There is no story of the success of a London restaurant more interesting than that of the Adelaide Gallery, which is more generally known as Gatti's.
The first Gatti to come to this country from the Val Blegno in the Ticino Canton of Switzerland, on the Italian side of the Alps, was the pioneer of penny ices in England, and his shop in Villiers Street by the steps leading down to the steamboat pier below Hungerford Market was for the sale of these ices andgaufres, the thin batter cakes pressed in a mould and baked, a delicacy the small children of Continental countries love, but which has never ousted the British penny bun for its pre-eminence in these islands. When Hungerford Market was swept away to give space for the building of Charing Cross Station, its name, however, being perpetuated by the bridge, the first Gatti's was re-established under the arches of the station and became in due course the Charing Cross Music Hall.
To the Gatti of Villiers Street and the Arches came from their native village two of his young nephews, Agostino and Stefano—the wags of the later Victorian days called them Angostura and Stephanotis. They determined, as soon as they felt their feet, to launch out on their own account. They leased the derelict Adelaide Gallery, which had its entrance in Adelaide Street, converted it into a café restaurant after the Continental pattern, and opened it on 21stMay 1862. So juvenile were these enterprising young Swiss that the younger brother could not legally sign the lease, being under twenty-one. The Adelaide Gallery was then right in the centre of the triangle of buildings bounded by King William Street, Adelaide Street and the Strand: it was parallel to the Lowther Arcade, and the entrance to it was by a narrow corridor from Adelaide Street, a street named, of course, after King William the Fourth's queen.
The gallery had been built in 1832 as the Gallery of Practical Science, at a time when object lessons in science were considered essential for the improvement of youthful minds; and in the long gallery, which is now a part of the restaurant, were working models of shaft wheels, while down its centre ran, waist-high, a long tank with a suspension bridge across it and a lighthouse in its midst. In this tank, working models of steamboats with very long smoke stacks puffed up and down. A gallery ran round this long hall and had pictures on its walls and models on stands of the various forms of architectural pillars. The Polytechnic, opened six years later, which this generation still remembers in its Diving Bell and Pepper's Ghost days, was run on similar lines. The gallery became subsequently a Marionette theatre, a casino and the home of some negro minstrels, but it never settled down successfully to any form of moneymaking until the young Gattis started it on its career as a café restaurant. An habitué of the Gallery in its scientific or in its casino days would only recognise the building to-day by its arched ceiling and by the circular openings in the roof for light and air.
Agostino and Stefano Gatti put marble-topped tables in the Gallery, couches against the walls and chairs on the other side of the tables, and in the basement they made billiard-rooms. Chops andsteaks and chip potatoes, the last a novelty to London, were the trump cards of their catering. At first the magistrates, possibly suspecting that the casino might be revived under another name, refused the Gallery a music licence, but that was granted later on in its existence. The Adelaide Gallery as a restaurant was a direct challenge to the old chop-houses. It gave very much the same fare under more airy and more cheerful conditions, and the Londoners took a wonderful fancy to the "chips."
My earliest memory of a visit to the Adelaide Gallery is a schoolboy one, for I was taken there to sup after seeing Fechter play inThe Duke's Mottoat, I think, the Lyceum. I ate on that occasion chops and tomato sauce, went on to pastry, and finished with a Welsh rarebit—a schoolboy has no fear of indigestion. I came to know the restaurant very well in the eighties, when I was quartered at Canterbury and at Shorncliffe for a spell of home service. I got at that time as much fun out of life in London as a Captain's pay and a small allowance would permit. I had sufficient knowledge of matters gastronomic to know that I received excellent value for my money at Gatti's, and the ladies to whom I used to give dinners said that they liked Asti Spumante and Sparkling Hock just as well as champagne—and perhaps they really did, bless them.
Early in the eighties most of the improvements made to the Gallery had been completed, and the restaurant ran right up to Adelaide Street and down to the Strand. Whether the entrance and new rooms on the King William Street side had then been made I forget, but if they had not been they soon after came into existence. One special friend of mine in those days was the big man in uniform who stood at the Strand entrance, and whose constant companionwas a large St Bernard dog. The big man always had a cheerful turn of conversation, and if by any chance I grew impatient because a lady whom I expected to dine did not appear, he would console me by saying that "probably nothing worse than a cab accident has happened." The St Bernard in its old age grew snappy, and eventually, when it had come back twice from new homes which had been provided for it, had to be destroyed. Both Messrs Agostino and Stefano Gatti were still alive in those days, grave-faced, pleasant gentlemen, who lunched together and dined together at a table not far from the entrance to the kitchen, and who when their meals were finished, sat at a semicircular desk and took the counters from the waiters as they had done ever since the first days of the restaurant.
I was somewhat later to make their acquaintance, and this was how it happened. Little "Willie" Goldberg, who was known to all the English-speaking world as The Shifter, was a man of brilliant ideas, which he rarely had the patience to carry into effect. I received one morning from him a telegram asking me to meet him at ten minutes past one at the Strand entrance of Gatti's, adding that it concerned a matter of the highest importance, which would bring much profit to both of us. I arrived at Gatti's in time, and was met at the door by The Shifter, who told me that the Gattis wanted a military melodrama for the Adelphi, that theatre being their property; that he had thought of a splendid title for a soldier play; that he and I would write it together; that the Gattis had asked him to lunch to talk the matter over; and that he had suggested that I should come too. Then we hurried into the restaurant. We lunched with Messrs Gatti, and when, after lunch, they very gently said that they were ready to hear anything that we might have to tell them, TheShifter disclosed the title, which pleased them, and then sat back in his seat as though the matter was settled. The Messrs Gatti asked for some slight outline of the play, but The Shifter put it to them that an advance of authors' fees should be the next step in the business. This, the Gattis said, was not the way in which they transacted the business of their theatre, whereon The Shifter closed the discussion by saying farewell. When we were outside in the street again, I suggested that the next thing to do would be to get out a scenario to submit to the Gattis; but The Shifter was in high dudgeon; he wrinkled up his long nose in haughty scorn and then said: "These Gattis don't understand our English ways of doing business"—and that was the beginning and the end of our great military melodrama. But I had made the acquaintance of the Gattis, and was always afterwards on very pleasant terms with them.
It is not within the scope of this article to deal with the Gattis' enterprises in theatres, but the tale of their purchase of the Vaudeville Theatre should be told as an instance of their kindness of heart. Amongst the many Gatti enterprises was the establishment of a great electric-light-distributing business. This began with a very small installation in the cellars of the Adelaide Gallery, and increased and increased until it is now one of the greatest electric light companies in London. At one time the electric light plant was established in a building just behind the Vaudeville Theatre, and Mr Tom Thorne, the actor, whose management had not prospered greatly, told the Messrs Gatti that his ill-success of late was owing to the noise the engines made behind the stage. Messrs Gatti, to obviate this grievance, bought the theatre, or at least as much of it as is freehold.
