Chapter M: Ritz 184 (9)

The Artists' Room is on the second floor, just on the top of the staircase. There is not room for many people in it, and the dinner-parties held there must of necessity be small ones. But there is no room in any restaurant in London which is in itself so interesting as this one. The walls are almost entirely covered with signatures and sketches and caricatures; there is a large photograph, framed and autographed, of Sir Henry Irving as Becket; there are drawings by Dudley Hardy and three or four caricatures, including one of himself, drawn by Caruso. There is a photo of poor Phil May in riding kit on a horse; there is the menu of the dinner given by the artists of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden to Mr Thomas Beecham. On the mantelpiece stand some good bronzes of English and French Volunteers, and the menu of a banquet given by Pélissier, the head of the Follies, to his friends, and his invitation to this feast, which commences in royal style: "I, Gabriel," etc., and ends with the earnest request, "Please _arrive_ sober," have been honoured with frames. Mademoiselle Felice Lyne's autograph records one of the latest successes in opera. There are two smoked plates with landscapes drawn on them with a needle, and there is the medallion in red of Dagonet I have already mentioned. The name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye as soon as any other inscription on one of the sections of the wall covered with glass; but it is well worth while to take the panels one by one, and to go over these sections of brown plaster inch by inch. Mascagni has written the first bars of one of the airs from _Cavalleria Rusticana_, Denza has scribbled the opening bars of "Funiculi, Funicula," Lamoureux has written a tiny hymn of praise to the cook, Ysaye has lamented that he is always tied to "notes," which, with a waiter and a bill at his elbow, might have a double meaning. Phil May has dashed some caricatures upon the wall, a well-meant attempt on the part of a German waiter to wash one of these out having resulted in the sacking of the said waiter and the glazing of the wall, Mario has drawn a picture of a fashionable lady, and Val Prinsep and a dozen artists of like calibre have, in pencil, or sepia or pastel noted brilliant trifles on the wall. Paderewski, Puccini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti, Plançon, De Lucia, Melba, Mempes, Tosti, Kubelik, Tschaikovsky, are some of the signatures.

XXXVIII

THE PICCADILLY RESTAURANT

It was a chance remark made by "The Princess," as three of us sat at lunch one Saturday in the open air at the Ranelagh Club, that nowhere in Central London was there an open-air dining place, that led me to ask her and "Daddy," her husband, both of them my very great friends (which is the reason that I permit myself to call them, as the Irish would say, "out of their names"), to dine with me one night in July, weather always permitting, in the open air within fifty yards of Piccadilly Circus.

Walking down Piccadilly, and looking up at the façade of the great Piccadilly Hotel, a building which has something of the nobility of a Grecian temple, and something of the heaviness of a county jail, I had noticed that a grey tent had been put up on the terrace, half-way up to the heavens, behind the great pillars and the gilded tripods, and I knew that this meant that as soon as the evenings were warm the restaurant would cater on the terrace for those who like to dine in the freshest air obtainable in muggy London.

Some form of covering is a necessity for any roof garden in Central London, not as a protection from rain or cold, but to deliver diners from the plague of smuts. Some day, when electricity and gas have between them driven coal far outside the boundaries of the capital, it will be possible for Londoners to breakfast under the plane-trees planted on their roofs, and to look, while they eat, at the roses climbing on the trellis-work which hides their little pleasance from the neighbours on the next roof; but in this present year of grace an open-air meal within the three-mile radius necessitates the blowing of smuts off each plate as soon as it is put on the cloth, and a great portion of the conversation of the table talk centres round the black smudges to be wiped off the diners' noses. The Piccadilly, by pitching its tent on its terrace, has gone as near to open-air dining as is possible in our London atmosphere.

It was well that I had added the provision "weather permitting" to my invitation, for on the evening that my two guests motored up from their old manor-house near Richmond the sky had clouded over, a misty rain was falling, and the temperature had dropped to November level. The dinner-table that would have been reserved for me on the terrace was cancelled, and a table for three laid in the restaurant of the big hotel--that very handsome saloon panelled with light wood, with gilded carving in high relief on the panels, with a blue-and-gold frieze, and elaborately decorated ceiling and casemented mirrors--a saloon which is a noble example of Louis XIV. decoration. I had ordered my dinner beforehand, taking care to include in it some of the specialities of the kitchen of the Piccadilly, and had interested in the designing of the little feast M. Berti, the restaurant manager, and the _chef de cuisine_, M. Victor Schreyeck; while M. Pallanti, one of the _maîtres d'hôtel_, who is an old acquaintance, had put me in that portion of the room which is under his special charge. The dishes on which the kitchen of the Piccadilly especially prides itself are its _délices de sole_ and its _filets de sole_, both named after the establishment, its _poularde à l'étuvée au Porto_, its _poularde Reine Mephisto_, its _cailles Singapore_, and its _vasques_ of peaches, or of raspberries, or of strawberries, all titled Louis XIV. in sympathy with the decoration of the room.

