whitebait on the table. I told him to bring the coffee and liqueurs and
bill out into the garden, because Miss Dainty, having been separated
from her dog so long, wanted to nurse and pet him.
This was the bill: Two dinners, 14s.; one Pommery, 18s.; two liqueurs,
1s. 6d.; coffee, 1s.; attendance, 1s.; total, £1, 15s. 6d.
We sat and watched St Paul's stand clear against the sunset, and Miss
Dainty, her dog happy in her lap, suddenly said: "If you give this
place a good notice, I'll never speak to you again."
"Why?" I replied. "The whitebait was delicious, the whiting pudding
capital, the omelette good. I liked the fried slips and the rissoles."
"Yes, perhaps," said Miss Dainty, with a pout. "But they wouldn't let
me have my dog in the dining-room!"
X
THE CECIL
I wonder whether Jabez Balfour, the genius who jumped at Park Lane and
landed on Broadmoor, ever comes to London from his country retreat,
where, under another name, he earns his daily bread, and looks at
the great palaces which were one of his money-spinning schemes and
notes the changes that are made in them. He certainly would scarcely
recognise to-day in the modern Hotel Cecil the great red-brick and
stone block of chambers and flats which first grew up, some seventeen
or eighteen years ago, next to the Adelphi Terrace overlooking the
Embankment Gardens. A company with some very distinguished gentlemen
on the list of the directors was formed to buy the great building, and
they have worked with indomitable perseverance to make a house that was
not intended to be an hotel into one of the most comfortable hotels
in London, and to popularise a restaurant which at first refused to
respond to their efforts.
The Cecil Restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, with
M. Bertini, a clever, quick-eyed, bearded Italian as manager, and M.
Coste, who was one of the greatest of the great chefs of the close of
the Victorian era, in command of the kitchens. But the company had been
in too great a hurry to begin to earn money, and the arrangements were
not yet working quite smoothly when London that dines and thinks about
its dinners was first asked to sit in judgment on the new dining-place.
The first roughnesses soon wore off; M. Bertini was an admirable
_maître d'hôtel_--I have lost sight of him of late years, but I think
he went for a time to South Africa, and he made a short appearance as
proprietor of a small restaurant in the Haymarket--and M. Coste, "the
old man," as the rest of the staff affectionately called him behind his
back, sent out through the doors that separate the kitchen from the
restaurant little dinners that delighted the palates of connoisseurs.
This propinquity of kitchen to restaurant is a great advantage. As you
sit at your table in the Cecil Restaurant you can, if you listen for
it, hear the voices of the men who call out the orders to the cooks--an
unceasing chant, a hymn to Gastronomy, and as a result no dish ever
comes cold to table at the Cecil Restaurant.
What, however, was radically wrong at first with the Cecil Restaurant
was its decoration. It is a very large, very high pillared hall, with
a glazed balcony overlooking the Victoria Gardens, and big windows on
the west giving a glorious view of Westminster; but its decorations
were at first too sombre in colour. The panelling was of walnut wood,
a large square of deep crimson velvet was embroidered with the Cecil
arms, the great mantelpieces of purple-grey Sicilian marble conformed
to the quiet scheme of colour, and the pillars and great window
casings all harmonised in the minor key. The mantelpieces are all
that remain to-day of the original scheme of colouring, and they are
scarcely noticeable amidst the shimmer of pink and white and gold.
A minor drawback was that the restaurant had no ante-room, and that
a dinner-giver had to await his guests in the bustling hall of the
hotel. People who dined at the Cecil Restaurant in those days praised
the cooking, and had nothing except good words for the attendance and
wine, but they said it was not "cheery." Nine out of ten ladies or men
did not trouble to analyse their feelings, but it was the coldness of
their surroundings that affected them.
