men who were prominent in the revival of road-coaching were all patrons
of the restaurant, and any night you may see half-a-dozen well-known
owners of race-horses dining there. The Stage, the Stock Exchange, and
Literature also have a liking for the old house, and hunting men love
it.
When I mentioned it as the ideal place for a dinner of bachelor
gourmets, I did not mean that men do not bring their wives and sisters
and sweethearts there. They do. But the Café Royal does not lay itself
out to capture the ladies. I never heard of anyone having afternoon tea
there, and when a lady tells me that she likes dining at the Café Royal
I always mentally give her a good mark, for it shows that she places in
her affections good things to drink and good things to eat before those
"springes to catch woodcock," gipsy bands in crimson coats, and palm
lounges.
In the great gilded cage of the restaurant and the big room the windows
of which open on to Glasshouse Street, the custom is to eat the lunch
of the day, or to select dishes from it, while dinner is an _à la
carte_ meal. If one entertains a lady at dinner one probably orders a
dinner which canters through the accepted courses, and I have by me the
menu of such a one:
Hors d'œuvre Russe.
Pot-au-feu.
Sole Waleska.
Noisette d'agneau Lavallière.
Haricots verts à l'Anglaise.
Parfait de foie gras.
Caille en cocotte.
Salade.
Pôle Nord.
And with this dinner we drank a good bottle of St Marceaux.
But men when they dine together think little of the rightful sequence
of courses, and order what their taste prompts them to eat. I have
dined at the Café Royal, and dined well on _moules Marinières_--and
one can eat _moules_ at the Café without fear, half a cold grouse, a
salad and a _petit Suisse_ cheese. When the ham is a dish of the day it
always tempts me, for the Café Royal hams are princes of their kind,
and the cold _mousses_ that the _chef de cuisine_, M. François Maître,
makes are beautifully light. The specialities of the cuisine of the
Café Royal are _œufs Magenta, œufs Wallace, homard Thérmidor, sole
Beaumanoir, filet de sole Simone, darne de saumon à l'Ecossaise, truite
Dartois, turbotin Paysanne, poularde bisque, faisan Carême, perdreau à
la Royal, caille Châtelaine, poulet sauté Sigurd, suprême de volaille à
la Patti, tournedos Figaro, noisette de pré salé moderne, côte d'agneau
Sultane, filet de bœuf Cambacères, selle d'agneau favorite._
Down in the café a _table d'hôte_ meal is served, wonderful value
for very few shillings, but I am not smoke-proof, and I like eating
my meals without the taste and smell of tobacco added to them. The
grill-room is always full, and perhaps more solid eating, of juicy
fillets and grilled chops and cutlets, is done there than anywhere else
in the house, except in the banqueting-rooms. I have banqueted with
the Bons Frères, a club of cheery connoisseurs who like their dinner
to be light and the songs that follow it also to be airy, in the great
gilded banqueting-room with, as part of its decoration, many crowned
N's, which might stand for Napoleon, but really indicate Nicols; I
have dined in smaller rooms with the Foxhunters' Lodge, and with many
other groups of good Freemasons and good diners; I have assisted at "Au
Revoir" banquets without number, and I know when I am bidden to feast
in a private room at the Café Royal that I shall be given a good dinner
on sound if perhaps conservative lines. This menu of a banquet given
not long since, which is typical, will convey more what I mean than
many words of description:
Natives.
Petite Marmite.
Saumon Sauce Genévoise.
Blanchailles.
Caille à la Cavour.
Jambon d'York aux Petits Pois.
Caneton de Rouen à la Presse.
Salade d'Orange.
Asperges Sauce Divine.
Bombe Alexandra.
Friandises.
Os à la Moëlle.
Café.
Dessert.
VINS.
Graves Monopole, Dry.
Heidsieck and Co., 1898.
Louis Roederer, 1899.
Ch. Le Tertre, 1888.
Martinez Port, 1884.
Denis Mouniés, 1860.
Liqueurs.
As a final word of praise for the Café Royal, let me record that just
as many of its waiters grow grey-headed in its service, so the steps of
any man who is a lover of good cheer and who has been an habitué of the
restaurant seem unconsciously to lead him to its doors. It was my first
love amongst the restaurants, and--well, you know how the proverb runs.