This was the dinner that I ordered, a summer dinner for a hot evening, for I had hoped that the weather would be kind, and that we should be able to eat on the terrace:

Melon de Cantaloup Frappé.
Kroupnick.
Sole à la Piccadilly.
Suprême de Volaille Jeannette.
Caille Royale Singapore.
Cœur de Romaine.
Asperges Vertes. Sauce Divine.
Vasque de Fraises Louis XIV.
Corbeille d'Excellences.

I waited for my guests in the lounge where the orchestra plays, a lounge panelled, as the restaurant is, and with paintings of fruit in the circular wreaths above the doors, with cane easy-chairs and cane tables with glass tops scattered about, with palms in great china vases, with gilt Ionic capitals to the pilasters on either side of the great supports to the roof, and with a great painted ceiling. A glazed screen with windows and doors in it separates the lounge from the restaurant.

"The Princess," when my guests arrived, was wearing a most becoming gown, and had brought her furs with her, in case I, as a mad Englishman, might insist on dining on the terrace in spite of the rain. "Daddy," who is, like myself, an old soldier _en retraite_, had put on one of his Paris unstarched shirts with many pleats, and was wearing his fusilier studs. M. Berti, his beard pointed like that of a Spaniard, bowed to us at the entrance of the restaurant, and directed us to our table, by which was a second little table with on it all the apparatus for the elaborating of the fish dish before our eyes. Near it stood the _maître d'hôtel_, pale and determined, feeling, I think, that the reputation of the house was in his hands, and a waiter and a _commis_ under his immediate orders. "The Princess," as I have written, wore a most becoming gown, and it pleased me that she should have so framed her native beauty, and I am sure it also pleased her, for at the other tables all the other guests were exceedingly well groomed and well frocked--a most good-looking company.

The soup, a white Russian soup with barley as its dominating ingredient, is one of those peasant soups the French have borrowed from the Russians, and have refined in promoting it to the _haute cuisine_. The _sole à la Piccadilly_ is a fish dish which grows to perfection as it is manipulated before the eyes of the expectant diners. A wide bath of mixed whisky and brandy boils up over the spirit lamp, and into this the boiled soles make a plunge before they are carried away to be filleted; then into the almost exhausted mixture of spirits is poured the sauce, which is a "secret of the house," and as this boils up first cream and then butter is added to it. The _filets de sole_ come hot to table, and over each portion of the fish is poured the precious sauce, sharp tasting, with a suggestion of anchovy amidst its many flavours. While this sole was being prepared, "Daddy" at first talked on of polo matches at Ranelagh and golf at Richmond, and did not notice that both "The Princess" and myself had become silent, as gourmets should be when watching a delicate culinary operation, but he, too, after a while felt the solemnity of the moment, and became dumb until the fish was before him, and he could pronounce it to be "very good indeed," an emphatic expression of opinion on the part of all three of us which, I trust, was conveyed to M. Schreyeck in his domains. The _suprême de volaille_ was a noble _chaudfroid_ of chicken with a rich stuffing or farce, I am not sure which is the correct description, in which _foie gras_ was the dominating note. The quails were named after the island of Singapore, because with them in the china dish came a most savoury accompaniment of pine-apple pulp and juice--and there are thousands of acres of pine-apples in Singapore--an admirable contrast to the flesh of the plump birds. To this dish also our council of three gave high praise. The bowl of strawberries and ice and fruit flavouring, another of the dishes of the house, made an admirable ending to a very good dinner, and with this dinner we drank a champagne strongly recommended by the house, Irroy 1904. I paid my bill, the total of which came to £3, 13s. 6d., the charge being 12s. 6d. a head for the dinner, which was a small sum for such delicate fare, and then we went into the lounge, where the band was still playing, to drink coffee and liqueurs, and to allow "Daddy" to smoke one of the very long cigars of which he always carries a supply.

It was still raining when my two guests started in their motor car back to Richmond, but they declared that they were fortified for their journey down into the country by a most satisfactory dinner.

The Piccadilly Hotel of to-day stands partly on the site of the agglomeration of halls and bar and restaurant which all came under the name of St James's Hall, the bar and restaurant being, in the mouths of the frequenters thereof, "Jemmy's." The great hall was in its day the centre of the musical world, and its Monday Pops and its classical concerts were celebrated. In a smaller hall the Moore and Burgess Minstrels flourished for many years until fickle London for a while grew tired of burnt-cork minstrelsy. The big bar of the St James's declined, as did most other restaurant bars, when gentlemen no longer cared to be seen taking their liquid refreshment standing, and the clientele of the restaurant was decidedly Bohemian. When "Jemmy's" was wiped off the map of London there were not many tears shed at its disappearance. The Piccadilly Hotel and its restaurant, when they were first opened, went through their teething troubles, as do most new establishments. The restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, most of its personnel coming straight from Monte Carlo to London, but though the _maîtres d'hôtel_ knew who was who in the principality of Monaco they were not so well acquainted with the personalities of London life. All these matters invariably straighten themselves out. I read in the columns of City intelligence that the hotel, under the management of Mr F. Heim, who is now managing director, is a financial success, and is paying good dividends. The restaurant has gathered to itself a clientele that is smart and well-dressed, and it treats its guests excellently.

