor Schreyeck; while M. Pallanti, one of the _maîtres
d'hôtel_, who is an old acquaintance, had put me in that portion of
the room which is under his special charge. The dishes on which the
kitchen of the Piccadilly especially prides itself are its _délices de
sole_ and its _filets de sole_, both named after the establishment,
its _poularde à l'étuvée au Porto_, its _poularde Reine Mephisto_, its
_cailles Singapore_, and its _vasques_ of peaches, or of raspberries,
or of strawberries, all titled Louis XIV. in sympathy with the
decoration of the room.
This was the dinner that I ordered, a summer dinner for a hot evening,
for I had hoped that the weather would be kind, and that we should be
able to eat on the terrace:
Melon de Cantaloup Frappé.
Kroupnick.
Sole à la Piccadilly.
Suprême de Volaille Jeannette.
Caille Royale Singapore.
Cœur de Romaine.
Asperges Vertes. Sauce Divine.
Vasque de Fraises Louis XIV.
Corbeille d'Excellences.
I waited for my guests in the lounge where the orchestra plays, a
lounge panelled, as the restaurant is, and with paintings of fruit in
the circular wreaths above the doors, with cane easy-chairs and cane
tables with glass tops scattered about, with palms in great china
vases, with gilt Ionic capitals to the pilasters on either side of the
great supports to the roof, and with a great painted ceiling. A glazed
screen with windows and doors in it separates the lounge from the
restaurant.
"The Princess," when my guests arrived, was wearing a most becoming
gown, and had brought her furs with her, in case I, as a mad
Englishman, might insist on dining on the terrace in spite of the
rain. "Daddy," who is, like myself, an old soldier _en retraite_, had
put on one of his Paris unstarched shirts with many pleats, and was
wearing his fusilier studs. M. Berti, his beard pointed like that of a
Spaniard, bowed to us at the entrance of the restaurant, and directed
us to our table, by which was a second little table with on it all the
apparatus for the elaborating of the fish dish before our eyes. Near
it stood the _maître d'hôtel_, pale and determined, feeling, I think,
that the reputation of the house was in his hands, and a waiter and a
_commis_ under his immediate orders. "The Princess," as I have written,
wore a most becoming gown, and it pleased me that she should have so
framed her native beauty, and I am sure it also pleased her, for at the
other tables all the other guests were exceedingly well groomed and
well frocked--a most good-looking company.
The soup, a white Russian soup with barley as its dominating
ingredient, is one of those peasant soups the French have borrowed from
the Russians, and have refined in promoting it to the _haute cuisine_.
The _sole à la Piccadilly_ is a fish dish which grows to perfection
as it is manipulated before the eyes of the expectant diners. A wide
bath of mixed whisky and brandy boils up over the spirit lamp, and into
this the boiled soles make a plunge before they are carried away to be
filleted; then into the almost exhausted mixture of spirits is poured
the sauce, which is a "secret of the house," and as this boils up first
cream and then butter is added to it. The _filets de sole_ come hot to
table, and over each portion of the fish is poured the precious sauce,
sharp tasting, with a suggestion of anchovy amidst its many flavours.
While this sole was being prepared, "Daddy" at first talked on of polo
matches at Ranelagh and golf at Richmond, and did not notice that both
"The Princess" and myself had become silent, as gourmets should be when
watching a delicate culinary operation, but he, too, after a while felt
the solemnity of the moment, and became dumb until the fish was before
him, and he could pronounce it to be "very good indeed," an emphatic
expression of opinion on the part of all three of us which, I trust,
was conveyed to M. Schreyeck in his domains. The _suprême de volaille_
was a noble _chaudfroid_ of chicken with a rich stuffing or farce, I am
not sure which is the correct description, in which _foie gras_ was the
dominating note. The quails were named after the island of Singapore,
because with them in the china dish came a most savoury accompaniment
of pine-apple pulp and juice--and there are thousands of acres of
pine-apples in Singapore--an admirable contrast to the flesh of the
plump birds. To this dish also our council of three gave high praise.
The bowl of strawberries and ice and fruit flavouring, another of the
dishes of the house, made an admirable ending to a very good dinner,
and with this dinner we drank a champagne strongly recommended by the
house, Irroy 1904. I paid my bill, the total of which came to £3, 13s.
6d., the charge being 12s. 6d. a head for the dinner, which was a small
sum for such delicate fare, and then we went into the lounge, where
the band was still playing, to drink coffee and liqueurs, and to allow
"Daddy" to smoke one of the very long cigars of which he always carries
a supply.
It was still raining when my two guests started in their motor car
back to Richmond, but they declared that they were fortified for their
journey down into the country by a most satisfactory dinner.
The Piccadilly Hotel of to-day stands partly on the site of the
agglomeration of halls and bar and restaurant which all came under
the name of St James's Hall, the bar and restaurant being, in the
mouths of the frequenters thereof, "Jemmy's." The great hall was in
its day the centre of the musical world, and its Monday Pops and its
classical concerts were celebrated. In a smaller hall the Moore and
Burgess Minstrels flourished for many years until fickle London for
a while grew tired of burnt-cork minstrelsy. The big bar of the St
James's declined, as did most other restaurant bars, when gentlemen
no longer cared to be seen taking their liquid refreshment standing,
and the clientele of the restaurant was decidedly Bohemian. When
"Jemmy's" was wiped off the map of London there were not many tears
shed at its disappearance. The Piccadilly Hotel and its restaurant,
when they were first opened, went through their teething troubles,
as do most new establishments. The restaurant opened with a great
flourish of trumpets, most of its personnel coming straight from
Monte Carlo to London, but though the _maîtres d'hôtel_ knew who was
who in the principality of Monaco they were not so well acquainted
with the personalities of London life. All these matters invariably
straighten themselves out. I read in the columns of City intelligence
that the hotel, under the management of Mr F. Heim, who is now managing
director, is a financial success, and is paying good dividends. The
restaurant has gathered to itself a clientele that is smart and
well-dressed, and it treats its guests excellently.
To the great grill-room, which lies down in the basement below the
restaurant, and which is one of the largest and one of the busiest
places of good cheer in London, I allude in my chapter concerning some
of the grill-rooms.
XXXIX
THE RENDEZVOUS
Behind every successful restaurant there is some personality--a
clever proprietor, a great cook, a managing director with a talent
for organisation, or a popular _maître d'hôtel_. The Rendezvous, in
Dean Street, has been brought to prosperity and popularity by the work
of one man, its proprietor, M. Peter Gallina. He is a dapper little
Italian, with a small moustache, a man of good family who ran away
from home as a boy and has made his way by his native cleverness and
perseverance, and by the possession of an exceptionally keen palate.
He grounded himself well in all that concerns a restaurant in a small
Parisian establishment not far from the Avenue d'Iéna. When he had
learned there enough of the trade to qualify him to be a manager of
any restaurant he came to England with his savings in his pocket and
took the position of manager in a small Strand restaurant, while he
looked about for an opportunity to become a proprietor and to possess
a restaurant of his own. He had the name of his restaurant ready
before he found a suitable house, for one day after a meal he sat
thinking of various matters and idly scribbled on the tablecloth a
series of capital "R's." Then, with no special intention, he fitted
on names to the "R's"--Rome, Renaissance, Renommé, Rendezvous, and
suddenly found that the title he wanted had come to him. And in the
same chance way he found the position he wanted for his restaurant.
During the period that he was at the restaurant in the Strand he used
to go to Dean Street to buy coffee for his little household, and he
noticed one day that a house there was to let. It had been used by one
of those mushroom clubs which spring up almost in a night in Soho,
and the police had terminated its short existence by making a raid on
the premises as a gaming-house. M. Gallina saw his opportunity, took
it, spent some money in brightening it up, and gave it an old-English
window on its ground floor, and that was the beginning of the
Rendezvous.
The gastronomic scouts soon discovered that Peter Gallina in his
little restaurant was giving extraordinarily good value at very
moderate prices, and some of them sent me word concerning it. Mr
Ernest Oldmeadow, the distinguished novelist, was one of the first of
Gallina's customers, and brought many others to the newly established
restaurant. Mr G. R. Sims, the genial "Dagonet" of _The Referee_,
was one of the first among the scribes to tell the general public
of the existence of the Rendezvous, and he wrote a ballad in its
honour. I, in the early days of the existence of the restaurant, made
the acquaintance both of it and its proprietor, who then, as now,
affected clothes of an original cut. In his restaurant Peter Gallina
wears a small double-breasted white jacket, with skirts and a very
wide opening in front. This opening is filled by the most voluminous
black cravat that has been seen since the days of the Dandies. A small
white apron is another article of his costume. In those early days M.
Gallina oscillated rapidly and continuously between the kitchen and
the restaurant, first seeing that the dishes were properly prepared,
and then watching his customers appreciatively eat the food. He had
no licence then to sell wines, and a small boy was constantly sent
scurrying across the road to a wine-merchant's shop almost opposite,
a shop which should have interest for all readers of books, for its
proprietor is a well-known author.
M. Gallina in a little book of "Eighteen Simple Menus," with the
recipes for all the dishes, a very useful little book which he used
to give away to his customers, but which he now sells to them for a
shilling, has in a preface set down some "Golden Rules for Cooks," and
the first of these is "Buy good materials only. The best cook in the
world cannot turn third-class materials into a first-class dish." This
rule M. Gallina has always observed himself.
The Rendezvous has constantly been increased in size. A house next door
to it fell vacant, and M. Gallina at once took it and converted it into
part of his restaurant. Then with larger dining-room came the necessity
for a larger kitchen, and this matter was put in hand. A wine licence
granted to the restaurant brought with it all the responsibilities of
a cellar, and M. Gallina has now an admirable kitchen and offices,
with walls of shining white tiles, and a cellar big enough to hold
all the wine that his customers require. A tea and cake shop, with
tea-rooms on the first floor, the Maison Gallina, next door but one to
the restaurant, was the next achievement of the enterprising little
man, and, finally, he rounded off his restaurant by building at the
back a new room, all dark oak and mirrors and Oriental carpets, with a
handsome oak gallery running round it.
The Rendezvous Restaurant is now one of the landmarks of Dean Street.
The wide windows of its ground floor are of little square panes, each
window set in a white wooden frame, above a facing of glazed red tiles,
and before them stands a line of Noah's Ark trees in green tubs. Over
these ground-floor windows the restaurant's name is written in Old
English characters on a white ground. A line of shrubs in winter and
flowers in summer is beneath the windows of the first floors of the two
old houses, and at night a row of globes blazes with electric light
above the name of the restaurant.
The interiors of the two front rooms on the ground floor of the
restaurant have been decorated to represent the parlours of an Old
English farmhouse. There are heavy black beams supporting the ceiling,
the walls are panelled with green cloth in wooden frames, the electric
lamps give their light in old lanterns, and there are silver wine
coolers with ferns in them on the broad window-sill. Upstairs, and
there are three staircases in the restaurant, one of the rooms on the
first floor is kept in its original Georgian panelled simplicity, while
the other is a Dutch room with plaques of Delft ware on the walls. The
new room at the back I have already described.
The clientele of the restaurant comprises every class of Londoner from
princes to art students. The late Prince Francis of Teck often dined
there. I have seen ladies in all their glory of tiaras of diamonds
and of pearl necklaces eating an early meal at the Rendezvous before
going to the opera; and the youngster who is one day going to obtain
Sargent's prices for his pictures, but is still in the chrysalis stage,
and the as yet undiscovered Melbas and Clara Butts receive just as
much attention when they eat the one dish which forms their lunch or
dinner as do the great people of the land who indulge in many courses.
The Royalty is but a score of steps away from the Rendezvous, and many
playgoers on their way to that theatre dine at the restaurant or sup
there after the performance. Messrs Vedrenne and Eadie quite appreciate
the advantage it is to have a flourishing restaurant just outside
their doors, and gave M. Gallina every encouragement when he first
established himself in Dean Street.
The Rendezvous has a _carte du jour_ which gives a great choice of
dishes. The long card is covered with items printed in red or written
in blue ink, and special delicacies are set down in scarlet. There
are various sole dishes and a score of those of other kinds of fish.
The entrées take up half the card, and birds and salads, vegetables,
savouries and dessert each have a thick little column of written
items under their respective headings. The prices, as I have already
written, are quite moderate for good material. The fish dishes
average eighteenpence, the entrées a little less. I have eaten at a
dinner-party given in the new room a very noble feast, and I have dined
by myself on soup, sole, a _navarin_ of lamb and an _entremet_, my
dinner, without wine, costing me five-and-threepence.
There are two specialities of the house--the _sole Rendezvous_ and the
_soufflé Gallina-_--which should be included in any typical dinner of
the establishment, and the last time that I dined at the restaurant and
entertained a lady I included both of these in the menu, which ran thus:
Melon Cantaloup.
Crème Fermeuse.
Soles Rendezvous.
Aile de Poularde en Casserole.
Aubergine à l'Espagnole.
Soufflé Gallina.
Café.
The _sole Rendezvous_ is an admirable method of cooking the fish with
a white wine sauce and most of the other good things that a cook can
use in a fish dish, all of which make it admirable to the taste but
exceedingly rich. The _soufflé Gallina_ is a _soufflé_ with brandied
cherries, and it is served in a little lagoon of fine champagne cognac
which is set alight. It is by no means a teetotal dish. This dinner for
two, with a pint of Vieux Pré, a champagne recommended by the house,
and a bottle of Mattoni, came very near a sovereign.
XL
THE PALL MALL RESTAURANT
Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door
above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained
window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows
with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few
playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or
His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall
Mall Restaurant. It is a restaurant which has prospered exceedingly,
and has done so because its two proprietors, MM. Pietro Degiuli and
Arnolfo Boriani--both ex-head waiters at the Savoy and the Carlton--see
to every detail concerning their restaurant and their kitchen and their
cellar with untiring diligence and with a complete knowledge. They are
both--Degiuli, small and neat and dapper, M. Boriani, broad, wearing a
curled-up moustache and looking like a _tenore robusto_--always in the
restaurant at meal-times doing the work of _maîtres d'hôtel_ and giving
personal attention to every member of their clientele.
In the ten years that have elapsed since they rechristened the
restaurant, which for a short period had been known as Epitaux's, they
have made many improvements. The restaurant itself, a high room with
a curved roof and two sliding skylights in the roof, which not only
let in the light but fresh air as well, is now a white restaurant,
with deep rose panels alternating with mirrors between the pilasters.
There is a little gilding in the decoration, but as carpet and chairs
and lamp-shades conform to the scheme of rose, the restaurant may be
described as all white and deep pink. There was originally a musicians'
gallery at one end of this dining-hall, a legacy from the Café de
l'Europe, as it was called in the fifties, and in the days of the café
the doorway was cased in to prevent draughts reaching the worthies who
used to sup there after the performance at the Haymarket Theatre. The
old wooden screen to the door has been swept away, and people lunch
and dine and sup in the gallery which has replaced the domain of the
musicians. A little lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, made
by absorbing part of the premises of the shop next door, is one of
the most recent additions to the Pall Mall, and the Fly-fishers' Club
having moved to larger premises, MM. Degiuli and Boriani have been able
to construct a banqueting-room on the first floor that, with a private
dining-room which can accommodate twenty diners, gives them now quite a
large establishment.
As I have written, the two proprietors give personal attention to every
matter connected with the restaurant, and they have not forgotten that
they are Italians, for in their _table d'hôte_ lunch, the price of
which is half-a-crown, one of the dishes is usually an Italian one,
and all the coffee made in the establishment is made after the Italian
fashion, no metal being allowed to come in contact with the fluid. For
their supper menu they always choose simple dishes, which can be cooked
directly an order has been given by those who sup. There is a _carte du
jour_, but the dinners that nineteen out of twenty diners order are one
or other of the _table d'hôte_ dinners of the day, a four-shilling and
a five-and-six one. This was the menu of the more expensive of these
two dinners on the last occasion that I dined at the Pall Mall:
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Consommé Madrilène Froid and Chaud or Germiny.
Saumon Hollandaise.
Cailles Richelieu à la Gelée.
Selle d'Agneau Soubise.
Fonds d'Artichauts Barigoule.
Pommes Château.
Volaille en Cocotte.
Salade.
Fraises Melba.
The soup was good, the quail especially attracted my notice, for its
jelly was flavoured with capsicum, giving it thus a special cachet.
The service at the Pall Mall is quick and silent, and, though there is
no unseemly hurry, the dinner is quickly served, for most of the people
who dine at the Pall Mall are going on to a theatre.
The Pall Mall has an exceedingly _comme il faut_ clientele, and any man
who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant
would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time,
and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall
very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and
the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre
to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment
for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants.
And perhaps because the Pall Mall stands where the stage of one of the
theatres in the Haymarket used to be, the restaurant numbers amongst
its clientele many of the great people of the opera and of the theatre,
as its book of autographs shows. This is a book full of scraps of
wisdom and wit, and the Stars of Song and Politics and the Stage have
not been afraid to cap each other's remarks. Thus when Madame Patti
leads off on the top of a page with a charming platitude, "A beautiful
voice is the gift of God," Madame Yvette Guilbert inscribes below a
reminder that "An ugly voice is also the gift of God"; Sir Herbert
Tree, taking a different view from that of either of the ladies, asks
whether a voice should not be considered "A visitation of Providence";
Miss Mary Anderson sides with her sex, for she opines that "All things
are the gift of God"; and Sir Rider Haggard rounds off the discussion
with "But the greatest gift of God is Silence." Lord Gladstone, about
to depart for South Africa, writes, "Faith in the Old Country" as his
contribution, and Mr Lloyd George puts immediately below it a sentence
in Welsh, which being translated means "Liberty will conquer"; Mr
Ben Davies, also a man of gallant little Wales, writes in his native
tongue, below Mr Lloyd George's sentence, "You are quite right, Lloyd
George, but your liberality has taken most of my money." Mr John Burns,
dining at the restaurant on "Insurance Day, 1911," was not stirred up
to any poetic flights by the occasion, "Health the only wealth" being
his rhymed contribution.
Amongst the signatures in the book is that of Signor Marconi, who
is not inclined to write his name more often than is necessary. His
contribution was coaxed from him by a flash of wit on the part of M.
Boriani. On the menu of the dinner eaten by the inventor of wireless
telegraphy appeared the item "_Haricots verts à la Marconi_." The great
electrician asked why they were so named. M. Boriani trusted that the
beans were not stringy, and the inventor having reassured him on this
point, he said that in this case they might rightly be described as
"_Sans fil_."
MM. Degiuli and Boriani have chosen as the motto of their restaurant,
"_Venez et vous reviendrez_," and this confident prediction has been
justified.
There is much history concerning the site on which the Pall Mall now
stands. In the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, when the lane which
led from Piccadilly down to the Mall gradually became a street of
houses, Charles II. gave permission to John Harvey and his partner to
sell cattle as well as fodder in the Haymarket. All along this market,
on both sides, inns sprang up, and one of them occupied the site where
the Pall Mall Restaurant now stands. The inn was pulled down early
in the eighteenth century, and on its site Mr Potter, a carpenter,
built a "summer" theatre; this theatre was converted by Samuel Foote
somewhere about 1760 into a winter theatre. Mr A. M. Broadley has
written for the proprietors of the Pall Mall an interesting booklet
which deals at length with this theatre and its managers, Foote and
the Colmans, and with the great actresses and actors and musicians
who appeared on its stage. Mozart played on the spinet there as an
infant prodigy; Margaret Woffington made her first bow to an English
audience in the part of Macheath in _The Beggars' Opera_, "after the
Irish manner"; and two actresses who married into the peerage--Lavinia
Fenton, who died Duchess of Bolton, and Elizabeth Farren, afterwards
Countess of Derby--played on its stage. But on 14th October 1820, the
Little Theatre, as it was called, closed its doors with the tragedy
of _King Lear_ and a farce. It was not at once pulled down, and was
still standing in a battered state when the present Haymarket Theatre,
built by John Nash, was opened in 1821, just a fortnight before the
coronation of George IV. When the Little Theatre was eventually pulled
down shops were erected on its site. Two of these were in the year of
the first Great Exhibition converted into the Café de l'Europe, the
great hall of which, somewhat altered, is the large room of the present
restaurant. Mr William John Wilde, who was Buckstone's treasurer at the
Haymarket Theatre, became the proprietor of the Café de l'Europe in the
late fifties, and as there was no early-closing law in those days the
café naturally enough became the favourite supping place for those who
had sat through a long evening at the theatre almost next door, and the
sturdy critics who congregated in the first row of the pit ate their
devilled bones and tripe and onions, Welsh rarebits, chops and potatoes
in their jackets, at the café after midnight and passed judgment on
the performances of Buckstone and Liston, Sothern and the other famous
comedians of the theatre as they supped. Mr D. Pentecost was the last
proprietor of the old café. He was, as "Dagonet" in _The Referee_ has
lately reminded us, a nephew of Pierce Egan, the author of "Tom and
Jerry," and he was, amongst other things, the refreshment contractor to
the Alhambra. He was also the proprietor of the Epitaux Restaurant in
the colonnade of the opera house in the Haymarket. When that building
was pulled down, in order that the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre
should be built on its site, Mr Pentecost transferred the name of
Epitaux to the Café de l'Europe. The building was redecorated and MM.
Costa and Rizzi became the lessees. Ten years ago, as I have previously
written, MM. Degiuli and Boriani became the proprietors and gave the
restaurant its present name and its present appearance.
XLI
IN JERMYN STREET
MAISON JULES. BELLOMO'S. LES LAURIERS
Jermyn Street used to be sacred to small private hotels, shops and
bachelors' chambers, but the restaurants have now invaded it and there
are half-a-dozen places of good cheer which have their front doors
in the street, while some of the Piccadilly restaurants have a back
entrance there.
M. Jules had the happy idea of taking two houses, one of them at one
time the home of Mrs Fitzherbert, as a medallion of the head of King
George IV., found under the drawing-room floor proves, and converting
them into a hotel and restaurant. It has proved so successful in Jules'
case that he is now adding on to his hotel and restaurant, building at
the same time a nice little suite of rooms with bow-windows for himself
and his wife. As you walk down Jermyn Street from St James's Street
towards Lower Regent Street, the Maison Jules is on the right-hand
side. You cannot miss it, for an illuminated terrestrial globe and the
name above the doorway catch your eye. A little ante-room is separated
from the restaurant by a glazed screen to keep off draughts. The
restaurant itself, a long room running the whole width of the house,
is all white, with a little raised ornamentation on its walls, with
gilt capitals to the white pillars, and on the marble mantelpiece a
clock and candelabra of deep blue china and ormolu. At the end of the
room a big window, which is almost a wall of glass, is cloaked by
lace curtains. There is a second room running at right angles at the
back, which either can be used as part of the restaurant or can be
partitioned off.
