CHALLIS'S (RUPERT STREET)
I felt like an extract from a Christmas story after the manner of
Charles Dickens. I was the unfortunate, desponding individual driven
at Christmas time to eat a solitary dinner in a deserted club, and as
I sat down to the little table, with three waiters regarding me with
placid curiosity, I felt a savage discontent that no spirit of a dead
sweetheart of days gone by, no child-angel, would appear to me as they
always do to the morose heroes of Christmas stories.
I had been reduced to solitude, moroseness, and a club dinner by
the possession of two tickets for Barnum and Bailey's great show at
Olympia. It was the day after Boxing Day, and I felt sure in the
afternoon that I should find a companion eager to see the performance
and previously to dine quietly at some little restaurant where
dress-clothes would not be _en règle_. Somehow or other I found it very
difficult to secure my man. It was the dream of the life of every man I
met to go to Olympia; but not to go there on Tuesday night. If I could
change the tickets for others for Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday
night I could have had a choice of fifty companions, but on Tuesday all
the married men said they had to dine at home with their wives; all
the unmarried ones had some other engagement. I began to feel that I
was shunned by mankind, and instead of thinking that I was conferring
a great favour by an offer of the spare ticket, I adopted an almost
imploring tone, begging for companionship.
I wandered from club to club, taking a gloomy pleasure in the sloppy
streets and the vestiges of the gale of the night before. They fitted
well with my growing melancholy. It was too late to send the tickets
back and to go home and dine. I had to dree my weird, and, like the
Wandering Jew, I moved on from place to place, seeking a companion and
finding none.
At the last club I went to--a little Bohemian club--I found my man.
He was playing dominoes. When I interrupted the game to ask him if he
would dine with me and come to Olympia, instead of making an excuse,
as the others had done, he said that nothing in the world would please
him better. He had to go home for a minute or to, but would be back, he
said, at the club at a quarter to seven. We would stroll over to some
bright, cheap restaurant and have a mouthful of food, and then take cab
and see the horses and gymnasts, freaks and miniature warships. I felt
I had at all events one friend in the world.
A quarter to seven came and the club was deserted by everybody except a
member asleep in an armchair and myself. I sat and watched the clock,
and three waiters stood by the little tables at the end of the room
and looked at me and talked in whispers to each other. The minute-hand
drew gradually up to the hour, and as it did so I sank down into the
depths of despondency. My friend had deserted me, basely deserted
me, or else he was killed, run over perhaps, or struck by a falling
chimney. The minute-hand went on to five minutes past, the member in
the armchair snored gently and regularly, the waiters seemed to look
at me pityingly. Pity from a waiter I could not endure. I got up and
went over to one of the little tables and sat down. The waiters looked
placidly pleased. I was relieving the monotony of their lives. I said I
would take the club dinner and a whisky-and-soda, and when two of the
waiters faded away, the other remained on guard. I put my elbows on the
table, and my head in my hands, and felt that I was indeed the morose
hero of pathetic Christmas magazine literature.
My soup was brought, and a whisky-and-soda deposited tenderly by the
side of the plate, when the door was flung open, and in came my missing
friend clothed in evening dress and radiant. There was an engagement he
had forgotten: he was taking a lady to dine at Challis's--new little
place of Baker's--a thousand apologies--I must cancel club dinner and
come over--couldn't keep the lady waiting--see me again in two minutes.
And he was out of the room again like a well-dressed whirlwind.
I did cancel the rest of my club dinner, to the suppressed grief
of the three waiters, who saw thus the only relief to their boredom
vanish. I put on hat and coat and walked through the darkness and slush
to Rupert Street, where two great ornamental lamps made a brave splash
of light in the gloom, and where a tablet of opal glass with ruby
lettering on it, dependent from a highly-ornamental glass and metal
door-shelter, set forth that here was the restaurant of Challis's Hotel.
To go from the darkness of the street by the direct door into the
restaurant is like the transition in the pantomime from the Realms
of the Demon Gloom to the Glittering Palace of the Good Fairy; and,
in my splashed boots and morning attire, I felt like the solitary
scene-shifter who is generally "discovered" in the midst of the
glittering scene when the front cloth rises.
Challis's Restaurant consists of two rooms, opening one into the other,
one decorated after the manner of the Louis XIV. period, and the other
after the manner of the Louis XV. period. Both are as pretty as a
bride-cake or a silk Watteau fan. White and gold and soft colour are
everywhere. The ceilings are painted with clouds and little roseate
deities, and echoes of Fragonard, and the other courtly painters of
dainty sylvan dreams are in the panels of the wall. The place blazes
with electric light, a starry constellation in the ceiling, lights
shaded with blue and pink and old-gold shades in brackets on the wall,
and on the table candle-lamps crowned with deep red shades. A palm
topping a little chiffonnier of white wood, a fireplace with pillars
of white-and-gold, and little bronzes on the mantelpiece; chairs of
dark wood, in keeping with the period; a carpet of deep red, and in one
corner a little counter of white wood, with a pretty little lady behind
it. Such was as much as I can remember of the setting of a scene in
which I should not have been the least surprised to have seen little
_abbés_ and _marquises_ feasting on syllabub and various dainties, and
dancing pavanes and minuets and gavottes between the courses.
A waiter in white waistcoat and with gold buttons to his coat, was
waiting to take my coat and hat, and my friend was beckoning me to a
table where he was sitting with a pretty lady in evening dress.
I was introduced, but did not catch the pretty lady's name. She
seemed to look upon it as being the most natural thing in the world
that I should have been brought away half-way through one dinner to
eat another, and so did my friend; and as it all seemed to be part
of a Christmas story, it all became natural to me. If Santa Claus
and St. George and the Dragon had come in and taken seats at one of
the neighbouring tables I do not think that on that particular night
I should have thought the matter called for any particular remark.
Every man but myself was in dress clothes, and I felt very like the
Ugly Duckling; but the unknown pretty lady did not allow me to be ill
at ease. She talked, and talked admirably, on subject after subject,
gliding from pictures to theatres, from books to music, with perfect
ease and knowledge. My friend sat in silent contentment, and I in a
dazed state of wonder as to who this clever pretty lady might be, and
how it was my friend could have forgotten his appointment with her,
and I felt very thankful to her for being at the trouble to talk to a
mud-splashed outcast like myself. This was the menu--
Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Consommé aux Profiterolles. Crème Jackson.
Blanchailles.
Civet de lièvre à la Française.
Aloyau à la moderne.
Poulet rôti au cresson. Salade.
Choux à la crème.
Glace aux apricots.
Petits fours.
Dessert.
The whitebait, which was the first dish I tasted, was good. The beef
and the chicken were both as good as the market affords. We drank a
light hock which was eminently drinkable, and when M. Coccioletti,
in explanation, as he presented the bill, said to my friend, "Three
dinners at 3s. 6d.," it struck me that I had eaten a very good dinner
for that price.
"Good-bye, old fellow--explain next time we meet--hope you'll have a
good time at Olympia," was what my friend said as he helped the fair
unknown into a brougham, and got in after her. She smiled at me. I was
left on the doorstep with the awful responsibility of those two tickets
for Barnum and Bailey's show.
31_st December_.