_Mine Host on the Avenue_
Mine Host on the Avenue--A Gentleman of Brussels--Poulard's--Some Old
New York Hotels--High Prices of 1836--The American--The
Metropolitan--Holt's--The Brevoort and the Steamship
Captains--Delmonico's--Famous Menus--The Glory of the Fifth Avenue--The
Logerot--A Bohemian Chop-house--The Great Mince Pie Contest--About
Madison Square--Lost Youth.
Is there anything that civilized man recalls more poignantly than the
menus of yesterday? Of the Brussels of the winter of 1917, the last
winter that the Americans of the Commission for Relief were allowed to
remain, I have many vivid memories. One of them is of a crowd gathered
before a shop-window in the Rue de Namur, a street that winds down from
the circle of boulevards to the Place Royale. Within, the object of
hungry curiosity, a fowl, adorned by a placard informing that the price
is forty-four francs. Conspicuous in the crowd, his face pressed against
the glass of the _étalage_, a little old gentleman. The bowl of
municipal soup and the loaf of bread are all that he has to look forward
to as the day's sustenance. But as he gazes his mouth waters
quiveringly, and for the moment the grey-green uniforms of the invaders
that are all about him, and the hated flag that is flying over the
Palais de Justice are forgotten. Soon he will go home and sit down and
write a letter to _La Belgique_, in which he will recall the happier
days, and tell of how one once was able to dine at the Taverne Royale
for the sum of two francs, fifty, or three francs, fifty, enumerating
carefully and lovingly the various courses. His letter, and others of
similar nature and inspiration, were the only genuine letters that the
occupying military authorities allowed to appear in the Belgian press.
But a world tragedy was not needed to invest with romance the menus of
yesterday. A memory of youth is the rock of Mont St. Michel on the
French coast. The name suggests a towering, isolated height in the
ocean, close to the mouth of the river dividing Normandy from Brittany,
surrounded at high tide by lashing waves, and at low tide by a muddy
morass, save where a causeway joins it to the mainland. The monks of St.
Michel sent ships to help convey the armies of William to Hastings, and
when the yoke of the Normans on England was young two sons of the
Conqueror waged battle here, and Henry besieged Robert or Robert
besieged Henry. When Philip Augustus burned it and it was the only
Norman fortress that withstood Henry the Fifth, and many years later, in
Maupassant's "Notre Coeur," a certain Madame de Burne entered a room of
one of its hotels and there blew out a candle. But above all I recall,
and ninety-five out of every hundred others who have visited the rock
recall, the breakfast that was once renowned throughout Europe--a
breakfast at two francs, fifty, brought to perfection for the reason
that it was always the same, the shrimps, the cutlets, the chicken, and
the amazing omelette, which the portly Madame Poulard prepared in full
view, tossing it like a flapjack, to a chorus of delighted "Ahs!"
There is no need to go far afield. There is the older New York, with its
memories of Mine Host of oyster-bar and chop-house, of culinary joys and
the ghosts of viands. Yesterday the personality of the landlord was more
in evidence and that of his staff happily less so. Mine Host was an
individual and not yet a corporation. He oozed welcome. He walked from
table to table, bland, smiling, eager for commendation, keen-eared for
criticism. Although paid for, it was none the less his hospitality that
was being dispensed, and he was acutely sensitive to appreciation. His
retainers were fewer in number and were retainers only. Then, from the
Spanish Main the last of the pirates disappeared, bequeathing to their
descendants the tables and hat-stands of the hostelries of Fifth Avenue
and the Great White Way. There they are today, insolent-eyed and
"walk-the-plank" mannered to all but the few whom they feel they can
hold to high ransom. To those of us who do not belong to that few of the
race of Dives there is satisfaction in turning over the old
bills-of-fare, and musing on the repasts that were once within the reach
of the purses of the humble.
When Horace Greeley arrived in New York in 1831, he had ten dollars in
his pocket and knew no one in the city. He entered a tavern. The
bartender looked him over superciliously. "We are too high for you. We
charge six a week." Horace agreed with him, and found shelter in a
boarding-house where he paid two dollars and a half a week.