Jules himself will welcome you as you come into the restaurant. I have
known him for many years, having first made his acquaintance when he
was manager at the Berkeley, when his hair was of lustrous brown, and I
have always been one of his supporters at the hotel in Piccadilly and
at the Savoy--when he became manager there, and now in Jermyn Street,
where, with his wife and his daughter, who has married the _chef de
cuisine_, and his son, who is following in his father's footsteps, he
controls the restaurant and the hotel. The girth of his waist may have
increased a little, possibly to match the bow-windows of those new
rooms, since I have known him, and his hair is now powdered with grey,
but his good-natured, round, rosy face, and his eyes, which almost
close when he smiles, remain the same. He is always so pleased to see
me that I find that a dinner at the Maison Jules does me more good than
most tonics do.
The people who dine at the Maison Jules are all pleasant and
well-to-do, and all the men wear dress clothes. Some of the men are
grey-haired people like myself who have followed Jules in all his
migrations; but the restaurant is by no means a home of rest for
the elderly, for on the last occasion that I dined there one of the
prettiest of the younger generation of actresses was being entertained
at the next table to mine; and young as well as elderly diners
appreciate the bonhomie that seems to be in the atmosphere at the
Maison Jules. The dinner of the house is an eight-shilling one. The
dinner I ate when I last dined _chez_ Jules is quite a fair specimen of
the evening meal:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé aux Quenelles.
Crème Américaine.
Suprême de Sole Volga.
Riz de Veau Souvaroff.
Médaillon de Bœuf Algérienne.
Poularde à la Broche.
Salade.
Haricots Verts au Beurre.
Mousse aux Violettes.
Friandises.
The _crème Américaine_, a pink thick soup, was excellent, and so was
the cold dish of sole, with jelly and a little vegetable salad. The
_mousse aux violettes_ was an ice with crystallised violets on the top;
and the _riz de veau_ and the _poularde_--for which Jules wished to
substitute a partridge--were both excellent of their kind. When Jules,
before I left, came to me and told me that some gentlemen a little
farther down the room had told him that there was absolutely nothing to
criticise in the dinner, I was not hard-hearted enough to tell him that
the beans were stringy, which, to tell the truth, they were. Otherwise
I agreed with the gentlemen farther down the room. The wine list is a
well-chosen one, and there is in the cellar some 1820 Martell brandy,
landed in England in 1870, which used to be the pride of the old St
James's Restaurant, and the whole of which Jules bought at the sale.
* * * * *
A little farther down the street on the same side is a restaurant and
hotel controlled by another old acquaintance of mine in the restaurant
world. The restaurant is Bellomo's, and the hotel of which it forms a
part is Morle's Hotel. In the days when I thought it my duty to do my
share of drinking, at the Café Royal, a particularly excellent cuvée
of Cliquot Vin Rosé, the waiter who was in charge of the table at
which I usually sat, and who attended to all my wants with admirable
intuition, was not at all one of the lean kind, and to identify him
from his fellows I always called him, and wrote of him as, "the fat
waiter." He prospered and ran up the tree of promotion, as good waiters
do at the Café Royal, so that in his later development he became
_maître d'hôtel_ in charge of the grill-room, and wore a frock-coat and
a black tie. But the anxieties of his new position in no way caused
him to grow thin. A year or two ago a friend wrote to me saying that
he and some others had found the money to set up Bellomo, whom, of
course, I remembered at the Café Royal, in a restaurant of his own
in Jermyn Street, and hoped that I would go and see how he prospered
there. I went, not feeling quite sure who Bellomo was, and found my
fat waiter of old, now a plump proprietor. His restaurant, which
consists of two rooms thrown into one, has walls with a light shade of
pink on them, and at night is lit by electroliers with pink shades. A
few steps lead from the front to the back. The restaurant is a cosy
little establishment, and the two dinners which are served there--one
a three-and-six one and the other a five-shilling one--are invariably
well cooked, for M. Bellomo has brought the good Café Royal traditions
with him to his new home. This is a typical menu, a winter one, of
Bellomo's three-and-six dinner:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Rothschild or Thick Mock Turtle.
Filet de Sole Chauchat.
Carré de Mouton Niçoise.
Oie rôti.
Salade.
Glacé Mont Blanc.
Gaufrettes.
* * * * *
Farther along the street and on the opposite side is Les Lauriers,
which takes its name from the two little evergreen trees which stand
in tubs at its door, and which is higher and more airy than most of
the restaurants of its size, for at some time or another the entresol
has been thrown into the rooms on the ground floor. Les Lauriers
consists, like most of the Jermyn Street restaurants, of two rooms
joined together with a space screened off by the door to form a tiny
ante-room. Its walls are panelled and painted cream colour, and lamps
with pink shades hang from the ceiling. The green carpet and the dark
wooden chairs at the three rows of tables give a comfortable look
to the place. The proprietor is M. Giolitto, who was a head waiter
at the Savoy before he came to Jermyn Street to make his fortune. A
very comfortable clientele patronises Les Lauriers, and there are two
dinners provided for them, one a short dinner which is served until a
quarter to eight, and the other a more elaborate one, priced 3s. 9d.
and 5s. 6d. respectively. The last time I dined at Les Lauriers I,
feeling rich, indulged in the longer dinner. This was the menu:
Melon Cantaloup or Driver's Royal Natives.
Consommé Viveur or Crème Doria.
Homard froid, Sce. Mayonnaise or Aiguillettes de Turbot en Goujons.
Tournedos à la Florentine.
Perdreau rôti sur Canapé.
Petits Pois à la Française.
Salade.
Ananas Master Joe.
Mignardises.
It was a well-cooked dinner, and I do not wonder that M. Giolitto was
able to tell me that his restaurant flourishes exceedingly.
XLII
THE MEN WHO MADE THE SAVOY
If I were to attempt to give you all the early history of the ground on
which the Savoy stands I should have to delve back to Tudor times, and
the Savoy Palace and the politics of that very turbulent period. For
me, however, the past history of the Savoy begins with the time when
the Savoy Theatre was built on reclaimed ground and opened in 1881.
The offices of the theatre were in Beaufort House, which stood on the
hill, and beside the theatre was a space of rough waste land, much like
the County Council's wilderness in Aldwych. On this unoccupied land
Mr D'Oyly Carte put up a shed to house the electric light plant for
the theatre, for the Savoy was the first theatre in London that used
electric light. The Savoy Hotel and Restaurant eventually rose where
the electric light shed first stood, and they were opened in 1889.
The hotel and restaurant then faced the Embankment, and had no Strand
frontage. To get to the restaurant one had either to do a glissade
in a hansom down the steep Savoy hill to the side entrance which led
into a courtyard, in the centre of which stood a majolica fountain, or
to go to the front entrance opposite to the Embankment Gardens. The
restaurant was smaller than it is now; it was panelled with mahogany;
it had a red and gold frieze and a ceiling of dead gold. It was a very
comfortable restaurant, and the mahogany walls gave it a homelike
feeling, though, of course, they absorbed a great deal of the light.
The private rooms, named after the various Gilbert and Sullivan operas,
were, as they are now, next to the restaurant. The grill-room was
tucked away in the middle of a block of buildings. There was below the
restaurant a _table d'hôte_ dining-room, and on the garden level was
a ballroom and its ante-rooms. The balcony was but half its present
width. No block of buildings has been more greatly improved from time
to time than the Savoy has been. There has hardly been a year without
some adornment being added, and in 1904 the largest additions during
the history of the hotel were completed, and the hotel and restaurant
gained their Strand outlet.
It would be possible to write a history of the Savoy by taking note of
the successive improvements and additions made to it. It would also be
possible to tell the history of the great restaurant by an account of
some of the eras of great dinners, the period, for instance, when the
South African millionaires were spending money like water during the
great "boom," and the period of freak dinners, when Caruso sang from a
gondola to diners sitting by a canal in Venice, which was really the
flooded courtyard; and when, on another occasion, the same space was
turned into a Japanese garden for a Japanese dinner. I was a guest
at some of these great dinners, at the Rouge et Noire one which two
magnates of the financial world gave to celebrate a great _coup_ at
Monte Carlo, when all the decorations of the table, all the flowers, as
much of the napery as was possible, reproduced the two colours, when
the waiters wore red shirts and red gloves, and the number on which the
money was won was to be found everywhere in various forms on the table.
And I was bidden to the return banquet, a white and green one, which
strove to outdo the luxury of the former one, whereat fruit-trees
bearing fruit grew apparently through the table, and each chair was a
little bower of foliage.
But I prefer to chat concerning the men who made the history of the
house. Not the men who pulled the strings behind the scenes, the Board
of Directors and their admirable managing director, Mr Reeves Smith,
but the men whom the public saw or heard of in the restaurant, the
general managers, the managers of the restaurant, and the chefs. The
managers whom I knew were Ritz, Mengay, Pruger, Gustave, and now Blond.
In the restaurant were Echenard, Joseph, Jules, Renault, and now Soi.
The chefs have been Escoffier, Thouraud, whom Joseph brought over with
him from Paris, Tripod, and now Rouget; and most of these I knew well.
When Mr D'Oyly Carte was putting in order the organisation of the
newly opened Savoy Hotel, he, at Monte Carlo, asked M. Ritz, who was
then at the Grand Hotel there, to come to London and take charge of
the Savoy Restaurant. M. Ritz came and brought M. Escoffier with him
to make history in the kitchens. When M. Ritz permanently took over
the management of the hotel and the restaurant he asked M. Echenard,
the proprietor of the Hotel du Louvre at Marseilles, to come to London
and assist him in the restaurant. This triumvirate worked admirably
together. M. Ritz, thin, nervous, splendidly neat, knowing all his
patrons and their tastes, was a great _maître d'hôtel_ as well as a
great manager. The saying which he constantly quoted, "The customer
is always right," he acted up to. If some ignorant diner found fault
with one of M. Escoffier's most exquisite creations it would be swept
away without a word and something suited to a lower intelligence and an
uncultivated palate substituted for it. If an old and valued customer
had come into the restaurant and had ordered for dinner, tripe and
onions and sausages and mashed potatoes, M. Ritz would have greeted
such an order as though it were a flash of genius, and would probably
have sent out to the nearest cab shelter for the dishes.
During the early days of the Savoy M. Ritz was quietly teaching the
English with money to spend that a good dinner is not of necessity a
long dinner, and that a few dishes exquisitely cooked are better than
a long catalogue of rich dishes. M. Echenard, looking like a Spanish
hidalgo, quite understood the ways of his two great colleagues--for
MM. Ritz and Escoffier are two of the greatest men in gastronomic
history--and backed them up nobly. The cholera year in Marseilles
took M. Echenard back to his hotel in the south, and he has prospered
exceedingly there, being now the proprietor of the Reserve and the
hotel just below it on the Corniche, as well as the Louvre. MM. Ritz
and Escoffier have since made the fortunes of other London restaurants.
When the Ritz-Escoffier regime at the Savoy came to an end the
directors bought the Restaurant Marivaux in the street by the side of
the Opéra Comique in Paris, and brought over M. Joseph, the presiding
genius of that restaurant, to take charge of the Savoy Restaurant.
The Marivaux had a unique reputation in the Paris of that day for its
cookery. Joseph came, bringing with him his chef, M. Thouraud. Joseph
was, I think, the most inspired _maître d'hôtel_, with the exception,
perhaps, of Frederic of the Tour d'Argent, I have ever met. The Savoy
Restaurant was rather too large for his system of management, for he
liked to take a personal interest in each dinner that was progressing
in his restaurant and to give it his constant supervision. He was born
of French parents in Birmingham, and his one great amusement was that
northern sport, pigeon flying. He had pleasant brown eyes and bushy
eyebrows, he wore all that remained of his hair rather long, and had
a tiny moustache. He was quite wrapped up in his profession, and, as
he told me once, looked at his boots the whole time that he took his
afternoon constitutional walk, that he might think of new dishes.
Whenever any novel idea occurred to him he tried it at home in his
own little kitchen before asking M. Thouraud to make experiment on a
larger scale. To see Joseph carve a duck was to see a very splendid
exhibition of ornate swordsmanship, and his preparation of a _canard
à la presse_ was quite sacrificial in its solemnity. There was in his
day a dinner given at the Savoy at which Madame Sarah Bernhardt was the
chief guest, and most of the other people present were "stars" of our
British stage. Joseph cooked before them at a side table most of the
dishes of the dinner, and told me that he did so because he wished to
show actresses and actors, who constantly appeal to the imagination of
their audiences, that there was something also in his art to please the
eye and stimulate the imagination. When I asked why he never went to
the theatre, he told me that he would sooner see six gourmets eating
a well-cooked dinner than watch the finest performance that Madame
Bernhardt and Coquelin could give. Joseph had quite a pretty wit and
facile pen. This was the _jeu d'esprit_ that he once wrote in a young
lady's album:--"C'était la première côtelette qui coûta le plus cher à
l'homme--Dieu en ayant fait une femme." And he wrote for me a little
essay on the duties of a _maître d'hôtel_ that was very sprightly in
style. He was even a greater believer than M. Ritz in the short dinner,
and declared that we in England only tasted our dinners and did not eat
them. Three dishes he considered quite enough for a good dinner, and
this was a tiny feast which he ordered for me on one occasion when I
took a lady to dine at the Savoy:
Petite marmite.
Sole Reichenberg.
Caneton à la presse. Salade de saison.
Fonds d'artichauts à la Reine.
Bombe pralinée. Petits fours.
Panier fleuri.
The _panier fleuri_ he carved himself at table from an orange.
Joseph became homesick, for he was a thorough Parisian, and went back
eventually to the Marivaux, but he soon after died.
[Illustration: JOSEPH CARVING A DUCK _After a drawing by Paul Renouard_]
The directors of the Savoy Company, which owns the Berkeley and
Claridge's as well as the Savoy Hotel, brought jolly, genial,
rosy-faced M. Jules, under whose rule the Berkeley had prospered
exceedingly, from that white-faced hotel to the Savoy, and his rule on
the Thames Embankment was as successful as it had been in Piccadilly.
It was during his managership that the additions that were to give the
entrance on to the Strand were planned, and, I fancy, were begun, and
when M. Jules left the Savoy to make for himself a restaurant and hotel
in Jermyn Street, M. Renault, from the Casino at Biarritz, came to the
Savoy Restaurant, and the quick-witted M. Pruger became general manager.
This was a period of great activity and of many alterations in the
building. No Savoy manager has ever had more brilliant inspirations
for great feasts than M. Pruger had. The gondola dinner was one of his
ideas and he always thought of something novel and amusing for the
Christmas and New Year's Eve parties. M. Renault is now in Rome at the
hotel there owned by the Savoy Company; M. Pruger was tempted away
to America to manage a mammoth restaurant on modern lines, but came
back from New York to take over the management of the Royal Automobile
Club when its great club-house in Pall Mall was opened. M. Gustave,
of the russet beard, who had steered the newly built Café Parisien
of the Savoy to great success, next became manager of the hotel, and
that brings us down to the history of to-day, for when he resigned his
appointment M. Blond, the present manager, succeeded him.
XLIII
THE DUTIES OF A _MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL_
I have mentioned in the previous chapter that Joseph wrote me a
sprightly letter on the duties of a _maître d'hôtel_. This is it:
MON CHER COLONEL,--Vous me demandez pour votre nouveau livre des
recettes. Méfiez-vous des recettes. Depuis la cuisinière bourgeoise et
le Baron Brisse on a chanté la chanson sur tous les airs et sur tous
les tons. Et qu'en reste-t-il; qui s'en souvient? Je veux dire dans
le public aristocratique pour qui vous écrivez, et que vous comptez
intéresser avec votre nouvelle publication, cherchez le nouveau dans
les à propos de table, donnez des conseils aux maîtresses de maison,
qui dépensent beaucoup d'argent pour donner des dîners fatiguants,
trop longs, trop compliqués; dîtes leur qu'un bon dîner doit être
court, que les convives doivent manger et non goûter, qu'elles exigent
de leur cuisinier ou cuisinière de n'être pas trop savants, qu'ils
respectent avant tout le goût que le bon Dieu a donné à toutes choses
de ne pas les dénaturer par des combinaisons, qui à force d'être
raffinées deviennent barbares.
On a beaucoup parlé du cuisinier. Si nous exposions un peu ce que doit
être le Maître d'Hôtel.
LE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL FRANÇAIS
La plus grande force du Maître d'hôtel Français, je dis Maître d'hôtel
Français à dessein, car si le cuisinier Français a su tirer parti des
produits de la nature avec un art infini, pour en faire des aliments
aimables, agréables, et bienfaisants, le Maître d'hôtel Français seul
est susceptible de les faire accepter et désirer. Or voilà pour le
Maître d'hôtel le champ qu'il a à explorer. Champ vaste s'il en fût,
car deviner avec tact ce qui peut plaire à celui-ci et ne pas plaire à
celui-là, est un problème à résoudre selon la nature, le tempérament
et la nationalité de celui qu'il doit faire manger. Il doit donc être
le conseil, le tentateur, et le metteur en scène. Il faut pour être un
maître d'hôtel accompli, mettre de côté, ou de moins ne pas laisser
percer le but commercial, tout en étant un commerçant hors ligne (je
parle ici du maître d'hôtel public de restaurant, attendu que dans la
maison particulière, le commerce n'a rien à voir, ce qui simplifie
énormement le rôle du maître d'hôtel. Pour cela il faut être un peu
diplomate, et un peu artiste dans l'art de dire, afin de colorer
le projet de repas que l'on doit soumettre à son dîneur). Il faut
donc agir sur l'imagination pour fair oublier la machine que l'on va
alimenter, en un mot masquer le côté matériel de manger. J'ai acquis
la certitude qu'un plat savamment préparé par un cuisinier hors ligne
peut passer inaperçu, ou inapprécié si le maître d'hôtel, qui devient
alors metteur en scène, ne sait pas présenter l'œuvre, de façon à le
faire désirer, de sorte que si ce mets est servi par un maître d'hôtel
qui n'en comprend pas le caractère, il lui sera impossible de lui
donner tout son relief, et alors l'œuvre de cuisinier sera anéanti et
passera inaperçu.
Ce maître d'hôtel doit être aussi un observateur et un juge et doit
transmettre son appréciation au chef de cuisine, mais pour apprécier
il faut savoir, pour savoir il faut aimer son art, le maître d'hôtel
doit être un apôtre.
Il doit transmettre les observations qu'il a pu entendre pendant le
cours d'un dîner de la part des convives, observations favorables ou
défavorables, il doit les transmettre au chef et aviser avec lui. Il
doit aussi être en observation, car il arrive le plus souvent que les
convives ne disent rien à cause de leur amphitryon mais ne mangent pas
avec plaisir et entrain le mets présenté: là encore le maître d'hôtel
doit chercher le pourquoi. Il y a aussi dans un déjeuner ou un dîner
un rôle très important réservé au maître d'hôtel. La variété agréable
des hors-d'œuvre, la salade qui accompagne le rôti, le façon de
découper ce rôti avec élégance, de bien disposer ce rôti sur son plat
une fois découpé, découper bien et vite, afin d'éviter le réchaud qui
sèche. Savoir mettre à point une selle de mouton, avec juste ce qu'il
faut de sel sur la partie grasse, qui lui donnera un goût agréable.
Pour découper le maître d'hôtel doit se placer ni trop près ni trop
loin des convives, afin que ceux-ci soient intéressés, et voient
que tous les détails sont observés avec goût et élégance, de façon
à tenter encore les appétits qui n'en peuvent presque plus mais qui
renaissent encore un peu aiguillonnés par le désir qu'a su faire
naître l'artiste préposé au repas, et qui a su donner encore envie à
l'imagination, quand l'estomac commençait à capituler.
Le maître d'hôtel a de plus cette partie de la fin du dîner, le choix
d'un bon fromage, les fruits, les soins de température à donner aux
vins, la façon de décanter ceux-ci pour leur donner le maximum de
bouquet; le maître d'hôtel ne peut-il encore être un tentateur avec
la fraise frappée à la Marivaux? ou avec la pêche à la cardinal,
qu'accompagne si bien le doux parfum de la framboise, légèrement
acidulé d'une cuillerée de jus de groseille. Notre grand Carême
qualifiait certains plats le "manger des Dieux." Combien l'expression
est heureuse!
Depuis que je suis à Londres j'ai trouvé un nombre incalculable
d'inventeurs de ma "pêche à la Cardinal." Il me faudra leur donner la
recette un jour que j'en aurai l'occasion.
N'est-ce pas de l'art chez le maître d'hôtel qui tente et charme
les convives par ces raffinements, et qui comme un cavalier sur une
moture essoufflée sait encore relever son courage et lui faire faire
la dernière foulée qui décide de la victoire? Après un bon repas
le maître d'hôtel a la grande satisfaction d'avoir donné un peu de
bonheur à de pauvres gens riches, qui ne sont pas toujours des heureux.
Et comme l'a dit Brillat Savarin "Le plaisir de la table ne nuit pas
aux autres plaisirs." Au contraire, qui sait si _indirectement_ je ne
suis pas le papa de bien des Bébés rieurs, ou la cause au moins de
certaines aventures que mes jolies clientes n'évoquent qu'en souriant
derrière leur éventail?
JOSEPH
_Directeur du Savoy Restaurant, Londres,
et du Restaurant de Marivaux, Paris._
XLIV
THE SAVOY TO-DAY
After the Houses of Parliament, the Law Courts, the National Gallery,
St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the Savoy Hotel is probably the
building that the well-to-do Londoner knows best. He cannot walk or
drive down the Strand without his eye being caught by its milk-white
frontage on that tumultuous street, and by the stern-faced gilded
warrior above the courtyard entrance who leans on a shield that bears
an heraldic bird, which I have no doubt is a very noble eagle, but
which looks as though it had been plucked. When he comes home from
abroad he, if he is looking to the right as he crosses the railway
bridge to Charing Cross, sees the garden front of the hotel, with its
balconies and many windows, and its flag aflutter, and recalling many
good dinners in the past, looks forward to many others in the immediate
future.
All the preliminaries to a dinner at the Savoy are pleasantly
dignified. The drive into the courtyard, the cessation of noise as the
wheels of car or carriage come upon the india-rubber paving under the
glazed roof, the cream and dark green marbles of the entrance front,
the trellis and flowers outside the Café, all contribute to pleasant
anticipation; and once inside the doors, the hall panelled with
dark woods, the glimpse through a long window of the light-coloured
reading-room, and the progress down a flight of crimson-carpeted
stairs, with walls of buff and brown marble on either side, form the
first stage of the diner's progress to the restaurant.
Servants in the handsome state livery they wear in the evening--French
grey and dark blue--take one's coat and hat, and it always gives me a
moment of gratification that I am such an old habitué that it is not
considered necessary to give me a ticket. Then if one is a host there
is nothing to do except to sit in one of the comfortable chairs in
this ante-chamber and to look alternately up the crimson stairs to see
whether one's guests are arriving and down another flight of stairs
across the great lounge to the crystal screen of great panes framed in
gilt metal which is the transparent barrier between the restaurant and
its approaches.