To tear down all the decorations of a newly built hall is an heroic
remedy which no board of directors would willingly face, and before
this was done other less expensive remedies were tried. A separate
entrance for the restaurant was made in the courtyard, and a lounge
built and quite charmingly decorated. M. Paillard, the great Parisian
restaurateur, crossed the Channel and became for a time manager of
the restaurant, making with M. Coste in the kitchen a remarkable
combination of talent. A Roumanian band, fierce-looking gentlemen in
embroidered garments, who had been sensationally successful at one of
the great exhibitions in Paris, were imported, were perched up on a
rostrum and made the roof reverberate with their czardas. The services
of "Smiler," a curry-cook of great renown, were exclusively retained
for the Cecil. (Sherry's in New York offered "Smiler" large sums of
money to transfer his services, and he crossed the Atlantic with a
little band of underlings of his own nationality. "Smiler" travelled
first class, and the reporters on the other side not unnaturally
took him to be an Indian Prince on his travels. "Smiler" did not
undeceive them, and enjoyed for some days all the privileges given
to royalty in a republic. Then he reported at Sherry's.) Mr Hector
Tenant, the managing director of the Empire, joined the Cecil board,
and a series of variety performances after dinner on Sundays filled
the big restaurant to its holding capacity on those evenings. Harry
Lauder, concerning whose talent and fine voice everybody was talking
at that time, sang, I remember, on one of those occasions. But there
must have been some excellent reasons for not continuing these variety
performances, for after a time they ceased.
At last the board took its courage in both hands and redecorated
the restaurant from floor to ceiling. It is now a hall of white and
gold and pink. The panels are of Rose du Barri silk, the pillars are
gleaming white, while the frieze is of the lightest blue. A dark rose
carpet gives relief to this shimmering, shining restaurant, and in its
centre is a handsome table of many tiers for fruit and sweet things,
a table of gilt sphinx heads and many electric lamps. The waiters
wear knee-breeches; the band plays in an ante-room. The redecorated
restaurant at once jumped into the affections of the world that dines,
and further to add to the good temper of this place of butterfly
colouring, the directors engaged as the _maître d'hôtel_ in charge
of the restaurant, M. Califano, who is known to the patrons of the
Cecil as "Sunny Jim." One of the advantages with which M. Califano has
been endowed by Nature is a smiling face, and some wit at the time
that "Sunny Jim" was a favourite figure on all the hoardings, gave M.
Califano his nickname.
To complete their work of betterment, the board added to the restaurant
and hotel the new palm court, a sumptuous lounge, upholstered in
powdered blue and gold, which has eaten up more than a half of the
great forecourt of the Cecil. This forecourt, which was almost of
the size and shape of a Roman hippodrome, was a great comfort in
past days to the cabdrivers of London, for there was unlimited room
in it for them to wait to take up guests at the hotel; but it was a
great waste of space. The new palm court is a very splendid place,
and besides giving the restaurant a noble reception-room, it has shut
away from the hotel all the noise of the street and all the bustle of
the reception hall. It has, however, done away with the most American
spot in London, the space of paving outside the front entrance of
the Cecil which used to be known as "The Beach." Here used to be cane
chairs and rocking-chairs and piles of luggage, and a newspaper stall,
and in the summer-time pretty girls sunning themselves, and waiters
hurrying to and fro with cold drinks and long straws in them; and the
American guests of the hotel who loved the brightness and the bustle
of the spot christened it "The Beach," and preferred it to any of the
gilded parlours inside the hotel. The new palm court, however, in a
stately manner, has taken the place of "The Beach" as a meeting-ground
for the hotel guests. Mr Kaiser, the general manager of the Hotel
Cecil, tells me that the building of this fine lounge has been of
benefit to the restaurant as giving a finishing touch to its comforts,
and I have no doubt that this is so, for dining in the restaurant, I
found it comfortably filled by people staying in the hotel, and guests
from outside, and "Sunny Jim" told me of the vast numbers whom on
such special occasions as Christmas and New Year's Eve he manages to
accommodate in the restaurant and balcony.
I ate the Cecilian dinner, a seven-and-sixpenny _table d'hôte_ meal,
which I found quite excellent. This is the menu:
Huîtres Natives on Hors d'Œuvre.
Consommé Princesse.
Crème Parisienne.
Filets de Sole Carême.
Quartier d'Agneau Arléquine.
Pommes Macaire.
Caille en Cocotte au Jus d'Ananas.
Salade.
Asperges, Sauce Hollandaise.
Glacé à l'Andalouse.
Friandises.
The delicate sauce with the sole, the neatness of the garnish of the
vegetables with the quarter of lamb, the plumpness of the quail and
their contrast of taste with the pine-apple, would have assured me that
the kitchen is in first-class hands, even had I not known that M. Jean
Alletru, a chef who stands very high in the estimation of his brother
chefs, had succeeded M. Coste, when that great man retired.