There always has been a strong theatrical element amongst the clientele of Gatti's, and the authors whowrote the Adelphi melodramas—Dion Boucicault, Henry Pettitt, George R. Sims, Robert Buchanan and others—used constantly to be amongst the people lunching and dining in the Gallery. In their theatrical enterprises the Gattis never forgot the Adelaide Gallery, and the one thing essential in an Adelphi melodrama was that it should conclude in time to allow the audience to sup at the restaurant. All the black-coated classes patronised the Gallery, from the comfortable business man, who got as good a chop there in the evening as he did in his City restaurant in the middle of the day, to the little clerk who took the girl he was engaged to there because she liked the music and the brightness of the place. The country cousins all knew Gatti's, and knew that it was a place where they would get a good meal at a reasonable price, and that no advantage would be taken of their ignorance of London charges. Salvini, the great actor, used to take his meals at Gatti's when he was in England, and the great Lord Salisbury had a fondness for a chop and chips, and used to gratify it by going to the Adelaide Gallery. An old Garibaldian, a fine, white-haired old gentleman in a slouch hat and a long, threadbare cloak, was the most remarkable of the clientele of Gatti's in the early eighties; he was evidently very poor and one dish with him constituted a meal, but because he had fought as a red-shirted hero, the waiters at Gatti's treated him with more deference than they would show to any prince, and took the copper he gave as a tip with as much gratitude as they would have expressed for the gold of the millionaire.
The Gatti's of to-day has adapted itself to modern requirements, but it caters for much the same class as of yore, and its food is still excellent material, well cooked, though there is a great deal more variety now than there was in the old chops andchips days. It retains, however, all its old democratic ways. Its clients choose their own tables and their own seats, hang up their own coats and then catch the attention of the waiter who has charge of the table. The restaurant—cream and gold, with French grey panels in its roof—has now four entrances: the Adelaide Street one, two in King William Street and one in the Strand. While the main restaurant remains anà la carteestablishment with a plentiful choice of dishes, including a list of grills, there is atable d'hôteroom at the King William Street side, a handsome hall with a gilded roof and pink-shaded electroliers, which throw their light up on to the ceiling. The latest addition to the dining-rooms is a banqueting hall, reached by marble stairs from King William Street. It is a handsome and well-proportioned room, with a musicians' gallery at one side, and an ante-room half-way up its stairs, and it holds one hundred and fifty feasters quite comfortably.
At the same little table where their father and their uncle sat, the two Messrs Gatti of to-day—John (ex-Mayor of Westminster) and Rocco—sit, young copies of their predecessors, in that one of them has kept a plentiful head of hair, whereas the other one has been less conservative. They give the same attention to the business of the restaurant that the original Gattis did, but the semicircular desk has vanished and the work of taking the counters is now done by deputies on either side of a great screen which stretches before the wide entrance to the kitchen. Mr de Rossi, dapper and energetic, is the manager of the restaurant, and it is always a comfort to me that when I lunch or dine under the musicians' gallery themaître d'hôtel, whom I have known for thirty years, comes and gives me fatherly advice as to the choice of dishes for a meal.
The kitchen of the Adelaide Gallery is one of the few in London that possess a large open fire for roasting, and its Old English cookery is, therefore, always good. It caters, however, for all nationalities, and as an indication of what its prices are, and of the variety of its fare, I cannot do better than give you the list of entrées I find on thecarte du jour, which I took away the last time I dined at Gatti's:
Carbonnade de bœuf à la Berlinoise, 1s. 2d.;lapin sauté Chasseur, 1s. 4d.;vol-au-vent de ris d'agneau Financière, 1s. 6d.;pieds de porc grillés Sainte Menehould, 1s. 2d.;fegatino di pollo alla Forestiera, 1s. 4d.;terrine de lièvre St Hubert(cold), 1s. 9d.;côte de veau en casserole aux cèpes, 1s. 9d.;tournedos Rouennaise, 2s.;chump chop d'agneau, purée Bruxelloise, 1s. 6d.;tête de veau en tortue, 1s. 6d.;salmis de perdreaux au Chambertin, 2s.;langue de bœuf braisée aux nouilles fraîches, 1s. 6d.;escalopes de veau Viennoise, 1s. 6d.;mironton de bœuf au gratin, 1s. 4d.;côtelettes d'agneau Provençale, 2s.;pigeon St Charles, 2s. 6d.;noisettes de pré-salé Maréchal, 1s. 9d.;entrecôte Marchand de Vin, 2s. 6d.;demi faisan en casserole, 4s.
And here is the menu of the five-shilling dinner I ate one Friday in October in thetable d'hôteroom, in company with many people, who were evidently going later to theatres:—
Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne.Consommé Julienne.Crème d'Huîtres.Turbotin d'Ostende Réjane.Anguilles Frites. Sce. Tyrolienne.Côtelettes de Volaille Pojarski.Petit Pois au Sucre. Pommes Comtesse.Faisan Ecossaise Rôti en Casserole.Salade Sauté.Glacé Mokatine.Délicatesses.
Gatti's, like every other restaurant of standing, has its own special dishes, and some of these were included in a lunch which I ate with Messrs John and Rocco Gatti when they were good enough in a chat we had to refresh my memory in regard to the early days of the restaurant:
Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne.Zéphire de Sole Adelaide.Suprême de Volaille Royal.Asperges vertes. Sce. Chantilly.Perdreau Rôti à la Broche.Cœur-de-Laitue à la Française.Cerises Montmorency Sarah-Bernhardt.Corbeille de Délices.Café.
Thezéphire de sole Adelaideis an admirablefilet de soleand oysters therewith; the breast of the chicken was served with an excellent white sauce; and theentremetwas worthy of the distinguished tragedienne after whom it is named.
The wine list at Gatti's is a document to be carefully studied. The Gattis of the previous generation laid down some very fine wines, and clarets and Burgundies of the great years of the end of the last century are to be found in the Adelaide cellars. The champagnes of great years and of great houses are priced far lower than they are to be found on the lists of fashionable restaurants, and there is some old cognac in the cellars to which I take off my hat whenever I am privileged to meet it. It was bought by the Gattis at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, when stocks of old brandy were sold at low prices. It is marked so as to show a profit on the purchase-money—not at its worth—and I know of no better brandy at any London restaurant, whatever price customers may choose to give.
I deserted, shamelessly and openly deserted, but I had an excuse.
When we started, a boatload of men in a launch from above Boulter's Lock on a still, hot summer Sunday afternoon, the sky was grey above and the river and Cliveden Woods were all in pleasant shadow; but when we were come to Odney Weir and Cookham Ferry the sun broke through the clouds and sucked them up, and at Bourne End the river sparkled and the sails of the sailing-boats tacking up the long stretch below Winter Hill gleamed in the sunlight. It was as hot an afternoon as we ever get in England, and as we steered into the eye of the sun the glare hurt my eyes, and there was no dodging it. When we came to the Compleat Angler, just below Marlow Bridge, and lay alongside its green lawn, with the flower beds and rose-trees right at the garden edge, I looked at the people sitting on the rustic chairs by the rustic tables in the shadow of the line of trees that acts as a screen against the western sun, and the villagers who loll the Sunday through on the railing of the bridge and stare at the hotel, and I thought how pleasant it would be to sit in the shade until dinner-time came, to eat that meal with the burble of the water falling over the weir in my ears, and afterwards to go back to town by a late train. So I deserted openly and shamelessly.
The Compleat Angler is a very old inn, so oldthat no one knows when it was built. But it was very probably in existence when the bodies of Warwick, the King-maker, and his brother Montacute were carried to Bisham Abbey to be buried. An engraving of a hundred years ago shows the old inn with a rope walk by its side, where the gardens of the hotel now stretch on the bank of the swift stream below the weir. The old wooden bridge which the present suspension bridge has replaced started at the angle of land by the weir, an angle now covered by the dining-room of the hotel, and it was under this bridge—not the present one—that a legendary hero of gastronomy, the Marlow bargee, ate the Puppy Pie.