Occasionally, when the table there palled, he and the other boarders
sought a change by repairing to a Sixpenny Dining Saloon in Beekman
Street where a splendid feast was to be had for a shilling (twelve and a
half cents).
Two years after Horace Greeley arrived in New York Holt's Hotel opened
its doors. It was the wonder of the town, the largest and most
magnificent inn erected up to that time. Even by rich people its prices
were thought exorbitant. They were one dollar and a half a day. That, of
course, meant the American plan. Even the panic years, from 1835 to
1837, when prices soared in a manner that brought consternation to the
breasts of careful housekeepers, do not very much startle us who are
living in the present Anno Domini 1918. Philip Hone, in his "Diary,"
wrote of living in New York in 1835 as exorbitantly dear, and went on to
say: "it falls pretty hard on persons like me who live upon their
incomes, and harder still upon that large and respectable class whose
support is derived from fixed salaries." The sweat of the brow of New
York all ran into the pockets of the farmers. Hone laid in a winter
stock of butter at twenty-nine cents a pound. "In the course of
thirty-four years housekeeping I have never buttered my bread at so
extravagant a rate." In March, 1836, he recorded: "The market was higher
this morning than I have ever known it. Beef, twenty-five cents; mutton
and veal, fifteen to eighteen; small turkeys, one dollar and a half.
Poor New York!"
A few years later and the prices were back to what was then held to be
normal. According to a Guide Book of the city issued in 1846, there were
one hundred and twenty-three eating-houses in the town, besides the
oyster-houses. At the cheaper places the prices were six cents a plate
of meats and three cents a plate of vegetables. In the more pretentious
restaurants the rates were of course considerably higher. Chamberlain's
Saloon in Pearl Street was a famous restaurant in 1851. Here is its
advertised bill-of-fare. Soups: beef, mutton, chicken, six cents; roast
pig, turkey, goose, chicken, duck, twelve and a half cents; beef, lamb,
pork, mutton, six cents; beefsteak pie, lamb pie, mutton pie, clam pie,
six cents; boiled beef, any kind, six cents. Made dishes: pork and
beans, veal pie, six cents; oyster pie, chicken pot-pie, twelve and a
half cents.
Philip Hone lived in a house on Broadway, facing City Hall Park. When he
wished to dine out he did not have to go far, for almost next door was
the American Hotel, one of the most famous hostelries of the period. Its
cooking was as sturdily patriotic as its name, although the menu is
flavoured with badly written French. Here is a sample bill-of-fare,
bearing the date of June 10, 1848.
Soup.
Rice Soup.
Fish.
Blackfish.
Boiled.
Leg of Mutton.
Fowl, oyster sauce.
Corn beef.
Ham, Tongue, Lobsters.
Entrees.
Fricassee of chicken, a la New York.
Tête de Veau en Tortue.
Cotellettes de mouton, saute aux pommes.
Filet de veau, pique a la Macedoine.
Tendon d'Agneau, puree au navets.
Fois de volaille, sautee, a la Bordelaise.
Croquettes de pommes de terre.
Stewed oysters.
Boeuf bouilli, sauce piquante.
Macaroni a l'Itallienne.
Roast.
Beef, Veal, Lamb, mint sauce, Chicken, Duck.
Vegetables.
Mashed potatoes. Asparagus.
Spinach. Rice.
Turnips. Pears.
Pastry.
Rice custard. Roman punch.
Pies. Tarts, etc.
Dessert.
Strawberries and cream. Almonds.
Raisins. Walnuts, etc.