To the great grill-room, which lies down in the basement below the restaurant, and which is one of the largest and one of the busiest places of good cheer in London, I allude in my chapter concerning some of the grill-rooms.

XXXIX

THE RENDEZVOUS

Behind every successful restaurant there is some personality--a clever proprietor, a great cook, a managing director with a talent for organisation, or a popular _maître d'hôtel_. The Rendezvous, in Dean Street, has been brought to prosperity and popularity by the work of one man, its proprietor, M. Peter Gallina. He is a dapper little Italian, with a small moustache, a man of good family who ran away from home as a boy and has made his way by his native cleverness and perseverance, and by the possession of an exceptionally keen palate. He grounded himself well in all that concerns a restaurant in a small Parisian establishment not far from the Avenue d'Iéna. When he had learned there enough of the trade to qualify him to be a manager of any restaurant he came to England with his savings in his pocket and took the position of manager in a small Strand restaurant, while he looked about for an opportunity to become a proprietor and to possess a restaurant of his own. He had the name of his restaurant ready before he found a suitable house, for one day after a meal he sat thinking of various matters and idly scribbled on the tablecloth a series of capital "R's." Then, with no special intention, he fitted on names to the "R's"--Rome, Renaissance, Renommé, Rendezvous, and suddenly found that the title he wanted had come to him. And in the same chance way he found the position he wanted for his restaurant. During the period that he was at the restaurant in the Strand he used to go to Dean Street to buy coffee for his little household, and he noticed one day that a house there was to let. It had been used by one of those mushroom clubs which spring up almost in a night in Soho, and the police had terminated its short existence by making a raid on the premises as a gaming-house. M. Gallina saw his opportunity, took it, spent some money in brightening it up, and gave it an old-English window on its ground floor, and that was the beginning of the Rendezvous.

The gastronomic scouts soon discovered that Peter Gallina in his little restaurant was giving extraordinarily good value at very moderate prices, and some of them sent me word concerning it. Mr Ernest Oldmeadow, the distinguished novelist, was one of the first of Gallina's customers, and brought many others to the newly established restaurant. Mr G. R. Sims, the genial "Dagonet" of _The Referee_, was one of the first among the scribes to tell the general public of the existence of the Rendezvous, and he wrote a ballad in its honour. I, in the early days of the existence of the restaurant, made the acquaintance both of it and its proprietor, who then, as now, affected clothes of an original cut. In his restaurant Peter Gallina wears a small double-breasted white jacket, with skirts and a very wide opening in front. This opening is filled by the most voluminous black cravat that has been seen since the days of the Dandies. A small white apron is another article of his costume. In those early days M. Gallina oscillated rapidly and continuously between the kitchen and the restaurant, first seeing that the dishes were properly prepared, and then watching his customers appreciatively eat the food. He had no licence then to sell wines, and a small boy was constantly sent scurrying across the road to a wine-merchant's shop almost opposite, a shop which should have interest for all readers of books, for its proprietor is a well-known author.

M. Gallina in a little book of "Eighteen Simple Menus," with the recipes for all the dishes, a very useful little book which he used to give away to his customers, but which he now sells to them for a shilling, has in a preface set down some "Golden Rules for Cooks," and the first of these is "Buy good materials only. The best cook in the world cannot turn third-class materials into a first-class dish." This rule M. Gallina has always observed himself.

The Rendezvous has constantly been increased in size. A house next door to it fell vacant, and M. Gallina at once took it and converted it into part of his restaurant. Then with larger dining-room came the necessity for a larger kitchen, and this matter was put in hand. A wine licence granted to the restaurant brought with it all the responsibilities of a cellar, and M. Gallina has now an admirable kitchen and offices, with walls of shining white tiles, and a cellar big enough to hold all the wine that his customers require. A tea and cake shop, with tea-rooms on the first floor, the Maison Gallina, next door but one to the restaurant, was the next achievement of the enterprising little man, and, finally, he rounded off his restaurant by building at the back a new room, all dark oak and mirrors and Oriental carpets, with a handsome oak gallery running round it.

The Rendezvous Restaurant is now one of the landmarks of Dean Street. The wide windows of its ground floor are of little square panes, each window set in a white wooden frame, above a facing of glazed red tiles, and before them stands a line of Noah's Ark trees in green tubs. Over these ground-floor windows the restaurant's name is written in Old English characters on a white ground. A line of shrubs in winter and flowers in summer is beneath the windows of the first floors of the two old houses, and at night a row of globes blazes with electric light above the name of the restaurant.

