Photo of M. RitzM. RITZ
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 toknow 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 thesewindows 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, thechef 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 amousseof crayfish, which he has named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a reminiscence of his days at Vichy, and hispêches 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 thegros pièceof 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 creationhad 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. Thepoulet en chaudfroidwas a noble bird, all white, and in it and with it was a pinkmoussedelicately perfumed with curry powder, a quite admirable combination. The Ritz salad is ofcœurs de romaine, with almonds and portions of tiny oranges with it. Last of the dishes in the dinner came thepêche 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 calledBelle Dijonnaisebecause 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. Theaiguillettesof duckling from one of the special dishes at the Ritz, and thesoufflésand themoussesthat come from the Ritz kitchens are always ethereal. This banquet is an excellent example of a feast which is important without being heavy.
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, asmaître 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 inthe 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 extensivecarte 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 thecarte du jourwhich I took away with me on the last occasion I lunched in Wilton Road I found amongst the entréesris de veau financière, Vienna schnitzel, côte de veau Napolitaine, bitock à la Russe, entrecôte Tyrolienneandfritto 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 icedzabajone 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 fascinatinglittle 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 stainedglass 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 mealà la cartefrom 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., andBavarois 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 ofmaître 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 thecarte 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.
"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. Atthe 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 thesoufflée, 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 thebabusas 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 thebabuhas 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 ofVanity Fair'ssketch 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 ofThe 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) knowthat 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.
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 afternoonsAt 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 creamymilk 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 greatPunchartists, 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 aremany 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 floorwhen 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.
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 andmaître 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 noproxime 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, soI 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 andmaître d'hôtelto 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 tastefor 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 sixtywith 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. Thedîner à la Russewas 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 gourmetpar excellenceof 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.
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 thestage-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 waschef 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 firstcame 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 thechef 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 clubwould, 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 acarte du jourwith 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 thecarteand 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 selectedrossolnik, a Russian soup, some turbot, a wing of a chickenen cocotte, and was hesitating over the variousentremets, 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. Theturbotin Beaumarchaisis 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. Thesuprême de volaille BagatelleI 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. Theentremetconsisted of peaches and grapes, raspberries, and a cream ice with, I fancy, more than one liqueur added, the whole forming a nobleCoupe-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.
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 earlydéjeuner, 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 retiredmaître d'hôtelwho 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 happyending with the description of thesoupe à l'oignonwhich 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 anomelette 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 anà la carteestablishment. 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 aboîte—with cream-coloured walls and a chocolateskirting. 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 thecarte 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 withhors d'œuvre, though I might have had sardines, orfilets de hareng, oranchois, orsalmisfor twopence. But I ordered soup, and Ithink I went up in Gustave's opinion when I preferred three-pennyworth ofsoupe à l'oignontopot au feuat the same price. There were three fish dishes on the card,moules Marinières, 6d.;merlan frit, 6d.;sole frit, 10d.; and Gustave recommended themoulesas 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 apilaff, which would have cost me 8d., almost plumped for arâble de lièvre, which meant an outlay of 1s., and then, remembering that it was Christmas-time, as near as possible ordered aboudin, which is the sausage that all good Frenchmen eat once a year at theréveillonsuppers on Christmas Eve. But I remembered the nightmare that followed the lastréveillonsupper to which I went in Paris, and, passing over all the entrées, ordered nothing more exciting than a wing of chicken, 1s., and asalade chicorée. Acrème chocolat, 4d., was myentremet.
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. Thecrème chocolatcertainly 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 exerciseand 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.
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 HamiltonHall, 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 placescruets, 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 themayonnaiseexcellent, and did full justice to the grouse, theomeletteand 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.
As 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 railwaycompany, 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.