court-martial. He was accommodated with a chair in the centre of
the room and given a cigar and a drink; a wide circle of candles in
bottles was put about him to give light to the proceedings, and all the
pirates sat in groups in the sawdust, the master-at-arms, with drawn
cutlass, behind the prisoner, the accuser, a picturesque ruffian, and
the prisoner's friend, an equally forbidding scoundrel, and the pirate
Captain being the only individuals standing up. This grouping formed
a really striking picture, and I have no doubt that many artistic
eyes took in its possibilities. The accusation brought against the
prisoner was that he had paid income tax (groans from the pirates),
that he was even suspected of paying super-tax (yells of fury from the
pirates), that he kept tame animals, notably Welsh rarebits, and that
he fed them. The pirate Captain had already warned the prisoner that
his sentence had been determined upon, and therefore that it was no
use for him, or anybody else on his behalf, to plead his cause; but
the prisoner's friend had a speech ready, and loosed it off, making
the case very much blacker against his client than it had been before.
Sentence was then duly pronounced, but as the pirate Captain had
mislaid the plank on which the victim was to walk, and as the goldfish
which were to represent sharks had been left downstairs, the doom of
the victim resolved itself into the presentation to him of a pair of
silver hand-cuffs with a tiny watch at the end of one of them.
After the court-martial, the pirates gave themselves and their guest an
entertainment. One pirate sang admirably; another pirate, whose name,
I think, before he went to sea, was Walter Churcher, told excellent
stories, and a third pirate went through the whole performance that the
flashlight photographer inflicts on good-natured diners, his apparatus
being a whisky bottle and a tin mug, and then handed round photographs
he pretended to have taken of our guest.
There was more fun to come, but as midnight was drawing near, and as I
belong now to the early-to-bed sect of sea-wolves, I departed quietly.
The lift boy at my flat, when he saw the brick-dust of my marine
complexion, said to me, as he took me up: "Good gracious, sir, whatever
has happened to your face?"
It was a great night altogether!
XXVI
APPENRODT'S
I had been, like every other Londoner, aware of the coming of
Appenrodt's shops into the panorama of the London streets; but I had
never gone into one of the Appenrodt establishments until a year ago,
and it was the dread of the armour-plate sandwich of the buffets that
sent me there.
I often, when I am going to an early first night at the theatre, cut
matters so fine as to dinner that I have only time to eat a couple of
sandwiches at a buffet, and as often as not the barmaid, knowing that I
am not a regular customer, does a feat of sleight of hand and gives me
the roof, the two top sandwiches of the pile. If I protest I am assured
that they were fresh-cut not a quarter of an hour ago, and being a
moral coward in such matters, I eat them. If I postpone my sandwich
meal until after the theatre a second thickness of armour-plate has
been added to the bread.
One evening, walking home after the theatre to my flat in the wild
north-west, I became aware when I reached Oxford Circus that I was
very hungry. Through the windows of Appenrodt's shop at Oxford Circus
I could see men in white jackets very busily slicing bread and making
sandwiches for the people who sat at the little tables. I went in,
ate a couple of ham sandwiches which had been made for me before my
eyes, and blessed the name of Appenrodt, for they were all that a ham
sandwich should be.
When Appenrodt's headquarters at No. 1 Coventry Street were a-building
I watched with interest the putting in of the big plate-glass windows,
and after its completion I looked whenever I passed at the big _cartes
du jour_ which are put up outside wherever there is space for them. One
evening, on my way to a club in the Leicester Square district to dine,
I found, just as I arrived at the Coventry Street corner, that I had
cut my time very close, and that if I dined at the club I should not be
in my place at the rising of the curtain. I looked at the big bills of
fare outside Appenrodt's, and went up into the restaurant on the first
floor to see whether I could get there a quickly served meal. I had an
excellent plate of _chicken consommé_, a cut from one of the joints of
the day--roast veal and bacon--and a rice pudding. I found this simple
food quite excellent, and I got to my theatre in plenty of time.
My first experience led me on to other dinners in Appenrodt's
restaurant on the first floor, and I found that the dishes, without
exception, were admirably cooked, and that the soup and the _soufflé
omelette_ with which I now always begin and end a repast at Appenrodt's
are noticeably excellent. There is plenty of choice, for the menu of
the day comprises four soups, ten fish dishes, at least the same number
of entrées, some of these being those that Germans love, vegetables and
sweets in due proportion, four joints at lunch-time and the same number
at dinner.
This is a typical dinner that I ate one night at Appenrodt's, and these
are the prices I paid for the dishes:--_crème conti_, an excellent
white soup, 6d.; _suprême de brill Dugleré_, 1s. 6d.; _pilaff de foie
de volaille à la Grecque_, 1s. 3d.; and _omelette Mylord_, which is a
form of _omelette surprise_, 1s. 6d.; and I drank therewith a pint of
Rhenish sparkling muscatel with all the taste and bouquet of the grape
in it.
The restaurant is all white and gold, and has a low ceiling, but as
it has a row of windows on two sides I have no doubt it will be quite
cool in summer. The curtains to the windows are of some pleasant
straw-coloured material, with pink spots on it; the carpet is dark. A
glass screen is in front of the lifts which bring the dishes down from
the kitchen at the top of the house. There are two staircases, one, the
main one, from Coventry Street, and another one from Wardour Street,
leading up to the restaurant. The waiters are mostly Germans, who speak
good English, and who have the bearing of drilled men. I have no doubt
that Mr Appenrodt, who at one time sacrificed a growing business to go
back to Germany to do his military training, does not engage any of his
countrymen who have shirked their years of service. The only drawback
to the restaurant that I have noticed is an unavoidable one owing to
the construction of the house, that the personnel of the coffee kitchen
have to pass through the restaurant coming and going about their work.
The people who dine in the restaurant at Appenrodt's seem to belong
to all classes. When I have dined there early I have seen amongst the
customers men and ladies whom I recognised as belonging to the Variety
profession, and who eat an early meal before going to the theatres
where they perform. Many of Appenrodt's countrymen and countrywomen
dine in the restaurant, and the black-coated classes of respectable
Londoners and their womenfolk have already found out how good the food
is there.
Having seen all these things, and feeling sure that Appenrodt, with
his many shops and his restaurants, meant a new power come into the
centre of London, I became curious as to the owner, or owners, of the
name and asked whether it was just a _nom de fantasie_ or whether there
really is such a person in the flesh as a Mr Appenrodt. I was assured
that there was a Mr Appenrodt and that if it would gratify my curiosity
to talk to him he would be very pleased to meet me.
And so it came that I met Mr Appenrodt in his own restaurant, and found
him to be a very quiet, patently sincere German gentleman, with a round
face, pleasant, steady eyes, hair a little thin on the top and a large
dark moustache. He told me across a luncheon-table the story of his
life, and I was able to assure him that other people besides myself
would find the history of his early struggles in England an interesting
one.
He was born in Berlin in 1867, and, having been a clerk in a Hamburg
shipping agency, came to this country when he was nineteen years old to
learn the English language. He soon found a billet in a City office, as
correspondence clerk at a pound a week, and he determined to stay in
England, though his father, who was a spirit distiller, wished him to
return to Germany and the distillery.
When he was twenty years old he thought he knew London well enough to
engage in business on his own account. His father would not help him,
but he had £2000 left him by his mother, and with this he engaged in
various speculations, the thought of which now moves him to hearty
laughter. He wanted to induce the English to smoke the German students'
long pipes and to use washable india-rubber playing cards.
These and other such brilliant ideas made a very serious inroad on
his capital. He held, amongst other agencies, one for a manufacturer
of preserves, and this brought him into touch with German provision
shops. These shops were all tucked away in little side streets in the
Soho district, and Mr Appenrodt thought that there would be a good
opening for German _delicatessen_ if it was possible to show them in
better premises and with more appetising surroundings. He opened in
a basement at the corner of Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street a
shop, in a room about twenty feet square. At that time there were no
light refreshment places in the City except the A.B.C. shops, and Mr
Appenrodt soon had a large clientele for his little shop. He saw that
there was a fortune to be made in catering for the wants of the middle
classes, but before he experimented on a larger scale he went back to
Germany to serve his one year of military service, having sold his
little business to a man who transferred it to some licensed premises
and made a fortune by it.
When Mr Appenrodt came back, having completed his term of military
service, he found that his luck in the City had petered out, for not
one of the shops he opened in succession proved to be a success. The
last straw was a shop in the Commercial Road, which seemed likely to
eat up all the funds he had left. But it was during this last attempt
that his luck turned. He engaged a young lady as shop assistant, and
she brought him good luck and success; and his love story, for it
was a love story, led up to the right ending of all love stories, a
happy marriage. And he backed his luck, for he and his wife made a
last bold bid for fortune by taking a shop in the West End, at the
corner of Coventry Street and Whitcomb Street. This venture proved an
instantaneous success. Mr Appenrodt and his wife at first did all the
work themselves, and their business hours were from nine A.M. until one
the next morning. They had no afternoons or evenings off, and worked
all and every Sunday.
Easier times came, assistant after assistant was engaged, and one
branch after another was opened. Not all of these proved successes, but
in spite of minor set-backs, the firm of two continued to flourish
more and more, and has now the big shop and restaurant at Coventry
Street, eight branches in various parts of London and a big depot in
Paris. Mr Appenrodt has refused many offers to turn his undertaking
into a company. He looks on his five hundred employees as his family,
and is not willing to put them at the mercy of strangers.
That was Mr Appenrodt's story to me across the table, and when I asked
him questions he amplified his personal history in various ways. He
told me how the Parisian depot came to be established: that one day he
met a former employee, one of his own countrymen, who talked French
like a native of France. He knew his man, and he told him that he
was just going over to Paris, and that if he could find a suitable
shop to let there, he would take it and put his old friend in as his
partner and as the manager. He found the shop, put his friend into
it, and it has proved a most successful speculation. He told me of
the various obstacles he had to overcome in building his premises in
Coventry Street; of the large sums he expended to buy out the owners
of the three houses he required and of the difficulties he experienced
in obtaining a licence to sell beer and other liquors; how at last
he bought two public-houses and surrendered their licences, and how
the Licensing Magistrates then gave him permission to serve alcoholic
drinks, but only with food. His prices, Mr Appenrodt told me, are fixed
as being the lowest prices at which he can sell first-class food and
make a reasonable profit on it without looking to any profit from the
drinks that are sold, for no pressure whatever is put on the patrons of
his restaurant to drink anything stronger than water.
I asked Mr Appenrodt what his special hobby was, and he told me
that it was to buy public-houses and to turn them into Appenrodt
establishments, which, if you come to think of it, is as true a work of
reform as any that is being carried out in London.
He and his wife, he went on to say, love the work they do. They go
together frequently to the firm's factory in the country, where
workmen, many of them imported from Germany, make the sausages, the
glassed delicacies and other specialities of the house, and on fine
days to the farm they own at Hendon, a picturesque tract of country
through which the River Brent flows, where they breed pigs for the
pork sausages--though English pork is so firm that Dutch pork or other
foreign porks must be mixed with it to make it bind--and fowls and
other farm produce.
Before I said good-bye to Mr Appenrodt he asked me if I would like
to see the kitchen and other parts of the house, and I said "With
pleasure," for I never think that the final word can be said regarding
a restaurant until one has seen the kitchen that supplies it. We
went upstairs to the top of the house, passing on the way a room in
which half-a-dozen women were peeling potatoes for the potato salads,
potatoes specially imported from Germany, for English potatoes crumble
too easily to be satisfactory material. And eventually we came to a
big kitchen at the top of the house, very airy and very clean, where
a French _chef de cuisine_ rules over cooks of all nationalities.
Descending again, we went into the basement to look at Appenrodt's
_Keller_, decorated after the German style with landscapes and figures,
where two bands play alternately all the afternoon and evening,
and where good Germans, and Englishmen who like good German beer,
congregate to eat simple food and drink the produce of Austrian and
German hop-fields.
And finally I walked round the big shop on the ground floor, where at
the marble counter the men in white were busy cutting sandwiches, and
Mr Appenrodt explained to me the beauties of the glassed delicacies and
the great variety of sausages of all countries, and as he took up one
after another, sausages of majestic size, products of Germany or Italy,
cut so as to show a section, and smaller sausages in glass jars, and
bunches and packages of sausages, and Swiss sausages in a shape to take
up very little room in a knapsack, I felt coming over me exactly the
same feeling that I experience when a collector of beautiful china, or
priceless lacquer or wonderful metal-work explains to me the beauties
of his collection, a feeling that I too want to collect that particular
kind of curio. If I were much in Mr Appenrodt's company I feel quite
sure that I should become an enthusiastic amateur in the matter of
sausages.
XXVII
THE BURFORD BRIDGE HOTEL
One of the pleasantest short runs out of London by motor car is to
Box Hill and the little hotel which lies just below it. In summer
the most picturesque way of getting to the hotel is either by one of
the Brighton coaches, which make it their lunching place, or by the
coach which goes to Box Hill and back in a day. And by no means an
uncomfortable, and certainly the cheapest, way of going down to the
hotel is to do as I did one Sunday--journey by the L.B. & S.C. Railway,
getting glimpses of Epsom and the great rolling common land of Ashtead,
of little rivers, and old mills, and wooded downs, on the way.
The Burford Bridge Hotel, which takes its name from the wide brick
bridge near by, over the River Mole, stands alongside the high
road where it curves from the hill-side down to the level. It is a
picturesque building, for when the Surrey Trust, of which more anon,
took the house, it was a mere wayside inn. It has been gradually built
on to, and is now more a group of houses of white rough-cast and slate
roofs than one house. It has rambling tiled-roofed stables and a
garage alongside it, and is surrounded by tall trees. Behind it, just
where the hill begins to rise, are its gardens, with turf terraces and
geraniums in terra-cotta pots on white pedestals. A great cedar stands
in the midst of one of the lawns and another lawn is a bowling-green.
Some of the trees on the hill-side stretch out great branches which
give shadow to the garden-seats.
Creepers climb over the house, there are rose-bushes by the paths, and
out beyond the bowling-green an orchard of old fruit-trees is on the
banks of the Mole, a brown stream in which the weeds wave gently as it
moves with a pleasant rustle through the down country on its way to
join the Thames. There are two dovecotes in the garden of the hotel,
and the flutter of white wings in the sunlight is pretty to see. Behind
the gardens is Box Hill, one part of which is steep, grassy down scored
with white footpaths, the other half stony slopes so steep as to be
almost cliffs, up which the woods and undergrowth climb. On the Sunday
of my visit the dark green of these woods was scarcely touched by the
russet and orange of the autumn tints.
In the old portion of the house there are small rooms on the ground
floor, and above, a dozen little bedrooms with flower-boxes in their
windows and bell-pulls hanging by the fireplaces; for though there is
electric light all over the house, the old-fashioned bell-pulls and
the long line of bells in the corridor have been left as an old-world
touch. Out into the garden there juts a newly built part of the house,
with a large dining-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above. The
dining-room is panelled with chestnut wood to within a couple of feet
from the ceiling. It has on one side recesses, one of which forms an
ingle-nook for the fireplace, and opposite to them, in the wall facing
the garden, are many French windows which give on to the lawns. At one
end of this pleasant room is a great bow-window looking down the length
of the lawns and orchard, and the tables in this bow are the ones most
sought after. The strips of red carpet on the polished wooden floor
deaden the sound of the feet of the waiters as they go to and fro, the
chairs are handsome ones of red leather, and as they bear on their
backs a scroll with "The Gaiety" on it, I presume they were bought when
the Gaiety Restaurant breathed its last.
All the classes for which the old inn, turned hotel, caters are
provided for. There is a refreshment-room for the chauffeurs, a bar for
the rustics. There is also a very pleasant sanctum, which I should have
called the bar parlour, but which is dubbed the lounge, in which are
the heads of some of the foxes killed by the local pack of hounds, and
a photograph of a meet at the hotel, some coaching prints, a picture
of a racehorse and its jockey, some little stags' heads which were
in the house when it was bought by the Trust, a grandfather clock,
some Japanese bronzes and Wedgwood vases, some old-fashioned wooden
arm-chairs and some big leather ones. It is in this comfortable room,
with a long stretch of window looking on to the road, that the worthies
of the neighbourhood assemble to talk over local politics and other
important matters. There is a little ante-chamber to the dining-room
with comfortable seats in it, a coffee-room and a drawing-room which
runs the full width of the old house and is the room in which the
ladies staying in the house sit after dinner.
The Surrey Public House Trust, which bought the Burford Bridge Inn,
and in whose hands it has become one of the most flourishing small
country hotels in England, is an association of noblemen and gentlemen
of Surrey who have bought a dozen inns and hotels in the county, and
who run them on the sanest and soundest possible lines. The sale of
alcoholic drinks is not looked to as the principal source of profit,
and as none of the houses owned by the Trust are tied houses, the
goods, eatable and drinkable, are purchased in the best and cheapest
markets. The company has as its manager at Burford Bridge Mr "Mike"
Hunt, who comes of the family who were the lessees of the Star and
Garter at Richmond in its palmy days. Mr Hunt, plump, light-haired,
with a moustache somewhat resembling that of the German Emperor, knows
all there is to know of hotel management, and the eight and a half
years he has been at Burford Bridge are the years in which the hotel
has risen to its present fame. He knows pretty nearly every motorist
who uses the Brighton road, and is a keen supporter of local sport.
The road to Dorking at certain times of the day, especially on Sundays,
is alive with motor cars and motor cycles, and the cars at lunch-time
and at tea-time cluster in front of the hotel like swarming bees. In
the big dining-room the lunch that is served is an excellent one.
There is a choice of two soups, one thick, one clear; fish--on this
particular Sunday there were some excellent lobsters--a great choice
of cold meats and one hot meat dish, and a choice of puddings. A cut
from the cheese is the ending of lunch, and then a cup of coffee served
under one of the trees on the lawn. Half-a-crown is the charge made for
this very ample meal.
If you are making a day of it, as I did on this Sunday, it is pleasant
in the afternoon to stroll past the station, near which a little wooden
chapel stands thatched with reeds, and on through country roads where
the little roses of the brambles were turning to blackberries, and past
garden hedges where the box and holly mingle, out towards Updown Woods.
Once away from the clatter and roar of the main road one is soon in the
heart of the most beautiful country in Surrey, and one comes back to
the hotel, when the rush of the motors returning to town is lulling,
to find a little blue mist coming up from the valley before the distant
wooded hills, and all the rooks winging their way homeward to their
rookery in the great trees, and in the broad meadow by the Mole across
the road, scores and scores of rabbits out for a frolic.
This is the dinner that I ate on that Sunday evening at Burford Bridge:
Consommé à la Reine.
Thick Giblet Soup.
Boiled Turbot, Sauce Hollandaise.
Roast Leg of Mutton.
French Beans. Potatoes.
Roast Duckling or Roast Partridge.
Salad.
Beignets Soufflés.
Tartlets Confiture.
Cheese, etc.
The giblet soup was excellent, the turbot fresh, and, though the
mutton might have been the more tender for another day of hanging, the
partridge and the salad were capital and the _beignet_ made with a very
light hand. The price of the dinner was 4s. 6d., and I drank with it a
pint of Rüdesheimer, which cost me 2s. 9d.
A large party of ladies and men who were staying in the hotel had a
table in the centre of the big room and were very merry over their
meal. Two pretty girls and a young man, motoring up to London, who
stopped at the hotel to eat a dinner on their way, two pleasant-faced
ladies staying at the hotel, and various couples of men, were some of
the diners that night. After dinner I watched the departure of the
motorists, who were completing their journey up to London, sat for a
while by the fire in the drawing-room, for there was sharpness in the
September night air, and at ten o'clock, gently tired by my afternoon's
walk on the hills, went up to bed in a clean little bedroom with some
good old prints on its walls. Next morning the sound that woke me was
the cawing of the rooks on their way to the fields.
XXVIII
THE RITZ
The Ritz Hotel and Restaurant will keep in the remembrance of Londoners
the name of the foremost _hôtelier_ of our days, M. Ritz, a man whose
genius is written across Europe and America, from Paris to Frankfort,
from Biarritz to Salsomaggiore, from Lucerne to Madrid, from Budapest
to New York. Too much quick brain work unfortunately has broken down M.
Ritz's health, and he is never likely to take any share again in the
control of the hotels which bear his name. He was the man who first
taught the mass of the rich English how to dine in cultured comfort in
their own capital; yet to the great majority of those who benefited
by his perfect taste and his genius for giving unostentatious luxury
to the gourmets of the world he was an unknown personality. Duchesses
and actresses, legislators and actors, explorers and curates, all are
known to the public by their photographs in shop windows and in the
newspapers, but I never saw a photograph of Ritz in a Regent Street
shop or in a journal.