In the pre-railway days the Compleat Angler looked for its patrons amongst the fishermen and the simple folk who gained their living on the river. The hotel to-day is one of the most comfortable old-fashioned riverside inns between Oxford and London, an inn that stoutly upholds its old English characteristics. The brown roofs of the old building and its old brick walls are still there, and the old fruit-trees of the orchard give shade on its lawn; but new wings have been built on as the custom of the hotel has increased, and the great stretch of delightful garden behind the hotel, from which there is a glorious view of the Quarry Woods, must be a comparatively new addition. Mr Kilby, the present landlord, his face tanned by the river air and river sunshine, his hair and moustache almost white, has been in possession of the house for twenty-two or twenty-three years; but before this time it had been in the hands of one family from generation to generation, right back into the misty past. Mr Kilby has kept the hotel Old English in character in all essential particulars. There is good black old oak panelling in the little hall, and Jacobean furnitureand an old grandfather clock, and on its walls, in glazed cases, are monster perch and other giants of the Thames caught at Marlow, and engravings of local celebrities and local magnates of past days; while in the dining-room are caricatures by Gillray and other wielders of the pencil in Georgian days. The gardens, kitchen garden and flower garden and lawns, behind the house, are also delightfully English, for the flowers that grow there are the Old English flowers, roses and lilies, stocks and pinks, ladies'-slippers and cherry pie, and a host of others, flowers that are old friends and which fill the air with scent on a hot afternoon. There are roses everywhere around the Compleat Angler. Those who land from their boats pass under a great arch of roses, and in the garden the roses climb over many bowers—for "pergola" is a word I hesitate to use in writing of this Old English pleasance. Honeysuckles grow up the supports of the verandah that gives shade to the windows of the dining-room, and there are bright flowers in all the window-boxes. Above all, there is the charm of the river, the indescribable freshness that always comes with tumbling water, the delight of the long, trembling reflections thrown by the trees and the spire of the church across the river, the grace of the white-clad girls who punt upstream and of the swans that sail quite secure by the edge of the weir, and the pleasant "lap, lap" of the water as the launches cut through it. If I wished in one hour to give an American friend an idea of the charm of the Thames I would take him to the chairs under the great willow that stands by the weir in the grounds of the Compleat Angler, and when he had sat in this shade for half-an-hour watching the calmness of the river and the eddies of the weir stream, the rushes, the reeds, the trees, the long line of wooded hills, theswans and the boats, if he did not understand what the Thames is to an Englishman, I should despair of him. If I was interested in a young couple who were hesitating on the brink of matrimony, and I wished to push them into it, I would invite them to take tea with me on the lawn of the Compleat Angler, and when the sun dropped low and the shadows of the trees lengthened and the air grew heavy with the scent of the roses, I would leave them together for an hour, and if in that hour the man had not proposed I would consider him a base deceiver, a heartless wretch incapable of sentiment.
In the late afternoon, when the bells of the church were ringing for evening service, I walked up the High Street, in which the lads of the village and the lasses all in white were abroad, and looked at Marlow's sole antiquarian relic—the stocks, which stand in an enclosure of turf and trees and flower-beds. I continued my pilgrimage to Shelley's house in West Street, and then on over the wooden bridge of old grey wood to the Lock.
The sun had set and the west was all opal with the dying light when I came back to the lawn of the Compleat Angler. The launch that had lain the afternoon through by the steps was gone, with its load of merry people, and the motor cars were all off on their return journey to London. Only the people staying in the hotel remained. It was dinner-time, but I was loth to leave the open air, for the hush of the evening had fallen. I could hear faintly the sound of a hymn being sung in the church, and that sentimentality, which is not religious feeling, but which is akin to it, had fallen upon me. I was at peace with all mankind. I forgave the architect who designed Marlow Church tower for thetriviality of his Gothic; I had no rancour against the tailor who took three weeks to make me three white evening waistcoats; I could think kindly of the people who send me insufficiently stamped letters from abroad, and I could remember that even the income-tax collector is a fellow-man. Had there been anyone by to whom I could recite poetry I would have been prepared to quote Herbert to my purpose, but the only companionable soul available at the moment was a friendly Irish terrier, and terriers have no soul for verse.
At last I went in to dinner. A corner table in the biggest of the three dining-rooms, a real summer-house, its walls being all windows, had been reserved for me, and from my seat I could look across the river to one side and on to the weir stream on the other. The light of day was not all gone, and I hardly needed the shaded lamp which kept company on the table with a great bunch of sweet-smelling flowers from the garden. I had not ordered any special dinner, but ate thetable d'hôtemeal of the house, the charge for which is six shillings. It was a good English dinner, and my only complaint regarding it is that there were some tags of unnecessary French upon the menu card. This, in plain English, was the dinner I ate and enjoyed:
Thick Mock Turtle.Salmon.Clear Butter Sauce.Braised Ham.Broad Beans.Madeira Sauce.Roast Chicken.Chip Potatoes.Green Peas.Raspberries and Cream Ice.
I might have added a savoury to this, but I liketo end my dinner with a sweet taste to linger on my palate. My bill altogether came to seven-and-six.
Feeling contented with myself, and life, the Compleat Angler, and my fellow-men, I sauntered to the railway station in time to catch the nine-forty train back to London.
There used to be two little rooms in London restaurants with walls made interesting by the signatures of great artists of song and colour and sculpture and music, who, some of them, had sketched little scenes above their names, and others had dotted down a few notes of music.
One of these little chambers was the sitting-room of Madame Dieudonné, in Ryder Street. Madame Dieudonné was an old French lady who kept a boarding-house much patronised by the great artists who came over to London from France. In her kitchen was an admirable chef, and the fame of thetable d'hôte—a realtable d'hôtein its original sense, for Madame always sat at the head of her own table—was so great that people who loved good cooking used to ask permission to be allowed to dine at it. But Madame Dieudonné did not give this permission to all comers, and it was necessary that the would-be guest should be presented to Madame and should obtain from her an invitation to her circle before a place was laid for him. Any special favourites amongst the guests were asked by Madame to come after dinner into her sitting-room, there to drink coffee and to chat, and amongst these favourites were the great musicians, and the great actors and great painters of her own land, who stayed at theboarding-house. When any man, or any lady, was asked for the first time into this holy of holies, he or she placed a signature upon the wall and any further embellishment that came to mind. Gradually the middle portion of the walls became a perfect treasure-house of autographs.
Madame Dieudonné died, and her circle was broken up, the old lodging-house became a hotel, and when M. Guffanti, its present owner, brought his great energy to bear upon it, it soon became prosperous. Alterations were made, the white room on the first floor, with its panel pictures of gallants and ladies in silks and brocades, which is now used for banquets, was constructed, and when Madame Dieudonné's little room was thrown into what is now the entrance hall, the workmen destroyed the signatures on the walls, evidently regarding them as mere dirt, in spite of all the precautions M. Guffanti had made to preserve them, and the only remembrances left of the stately old lady who used to sit at the head of her own table is in the name of the hotel and restaurant.