The day came when the hotels farther downtown yielded the palm to the
Metropolitan, opened in the middle fifties at Broadway and Prince
Street. The late Alfred Henry Lewis thus rhetorically pictured the
Metropolitan, in the winter of 1857-58, when to dine there was the thing
to do. "Over near a window are Bayard Taylor, the poet Stoddard, and
Boker, who wrote 'Francesca da Rimini,' which Miss Julia Dean is playing
at Wallack's. Beyond them is Edmund Clarence Stedman, with lawyers David
Dudley Field and Charles O'Connor. The second table from the door is
claimed by Sparrow Grass Cozzens and Fitz-James O'Brien, who have
adjourned from Pfaff's beer-cellar near Leonard Street, where, under the
Broadway sidewalk, they were quaffing lager and getting up quite an
appetite on onions, pretzels, and cheese. They have with them Walt
Whitman, who, silent and wholly wanting in that barbaric yawp, is
distinguished by what William Dean Howells, ever slopping over in his
phrase-making, will one day speak of as his 'branching beard and Jovian
hair.' The theatres have a place in the Leland café, and that dark,
thin-faced scimetar-nosed Jewish woman, who coughs a great deal, is the
French actress, Rachel. She has been playing at the New York Theatre,
and caught a cold on that overventilated stage, as open to the winds as
a sawmill, which will kill her within a year. With her are the singer,
Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore Thomas. The sepulchral
Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor,
Stoddard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talking of the operatic
failure at the Academy of Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, of
Mrs. Wood's success at Wallack's, and of Burton's reopening of the old
Laura Keene Theatre, in Broadway across from Bond. Thomas mentions the
accident at Niblo's the other evening, when Pauline Genet, of the Revel
troupe, was so savagely burned. Speculation enlists O'Connor, Stedman,
and Field, and Field is prophesying impending money troubles, which
prophecies the panic six months away will largely bear out."
Then, quietly at first, but none the less surely, Fifth Avenue began to
play its part to the town and to the visiting stranger. Now that the
Astor House and the old Fifth Avenue Hotel are gone it is to the
Brevoort, or the Lafayette-Brevoort, just as you choose to call it, that
one turns to find the ghosts of yesterday. They are nothing to shy at,
being comfortable, well-fed spirits, compositely cosmopolitan. For
legend has it that the management in the old days was particularly
gracious to the captains of the transatlantic steamers when they were in
this port, and the seamen were correspondingly appreciative. So as the
vessel was passing the Nantucket Lightship the titled Englishman bound
for the Canadian Rockies to hunt big game, or the French banker, seeking
first-hand information about values in mines or railroads, or the
Neapolitan tenor about to fill an engagement at the Academy of Music,
turned to the captain for advice as to where to stay during the sojourn
in New York, the Briton, or the Gaul, or the Italian was likely to hear
such a flattering account of the comfort of the Brevoort and the
excellence of its _cuisine_, that any previous suggestions were promptly
forgotten. In the old-time novels of New York visiting Englishmen in
particular always "stopped" at the Brevoort. It would have been heresy
on the part of the novelist to have sent them elsewhere. Nor can any
blame be attached to romancer or steamship captain. It was always a
good hotel, but in the old days it had not yet been invaded by those who
like to play at Bohemia.
Delmonico's has had many incarnations since the day when the brothers,
Peter and John, established themselves in the humble basement at No. 27
William Street, back in 1827. First there was the move to 76 Broad
Street, and then to Broadway and Chambers Street. But to that generation
of New Yorkers of which only a few remain, there has been only one great
Delmonico's, the one which in 1861 opened its doors at the northeast
corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. It was the centre of the
town in the sixties and early seventies. Two blocks away was the Academy
of Music, the Metropolitan Opera House of the time, and Fourteenth
Street was burgeoning out as the new Rialto. Society set its seal upon
the establishment. The clubs of the immediate neighbourhood, of which
there were several, did not think it necessary to install _cuisines_
when Delmonico's was so close at hand. The name of the house is still a
byword in the land, but the names of Filippini and Lattard, two of the
_maître d'hôtel_ who helped to make Delmonico's famous, have been
forgotten by all but a very few. What supper parties were given in the
old establishment, and what dances of that exclusive circle to which Mr.
Ward McAllister was later to give the sticking designation of the "Four
Hundred," before the house again marched on northward to Madison Square,
and a rug-man installed himself and his wares in the halls that had been
the scene of such good cheer and so much well-bred revelry!