The interiors of the two front rooms on the ground floor of the restaurant have been decorated to represent the parlours of an Old English farmhouse. There are heavy black beams supporting the ceiling, the walls are panelled with green cloth in wooden frames, the electric lamps give their light in old lanterns, and there are silver wine coolers with ferns in them on the broad window-sill. Upstairs, and there are three staircases in the restaurant, one of the rooms on the first floor is kept in its original Georgian panelled simplicity, while the other is a Dutch room with plaques of Delft ware on the walls. The new room at the back I have already described.

The clientele of the restaurant comprises every class of Londoner from princes to art students. The late Prince Francis of Teck often dined there. I have seen ladies in all their glory of tiaras of diamonds and of pearl necklaces eating an early meal at the Rendezvous before going to the opera; and the youngster who is one day going to obtain Sargent's prices for his pictures, but is still in the chrysalis stage, and the as yet undiscovered Melbas and Clara Butts receive just as much attention when they eat the one dish which forms their lunch or dinner as do the great people of the land who indulge in many courses. The Royalty is but a score of steps away from the Rendezvous, and many playgoers on their way to that theatre dine at the restaurant or sup there after the performance. Messrs Vedrenne and Eadie quite appreciate the advantage it is to have a flourishing restaurant just outside their doors, and gave M. Gallina every encouragement when he first established himself in Dean Street.

The Rendezvous has a _carte du jour_ which gives a great choice of dishes. The long card is covered with items printed in red or written in blue ink, and special delicacies are set down in scarlet. There are various sole dishes and a score of those of other kinds of fish. The entrées take up half the card, and birds and salads, vegetables, savouries and dessert each have a thick little column of written items under their respective headings. The prices, as I have already written, are quite moderate for good material. The fish dishes average eighteenpence, the entrées a little less. I have eaten at a dinner-party given in the new room a very noble feast, and I have dined by myself on soup, sole, a _navarin_ of lamb and an _entremet_, my dinner, without wine, costing me five-and-threepence.

There are two specialities of the house--the _sole Rendezvous_ and the _soufflé Gallina-_--which should be included in any typical dinner of the establishment, and the last time that I dined at the restaurant and entertained a lady I included both of these in the menu, which ran thus:

Melon Cantaloup.
Crème Fermeuse.
Soles Rendezvous.
Aile de Poularde en Casserole.
Aubergine à l'Espagnole.
Soufflé Gallina.
Café.

The _sole Rendezvous_ is an admirable method of cooking the fish with a white wine sauce and most of the other good things that a cook can use in a fish dish, all of which make it admirable to the taste but exceedingly rich. The _soufflé Gallina_ is a _soufflé_ with brandied cherries, and it is served in a little lagoon of fine champagne cognac which is set alight. It is by no means a teetotal dish. This dinner for two, with a pint of Vieux Pré, a champagne recommended by the house, and a bottle of Mattoni, came very near a sovereign.

XL

THE PALL MALL RESTAURANT

Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall Mall Restaurant. It is a restaurant which has prospered exceedingly, and has done so because its two proprietors, MM. Pietro Degiuli and Arnolfo Boriani--both ex-head waiters at the Savoy and the Carlton--see to every detail concerning their restaurant and their kitchen and their cellar with untiring diligence and with a complete knowledge. They are both--Degiuli, small and neat and dapper, M. Boriani, broad, wearing a curled-up moustache and looking like a _tenore robusto_--always in the restaurant at meal-times doing the work of _maîtres d'hôtel_ and giving personal attention to every member of their clientele.

In the ten years that have elapsed since they rechristened the restaurant, which for a short period had been known as Epitaux's, they have made many improvements. The restaurant itself, a high room with a curved roof and two sliding skylights in the roof, which not only let in the light but fresh air as well, is now a white restaurant, with deep rose panels alternating with mirrors between the pilasters. There is a little gilding in the decoration, but as carpet and chairs and lamp-shades conform to the scheme of rose, the restaurant may be described as all white and deep pink. There was originally a musicians' gallery at one end of this dining-hall, a legacy from the Café de l'Europe, as it was called in the fifties, and in the days of the café the doorway was cased in to prevent draughts reaching the worthies who used to sup there after the performance at the Haymarket Theatre. The old wooden screen to the door has been swept away, and people lunch and dine and sup in the gallery which has replaced the domain of the musicians. A little lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, made by absorbing part of the premises of the shop next door, is one of the most recent additions to the Pall Mall, and the Fly-fishers' Club having moved to larger premises, MM. Degiuli and Boriani have been able to construct a banqueting-room on the first floor that, with a private dining-room which can accommodate twenty diners, gives them now quite a large establishment.