Dieudonné's has flourished exceedingly, and M. Guffanti, his hair a little thinner on the top of his head than when first I made his acquaintance, but with the same majestic curve to his moustache ends, and possessing the same invincible energy, has increased the size of his hotel by taking in several other houses.
The Dieudonné's of the present day is a large building of white stone and red brick, always very spick and span, and decked out with flower boxes. The restaurant on the ground floor is a fine room in the Adams style, a very light grey in colour, with some of the ornamentation just touched with gold. At one end are three large bow-windows, and at the other end there is a musicians' gallery for the orchestra. On the side walls the ornamentation suggestsdoorways with mirrored panels, pink shades on the electroliers have subdued the light, which, when the room was first built, I found too white and too brilliant, and the lamps on the tables are also pink-shaded. The carpet is of a deep rose, and the white chairs are also upholstered in that colour. It is a very pleasant dining-room, and the people who dine there are all pleasant to look at, and do good food the compliment of going dressed in becoming garments. I very rarely dine at Dieudonné's without seeing a ladies' dinner-party in progress, for Dieudonné's has always been a favourite dining place of the gentler sex since the early days when Giovanini, the oldmaître d'hôtel, with bushy eyebrows and Piccadilly weepers, used to consider any ladies without an escort as being put under his special and fatherly protection.
Dieudonné's chiefly relies on twotable d'hôtedinners, one the opera dinner, at six-and-six, and the other the Dieudonné dinner, at eight shillings. On the last occasion that I dined at Dieudonné's before going on to the Russian Opera at Drury Lane I ate the opera dinner, the menu of which I give below. It was the day of President Poincaré's state entry into London, and that event is celebrated by two of the dishes in the dinner:
Menu.Hors d'œuvre Variés.Consommé à la Française.Crème de Laitues aux Perles.Saumon d'Ecosse Poché.Sauce Mousseline.Pommes Nature Concombres.Côtes de Pré-Salé Poincaré.Canetons d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise.Petits Pois Nouveaux.Coupe Entente Cordiale.Friandises.
The Dieudonné dinner on this day only differed from the shorter one by the inclusion in it ofescaloppes de ris de veau George V.
The other restaurant which created and retains an artists' room is Pagani's, in Great Portland Street, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Queen's Hall and St George's Hall. When, in 1871, Mario Pagani opened a little shop, which became a restaurant, in a house in Great Portland Street, the German Reeds were in possession of St George's Hall, with, I think, Corney Grain, as a newly risen star, in their company. The Queen's Hall had not been built and St James's Hall, the site of which is now occupied by the Piccadilly Hotel, was the musical centre of London. M. Pagani, being an Italian, gave his customers Italian cookery, and very good Italian cookery too, and the journalists and the painters and the singers soon heard of the new little restaurant where there were always Italian dishes on the bill of fare. Pellegrini, theVanity Faircartoonist, and Signor Tosti were two of the first patrons of the restaurant. Mr George R. Sims, doyen to-day of literary gourmets, loved the restaurant as it was in its early state, and wrote of the good Italian food to be obtained there, and his portrait, on a china plaque, occupies, rightly enough, the centre of one of the walls up in the artists' room. In 1887 M. Mario Pagani retired, and for a time his brother and his cousin carried on the restaurant; the latter, M. Giuseppe Pagani—left, in 1895, in sole control—taking as partner M. Meschini, the latter of whom eventually became the sole proprietor, bequeathing, when he died, the restaurant to his widow and to his son.
Pagani's in the forty odd years of its existence, has increased in size to an extraordinary extent, and the building, with its elaborately ornamented front of glazed tiles with complicated figures in the pattern and ornaments of Della Robbia ware, its squat pillarsof blue and its arches, luminous at night with electric light, differs immensely from the little, stuffy Italian restaurant that it originally was. It has a second entrance now in a side street, and a Masonic banqueting-room, and a lift, and its restaurant on the ground floor is a very large one and always reminds me of those great establishments that I see in the German cities. It is a very comfortable restaurant, and its brown walls, its mirrors with trellis-work and creepers painted on them set in brown wooden frames, and its ceiling painted in quiet colours, all give a sense of cosiness. There is in this downstairs restaurant a dispense bar, which looks very picturesque seen through a glazed screen, and just by this screen is the entrance from which the waiters stream out from the kitchen carrying the dishes ordered by the patrons of the restaurant, which they show as they pass to a clerk. To dine habitually at Pagani's at a table facing the kitchen entrance is to obtain a complete knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the Italian waiter. He is not run into a mould as a French waiter is, but retains many individualities. He always wears a moustache, and is pleasantly conversational with his fellows and with the customers.
In its early days, the cookery at Pagani's was Italian and nothing but Italian, but with ever-increasing prosperity the scope of the kitchen has broadened, and now most of the dishes on thecarte du jourhave French names. The head cook, however, is a good Italian, M. Faustin Notari, who has climbed the ladder of promotion to the top during the twenty years he has been in the kitchens of Pagani's, and there are always some Italian dishes on the bill of fare. The following are the dishes that I most frequently see on the card:—Minestrone, minestrone alla Genovese, zuppa alla Pavese, filetti di sole alla Livornesse, spaghetti,and Macaroni done in every way possible,ravioli al sugooralla Bolognese, gnocchi alla Romana, fritto misto alla Tosti, ossi buchi, arrostino annegato,and I generally finish my dinner at Pagani's with azambaglione. Pagani's has its specialities of the house apart from Italian dishes, and when I have dined, as I often do, as one of the committee of an amateur dramatic club, in the Artists' Room, I generally findpoulet à la Pagani—a very toothsome way of cooking the domestic fowl—on the menu of our little feasts.Filet de sole Paganiis another excellent dish, an invention of the house.Poule au potandcassôlet à la Provençaleand thebisque, and thebortschat Pagani's are always excellent. The diners whom I see at the other tables downstairs at Pagani's all seem to me to belong to that very pleasant world, artistic Bohemia. The great singers of the opera and the great musicians who play at the Queen's Hall go there to lunch and dine and sup, and their artistic perception is not confined entirely to music, for I notice that they generally bring very pretty ladies with them to eat the good dishes of the restaurant. A little touch of Bohemia that always pleases me at Pagani's is the boy who comes round with a tray selling cigars and cigarettes. The restaurant-rooms on the first floor used, in the early days when Pagani's was quite a small place, to be the rooms to which the sterner sex used to take ladies to dine, and there was a particular corner by a window with a tiny conservatory in it which was the favourite spot in the room. The gentler sex now dines everywhere in the restaurant, but in the first-floor rooms, with pleasant red walls, glazed screens put between the tables give a sense of privacy.
