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 admirablemoussewith 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. Thefilets de sole Sportiveare 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 theslightly 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 interestingsalmisof 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 behavedwith 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'ssupplies 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 theprivate 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.
TheTruite 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.
One of our legislators had very kindly asked me to dine with him at the House of Commons, at eight-fifteenp.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 theMinisterial 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 outon 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 partof 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 thechef 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 thinkhe 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 ofcrème d'asperges, œufs a la tripe, carottes à la crème,orharicots verts au beurreormacaroni 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 ticketfor 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.
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 amauvais quart d'heurethese 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 weare 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 taleover 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 anymaître d'hôtelconsiders it to be an "important" meal, and believes that the guests will not think they have dined satisfactorily unless they have eaten prodigiously. Butthe 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.
No account of the Trocadero would be complete without an allusion to thetable d'hôtedinners 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 orderedtête-à-têtedinner over which the chef had taken much trouble—hisSuprêmes de sole TrocadéroandPoulet de printemps Rodisiare 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 givinghim 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 delicatemousseever 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-lookingmaître 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 impressJones 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-shillingtable d'hôtemeal; but in face of this calm superiority I abandoned that, skipped the seven-and-sixtable d'hôteas 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 thehors 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 thesalonseen through the dark framing of theportières; 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 ourpotage vert-préout 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 twoex-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.
Thefilets 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 thepetites bouchées à la St-Hubertwere good; but he ate threesorbets, 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 ofpetits 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 clevermethod 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'hôtewine, 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.
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 wasits 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 ofThe 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 afin 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, anà la carteestablishment 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 tothe 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 betête-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 thecabinets particuliersare 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 thetwo 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 thattable d'hôtedinners 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-sixtable d'hôtedinner 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 thecrème Victoriaa good soup:
MenuHors 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 andpâtissier, 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 thespring 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 eitherhors d'œuvreor soup, fish, an entrée and anentremet, 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 thecarteof the dinner coldconsommé, fried sole, sweetbread and spinach, and an ice. Theconsomméwas 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 ahors 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.
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 theWelcome 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 ofmaîtres d'hôteland 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 nightmeans 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 thetable d'hôtedinners, 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 wasrapping 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 shehad 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 ourcrème bonne femmeand declared it to be good. With thetournedosmy imperfections of memory with respect to "words" were cast into my teeth, and especially of a sentence. I introduced intoHis 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 dowerhisEthel with the "inestimable guerdon" ofhislove.
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 andcanvas, 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.
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 ofterror, so I took up knife and fork and bade the waiter do his duty.
Theraison d'êtreof 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 thehors d'œuvrewere 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 thehors 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 withour 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 anysorbetthat 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 ninep.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.