The lounge--crimson under foot, with walls light cream in colour, good
copies of portraits by British old masters in panels alternating with
looking-glass doorways; with pillars of buff marble, veined with brown
and having gilt capitals, and bronze amorini and sculptured groups
of the Graces as supports for electroliers--is a delightful room,
as one realises after dinner when the hour of coffee has come. The
band, wearing in the evening their uniform of dark blue, the leader
distinguished by a silver sash--in the daytime they are in crimson--are
in a corner of the lounge close against the crystal screen that
their music may be heard in the restaurant. Arched entrances in the
eastern wall lead into the Winter Garden, another great hall with a
glazed ceiling, with roses climbing up trellis-work, and with a great
recess, up a broad flight of stairs, with pillars of green marble and
a gilded fountain against its wall. The _salon de verdure_, as it
is grandiloquently called, is above the new ballroom, the two great
apartments occupying the space where the courtyard used to be.
My guests of the particular night I am describing were my friend and
old comrade, Pitcher, the editor of _Town Topics_, and his wife and his
pretty daughter. I had determined that they should eat a typical Savoy
dinner, and had been at some pains to obtain a really representative
feast. Before I went away on my travels in the summer I had interviewed
M. Blond, the general manager (who was brought back when he was
half-way to Rome two years ago to take up the management of the Savoy),
in his sanctum, telling him that when in the autumn I intended to
write a couple of chapters concerning the Savoy, I should like to give
a dinner including some of the specialities of the cuisine, and that
I should like to have something descriptive to say as to such of the
dishes of which the Savoy is proud that were not included in my little
feast. We took into our conference M. Rouget, the Maître-Chef of the
Savoy, who looks the genial, burly, contented person that the head of
a great kitchen should be, and we chatted over new dishes and dishes
with new names (which are not the same thing), and he gave me some
particulars of his kitchens and of the great army of cooks employed in
the Savoy, there being as many as two hundred and ten in the brigade.
When, being back again in London, I carried out my intention of asking
my editor to dinner, M. Soi, the manager of the restaurant, came into
counsel. When I had made up my mind on the important matter whether
my dinner should cost twelve-and-six or fifteen-and-six a head, and
had stated that I should like the more expensive feast, I added that I
hoped that no beef would be included in the menu, for Pitcher had been
complaining of preliminary symptoms of gout. M. Soi on the day we were
to dine--a Sunday--submitted to me a menu which I duly initialled as
approved.
My guest and his wife, looking as young as her pretty daughter, duly
arrived to the moment. M. Soi, young and good-looking, with a light
moustache--he was under Ritz in various restaurants, and has been at
the Grand Hotel in Rome as restaurant manager, going in the summer to
the Palace Hotel at St Moritz, before three years ago he came to the
Savoy--received us at the entrance, and we were piloted to a table a
comfortable distance away from the band, from which the ladies had a
full view of the room, full, as it always is, with good-looking people,
the softer sex all being in frocks that gave my lady guests plenty
to talk about. I gave my guests the menu, which, of course, I had
previously seen, to look at, as soon as they had settled down, and I
used my eyes to take in my surroundings.
Though I regret the disappearance of the mahogany panelling, which is
stowed away somewhere in the hotel, as one regrets the loss of an old
friend, the pleasant buff colouring of the present restaurant, with its
frieze of raised decoration and the electric light thrown up on to the
ceiling and reflected down, which is most comfortable to the eye, make
for lightness; and light as distinguished from glare is an aid to good
spirits in a restaurant. The balcony of to-day, twice the width of the
old balcony, and fitted with a long awning for use on sunshiny days--an
awning which cost an almost incredible sum of money--is in request both
at lunch and dinner and supper-time; and at lunch it has the supreme
advantage of commanding the one great view in Central London, the river
and the gardens and the Houses of Parliament grouping into a splendid
picture, only spoiled by the blot of the unlovely railway bridge.
This was the menu of the Savoy dinner that M. Soi considered typical:
Délices de Sterlet.
Blinis de Sarrasin.
Consommé de Terrapine en Tasse. Kapusniack.
Suprême de Sole Divine.
Diablotin Cancalaise.
Filet de Perdreau Bonne Bouche.
Croquettes de Marrons.
Noisette d'Agneau de Galles Eldorado.
Fond d'Artichaut Clamart.
Poularde soufflée Savoy.
Salade Cornelia.
Poire de Paris Tosca.
Frivolités.
Canapé Esperanza.
--and as the accompanying wine I had ordered some sherry with the
_caviar_, a magnum of Pommery and some Mattoni water.
A most admirable dinner it was, rather long, perhaps, to my taste, but
it would have been difficult to get enough distinctive dishes into
a shorter menu. The _sterlet caviar_ on the little Russian pancakes
made an admirable _hors d'œuvre_; the _consommé_ was of turtle, but
much lighter than the usual turtle soup; the _kapusniack_ is a Russian
soup, in which leeks, celery, turnips, onions, mushrooms, pig's ear,
crushed tomatoes and cabbage seasoned with vinegar play a part, and it
is served with cream stirred into it, and with those little _pâtés_ of
which the Russians are so fond when broken into the soup. The sole was
garnished with fried oysters covered with bread-crumbs, and the _filet
de perdreau_, which was the supreme triumph of the dinner, consisted of
grilled _suprêmes_ of partridges and grilled rashers of bacon dipped
in _poivrade_ sauce. The _noisettes_ were the one plain dish of the
dinner, but the asparagus ends tucked away in the hearts of artichokes
gave it its cachet. The cold chicken filled with a _mousse_ of _foie
gras_ was a very noble dish, and tiny mushrooms, formed from some kind
of _mousse_, which apparently grew amidst the truffles, and slices of
chicken breast which surrounded the white bird adorned with Pompeiian
drawings, were a very happy idea. The nuts soaked in Kummel which
we found in the interior of the pears, which were served with a red
currant ice, was another happy idea much appreciated by the ladies, and
the _canapé esperanza_ proved to be soft roes on toast.
This dinner takes a very high place amongst the many good dinners I
have eaten in my time in the Savoy Restaurant. My bill came to £5, 2s.
Some of the Savoy specialities for which there were not room in one
dinner menu are _huîtres Baltimore_, which are oysters grilled with
bacon; _bortsch Polonaise, homard Miramar, sylphide Savoy,_ which is a
very attractive way of serving lamb sweetbreads; _mignonettes d'agneau
à la Delhi, soufflés belle de nuit,_ which is a variant of the _soufflé
surprise_, peaches and strawberry and vanilla ice being used in it;
and the noble _bécasse à la Soi_, an invention of M. Soi, which is
the breast of a woodcock served with a most delightful sauce on toast
covered with _foie gras_.
I have mentioned the ballroom which has taken the place of the old
courtyard and its fountain, and in which many of the great banquets
given at the Savoy are held. It is a fine room, light grey in
colour, splendidly spacious, and when lighted up its colour shows
off the ladies' dresses to perfection. My only objection to it as a
banqueting-room was that the white light, which is admirable for a
ballroom, was rather too glary for a dining-room. This has now been
obviated by lessening the light when dinners are given in the room.
If the Savoy could find some means of shading the lamps with pink or
putting on pink glasses to the lamps on the occasion of banquets, it
would, I think, please those like myself who think that the best light
for a dining-room is a pink one.
I asked M. Blond to give me the menu of any recent Savoy banquet
of which the management was especially proud, not that I have not
preserved many menus of many great dinners, but that I wished to shift
the responsibility of selection on to his shoulders. This is the menu
of the banquet and wines he has sent me as being typical of great Savoy
feasts:
Caviar de Bélouga.
Blinis à la Gouriew.
Queue de Bœuf à la Française.
Crème Germiny.
Filets de Sole à l'Aiglon.
Suprême de Volaille à l'Aurore.
Côte d'Agneau de Lait au Beurre Noisette.
Pommes Lorette.
Velouté Forestière.
Délice de Strasbourg à la Gelée de Vin du Rhin.
Bécassine Double Flambée à l'Armagnac.
Perles du Perigord.
Cœurs de Laitues Suzette.
Asperges Vertes de Paris.
Comices Toscane.
Soufflé Pont l'Évêque.
Corbeilles de Fruits.
WINES.
Schloss Johannisberg Cabinet, 1893.
Veuve Clicquot, 1904.
Magnums Pommery and Greno (Nature), 1904.
Chât. Haut Brion "Cachet du Château," 1888.
Cockburn's 1890 (Bottled 1893).
Croft's 1881 (Bottled 1884).
Hennessey's 70 year old Cognac.
Many of the dishes included in this great dinner I hope I may meet at a
future time at Savoy banquets.
XLV
THE RESTAURANT DES GOURMETS
Dining one wet night in September at the Restaurant des Gourmets in
Lisle Street I told the young manager, with whom I chatted, that it
must be ten years since I dined there, and that at that time M. Brice
was the proprietor. The manager's reply was that fourteen years ago
M. Brice sold the restaurant to its present proprietors. I looked up
the date of my last visit to the Gourmets when I got home, and found
that it was in 1898. It was a queer little place of very eatable food
at extraordinarily cheap prices when first I made its acquaintance. It
then occupied the ground floor of one of the little houses in Lisle
Street, the street in which is the stage door of the Empire Theatre,
and Mr George Edwardes' offices at the back of Daly's Theatre. The
outside of the restaurant in those days did not look inviting. The
woodwork was painted leaden grey, and a yellow curtain hung inside the
window to screen the interior from the view of the public. The glass of
the door was whitened and "Entrée" written across it in black paint.
There were as many little tables, to hold two or four, as could be
crammed into the little room; the benches by the wall were covered with
black leather, the walls were grey, with wooden pegs all round on which
to hang hats and coats, and, here and there, notices on boards "La
Pipe est interdite." By the window was a long counter, on which were
bowls of salad and stacks of French loaves, and a metal coffee-making
machine. By this counter stood a plump Frenchwoman in black with an
apron, who shouted orders down a lift, and up the lift came presently
in response the dish called for. M. Brice, a little Frenchman with a
slight beard and wearing a grey cap, came and sat on a chair by the
table and told me who the star guests were amongst the people of all
nationalities who filled all the space on the chairs and benches. The
_chef d'orchestre_ of the Moore and Burgess Minstrels at St James's
Hall was one of the celebrities; another, a gentleman wearing a red
tie, was a journalist who contributed articles on Anarchists to
the newspapers; there were some Frenchmen who were big men in the
greengrocery line, and came over occasionally to Covent Garden; and
the greatest celebrity of all was a clean-shaven, prosperous-looking
person, the coachman of the Baron Alfred de Rothschild. My bill that
evening totalled 2s. 7d., and for this I obtained _hors d'œuvre_,
2d.; _pain_, 1d.; _potage, pâté d'Italie_, 2d.; _poisson_, 8d. (the
expensive dish of my dinner, turbot and caper sauce); _gigot haricot_,
6d.; an _omelette_, 4d.; cheese, 2d.; and a pint of claret, of which M.
Brice had purchased a supply at the sale of the surplus wines of the
Café Royal, which cost me no more than 6d.
The front of the Restaurant des Gourmets to-day stretches across three
of the houses in Lisle Street, and it has, besides the ground-floor
rooms, quite a spacious restaurant on the first floor, made by throwing
the three rooms of the houses into one. Its ground-floor front is
painted chocolate colour, and its principal entrance, between two
of the houses, is quite imposing, has little Noah's Ark trees and
a _chasseur_ in buttons, stationed there to direct visitors to the
different rooms and to call taxis. The staircase, with brass edges to
the steps and a brass rail, and with walls of white panelling, leads to
the restaurant upstairs, and a little pay-desk, with an opening like
those in a railway ticket office, faces one at the entrance, and it is
here that every visitor pays his bill as he goes out. I looked in at
all three downstairs rooms, which are bright with coloured papers on
their walls, and found all the tables occupied, before I went upstairs
into the larger restaurant. There I found a little table vacant, and
sat down at it with grim apprehension that I might have what scanty
hair I possess on the top of my head blown off, for just above it was
a large electric fan. It was, however, not necessary, the night being
cool, to set this going, and I ate my dinner in a calm atmosphere.
The Gourmets has become quite smart since Madame H. Cosson and her son
succeeded M. Brice in the proprietorship. The upstairs restaurant is
panelled with white woodwork above a green skirting, there are mirrors
in the panelling, and the range of windows looking out on to Lisle
Street have white lace curtains. There is a table in the middle of
the room, and upon it fruits and big-leaved plants and a basket with
bunches of grapes hung invitingly along the handle. Two big stands of
Austrian bent-wood for hats and coats are placed as sentinels on either
side of this table. There is a round-faced clock on the wall to tell
the time, and at intervals notices to say that all drinks must be paid
for in advance, which means, I suppose, that the Gourmets has not yet
obtained a wine and spirit licence. No notice forbidding pipes is now
necessary. The waiters in dress clothes and black ties bustle about,
and when I had given my order for _crème de laitue, cabillaud frit,
poulet au riz, sauce suprême,_ and pudding Gourmets, I looked round at
my fellow-guests to see if I could pick out any celebrities. There was
no M. Brice this time to act as a "Who's Who in Lisle Street," and most
of the people who were dining seemed to me to be young couples. Indeed
from the tables in my vicinity a painter could have limned a series of
pictures of the various stages of matrimony. At the table next to mine
sat a young couple who were still in the holding hands state of love,
who were thinking a great deal about each other and very little about
their dinner, and who ordered anything that the waiter suggested to
them; further on was a couple, each of whom was reading a newspaper,
and next to them again a young husband and wife, who had brought out
to dinner a pig-tailed little girl of six or seven, whose manners were
most admirable, for she bade the waiter "Good-night" when she went away
with all the grace of a duchess. Beyond these again was an elderly
couple, who sat together at one side of a table, an affectionate Darby
and Joan.
My soup when it came tasted rather too strongly of pepper, but the
fried cod was excellent. The _poulet au riz_ was all that it should be,
and the pudding Gourmets was a simple version of the well-known pudding
Diplomate.
Prices have gone up a little at the Gourmets since my first visit
there, owing, of course, to the general rise in the price of material.
I was charged 3d. for the soup, 6d. for the cod; I had rushed into wild
extravagance in ordering chicken, for that cost me 1s. 3d., and the
price of the pudding Gourmets was 4d.
XLVI
THE MAXIM RESTAURANT
There may not appear at first blush to be any close connection between
Wardour Street, that length of it which lies between Shaftesbury
Avenue and Coventry Street, and the pleasant Austrian watering-place
of Marienbad; but whenever I traverse the thoroughfare where the wax
figures simper in Clarkson's, the wig-maker's, windows, and where the
French library at one of the corners always keeps some passers-by in
front of it looking at the illustrated papers and post cards, the china
figures and the covers of the novels, there rises before me when I
come to the Maxim Restaurant a vision of hills covered with pine-woods
and of the Café Rubezahl, a castellated building of great red roofs
and turrets and spires, high up on the green hill-side, the café at
which the late King Edward often drank the good Austrian coffee of an
afternoon during his annual August trip to the town of healing waters.
The Rubezahl was, in an indirect manner, the parent of the
Restaurant Maxim in Wardour Street, for when the organisers of the
Austro-Hungarian Exhibition at Earl's Court cast about for attractions
which would be in keeping with the spirit of the exhibition it occurred
very naturally to them that an Austrian restaurant where the admirable
plain Austrian dishes could be eaten and where the Hungarian wines and
the cool beer of Pilsen could be drunk would be a pleasant novelty;
and such a restaurant was established opposite to the Welcome Club, and
was eminently successful. And to manage this restaurant the son-in-law
of the proprietor of the Rubezahl came from the Austrian Highlands,
and when King Edward lunched at the restaurant and was given a typical
Austrian meal of "cure food" he recognised M. Maximilian Lurion, the
manager, and chatted with him concerning Marienbad and the Rubezahl.
When Earl's Court had closed its doors for the winter M. Maxim Lurion
was not unwilling to stay in London, and he, in conjunction with a
British syndicate, thought that a site at the corners of Wardour and
Gerrard Streets, which was then in the market, would be a suitable
position for a restaurant. A small public-house carrying a licence
was included in the purchase, and when everything else on the site
was pulled down the business part of the old house of refreshment
stood, looking like a saloon of the Wild West, amidst the ruins. When
a name had to be found for the new restaurant, the shortened form of
M. Lurion's Christian name was chosen, and the building became the
Restaurant Maxim. No doubt Maxim's, in Paris, came by its name in a
like manner, for Maximilian is a very usual name in central and eastern
Europe.
Maxim's has always kept a clean face in a street not remarkable
for smartness, and its white exterior, the touches of gilding on
the wreaths that embellish its outer walls, its rows of mauresque
white-curtained narrow windows on the first floor, its turret domed
with silver, the flowers in its green and gold balconies, and the
commissionaire in a well-fitting coat who stands by the front door,
near the two large menus which set forth what is the dinner of the day,
make it a pleasant feature of the street.
When the Maxim was first opened M. Lurion took me over the
establishment from garret to basement, and showed me how the coffee is
made in Austria, though Austrian coffee never tastes so well in London
surroundings as it does under the little trees of the hill-side cafés
in Carlsbad or Marienbad, or in one of the open-air restaurants in the
Prater of Vienna. The Maxim, however, did not at first fulfil the hopes
of its promoters. Whether its name frightened people or whether it was
too ambitious in its aims I do not know, but it soon changed hands.
When one evening last summer I went to the Maxim to dine before going
to one of the theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue, I found M. Ducker, the
present manager, in the entrance hall near the cloak-room where hats
and coats are left, and he told me all about the varying fortunes of
the restaurant, who are its present proprietors, and of the struggle
that was necessary to bring it to its present state of prosperity,
for prosperous it now is, there being not a vacant table either on
the ground floor or the first floor when I came in. While I talked
to M. Ducker a couple, who had finished their dinner, rose from a
table by the brass ornamental rail surrounding the oval opening which
makes the restaurant on the first floor a balcony to the room below,
a waiter slipped a clean cloth on to the table, and in a few seconds
it was ready for my occupation. M. Ducker hoped I would have a good
dinner, and left me to the care of the _maître d'hôtel_, and as the
waiter covered the table with little dishes containing _hors d'œuvres_
I looked at the menu, at my surroundings, and at the company. This
was the menu of the half-crown dinner of the house, the arms of the
establishment, three stags' heads on a shield, with a boar's head as a
crest, and two stags as supporters, being at the top of the menu card:
Hors d'œuvre à la Russe.
Consommé Chiffonnette.
Crème Gentilhomme.
Suprême de Barbue Niçoise.
Carré de Pré-Salé Bourguignonne.
Pommes fondantes.
Poulet en Casserole.
Salade.
Glacé Chantilly.
Dessert.
In the upper restaurant of the Maxim, where I sat, the walls are
papered deep red, with white woodwork and white classic ornamentation.
There are mirrors on the walls, and on a large panel the arms of
the house are displayed in proper heraldic colours. The cut glass
electroliers, some hanging, some fixed to the ceiling, give light both
to the upper and lower restaurants. The lower restaurant is panelled
and is all white, red-shaded lamps on the tables and some palms making
a contrast of colour. Down in the basement is a grill-room. The chairs
are of white wood upholstered in green leather, and the carpets are a
deep rose in colour. The little string band of the establishment plays
in the upper restaurant, its leader, who is a talented violinist,
standing close by the brazen railing so that his music shall be as well
heard below as it is above.
Every table, as I have written, was occupied this evening in both the
stages of the restaurant. There are two circular lines of tables above,
one close to the railings, one against the walls, and the people who
sat at them belonged to all the various grades of respectable London.
At the table by the wall level with mine were a young man and a pretty
girl. He was smoking a cigarette, she was drinking a cup of coffee,
and they were evidently obtaining their evening's entertainment in
listening to the music. At the table beyond them were a little lady
whom I include amongst my pleasant acquaintances, her husband and a
friend. Four men, in dinner jackets and black ties, were at the table
beyond them, and then other couples, young and old, and other little
parties of three and four. Here and there were people, like myself,
dressed to go to a theatre; but the Maxim is in the land of Bohemia,
where there are no customs as to wearing clothes of ceremony. What
chiefly struck me as to the diners at the Maxim was that they were all
enjoying to the uttermost their half-crown's worth of dinner and music.
There were smiling faces at all the tables, and the applause at the
conclusion of each item of the band programme was very enthusiastic.
The eating of satisfactory food and the drinking of sound wine are
not the only dining pleasures that make glad the heart of an epicure,
and to be amongst people who are enjoying themselves thoroughly is a
delight that cannot be written down on a menu or contained between the
covers of a wine list.
To come to the important matter of the dinner I ate at the Maxim, the
_crème gentilhomme_, a thick green soup, flavoured, I fancy, with
spinach, was excellent, and there was no fault to find with the fish
and its pink accompaniment of tomatoes and shrimps. When I came to the
next course a strange thing happened. I had noticed, and appreciated as
a special personal compliment, the presence of a jar of caviare amongst
the _hors d'œuvres_; but when, instead of _pré-salé_ mutton, a tender
_tournedos_ of beef was put before me, a great fear came upon me that
I was eating somebody else's specially ordered dinner, perhaps that
of the manager himself. On consideration, when a plump roast chicken
was brought me instead of a portion of the bird _en casserole_, I
came to the conclusion that the manager had conspired with the cook
to give me more than my half-crown's worth of food, and when a noble
bowl of _fraises Melba_ was placed before me instead of the small
_glacé Chantilly_ I felt sure that I had been put on the "most-favoured
nation" basis. But this overkindness was not needed, for, watching my
neighbours, I saw that the mutton they ate looked toothsome; I would
just as soon have been served my wing of a chicken from a white-metal
_casserole_ as from a plate, and I am quite sure that the temptation
to eat too many strawberries and ice brought me near the deadly sin of
greediness.
To anyone making a dining tour of the restaurants of London, I commend
the Maxim Restaurant as a bright and cheerful place, in a neighbourhood
where brightness is not the rule, where good-tempered, pleasant diners
appreciate the food and the music they get for their half-crowns.
XLVII
BIRCH'S
No. 15 Cornhill, which dates back to about 1700, is a little slip of
a building, old-fashioned in appearance and tall in comparison to its
breadth, its ground area being just fifteen feet by thirty. This is
Birch's, the famous little pastry-cook's shop, which for years almost
unnumbered has supplied the Lord Mayor's Mansion House banquets and the
great feasts at the Guildhall.
Its ground floor has an old-fashioned carved front with three windows
with little panes, one of ground glass in the centre of each window
setting forth that soups, ices and wine are to be obtained within.
The woodwork of the front is curiously carved, the carving having
reappeared in recent years, when coat after coat of paint was taken
off, a section of the various layers being of as many colours as
a Neapolitan ice. The double door of the little shop, unusual in
shape, also has glass panels. There used to be on the woodwork of
the door an old brass plate on which, in letters almost worn out by
constant rubbing, the name of the proprietor was given as Birch, late
Hornton. But some young bloods one night screwed this off and it has
disappeared. Through the glass windows can be seen many wedding cakes,
biscuits in tall glass cylinders and a royal crown which was probably
part of the table decorations at some great feast.
