THE AMERICAN BAR, CRITERION (PICCADILLY CIRCUS)
It was half-past seven, or it may have been even a little later, when I
encountered the recorder of racing romances wandering along the eastern
half-mile of Piccadilly, and both he and I had been too indolent to get
into the conventional sables. To him it was a matter of no moment. Many
racing campaigns had so "taken the corners off" him that, like that
excellent warrior, but distinctly casual diner, Frederick the Great, he
could sit himself down in any garb and return grateful thanks to Heaven
for enough salt beef and cabbage for a meal--which may go to prove
either that Frederick should have been enshrined among the martyrs, or
that salt beef has monstrously degenerated.
A very good place in the old days for an undress dinner, the romancer
declared when the subject was broached, was the American Bar at the
Criterion, and further than this he went by telling me of the men who
"knew their town," who swore by the succulent grilled pigs' feet to be
had there at supper-time; so there we went.
Managers come and managers go at the big caravanserai at Piccadilly
Circus, but the American Bar remains the same. The ceiling had been
recently renovated, and the fine patriotic design of the national
eagle, with its talons full of forked lightning, had been embellished
with some extra gold-leaf; otherwise there is little change. There are
the little carved cupids on the outside portals, the marble-topped
tables which are deftly covered with table-cloths by the waiters in the
usual French garb of white aprons and short jackets when the meal-times
approach, the partitions of brass rail, the marble columns, the panels
of glazed tiles, and, at the end of the room, the grill with a clock
above it, where, shielded by a transparent screen, a stout cook all in
white stands and turns the chops and the steaks on the great gridiron
where the fat drips through and fizzles on the coals beneath. The great
janitors, both of mighty girth, who stand at the outer doors, look in
occasionally to give a message, for from about twelve in the morning
to midnight the American Bar is as busy as a beehive, and each edition
of the evening papers is anxiously bought and scanned by most of the
habitués, who have, as a rule, a tinge of the racing man about them.
After ordering our soup, a _consommé Nevers_ that proved good, though
we waited an unconscionable time for it, my guest fell to pointing
out some of the many celebrities who were there, either sitting at
the tables or standing at the bar, where the many bottles on the
shelves make a fine show, where the lager-beer engine is surmounted by
a silvered statuette, and three white-coated tenders seem continually
employed in mixing drinks in tumblers half-filled with crushed ice; and
foremost amongst them was a Mr. Cockburn, a florid man of distinctly
sporting appearance, whose cheeks still bore the unsightly scars that
their wearer got in the now almost forgotten brawl with cutlasses
in a house in Munster Terrace, Regent's Park. Near him was a spare,
dark man, dressed in grey, wearing his bowler hat very much over one
ear. This was Saville, Cockburn's fellow-sufferer in the battle of
the blades, who, when the chief assailant, a Mexican card-cheat named
Tarbeaux (now in penal servitude), was about to return to the attack on
Cockburn, made the extraordinary appeal, "That's enough; don't _twice_
him!"
Then there was sitting at one of the tables a burly fellow, broad of
back and lavishly bestudded with diamonds, who the romancer informed me
was a redoubtable bookmaker. He it was, said my philosopher, who headed
the Birmingham contingent at most of the prize-fights of recent years,
and particularly in evidence were they at the Smith and Greenfield and
the Smith and Slavin encounters at Le Vesinet and Bruges respectively.
The names of the other prosperous-looking people who formed a group
round the hero of the diamonds have slipped my memory, but they all
seemed to have a nickname of some kind, and the racing romancer, when I
asked for information about any of them, invariably began, "What, not
know old--whatever the name might be?"
For our second course we took _saumon, sauce Gervoise_, and very good
and well-cooked it was, though again we had some time to wait for it;
and here it was that many eyes noted the entrance of a well-known
Oriental banker, a gentleman of great wealth, and one of the last
personages one would have expected to see dining solus and in the
plainest manner possible. That it was a favourite resort of his seemed
apparent from the fact that he walked straight to a table at which a
chair had been turned up, and the manager of the room himself came
forward to proffer those few words of advice which relieve the diner
of so much hazardous speculation. Yet other newcomers were a stalwart
ex-major of the Royal Artillery, and a music-hall agent, who in the
halcyon past had half the proprietors of variety theatres in London
at his feet. To each and all of them "Charlie," the well-groomed head
bar-keeper with the accurately-parted and immaculately plastered hair,
had something of paramount interest to impart, and he seemed so bland
that one wondered how he ever survived the friendly raids of the
olden days when a certain festive youth and his companions were wont
to take the place by storm, and on one occasion escaladed the bar,
took possession of the tills, and scrambled the shillings among the
chronic needy. What wild extravagances were they not capable of! It
was here that the undefeated racing man who used to be known as the
best-looking youth in London, and was to be seen daily in Piccadilly
with a black poodle decorated with bows of yellow ribbon, once mixed,
for the entertainment of his friends, his fearful and wonderful
"fruit-salads"--generally a couple of sovereigns' worth of hothouse
fruit steeped in the oldest cognac of Justerini and Brooks, and
_liqueurs variées_, the effects of which the friends aforesaid found
the greatest possible difficulty in sleeping off by dinner-time.
But our entrée arrives, a _filet sauté Béarnaise_, than which I
desire to eat no better. A new arrival of guests, most of them fresh
from Kempton, with their racing-glasses hung over their shoulders,
included a young man with a familiarly known nickname, who in the
first Jubilee years galloped through his money and earned his jubilant
title; another racing man, with the name of a philanthropist of a past
generation, who at one time owned a property with two racecourses on
it; and a gentleman who used to drive a yellow-bodied coach with four
piebald horses, which he alluded to humorously as his mustard-pot
and guinea-pigs, who having run through one fortune seems likely to
make another. A sporting baronet, who takes an interest in yachting;
a dramatist, who has written more than one racing play, and no doubt
finds the American Bar useful for his local colour; our cleverest
caricaturist, and a dozen or two less well-known people, formed a solid
mass before the bar, and occupied all the available tables. We had
finished our Burgundy, which for its price was exceptionally good, and
my guest had eaten some cheddar cheese, when the roving disposition of
the racing romancer asserted itself, and for our coffee and liqueurs
we must needs go to the hospitable Eccentric Club across the way, so
I called for the bill: Two consommé, 2s.; two salmon, 4s.; two filets
sautés, 6s.; cheese, 6d.; Burgundy, 5s.; total, 17s. 6d.
17_th May_.