M. de Balzac, planning to entertain a Russian nobleman at the Restaurant
de Paris, asked the management to "put its best foot forward" for the
occasion. "Certainly, Monsieur," was the retort, "for the simple reason
that it is what we are in the habit of doing every day." Old-time
patrons of the Fourteenth Street corner will tell you that such a reply
might have fittingly come from the _maître d'hôtel_ of the "Del's" that
was. But conceding the quality of the everyday service there were famous
dinners that have stood out in the annals of the house. Here, for
example, is the menu of what was known as the "Swan Dinner" held the
evening of February 17, 1873.
Potages.
Consomme Imperial. Bisque aux crevettes.
Hor d'oeuvres.
Timbales a la Conde.
Poissons.
Red Snapper a la Venetienne.
Eperlan, sauce des gourmets.
Releve.
Filet de boeuf a la l'Egyptienne.
Entrees.
Ailes de canvas back, sauce bigurade.
Cotellettes de volaille Sevigne.
Asperges froide en branche.
Sorbet a l'Ermitage.
Rotis.
Chapon truffes. Selle de mouton.
Entremets.
Choufleurs, sauce creme. Carbons a la moelle.
Petits pois au beurre.
Poires a la Richelieu.
Gelee aux ananas. Gaufres Chantilly Sultanne.
Gateaux a la Reine. Coupole a l'Anglaise.
Pain de peche Marechale. Gelee au fruits.
Dessert.
Délicieux aux noisettes. Biscuit Tortoni.
Fruit glaces.
Petit fours. Bonbons.
Pieces montes.
The musty inn of mid-Europe will boast till the end of time of the
two-hour visit within its walls of a certain Elector and his suite in
the year sixteen hundred and something or seventeen hundred and
something. There is not a hostelry in England dating back to Tudor times
without a bed in which Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have slept. But for
famous guests, authentically established, there is probably no other
hotel in the world that is to be compared to the Fifth Avenue. When the
boyish Prince of Wales played leap-frog in its corridors at the time of
his visit to the United States in 1860, he began a distinguished
procession. Every president of the nation from the day the hotel was
opened until it closed at some time stayed there. That meant Lincoln,
Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, and
Roosevelt. At the time of Grant's funeral in August, 1885, the
immediate family, the relatives, President Cleveland, Vice-President
Hendricks, former Presidents Hayes and Arthur, the members of the
Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, the
Diplomatic Corps, and the Governors of the various States were all
guests of the hotel. Not only did great men stay there, but they did
things there. It was at the Peabody dinner at the Fifth Avenue that the
movement to nominate Grant for President started. In 1880, after his
nomination, Garfield, at the solicitation of Arthur, came all the way
from Mentor to meet Roscoe Conkling. But the haughty and powerful
Conkling would not see him. If the hotel had not been the recognized
shelter of visiting Republican statesmen in New York it is reasonably
certain that Tilden, instead of Hayes, would have occupied the White
House from 1877 to 1881, for it was there that a rescue of the
Republican candidate was set on foot in 1876 after he had been given up
as lost. In one of the parlours of the hotel the ill-advised Dr. S.A.
Burchard doomed Blaine to defeat when he said: "We are Republicans, and
we do not intend to leave our party to identify ourselves with a party
whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."
Today it would be hard to find a hotel below Forty-second Street that
still continues on what is known as the American plan. But when the
Fifth Avenue was young that system of prices was supposed to embody the
national spirit of democracy. Yet the idea had its wise critics, who
found in it a certain injustice. For example there was an editorial on
the subject, apropos of the Fifth Avenue, in the issue of October 1,
1859, soon after the hotel was opened, which ran, in part: "In the first
place, what can be more preposterous than to establish a fixed rate of
fare at hotels? Big, fat, bloated, blustering Guzzle goes to the Astor
House for a week, and, in virtue of his standing and his paunch, gets a
room near the dining saloon--a large, airy room looking on the Park,
with lounge, arm-chairs, pier-glasses, Brussels carpet, and other
furniture, all rich and luxurious; at dinner he eats _paté de fois gras_
and woodcock, at supper he has elaborate little dishes which exercise an
experienced cook for an hour or two, at breakfast he has salmon at fifty
cents a pound, for all of which Guzzle pays two dollars and a half a
day. The Rev. John Jones has a cup of weak tea for his breakfast, a
slice of beef for his dinner, and a room under the tiles, and pays the
same two dollars and a half." Perhaps there was a little exaggeration in
the Harper editorial. But judge of Guzzle's opportunities from the
following menu of the first dinner served by the Fifth Avenue, that of
Tuesday, August 23, 1859.