VIII
OYSTER-HOUSES
The great catastrophe of my life, I think, was that the first oyster
I ate was a bad one. I was at school for a year or two at Dedham, as
a preparation for Harrow, and Dedham is in Essex, and not far from
Colchester. An old man used to wheel a barrow of oysters to the playing
field, and dispensed his shell-fish at a penny an oyster. One day when
I was in funds I thought that I would begin to enjoy the luxuries of
life, and bought an oyster. That oyster was a bad one. Not just an
ordinary bad oyster, but of a superlative badness, the most horrible
oyster that any small boy ever tried to swallow--and failed. The memory
of that oyster kept me for many years from making a second attempt.
When I was first bidden to a Colchester oyster feast and sat amidst
Cabinet Ministers and mayors and aldermen in their robes of office,
and generals and admirals all pitching into the bivalves like winking,
I, to the great surprise of the waiters, ate twice as many oysters
as any alderman present. Had I been given an opportunity of making a
speech after lunch I should have told the assembled company that my
unparalleled feat in the absorption of Colchester natives that day was
my revenge for the horrors of the first Colchester oyster I tried to
eat one sunlit spring afternoon on the Dedham playing field. I have not
yet been invited by a Mayor of Whitstable to accompany him to sea to
eat oysters afloat on the first day of the dredging season, but I have
eaten many oysters plain and oysters scalloped at the "Bear and Key,"
and I never have had a grudge against any individual Whitstable oyster,
so there is no injury to redress.
All this, I know, should be reserved for my autobiography; but as I am
never likely to autobiograph myself it has to be set down here.
And now to talk of some of the oyster-houses of London. If on the "Roof
of the World," the great tableland of Thibet, one British explorer met
another British explorer, and the first man suddenly said "Scott's!"
the second man inevitably would answer "Oysters," for Scott's window at
the top of the Haymarket, with its little barrels of oysters and its
crimson lobsters reposing on beds of salad stuff, and its big crabs
lying on their backs and folding their vandyke-brown claws, as if in
pious meditation, over their buff stomachs, is one of the landmarks of
London. The old Scott's, before the fire that gutted it, has faded from
the memory of most Londoners, and the new building, with its pillars,
which are apparently of mother-o'-pearl pressed into black marble,
with bands of ornamental brass about them, and its red blinds and
red-shaded lamps in the upper storeys, is accepted as being the hub of
the West End of London, just as the old one was. Inside the doors are
the two marble-topped counters with piles of plates upon them, and on
their fronts long napkins hanging from rails. Behind the counters men
in white jackets are busy opening oysters and pouring out tumblers of
stout and glasses of Chablis all day long. There are on the counters
stacks of thin slices of brown bread and butter and other stacks of
sandwiches of various kinds of fish and plates of prawns of coral-pink.
I know of no better place than this wide oyster hall of Scott's for a
theatre-goer to eat a very light meal before going early to a theatre
when he intends to sup luxuriously after the show. Scott's, though
its shell-fish are its trump cards, desires to be all things to all
men, and to all women. It possesses a "dive" in its basement with tiled
walls, on which Japanese fish swim in and out through Japanesy weeds,
and behind the oyster hall is the grill-room, shut off from draughts by
a great glass screen, in which a white-clothed cook stands with a table
of viands at his elbow, turning the chops and steaks, sausages and
rashers on the big grill. Upstairs there is an _à la carte_ restaurant,
where all kinds of luxuries are obtainable, and Scott's is a very
popular place at which to sup after the theatre.
If you would like to see how popular oysters are with Londoners at
lunch-time, come with me to the Macclesfield in the street of that
name leading out of Shaftesbury Avenue. When "Papa" De Hem first took
over the Macclesfield it was just a public-house in the Soho district,
but "Papa," who is a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, and who was
through the Siege of Paris, brought the thorough methods of an old
soldier to bear upon the house. He turned all the old clientele out of
its doors, and, though he kept a bar in the premises, it was by selling
very large quantities of Whitstable oysters at a price that left him
a very small profit that he saw his way to a fortune. Journalists and
actors and artists and other dwellers in the realms of artistic Bohemia
soon learnt of the new resort. Dagonet chatted of it in _Mustard and
Cress_, Pitcher told tales concerning it in _Gals' Gossip_, and took
the chair at the smoking concerts for charities held in the grotto
upstairs, and as the prices have been kept rigorously low, and as the
oysters have always been excellent, the Macclesfield is now one of
the most popular oyster-houses in London. Come in through the glass
door, and you find on one side the long bar, and on the other side
little tables, at which every seat is occupied by lunchers who are
eating Whitstables on the deep shell, or oyster stew, or oysters
fried, or oysters grilled, or broiled lobsters, or the mayonnaise
of lobster which is one of the specialities of the house. There are
luncheon dishes of meat and fowl also obtainable, but when I go to the
Macclesfield I go there to eat shell-fish, and am not to be turned
from my purpose by any roast chicken or grilled chop. We are not in
the least likely to find a vacant seat at any of these first tables,
so we will move on into the wider space where is the oyster bar, with
men in white behind it, busy with their oyster knives, and behind them
a background of barrels of Meux's stout. Here is the entrance to the
grotto--an entrance beautified by trellis-work and Japanese lanterns.