As I have written, the two proprietors give personal attention to every matter connected with the restaurant, and they have not forgotten that they are Italians, for in their _table d'hôte_ lunch, the price of which is half-a-crown, one of the dishes is usually an Italian one, and all the coffee made in the establishment is made after the Italian fashion, no metal being allowed to come in contact with the fluid. For their supper menu they always choose simple dishes, which can be cooked directly an order has been given by those who sup. There is a _carte du jour_, but the dinners that nineteen out of twenty diners order are one or other of the _table d'hôte_ dinners of the day, a four-shilling and a five-and-six one. This was the menu of the more expensive of these two dinners on the last occasion that I dined at the Pall Mall:

Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Consommé Madrilène Froid and Chaud or Germiny.
Saumon Hollandaise.
Cailles Richelieu à la Gelée.
Selle d'Agneau Soubise.
Fonds d'Artichauts Barigoule.
Pommes Château.
Volaille en Cocotte.
Salade.
Fraises Melba.

The soup was good, the quail especially attracted my notice, for its jelly was flavoured with capsicum, giving it thus a special cachet.

The service at the Pall Mall is quick and silent, and, though there is no unseemly hurry, the dinner is quickly served, for most of the people who dine at the Pall Mall are going on to a theatre.

The Pall Mall has an exceedingly _comme il faut_ clientele, and any man who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time, and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants. And perhaps because the Pall Mall stands where the stage of one of the theatres in the Haymarket used to be, the restaurant numbers amongst its clientele many of the great people of the opera and of the theatre, as its book of autographs shows. This is a book full of scraps of wisdom and wit, and the Stars of Song and Politics and the Stage have not been afraid to cap each other's remarks. Thus when Madame Patti leads off on the top of a page with a charming platitude, "A beautiful voice is the gift of God," Madame Yvette Guilbert inscribes below a reminder that "An ugly voice is also the gift of God"; Sir Herbert Tree, taking a different view from that of either of the ladies, asks whether a voice should not be considered "A visitation of Providence"; Miss Mary Anderson sides with her sex, for she opines that "All things are the gift of God"; and Sir Rider Haggard rounds off the discussion with "But the greatest gift of God is Silence." Lord Gladstone, about to depart for South Africa, writes, "Faith in the Old Country" as his contribution, and Mr Lloyd George puts immediately below it a sentence in Welsh, which being translated means "Liberty will conquer"; Mr Ben Davies, also a man of gallant little Wales, writes in his native tongue, below Mr Lloyd George's sentence, "You are quite right, Lloyd George, but your liberality has taken most of my money." Mr John Burns, dining at the restaurant on "Insurance Day, 1911," was not stirred up to any poetic flights by the occasion, "Health the only wealth" being his rhymed contribution.

Amongst the signatures in the book is that of Signor Marconi, who is not inclined to write his name more often than is necessary. His contribution was coaxed from him by a flash of wit on the part of M. Boriani. On the menu of the dinner eaten by the inventor of wireless telegraphy appeared the item "_Haricots verts à la Marconi_." The great electrician asked why they were so named. M. Boriani trusted that the beans were not stringy, and the inventor having reassured him on this point, he said that in this case they might rightly be described as "_Sans fil_."

MM. Degiuli and Boriani have chosen as the motto of their restaurant, "_Venez et vous reviendrez_," and this confident prediction has been justified.

There is much history concerning the site on which the Pall Mall now stands. In the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, when the lane which led from Piccadilly down to the Mall gradually became a street of houses, Charles II. gave permission to John Harvey and his partner to sell cattle as well as fodder in the Haymarket. All along this market, on both sides, inns sprang up, and one of them occupied the site where the Pall Mall Restaurant now stands. The inn was pulled down early in the eighteenth century, and on its site Mr Potter, a carpenter, built a "summer" theatre; this theatre was converted by Samuel Foote somewhere about 1760 into a winter theatre. Mr A. M. Broadley has written for the proprietors of the Pall Mall an interesting booklet which deals at length with this theatre and its managers, Foote and the Colmans, and with the great actresses and actors and musicians who appeared on its stage. Mozart played on the spinet there as an infant prodigy; Margaret Woffington made her first bow to an English audience in the part of Macheath in _The Beggars' Opera_, "after the Irish manner"; and two actresses who married into the peerage--Lavinia Fenton, who died Duchess of Bolton, and Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby--played on its stage. But on 14th October 1820, the Little Theatre, as it was called, closed its doors with the tragedy of _King Lear_ and a farce. It was not at once pulled down, and was still standing in a battered state when the present Haymarket Theatre, built by John Nash, was opened in 1821, just a fortnight before the coronation of George IV. When the Little Theatre was eventually pulled down shops were erected on its site. Two of these were in the year of the first Great Exhibition converted into the Café de l'Europe, the great hall of which, somewhat altered, is the large room of the present restaurant. Mr William John Wilde, who was Buckstone's treasurer at the Haymarket Theatre, became the proprietor of the Café de l'Europe in the late fifties, and as there was no early-closing law in those days the café naturally enough became the favourite supping place for those who had sat through a long evening at the theatre almost next door, and the sturdy critics who congregated in the first row of the pit ate their devilled bones and tripe and onions, Welsh rarebits, chops and potatoes in their jackets, at the café after midnight and passed judgment on the performances of Buckstone and Liston, Sothern and the other famous comedians of the theatre as they supped. Mr D. Pentecost was the last proprietor of the old café. He was, as "Dagonet" in _The Referee_ has lately reminded us, a nephew of Pierce Egan, the author of "Tom and Jerry," and he was, amongst other things, the refreshment contractor to the Alhambra. He was also the proprietor of the Epitaux Restaurant in the colonnade of the opera house in the Haymarket. When that building was pulled down, in order that the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre should be built on its site, Mr Pentecost transferred the name of Epitaux to the Café de l'Europe. The building was redecorated and MM. Costa and Rizzi became the lessees. Ten years ago, as I have previously written, MM. Degiuli and Boriani became the proprietors and gave the restaurant its present name and its present appearance.