I might have spent a shilling less and have eaten an alternative dinner
without the oysters in it, or I might have taken advantage of an
arrangement by which anyone dining at the Cecil can pay a fixed price
for his or her dinner, and choose practically anything they like from
the _carte du jour_, which is a very ample one, and which generally
contains some of the _spécialités_ created by M. Alletru. This is the
list of these _spécialités_ and a couple of very pretty little dinners
can be arranged from amongst them, the only thing needed in addition
being a soup. _Tomate en surprise au caviar, turbotin Prince de Galles,
filet de sole Clarence, timbale de truite froide Norvégienne, ris de
veau St Cloud, caille à la Salvini, poitrine de volaille Providence,
selle d'agneau Cecil, poularde à la Jacques, fraises Tetrazzini,
bouteille de champagne en surprise._
I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that a
_maître-chef_ can receive is that which comes from his brothers in art,
and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel
Cecil and their _chef de cuisine_ than that the Ligue des Gourmands,
the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they
held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier,
placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who,
with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier
had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which
there were three hundred guests present, in preference to that of
any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great
banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the
perfection of a dinner of ceremony. The _Dodine_ and the _Fraises
Sarah-Bernhardt_ were the two sensational dishes of the feast, but
it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting
without being heavy:
Hors d'œuvre.
Petite Marmite Béarnaise.
Truite Saumonée aux Crevettes Roses.
Dodine de Canard au Chambertin.
Nouilles au Beurre Noisette.
Agneau de Pauillac à la Bordelaise.
Petits pois frais de Clamart.
Poularde de France.
Cœur de Romaine aux Pommes d'Amour.
Asperges d'Argenteuil Crème Mousseline.
Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt.
Dessert.
Café--Liqueurs.
Bénédictine.
Whether the Cecil was the first of the great banqueting houses to
effect a reform in the service of public banquets I am not sure, but it
was at the Cecil that I first found that such a reform had taken place.
In old days it was the custom for the waiters to trail a dish along the
whole length of a banqueting-table, and the salmon, which went up the
room a noble-looking fish, came down five minutes later to starvation
corner, a head, a tail and a skeleton. It was at the Cecil that I
first noticed the breaking up of the tables into manageable sections
of guests, with a waiter and his aids to each section, and the dinner
served straight from the kitchen to that section. The restaurant and
the banqueting halls and the private dining-rooms by no means exhaust
the list of the accommodations of those who dine that the Cecil
affords. There is below the Rose du Barri room another one, the Indian
room, decorated in Oriental fashion with blue and yellow tiles, and in
this a grill dinner and a _table d'hôte_ dinner are both served, and
when this room overflows another equally spacious room is opened and
becomes the grill-room.
(As I correct the proofs of this chapter news comes to me that "Sunny
Jim" will in 1914 become a joint partner in the management of the St
James's Palace Hotel in Bury Street and will give special attention to
its restaurant.)
XI
CLARIDGE'S
I reach back in memory farther in touch with Claridge's than with any
other hostelry in London, One of the stories of her early life that my
mother often told me when I was a small boy was how my grandfather,
as crotchety an elderly widower as ever ruled an Indian district,
when he finally retired from the service of John Company, arrived in
London with his bullock trunks and sandalwood boxes lined with tin, his
bedding rolled up in bundles, his guns, his fly-whisks, and palm-fans,
and all the strange paraphernalia that an Anglo-Indian official
gathered about him in those days. With him came his faithful bearer,
and an ayah, and his little pale daughter, and they all descended at
Claridge's Hotel--though perhaps in those days it might have been
Mivart's. The first great grief of the little girl's life was that
the "Nabob," as my grandfather was called in the family, delivered a
"hookum" to the manager of the hotel that an English nurse must be
provided directly for his small daughter, as the ayah ought to return
at once to her own country, and my mother was obliged to say good-bye
to her devoted Indian attendant. My first personal introduction
to Claridge's was when, as a schoolboy, I was invited by another
schoolboy, who wished to show off, to go with him to visit a German
_Graf_, a nobleman with a very long string of minor titles, whose
greatest glory was that he owned a castle on the Rhine. The _Graf_ was
very polite to the two little English boys, and talked to us in very
bad English; and when we took our departure he saw us to the door as
though we had been persons of the greatest importance. Mr Claridge,
wearing a skull-cap of velvet, happened to be in the hall as we passed
through, and I remember well the beautiful bow that he gave to the
Count. Mr Claridge's bows were celebrated; they were of a different
depth, according to the rank of the person to whom he bowed, and there
was even a delicate difference in the salute that he gave to a Serene
Highness to that with which he welcomed a Royal Highness. Claridge's in
those days consisted of half-a-dozen houses connected with each other,
and the best rooms in these houses formed the suites where the various
royalties who patronised the hotel lodged, Mr Claridge and his staff
of servants being always on the watch that the privacy of his guests
should not be invaded. On one occasion, when a famous caricaturist took
a room at the hotel, Mr Claridge waited on him and informed him that
he must transfer his custom elsewhere, for, though he, Mr Claridge,
was a great admirer of the artist's talent, and decorated the walls of
some of the rooms with his work, he could never allow a royal personage
to be caricatured within the walls of his hotel. Not that Mr Claridge
himself always spoke too respectfully of the great ones of the earth.