The little shop has an atmosphere of its own. Directly one goes into
it one smells the good scent of turtle soup and Old Madeira, with an
added aroma of puff pastry. The shop is divided into two parts by an
open screen, and a counter runs its full length. There are old black
bottles in glass cupboards, and decanters on shelves, and an old clock.
The floor is saw-dusted, and men in white aprons bustle about attending
to the wants of the customers. Tray after tray of pastry of all kinds
is put on the counter and cleared within a few minutes of their
appearance. Dignified City men, plate in hand, jostle each other to get
a first chance at the macaroons, to obtain a still smoking bun, or a
three-cornered puff fresh from the oven. Plates of sandwiches are put
before customers to disappear with great rapidity. Whiskies and sodas,
glasses of Old Madeira or Port or East Indian Sherry seem to be the
favourite drinks. When a customer has eaten all he wants and drunk all
he wants, he tells an amiable lady in black what he has taken, and she,
being a lightning calculator, tells him in reply what he has to pay.
The soup-room on the first floor, to which a flight of narrow little
steps ascends, has a calmer atmosphere. Here, in a room with walls
the paper of which has been turned to a deep amber tint by the London
atmosphere, gentlemen sup, sitting down, their plates of turtle soup or
oxtail, and drink their wine with dignified composure. There are tall
white wedding cakes under glasses in this room also. The servitors in
white aprons are busy in the soup-room, though not quite as busy as
downstairs amongst the jam puffs.
Up yet another Jacob's ladder of stairs is the ladies' room, which
I fancy is used as a chapel of ease for the soup-room, though it is
said that rich old widow ladies going quarterly to draw their income
from the Bank of England always go into Birch's for a plate of turtle
soup and a glass of sherry. Yet one flight of stairs higher is the
office of the firm of Messrs Ring and Brymer, who have owned Birch's
since 1836. In this room, in old leather-covered books, are wonderful
records of hecatombs of baked meats and roasted fowl served at City
banquets without end. The two oldest members of the firm have died of
late years. These two old gentlemen, Mr Ring and Mr Brymer, who looked
like archdeacons in mufti, and had exactly the right dignity for men
who provide and control the Lord Mayor's feasts, had both a wonderful
memory for banquets that the firm had provided. I happened to mention
one day in their presence that a forbear of mine, a banker and brewer,
Alderman Newnham, had been Lord Mayor of London, and at once they said
that in their books were the details of a feast given by the worthy
old gentleman when he was sheriff, and taking down an old volume they
showed me how many gallons of turtle soup, the number of sirloins of
beef, and the quantity of fair white chickens, orange jellies and plum
puddings that the old alderman paid for. It is a very cosy little room
in which to lunch, this office of the firm, and the turtle soup, with
its great squares of turtle flesh in it, a sole Colbert, a grouse pie,
angels on horseback, and a big helping of that wonderful orange jelly,
a clouded delicacy that has the flavour of the orange stronger than any
other jelly made by any other pastry-cook, and which is a speciality
of the house, taste all the better for being eaten in the little room
on the walls of which are old Guildhall menus and old pictures of City
feasts and portraits of city celebrities, and many letters from the
great panjandrums of City companies, giving praise to Messrs Ring and
Brymer for the excellence of the banquets supplied by them.
All the preparations for a Guildhall or a Company banquet, except
the cooking that goes on in the kitchens of the halls, used to be
made in the kitchens below No. 15 Cornhill, and the houses on either
side of it, and it used to be one of the free afternoon sights of the
City to see the kitchen-men carrying out through the little entrance
door the soup and the pastry, the jellies and the cakes for a City
banquet. When two great insurance offices squeezed in on either side of
the pastry-cook's shop, Messrs Ring and Brymer had to look for other
kitchens, and they now have a house in Bunhill Row, where on the top
storey there is a great kitchen for the cooking of the soup and other
delicacies, and where in the basement the turtles spend their last sad
days before being butchered to make a Lord Mayor's holiday. At Bunhill
Row there is also a cosy little office with the arms of many of the
City companies as its wall ornaments.
Old Tom Birch, who was the second of his line, the son of Lucas Birch
who succeeded the Hornton dynasty, was a man of many interests and a
great celebrity of the City. His Christian name was Samuel, but he was
"Tom" in the mouths of all City men. He was Lord Mayor of London in
1814, the only pastry-cook who has ever attained to that high dignity.
He was a great orator, and an enthusiastic supporter of Pitt; he was
Lieut.-Colonel of the first regiment of Loyal London Volunteers raised
at the time of the French Revolution, and he wrote several comedies
which were performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. There is still
extant a song of the day, which no doubt in its time had a great
success in City circles, in which a Frenchman coming to London, and
being taken round the sights, is surprised to learn that the colonel of
a regiment he sees on parade is old Tom Birch, the pastry-cook; that a
governor holding forth to the boys at St Paul's School; that an orator
in the Guildhall; and that the author of a comedy at Covent Garden, are
all one and the same estimable old Tom.
A Lord Mayor's Guildhall banquet to-day has all the same outward
pomp and gorgeousness that it had eighty or a hundred years ago.
But a Lord Mayor's banquet, so far as good things to eat and to
drink are concerned, is absolutely different to-day from what it was
half-a-century ago. This is the menu of the feast that Messrs Ring and
Brymer provided on Lord Mayor's day 1913 for the Guildhall banquet. The
baron of beef is, of course, just as much a civic dish as is the turtle
soup, but the dinner is, on the whole, quite a light one:
Turtle. Clear Turtle.
Fillets of Turbot Duglère.
Lobster Mousse.
Turban of Sweetbread and Truffles.
Baron of Beef.
Salad.
Casserole of Partridge.
Cutlets Royale.
Tongues.
Orange Jelly.
Italian Creams. Strawberry Creams.
Maids of Honour.
Princess Pastry.
Ices. Dessert.
The wines for this occasion were: Punch. Sherry--Gonzalez.
Hock--Rüdesheim. Champagne--Clicquot, 1904; Bollinger, 1904.
Moselle--Scharzberger. Claret--La Rose, 1899. Port--Dow's, 1896.
Bénédictine. Grande Chartreuse. Perrier. The cost of the dinner,
including wine, came to about two guineas a head.
And now as a contrast I give you the menu of the banquet given in the
Guildhall on Lord Mayor's Day, 1837. This was a Royal entertainment.
The menu is a yard in length, and it comprises the dishes at the Royal
table and the general bill of fare as well. I only give you the dishes
served at the Royal table, which form an extraordinary mass of flesh,
of fish, fruit, fowl, in season and out of season. The buffet, no
doubt, held the dishes for which there was not room on the table. The
wines served at this banquet are put down simply as Champagne, Hock,
Claret, Burgundy, Madeira, Port, Sherry:
THREE POTAGES.
Potage de Tortue à l'Anglaise.
Consommé de Volaille.
Potage à la Brunoise.
THREE PLATS DE POISSON.
Turbot bouilli garni aux Merlans frits.
Rougets farcis à la Villeroi.
Saumon bouilli garni aux Eperlans.
THREE RELEVÉS.
Poulets bouillis, aux Langues de Veau Glacés, garnis de
Croustade à la Macédoine.
Noix de Veau en Daube décorée à la Bohémienne.
Filet de Bœuf à la Sanglier en Chasse.
EIGHT ENTREMETS.
Ris d'Agneau piqués à la Turque aux petits Pois.
Sauté de filets de Faisans aux Truffes.
Pâté chaud aux Bécassines à l'Italienne.
Casserole de pieds d'Agneau aux Champignons.
Sultanne de filets de Soles à la Hollandaise, garnis aux Ecrevisses.
Timbale de Volaille à la Dauphine.
Filets de Lièvre confis aux Tomates.
Côtelettes de Perdreaux au Suprême.
BUFFET.
Potage à la Turque.
Hochepot de Faisan.
Tranches de Cabillaud.
Eperlans frits.
Langue de Bœuf.
Jambon à la Jardinière.
Bœuf rôti. Mouton rôti.
Agneau rôti. Agneau bouilli.
Hanche de Venaison.
Pierre grillé au Vin de Champagne,
Petit Pâtés aux Huîtres.
Croquettes.
Côtelettes d'Agneau aux Concombres.
Dindon rôti aux Truffes à l'Espagnole.
SECOND SERVICE.
THREE PLATS DE RÔTI.
Faisans.
Bécasses.
Cercelles.
THREE RELEVÉS.
Souflet de Vanille.
Pommes à la Portugaise.
Gaufres à la Flamande.
FOUR PÂTISSERIES MONTÉES.
Vase en Croquante garni de Pâtisserie aux Confitures.
Fontaine Grecque, garnie aux petit-choux.
Vase de Beurre frais aux Crevettes.
Fontaine Royale garnie de Pâtisserie à la Genévoise.
TWELVE ENTREMETS.
Crème d'Ananas garnie.
Gelée au Vin de Champagne garnie aux fruits.
Homards à la Rémoulade.
Mayonnaise de Poulet à l'Aspic.
Fanchonettes d'Orange, garnies aux Pistaches.
Compôte des Pêches, en petits Panniers.
Tartelettes aux Cerises, en Nougat.
Petites Coupes d'Amarids à la Chantilly.
Culs d'Artichauts en Mayonnaise.
Anguille au Beurre de Montpellier.
Gelée au Marasquin, décorée.
Gâteaux de Pommes en Mosaïque, à la Crème d'Abricot.
BUFFET.
Poulets rôtis.
Bécassines rôties.
Canards Sauvages rôtis.
Tourte aux Pommes.
Tourte aux Cerises.
Beignets de Pommes.
Fondu de Parmesan.
Trifle à la Crème.
Plum Pudding.
Mince Pies.
No wonder our grandfathers mostly died of apoplexy!
XLVIII
A CITY BANQUET
THE MERCERS' HALL
I do not think that of all the dinners I have eaten with various
hospitable City Companies in their halls I could select a more
representative one than one I ate with the Mercers. That we drank 1884
Pommery at the banquet shows that it did not take place yesterday.
* * * * *
If there was one City Company that I was anxious to dine with it
was the Mercers, for most of my forebears had been of the guild. My
great-great-uncle, who was Lord Mayor and an M.P., and who fell into
unpopularity because he advocated paying the debts of George IV., was
a Mercer; my great-uncle was in his turn Master of the Company, and my
grandfather, who was a very peppery and litigious old gentleman, has
left many pamphlets in which he tried to make it warm for everybody
all round because he was not raised to the Court of Assistants when
he thought he should have been. I had looked out Mercers' Hall in
the Directory, and found its position put down as 4 Ironmonger Lane,
Cheapside; so a few minutes before seven o'clock, the hour at which
we were bidden to the feast, I found my way from Moorgate Street
Station to Ironmonger Lane, and there asked a policeman which was the
Mercers' Company Hall. He looked at me a little curiously and pointed
to some great gates, with a lamp above them, enshrined in a rather
dingy portal. I passed a fountain, of which two cherubs held the jet
and three stone cranes contemplated the water in the basin, and found
myself in a great pillared space. A servant in a brown livery, of whom
I asked my way, pointed to some steps and said something about hurrying
up. At the top of the steps a door led me into a passage, on either
side of which were sitting gentlemen in dress clothes. I looked at them
and they looked at me, and I thought for a second that the Mercers'
guests were rather a queer lot; and then the true inwardness of the
situation burst on me. I had come in by the waiters' door.
I was soon put right, my hat and coat taken from me, and my card of
invitation placed in the hands of a Master of the Ceremonies, who in
due time presented me to the Master, to the Senior Warden, and to the
House Warden, who stood in a line, arrayed in garments of purple velvet
and fur, and received their guests.
The ceremony of introduction over, I was able to look around me and
found myself in a drawing-room that took one away from the roar of
Cheapside to some old Venetian Palace. The painted ceilings, the
many-coloured marbles, the carved wood, the gilding and inlaying make
the Mercers' drawing-room as princely a chamber as I have ever seen.
While the guests assembled my host's sons took me away into another
room, which, with its long table, might have been a council chamber of
some Doge, and here were hung portraits of the most distinguished of
the Mercers. Dick Whittington looked down from a gilt frame, and so
did Sir Thomas Gresham, and there was Roundell Palmer in his judge's
robes. But, preceded by someone in robes carrying a staff of office,
the Master was going into the hall, and the guests streamed after him.
"It only dates from after the Fire," said my host, as I gazed in
admiration at the magnificent proportions of this banqueting-house,
the oak almost black with age, relieved by the colours of the banners
that hang from the walls, by the portraits of worthies, by some noble
painted windows, by the line of escutcheons which run round the room,
bearing the arms of the Past-Masters of the Company, and by the
carved panels, into all but two of which Grinling Gibbons threw his
genius, while the two new ones compare not unfavourably with the old.
At the far end of the hall is a musicians' gallery of carved oak. A
bronze Laocoon wrestles with his snakes at one side of the hall, and
on the other, on a mantel of red marble, a great clock is flanked by
two bronzes. Three long tables run up the room to the high table, at
the centre of which is the Master's chair, and behind this chair is
piled on the sideboard the Company's plate. And some of the plate is
magnificent. There are the old silver salt-cellars, there are great
silver tankards, gold salvers, and the gold cup given to the Mercers by
the Bank of England and the Lee cup and an ornamental tun and waggon,
the first of which is valued at £7000 and the second at £10,000.
"Pray, silence for grace," came in the deep bass tones of the
toast-master from behind the Master's chair, and then all of us settled
down to a contemplation of the menu and to a view of our fellow-guests.
This was the dinner that Messrs Ring and Brymer, who cater for the
Mercers, put upon the table:
Tortue. Tortue claire.
Consommé printanière.
Salade de filets de soles à la russe.
Saumon. Sauce homard.
Blanchaille.
Ortolans en caisse.
Mousse de foie gras aux truffes.
Ponche à la Romaine.
Hanches de venaison.
Selles de mouton.
Canetons.
Poulets de grain.
Langues de bœuf.
Jambons de Cumberland.
Crevettes en serviette.
Macédoines de fruits.
Gelées aux liqueurs.
Meringues à la crème.
Bombe glacé.
Quenelles au parmesan.
WINES.
_Madeira.
Hock. Steinberg_, 1883.
_Sauterne. Château Yquem_, 1887.
_Champagne. Pommery_, 1884.
_Burgundy. Chambertin_, 1881.
_Claret. Château Latour_, 1875.
_Port_. 1863.
I always rather dread the length of a City dinner, but in the case
of the Mercers a happy compromise seems to have been arrived at,
the dinner being important enough to be styled a banquet, and not
so long as to be wearying. Messrs Ring and Brymer's cook is to be
congratulated, too, for his _mousse de foie gras_ was admirable.
There were some distinguished guests at the high table. At the far end,
where the Senior Warden sat, there were little splashes of colour from
the ribbons of orders worn round the neck, and the sparkle of stars
under the lapels of dress-coats.
The Master had on his right a well-known baronet, and on his left a
special correspondent who had just returned from the Far East, where
for a time he was a prisoner of war. Next to him was an ex-M.P. and
next to him again one of the House of Commons--an Irish Q.C., with
clean-shaven, powerful face.
At the long tables sat as proper a set of gentlemen as ever gathered to
a feast; but with no special characteristics to distinguish them from
any other great assemblage. The snow-white hair of a clergyman told out
vividly against the background of old oak, and a miniature volunteer
officer's decoration caught my eye as I looked down the table.
The dinner ended, the toast-master's work began again, and first from
the gold loving-cup and from two copies of it, the stems of which are
said to have been candlesticks used when Queen Elizabeth visited the
Company, we drank to each other "across and across the table." The
taste of the liquor in the cup was not familiar to me, and when my host
told me how it was compounded I was not surprised. It is a mixture of
many wines, with a dash of strong beer.
Grace was sung by a quartet in the musicians' gallery, and then the
company settled down to listen to speeches interspersed with song. By
each guest was placed a little cigar-case, within it two cigars; but
these were not to be smoked yet awhile. While we sipped the '63 Port,
we listened to an M.P. as he responded for "The Houses of Parliament."
Later the Irish Q.C., who spoke for "The Visitors," caught up the ball
of fun, and tossed it to and fro, and charming ladies and mere men
sang songs and quartets, and my host told me, in the intervals, of
the great store of the old Clarets and Ports that the Mercers had in
their cellars, which was enough to make a lover of good wine covet his
neighbour's goods. And still later, after the cigars had filled the
drawing-room with a light grey mist, I went forth, this time down the
grand oaken staircase, with its lions clasping escutcheons. I passed
into Cheapside with a very lively sense of gratitude to the Mercers in
general, and my hospitable host in particular.
XLIX
THE CAVENDISH HOTEL
A GREAT BRITISH WOMAN COOK
Often enough during the past quarter of a century I have heard
some hostess say reassuringly to someone whom she had asked to a
dinner-party to meet someone else of the first importance: "Mrs Lewis
is coming to cook the dinner." That short sentence has meant a great
deal, for Mrs Lewis is the most celebrated woman cook that this or
probably any other age has produced. I do not even except the great Mrs
Glasse. If in England there was a _cordon-bleu_ for women cooks Mrs
Lewis would be a Grand Officer of the Order.
She is the proprietress of the Cavendish Hotel, which occupies three
houses, 81 to 83 Jermyn Street, and it was to Jermyn Street that I
went to make her acquaintance. I waited in the tea-room of the hotel,
a room, round the walls of which hangs a line of photographs of some
of the great ones of the world, and I wondered what kind of a lady it
might be that I was presently going to meet, for though I had tasted
Mrs Rosa Lewis's handiwork often enough I had never set eyes on her in
the flesh.
Somehow my ideas of a successful petticoated ruler of the kitchen have
always been associated with portliness, majesty, black silk, a heavy
gold chain and cameo jewellery. I think that a boyish remembrance
of my mother's cook in her church-going attire must have left this
impression on my mind. But these vague ideas were shattered and sent
spinning into space when into the tea-room came a slim, graceful lady
with a pretty oval face and charming eyes, and hair just touched with
grey. She was wearing a knitted pink silk coat, and one of those long
light chains that mere men believe were intended to support muffs.
She was arm in arm with one of the prettiest of the young comediennes
of to-day, and when she told me that amongst the people she had asked
to lunch was an ex-Great Officer of the Household, a young officer of
cavalry, and an American editor, I began to feel that at last I was
moving in Court circles, and instead of formulating the questions that
I intended to ask about cookery began to babble of great houses and
coroneted personages just as though I was a newsman getting together my
column of society gossip.
[Illustration: MRS. LEWIS]
But Mrs Lewis brought me back to Jermyn Street and my object in going
there by telling me at the lunch-table in the grey dining-room that
all the members of her kitchen brigade are girls, that she was going
presently to take me down to show me them at work, and that Margaret,
who is twenty-six years old, was responsible for the lunch we were
going to eat, even to the _pommes soufflés_, and she further declared
her entire belief that it was more satisfactory to have an accomplished
woman cook than an accomplished chef in a kitchen; for the women are
more resourceful, are less apt to make difficulties, and grumble less
at their work, but that, on the other hand, they are as a rule more
extravagant than the men cooks, for they do not understand the economic
side of kitchen finance.
And very excellent indeed Margaret's handiwork proved to be. Our first
dish was of grilled oysters and celery root on thin silver skewers,
and then came one of those delicious quail puddings which are one
of Mrs Lewis's inventions and for which King Edward had a special
liking. There was a whole quail under the paste cover for everyone at
table, with a wonderful gravy, to the making of which go all sorts
of good things and which when it has soaked into the bottom layer of
paste makes that not the least delicate part of the dish. Had not a
turn of the conversation taken Mrs Lewis off to a description of how
beautiful the twins just born to a member of the aristocracy are, I
should have liked to have heard more concerning King Edward's tastes
in cookery, for no one, except, perhaps, M. Ménager, who was his
Majesty's chef, knew them better than did Mrs Lewis, to whom many an
anxious hostess entertaining Royalty for the first time has looked as
her sheet-anchor. A turn of the conversation brought up the name of the
Duke of Connaught, who, I know, has the same admiration for Mrs Lewis's
handiwork that the late King so often expressed. Another appreciative
monarch for whose appetite Mrs Lewis has catered is the Kaiser, for she
ruled the kitchen at Highcliffe Castle during the Emperor's stay there
of three weeks. A personal gift of jewellery marked H.I.M.'s approval.
Mrs Lewis lays it down that three dishes are the right number at any
lunch, for she, like all other really great authorities on gastronomy,
is opposed to a long menu; but she, as great authorities sometimes do,
broke her own rule in giving us, after the quail pie, a dish of chicken
wings in bread-crumbs and kidneys before the pears and pancakes,
an admirable combination, with which our lunch ended. After lunch
Mrs Lewis took the little gathering that had congregated about the
lunch-table for coffee down in the lift to her kitchen, a splendidly
airy and spacious one, running the full length of the three houses,
and with its windows opening out on a courtyard at the back. It is as
cheerful and light and as well ventilated a kitchen as I have seen
anywhere. The rooms which should be cold for the keeping of provisions
are just at the right temperature, the lines of pots and pans shine
brilliantly, and bustling about were half-a-dozen girls of all ages,
from the light-haired Margaret, head of the kitchen, to a little girl
of fourteen, the youngest recruit, all wearing the white caps that
men cooks wear, which form a very becoming head-dress. And Mrs Lewis,
talking of "my girls," as she calls them, told me that she was a year
younger than the youngest of them when she first, with a pig-tail of
hair down her back, began to learn the art of cookery in the kitchen
of the Comtesse de Paris, and she added that she could show me the
character she received from her first place when, as a beginner, she
was earning the large sum of a shilling a week. Her second place was
with the Duc d'Aumale at Chantilly, and the first kitchen over which
she had complete rule was that of the Duc d'Orléans, when he was at
Sandhurst. She at one time controlled the kitchen of White's Club, and
Mr Astor, both at Hever and in London, puts his kitchens in Mrs Lewis's
charge when he gives his great parties.
No cook with her training completed leaves Mrs Lewis's kitchen for
another place at less than £100 a year, but her girls are never anxious
to go elsewhere, which I can quite understand, for they seemed a very
happy family down in that cheerful, airy kitchen.
And presently in the tea-room I gained Mrs Lewis's undivided attention
for a minute or two and drew from her some opinions as to the changes
in dinners that she had noticed since she first began to rule the
roast. One difference is a matter of finance, that people in Victorian
days were quite content to pay three guineas a head for a dinner, but
that now hostesses bargain that their dinners shall not cost them more
than a guinea a head. Dinners have become much shorter, but people
in society have a greater knowledge of gastronomy than they used to
possess. In past days a small jar of compressed caviare was all that
was needed for a dinner-party; nowadays a large bowl or jar of the
fresh unpressed caviare is required. People were satisfied at one time
with half a stuffed quail, but now a whole roasted quail is the least
that can be set before any one person. Again, in times now past, a
sliced truffle went a long way, whereas now each individual guest likes
to have a whole truffle "as big as your fist" offered her or him.