XLI

IN JERMYN STREET

MAISON JULES. BELLOMO'S. LES LAURIERS

Jermyn Street used to be sacred to small private hotels, shops and bachelors' chambers, but the restaurants have now invaded it and there are half-a-dozen places of good cheer which have their front doors in the street, while some of the Piccadilly restaurants have a back entrance there.

M. Jules had the happy idea of taking two houses, one of them at one time the home of Mrs Fitzherbert, as a medallion of the head of King George IV., found under the drawing-room floor proves, and converting them into a hotel and restaurant. It has proved so successful in Jules' case that he is now adding on to his hotel and restaurant, building at the same time a nice little suite of rooms with bow-windows for himself and his wife. As you walk down Jermyn Street from St James's Street towards Lower Regent Street, the Maison Jules is on the right-hand side. You cannot miss it, for an illuminated terrestrial globe and the name above the doorway catch your eye. A little ante-room is separated from the restaurant by a glazed screen to keep off draughts. The restaurant itself, a long room running the whole width of the house, is all white, with a little raised ornamentation on its walls, with gilt capitals to the white pillars, and on the marble mantelpiece a clock and candelabra of deep blue china and ormolu. At the end of the room a big window, which is almost a wall of glass, is cloaked by lace curtains. There is a second room running at right angles at the back, which either can be used as part of the restaurant or can be partitioned off.

Jules himself will welcome you as you come into the restaurant. I have known him for many years, having first made his acquaintance when he was manager at the Berkeley, when his hair was of lustrous brown, and I have always been one of his supporters at the hotel in Piccadilly and at the Savoy--when he became manager there, and now in Jermyn Street, where, with his wife and his daughter, who has married the _chef de cuisine_, and his son, who is following in his father's footsteps, he controls the restaurant and the hotel. The girth of his waist may have increased a little, possibly to match the bow-windows of those new rooms, since I have known him, and his hair is now powdered with grey, but his good-natured, round, rosy face, and his eyes, which almost close when he smiles, remain the same. He is always so pleased to see me that I find that a dinner at the Maison Jules does me more good than most tonics do.

The people who dine at the Maison Jules are all pleasant and well-to-do, and all the men wear dress clothes. Some of the men are grey-haired people like myself who have followed Jules in all his migrations; but the restaurant is by no means a home of rest for the elderly, for on the last occasion that I dined there one of the prettiest of the younger generation of actresses was being entertained at the next table to mine; and young as well as elderly diners appreciate the bonhomie that seems to be in the atmosphere at the Maison Jules. The dinner of the house is an eight-shilling one. The dinner I ate when I last dined _chez_ Jules is quite a fair specimen of the evening meal:

Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé aux Quenelles.
Crème Américaine.
Suprême de Sole Volga.
Riz de Veau Souvaroff.
Médaillon de Bœuf Algérienne.
Poularde à la Broche.
Salade.
Haricots Verts au Beurre.
Mousse aux Violettes.
Friandises.

The _crème Américaine_, a pink thick soup, was excellent, and so was the cold dish of sole, with jelly and a little vegetable salad. The _mousse aux violettes_ was an ice with crystallised violets on the top; and the _riz de veau_ and the _poularde_--for which Jules wished to substitute a partridge--were both excellent of their kind. When Jules, before I left, came to me and told me that some gentlemen a little farther down the room had told him that there was absolutely nothing to criticise in the dinner, I was not hard-hearted enough to tell him that the beans were stringy, which, to tell the truth, they were. Otherwise I agreed with the gentlemen farther down the room. The wine list is a well-chosen one, and there is in the cellar some 1820 Martell brandy, landed in England in 1870, which used to be the pride of the old St James's Restaurant, and the whole of which Jules bought at the sale.