The Artists' Room is on the second floor, just on the top of the staircase. There is not room for many people in it, and the dinner-parties held there must of necessity be small ones. But there is no room in any restaurant in London which is in itself sointeresting as this one. The walls are almost entirely covered with signatures and sketches and caricatures; there is a large photograph, framed and autographed, of Sir Henry Irving as Becket; there are drawings by Dudley Hardy and three or four caricatures, including one of himself, drawn by Caruso. There is a photo of poor Phil May in riding kit on a horse; there is the menu of the dinner given by the artists of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden to Mr Thomas Beecham. On the mantelpiece stand some good bronzes of English and French Volunteers, and the menu of a banquet given by Pélissier, the head of the Follies, to his friends, and his invitation to this feast, which commences in royal style: "I, Gabriel," etc., and ends with the earnest request, "Pleasearrivesober," have been honoured with frames. Mademoiselle Felice Lyne's autograph records one of the latest successes in opera. There are two smoked plates with landscapes drawn on them with a needle, and there is the medallion in red of Dagonet I have already mentioned. The name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye as soon as any other inscription on one of the sections of the wall covered with glass; but it is well worth while to take the panels one by one, and to go over these sections of brown plaster inch by inch. Mascagni has written the first bars of one of the airs fromCavalleria Rusticana, Denza has scribbled the opening bars of "Funiculi, Funicula," Lamoureux has written a tiny hymn of praise to the cook, Ysaye has lamented that he is always tied to "notes," which, with a waiter and a bill at his elbow, might have a double meaning. Phil May has dashed some caricatures upon the wall, a well-meant attempt on the part of a German waiter to wash one of these out having resulted in the sacking of the said waiter and the glazing of the wall, Mario has drawn a picture of a fashionable lady, andVal Prinsep and a dozen artists of like calibre have, in pencil, or sepia or pastel noted brilliant trifles on the wall. Paderewski, Puccini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti, Plançon, De Lucia, Melba, Mempes, Tosti, Kubelik, Tschaikovsky, are some of the signatures.
It was a chance remark made by "The Princess," as three of us sat at lunch one Saturday in the open air at the Ranelagh Club, that nowhere in Central London was there an open-air dining place, that led me to ask her and "Daddy," her husband, both of them my very great friends (which is the reason that I permit myself to call them, as the Irish would say, "out of their names"), to dine with me one night in July, weather always permitting, in the open air within fifty yards of Piccadilly Circus.
Walking down Piccadilly, and looking up at the façade of the great Piccadilly Hotel, a building which has something of the nobility of a Grecian temple, and something of the heaviness of a county jail, I had noticed that a grey tent had been put up on the terrace, half-way up to the heavens, behind the great pillars and the gilded tripods, and I knew that this meant that as soon as the evenings were warm the restaurant would cater on the terrace for those who like to dine in the freshest air obtainable in muggy London.
Some form of covering is a necessity for any roof garden in Central London, not as a protection from rain or cold, but to deliver diners from the plague of smuts. Some day, when electricity and gas have between them driven coal far outside the boundaries of the capital, it will be possible for Londoners to breakfast under the plane-trees planted on theirroofs, and to look, while they eat, at the roses climbing on the trellis-work which hides their little pleasance from the neighbours on the next roof; but in this present year of grace an open-air meal within the three-mile radius necessitates the blowing of smuts off each plate as soon as it is put on the cloth, and a great portion of the conversation of the table talk centres round the black smudges to be wiped off the diners' noses. The Piccadilly, by pitching its tent on its terrace, has gone as near to open-air dining as is possible in our London atmosphere.
It was well that I had added the provision "weather permitting" to my invitation, for on the evening that my two guests motored up from their old manor-house near Richmond the sky had clouded over, a misty rain was falling, and the temperature had dropped to November level. The dinner-table that would have been reserved for me on the terrace was cancelled, and a table for three laid in the restaurant of the big hotel—that very handsome saloon panelled with light wood, with gilded carving in high relief on the panels, with a blue-and-gold frieze, and elaborately decorated ceiling and casemented mirrors—a saloon which is a noble example of Louis XIV. decoration. I had ordered my dinner beforehand, taking care to include in it some of the specialities of the kitchen of the Piccadilly, and had interested in the designing of the little feast M. Berti, the restaurant manager, and thechef de cuisine, M. Victor Schreyeck; while M. Pallanti, one of themaîtres d'hôtel, who is an old acquaintance, had put me in that portion of the room which is under his special charge. The dishes on which the kitchen of the Piccadilly especially prides itself are itsdélices de soleand itsfilets de sole, both named after the establishment, itspoularde à l'étuvée au Porto, itspoularde Reine Mephisto, itscailles Singapore, and itsvasquesof peaches, or of raspberries, or of strawberries, all titled Louis XIV. in sympathy with the decoration of the room.
This was the dinner that I ordered, a summer dinner for a hot evening, for I had hoped that the weather would be kind, and that we should be able to eat on the terrace:
Melon de Cantaloup Frappé.Kroupnick.Sole à la Piccadilly.Suprême de Volaille Jeannette.Caille Royale Singapore.Cœur de Romaine.Asperges Vertes. Sauce Divine.Vasque de Fraises Louis XIV.Corbeille d'Excellences.
I waited for my guests in the lounge where the orchestra plays, a lounge panelled, as the restaurant is, and with paintings of fruit in the circular wreaths above the doors, with cane easy-chairs and cane tables with glass tops scattered about, with palms in great china vases, with gilt Ionic capitals to the pilasters on either side of the great supports to the roof, and with a great painted ceiling. A glazed screen with windows and doors in it separates the lounge from the restaurant.
"The Princess," when my guests arrived, was wearing a most becoming gown, and had brought her furs with her, in case I, as a mad Englishman, might insist on dining on the terrace in spite of the rain. "Daddy," who is, like myself, an old soldieren retraite, had put on one of his Paris unstarched shirts with many pleats, and was wearing his fusilier studs. M. Berti, his beard pointed like that of a Spaniard, bowed to us at the entrance of the restaurant, and directed us to our table, by which was a second little table with on it all the apparatusfor the elaborating of the fish dish before our eyes. Near it stood themaître d'hôtel, pale and determined, feeling, I think, that the reputation of the house was in his hands, and a waiter and acommisunder his immediate orders. "The Princess," as I have written, wore a most becoming gown, and it pleased me that she should have so framed her native beauty, and I am sure it also pleased her, for at the other tables all the other guests were exceedingly well groomed and well frocked—a most good-looking company.
The soup, a white Russian soup with barley as its dominating ingredient, is one of those peasant soups the French have borrowed from the Russians, and have refined in promoting it to thehaute cuisine. Thesole à la Piccadillyis a fish dish which grows to perfection as it is manipulated before the eyes of the expectant diners. A wide bath of mixed whisky and brandy boils up over the spirit lamp, and into this the boiled soles make a plunge before they are carried away to be filleted; then into the almost exhausted mixture of spirits is poured the sauce, which is a "secret of the house," and as this boils up first cream and then butter is added to it. Thefilets de solecome hot to table, and over each portion of the fish is poured the precious sauce, sharp tasting, with a suggestion of anchovy amidst its many flavours. While this sole was being prepared, "Daddy" at first talked on of polo matches at Ranelagh and golf at Richmond, and did not notice that both "The Princess" and myself had become silent, as gourmets should be when watching a delicate culinary operation, but he, too, after a while felt the solemnity of the moment, and became dumb until the fish was before him, and he could pronounce it to be "very good indeed," an emphatic expression of opinion on the part of all three of us which, I trust, was conveyed to M. Schreyeck in his domains. Thesuprême de volaillewas a noblechaudfroidof chicken with a rich stuffing or farce, I am not sure which is the correct description, in whichfoie graswas the dominating note. The quails were named after the island of Singapore, because with them in the china dish came a most savoury accompaniment of pine-apple pulp and juice—and there are thousands of acres of pine-apples in Singapore—an admirable contrast to the flesh of the plump birds. To this dish also our council of three gave high praise. The bowl of strawberries and ice and fruit flavouring, another of the dishes of the house, made an admirable ending to a very good dinner, and with this dinner we drank a champagne strongly recommended by the house, Irroy 1904. I paid my bill, the total of which came to £3, 13s. 6d., the charge being 12s. 6d. a head for the dinner, which was a small sum for such delicate fare, and then we went into the lounge, where the band was still playing, to drink coffee and liqueurs, and to allow "Daddy" to smoke one of the very long cigars of which he always carries a supply.