And, making the most of my opportunity, I asked Mrs Lewis what was
the time-table of her day when she went out to cook one of those
dinners that have made her so famous. It is a very long day's work.
She is at the market at five A.M. to buy her material; at seven her
staff is ready to help her in her own kitchen, and she begins with the
last dishes of the dinner, preparing the sweets and ices; next she
turns to the cleaning and preparation of the vegetables, and then to
the materials for the soup and the making of the cold dishes. By one
o'clock the meats and birds are all prepared for the cooking, and at
six all the things to be cooked at the house where the dinner is to be
given are put in hampers and taken over there.
To step for an evening into command of a kitchen, very often over the
heads of one or two men cooks, is not always an unmixed pleasure, and
Mrs Lewis, who has a very keen sense of humour, told me some of her
experiences in some kitchens which will make very amusing reading if
ever she writes her reminiscences, as she should do. Sometimes she is
asked to build up a tent for some great dinner, which she is ready
to do, and she often furnishes it, and ornaments its walls with china
and pictures. Sometimes when a host or hostess wishes to entertain
many guests to dinner and a ball Mrs Lewis takes a big vacant house
and furnishes it for one night, in all the rooms that are seen, as
completely as though its owners were still occupying it. "I have made
almost as much in the past year out of my gold chairs and my china as
I have out of my pots and pans," she told me. She has a little army of
devoted waiters who have been at her call for twenty years and who are
always ready to serve under her banner.
A menu of one of Mrs Lewis's ball suppers, at Surrey House, may well
find a place here. She, I believe, first made the great discovery that
young men who have danced an evening through prefer eggs and bacon and
Lager beer in the small hours of the morning to _pâté de foie gras_ and
champagne:
_Chaud_.
Consommé de Volaille.
Cailles Schnitten.
Poussin à la Richelieu.
Poulet grillé, Pommes soufflées.
_Froid._
Petites Crabes. Homard. Truite au Bleu.
Poularde en Gelée.
Dindonneaux Hezedia.
Canard pressé en Parfait.
Bœuf et Agneau à la Mode.
Mousse de Jambon en Belle-Veu.
Asperges.
Fraises du Bois Monte Carlo.
Mélange de Fruits.
Pâtisserie.
Café Noir (à deux heures).
Grenouilles à la Lyonnaise.
Œufs pochés au Lard.
Rognons grillés.
Pilsener Lager Beer.
She has cooked dinners for the regiments of the Household Cavalry
when they entertained a sovereign; when a good fellow, now dead, kept
open-house for all his friends in the club-room during Warwick Races,
Mrs Lewis undertook the difficult task of providing the best of lunches
for an unknown number, and she has contracted for many of the feasts of
the great Government Departments.
Mrs Lewis has the artist's appreciation of a critical judgment of her
handiwork, but to cook a dinner for people who cannot understand its
excellences is, in her opinion, like "feeding pigs on mushrooms." There
is not one iota of jealousy in Mrs Lewis, for when I told her that
in my opinion she held, as a woman ruler of the kitchen, a parallel
position to that which M. Escoffier holds as a man, she told me how
much she admires the great French Maître-Chef, not only as a great
cook, but as a great gentleman.
Before I left the Cavendish Hotel Mrs Lewis showed me some of the
rooms, and when I was loud in praise of the perfect taste and the happy
combination she has achieved of keeping all the charm of the fine
old chambers and yet adding to them all the modern conveniences, she
laughed, told me that she had been her own architect, added that it was
not an expensive education that had enabled her to do all this, and
likened herself in her apprentice years to the little girl of fourteen
whom we had seen down in the kitchen.
L
THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES
Of clubs formed for the noble purpose of eating good dinners--clubs
that have no club-houses--there are very many. Sometimes there is a
literary tinge as an excuse for the dinners, sometimes a Bohemian,
sometimes a Masonic. But there are two dining clubs that deserve
especial recognition in a Gourmet's Guide, for they are clubs of
professional gourmets whose business concerns the organisation of good
feeding. One of these clubs, which held its annual dinner this year
in the new banqueting-room of the Piccadilly Hotel, is the Réunion
des Gastronomes. This association consists of proprietors, managing
directors and managers of hotels, restaurants and clubs. It holds
meetings to discuss and take action in all matters which concern the
prosperity and welfare of the gastronomic art, and once a year its
members and their guests banquet at one of the hotels or restaurants
which are represented by members of the Réunion. I have been fortunate
enough to be a guest of late years at many of these banquets, and look
back with pleasure to the feasts held at the Hyde Park Hotel, at the
Café Royal, at Prince's Restaurant, and other temples of gastronomy.
Two lifts take banqueters down from the entrance hall of the Piccadilly
Hotel to the ante-chamber of the new banqueting-room somewhere down
in the bowels of the earth. The new rooms are below the grill-room,
and the Piccadilly must have almost as much depth below the street
level as it has height above it. The ante-room is classic in its
ornamentation, is white, or a very light grey, in colour, and its
decoration is elaborate. Here, between eight o'clock and half-past
eight, some three hundred Gastronomes and their guests assembled, and I
received a warm welcome from Mr Louis Mantell, of the National Liberal
Club, the hon. secretary of the society, and from Mr J. L. Kerpen, of
the Hyde Park Hotel, the president of the society, who was wearing
his jewel of office, hung by a gold chain round his neck. Colonel Sir
William Carington, the hon. president of the society, was to have
taken the chair at the dinner, but a bereavement prevented him from
being present, and the president of the year presided in his place. I
found pleasant familiar faces all about me. There were, amongst many
others, Mr Judah of the Café Royal, M. Soi of the Savoy, M. Kramer of
the Carlton, M. Jules from Jermyn Street, M. Gustave from the Lotus
Club, Mr George Harvey from the Connaught Rooms, M. Luigi of Romano's,
Mr Edwardes, M. Pruger from the Automobile Club, M. Boriani from the
Pall Mall, Messrs Harry and Dick Preston up from Brighton, and scores
of other pleasant acquaintances. At the half-hour punctually, a young
toast-master with a most majestic voice announced that dinner was
served, and the three hundred of us made our way next door into the new
great banqueting-room that was receiving its gastronomic baptism.
It is a fine spacious room, though its construction is rather curious,
for, no doubt owing to exigency of space, the roof of a portion of
it is comparatively low, though the major part is quite lofty. It
must, however, have admirable ventilation, for at no period during
the evening did the room become uncomfortably warm or the atmosphere
uncomfortably smoky. The colouring of the walls is of stone with a
slight tinge of chrome. Round a portion of the hall runs a gallery with
a handsome railing of black and gold, and a double staircase at the end
of the room leads up to this gallery. The ceiling is ornamented with
fine paintings of gods and goddesses in the clouds; there are large
mirrors on one side of the room and, in spite of the different heights
of portions of the ceiling, the acoustic properties of the great
hall are excellent. An admirable band, the leader of which I think I
remember as a solo violinist on the stage, played us in to dinner and
made music during dinner, there being loud calls for M. Boriani, the
Caruso of the gastronomic world, when a selection from _La Bohème_ was
played.
A long table ran the whole length of the room, and smaller ones
branched off from it like the prongs of a rake. The tables were
decorated with flowers of all shades of crimson and flame colour,
and the effect was quite beautiful. This was the menu of the dinner,
and the manager of the Piccadilly and the chef were both warmly
congratulated on a most admirable feast. Following the menu are the
wines which accompanied it:
Caviar Frais d'Astrakan.
Blinis.
Tortue Claire.
Délices de Sole au Coulis d'Ecrevisses.
Selle de Chevreuil Grand Veneur.
Purée de Marrons.
Suprême de Volaille Princesse.
Neige au Champagne.
Reine des Prés en Cocotte.
Salade Trianon.
Rocher de Foie Gras à la Gelée au Porto.
Vasque de Pêches aux Perles de Lorraine.
Corbeille d'Excellence.
Croûte Piccadilly.
Fruits.
Moka.
* * * * *
Zeltinger Auslese, 1906.
Niersteiner Rollaender, 1911.
Volnay, 1903.
Ernest Irroy and Co., 1906.
Giessler and Co., 1906.
Bouget Fils, 1906.
Château Pontet Clanet, 1895.
La Grande Marque
(60 years old)
Specially selected for the Gastronomes' Dinner.
Liqueurs.
The crawfish sauce with the filleted sole was of a most delicate taste;
the venison admirable; the _volaille princesse_ a most dainty dish of
fowl, and the quail, the "Queen of the Fields," admirably plump little
fellows. The _foie gras_, served in the shape of a circular fort, I did
not taste, for I had already dined very well. The _vasque de pêches_
was one of those combinations of fruit and _confitures_ and ice that
are now so popular.
With the coffee came the Royal toasts, and then the cigars, and as
the smoke curled up and the liqueurs were brought round the musical
programme which had been arranged commenced. A gentleman in Highland
costume assured us that the joys of lying in bed were greater than the
joys of getting up in the morning, and a young lady with a fascinating
dimple sang "You Made Me Love You," to the three hundred of us.
"The Guests" was the next toast, to which Dr O'Neill responded,
thanking the professors of gastronomy for the patients who so often
came by means of _gourmandise_ into the hands of his profession. Then
after "Snooky Ookums," by another fascinating lady, who wore a large
red feather in her hair, there was a little ceremony which delighted
the Gastronomes and their guests very much. It was a presentation of a
handsome silver-gilt cup on behalf of the Réunion des Gastronomes to
their hon. secretary, Mr Louis Mantell, to whose cheery management of
the feasts so much of their success is due. The whole company united in
singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," so as to give Mr Mantell time
to collect his thoughts before acknowledging his Christmas box in the
shape of a cup.
Some good stories from Mr Cooper Mitchell, a little more oratory,
though speeches at the Gastronomes' banquet are always kept within the
shortest space, and with more songs, a very merry evening ended. If
future banquets in the Piccadilly banqueting-hall are all nearly as
successful as the first one held there it will become a hall of good
will and good fellowship as well as a hall of good cheer.
LI
THE LIGUE DES GOURMANDS
Saint Fortunat has deposed Saint Laurent from his position as Patron
Saint of Cooks. Saint Laurent was an impostor in the matter of
_gourmandise_ for he owed the proud position he occupied for so many
centuries as the Patron of the Chefs to the exceedingly uncomfortable
position in which he met his martyrdom. He was broiled on a gridiron.
Saint Fortunat not only thoroughly enjoyed good things to eat and
drink, but wrote excellent Latin verses in praise of gastronomy, some
of which M. Th. Gringoire, the secretary of the Ligue des Gourmands and
the editor of the _Carnet d'Epicure_, a clever Parisian journalist who
has settled in London, has translated into flowing French verses. Saint
Fortunat was the father-confessor to the Queen-Saint Radegonde and to
Saint Agnes, and these two ladies, the first of the _cordons-bleus_,
prepared _ragoûts_ and _friandises_ for the holy man, who thanked them
in poetry. He died in the odour of sanctity as Bishop of Poitiers.
The Ligue des Gourmands, which is the association of the great French
chefs in London, and whose president is Maître Escoffier, the eminent
chef of the Carlton, celebrates the feast day of the Saint, in
December, by a banquet in his honour. The dinner in 1913 was the second
of the St Fortunat banquets and the fourteenth feast held by the Ligue.
The Ligue has branches pretty well all over the world wherever there
are French cooks. If London, under the presidency of M. Escoffier,
takes the lead with sixty members, Paris comes a good second with
forty-three members, and Marseilles, New York and Montreal tie for
third place, with twelve members each. Brussels has a group of six
members, and there is a forlorn hope of five devoted French chefs in
the heart of the enemy at Berlin. Delhi and Dakar, Constantinople and
Ajaccio, Bombay and Gumpoldskirschen, Lowestoft and Lahore, Shanghai
and Syracuse, Yokohama and Zurich, and a hundred other towns are
advance posts of the Ligue, and wherever there is a group of the
leaguers they and their guests eat the St Fortunat dinner, the menu of
which is composed by M. Escoffier, and the _recettes_ of the especial
dishes in which are sent in advance to the members before the Saint's
day. In 1913 the most important dinner of the Ligue next to that held
at Gatti's was the one at Paris, where the leaguers dined together at
Paillard's and sent congratulations to their brethren in London.
M. Jean Richepin, the great French poet, is bracketed with M. Escoffier
in the presidency of the Ligue, and many of the dishes that M.
Escoffier has invented for the feasts of the Gourmands are named after
celebrities in art and letters. The _fraises Sarah Bernhardt_, which
was the surprise dish of the first dinner of the Ligue, has become a
household word in all the restaurants of all the nations. M. Escoffier
is no believer in keeping his inventions as _secrets de la maison_,
and his _recettes_ for the dinners of the Ligue are always published
both in French and English, in the _Carnet d'Epicure_, which is the
mouthpiece of the Ligue.
In this open-handedness and open-mindedness, M. Escoffier is very
wise. I always assure ladies who ask me to obtain for them recipes of
various dishes, and remind great chefs when I beg _recettes_ from
them, that it is not so much the ingredients of a dish as the hand of
the cook that makes a masterpiece. No painstaking amateur, following
exactly the directions given by a master of the art, ever reproduces a
_chef-d'œuvre_, any more than an amateur painter, copying the work of
some great master of the brush is able to obtain that master's effects.
The dish that M. Escoffier had invented for the Dîner St Fortunat in
1913 was the _cochon de lait St Fortunat_, with _pommes Aigrelettes_
and _sauce groseille au Raifort_.
We, the hosts and the guests, began to assemble at eight o'clock in the
ante-room half-way up the great staircase on the King William Street
side of the Adelaide Gallery. The great cooks are not so selfish as
many other banqueters are, for they welcome ladies to their feasts,
and very pretty indeed are most of the chefs' wives and daughters,
and cousins and aunts, who grace these feasts. No one, unless he knew
who the members of the Ligue are, would tell by seeing them as they
gathered for their banquet what their profession is. M. Escoffier,
the president, with thoughtful eyes and gentle expression, looks, as
I have, I know, before said, like an ambassador or some great painter
or sculptor. M. Cedard, the King's chef, who is usually at these
feasts, but who was absent from this one, looks like an attaché of an
embassy; M. Malley, of the Ritz, has the appearance and the aplomb of
an officer of Chasseurs à cheval, and so on through the whole list.
Some of them, of course, are the plump and rosy gentlemen that artists
love to draw presiding over pots and pans, but great cooks are not all
run into one mould, either in figure or in intellect. And the guests of
the Liguers vary in type, as the Liguers themselves do. I shook hands
on Saturday night with distinguished soldiers and their wives, with
_bon-vivants_, with proprietors of restaurants, with representatives of
the great champagne firms of Rheims, with journalists and authors who
are epicures, with doctors who do not practise themselves in the matter
of diet all that they preach to their patients.
The banqueting-room at the Adelaide Gallery holds comfortably one
hundred and fifty diners, and we must have been quite that number, for
more gourmets wished to make trial of the sucking-pig of the Saint than
it was possible to find room for, and though as many tables as possible
had been put into the space M. Gringoire had to refuse tickets to
would-be diners who had postponed the request until the eleventh hour.
Soon after half-past eight, which is the dinner-hour of the Ligue--for
the great chefs like to see the dinners from their kitchens well under
way before they change from their professional white clothing into
dress clothes--we streamed up the stairs from the ante-room into the
banqueting hall--a fine room, with a musicians' gallery occupied for
the occasion by an Hungarian orchestra in hussar uniform, and with,
for this especial occasion, the French and the English flags draped
together at each end of the room. A long table ran the full length of
the room, and from it jutted out smaller tables, each presided over by
an officer of the Ligue.
When we were seated I could see some faces of well-known chefs whom I
had missed in the press downstairs. There were there, besides the names
I have already mentioned, M. Aubin, of the Russell Hotel; M. Espezel,
of the Union Club; M. Briais, of the Midland Hotel; M. Grunenfelder,
of the Grand Hotel; M. Vicario, of the Carlton; M. Müller, of the Hyde
Park Hotel; M. Görog, who was one of the four founders of the Ligue; M.
Génie, of Prince's Restaurant; M. Ferrario, of Romano's; M. Vinet, who
was for many years chef at "The Rag"; Mr Coumeig, chef to the Duchess
of Marlborough; and M. Saulnier, _sous-chef_ of the Piccadilly, a
rising star. If all these names are not French names, those amongst the
chefs of the Ligue who were not born in France have, by adopting the
cult of the Haute Cuisine Française, become naturalised Frenchmen in
gastronomy.
There are various little ceremonies observed at the dinners of the
Gourmands, one of them being that at the commencement of dinner a
member of the Ligue rises and reminds his fellow-members that only
French wine should be drunk at these banquets. Another little ceremony
is that each dish in turn is announced by the toast-master--of course,
for this occasion a Frenchman--who rolls his "r's" with fine resonance
as in a thunderous voice he tells us what we are going to eat.
This was the menu with Escoffier's signature appended to it:
Crêpes au Caviar frais.
Huîtres pimentées.
Croûte au Pot à l'Ancienne.
Turban de Filets de Sole au gratin.
Chapon fin à la Toulousaine.
Cochon de Lait Saint-Fortunat.
Pommes Aigrelettes.
Sauce Groseille au Raifort.
Bécassines Rosées.
Salade Lorette.
Pâté de foie gras.
Biscuit glacé Caprice.
Mignardises.
The caviar and the little pancakes are always delightful, and the
_croûte au pot à l'Ancienne_, in its delicate plainness, always makes
an excellent beginning to a dinner. The _gratin_ with the sole made
it a rather drier dish than fish dishes usually are, and I know that
this was the criticism passed on it by the president of the Ligue, but
it was very excellent to the taste. The _chapon_, with its rich sauce,
was admirably cooked, and served in dishes with at either end heads of
fowls admirably reproduced by the sculptors in the kitchen, and then
to a triumphal march from the band a little sucking-pig, its crackling
golden from the fire, was brought in processionally and shown to the
chairman of the feast and the guests in general before it was carried
out to be carved. And very admirable the flesh of this piglet and his
companions was when brought to table, with round each dish apples in
their skins, the top of each apple being cut off to serve as a little
lid. A sharp-tasting sauce, in which the flavours of red currant and
horse radish mingled, formed an agreeable bitter-sweet. What the
various ingredients were that formed the admirable stuffing of the
little pigs I do not exactly know, but there were barley and chestnuts
amongst them, but, like all good stuffing, one flavour after another
chased each other over the palate. M. Escoffier's own criticism on his
own creation was that a sucking-pig is more suited for a _petit comité_
than for a large gathering; but, though I quite agreed with him that
the right party in numbers to eat a sucking-pig is just that number
that one sucking-pig will satisfy, I think it very hard luck if greater
numbers were to be prevented by this very fine distinction between a
dish for a dinner-table and a dish for a banqueting-table from eating
a very great delicacy. The snipe and salad, the _pâté de foie gras_,
served on a great bed of crust, and an admirable ice, finished the
banquet. Then came the after-dinner ceremonies and songs, which at
these feasts are varied and lively. The toast of "The King" and "The
President," with the two National Anthems, was followed by a little
discourse in honour of the Patron Saint by the chairman, who coupled
the name of the saintly patron of gastronomy with those of his two
_continuateurs_, the great poet and the great chef, and to this speech
M. Escoffier replied with great modesty. The toast of "The Ladies" next
brought all the male guests to their feet, and then followed the hymn
to St Fortunat, sung by a gentleman from the musicians' gallery, with
orchestral accompaniment, the guests taking up the refrain:
"Saint Fortunat, honneur à toi,
O notre chef! O notre roi!
Saint Fortunat!"
If the leaguers were a little slow in picking up the air and paid very
little attention to the time, the heartiness with which they chorused
the Saint's name made amends for any other shortcomings. "The Ligue,"
"The Visitors," "The Press"--for whom Mr John Lane, of _The Standard_,
returned thanks--and "The Cuisine and Wines of France" were toasted
by various orators, some of whom spoke in English, some in French.
And then M. T. Fourie, the chef of the Adelaide Gallery, bearded, and
blushing in his white uniform of the kitchen, was called up to the high
table that the president of the Ligue and the chairman of the dinner
might shake him by the hand and congratulate him on the admirable feast
which he had prepared. This is a very pretty little ceremony always
observed at these feasts, and a very right one, for at most banquets
the chef who has been the cause of so much pleasure to the guests
is not asked to come in person to receive the thanks which are so
legitimately due to him.
After this ceremony the concert, an Anglo-French one, commenced.
Mademoiselle Suzanne Ollier, Miss Marianne Green and Miss Winifred
Green, of the Gaiety, Mademoiselle Bianca Briana, and Miss Mabel
Martin all sang charmingly, and were presented with bouquets on behalf
of the Ligue, and M. Siffre, the president of the Club Gaulois, sang
"Margot" quite excellently, without an accompaniment. He was presented
with a cabbage stuck on a fork, for the leaguers dearly love their
little jokes at their banquets. At last the band played the _Père la
Victoire_ march and the National Anthem, and the dinner came to an end.
In gratitude to M. Escoffier, the president, to M. Th. Gringoire, the
secretary, and to all the members of the Ligue for being permitted
in their company to taste for the first time the sucking-pig of St
Fortunat--a dish that will go the round of the globe--let me quote a
few words appropriate to the occasion from Charles Lamb's prose Hymn of
Praise in honour of roast pig:
"Pig--let me speak his praise--is no less provocative of the appetite
than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate.
The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his
mild juices."
LII
THE CAVOUR RESTAURANT
FOR AULD LANG SYNE
I head this chapter "For Auld Lang Syne," for the future of the Cavour
Restaurant has been, since the death of Philippe, who brought the
restaurant into celebrity, uncertain. The Cavour has been put up of
late years once to public auction and bought in, and there have been
rumours without number that this, that and the other actor-manager was
going to purchase the building.
In spite of all these rumours, the Cavour still continues in the hands
of Mrs Dale, who was manageress under Philippe in old days, and to whom
he left the property, just as it used to be in Philippe's time, which
is to say that it is one of the best bourgeois French restaurants to be
found in London.
Every Londoner knows the white-faced restaurant almost next door to the
Alhambra in Leicester Square. It is one of the few restaurants that
still retains a bar, though it is nowadays called a buffet, and the
three-and-six dinner which is served in the restaurant is still as it
used to be, a most excellent meal, unstinted, well cooked, and all its
material of excellent quality.
The bar of the buffet has always been a favourite resort of actors, and
it was there that I first heard Arthur Roberts tell the story of "The
Old Iron Pot," a tale the success of which led to the invention of the
game of "Spoof," that masterly feat of bamboozling the guileless which
gave amusement in the eighties to all Bohemia and added a new word to
the English language. The Old Iron Pot figured largely in a tale which
Arthur Roberts never wearied of telling to "Long Jack" Jarvis, another
actor. No one ever heard the beginning of the tale, for it was always
well in progress when the victim of the harmless pleasantry came on
the scene. Arthur was so intent on the story, the other conspirator
so immensely interested, that the new-comer was at once interested
also, dispensed with all greetings, and tried vainly to understand
all the ramifications of the story into which new characters seemed
constantly to come, and which all revolved round an old iron pot.
