GATTI'S (THE STRAND)
I was somewhat in a quandary. I was going to the new play at the St.
James's, and had made up my mind to dine at a little club not far from
Charing Cross, of which I have the honour to be a member. I went into
the sacred portals. I found the hall without a hat or coat hung up in
it, and entering the big room of the club I disturbed the meditation
of the club servants. There was, for a wonder, nobody in the club, no
one had ordered dinner, and as I do not like being a solitary diner
at a long table, with three guardian angels in white jackets hovering
round me, I made up my mind to go and have my chop elsewhere. My time
was short, for I was anxious not to miss a word of the first act. Any
of the dinners of the hotels in Northumberland Avenue would be too long
for my time; but I was within a stone's throw of Gatti's and thought
that I would revisit an old haunt and revive memories of my days of
subalternhood.
When I had a large crop of curly hair on my head, and just enough down
to pull on my upper lip, when a small allowance and a sub-lieutenant's
5s. 3d. a day were all my wealth and I never entered the portals of
Cox's Bank without trembling, I used to go much to Gatti's. If I had
the felicity of entertaining a lady at a _tête-à-tête_ dinner my
ambition did not rise to the Café Royal--the Savoy and Princes' Hall,
and Willis's and the rest did not exist at that time--where I should
have fingered the money in my pocket and should have been desperately
nervous when the waiter appeared with the bill. I went instead to
Gatti's. One could get a large amount of good food at a very easy
tariff there, one knew exactly the price of everything from the card,
and there was no smiling head waiter with a nest of plovers' eggs at
7s. 6d. apiece, or a basket of strawberries for a guinea, to set one's
poverty against one's gallantry. _Asti spumante_, too, is much cheaper
than champagne, and I think most of the fair sex really like it better.
Be that as it may, the financial question was the prominent one, and
I sometimes found myself standing waiting at the Strand entrance
alongside a gigantic porter and a huge hound. I made great friends with
both the big man and the big dog, and, if after a quarter of an hour's
waiting, my fair guest did not appear the big man invariably consoled
me with, "Do not despaire, saire. Perhaps the lady 'as a dronken
cabman."
Gatti's was not then as it is now. There was the straight run in
from Adelaide Street, where strange-looking foreigners sat at the
marble-topped little tables and made the most of one portion of some
dish piled high with macaroni, and there was the curving entrance-hall
leading in from the Strand, with its white-clothed tables, and its
steps up to the biggest room, and between the long gallery with its
clothless tables and the aristocratic end of the restaurant the Messrs.
Gatti sat at an oval desk to which each waiter brought every dish that
was to be served, and there was a mysterious interchange of what looked
like metal tokens. All the theatrical demigods of my subalternhood used
to be at the tables too. There I first (off the stage) saw Nelly Power,
whose photograph had adorned my room at Harrow, and a gay young fellow
called Toole, and another named Lionel Brough, and H. J. Byron, and
half a hundred more. The modern lights of the stage and the dramatists
go to Gatti's still, and no doubt are furtively stared at now by
youngsters such as I was then. There were many interesting people at
Gatti's in those days, as there are now, and most fascinating to me
was an old aide-de-camp of Garibaldi, a fine, white-moustached old man
in a slouch hat and voluminous cloak, with something of the look of
his great chief about him, who always ordered only one dish, and that
of the cheapest. The halfpenny he gave the waiter as a tip was always
received with as many thanks as a reckless young swell's half-sovereign
would be.
The entrance from King William Street is new since those days, and so
is the room it leads into, making Gatti's, with its triple entrances,
rather like the crest of the Isle of Man. I went in by this new
entrance, noticing that the house next door had also been absorbed
into the restaurant, and found myself again in the familiar scene of
bustle. Every table was taken; here a single gentleman, pegging away at
his cut from the joint, there a family party, the father with a napkin
tucked under his chin, the child with one tied round its neck. There
was a party of girls in much-flowered hats who unmistakably belonged
to some theatre; two dramatists with a bundle of brown-paper-covered
manuscript on the table between them; a little costumier in blue
spectacles eating silently, while a light-bearded gentleman, who is
the best-known perruquier in London, was telling him volubly of the
wonderful wigs that Mdme. Sarah Bernhardt had ordered for her new
piece. The dramatists would have had me stay and eat at their table;
but I wanted to go if possible to my old seat, and so went on to the
largest room, the centre of the restaurant, where I used to retain a
corner table. Not a seat was to be had, everywhere were parties of
respectable citizens and their wives in broadcloth and stuff, and the
bustling waiters in dress clothes and black ties could only look round
helplessly when I asked them to find me a table. I was the one man
in dress clothes in the room, the waiters excepted, and I began to
think, as I stood rather desolately amid all the bustle and clatter,
that I should have done more wisely to dine in solitary dignity at
the club, when I looked towards the table where the two Messrs. Gatti
in old days, when they were not at the desk, used to sit, for they
were always together, and there was the survivor of the two sitting
in his accustomed seat. The author of _Captain Swift_, who had been
sitting opposite to him, talking, no doubt, about a coming play for
the Adelphi, rose at that moment, and Mr. Gatti, seeing my dilemma,
motioned me to the vacant seat. We none of us grow younger, and as
I shook Mr. Gatti's hand I thought that, though his hair, brushed
straight back from the forehead, and his moustache are hardly touched
with grey, he was looking very careworn.
One of the managers, in frock-coat and black tie, was at my elbow with
the bill of fare. _Croûte au pot_, printed in bigger letters than the
rest of the dishes, first caught my eye, and I ordered that; and,
skipping the long list of fish and entrées, I was puzzling as to which
of the many joints to have a cut from, when the manager suggested
braised mutton, which I thought sounded well, and for drink I would
have a big glass of cold lager-beer.
I looked round the rooms. Except for the new rooms and a new
serving-room, everything seemed very much the same as of past times.
The crowd at the marble-topped tables was not quite so picturesque as
that I remembered of old; but the great counter, with its backing of
dark wood and looking-glass, its lager-beer engine, and its army of
bottles, was there, the oval desk with its two occupants was there, the
carvers with the big dish-covers running up and down on chains were
there. The decorations of blue and gold were of the same colours that I
recall, the stained window I remembered, but a new portrait of the late
Mr. Terriss, the actor, in the well-known grey suit, looked down on me
from the wall.
The soup, strong and hot, with its accompanying vegetables on
a separate plate, was brought, and, having disposed of it, I
thought that it was a good opportunity to interview Mr. Gatti as
to the transformations of the restaurant and as to his theatrical
speculations. I learned that the first state of the Adelaide Gallery
was a long entrance leading to one big room, that the floor of the
restaurant was where the cellars are now, and that two balconies at
that time ran round the room. Bit by bit the various changes were
explained to me, until the advent of the braised mutton, with white
beans and new potatoes, brought a pause. Capital mutton it was--a huge
helping too--and the lager-beer delightfully cold and light. "A concert
season at Covent Garden was your first theatrical speculation, was it
not?" I had begun, when my eye caught the clock over the arch. I wanted
to hear about Covent Garden and the Adelphi and the Vaudeville, and I
wanted to eat cheese and drink coffee and some of the excellent old
brandy the restaurant has; but the hands of the clock pointed to twenty
minutes to eight, and at a quarter to eight the curtain would rise at
the St. James's, so I called for my bill. Soup, 1s. 6d.; entrée, 1s.
4d.; vegetable, 4d.; bread, 1d.; beer, 6d.; total, 3s. 9d.
5_th April_.