Archbishop Temple used to tell a story that when in 1846 the Pope
seriously thought of taking refuge in England, Mr Claridge remarked
that he was so full up with kings and royal dukes that he could only
offer his Holiness a small back room, but that, being a bachelor, he,
the Pope, would probably not mind.
The old Claridge's was pulled down and the new Claridge's built in
the nineties, and I remember the opening day, when a great crowd of
fashionable people came to look at its _salons_ and ballroom and
restaurant, and the royal suite. The india-rubber roadway in the
entrance, then a novelty, was much admired, and the six footmen in the
hall, in their state livery, looked mighty splendid. Mr D'Oyly Carte,
who more than anyone else had been the moving spirit in the creation of
the new hotel, was wheeled about in a chair through the crush of pretty
ladies and distinguished gentlemen, for he was then very ill.
The new Claridge's soon found its own particular atmosphere, an
atmosphere of perfect serenity. The little army of footmen, who were
too gorgeous for ordinary occasions, were reduced in numbers, and now
only one superb being in plush and silken calves moves about the hall
and arranges the papers in the reading-room. The inner hall, with
its pillars and walls of white, and its reflected light, is a most
comfortable lounge in which to sit after dinner and listen to the
orchestra, and out of this open two rooms, one of Wedgwood blue with
Wedgwood designs on it, and the other of old gold. The restaurant has
been considerably altered since its first opening, for it has been
divided into two rooms, the colouring of it has been brightened, and at
night an abundance of light is now thrown on to the painted ceilings
from cunningly concealed lamps. The bases of the great arches which
support the roof are cased in dark oak, with an inset of olive wood;
the carpet is of rose and grey and the chairs are of green leather with
the arms of the hotel stamped upon it.
It is a restaurant in which dinner takes its right place as one of the
tranquil pleasures of life. The music of the band is never too loud,
the fine napery and the admirable glass are pleasant to the touch, the
flowers in the silvered stands of the table lamps give an agreeable
touch of colour, the cut glass of the pendent electroliers sparkles,
and the first and the second _maîtres d'hôtel_, M. Invernizzi, who
comes from the Palace Hotel, at St Moritz, to London for the season,
and M. Castelani, who is a permanency at Claridge's, are tactfully
attentive, while M. Gehlardi, the manager of the hotel, walks through
the rooms during the course of dinner to bow here and there at a
table, and to assure himself that all is well. It is the clientele
of Claridge's that has made its atmosphere, for the well-dressed,
good-looking, quiet people who dine at the tables, put a comfortable
distance apart, are folk whose names bulk largely in the Society
columns of the newspapers, and the list of the diners on any given
night in Claridge's Restaurant would be for the most part a string of
titles. Good manners are in the air, and I do not think that even the
rawest plutocrat could be unmannerly amidst such surroundings.
On the night that I last dined at Claridge's, I had written beforehand
asking that a table for three should be reserved for me, and I had
intended to give my guests the larger of the two dinners of the
restaurant, the twelve-and-six one, which runs through the usual
courses, and which is by no means a set dinner, for any dish which does
not exactly match the fancy of a dinner-giver is changed for another to
suit his whim or his palate. But I found that a special little feast
had been ordered for me by M. Gehlardi, and the menu of it was as
follows:--
Melon Cantaloup.