Jack Jarvis apparently thoroughly understood the story, occasionally
asked questions, and now and then corrected Arthur Roberts as to the
relationship of the various characters, and the other listener very
soon found himself pretending that he too comprehended all the twists
and turns.
Somehow or another, in those days the spirit of harmless practical
joking seemed to be in the atmosphere of the Cavour bar. Perhaps it
was, because in the days when Leicester Square was a waste ground with
the damaged equestrian statue of George the Third in its midst some
practical jokers sallied out one night from the little restaurant which
occupied the site of the bar, to play the best practical joke of the
last century. They painted the statue's horse with red spots, put a
fool's cap on the statue's head, and a long birch broom in the hand
which should have held a field-marshal's baton.
Philippe was the one and only waiter in those days at the little
restaurant which was kept by a Frenchman and his wife. Next door, and
extending behind the restaurant, was a tin shanty, where judge and
jury entertainment was held and _poses plastiques_ were exhibited. It
was a disreputable place, for Brookes, who was its proprietor, and who
had been associated with "Baron" Nicholson at the Coal Hole, had not
the Baron's wit, though he had the same flow of doubtful oratory.
When the old couple died, and Philippe succeeded to the business, he
soon bought up the tin shanty and the ground belonging to it, built
the Cavour as it now is, the bar occupying the site of the original
restaurant, and made a little garden on the space now occupied by a
cinema show.
Of this little garden Philippe was very proud. He liked to be able to
go out of his restaurant and pick a bunch of mignonette to give to any
lady, and he grew some vegetables and oranges there as well as flowers.
He had an eye also to the main chance, for when anyone pointed out to
him that he was wasting a valuable site by making a garden of it, he
nodded his head, and replied: "The earth he grow more valuable every
day."
Philippe, short, grey-haired, with a little close-clipped moustache,
always wearing a turned-down collar and a black tie, had a very
distinct personality of his own. He was a first-class man of business,
was up every morning at five o'clock to go the rounds of the market,
riding in one four-wheeled cab, with another one following behind, into
which he put his purchases and brought them home with him. He had no
love for teetotalers, and he budgeted for the very liberal dinner of
the house on the understanding that his customers should drink wine
therewith. When he found that some of the guests were drinking only
water, he used at once to send a waiter to them or to talk to them
himself, and to tell them that he would charge them sixpence extra.
After a time he found it entailed less loss of temper to notify this on
the bill of fare, and the Cavour menu still bears the legend: "No beers
served with this dinner. Dinner without wine, sixpence extra."
The restaurant of the Cavour is a large white room, with a smaller
room, also white, running back from it. Access to the big room is
obtained from Leicester Square by a narrow corridor decorated with
allegorical figures of the various months of the year--awful daubs,
whoever it was who painted them. The big room is lighted from above
by a sky-light, and there are large globes of electric light in the
ceiling. There are many large mirrors let into the walls, and down
each side of the room run brass rails for hats and coats. There is
oilcloth on the floor, with strips of carpet over it in the gangways.
The waiters go to a bar near the entrance door for the wine and other
drinkables, which are served out there by Mrs Dale, or by her deputy.
Some of the waiters, mostly French, were in the restaurant for many
years under Philippe, but there is a new manager now with a curled-up
black moustache.
If any of the habitués wish to entertain guests to an elaborate
dinner at the Cavour, the custom is to pay five shillings instead of
three-and-six, and certain extra dishes are put into the dinner of the
day for this price. The ordinary dinner, however, is so good that these
additions are hardly needed. This is the menu of a three-and-six dinner
I ate at the Cavour this winter. It is served from five to nine, so as
to meet the convenience of all the patrons of the restaurant, from the
actor who makes a hurried meal before going to the theatre, to the City
man who comes in very late after a day of hard work and goes home after
his dinner:
Hors d'œuvre variés.
_Soup._
Consommé de Volaille à la Royal.
Crème à l'Indienne.
_Fish._
Boiled Turbot au Sauterne.
Fried Fillet of Plaice.
Grilled Herring.
_Entrée._
Filet Mignon aux Haricots panachés.
Calf's Head à la Reine.
_Roast._
Chicken.
Quails on Toast
Salad. Cheese. Dessert.
There was a fine selection of _hors d'œuvre_ to choose from, and
plenty of each, not the one sardine looking lonely in a little dish,
the two radishes and the potato salad that so often are the sole
representatives of the first course at cheap dining-places. I was given
a big plateful of good thick mulligatawny soup, and when I had eaten
the very liberal helping of boiled turbot, excellently firm, I felt
that I had finished quite a good dinner. However, I summoned up enough
appetite to dispose of the little _vol au vent_ put before me, the
pastry of which was noticeably excellent, and then attacked a quail,
which was quite a good bird, even if it had not those layers of fat
which distinguish a "special" quail on a club dinner list from the
ordinary one. A scoop from an excellent Stilton cheese ended my repast.
It may be selfish to hope that Mrs Dale may not sell her property to
be converted into a theatre, but the Cavour dinner is such a good meal
of its kind that I should be sorry if it disappeared from the map of
London That Dines.
LIII
VERREY'S
If I compare Verrey's in Regent Street to Borchardt's in the
Französischerstrasse of Berlin, I am paying Verrey's a high compliment,
for Borchardt's is the classic restaurant of the German capital, run on
good French lines by a German proprietor.
Mr George Krehl the First, founder of Verrey's as a restaurant, was
born near Stuttgart, and came over from Germany in 1850; and the recent
manager of the restaurant, Mr Stadelmaier, is also German born, for
he, like Mr Krehl, came from near Stuttgart, and he, before he went to
Egypt, to Paris, to Düsseldorf and elsewhere, to become a cosmopolitan,
served his apprenticeship in gastronomy under old Mr George Krehl at
Verrey's.
But French--French of the second empire--Verrey's is, particularly
at dinner-time. At lunch-time the restaurant is always quite full of
ladies who shop in Regent Street, and of their escorts, and the rooms
on the first floor are also given over to lunchers--and even then,
sometimes, would-be customers have to wait a little while to obtain
tables. Therefore the luncheon menu is adapted to the wants of ladies
who are probably in a hurry, for though there is a very full list at
lunch-time of delicacies that can be ordered, there are also several
entrées and several joints always ready.
It is, however, at dinner-time that Verrey's enjoys the peaceful,
unhurrying atmosphere that always should surround a classic restaurant,
and which is so thoroughly in keeping with the old bow-windows with
small panes of the café, which look out on to Regent Street. A little
corridor leads from the street to a tiny waiting-room--a comparatively
recent addition, for it used to be the old still-room, a room which
is so small that the round table of ormolu with a china plaque in its
centre, on which is a portrait of Louis XV., and smaller oval plaques
all about it, almost fills all the available space.
The restaurant, lighted from above, used in old Mr Krehl's days
to be known as the Cameo Room, for on the centre of each of its
panels was a medallion in the style of Wedgwood. I rather wish that
this old decoration had been retained, but I remember the pride
with which Mr George Krehl the Second showed me the new Oriental
decorations--decorations which still remain--the silvered roof with
mirrors reflecting it, the electric lights on the cornice with great
shells to act as reflectors, an electric clock shaped like a star,
and the panels of old gold Oriental silk. Time has mellowed the
gorgeousness of this Eastern setting, which in its first bloom I
thought a little too _voyant_, and the dark carpet and the dark wood
and upholstery of the chairs, all keep the scheme of colouring a
restful one. The napery at Verrey's is the good thick napery of the
classic restaurant. Its glass is thin; its silver is heavy--all trifles
which are important as adding to the delight of a good dinner. The
lights at the tables are wax candles, with pink shades, in old silver
candlesticks, and there is a Japanese simplicity in the two great
bunches of flowers in glass vases, one of which is on a dark wooden
stand in the centre of the room, and the other on the sideboard. There
are flowers also, in glasses, on all the tables.
It adds to the pleasure of dining at Verrey's to be known and to be
recognised by the old servants who have been in the restaurant as long
as I can remember it. There is an old head waiter, a fine specimen of
a Briton--portly, with little side whiskers, dignified and unhurrying,
who might have stood as a model for that Robert whose wit and wisdom
used to enliven the pages of _Punch_, who always remembers my name and
all my gastronomic history. And the head waiter in the café, who now
has a full head of grey hair, I remember when he first came to Verrey's
a youth with the blackest of black hair. Mr Stadelmaier, though he
looks on the right side of forty, remembers how young Mr George Krehl,
in the days of his father's rule, one day took me out into the yard
at the back of the house to show me his dogs and the kitchen which
looks out on to this open space, and the last time I dined at Verrey's
brought me in from the yard, to look at a delightful little Samoyede
puppy, looking like one of the woolly toy dogs in the shops, for he
too, like Mr George Krehl the younger, is a breeder of prize dogs, and
has established a club for the owners of sleigh dogs.
Mr Stadelmaier has now left Verrey's and is manager of Kettner's.
The patrons of Verrey's at dinner-time are some of them grey-headed,
for I am sure that all its old patrons always return to their first
love; but there are young couples as well, and the restaurant, though
it is quiet, is by no means dull. It has this distinction, rare amongst
modern restaurants, that it has never surrendered to the modern craze
for music during meals, and it is possible to talk to a neighbour at
the dinner-table without raising one's voice to a shout. I fancy that
Mr Albert Krehl, the survivor of the two sons of old Mr George Krehl,
would as soon think of introducing gipsy music into the restaurant as
they would of engaging Tango dancers to do "the Scissors" in and out of
the tables.
Verrey's has so far acknowledged the tendencies of to-day towards a
_table d'hôte_ dinner that it offers its patrons, if they wish it, a
dinner at seven-and-six. But it is true to its old traditions in that
although it offers this dinner, no dish of the dinner is cooked until
the order has been given, and it is practically a dinner _à la carte_
selected for the diner at a settled price. This is the menu of one of
these dinners:
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Consommé Duchesse.
Crème de Volaille.
Suprême de Sole Regina.
Filet de Bœuf Jussieuse.
Pommes Château.
Faisan rôti.
Salade d'Endive.
Celeri braisé au jus.
Parfait de Vanille.
Friandises.
Croûte Baron.
But to eat a dinner ordered by somebody else, because I am too lazy to
order it myself, is to me just as unsporting as it is to land a fish
that somebody else has hooked, so that when I dine at Verrey's I pay M.
Schellenberg, the _chef de cuisine_, who is an Alsatian, the compliment
of giving careful consideration as to which of his _plats_ I shall
order, and I generally like to include in my dinner some of Verrey's
specialities, of which there are quite a number. The last time I dined
there I was given an excellent _bortsch_ soup, one-and-three--it is the
custom at Verrey's to charge for a half-portion, which is ample for one
person, a little more than half what is charged for a whole portion,
which suffices for two; _sole à la Verrey_, a filleted sole with an
admirable sauce, which is one of the secrets of the house, but in which
the taste of ketchup is discernible, two shillings; and a _soufflé
Palmyre_, two shillings. This with a pint of good claret was a dinner
not to be despised.
I asked Mr Stadelmaier whether the Queen's Hall and the Palladium,
two neighbouring places of music and entertainment, had brought the
restaurant many customers. The concerts at the Queen's Hall, he told
me, had done so, and he said that people going to the Palladium, when
it gave a one-house variety entertainment, used often to dine at
Verrey's, but that its present "two houses a night" policy did not send
diners to the restaurant.
There is an abundance of history behind Verrey's, and if a careful
record had been kept of the great dinners given in the rooms on the
first floor, such a record as the Café Anglais in Paris kept, it would
make very interesting reading. One of the merriest dinners probably
ever given in those upper rooms was the one at the time of the late
Victorian revival of road coaching, at which most of the guests were
well-known whips. Every man at this dinner was presented with a pink
waistcoat, and as after dinner most of the men went on either to
music halls or theatres, the appearance in the boxes of the young
bloods wearing pink waistcoats astonished the audiences, who thought
that a new fashion was being set. A quieter dinner, but an even more
distinguished one, was that at which King Edward, when he was Prince of
Wales, was present. This was its menu:
Œufs à la Ravigote.
(Vodkhi.)
Bisque d'écrevisses. Consommé Okra.
Rougets à la Muscovite.
Selle de mouton de Galles.
Haricots panachés. Tomates au gratin.
Pommes soufflées.
Timbale Lucullus.
Fonds d'artichauts. Crème pistache.
Grouse.
Salad Rachel.
Biscuit glacé à la Verrey.
Soufflé de laitances.
Dessert.
Many distinguished men have dined in the Cameo Room--Tennyson, the
Poet Laureate, was a great crony of Mr George Krehl the elder, and
he kept all kinds of mementoes of the poet. Mr Gladstone was another
frequenter of the Cameo Room, and he liked to talk to Mr Krehl of the
revolutionary days of '48 in Germany.
The tragedy which is associated with the name of the house was the fate
of the beautiful Miss Fanny Verrey. Verrey, from whom the restaurant
takes its name, was a Swiss confectioner, who came over from Lausanne
in the second decade of the last century and established his shop
in Regent Street. To add to the attractions of his establishment he
brought over from Lausanne his pretty young daughter, who was engaged
to a Swiss pastor. She was young and lively and beautiful; she chatted
with her father's customers, and learnt English by talking with them;
the bucks of those days made her a toast; and Lord Petersham wrote some
verses in honour of "The Pretty Confectioner," in which he dubbed her
"Wild Switzerland's Queen," and ended one of the verses with these
lines:
"Thy mind--brightest gem--is the Temple of Love;
But bright as thou'rt fair--thou'rt pure as a dove";
which shows that his lordship, though his sentiments were praiseworthy,
was not a great poet. The fame of Miss Verrey's beauty drew crowds
not only into the shop, but outside it, and spiteful and jealous
rivals spread rumours concerning Miss Verrey's lightness of behaviour,
which were entirely untrue. The crowds outside the shop became such
a nuisance that the authorities interfered in the matter. Mr Verrey
removed his daughter from the shop, and she kept to her room to avoid
public notice. The turmoil, the unmerited scandal, and the lampoons
in the papers so affected the girl's health that she pined away and
died. But even then her memory was not respected, and as a good example
of the want of taste of the time--the year was 1828--this riddle was
published in one of the papers: "Why was Miss Verrey's death like a
window front?" _Answer:_ "Because it is a paneful case."
At one period Verrey's was known as the Café François; but I can find
no particulars concerning it under this title. I also think that Verrey
must at some time or another have occupied another shop in Regent
Street, for some of his advertisements, notably one of Howqua's teas,
"as patronised by their Majesties," were issued from 218 Regent Street,
whereas Verrey's to-day occupies 229 Regent Street.
LIV
THE CATHAY RESTAURANT
[Illustration]
In full view of all who pass to and fro through Piccadilly Circus,
there shines on one of the tall houses which encircle it the
announcement that the upper part of the building is occupied by the
Cathay Restaurant, which modestly on its menu describes itself as a
"pioneer, first-class, Chinese restaurant."
As I take into my descriptive net every manner of eating-house, so
long as the food and drink to be obtained there is good of its kind, I
experimented in the first days of this year of grace, at lunch-time,
on the Cathay Restaurant, and found that it has selected in its very
long _carte du jour_ those Chinese dishes which are palatable to the
European, as well as to the Chinese taste.
Chinese food is no novelty to me, for during the five years that I was
quartered in the Far East--at Penang, Singapore and Hong-Kong--I was
frequently one of the guests at feasts given by Chinese merchants, and
learned by experience which were the dishes that one could safely eat
and which were the Chinese delicacies that it was wise to drop under
the table. A Chinaman, when he wishes to be very polite at table, takes
up with his chop-sticks some especially dainty morsel from his own
plate and pops it into the mouth of his European neighbour at table. A
kindly young Chinaman once thus put into my mouth a slip of cold pig's
liver wrapped round a prune, and I do not think that I ever tasted any
nastier combination.
Two Chinese banquets at which I was a guest remain very clearly marked
in my memory. One was given by a rich Chinaman at Penang, on the
occasion of the marriage of his son, to all the European officials and
the officers of the garrison and the leading British merchants. It
was a feast at which the dishes were alternately Chinese and European
ones, and by each man's and by each lady's dish, for the ladies were
also invited, were chop-sticks, and knives and forks and spoons. One
Chinese dish I remember at this feast as being quite excellent--a salad
of vegetables and of small fish of all kinds. All the guests ate quite
heartily both of the European dishes and the Chinese dishes, but that
night nearly all the Europeans who had been to the banquet believed
that they had suddenly been stricken with Asiatic cholera. I was one of
the happy exceptions, and I suppose that I must have skipped whatever
was the dish that worked such havoc amongst my fellow-guests.
Messengers from half the bungalows in the leafy lanes of Penang were
sent off post-haste to the civil surgeon, begging him to come at once
to the bedside of unhappy sufferers, and each messenger as he arrived
at the civil surgeon's house received the news that the doctor believed
himself to be in the throes of the same dread Asiatic disease, and did
not think that he would survive the dawn. Nobody, however, did die,
and two or three days later all the aristocracy of Penang, looking
even paler than Europeans always are in that land of lily-white
complexions, and very shaky about the knees, gathered together at a
cricket match and discussed the matter. Somebody had already gone to
the Chinese merchant and had told him of the havoc that his banquet had
made. He was profoundly grieved, pointed out that none of his Chinese
guests had suffered the slightest inconvenience, and laid the blame
on the European dishes, which he had procured as a compliment to his
white guests, saying that he "always mistrusted the cookery of the
barbarians."
The other unforgettable feast was given by the head Shroff, the native
cashier, of one of the banks in Hong-Kong. I had been talking at the
house of one of the bankers as to my experiences of Chinese dishes,
and had rather decried the cookery of the Flowery Land. I had (I
was afterwards told) been especially sarcastic as to the Chinaman's
partiality for puppy-dog, and more or less ranked all Chinese dishes
with the detestable rat soup which a Chinaman sold in the early
mornings just outside the barrack gates to the coolies on their way to
their work. The orderly officer going to inspect rations always had to
pass the unsavoury cauldron from which the soup was ladled out, and,
in the hot weather, the only thing to do was to put a handkerchief to
one's nose and run past it.
Some little time after these conversational flourishes of mine the
banker asked me if I would like to eat a real, well-cooked Chinese
dinner, for the head Shroff of his bank had asked him to honour him
with his company at his villa in Kowlun--which is where the "Mr Wu's"
come from--and had told him that he would be delighted if he would
bring some of his European friends. The dinner, which consisted chiefly
of fish, was an excellent one, the all-pervading taste of soy not being
too persistent, and I was especially delighted with a white stew of
what my host said was Cantonese rabbit, which I thought quite the
most tender and the fattest rabbit I had ever tasted. When the dinner
was over, the banker told me that the "Cantonese rabbit" to which I
had given such unlimited praise was really a Cantonese edible puppy,
fattened on milk and rice. After that incident I found that whenever
I dined out in Hong-Kong, conversation always seemed to turn on to
Cantonese puppies, and I was gently chaffed for at least six months as
to my sudden conversion to the delights of baby chow as a _pièce de
résistance_.
I found, however, neither puppy-dog nor rat on the _carte du jour_ of
the Cathay Restaurant.
The restaurant is on the first floor above a bank. A commissionaire
stands at the outer portals, and there is a lift for the benefit of
anyone who is too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs. The
restaurant itself is hardly sufficiently Oriental in appearance to
be a Cockney's beau ideal of a Chinese restaurant. It is just what a
progressive restaurant for Chinamen in Peking would be, for though
the food is Chinese food, cooked by a Chinese cook, the appearance of
the restaurant is almost European, an exaggerated copy of a French
restaurant, with here and there Chinese touches which redeem the place
from tawdriness. There is on the wall a paper with a pattern of gold
fleurs-de-lis, the carpet is crimson, the chairs and tables are of
European make, the waiters are of European nationalities and wear dress
clothes. But a strip of good Chinese embroidery is hung along that side
of the restaurant where the serving-room is behind a glassed screen;
there are porcelain vases on the two mantelshelves; a great Chinese
ornament of carved wood, gold and crimson and black, hangs by a ribbon
just inside one of the windows; the big curtains to the windows are
of old gold Chinese silk, and the little curtains, also of Oriental
silk, are lilac in tint. The manager of the restaurant is a Chinaman
with short-cut hair, and he wears the same neat, dark garments that all
European managers assume. I sat down at one of the tables, asked the
young Italian who came to wait on me to show me a _carte du jour_ and
the menu of the set lunch, if there was one, and then looked round at
the people who were taking their meal there.
The Chinese in London certainly patronise their own restaurant, for
quite half the people who were eating luncheon were Celestials. There
were two young Chinese boys in the charge of a grey-haired English
lady. There were several young Chinamen whom I mentally put down as
students. An older Chinese gentleman had brought his wife out to lunch;
and before I left, a party of Chinese gentlemen came in, whom, from the
respect shown to them by the manager, I judged to be secretaries of the
Chinese Embassy--the Chinese Ambassador, whom I know by sight, was not
amongst them.
Nowadays when Chinese gentlemen and ladies wear European clothes, and
the men have their hair short, one has to look at their faces to detect
the difference between them and Europeans.
There were some Londoners lunching in the restaurant. A party of
ladies in furs were enjoying the novelty of the Chinese dishes; two
youngsters, whom I took to be medical students, were ordering various
dishes from the _carte du jour_, and were cross-examining the waiter
keenly as to the cooking arrangements and how the delicacies were
imported from China; and two schoolgirls, one of the flapper age and
one younger, came into the restaurant giggling and looking round as
though they expected a pantomime Chinaman to spring up before them or
to jump round a corner.
The menu of the day at the Cathay is on a large folding mauve card,
and the dishes are both in Chinese characters and in English letters
with an explanation in English below each name. The first division is
for chop sueys and noodles. A chop suey is to the Chinese what Irish
stew is to the English and a _ragoût_ is to the French. Pork is its
foundation, and chicken livers and chicken gizzards, celery, mushrooms,
peas, onion, garlic, peppers, oil and salt all go into it. Noodle is
any paste dish, and macaroni or vermicelli would be described on a
Chinese menu as a noodle.
Of the dishes on the card, Loo min is noodle in Pekinese style. Lat
chew chop suey is chop suey with green chutney. Chop suey min is chop
suey with noodle, and so on. There is a little list of dishes which
are ready, and a longer list of dishes which will take some minutes to
prepare, such as fried crab and Chinese omelet; fried rice, with meat,
mushroom, egg and vegetables; sliced jelly-fish with pickle; and soyed
pork. Some especial dishes are on the menu for which a day's notice
must be given, one of these being birds'-nests with minced chicken and
another shark's fin with sliced chicken, ham, bamboo shoots, etc. At
the end of the list comes the catalogue of teas, pastries and sweets,
pickled onions being included in this category.
After looking down the _carte du jour_, I turned my attention to
the set luncheon, and first of all took up the card on which it was
written in Chinese. In case you may be able to read Chinese fluently I
reproduce this card on the next page.