* * * * *

A little farther down the street on the same side is a restaurant and hotel controlled by another old acquaintance of mine in the restaurant world. The restaurant is Bellomo's, and the hotel of which it forms a part is Morle's Hotel. In the days when I thought it my duty to do my share of drinking, at the Café Royal, a particularly excellent cuvée of Cliquot Vin Rosé, the waiter who was in charge of the table at which I usually sat, and who attended to all my wants with admirable intuition, was not at all one of the lean kind, and to identify him from his fellows I always called him, and wrote of him as, "the fat waiter." He prospered and ran up the tree of promotion, as good waiters do at the Café Royal, so that in his later development he became _maître d'hôtel_ in charge of the grill-room, and wore a frock-coat and a black tie. But the anxieties of his new position in no way caused him to grow thin. A year or two ago a friend wrote to me saying that he and some others had found the money to set up Bellomo, whom, of course, I remembered at the Café Royal, in a restaurant of his own in Jermyn Street, and hoped that I would go and see how he prospered there. I went, not feeling quite sure who Bellomo was, and found my fat waiter of old, now a plump proprietor. His restaurant, which consists of two rooms thrown into one, has walls with a light shade of pink on them, and at night is lit by electroliers with pink shades. A few steps lead from the front to the back. The restaurant is a cosy little establishment, and the two dinners which are served there--one a three-and-six one and the other a five-shilling one--are invariably well cooked, for M. Bellomo has brought the good Café Royal traditions with him to his new home. This is a typical menu, a winter one, of Bellomo's three-and-six dinner:

Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Rothschild or Thick Mock Turtle.
Filet de Sole Chauchat.
Carré de Mouton Niçoise.
Oie rôti.
Salade.
Glacé Mont Blanc.
Gaufrettes.

* * * * *

Farther along the street and on the opposite side is Les Lauriers, which takes its name from the two little evergreen trees which stand in tubs at its door, and which is higher and more airy than most of the restaurants of its size, for at some time or another the entresol has been thrown into the rooms on the ground floor. Les Lauriers consists, like most of the Jermyn Street restaurants, of two rooms joined together with a space screened off by the door to form a tiny ante-room. Its walls are panelled and painted cream colour, and lamps with pink shades hang from the ceiling. The green carpet and the dark wooden chairs at the three rows of tables give a comfortable look to the place. The proprietor is M. Giolitto, who was a head waiter at the Savoy before he came to Jermyn Street to make his fortune. A very comfortable clientele patronises Les Lauriers, and there are two dinners provided for them, one a short dinner which is served until a quarter to eight, and the other a more elaborate one, priced 3s. 9d. and 5s. 6d. respectively. The last time I dined at Les Lauriers I, feeling rich, indulged in the longer dinner. This was the menu:

Melon Cantaloup or Driver's Royal Natives.
Consommé Viveur or Crème Doria.
Homard froid, Sce. Mayonnaise or Aiguillettes de Turbot en Goujons.
Tournedos à la Florentine.
Perdreau rôti sur Canapé.
Petits Pois à la Française.
Salade.
Ananas Master Joe.
Mignardises.

It was a well-cooked dinner, and I do not wonder that M. Giolitto was able to tell me that his restaurant flourishes exceedingly.

XLII

THE MEN WHO MADE THE SAVOY

If I were to attempt to give you all the early history of the ground on which the Savoy stands I should have to delve back to Tudor times, and the Savoy Palace and the politics of that very turbulent period. For me, however, the past history of the Savoy begins with the time when the Savoy Theatre was built on reclaimed ground and opened in 1881. The offices of the theatre were in Beaufort House, which stood on the hill, and beside the theatre was a space of rough waste land, much like the County Council's wilderness in Aldwych. On this unoccupied land Mr D'Oyly Carte put up a shed to house the electric light plant for the theatre, for the Savoy was the first theatre in London that used electric light. The Savoy Hotel and Restaurant eventually rose where the electric light shed first stood, and they were opened in 1889. The hotel and restaurant then faced the Embankment, and had no Strand frontage. To get to the restaurant one had either to do a glissade in a hansom down the steep Savoy hill to the side entrance which led into a courtyard, in the centre of which stood a majolica fountain, or to go to the front entrance opposite to the Embankment Gardens. The restaurant was smaller than it is now; it was panelled with mahogany; it had a red and gold frieze and a ceiling of dead gold. It was a very comfortable restaurant, and the mahogany walls gave it a homelike feeling, though, of course, they absorbed a great deal of the light. The private rooms, named after the various Gilbert and Sullivan operas, were, as they are now, next to the restaurant. The grill-room was tucked away in the middle of a block of buildings. There was below the restaurant a _table d'hôte_ dining-room, and on the garden level was a ballroom and its ante-rooms. The balcony was but half its present width. No block of buildings has been more greatly improved from time to time than the Savoy has been. There has hardly been a year without some adornment being added, and in 1904 the largest additions during the history of the hotel were completed, and the hotel and restaurant gained their Strand outlet.