The walls of the grotto are of oyster-shells, with here and there an
irregular piece of mirror showing through, and all Papa De Hem's best
customers have written their names on the oyster-shells. The tables
in the grotto are set close together, and there are two of them in a
snug corner, towards which every customer first makes his way, only
to find nine times out of ten that there is no place for him. The
waitresses bustle about, and the proprietor has a word to say to all
old friends. Upstairs on the first floor is another grotto, larger than
the downstairs one, and quieter, and here ladies are often brought to
lunch.
Stout is the classic accompaniment to oysters, and it is possible to
eat the bivalves actually in the shadow of Meux's great Horseshoe
Brewery, for the Horseshoe Tavern next door has an oyster dive down in
the basement, just below its grill-room. On the way down to the dive
you pass the great spirit casks of the Horseshoe safely placed behind a
grille, the biggest cask of all being that of the ten-year-old "Annie
Laurie" whisky, which holds 1000 gallons. The oyster bar resembles a
horseshoe in shape, and behind it is a wall of small kegs of Meux's
stout. The Horseshoe is a good old-fashioned British house, with one of
the largest open fires in London, and I remember that once when there
was an especially splendid haunch of venison to be cooked for a party
of gourmets Mr Baker was approached, and the venison feast was held at
the Horseshoe.
Rule's Oyster-house, in Maiden Lane, in the window of which are two
huge shells from Singapore and many big champagne bottles, is a house
of many associations with the men of the pen of Victorian days. Albert
Smith was the demigod of the establishment. Mark Lemon, Douglas
Jerrold, Henry Irving, Besant and Rice, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins,
Yates and Sala were some of the men who used to eat oysters in Maiden
Lane and who have accorded appreciation of them. There are busts and
portraits on the walls of the rooms of many theatrical celebrities, and
in one room is a fine collection of Dighton caricatures.
White's and Gow's, in the Strand, both old-established fish and oyster
houses, each deserve a word, and the Chandos, over against the National
Portrait Gallery, gives its oyster-eating patrons six oysters, a glass
of stout, and bread and butter for a shilling.
Sweeting's, in Fleet Street, is especially dear to me, because of
its sawdusted floor. The front of the house has been set back in the
widening of the street, but the house remains very much as it was. By
the marble-topped counters are wooden stools, on which the lunchers
perch like sparrows, and besides the oysters there are fish snacks and
big lobsters, and on one of the counters is a selection of sandwiches
of all kinds. Upstairs there are two floors of dining-rooms for people
who want something more solid than oysters or sandwiches.
No chapter on oyster-houses would be complete without reference to
Driver's in Glasshouse Street, and Wilton's in King Street, both
houses which supply the clubs and great restaurants with oysters, and
which, as well, open oysters for hungry customers at their counters.
At Driver's a little screen of stained glass only partially conceals
the oysters which are spread out on the broad space behind the glass.
On the door is the simple legend, "Driver, Oysterman," and inside
are three black-coated men opening oysters behind the counter. In a
little glass box sits a lady cashier. This in old days used to be where
Mrs Driver sat, and could always spare time for a smile and a word
to an old customer. On the wall behind the counter is a board with
the orders for oysters contained by clips, and two shelves, on which
are rows of big shells, showing wide surfaces of mother-o'-pearl. A
little staircase leads to an upper room, where sybarites can sit and
eat oysters and caviare and bread and cheese, and there is a little
table downstairs tucked away behind the staircase; but I am one of the
stalwarts who have always stood at the counter at Driver's to eat my
oysters and to wipe my fingers afterwards on the pendant napkins.