It was still raining when my two guests started in their motor car back to Richmond, but they declared that they were fortified for their journey down into the country by a most satisfactory dinner.
The Piccadilly Hotel of to-day stands partly on the site of the agglomeration of halls and bar and restaurant which all came under the name of St James's Hall, the bar and restaurant being, in the mouths of the frequenters thereof, "Jemmy's." The great hall was in its day the centre of the musical world, and its Monday Pops and its classical concerts were celebrated. In a smaller hall the Moore and Burgess Minstrels flourished for many years until fickle London for a while grew tired of burnt-cork minstrelsy. The big bar of the St James's declined,as did most other restaurant bars, when gentlemen no longer cared to be seen taking their liquid refreshment standing, and the clientele of the restaurant was decidedly Bohemian. When "Jemmy's" was wiped off the map of London there were not many tears shed at its disappearance. The Piccadilly Hotel and its restaurant, when they were first opened, went through their teething troubles, as do most new establishments. The restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, most of its personnel coming straight from Monte Carlo to London, but though themaîtres d'hôtelknew who was who in the principality of Monaco they were not so well acquainted with the personalities of London life. All these matters invariably straighten themselves out. I read in the columns of City intelligence that the hotel, under the management of Mr F. Heim, who is now managing director, is a financial success, and is paying good dividends. The restaurant has gathered to itself a clientele that is smart and well-dressed, and it treats its guests excellently.
To the great grill-room, which lies down in the basement below the restaurant, and which is one of the largest and one of the busiest places of good cheer in London, I allude in my chapter concerning some of the grill-rooms.
Behind every successful restaurant there is some personality—a clever proprietor, a great cook, a managing director with a talent for organisation, or a popularmaître d'hôtel. The Rendezvous, in Dean Street, has been brought to prosperity and popularity by the work of one man, its proprietor, M. Peter Gallina. He is a dapper little Italian, with a small moustache, a man of good family who ran away from home as a boy and has made his way by his native cleverness and perseverance, and by the possession of an exceptionally keen palate. He grounded himself well in all that concerns a restaurant in a small Parisian establishment not far from the Avenue d'Iéna. When he had learned there enough of the trade to qualify him to be a manager of any restaurant he came to England with his savings in his pocket and took the position of manager in a small Strand restaurant, while he looked about for an opportunity to become a proprietor and to possess a restaurant of his own. He had the name of his restaurant ready before he found a suitable house, for one day after a meal he sat thinking of various matters and idly scribbled on the tablecloth a series of capital "R's." Then, with no special intention, he fitted on names to the "R's"—Rome, Renaissance, Renommé, Rendezvous, and suddenly found that the title he wanted had come to him. And in the same chance way he found the positionhe wanted for his restaurant. During the period that he was at the restaurant in the Strand he used to go to Dean Street to buy coffee for his little household, and he noticed one day that a house there was to let. It had been used by one of those mushroom clubs which spring up almost in a night in Soho, and the police had terminated its short existence by making a raid on the premises as a gaming-house. M. Gallina saw his opportunity, took it, spent some money in brightening it up, and gave it an old-English window on its ground floor, and that was the beginning of the Rendezvous.
The gastronomic scouts soon discovered that Peter Gallina in his little restaurant was giving extraordinarily good value at very moderate prices, and some of them sent me word concerning it. Mr Ernest Oldmeadow, the distinguished novelist, was one of the first of Gallina's customers, and brought many others to the newly established restaurant. Mr G. R. Sims, the genial "Dagonet" ofThe Referee, was one of the first among the scribes to tell the general public of the existence of the Rendezvous, and he wrote a ballad in its honour. I, in the early days of the existence of the restaurant, made the acquaintance both of it and its proprietor, who then, as now, affected clothes of an original cut. In his restaurant Peter Gallina wears a small double-breasted white jacket, with skirts and a very wide opening in front. This opening is filled by the most voluminous black cravat that has been seen since the days of the Dandies. A small white apron is another article of his costume. In those early days M. Gallina oscillated rapidly and continuously between the kitchen and the restaurant, first seeing that the dishes were properly prepared, and then watching his customers appreciatively eat the food. He had no licence then to sell wines, and a small boy wasconstantly sent scurrying across the road to a wine-merchant's shop almost opposite, a shop which should have interest for all readers of books, for its proprietor is a well-known author.
M. Gallina in a little book of "Eighteen Simple Menus," with the recipes for all the dishes, a very useful little book which he used to give away to his customers, but which he now sells to them for a shilling, has in a preface set down some "Golden Rules for Cooks," and the first of these is "Buy good materials only. The best cook in the world cannot turn third-class materials into a first-class dish." This rule M. Gallina has always observed himself.
The Rendezvous has constantly been increased in size. A house next door to it fell vacant, and M. Gallina at once took it and converted it into part of his restaurant. Then with larger dining-room came the necessity for a larger kitchen, and this matter was put in hand. A wine licence granted to the restaurant brought with it all the responsibilities of a cellar, and M. Gallina has now an admirable kitchen and offices, with walls of shining white tiles, and a cellar big enough to hold all the wine that his customers require. A tea and cake shop, with tea-rooms on the first floor, the Maison Gallina, next door but one to the restaurant, was the next achievement of the enterprising little man, and, finally, he rounded off his restaurant by building at the back a new room, all dark oak and mirrors and Oriental carpets, with a handsome oak gallery running round it.
The Rendezvous Restaurant is now one of the landmarks of Dean Street. The wide windows of its ground floor are of little square panes, each window set in a white wooden frame, above a facing of glazed red tiles, and before them stands a lineof Noah's Ark trees in green tubs. Over these ground-floor windows the restaurant's name is written in Old English characters on a white ground. A line of shrubs in winter and flowers in summer is beneath the windows of the first floors of the two old houses, and at night a row of globes blazes with electric light above the name of the restaurant.
The interiors of the two front rooms on the ground floor of the restaurant have been decorated to represent the parlours of an Old English farmhouse. There are heavy black beams supporting the ceiling, the walls are panelled with green cloth in wooden frames, the electric lamps give their light in old lanterns, and there are silver wine coolers with ferns in them on the broad window-sill. Upstairs, and there are three staircases in the restaurant, one of the rooms on the first floor is kept in its original Georgian panelled simplicity, while the other is a Dutch room with plaques of Delft ware on the walls. The new room at the back I have already described.
The clientele of the restaurant comprises every class of Londoner from princes to art students. The late Prince Francis of Teck often dined there. I have seen ladies in all their glory of tiaras of diamonds and of pearl necklaces eating an early meal at the Rendezvous before going to the opera; and the youngster who is one day going to obtain Sargent's prices for his pictures, but is still in the chrysalis stage, and the as yet undiscovered Melbas and Clara Butts receive just as much attention when they eat the one dish which forms their lunch or dinner as do the great people of the land who indulge in many courses. The Royalty is but a score of steps away from the Rendezvous, and many playgoers on their way to that theatre dine at the restaurant or sup there after the performance. Messrs Vedrenne and Eadie quite appreciate theadvantage it is to have a flourishing restaurant just outside their doors, and gave M. Gallina every encouragement when he first established himself in Dean Street.
