THE BLUE POSTS (CORK STREET)
"None of your d--d _à la's_, and remember I won't get into dress
clothes for anybody." That was what the old gentleman wrote, and it
was not an easy matter to find a dining place and a theatre to go to
afterwards that would suit my prospective guest.
The old gentleman lives his life in a little country town which is
favourable to the growth of characters; he always wears a plain,
double-breasted broadcloth coat; a bird's-eye cravat, taken twice round
his old-fashioned collar, folded in a manner that would puzzle a modern
valet, and secured by a fox-tooth pin; his waistcoats, the irreverent
youths of the club say, descended to him from his great-grandfather,
and his watch chain is a leather chin-strap. He has a particular
chair by a particular window of the county club on which he sits in
the afternoon of non-hunting days, and drinks one stiff glass of
brandy-and-water. He has never worn a greatcoat, never missed a day's
hunting for the last fifteen years, will walk a mile, run a mile, and
ride a mile against any man of his own age, and he is near seventy,
dislikes the French on principle, and has never been to France, and
comes to London as rarely as he can--very pressing business, the Cattle
Show or a horse show being the only matters that would ever bring
him up even for the day. The son, the grandson, and great-grandson
of comfortable country solicitors, he preferred entertaining clients
to advising them, always shut up his office on hunting days, and
having a surplus of the world's goods, for a bachelor, he lives a very
comfortable life in the beetle-browed old house in the High Street,
with its great garden behind, its dark dining-room with a glint of
reflected lights from polished mahogany and massed silver, its crooked
oak staircase, its panelled passages, and bedrooms, each with a huge
four-poster bed, its carved chimney-pieces and uneven floors; with, as
servants, a prim housekeeper, a fat cook--the only woman, he says, in
the county who can make a venison pasty--and an old butler, with whom
he argues as to the port to be drunk after dinner.
I know the old gentleman's tastes, for he has asked me often enough
to the wonderful oyster and woodcock lunches he gives, and the solid
English dinners in which haunches of venison, saddles of mutton, great
capons, turkeys almost as big as ostriches, cygnets, sucking pigs, and
such-like dishes generally are the _gros pièces_, and it was not easy
to select a suitable dining-place for him. He was up for the Hackney
Show; had, after much pressing, consented to dine and go to the
theatre, and where to take him I did not know.
The melodrama of the moment at the Adelphi was the play I thought he
would like, and, after passing by mentally my clubs, because he might
not care to be the one man in morning dress among a white-cravated
crowd, and the "smart" restaurants for the same reason, and also
because nothing but brute force would keep a maître d'hôtel from
putting an _à la_ on the menu, the happy thought came to me that at the
Blue Posts the fare would suit my guest well.
I went down in the early afternoon through the Burlington Arcade, with
its scent of perfumers' shops and its Parisian jewellery, into Cork
Street, where the tavern hides itself modestly.
I have but vague remembrances of the old house which was burned
down. To-day, if one did not know that the house holds still to its
reputation of being one of the very best places where old-fashioned
British food is to be obtained, it might, with its tiled floors, its
stained-glass windows and doors, its wall-papers of quiet artistic
shades, its electric light, be one of those small restaurants where the
Parisian art of cooking is cultivated. Past the stained-glass doors
leading into the wine-bars, upstairs and into the dining-room, sacred
to the male sex, with its six or seven little square tables, and two
round ones, I went, there to find Frank, the head waiter, not yet in
his evening garb, sitting and reading a paper. Frank, who, with his
white moustache and whiskers and white hair parted in the centre, has
still about him a suggestion of the soldier who fought under the old
Emperor William, has been for fifteen years head waiter at the Posts,
and is a person to be confided in; so I told him particulars as to
the old gentleman who was to be my guest, and asked for suggestions.
The bill of fare, on a long slip of paper, which Frank put into my
hand would have gladdened the old gentleman's heart. There was not an
_à la_ on it--not a word of French, "sauce _tartare_" excepted, and
entrées were rigorously excluded. Frank advised soup, saying that all
the soups were made from stock, no sauces of any kind being used; but
I mistrust the Britannic soup, for we are not a nation of soupmakers,
and would have none. "Grilled or fried?" was the question as to the
fish, and after due discussion I ordered a grilled sole. I was all for
a porterhouse steak, but at this Frank put his foot down. Rump steaks
were the specialty of the house, he said, and explained how the cook
kept the great joint of beef intact, only cutting a steak just before
he put it on the grill, and this being so, a rump steak it had to be,
with potatoes in their jackets, a salad, and cauliflower. Marrow-bones
completed the dinner. For wine I ordered a bottle of Beaune supérieur
and a pint of port.
At 7.45 to the second my old gentleman, his clean-shaven, ruddy face
bringing a breath of country air with it, appeared, and as we sat
at our table and waited for the sole, of which the cook had started
the cooking as soon as I set foot within the dining-room, I was
given much information as to the hackneys, told of some marvellous
runs that the county hounds had had lately, and was lectured on the
iniquity of the farmers wiring their fences. Then we looked at the
room and the company. The proof print of the coronation of Her Majesty
which hangs on the soft green-coloured wall was approved of as being
patriotic, the frieze with its little tablets bearing the names of
authors and composers and the stained-glass windows and skylight were
considered Frenchified, and the Parian statuettes on the mantelpiece
were dismissed as fal-lals. I wished that some of the stately bucks,
habitués of old days, had been dining there--Mr. Weatherby in his
blue coat and brass buttons, and a great publisher with his black
satin stock; for the young gentlemen who sat at the other tables, most
of them in dress clothes, though irreproachably correct, were not
picturesque.
Frank brought the sole, piping hot, still sizzling, from the bars. The
cook had given it the necessary squeeze of lemon, and, watching my
guest, I could see that the first item of my dinner was a success. The
Beaune, warmed to just the right temperature, was as good a Burgundy
as a man could wish with his dinner. Then came the steak, not a thin
slab of meat, but a fine, impressive solid mass of beef, great of
depth and size, the typical dish for Englishmen. I cut it, and in the
centre there was the ruddy flush which is as pleasing to the devout
diner as the blush on a maiden's cheek is to the devout lover. The
great potatoes, cooked in their skins, were so hot that they burned
our fingers, the cauliflower was excellent, and there was a delicious
beetroot salad powdered with spring onion. "Damme!" said the old
gentleman, "they understand what a steak is, here." Then came the
marrow-bones, each swathed in its napkin with its attendant square of
toast leaning up against it. Now the first essential in a marrow-bone
is that it should be hot, and the second that it should contain at
least a fair amount of marrow. Our bones were so hot that they could
hardly be held in spite of the protecting napkin, and from each gushed
forth a flood of the steaming delicacy.
We sat and sipped our port, and trifled with a Cheddar cheese. My old
gentleman had objected to the waiters in such a Britannic house being
of foreign birth; but I comforted him by telling him of the battles
against the French in which Frank had taken part, and of the history of
his maimed hand. "Fought the French, did he?" said the old gentleman.
"That's good. Damme, that's very good!" He had put a date to the port,
and opened his eyes when I told him how little I was charged for
it. Indeed, all the items of my bill were small. Dinners, 10s. 6d.;
Burgundy, 7s.; port, 5s. 6d.; total, £1: 3s.
"I hope you have not dined badly?" I asked my guest as we rose to
take cab for the Adelphi. "Well, my boy; _very_ well," said the old
gentleman.
15_th March._