Bortch à la Russe.
Filets de Sole Newnham-Davis.
Noisette d'Agneau aux Fines Herbes.
Petits pois frais. Pommes Noisettes.
Coq en Pâte.
Salade de Romaine à l'Estragon.
Fraises Parisienne.
Friandises.
The _chef de cuisine_ at Claridge's is M. Maurice Bonhomme, who had
passed through the kitchens of two great Parisian restaurants, the
Café de Paris, and Ledoyen's, in the Champs Elysées, before he came to
London. He is a chef of high repute, and these are the specialities
of his kitchen:--_filet de sole Tosca, suprême de sole Pré Catalan,
Coulibiac de saumon, suprême de volaille d'Orléans, cailles Hacchi
Pacha, Coq en Pâte Claridge's, pêches Caprice, fraises Delphine_.
Of the dishes of my dinner, the excellent _Bortch à la Russe_ was
served as it is in Russia, with little _pâtés_ to break into it. The
list of these _pâtés_ in the menu of a Russian dinner is often a long
one. The _filet de sole_, which M. Bonhomme paid me the compliment of
christening to my name, is a quite admirable _sole poché au Madère_,
with all the fumet of the fish retained and served with sliced
_champignons_ and _pointes d'asperges_. I sent my very best compliments
to M. Bonhomme on his masterpiece. The _coq en pâte_ is an ornamental
dish, for the fowl stuffed with all manner of rich things is encased in
a paste shaped like a cock, crest and all. The outer covering is broken
before the bird is carved. It is a dish of almost terrifying richness.
Quite a number of the great people of the land give their banquets at
Claridge's, and out of the sheaf of the menus of these feasts I select
one of the Surrey Magistrates' Club Dinner, which shows that our Solons
across the Thames dine and wine with much discretion and taste:
Royal Natives.
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Monte-Carlo.
Bisque de Crabes.
Turbotin braisé au Champagne.
Whitebait diable noir.
Selle de Béhague à l'Estragon.
Haricots verts de Nice.
Pommes nouvelles au Beurre.
Timbale à la Galoise.
Caneton d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise.
Salades d'Oranges.
Asperges vertes Sauce Hollandaise.
Pêches Melba.
Friandises.
Bonne Bouche.
VINS.
Oloroso Fine Old.
Piesporter, 1904.
George Goulet (mag.), 1900.
Moët et Chandon.
Dry Imper., 1904.
Dow's 1896.
Courvoisier Brandy.
Fine Champagne, 1865.
I wonder how a club dinner of magistrates of fifty years ago would
contrast with such a dinner as the above.
XII
THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT
Old "Rats," which is the disrespectful title by which most of his
friends call Major-General Sir Ulysses Ratbourne, late of the
Bundlekund Fusiliers, was holding forth to his crony, Colonel
Bunthunder, late of the same distinguished regiment, in the hall of
the Cutlass and Cross-bow Club as I passed through it, and the General
paused for a second in his denunciation of Radicals and Socialists
to say that he wanted to have a word with me, and then finished his
peroration. Colonel Bunthunder muttered: "Very true, very true," and
went on into the smoking-room shaking his head sorrowfully, and the
General turned to me.
"Look here, my lad"--anyone under seventy is "my lad" to the
General--said he, "I want you to give me a bit of advice."
I said the correct platitude, and awaited developments.
"My nephew Bill, the one in the Hussars, has just married, and he and
his wife are coming up to town, and I want to know where to take 'em to
dine."
I reeled off the list of the half-dozen most fashionable restaurants;
but the General cut me short. "Ay, my lad, that's all very well; but
the girl that poor old Bill's been and married is a vegetarian. What
d'ye say to that, now?"
The General had put into the word "vegetarian" just the tone of
astonished disgust he would have employed had he told me that the young
lady was a militant suffragette; but I did not echo that at all. "Take
them to the Eustace Miles Restaurant in Chandos Street," I advised;
"and whatever your niece's fads may be, you can give her what she wants
there."
Old "Rats" thanked me with the chastened thankfulness that men show
when given the address of a specialist for some obscure disease of
which they think they are a victim, wrote the address down on a card,
and went after Colonel Bunthunder into the smoking-room to tell him all
about it.