The Rendezvous has acarte du jourwhich gives a great choice of dishes. The long card is covered with items printed in red or written in blue ink, and special delicacies are set down in scarlet. There are various sole dishes and a score of those of other kinds of fish. The entrées take up half the card, and birds and salads, vegetables, savouries and dessert each have a thick little column of written items under their respective headings. The prices, as I have already written, are quite moderate for good material. The fish dishes average eighteenpence, the entrées a little less. I have eaten at a dinner-party given in the new room a very noble feast, and I have dined by myself on soup, sole, anavarinof lamb and anentremet, my dinner, without wine, costing me five-and-threepence.
There are two specialities of the house—thesole Rendezvousand thesoufflé Gallina-—which should be included in any typical dinner of the establishment, and the last time that I dined at the restaurant and entertained a lady I included both of these in the menu, which ran thus:
Melon Cantaloup.Crème Fermeuse.Soles Rendezvous.Aile de Poularde en Casserole.Aubergine à l'Espagnole.Soufflé Gallina.Café.
Thesole Rendezvousis an admirable method of cooking the fish with a white wine sauce and most of the other good things that a cook can use in a fish dish, all of which make it admirable to the taste butexceedingly rich. Thesoufflé Gallinais asouffléwith brandied cherries, and it is served in a little lagoon of fine champagne cognac which is set alight. It is by no means a teetotal dish. This dinner for two, with a pint of Vieux Pré, a champagne recommended by the house, and a bottle of Mattoni, came very near a sovereign.
Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall Mall Restaurant. It is a restaurant which has prospered exceedingly, and has done so because its two proprietors, MM. Pietro Degiuli and Arnolfo Boriani—both ex-head waiters at the Savoy and the Carlton—see to every detail concerning their restaurant and their kitchen and their cellar with untiring diligence and with a complete knowledge. They are both—Degiuli, small and neat and dapper, M. Boriani, broad, wearing a curled-up moustache and looking like atenore robusto—always in the restaurant at meal-times doing the work ofmaîtres d'hôteland giving personal attention to every member of their clientele.
In the ten years that have elapsed since they rechristened the restaurant, which for a short period had been known as Epitaux's, they have made many improvements. The restaurant itself, a high room with a curved roof and two sliding skylights in the roof, which not only let in the light but fresh air as well, is now a white restaurant, with deep rosepanels alternating with mirrors between the pilasters. There is a little gilding in the decoration, but as carpet and chairs and lamp-shades conform to the scheme of rose, the restaurant may be described as all white and deep pink. There was originally a musicians' gallery at one end of this dining-hall, a legacy from the Café de l'Europe, as it was called in the fifties, and in the days of the café the doorway was cased in to prevent draughts reaching the worthies who used to sup there after the performance at the Haymarket Theatre. The old wooden screen to the door has been swept away, and people lunch and dine and sup in the gallery which has replaced the domain of the musicians. A little lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, made by absorbing part of the premises of the shop next door, is one of the most recent additions to the Pall Mall, and the Fly-fishers' Club having moved to larger premises, MM. Degiuli and Boriani have been able to construct a banqueting-room on the first floor that, with a private dining-room which can accommodate twenty diners, gives them now quite a large establishment.
As I have written, the two proprietors give personal attention to every matter connected with the restaurant, and they have not forgotten that they are Italians, for in theirtable d'hôtelunch, the price of which is half-a-crown, one of the dishes is usually an Italian one, and all the coffee made in the establishment is made after the Italian fashion, no metal being allowed to come in contact with the fluid. For their supper menu they always choose simple dishes, which can be cooked directly an order has been given by those who sup. There is acarte du jour, but the dinners that nineteen out of twenty diners order are one or other of thetable d'hôtedinners of the day, a four-shilling and a five-and-six one. This was themenu of the more expensive of these two dinners on the last occasion that I dined at the Pall Mall:
Hors d'œuvre Variés.Consommé Madrilène Froid and Chaud or Germiny.Saumon Hollandaise.Cailles Richelieu à la Gelée.Selle d'Agneau Soubise.Fonds d'Artichauts Barigoule.Pommes Château.Volaille en Cocotte.Salade.Fraises Melba.
The soup was good, the quail especially attracted my notice, for its jelly was flavoured with capsicum, giving it thus a special cachet.
The service at the Pall Mall is quick and silent, and, though there is no unseemly hurry, the dinner is quickly served, for most of the people who dine at the Pall Mall are going on to a theatre.
The Pall Mall has an exceedinglycomme il fautclientele, and any man who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time, and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants. And perhaps because the Pall Mall stands where the stage of one of the theatres in the Haymarket used to be, the restaurant numbers amongst its clientele many of the great people of the opera and of the theatre, as its book of autographs shows. This is a book full of scraps of wisdom and wit, and the Stars of Song and Politics and the Stage have not beenafraid to cap each other's remarks. Thus when Madame Patti leads off on the top of a page with a charming platitude, "A beautiful voice is the gift of God," Madame Yvette Guilbert inscribes below a reminder that "An ugly voice is also the gift of God"; Sir Herbert Tree, taking a different view from that of either of the ladies, asks whether a voice should not be considered "A visitation of Providence"; Miss Mary Anderson sides with her sex, for she opines that "All things are the gift of God"; and Sir Rider Haggard rounds off the discussion with "But the greatest gift of God is Silence." Lord Gladstone, about to depart for South Africa, writes, "Faith in the Old Country" as his contribution, and Mr Lloyd George puts immediately below it a sentence in Welsh, which being translated means "Liberty will conquer"; Mr Ben Davies, also a man of gallant little Wales, writes in his native tongue, below Mr Lloyd George's sentence, "You are quite right, Lloyd George, but your liberality has taken most of my money." Mr John Burns, dining at the restaurant on "Insurance Day, 1911," was not stirred up to any poetic flights by the occasion, "Health the only wealth" being his rhymed contribution.
Amongst the signatures in the book is that of Signor Marconi, who is not inclined to write his name more often than is necessary. His contribution was coaxed from him by a flash of wit on the part of M. Boriani. On the menu of the dinner eaten by the inventor of wireless telegraphy appeared the item "Haricots verts à la Marconi." The great electrician asked why they were so named. M. Boriani trusted that the beans were not stringy, and the inventor having reassured him on this point, he said that in this case they might rightly be described as "Sans fil."
MM. Degiuli and Boriani have chosen as the mottoof their restaurant, "Venez et vous reviendrez," and this confident prediction has been justified.