Behind Wilton's plate-glass windows there are warrants suitably
framed, and the proprietor is generally to be seen either behind his
counting-desk or the little oyster bar in the spacious shop. Wilton's
at one time used to purvey Irish oysters, as well as other British
varieties, but the supply was so uncertain that they have been taken
off the list.
If I have omitted to give the prices of the oysters at the various
oyster-houses, it is because they vary so much. One can buy native
oysters in the shops at Whitstable for 1s. a dozen, or 1s. 9d. for
twenty-five. By the time they arrive in London their cheapest price is
1s. 6d. a dozen, and the specially selected ones, which are sometimes
called "Royal Natives," cost as much at some oyster-houses as 3s. 6d.
a dozen. Seconds, Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Portuguese are each a step
lower down in price. American oysters are to be obtained in Paris at
Prunier's, but I know of no house in London at the present time which
imports them. Ten years ago they were obtainable at two of the houses.
IX
WHITEBAIT AT GREENWICH
Gone are the great days of the whitebait dinners at Blackwall and
Greenwich. No longer does _The Morning Post_ ever publish such a
paragraph as this, "Yesterday the Cabinet Ministers went down the
river in the ordnance barges to Lovegrove's West India Dock Tavern,
Blackwall, to partake of their annual fish dinner. Covers were laid
for thirty-five gentlemen," which appeared on 10th September 1835. No
longer is there a great rivalry between the two Greenwich taverns, the
Trafalgar and the Ship. The Ship still remains and the whitebait have
not deserted the Thames, but though at intervals I read paragraphs that
fish dinners are still to be obtained at the Ship, I never meet anyone
who has journeyed to Greenwich to see whether this is so, and the last
time that I went there to dine my reception was so chilly that I have
not experimented again. But the account of that dinner may interest
as showing what a Greenwich fish dinner was in the days of good King
Edward.
* * * * *
It was pleasant to see Miss Dainty's (of all the principal London
theatres) handwriting again. She had been very ill--at the point of
death, indeed--owing to a sprained ankle, which prevented her going
to Ascot, for which race meeting she had ordered three dresses, each
of which was a dream. When was I going to take her out to dinner? The
parrot was very well, but was pecking the feathers out of his tail.
She had some new pets--two goldfish, whose glass bowl had been broken
and who now lived in a big yellow vase. The cat had eaten one of the
lovebirds, and was ill for two days afterwards. The pug had been
exchanged for a fox-terrier--Jack, the dearest dog in the world. Jack
had gone up the river on the electric launch and had fought two dogs,
and had been bitten over the eye, and had covered all his mistress's
white piqué skirt with blood; but for all that he was a duck and his
mother's own darling.
This, much summarised, was the pretty little lady's letter, and I wrote
back at once to say that the pleasure of entertaining a princess of
the blood-royal was as nothing to the honour of her company, and if
the foot was well enough, would she honour me with her presence at
dinner anywhere she liked? And, as the weather had turned tropical, I
suggested either Greenwich or the restaurant at Earl's Court.
For Greenwich the fair lady gave her decision, and then I made a
further suggestion: that, if she did not mind unaristocratic company,
the pleasantest way was to go by boat.
This suggestion was accepted, and Miss Dainty in the late afternoon
called for me at a dingy Fleet Street office. I was delighted to see
the little lady, looking very fresh and nice as she sat back in her
cab, and I trust that my face showed nothing except pleasure when I
perceived a small fox-terrier with a large muzzle and a long leash
sitting by her side. Miss Dainty explained that as she had allowed her
maid to go out for the afternoon she had to bring Jack, and of course I
said that I was delighted.
We embarked at the Temple pier on a boat, which was as most river
boats are. There were gentlemen who had neglected to shave, smoking
strong pipes; there were affable ladies of a conversational tendency
and there were a violin and harp; but there were as a compensation all
the beautiful sights of the river to be seen, the cathedral-like Tower
Bridge, the forest of shipping, the red-sailed boats fighting their way
up against the tide, the line of barges in picturesque zigzag following
the puffing tugs; and all these things Miss Dainty saw and appreciated.
There was much to tell, too, that Miss Dainty had not written in her
letter, and Jack was a never-failing source of interest. Jack wound
his leash round the legs of the pipe-smoking gentlemen, was not quite
sure that the babies of the conversational ladies were not things that
he ought to eat, and at intervals wanted to go overboard and fight
imaginary dogs in the Thames.