Soups.
Green Turtle. Barley.
Fish.
Boiled Salmon, shrimp sauce. Baked Bass, wine sauce.
Boiled.
Leg of Mutton, caper sauce. Chicken, with pork.
Calf's Head, brain sauce. Beef tongue.
Turkey, oyster sauce. Corn Beef and Cabbage.
Cold Dishes.
Ham, Roast Beef, Pressed Corn Beef, Tongue, Ham.
Lobster Salad. Boned Turkey with truffles.
Entrees.
Fricasseed Chicken a la Chevaliere.
Macaroni, Parmesan.
Lamb cutlets, breaded.
Oysters, fried in crumbs.
Currie of Veal, in border of rice.
Queen Fritters.
Kidneys, champagne sauce.
Pigeons, en compote.
Sweetbreads, larded green peas.
Roasts.
Beef. Lamb, mint sauce.
Loin of Veal, stuffed. Goose.
Turkey. Chicken.
Ham, champagne sauce.
Vegetables.
Mashed Potatoes, Boiled Potatoes. Boiled Rice.
Baked Potatoes. Stewed Tomatoes. Squash.
Turnips. Cabbage. Beans.
Pastry.
Sponge Cake Pudding. Apple Pies.
Madeira Jelly. Peach Pies.
Peach Meringues. Squash Pies.
Gateaux Modernes. Cols de Cygne.
Dessert.
Raisins. Almonds. Peaches. English Walnuts.
Pecan Nuts. Filberts. Bartlett Pears.
Citron Melons. Water-melons.
Vanilla, lemon ice-cream.
Considering that this was not an exceptional dinner, but was a sample
of the fare that was served every day one is inclined to envy Guzzle and
to deplore the neglected opportunities of the Rev. Jones.
Below the Fifth Avenue Mine Host flourished yesterday. At the corner of
Eighteenth Street there was the Logerot, sometime called Fleuret's.
There, as at the old Martin's, at University Place and Ninth Street, a
little play of the imagination enabled the diner to hug the delusion
that he was at Foyot's, and that the gentleman with the white goatee at
the table opposite was a Senator of France from the near-by Palace of
the Luxembourg. After he had eaten of the _moules marinieres_ and the
_escargots_ it was no longer imagination, he felt sure of the fact. To
stimulate through the palate such pleasant fancy was the idea of Richard
de Croisac, Marquis de Logerot, who opened the place in 1892. When
Logerot's passed the setting was made to serve a purpose ignominious,
though highly laudable. It became an incubator shop, and tiny coloured
babies squirmed mysteriously where once the _casserole_ steamed.
The neighbourhood is rich in gastronomical memories. At the same corner
for twenty years the chop-house of John Wallace flourished. In the
eighties it was one of the few chop-houses uptown. There was a flavour
of Bohemia about the clientèle. Characters who were famous in their day
but whose very names are now forgotten, congregated there for the steaks
and kidneys and the ale drawn from the wood. There, so the story goes,
was sown the seed of the Great Mince Pie Contest. An actor, dropping
into Wallace's late one evening for the after-work rarebit, overheard
fragments of ah argument about the relative merits of the mince pies of
certain of the city's hotels and refectories. He was playing at the time
in the dramatization of Mr. Tarkington's "Monsieur Beaucaire," and the
next evening he brought up the subject for discussion with various
ladies and gentlemen of the company. Had it been a matter of lobsters he
might have had an apathetic response. But the homely mince pie roused to
riotous enthusiasm. Each player protested that he or she knew of a place
from which came a mince pie surpassing all others. So the contest was
arranged and a jury of unimpeachable character selected, and two nights
later the pies were brought proudly in and in turn sampled. Incidentally
the winning pasty came from the old Ashland House at Fourth Avenue and
Twenty-fourth Street, and its sponsor was Mr. A.G. (better known as
"Bogey") Andrews.