The first word on this only means menu. The first dish is a soup of
chicken, ham, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. The second dish is fried
chicken liver and vegetables, and the last dish is simply roast pork.
I opted for this half-crown meal, and as a preliminary, the waiter
put a tiny cup of soy and a Chinese porcelain spoon by the side of the
European knives and forks and spoons which were already on the table.
A wine list was offered me, but I preferred, as I was going to eat
Chinese meats, to drink Chinese tea with them, and ordered a cup of
Loong Cheng. The plates used at the Chinese restaurant are, like the
cutlery, of European pattern, but the dishes in which the soups and the
meats are brought to table are Chinese ones of all kinds of shapes and
ornamented with Chinese paintings. My soup, with tiny strips of bamboo
in it and morsels of chicken flesh, tasted very much like the chicken
broth that one is given when one is ill and on a low diet. The fried
chicken and vegetables were quite good eating, and the taste of the
bamboo shoots in it was particularly pleasant to the palate. The roast
pork I shied at, and asked instead to be given a plate of chow chow, an
admirable sweet which I have known ever since boyhood, for one of my
uncles, who was Consul at Foo Chow, used to send home to all his small
nephews presents of this delicacy. The tea was excellent, and doing as
the Chinese do, I did not spoil its taste by adding either sugar or
milk to it.
[Illustration]
Altogether my luncheon at the Chinese Restaurant was quite a pleasant
experiment, and I can advise any gourmets who would like to test the
cookery of the Far East in comfortable surroundings to follow my lead.
LV
THE WHITE HORSE CELLARS
A little glass canopy with a clock above it juts out into Piccadilly,
and a tall commissionaire stands at an entrance where some stairs
dive down, apparently into the bowels of the earth. Where the stairs
make their first plunge there is above them on the wall the device of
a white horse--a fine prancing animal, somewhat resembling the White
Horse of Kent.
The stairs, with oak panelling on either side of them, give a twist
before they reach the bottom, where is the modern restaurant that
occupies the site of what were originally known as the New White Horse
Cellars, but which are now called the Old White Horse Cellars, probably
on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle, for they have been modernised
out of all recognition since the days when Charles Dickens recorded the
departure of Mr Pickwick from these Cellars on his coach journey down
to Bath.
The Old White Horse Cellars were originally on the Green Park side of
Piccadilly, and their number was 156, as some way-bills to be seen at
the present White Horse Cellars testify. This ground is now occupied
by the Ritz Hotel. Strype mentions the original cellar as being in
existence in 1720.
On the staircase walls of the New White Horse Cellars is a little
collection of prints and way-bills, caricatures, etchings, old bills of
Hatchett's Hotel, posters and advertisements from _The Times_ and other
papers of the hours at which the coaches for the west started. In this
curious little gallery of odds and ends are some documents relating
to the old cellar on the other side of the road. But the White Horse
Cellars were under Hatchett's in the great coaching days, from the year
of the battle of Waterloo to 1840. It was from Hatchett's that Jerry,
in Pierce Egan's book, took his departure when going back to Hawthorn
Hall, and said farewell to Tom and Logic, and it was in the travellers'
room of the White Horse Cellars, a title that was used alternatively
with "Hatchett's," that Mr Pickwick and his friends sheltered from the
rain, waiting for the Bath coach.
Hatchett's in Dickens's time was not the comfortable house that I
knew in the eighties, when the revival of stage-coaching was at its
height. Indeed, there could not be a picture of greater discomfort than
Dickens sketched in a few words when he wrote: "The travellers' room
at 'The White Horse Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable; it would be
no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into
which an aspiring kitchen fireplace appears to have walked, accompanied
by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is divided into boxes for
the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock,
a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in
a small kennel for washing glasses, in a corner of the apartment."
Dickens's word picture of the scene at the start of the coach at
half-past seven on a damp, muggy and drizzly day is a fine pen-and-ink
sketch, and Cruikshank, in one of his caricatures, "The Piccadilly
Nuisance," shows very much the scene as Dickens described it, with the
orange-women and the sellers of all kinds of useless trifles on the
kerb; the coaches jostling each other, passengers falling off from
them, and the pavement an absolute hustle of humanity.
Cruikshank's various drawings and caricatures preserve the appearance
of Hatchett's of the old days in the memory better than any word
pictures could do. The bow-windows of the old hotel with many panes
of glass in them; the stiff pillared portico, with on it the name
"Hatchett's," and a little lamp before it, and above it the board with
the inscription, "The New White Horse Cellar. Coaches and waggons to
all parts of the kingdom." Above this board again was a painting of an
old white horse. I fancy that the title of the Cellars, when they were
on the other side of the way, must have been taken from some celebrated
old horse--though Williams, who was the first landlord of the original
cellars, is said to have given them their name as a compliment to the
House of Hanover, and that it was the white horse, not the cellar, that
was old.
There are various other legends with respect to the horse that gave
Hatchett's its title, one of them being that Abraham Hatchett, a
proprietor of the tavern, had an old white horse with a turn of speed
which had won him many a wager against more showy animals.
The entrance to the Cellars below Hatchett's, in the old days, was down
some very steep stairs just in front of one of the bow-windows, and an
oval notice, hanging from a little arch of iron, directed people down
into the depths to the booking-office.
My reminiscences of Hatchett's are of the later revivals of road
coaches; the days of old "Jim" Selby, the famous coachman who, though
everybody called him "old," died a comparatively young man. His grey
hair and his jolly, fat, rosy face gave him an appearance of being
older than he really was. Those were the days when the late Lord
Londesborough and Captain Hargreaves, Mr Walter Shoolbred, Captain
Beckett, Baron Oppenheim and Mr Edwin Fownes were well-known whips,
and when "Hughie" Drummond, and the host of other good fellows and
lively customers in whose veins the red blood flowed in a lively
current, who drank old port and despised early hours, were the men
about town. "Hughie" Drummond taking old "Jim" Selby out to dinner
after the arrival of the "Old Times" from Brighton and changing hats
with him, which generally took place early in the evening, is one of my
remembrances of Hatchett's. And many a time have I split a pint with
"Dickie-the-Driver," the oldest in standing amongst my friends, then
not the least lively of the young fellows, before climbing up on to the
coach at Hatchett's to go down to the Derby. For many years eight of
us, always the same men, went down by coach from Hatchett's on Derby
Day, always with "Dickie" driving out of London and the last stage on
to the downs, and our gallop down and up the hill on the course was a
really breakneck performance.
It was from Hatchett's that "Jim" Selby started on his celebrated
drive with the Brighton coach, "Old Times," to Brighton and back, for
a wager of a thousand pounds to five hundred against his accomplishing
the journey in eight hours. On the coach were: Selby himself, driving;
Captain Beckett, whom we all called "Partner"; Mr Carleton Blyth,
who still sends yearly from Bude his greeting of "Cheero" to his old
friends; Mr "Swish" Broadwood, Mr "Bob" Cosier, Mr A. F. M'Adam, and
the guard. Harrington Bird's picture of the coach during the galloping
stage, with the horses going at racing pace, gives an idea of how Selby
drove on that day when he had a clear road. The coach reached the "Old
Sip" at Brighton, having done the first half of the journey in just
under four hours; stayed there only long enough to turn the coach
round and to read a telegram from the old Duke of Beaufort, who was
most keenly interested in the revival of coaching, and who was a very
good man himself on the box seat--and then started again for London,
reaching the White Horse Cellars ten minutes under the stipulated time
and forty minutes within the record. I was one of the men amongst the
crowd that gathered to see the return of the coach and to cheer old
"Jim" Selby, who brought his last team in no more distressed than they
would have been doing their journey under ordinary circumstances. How
highly respected Selby was by all coaching men was shown by the long
string of stage-coaches, every coach on the road having suspended its
usual journey, which followed his body to the grave.
In those days the bill of fare at Hatchett's was roast beef or boiled
mutton and trimmings; duck and green peas, or fowl and bath-chap. There
was an inner sanctuary then called "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was the
bar parlour, into which only the most favoured patrons of the house
were admitted, and Miss Wills, the manageress, used to keep any unruly
spirits very much in order.
When Hatchett's was rebuilt and changed its name it changed hands
very frequently, though the White Horse Cellars always remained a
restaurant. The Cercle de Luxe, a dining club, at one time occupied the
upper floors of the building, and then it became the Avondale Hotel,
with M. Garin as manager and M. Dutruz as chef. Since then the rooms
have been put to many uses, and are now, I see, once again in the
market.
It is the memory of what Hatchett's and the White Horse Cellars have
been in their old days--memories that haunt me like the sound of a horn
afar off on one of the great roads--that makes me disinclined nowadays
to eat a French dinner in what was a home of good English fare; and
whenever I lunch or dine in the White Horse Cellars to-day I always,
for the sake of old times, order a plate of soup, a mixed grill and a
scoop from the cheese. The three-and-sixpenny dinner of to-day is, I
have no doubt, a good one, and Mr Stump, the present manager, is most
courteous and anxious to oblige. I look at the menu when I am in the
restaurant, but for the old sake's sake I keep as close to the meals of
old days as the resources of the establishment allow me to do.
The White Horse Cellars of to-day is a modern, up-to-date restaurant,
below the level of the ground, though the ventilation is so excellent
and the lighting arrangements so good that one never has the sensation
of being in a cellar. Half-way down the staircase, just where the
little picture gallery commences, a door leads into a buffet. One's
great-coat and hat are taken at the bottom of the stairs, and then one
enters quite a lofty room with a groined roof, and with cosy nooks and
various extensions of the bigger room, which, I fancy, have been thrown
out under the side-walk above. The walls of the restaurant are of cream
colour; the ornamentation is in the style of Adams, and there is deep
rose colour in the arches of the roof. Many mirrors reflect the vistas
and give the rooms the appearance of being more extensive than they
really are: a string band is perched up in a little gallery; there are
palms here and there, and a bronze galloping horse in a recess does
something to recall the old horsy days of Hatchett's.
There are many little tables, each with its pink-shaded lamp, in
this restaurant, and it has a chic clientele, the "Nuts" of to-day
appearing to patronise it just as much as the bucks and the bloods,
the swells, and the "whips" of the last two generations used to. I
see pretty actresses sometimes dining at Hatchett's, and it is a very
cheerful restaurant in which to take a meal. It is, I believe, always
crowded at supper-time, and the Glorias, the two excellent dancers who
appear earlier in the evening on the Empire stage, dance the Tango, at
midnight, in and out of the little tables.
But to me the charm of the White Horse Cellars is that I can live again
in memory, when lunching or dining there, those joyous days of youth
and fresh air, when a jolly coach-load used to start from before its
door for a day of delight in sitting behind good horses driven by a
good whip, listening to the music of the shod hooves and the guard's
horn, receiving a greeting from everyone along the road, and feeling
that no king on a throne is happier than a man riding behind a picked
team on a good coach. Motor cars have their uses and their pleasures,
but they seem to have killed the fuller-blooded joys that came with
coaching.
LVI
THE MONICO
The Monico, in Piccadilly Circus, which is both café and restaurant, is
an establishment which has been brought to its present prosperity by
Swiss industry and Swiss thrift. The original M. Monico, the father of
the present proprietors of the restaurant, came from the same village
in the Val Blegno, in the Italian provinces of Switzerland, as did the
Gattis. M. Monico was with that Gatti, the great-uncle of the present
Messrs Gatti, who sold _gaufres_ and penny ices in Villiers Street, and
who when Hungerford Market was swept away and Charing Cross Station
built established the Gatti's restaurant under the arches.
About fifty years ago, just at the time that MM. A. and S. Gatti were
establishing themselves in the Adelaide Gallery, young M. Monico, who
died only three years ago, was also making an independent start on the
road to fortune. Looking about for a site on which to build a café he
had found, off Tichborne Street, a large yard where coaches and waggons
stood, and round which was stabling for horses. This yard he leased,
and built on its site the Grand Café with the present International
Hall above it. M. Monico had intended to put up a tall building, but
the neighbours objected to this; he was obliged to alter his plans, and
in consequence, whereas the café is a very high room, the International
Hall above it is rather squat in its proportions. Those were the days
in which billiards was a game much in favour, and in the International
Hall above the café M. Monico established a number of billiard-tables.
When the craze for billiards died away the long upper room, with its
arched ceiling, became a banqueting hall. Fifty years ago the licensing
magistrates looked with just as much suspicion on any new enterprises
in restaurants as they do at the present day, and the Monico could not
at first obtain a licence to sell wines and spirits. This, however, was
later on granted to M. Monico.
I fancy that there must have been a good deal of the Italian combative
spirit in old M. Monico, for he seems to have been at loggerheads with
more than one of his neighbours. To-day, when you have gone in under
the glass canopy with two gables which protects the Piccadilly Circus
entrance, when you have passed the little stall for the sale of foreign
newspapers and have come into the café which acts as an ante-room to
the great gilded saloon, you will notice that part of this café has a
solid ceiling and that the other half is glazed over. The glazed-over
portion was, in old M. Monico's time, an open space, and into this open
space a neighbour, a perfumer, had the right to bring carts and horses
in the course of his business. This right the perfumer exercised on
occasion, to the great annoyance of M. Monico, and the present Messrs
Monico recall with a smile how the perfumer would often bring in a
great van with two horses to deliver a couple of small packages that
any messenger boy could have carried.
The clearing away of a block of houses when Piccadilly Circus was given
its present proportions gave the Monico its entrance on to that centre,
and when Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the network of small
streets in Soho, M. Monico and his sons obtained a second frontage for
their restaurant and built the block which contains the grill-room,
the buffet and banqueting-rooms, now topped by the new masonic temple,
the latest addition to the Monico.
The Monico of to-day is one of those great bee-hives of dining-rooms
that cater for every class of diner. It has its little café and its
big _à la carte_ dining-saloon, its grill-room, its banqueting-rooms
and its German beer cellar down in the basement. It has two marble
staircases, one leading down to Piccadilly Circus and one to
Shaftesbury Avenue, and its big saloon, the original café, is as
gorgeous a hall as gilding can make it. Its walls are of gold and
mirrors and raised ornamentation, with the windows high up, and with
a golden balcony for the musicians. It has a gilded ceiling and its
pilasters are also golden. An orchestra plays in this room, whereas
in the grill-room those who like their meals without orchestral
accompaniment can eat them in peace. Up and down the great gilded
room walk four _maîtres d'hôtel_ in frock-coats and black ties, and
a battalion of waiters are busy running from tables to kitchen. The
bill of fare in the gilded chamber is a most comprehensive one, and
any man of any nationality can find some of the dishes of his country
on it. It is a beer restaurant as well as a wine restaurant, and the
simplest possible meal, very well cooked, can be eaten there as well as
elaborate feasts.
The grill-room is less gorgeous in its decorations, though its buff
marble pillars and walls are handsome enough. It is in this room
that the _table d'hôte_ dinners at half-a-crown and three-and-six
are served, and it is here that many men of business feed, and feed
excellently well. Not many days ago I lunched in the grill-room, my
host being a gourmet who knew all the resources of the establishment,
and I enjoyed the _sole Monico_, a sole with an excellent white sauce;
a woodcock _flambé_ and a salad of tender lettuce which, like the
beautiful peaches with which we finished our repast, must have been
grown in some Southern, sunshiny clime. I also enjoyed the cheese
_fondue_, made, I think, from the _recette_ that Brillat Savarin set
down in his "Physiologie du Goût."
The Monico has gained special celebrity for its banquets, and the
requests for dates for such feasts made to the Messrs Monico have been
so overwhelming that they have turned the Renaissance Saloon, which
used to be devoted to a _table d'hôte_ dinner, into a banqueting-room,
and have redecorated it for its new uses.
It remains in my memory that men who were present at the banquet
given to Lord Milner in the International Hall of the Monico before
he left England to take up his duties as Pro-Consul in South Africa,
and who talked to me afterwards of the feast, told me that it was
the best public dinner, best served and best cooked, that they had
ever eaten, and last year, when I dined at the Poincaré dinner of
the Ligue des Gourmands, which was held in the Renaissance Room (the
occasion on which M. Escoffier's "creation" of the _poulet Poincaré_
was first disclosed to a discriminating gathering), I thought then
that M. Sieffert's (the _chef_) handiwork was worthy of all the praise
lavished on it, and that M. G. Ramoni, the manager, had arranged most
admirably all the details of the banquet. The Renaissance Room now
quite justifies its title, for its decoration of peacock blue panels
and frames of gilded briar, with strange birds perched on the sprays,
somewhat suggests Burne-Jones and the colouring of his school.
As a specimen of a Monico banquet I cannot do better than give you one
eaten by that famous Kentish cricketing club, the Band of Brothers, the
menu of whose dinner bears their badge in dark and light blue, and has
also a bow of their ribbon:
Huîtres de Whitstable
Fantaisie Epicurienne.
Tortue verte en Tasse.
Turbotin poché, Sauce Mousseline.
Julienne de Sole Parisienne.
Mousse de Volaille Régence.
Côtelettes d'Agneau Rothschild.
Pommes Anna.
Punch Romaine.
Bécassine sur Canapé.
Salade de Laitue.
Escalope de Homard Pompadour.
Pêche Flambé au Kirsch.
Paillettes au Parmesan.
Fruits.
Corbeille de Friandises
Café.
VINS.
Amontillado.
Marcobrunner, 1904.
Bollinger and Co., 1904.
Lanson, 1906.
Martinez Port, 1896.
Grand Fine Champagne, 1875.
Many of the banquets given at the Monico are masonic ones, and the new
temple at the top of the house on the Shaftesbury Avenue side is a very
splendid shrine, with walls of marble and a dome round which the signs
of the zodiac circle, and with doors and furniture of great beauty.
LVII
THE ITALIAN INVASION
The plains of Lombardy, the pleasant mountain land of Emilia and the
champaign that surrounds Turin, are studded with comfortable villas,
the property of successful Italian restaurateurs who have made a
comfortable little fortune in London and who go to their own much-loved
country to spend the autumn of their days. Every young North Italian
waiter who comes to England believes that in the folds of his napkin
he holds one of these pleasant villas, just as every French conscript
in Napoleonic days thought that he, amongst all his fellows, alone
felt the extra weight of the field-marshal's baton in his knapsack. No
race in the world is more thrifty and more industrious than are these
North Italians, and they rival the Swiss in their aptitude for making
considerable sums of money by charging very small prices.
Spain and Great Britain are usually classed together as the two
countries in which the natives know least of economy in housekeeping
and cookery, and the Italians, spying the wastefulness of the land,
have descended on England as a friendly invading force, whereas the
Swiss have taken Spain in hand. There is no Spanish town in which
there is not a café Suizio, and there are very few English towns in
which an Italian name is not found over a restaurant, which is often a
pastry-cook's shop as well.
I have in preceding chapters written of some of the restaurants owned
by Italians in London, but were I to deal at length with all the
well-managed restaurants, large and small, controlled by Italians in
London, I should have to extend the size of my book to very swollen
proportions, so I propose to mention briefly those Italian restaurants
at which at one time or another I have lunched or dined with
satisfaction.
One of the largest Italian restaurants is the Florence, in Rupert
Street, which the late M. Azario, a gentleman of much importance in the
London Italian colony, made one of the most successful moderate-priced
restaurants in London. He was decorated with an Italian order, and
when he died, not long ago, he was much mourned by his countrymen.
Madame Azario (who is now Madame Mainardi and who has appointed her
husband, whom I remember at the Savoy, to the supreme command of the
establishment), to whom he left the restaurant, has made some changes
in it, bringing it up to date. It now has a lounge where hosts can wait
for their guests, and it has fallen a victim to the prevailing craze
for Tango dancing at supper-time. Its three-shilling dinner is a most
satisfying one at the price. The Florence is not too whole-heartedly
Italian to please diners of other nationalities, but when an Italian
gives a lunch or a dinner to his fellow-countrymen or to those who love
the cookery of Italy, it can be as patriotic in the matter of dishes as
any restaurant in Italy. This is the menu of a lunch given to one of
the most Italian of Englishmen. It is a capital example of an Italian
meal, and there is a little joke tucked away in it, for the "Neapolitan
Vanilla" is another way of writing garlic:
Antipasto Assortito.
Ravioli alla Fiorentina.
Trotta à l'Italiana.
Scalloppine di Vitello alla Milanese.
Asparagi alla Sant'Ambrogio.
Pollo alla Spiedo.
Insalata Rosa alla Vaniglia di Napoli.
Zabaglione al Marsala.
Formaggio.
Frutta.
* * * * *
Chianti.
Barolo vecchio.
Asti naturale.
Caffe.
Liquori.
One of the first established and one of the best of the Italian
restaurants is Previtali's, in Arundel Street, that little thoroughfare
that runs up into a cul-de-sac square, off Coventry Street. It was said
a while ago that this little square and its approach were to be eaten
up by a new great variety theatre, but I see that the ground is now
advertised as being for sale. Below the great board which announces
this is a smaller one, which tells that Previtali's is to remain where
it is till September 1915, when it will find other quarters. Its _table
d'hôte_ luncheon costs half-a-crown, and its _table d'hôte_ dinners
are priced at three-and-six and five shillings, the latter giving such
a choice of food that not even a starving man would ask for more when
he had gone through the menu. Previtali's has an excellent cellar of
Italian wines.
Many of the restaurants owned by Italians in London have a clientele
that suits the size of the house, and they do not cry aloud by bold
advertisements for fresh guests. Such a quiet, unassuming restaurant is
the Quadrant, in Regent Street, the windows of which keep their eyes
half closed by pink blinds which shut off the view of the interior
from passers-by. Messrs Formaggia and Galiardi cater there for very
faithful customers, and I always look with interest as I pass at the
menu of the half-crown dinner which is written in a bold hand and shown
in a small frame by the window. It is always a well-chosen meal, and
on the occasions that I have eaten at the Quadrant, I have been well
satisfied with its fare. It was at the Quadrant that a gourmet with a
taste for strange foods gave me a lunch of land-crabs which had been
imported with much difficulty from either Barbadoes or the West Indies,
and which Mr Formaggia's chef had cooked strictly in accordance with
the recipe that came with them. They had, I remember, rather a bitter
taste, but perhaps land-crabs, like snails, are not to everybody's
taste.
In Soho, the Italian restaurants jostle the French restaurants in
every street. Perhaps the best known of the Soho restaurants owned by
Italians is the Ristorante d'Italia, whereof Signor Baglioni is the
proprietor, which thrusts out an illuminated arum amidst the electric
globes and glittering signs of Old Compton Street. My memories of the
half-crown _table d'hôte_ dinner there is of food excellently cooked
under the superintendence of an erstwhile _chef de cuisine_ of the
Prince of Monaco, of the noise of much talking in vehement Italian, of
rather close quarters at little tables laid for four, and of a menu of
rather portentous provender.