There is much history concerning the site on which the Pall Mall now stands. In the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, when the lane which led from Piccadilly down to the Mall gradually became a street of houses, Charles II. gave permission to John Harvey and his partner to sell cattle as well as fodder in the Haymarket. All along this market, on both sides, inns sprang up, and one of them occupied the site where the Pall Mall Restaurant now stands. The inn was pulled down early in the eighteenth century, and on its site Mr Potter, a carpenter, built a "summer" theatre; this theatre was converted by Samuel Foote somewhere about 1760 into a winter theatre. Mr A. M. Broadley has written for the proprietors of the Pall Mall an interesting booklet which deals at length with this theatre and its managers, Foote and the Colmans, and with the great actresses and actors and musicians who appeared on its stage. Mozart played on the spinet there as an infant prodigy; Margaret Woffington made her first bow to an English audience in the part of Macheath inThe Beggars' Opera, "after the Irish manner"; and two actresses who married into the peerage—Lavinia Fenton, who died Duchess of Bolton, and Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby—played on its stage. But on 14th October 1820, the Little Theatre, as it was called, closed its doors with the tragedy ofKing Learand a farce. It was not at once pulled down, and was still standing in a battered state when the present Haymarket Theatre, built by John Nash, was opened in 1821, just a fortnight before the coronation of George IV. When the Little Theatre was eventually pulled down shops were erected on its site. Two of these were in the year of the first Great Exhibition converted into the Café de l'Europe,the great hall of which, somewhat altered, is the large room of the present restaurant. Mr William John Wilde, who was Buckstone's treasurer at the Haymarket Theatre, became the proprietor of the Café de l'Europe in the late fifties, and as there was no early-closing law in those days the café naturally enough became the favourite supping place for those who had sat through a long evening at the theatre almost next door, and the sturdy critics who congregated in the first row of the pit ate their devilled bones and tripe and onions, Welsh rarebits, chops and potatoes in their jackets, at the café after midnight and passed judgment on the performances of Buckstone and Liston, Sothern and the other famous comedians of the theatre as they supped. Mr D. Pentecost was the last proprietor of the old café. He was, as "Dagonet" inThe Refereehas lately reminded us, a nephew of Pierce Egan, the author of "Tom and Jerry," and he was, amongst other things, the refreshment contractor to the Alhambra. He was also the proprietor of the Epitaux Restaurant in the colonnade of the opera house in the Haymarket. When that building was pulled down, in order that the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre should be built on its site, Mr Pentecost transferred the name of Epitaux to the Café de l'Europe. The building was redecorated and MM. Costa and Rizzi became the lessees. Ten years ago, as I have previously written, MM. Degiuli and Boriani became the proprietors and gave the restaurant its present name and its present appearance.
Jermyn Street used to be sacred to small private hotels, shops and bachelors' chambers, but the restaurants have now invaded it and there are half-a-dozen places of good cheer which have their front doors in the street, while some of the Piccadilly restaurants have a back entrance there.
M. Jules had the happy idea of taking two houses, one of them at one time the home of Mrs Fitzherbert, as a medallion of the head of King George IV., found under the drawing-room floor proves, and converting them into a hotel and restaurant. It has proved so successful in Jules' case that he is now adding on to his hotel and restaurant, building at the same time a nice little suite of rooms with bow-windows for himself and his wife. As you walk down Jermyn Street from St James's Street towards Lower Regent Street, the Maison Jules is on the right-hand side. You cannot miss it, for an illuminated terrestrial globe and the name above the doorway catch your eye. A little ante-room is separated from the restaurant by a glazed screen to keep off draughts. The restaurant itself, a long room running the whole width of the house, is all white, with a little raised ornamentation on its walls, with gilt capitals to the white pillars, and on the marble mantelpiece a clock and candelabra of deep blue china and ormolu. At the end of the rooma big window, which is almost a wall of glass, is cloaked by lace curtains. There is a second room running at right angles at the back, which either can be used as part of the restaurant or can be partitioned off.
Jules himself will welcome you as you come into the restaurant. I have known him for many years, having first made his acquaintance when he was manager at the Berkeley, when his hair was of lustrous brown, and I have always been one of his supporters at the hotel in Piccadilly and at the Savoy—when he became manager there, and now in Jermyn Street, where, with his wife and his daughter, who has married thechef de cuisine, and his son, who is following in his father's footsteps, he controls the restaurant and the hotel. The girth of his waist may have increased a little, possibly to match the bow-windows of those new rooms, since I have known him, and his hair is now powdered with grey, but his good-natured, round, rosy face, and his eyes, which almost close when he smiles, remain the same. He is always so pleased to see me that I find that a dinner at the Maison Jules does me more good than most tonics do.
The people who dine at the Maison Jules are all pleasant and well-to-do, and all the men wear dress clothes. Some of the men are grey-haired people like myself who have followed Jules in all his migrations; but the restaurant is by no means a home of rest for the elderly, for on the last occasion that I dined there one of the prettiest of the younger generation of actresses was being entertained at the next table to mine; and young as well as elderly diners appreciate the bonhomie that seems to be in the atmosphere at the Maison Jules. The dinner of the house is an eight-shilling one. The dinner I ate when I last dinedchezJules is quite a fair specimen of the evening meal:
Hors d'œuvre.Consommé aux Quenelles.Crème Américaine.Suprême de Sole Volga.Riz de Veau Souvaroff.Médaillon de Bœuf Algérienne.Poularde à la Broche.Salade.Haricots Verts au Beurre.Mousse aux Violettes.Friandises.
Thecrème Américaine, a pink thick soup, was excellent, and so was the cold dish of sole, with jelly and a little vegetable salad. Themousse aux violetteswas an ice with crystallised violets on the top; and theriz de veauand thepoularde—for which Jules wished to substitute a partridge—were both excellent of their kind. When Jules, before I left, came to me and told me that some gentlemen a little farther down the room had told him that there was absolutely nothing to criticise in the dinner, I was not hard-hearted enough to tell him that the beans were stringy, which, to tell the truth, they were. Otherwise I agreed with the gentlemen farther down the room. The wine list is a well-chosen one, and there is in the cellar some 1820 Martell brandy, landed in England in 1870, which used to be the pride of the old St James's Restaurant, and the whole of which Jules bought at the sale.
A little farther down the street on the same side is a restaurant and hotel controlled by another old acquaintance of mine in the restaurant world. The restaurant is Bellomo's, and the hotel of which it forms a part is Morle's Hotel. In the days when I thought it my duty to do my share of drinking, at the Café Royal, a particularly excellent cuvée of Cliquot Vin Rosé, the waiter who was in charge of the table at which I usually sat, and who attended toall my wants with admirable intuition, was not at all one of the lean kind, and to identify him from his fellows I always called him, and wrote of him as, "the fat waiter." He prospered and ran up the tree of promotion, as good waiters do at the Café Royal, so that in his later development he becamemaître d'hôtelin charge of the grill-room, and wore a frock-coat and a black tie. But the anxieties of his new position in no way caused him to grow thin. A year or two ago a friend wrote to me saying that he and some others had found the money to set up Bellomo, whom, of course, I remembered at the Café Royal, in a restaurant of his own in Jermyn Street, and hoped that I would go and see how he prospered there. I went, not feeling quite sure who Bellomo was, and found my fat waiter of old, now a plump proprietor. His restaurant, which consists of two rooms thrown into one, has walls with a light shade of pink on them, and at night is lit by electroliers with pink shades. A few steps lead from the front to the back. The restaurant is a cosy little establishment, and the two dinners which are served there—one a three-and-six one and the other a five-shilling one—are invariably well cooked, for M. Bellomo has brought the good Café Royal traditions with him to his new home. This is a typical menu, a winter one, of Bellomo's three-and-six dinner: