half 277, 7s.; liqueur, 2s. 6d.; total, £1, 18s.; and asked Jones minor
where he would like to go and be amused. He said he had heard that the
Empire was jolly good.
XXI
IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE THEATRE
KETTNER'S LE DINER FRANÇAIS
I know as a result of my early training in Miss Woodman's school for
the "sons of the nobility and gentry" in Somerset Street, off Orchard
Street, that a piece of land almost entirely surrounded by water is
called a peninsula. But I was never instructed in any school as to
there being a special name for a theatre almost entirely surrounded by
restaurants. If there is such a name it should be applied to the Palace
Theatre, for restaurants have sprouted up about it just as grass grows
round the foot of a tree.
Of this group of restaurants two at least that I know deserve special
mention, one as having been the pioneer of clean restaurant kitchens
and the other, a very cheap restaurant, as having made the fortune
of one restaurateur and of being in the course of making the fortune
of his successor. Kettner's, in Church Street, was the first small
restaurant that dared to show its kitchen to all comers at a time when
the kitchens of most little foreign restaurants were places of horror.
M. Auguste Kettner was a chef who had learned his art in his native
country, and who, as an investment of his savings, started a small
restaurant, in 1867, in Church Street, Soho. Those were the days before
Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the slums, before Cambridge
Circus was made, before the Palace Theatre was built, and when Soho was
a maze of little streets. So puzzling to a stranger was its geography
that the district inspired W. S. Gilbert to write a "Bab" ballad
concerning Peter the Wag, the policeman with a taste for practical
jokes who always sent the people who asked the way of him in the wrong
direction. Retribution came to Peter when he lost his way near Poland
Street, Soho.
"For weeks he trod his self-made beat,
Through Newport--Gerrard--Bear--Greek--Rupert--Frith--Dean--Poland Streets,
And into Golden Square."
Kettner's was discovered by a correspondent of _The Times_, and the
readers of the Thunderer, which in those days took very meagre notice
of the amusements and enjoyments of life, were surprised to be told
of a little restaurant in the centre of Soho where the kitchen was
as clean as a new pin and where excellent food was to be obtained at
surprisingly cheap prices. That article made the fortune of Kettner's
just as other articles in less august papers have made since then the
fortunes of other restaurants. Journalists, artists and actors, the
swallows who herald prosperity, came to the restaurant, and George
Augustus Sala, the author, who was a _fin gourmet_, with a knowledge of
the practical side of cookery as well, became the great patron of the
restaurant.
In the early seventies, as a young subaltern with a microscopic income
and a desire to make it stretch as far as possible, I used often to
dine at Kettner's. It was a real chef's restaurant in those days, an _à
la carte_ establishment where one ate one or two dishes quite admirably
cooked, and where a walk through the kitchen and an inspection of the
larder always preceded or followed a dinner. I never hurried over a
meal to be in time for the rising of the curtain at a neighbouring
theatre, for there were no neighbouring theatres then, but enjoyed
my dinner to the uttermost. M. Kettner then was so successful in
business that he was gradually absorbing house after house, and his
restaurant, instead of being in one little house, occupied the ground
floor of several houses, doors being driven through the party walls.
The private rooms on the first floor were favourite dining places of
couples who wished to be _tête-à-tête_, and I fancy that when the
popularity of such little dinners at restaurants was dimmed it was a
blow to the restaurant in Church Street. I have always thought myself
that the almost entire disappearance of the small private dining-room
from restaurants coincided with the building of innumerable houses of
flats, and that the dinners which used to be given in the _cabinets
particuliers_ are now eaten in flats.
In 1877 two events of great importance to M. Kettner happened: he wrote
his "Book of the Table" and he died. His table book, of which a second
edition has recently been published, is a curious mixture of very
useful recipes and scraps of information concerning all matters under
the sun that can in any way be connected with cookery. Achilles, for
instance, is brought into the book that reference may be made to the
Achilles statue in Hyde Park, and then to the great Duke of Wellington,
of whom the story is told that his cook, Felix, left his service in
despair because the Duke could not distinguish between a dinner cooked
by an artist and one horribly mauled by a kitchenmaid.
When at the height of his fame and prosperity M. Kettner died and left
a widow, and Madame Kettner, when her days of mourning had passed,
married M. Giovanni Sangiorgi, who also became her partner in the
business, a kindly man who keeps a watchful eye on the restaurant which
is now controlled by a company. The restaurant was in comparatively
late years rebuilt and an entrance hall given to it, and the two rooms
to the right of the hall were in 1913 very tastefully redecorated,
but it still retains its characteristic of being several small houses
joined together. The first sight that greets one's eyes on entering the
hall is a view of the kitchen, generally with a cook in white clothing
busy about his work as the centre of the picture, and those who lunch
and dine are, as of yore, asked to walk through the white-tiled,
beautifully clean domain of the chef. A grill-room now forms part
of the establishment, and the character of the meals is changed in
that _table d'hôte_ dinners at various prices are the trump cards of
the establishment. I fancy that the propinquity of the Palace, of
the Shaftesbury Theatre, and now of the Ambassadors' may have had a
great deal to say to this change, for when I dine at Kettner's before
going to the Palace or the Shaftesbury I can see that most of my
fellow-guests are theatre-goers. A three-and-six _table d'hôte_ dinner
in the grill-room and five-shilling and seven-and-six ones in the
restaurant are the early evening meals of the establishment, and below
is quite a fair specimen of the menu of the five-shilling dinner. It
is the one I ate on the last occasion that I made a pilgrimage to see
Madame Pavlova dance. The quail was fat and tender, and the _crème
Victoria_ a good soup:
MENU
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Bortsch.
Crème Victoria.
Turbotin Bercy ou Blanchaille.
Poulet Poëlé Derby.
Côtelette de Mouton Maréchale.
Pommes Nouvelles.
Caille Rôtie.
Salade.
Glacé de Moka.
But Kettner's now has to encounter many rivals, for young men such
as Kettner himself was when he made the fame of his restaurant are
following his example, and all the Soho district bristles with little
restaurants which give wonderfully good food for the small prices
they charge. Kettner's will always, however, be famous for showing
its clients a spotlessly clean kitchen when such kitchens were the
exception, and this excellent custom and example it maintains to-day.
The other noticeable restaurant of this group is one founded by M.
Roche, which bears in large letters on its front "Le Dîner Français,"
and which occupies the ground floor of No. 16 Old Compton Street.
A story I have been told of the origin of the restaurant is rather
picturesque. M. Roche was a baker and _pâtissier_, and one day two
Frenchmen came into his shop and asked where they could get a good
French meal. M. Roche replied that he and his family were about to
eat their midday meal, and that if the strangers from his native land
cared to join them he would be delighted. The two Frenchmen enjoyed
their midday meal so thoroughly that they asked to be allowed, during
their stay in London, to take all their meals at the bakery, paying
their share, and M. Roche's establishment gradually changed its
character, becoming a full-blown restaurant. That M. Roche served his
apprenticeship under Frederic at the Tour d'Argent in Paris does not
militate against the probability of this story. M. Roche, having made a
fortune in Old Compton Street, returned to France and bought an hotel
near Granville. _Le Dîner Français_, from which the establishment
takes its name, was always an eighteen-penny meal, and continued to
be so under the present proprietor, M. Béguinot, until the epidemic
of "lightning strikes" came in the spring of 1913, when, to cover
the extra expense entailed by giving cooks and waiters their weekly
holiday, the price was raised to one-and-nine. M. Roche always had the
reputation of buying the best material in the market, and M. Béguinot
has maintained this reputation. The restaurant at dinner-time is
generally filled to its holding capacity, and as many as four hundred
dinners are sometimes served on one evening. The restaurant is narrow,
but it runs far back, three rooms being thrown into one. The walls are
of cream colour, with a skirting of deep orange; the floor is covered
with oilcloth; the knives are black-handled, but cheapness in M.
Béguinot's establishment does not mean dirt, for everything is as clean
as clean can be, and the waiters, who all talk excellent English, wear
shirts and aprons as clean as the walls. Near the door in the first of
the rooms are two long tables, and at these any man who is by himself
takes a seat.
For one-and-nine one is given a choice of either _hors d'œuvre_
or soup, fish, an entrée and an _entremet_, and there is quite
a reasonable choice of dishes under each heading. I dined at M.
Béguinot's restaurant one Sunday night, and Sunday is by no means a bad
day on which to dine there, for the rooms are then less crowded than
on weekdays, and, sitting at one of the long tables, I selected from
the _carte_ of the dinner cold _consommé_, fried sole, sweetbread and
spinach, and an ice. The _consommé_ was reasonably strong, the sole
was really a little slip, but quite fresh and well fried; the small
sweetbread was excellent, and the diminutive portion of ice was all
that it should be. There was a liberal supply of bread on the table,
and the crisp sound of the cutting of the long yards of bread at a side
table was almost continuous throughout dinner. When I had finished my
meal I certainly did not feel full to repletion, but it sufficed.
My neighbour on one side of me had ordered a _hors d'œuvre_, and the
globule of butter given him with his two sardines was a tiny one. He
followed fish with fish, and I noticed that the slice of cold salmon
of a pale pink came from the tail end. He followed my suit in ordering
sweetbread, and finished his meal with a tartlet. I was extravagant in
my order for wine, for, passing over the elevenpenny Graves and the
next wine on the list, I recklessly commanded a pint of Sauterne, which
cost me 1s. 10d., so that my bill came to 3s. 7d., and I got very good
value for my money.
My fellow-guests on Sunday night were a selection from all the
respectable classes, little parties of ladies, married couples and that
contingent from the artistic colony which is always to be found in
every Soho restaurant.
XXII
THE WELCOME CLUB
In the days when I was still an enthusiastic amateur actor, I was once
"cast" for the insignificant part of an aged peasant--the organiser
of the performance assured me that though there were only a dozen
lines in the part, it nevertheless "stood out"--and in a smock-frock,
a pair of second-best trousers tied up with hay-bands, fishing boots,
a bandana handkerchief round my neck, a long, straggly white beard, a
red nose and an old tall silk hat, brushed the wrong way to give it the
appearance of beaver, I depicted the rude forefather of the village. I
spoke in a trembling, squeaky voice and I was addressed by the lads and
lasses, yes, and even by the noble old squire and by the black-browed
villain, as "Granfer." The part did not, apparently, stand out enough
to catch the notice of our audiences, but to those who played with me
that drama of village life I have remained "Granfer" to the present
day, and every summer I ask three of them, my Pet Grandchild, my Tiny
Grandchild and Little Perce to dine with me one evening at the Welcome
Club and to go the round of the side-shows afterwards, that being very
much the sort of entertainment that every real grandfather ought, I
think, to give his grandchildren.
I made my acquaintance with the Welcome Club in the year that it was
first built, at the beginning of all things at Earl's Court. Mr Alec
Knowles was the first secretary of the club. The idea of the Welcome
Club, of which distinguished foreigners could be made honorary members,
originated at the great Chicago Exhibition, in the grounds of which
there was a club of this name.
The trees that were planted in front of the lawn of the club have grown
to a good size now, but even more picturesque than the formal lines
of planes are the thorns and other old trees which were on the ground
before the makers of the exhibition gardens took things in hand, and
which were left there. Year after year, additions and improvements have
been made to the Welcome Club. What was originally a dining-room and a
lawn has become a club-house in a garden. The long shelter, a pleasant
place in which to dine on a summer's evening, has been enlarged more
than once, and now, with its alcoves, each a tiny dining-room, with
vines growing up its supports and flower beds edging its railings, it
pleases the eye of the artist and architect as well as the eye of the
diner. On the other side of the club-house is a pretty drawing-room
for ladies, and Time, which always works in sympathy with a clever
architect, has done its share in deepening the colour of the tiles, in
bringing the lawn to velvety perfection, and in drawing up the young
trees inch by inch. Never before have the garden beds been so gay with
flowers as they were in 1913, and the interior of the club-house has
been brightened up to concert pitch.
To organise the staff of a club that is only open for four months in
the year is no easy matter, for the pick of _maîtres d'hôtel_ and cooks
and waiters do not as a rule care to accept engagements that only last
for a third of a year. A club as far from its bases of supply as is
the Welcome cannot arrange its catering so easily as can clubs in the
centre of London, which have their fishmonger's and butcher's shops
just round the corner, and a wet or a cold night means almost empty
dining-rooms at Earl's Court. Difficulties, however, only exist to
be overcome, and Mr Payne, the chairman of the Earl's Court Company,
determined that it shall no longer be said that it is impossible to get
a good dinner in any exhibition, has brought all his energy to bear on
the problem, and with Mr Charles Bartlett, as secretary, with a Bond
Street firm of caterers responsible for the personnel and material
and with M. G. Thuillez in charge of the club kitchens, I think that
Mr Payne made good his promise. I certainly have never before at the
Welcome Club eaten a dinner so satisfactory in every way as the one I
gave one fine evening last July to my three grandchildren.
I had written word to the secretary, an old friend, saying on what
evening I was coming to dine and asking him to give the manager a hint
whether to reserve for me a table in the dining-room or the shelter,
according to whether the evening was warm or cool. The weather that day
was fine, but the temperature kept about the temperate line. As the
manager was unable to guess whether the ladies would find the shelter
chilly and as there was that evening no great rush for tables, he
reserved until I should appear upon the scene, a table for four in the
dining-room and another for the same number in one of the alcoves of
the shelter.
When I came to the club, five minutes before the hour of dinner, I
opted at once for the table in the alcove, looked at the menus of
the _table d'hôte_ dinners, one a five-shilling one and the other a
seven-and-six one, and chose the latter, ordered my wine, a magnum of
Krug, and then sat in one of the big wicker chairs on the lawn and
waited for my guests.
The scarlet-coated band of an infantry regiment had taken their
places in the band pavilion in the centre of the gravelled space and
the bandmaster was rapping on his music stand to command his men's
attention. There were already many people sitting on the circle of
seats which surrounds the pavilion. Away to the left men in dress
clothes and ladies in evening frocks were going in little parties into
the Quadrant Restaurant, and opposite to the Welcome Club, with the
breadth of the open space in between, there were groups of men about
the American bar and the tea pavilion. The great tower, which is part
of one of the mountain railways, loomed big to the right, but the
cars that run on the rails had for a time ceased to rattle and splash
through the stream of real water which forms part of the scenery. The
flying machines still farther to the right were also still for the
moment, the wire hawsers which support them looking like the rigging of
a ship. Presently I saw my three guests approaching, having come into
the gardens by the most westerly entrance, and we were soon seated in
the alcove, where an electric lamp hung from the ceiling and another
lamp on the table was alight, though the sun had only just set. This
was the menu of the dinner that we ate:
Melon Rafraîchi.
Consommé Tosca.
Crème Bonne Femme.
Turbot Bouilli Sauce Homard.
Tournedos Doria.
Pommes Rosette.
Noix de Ris de Veau en Cocotte Demidoff.
Sorbet Mandarinette.
Caneton d'Aylesbury rôti au Cresson.
Salade Cœur de Laitue.
Glacé Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
Our conversation naturally enough drifted on to stories of amateur
acting; but not until my Tiny Grandchild had first described a deed
of heroism she had done while staying at a country house. In the
dead of the night she heard a bell ring continuously, and assuming
that burglars were in the house and had carelessly set an alarm bell
ringing, she woke up her husband in the next room and proposed that
they should there and then rouse all the inmates of the house and
capture the burglars. But her husband looked at his watch and as
an amendment suggested that, as the ringing was probably an alarum
clock, set by a diligent housemaid, instead of alarming the household
it would be better for my T. G. to sleep out her beauty sleep. We
re-christened the daring lady "The Little Heroine" as we supped our
_crème bonne femme_ and declared it to be good. With the _tournedos_
my imperfections of memory with respect to "words" were cast into my
teeth, and especially of a sentence. I introduced into _His Excellency
the Governor_, when, as Sir Montague, I declared to Ethel that I would
"dower her with the inestimable guerdon of my love," words that Captain
Marshall never wrote. And, further, it was recalled that most of us who
had played together in this comedy, and its author, went one evening to
see Mr H. B. Irving and Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Mr Dion Boucicault and
Mr Marsh Allen and others play the comedy, and how a shout of delight
went up from our row of stalls and puzzled our neighbours sorely when
Mr Irving, primed, no doubt, by Captain Marshall, declared that he
would dower _his_ Ethel with the "inestimable guerdon" of _his_ love.
To change the subject I drew the attention of my three grandchildren to
their surroundings, for there are a few minutes of supreme loveliness
at the Welcome Club when the light is fading from the western sky and
all the electric lamps suddenly spring into brilliancy. The tower of
the mountain railway no longer appears to be a thing of wood and
canvas, but stands a great, dark, solid mass against the sky, with
the twinkle of some letters of electricity upon its battlements. In
the trees on the lawn, lamps, red and blue and golden, shimmer like
fireflies; all about the bandstand are garlands of white light, and the
flying machines, shadows dotted with coloured light, go swinging round
in the distance.
When we had finished our dinner we sat in contentment for a while on
the lawn, listening to the music of the band and drinking our coffee,
and then, as an aid to digestion, went in to The Hereafter side-show,
almost next door, where skeletons dance and a bridge swings and rocks
over a torrent of painted fire; and then on to the booths where the
china of "happy homes" can be broken up at a penny a shot, where the
two ladies did desperate execution against the kitchen service. And
next to the revolving cylinders, where we watched enterprising young
gentlemen stand on their heads involuntarily, and to the variations
on hoop-la stalls, at one of which we all tried unsuccessfully to win
watches. And on to the summer ballroom; and to the bowl-slide; and
finally, as the supreme digestive, we all four went down the water
chute, I taking the precaution of leaving my tall hat below in charge
of the gate man: for one year going down this chute my Tiny Grandchild,
being shot into the air by the bump on the water, descended on my hat,
which I held in my hand, and turned it into a good imitation of an
accordion.
XXIII
GOLDSTEIN'S
HORS D'ŒUVRE.
Smoked Salmon. Solomon Gundy.
Olives.
SOUPS.
Frimsell. Matsoklese.
Pease and beans.
FISH.
Brown stewed carp. White stewed gurnet.
Fried soles. Fried plaice.
ENTRÉES.
Roast veal (white stew).
Filleted steak (brown stew).
POULTRY.
Roast capon. Roast chicken.
Smoked beef. Tongue.
VEGETABLES.
Spinach. Sauerkraut.
Potatoes. Cucumbers.
Green salad.
SWEETS.
Kugel. Stewed prunes.
Almond pudding.
Apple staffen.
When I looked at the above I groaned aloud. Was it possible, I thought,
that any human being could eat a meal of such a length and yet live? I
looked at my two companions, but they showed no signs of terror, so I
took up knife and fork and bade the waiter do his duty.
The _raison d'être_ of the dinner was this: Thinking of untried
culinary experiences, I told one of the great lights of the Jewish
community that I should like some day to eat a "kosher" dinner at a
typical restaurant, and he said that the matter was easily enough
arranged; and by telegram informed me that dinner was ordered for that
evening at Goldstein's and that I was to call for him in the City at
six.
When I and a gallant soul, who had sworn to accompany me through thick
and thin, arrived at the office of the orderer of the dinner, we found
a note of apology from him. The dinner would be ready for us, and his
best friend would do the honours as master of the ceremonies, but he
himself was seedy and had gone home.
On, in the pouring rain, we three devoted soldiers of the fork went, in
a four-wheeler cab, to our fate. The cab pulled up at a narrow doorway,
and we were at Goldstein's. Through a short passage we went towards
a little staircase, and our master of the ceremonies pointed out on
the post of a door that led into the public room of the restaurant a
triangular piece of zinc, a Mazuza, the little case in which is placed
a copy of the Ten Commandments. Upstairs we climbed into a small room
with no distinctive features about it. A table was laid for six. There
were roses in a tall glass vase in the middle of the table, and a
buttonhole bouquet in each napkin. A piano, chairs covered with black
leather, low cupboards with painted tea-trays and well-worn books on
the top of them, an old-fashioned bell-rope, a mantelpiece with painted
glass vases on it and a little clock, framed prints on the walls, two
gas globes--these were the fittings of an everyday kind of apartment.
We took our places, and the waiter, in dress clothes, after a surprised
inquiry as to whether we were the only guests at the feast, put the
menu before us. It was then that, encouraged by the bold front shown by
my two comrades, I, after a moment of tremor, told the waiter to do his
duty.