There was a family hotel called the Glenham on the Avenue between
Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets, and at the north-east corner of
Twenty-second, where part of the base of the "Flatiron Building" now
is, was the old Cumberland. There was one man, at least, who appreciated
the Cumberland. In fact he liked it so well that, when the structure was
to be demolished to make way for the new skyscraper, he refused to move
out, and having a lease, could not be evicted. So he stayed there to the
last, while the bricks came tumbling down about his ears. Then, just
around the corner, where Broadway joins Madison Square, was the
Bartholdi, celebrated by the patronage of Mr. Fitzsimmons, alias Ruby
Robert, the Freckled One, the Kangaroo, and beyond, still standing, a
memento of yesterday, Dorlon's, uptown heir to the glories of the old
Fulton Market place, which boasted a history that goes back
three-quarters of a century. A relic of the old establishment, a
mahogany table round which Cornelius Vanderbilt and Judge Roosevelt (the
grandfather of T.R.), and John Jacob Astor, and John Swan used to sit
at their oyster dinner consisting of oysters raw, stewed, roasted in the
shell, and broiled, is still preserved.
Perhaps, at night, the shades of famous dishes of the past come forth
from remodelled walls or forgotten cupboards and meet in the Park to
recall the glories that once were. For all about are memories. Beyond
where the Fifth Avenue was was the Hoffman House where one went to dine
as well as to feast the eyes on the twenty-five-thousand-dollar
Bougereau of "Nymphs and Satyr," and "Pan and Bacchante." Then the
Albermarle and Saint James, the Brunswick, and the famous south-west
corner of the Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. The Brunswick had its
adherents, who proclaimed its table the best in New York, and the land
once rang with a Tammany dinner that was held there. But that south-west
corner. It was famous as "Del's" and it was famous when it was Martin's.
Who that knew it will ever forget what was known as the "Broadway Room,"
and the special soup for every day of the week, and the _cuisine Russe_
with the _plats du jour_ for luncheon and dinner, and the vodka that one
might have if one wished? And also, the chestnut soup!
If your palate of yesterday craved the exotic in the way of food there
was the Indian Palace that once flourished at No. 325 Fifth Avenue. In
1900, a Prince Ranji Something or Other, who claimed to be a son of the
Sultan of Sulu or Beloochistan, opened it, establishing the first
smoking room for women in the city. He brought the aspect of the East in
the shape of Indians, and dancing girls, and jugglers, and Hindoo tango
dancers, and flower girls, and cigarette girls, and music girls, all in
their native costumes. There was prosperity for a time, and rich
promise, until the Prince ran against the callous, unsympathetic
Occident in the shape of the contract labour law.
On up the Avenue as far as the Plaza, where, as early as 1870, "Boss"
Tweed attempted to erect a hotel on the site of the present Netherlands,
the gastronomical trail of the past may be followed. Five years ago it
was said that New York had more good restaurants than any city in the
world except Paris. Today there is no longer the exception. In the
spirit that has long moved the people of Marseilles to the saying: "If
Paris had a Cannebiere it would be a little Marseilles," an American
city has said: "Paris might cook as well as New Orleans if it only had
New Orleans's markets." To an even greater arrogance in its culinary
past and present New York has a right. Turning over some of the menus of
yesterday is recalling when the world was young. Lost youth is in the
memory of "the wharves, and the slips, and the sea-tides tossing free;
and the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, and the beauty and mystery of
the ships, and the magic of the sea." It is also in the memory of the
flavour of certain delectable, never-to-be-forgotten repasts.