The most Italian of any restaurant that I have discovered in my
explorations in Soho is the Treviglio in Church Street, a little
restaurant that might have been lifted bodily from a canal-side in
Venice or a small street in Florence. It is whole-heartedly Italian,
and puts to the forefront of its window a list of the specialities of
Italian cookery on which it prides itself. It is a favoured haunt of
the Italian journalists in London, and that, I think, can be taken as a
certificate that its cookery is not only thoroughly Italian but is also
good Italian. Signori Pozzi and Valdoni are its proprietors.
Pinoli's is a restaurant in Lower Wardour Street that offers almost
as much at its two-shilling _table d'hôte_ dinner as some other
restaurants do at twice or more that price.
A quiet, flourishing restaurant owned by an Italian, Signor Antonio
Audagna, who began life as a waiter at Romano's, is the Comedy
Restaurant, in Panton Street, Haymarket. It is a comfortable
restaurant, with cream walls and oval mirrors and pink-shaded lamps,
and its back rooms are on a higher level than those of its Panton
Street front. Its customers are very faithful to it, and, as its
proprietor once told me, "when the fathers die the sons take their
places as customers." There was some time ago a proposal to extend
it so as to give it a front to the Haymarket, but that plan came to
naught, and the Comedy goes on just as before in its old premises.
This is a menu of the Comedy _table d'hôte_ dinner, and its proprietor
apparently took a hint from Philippe of the Cavour for the menu bears
the legend, "No beer served with this dinner":
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Queue de Bœuf Printanière
Crème Chasseur.
Sole à la Bourguignonne.
Noisette de Pré-Salé Volnay.
Spaghetti al Sugo.
Poulet en Casserole.
Salade.
Glacé Comedy.
Dessert.
Another quiet restaurant with a faithful clientele is Signor Pratti's,
the Ship, in Whitehall. His _table d'hôte_ dinners are half-a-crown
and three-and-six, and his eighteenpenny lunch, I fancy, brings to the
restaurant many of the hard-worked gentlemen from Cox's Bank, just
across the way, and from the Admiralty, which is suitably just behind
the Ship. Signor Pratti, if I remember rightly, fines teetotalers by
charging them sixpence extra.
From Hampstead to Surbiton, from Richmond to Epping, the little Italian
restaurants flourish. One gourmet whom I know, with a delicate taste
in Italian wines, makes pilgrimages regularly to Reggiori's, opposite
King's Cross Station, because he gets there a particular wine which
this restaurateur imports; while I take an almost paternal interest in
Canuto's Restaurant in Baker Street. The rise of that restaurant from a
very humble place, that put out two boards with great sheets of paper
on them, giving the dishes ready and the dinner of the day, to a rather
haughty little restaurant with a very beautiful window and the _carte
du jour_ and the menus of _table d'hôte_ dinners behind the glass in
frames of restrained gorgeousness, typifies the gradual advance in
social splendour of the long street that leads to Regent's Park.
LVIII
THE HYDE PARK HOTEL
Newly engaged couples are rather kittle cattle to entertain at any
meal. There was once a pretty young widow who was about to marry a
charming young man, and I asked the pair to lunch with me one day at
the Savoy and was very particular to secure a table in the balcony, for
I thought that the view over the Gardens and up the Thames to the House
of Lords and Westminster Abbey would harmonise very well with love's
young dream. And it did harmonise only too well with it, for the pretty
widow sat with her face in her two hands gazing up the river with
far-away eyes while the grilled lamb cutlets grew cold and the _bomb
praliné_ grew warm, and the charming young man, sat opposite to her
with hands tightly clasped, gazing into her face and thinking poetry
hard the while. Conversation there was none on that occasion. I do not
believe that the couple knew in the least whether they were eating sole
or cream cheese, and I still have such remnants of good manners that
were instilled into me in the days of the nursery that I felt that
I was doing an impolite thing to eat heartily while my guests were
neglecting their food. I often subsequently wondered whether in the
days when I fell desperately in love at least once in every six months,
I behaved in public as much like a patient suffering from softening of
the brain as did that nice young man on the day he lunched with me at
the Savoy.
One of my nephews, a young soldier doctor, is going to do a very
sensible thing in marrying an exceedingly nice girl early in his
career, and as he is on leave in London it seemed to me that it would
be a pleasant thing to ask him and the young lady to lunch or dine with
me. Though I did not for a moment believe that the presence of his
intended would cause him to neglect his food, I was not prepared, after
my previous experience, to put the young lady to the tremendous trial
of the view of the Thames from the Savoy balcony, and I decided that
dinner, not lunch, should be the meal.
As I was curious to see whether a little dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel
was as well cooked as the great banquets are in that flourishing
establishment, I asked them to dine there with me one Sunday evening,
and gave Mr Kerpen, the manager of the hotel, warning of our coming,
asking him to suggest to M. Müller, the _chef de cuisine_, that I
should like one or two specialities of his kitchen included in a very
short menu.
If lunch had been the meal to which I invited the young couple the Hyde
Park Hotel dining-room would have been a spot as inducive to day dreams
as are the balconies at the Savoy and the Cecil, for the view the Hyde
Park Hotel commands over the Park is one of the most beautiful and most
varied in London. A strip of garden lies between the Hotel and the
Ladies' Mile, and beyond that is the branch of Rotten Row that runs up
past the Knightsbridge Barracks. Beyond that again are green lawns and
clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, and the grassy rise
up to the banks of the Serpentine, the glitter of the water of which
and the big trees about it closing in the landscape. The carriages go
rumbling past; there are generally some riders in the Row and there is
always movement on the footpath, and it seems to be one of the duties
of the regiment of Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge to supply as a
figure in the immediate foreground either a young orderly officer in
his blue frock-coat setting out or returning from his rounds on a big
black charger, or a rough-riding corporal in scarlet jacket teaching
a young horse manners. The view up the river to Westminster may have
a dreamy beauty on a sunshiny day, the vista of the long walk in the
Green Park, down which the windows of the Ritz dining-room look, may
have more sylvan beauty, but the outlook of the Hyde Park Hotel has
more colour and more variety than those of the other big hotels I have
mentioned.
The Hyde Park Hotel was one of Jabez Balfour's speculations, and for
a time it was a great pile of flats before it became technically an
hotel. It had a fire, and I fancy that it was after the fire that M.
Ritz was consulted as to its redecoration--for he had a great talent
and indisputable taste in suggesting the ornamentation of large
rooms--and that the Hyde Park Hotel became the exceedingly comfortable,
quiet, luxurious house it is to-day.
In the big hall, with its dark-coloured marbles and handsome fireplace,
I found the young couple waiting for me. They were before their time
and were in holiday spirits, which reassured me, for no laughing girl
is likely to slip suddenly into day dreams. After I had given my hat
and coat to the dark-complexioned servitor in blue and gold Oriental
dress, who looks like a very good-natured Othello, we waited for a
while in the big cream and green drawing-room--a room so fresh in
colour that it does not suggest an environment of London atmosphere,
though it looks out on to Knightsbridge. At the quarter past eight we
went into the big dining-room, and M. Binder, the _maître d'hôtel_,
showed us to the table in a corner by a window which had been set for
us.
The Hyde Park Hotel dining-room is an exceedingly handsome hall of
mahogany, with panels of gold and deep crimson brocade; its pillars
are of deep red wood with gilt Corinthian capitals; a band plays in a
gallery above the crystal service doors and the colours of the panels
are echoed in carpet and curtains and upholstery. In its comfortable
colouring the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room reminds me very much of
what the Savoy dining-room used to be before its beautiful mahogany
panelling was taken down and the colour of the walls and ceiling
changed to cream.
I soon found that I was not either to be silent or to have the
conversation all to myself, for the young people laughed and chatted
away, and I found myself comparing descriptions of the Curragh as it
was in the seventies, when we used to lie in bed in the huts and watch
the marking at the butts through the cracks in the walls, with the
Curragh of to-day when the last of the Crimean wooden huts are about to
disappear. The reading of the menu, however, was gone through with due
solemnity, and the young lady knew that an important moment in her life
was about to approach, for she was going to taste caviare for the first
time. This was the menu of our dinner:
Caviar Blinis.
Crème d'Asperges.
Sole à la H.P.H.
Selle d'Agneau de lait poëlée.
Haricots verts aux fines herbes.
Bécassines Chasseur.
Salade.
Pêches Petit Duc.
Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
The young soldier doctor watched his bride-that-is-to-be eat her first
mouthful of caviare and little angle of the Russian pancake with
interest and some curiosity. If she did not like the delicacy there
would be no caviare for him in the days of their honeymoon, while if
she took a violent fancy to them it might strain the resources of a
very young establishment to provide caviare at two meals a day. She
took her first mouthful, considered, and said that she liked it; but
did not express any overwhelming attachment to it, so I think that so
far as caviare is concerned it will be eaten with appreciation in the
household-that-is-to-be but will not appear every day at table. The
soup was an excellent thick cream; the sole was one of the specialities
of the kitchen put by the _chef de cuisine_ into the menu, and a most
admirable sole it is. It is a _mousse_ of chicken sandwiched between
fillets of sole, and lobster and oysters and, I fancy, mushrooms also,
have their part in this very noble dish. The tiny saddle of lamb was
the plain dish of the dinner; the snipe were given a baptism of fire
before they were brought to table. The peaches were another dish that
is a speciality of the house. With the _Bar-le-Duc_ currant jelly about
the peaches there was mingled some old Fine Champagne, while the ice
and the vanilla cream that went with it were served separately, as is
the modern fashion, which is a great improvement on sending up the ice
in a messy state with the fruit. The wine we drank was Clicquot 1904.
I was charged half-a-guinea a head for our dinner, which was excellent
value for the money: altogether an admirable dinner, admirably cooked,
and I sent my compliments to the chef.
The other people who had dined had gradually melted away; the band
had left its gallery and we could hear its strains coming from some
distant room. The young people chattered away about theatres and
dances and we might have sat at table until midnight had not the
_maître d'hôtel_ suggested that we might like to look at the other
rooms on the ground floor before going into the smoking lounge, where
the band was playing and where a lady was presently to sing. We walked
through a charming little ante-room with golden furniture, into the
great pink banqueting-room which is used for dances and balls as well
as for great feasts. It is the part of the Hyde Park Hotel with which
I am most familiar, and I told the young people, who were more anxious
to know which way the boards ran and whether it was a good floor for
dancing than they were for descriptions of banquets, how at one of the
dinners of the Gastronomes in this fine room the table decorations were
so arranged as to be high above the diners' heads and that the air
seemed full of flowers and how M. Müller had invented for that feast
the beau-ideal of a vegetable _sorbet--tomates givrées_. I had thoughts
of giving them details of a wonderful banquet given at the hotel by the
Society of Merchants, but I am sure they would not have had patience
to listen, so what I abstained from telling them then, lest they might
think me a gluttonous old bore, I here set down for your consideration,
for you can skip it if you will, whereas the two young people would, I
am sure, have been kind enough to listen and to pretend to appreciate
its beauties:
Cantaloup Grande Fine Champagne.
Caviar.
Consommé Florentine.
Crème de Pois frais.
Filets de Truite Saumonée au Coulis d'Ecrevisses.
Volaille de la Bresse Châtelaine.
Selle de Béhague à la Provençale.
Aubergines au Beurre Noisette.
Cailles Royales à l'Ananas.
Pommes Colerette.
Dodines de Canard à la Gelée.
Cœurs de Laitues aux œufs.
Pêches Framboisées.
Friandises.
Dessert.
VINS.
Sandringham Sherry.
Schloss Volkrads, 1904.
Pommery and Greno, 1900.
Château Brane Cantenac, 1899.
Sandeman's, 1884.
Marett Gautier, 1830.
Liqueurs.
Then we went into the big room, a room of mahogany, and views of lake
and river and sea painted on the panels, which is the room most used by
the people who live in the hotel, where the papers and great arm-chairs
are and where a man can smoke comfortably, and we listened to the
little orchestra and to a young lady who sang us songs sentimental and
songs cheerful until it was time for my nephew to do escort duty in
taking the young lady back to the northern heights where she lives.
LIX
YE OLDE GAMBRINUS
The one thing in the world that the friends of Germany do not tell us
poor Englishmen is to be obtained better in the Fatherland than on this
side of the Channel is things to eat, though of course Munich beer has
been held up to our brewers for generations as an example of what they
should brew. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are fewer German
restaurants in London in comparison with the size of the German colony
than there are French and Italian restaurants in comparison with the
colonies of those countries.
Yet good, simple German cookery is quite excellent of its kind. A
German housewife knows how to make a goose into many delectable dishes
which an English housewife knows nothing of, and the German tarts are
excellent things amongst dishes of pastry.
There are one or two German restaurants in Soho, and Mr Appenrodt in
his restaurants considers the tastes of his fellow-countrymen, but the
best known London restaurant devoted entirely to German and Austrian
cookery is the Olde Gambrinus, in Regent Street, and it was an Italian,
little Oddenino, who appreciated the long-felt want of the Germans in
London and who gave them a restaurant in which they can imagine that
they are once again back in their own country, eating German foods and
drinking German drinks.
The Gambrinus has entrances both in Glasshouse Street and in Regent
Street. The Regent Street entrance echoes the decoration of that of
its big brother, the Imperial Restaurant, a few paces farther along the
street, and its marble pillars and revolving door do not suggest the
entirely German surroundings we are in as soon as we have crossed the
threshold. A comparatively narrow room, panelled half-way up its height
with dark wood and with two rows of tables, is the first portion of the
restaurant we see on entering from Regent Street, and it is here that
those good Germans sit who do not want to eat a meal but wish to drink
their "steins" of beer. Above the panelling on the walls are the heads
of many deer and wild beasts from all parts of the world, and the first
impression that this gives to anyone who does not know the Gambrinus
is that it is a Valhalla for the denizens of some Wonder Zoo. In the
midst of these heads of the wild things of the woods and the plains is
that of a fine dog. No doubt he was the chosen companion of some mighty
hunter, and one hopes that he was not like the rest, a spoil of the
chase.
After this first narrow room there comes a wider one with an arched
roof, glazed with bottle-glass, and then the main restaurant itself,
which has the appearance of a baronial hall. Its floor is of wooden
blocks; there are many little tables in it, and chairs with backs of
dark leather, and it is panelled like the entrance, with dark wood. Any
chair not occupied is at our disposal, and we have found seats, and a
waiter has put in front of us the big sheet with the menu of the day on
it and a picture in blue of a crowned gentleman with a long white beard
astride on a beer cask and drinking from a foaming tankard. We will
order our dinner first and then look at our surroundings.
For every day in the week there are special dishes: four soups, one
of which is generally _bouillon mit ei_; three meat dishes and a
fruit dish. There is a list of _hors d'œuvre_, amongst them _Berliner
rollmops_ and _Brabant sardellen, Nürnberger ochsenmaul salat_ and
Bismarck herring. There is a column in print of cold dishes in which
various German sausages are given the place of honour, and then,
written in violet ink, many ready dishes beyond those sacred to the
day, and another list of dishes which can be had to order.
As the most typical German dishes amongst those of the day let us
order goose soup with dumplings, roast veal and peas, and pear tart,
and we cannot do better than wash this down with two large glasses of
light-coloured Munich beer.
The waiter takes our orders, and from a pile of rounds of wadding put
down by us two with some blue printing on them, which shows that we
are going to drink Munich beer, whereas had we elected for the beer of
Pilsen we should have been given rounds of wadding with red on them.
On all the seats at all the tables are Germans of all types.
Dark-haired Germans from the south, looking almost like Italians, and
the typical fair-haired Teutons of the north with fat necks and hair
cropped to a stubble. Anyone who thinks that the German fraus and
frauleins resemble at all the unkind caricatures the French make of
them should see the pretty ladies who accompany the worthy Germans who
eat their dinners at the Gambrinus. They are as fresh and charming,
as well dressed and as daintily mannered as the ladies who go to any
restaurant of any other nationality.
The windows that give on to Glasshouse Street are of the glass that
looks as though the bottoms of wine bottles had been used, and in the
centre of each window is an escutcheon with armorial bearings. At
one side of the room is a gallery of dark wood, and on the front of
this is also a wealth of heraldry. The heads of animals of all kinds,
which seemed a little strange in the _brasserie_ by the entrance, seem
quite in place in the big hall which has all the appearance of the
dining-room of some old baronial castle converted into a German inn. On
the side opposite to the gallery is a long counter under two arches of
dark wood. On this counter are many beer mugs, and fruit in baskets,
and on a series of shelves all the _delicatessen_ which are recorded on
the _spiese karte_. On the wall at the back of the two arches hang the
beer mugs which belong to the customers, rows upon rows of them forming
a background of coloured earthenware and glass. By the side of this
long counter is another, where a pretty girl sits and hands out to the
waiters the liqueur bottles and keeps the necessary accounts.
If the trophies of the chase in the _brasserie_ are various they are
infinitely more various in the big hall, for the Herr Baron must have
hunted on all the continents and did not disdain to add monsters of the
deep to his trophies, for a spiky fish, looking like a marine hedgehog,
dangles from the ceiling, and below it is one of those curious things
which sailors call mermaids and the right name of which is, I believe,
manati. He was a collector of curios also, this imaginary baron, for
a curious lamp in the shape of an eight-pointed star hangs above the
gallery, there is a carved owl immediately below it and various other
wood carvings in different parts of the restaurant, and on the broad
shelf above the panelling are a wonderful variety of earthenware
and china and pewter mugs and dishes and jugs and candlesticks in
quantities that would set up half-a-dozen antique shops.
The heads of animals on the wall would supply material for an
exhaustive lesson in zoology. There is the skull of an elephant, the
head of a rhino, a bear grins sardonically on one side, and opposite
to him a zebra appears to have thrust his head and neck through the
wall. There are several boars' heads, an eagle with his wings spread
dangles from the balcony, and a black cock appears to be rising from a
forest of liqueur bottles. There are horns or heads of half-a-hundred
varieties of deer, from the wapiti and elk to those tiny little fellows
with horns a couple of inches long who run about like rabbits in the
German forests. There are antlers of red deer and fallow deer, and
heads of wildebesste and hartebesste, and black buck and buffalo, and
of many more that are beyond my knowledge of horned beasts.
There are in the room glass screens to keep off all draughts; there
are bent-wood stands on which to hang coats and hats, and a staircase
with a luxurious carpet on it and a brass rail leads down into the
grill-room of the Imperial Restaurant next door.
But the waiter, who had already put down by our places two long sloping
glasses of the clear cold beer, now brings us the plates of smoking
goose soup, and excellent soup it is, with the suet dumplings, as
light as possible, in it, and pieces of the breast of the goose. Why
we English neglect the goose as a soup-maker I do not know, as indeed
I do not know why we neglect the goose at all and consign him to the
kitchen as a meal for the servants while the turkey is being eaten
upstairs. The veal, which, I should imagine, is imported from Germany,
is excellent, and the huge chop of it that is given to each of us must,
I think, be an extra attention on the part of the management, for M.
Oddenino has just come in and has taken a seat at a table in a recess,
where he dines frugally every night so as to be within call of his
restaurant next door, and he has called the attention of the little
manager to our presence. So perhaps we are being given what in Club
life is known as the "Committee-man's chop."
Our third venture is just as satisfactory as the two previous ones,
for the great angle of open pear tart is in every way excellent. The
bill presented at the close of our meal is as moderate as the food was
good. We have each in our meal consumed three shillings and three pence
worth of well-cooked food and cold beer.
So again I ask, Why should the German _cuisine_ in London be the
Cinderella of the daughters of Gastronomy?
LX
MY SINS OF OMISSION
No one can be more aware than I am of the things I have left undone
in writing of the restaurants of London, of the many interesting
dining-places of which I have made no mention, of the eating-houses
with historical associations that I have overlooked.
I have done no more than touch the hem of the garment of the City. As
I write I recall that the Ship and Turtle, the Palmerston and other
notable restaurants I have passed by without even a word, and that
I have given only a line to Pim's and Simpson's, and the George and
Vulture, each of which is worthy of a chapter.
The Liverpool Street Hotel, which I have singled out, is not by any
means the only great railway hotel in London where the catering is
excellent. I used at one time to dine every Derby night with the late
Mr George Dobell at the St Pancras Hotel, and a better cooked dinner no
one could have given me. The Euston Hotel had, and I have no doubt has,
an admirable cellar of wines.
There is a chapter waiting to be written concerning the changes that
have taken place in railway refreshment-room catering, with, as
examples, the dining-rooms at the two Victoria stations and the _table
d'hôte_ dinner that is provided for playgoers at Waterloo.
The luncheons provided for golfers in the club-houses of the golf
courses near London was another subject to which I intended to devote
a chapter, and yet another to the excellent luncheons that the racing
clubs, following Sandown's example, provide for their members.
There are roadside and riverside inns that deserve mention besides
those of which I have written.
Many of the large hotels that I have not mentioned deserve attention,
but there is a certain similarity in the _table d'hôte_ meals at all
big hotels nowadays and the difference between the rank and file
of them lies more in their situation and decoration than in their
_cuisine_.
My excuse for paying a vague compliment to the big hotels in bulk will
not hold good with respect to the many small hotels that I have not
mentioned where the cookery is excellent. They at least have, each
one, its distinct individuality. I can only plead that I have been
frightened by their number. Almond's in Clifford Street, Brown's in
Albemarle Street, where M. Peròs is the chef, are two which occur to me
as I write in which I have dined admirably, and I have no doubt that
"Sunny Jim" will make the restaurant of the St James's Palace Hotel a
favourite dining-place.
I feel that I have slighted Oxford Street and Holborn in having merely
nodded as I passed by to some of the many restaurants, some of them
important ones, that are to be found on the road from Prince Albert's
Statue to the Marble Arch. My hope of making amends to them for this
neglect lies in a hope that my book may run into more than one edition.
In the streets that branch off from Shaftesbury Avenue there are
several restaurants for which I should have found room in this
book. The Coventry is one, and the by-ways of Soho teem with little
eating-houses waiting to be discovered and to become prosperous and
to possess globes of electric light and rows of Noah's ark trees in
green tubs. I am not such a hardy explorer as I used to be, but I have
gone through some terrible times in experimenting on some of the little
restaurants in Soho--the ones that had better remain undiscovered.
Some of my correspondents have asked me why I only write of places that
I can conscientiously praise, and why I do not describe my failures.
My answer to this is that it is not fair to condemn any restaurant,
however humble it may be, on one trial, and that, when I have been
given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see
whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion. I prefer
to consign to oblivion the stories I could tell of bad eggs and rank
butter and cold potatoes, stringy meat and skeleton fowls.
It is so much better for one's digestion to think of pleasant things
than to brood over horrors.
Adieu, or rather, I trust, au revoir.
* * * * *
_P. S._--That changes have taken place in the personnel of the
restaurants even in the space of time that it takes to pass the proofs
of this book shows how difficult it is to keep such a publication
right up to date. Most of the changes I have been able to note in
their proper position, but the sale of Rule's by Mr and Mrs O'Brien to
one of their old servants and the appointment of M. Mambrino to the
managership of the Berkeley Hotel I must record here.
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