Arrived at Greenwich, at the Ship (the tavern with a rather dingy
front, with two tiers of bow windows, with its little garden gay with
white and green lamps, and with its fountain and rockery which had bits
of paper and straws floating in the basin), I asked for the proprietor.
Mr Bale, thick-set, and with a little moustache, came out of his room,
and whether it was that Fleet Street and the Thames had given me a
tramplike appearance, or whether it was that he did not at once take a
fancy to Jack, I could not say, but he did not seem overjoyed to see
us. Yet presently he thawed, told me that he had kept a table by the
window for us, and that our dinner would be ready at six-thirty as I
had telegraphed.
In the meantime I suggested that we should see the rest of the house.
"Would it not be better to leave the dog downstairs?" suggested Mr
Bale, and Jack was tied up somewhere below, while we went round the
upper two storeys of dining-rooms--for the Ship is a house of nothing
but dining-rooms. It is a tavern, not a hotel, and there are no
bedrooms for guests. We went into the pleasant bow-windowed rooms on
the first floor, in one of which a table was laid ready, with a very
beautiful decoration of pink and white flowers, and in the other of
which stand the busts of Fox and Pitt. We looked at the two curious
wooden images in the passage, at the chairs with the picture of a ship
let into their backs, and at the flags of all nations which hang in the
long banqueting-room; and all the time Jack, tied up below, lifted up
his voice and wept.
I asked if Jack might be allowed to come into the dining-room and sit
beside his mistress while we had dinner, giving the dog a character
for peacefulness and quiet for which I might have been prosecuted
for perjury; but it was against the rules of the house, and Mr Bale
suggested that if Jack was tied up to a pole of the awning just outside
the window he would be able to gaze through the glass at his mistress
and be happy.
A fine old Britannic waiter, who looked like a very much reduced copy
of Sir William Vernon-Harcourt, put down two round silver dishes,
lifted up the covers, and there were two _souchés_, one of salmon
and one of flounder. I helped Miss Dainty to some of the salmon and
filled her glass with the Pommery, which, after much thought, I had
selected from the wine list. But she touched neither; her eyes were on
Jack outside, for that accomplished dog, after doing a maypole dance
round the pole, had now arrived at the end of his leash--and incipient
strangulation. Miss Dainty went outside to rescue her pet from instant
death, and I, having eaten my _souché_, followed. Jack wanted water,
and a sympathetic hall porter who appeared on the scene volunteered
to get him a soup-plateful, and tie him somewhere where he could not
strangle himself.
The _souchés_ had been removed, and some lobster rissoles and fried
slips had taken their place. Miss Dainty took a rissole and ate it
while she watched the hall porter put Jack's plate of water down, and
I made short work of a slip and was going to try the rissoles when
Jack, in a plaintive tone of voice, informed the world that something
was the matter. His mistress understood him at once. The poor dear
would not drink his water unless she stood by; and this having been
proved by actual fact, Miss Dainty, with myself in attendance, came
back to find that whiting puddings and stewed eels had taken the place
of former dishes.
Miss Dainty took a small helping of the eels, looked at it, and then
turned her eyes again to Jack, who was going through a series of
gymnastics. I ate my whiting pudding, which I love, in fevered haste,
and had got half-way through my helping of eels when Miss Dainty
discovered what was the matter with Jack. The boys on the steps below
were annoying him, and the only way to keep him quiet would be to give
him some bones. The sympathetic hall porter again came to the rescue,
and Jack, under his mistress's eye, made fine trencher play with two
bones.
There was a look of reproach in the veteran waiter's eye when we came
back and found that the crab omelette and salmon cutlets _à l'indienne_
were cooling. I tried to draw Miss Dainty's attention away from Jack. I
told her how Mr Punch had called her Faustine, and had written a page
about her; but when she found there was nothing to quote in her book of
press notices she lost all interest in the hump-backed gentleman.
With the advent of the plain whitebait a new danger to Jack arose.
A turtle was brought by three men on to the lawn and turned loose,
and Miss Dainty had to go out and assure herself that Jack was not
frightened, and that the turtle was not meditating an attack upon him.
The turtle was found to be a harmless and interesting insect, and
having been shown, with practical illustrations, how the beast was
captured by savages, Miss Dainty took great pity on it, collected water
in the soup-plate from the fountain, poured it over its head, and tried
to induce it to drink, which the turtle steadfastly refused to do.