It would be possible to write a history of the Savoy by taking note of the successive improvements and additions made to it. It would also be possible to tell the history of the great restaurant by an account of some of the eras of great dinners, the period, for instance, when the South African millionaires were spending money like water during the great "boom," and the period of freak dinners, when Caruso sang from a gondola to diners sitting by a canal in Venice, which was really the flooded courtyard; and when, on another occasion, the same space was turned into a Japanese garden for a Japanese dinner. I was a guest at some of these great dinners, at the Rouge et Noire one which two magnates of the financial world gave to celebrate a great _coup_ at Monte Carlo, when all the decorations of the table, all the flowers, as much of the napery as was possible, reproduced the two colours, when the waiters wore red shirts and red gloves, and the number on which the money was won was to be found everywhere in various forms on the table. And I was bidden to the return banquet, a white and green one, which strove to outdo the luxury of the former one, whereat fruit-trees bearing fruit grew apparently through the table, and each chair was a little bower of foliage.

But I prefer to chat concerning the men who made the history of the house. Not the men who pulled the strings behind the scenes, the Board of Directors and their admirable managing director, Mr Reeves Smith, but the men whom the public saw or heard of in the restaurant, the general managers, the managers of the restaurant, and the chefs. The managers whom I knew were Ritz, Mengay, Pruger, Gustave, and now Blond. In the restaurant were Echenard, Joseph, Jules, Renault, and now Soi. The chefs have been Escoffier, Thouraud, whom Joseph brought over with him from Paris, Tripod, and now Rouget; and most of these I knew well.

When Mr D'Oyly Carte was putting in order the organisation of the newly opened Savoy Hotel, he, at Monte Carlo, asked M. Ritz, who was then at the Grand Hotel there, to come to London and take charge of the Savoy Restaurant. M. Ritz came and brought M. Escoffier with him to make history in the kitchens. When M. Ritz permanently took over the management of the hotel and the restaurant he asked M. Echenard, the proprietor of the Hotel du Louvre at Marseilles, to come to London and assist him in the restaurant. This triumvirate worked admirably together. M. Ritz, thin, nervous, splendidly neat, knowing all his patrons and their tastes, was a great _maître d'hôtel_ as well as a great manager. The saying which he constantly quoted, "The customer is always right," he acted up to. If some ignorant diner found fault with one of M. Escoffier's most exquisite creations it would be swept away without a word and something suited to a lower intelligence and an uncultivated palate substituted for it. If an old and valued customer had come into the restaurant and had ordered for dinner, tripe and onions and sausages and mashed potatoes, M. Ritz would have greeted such an order as though it were a flash of genius, and would probably have sent out to the nearest cab shelter for the dishes.

During the early days of the Savoy M. Ritz was quietly teaching the English with money to spend that a good dinner is not of necessity a long dinner, and that a few dishes exquisitely cooked are better than a long catalogue of rich dishes. M. Echenard, looking like a Spanish hidalgo, quite understood the ways of his two great colleagues--for MM. Ritz and Escoffier are two of the greatest men in gastronomic history--and backed them up nobly. The cholera year in Marseilles took M. Echenard back to his hotel in the south, and he has prospered exceedingly there, being now the proprietor of the Reserve and the hotel just below it on the Corniche, as well as the Louvre. MM. Ritz and Escoffier have since made the fortunes of other London restaurants.

When the Ritz-Escoffier regime at the Savoy came to an end the directors bought the Restaurant Marivaux in the street by the side of the Opéra Comique in Paris, and brought over M. Joseph, the presiding genius of that restaurant, to take charge of the Savoy Restaurant. The Marivaux had a unique reputation in the Paris of that day for its cookery. Joseph came, bringing with him his chef, M. Thouraud. Joseph was, I think, the most inspired _maître d'hôtel_, with the exception, perhaps, of Frederic of the Tour d'Argent, I have ever met. The Savoy Restaurant was rather too large for his system of management, for he liked to take a personal interest in each dinner that was progressing in his restaurant and to give it his constant supervision. He was born of French parents in Birmingham, and his one great amusement was that northern sport, pigeon flying. He had pleasant brown eyes and bushy eyebrows, he wore all that remained of his hair rather long, and had a tiny moustache. He was quite wrapped up in his profession, and, as he told me once, looked at his boots the whole time that he took his afternoon constitutional walk, that he might think of new dishes. Whenever any novel idea occurred to him he tried it at home in his own little kitchen before asking M. Thouraud to make experiment on a larger scale. To see Joseph carve a duck was to see a very splendid exhibition of ornate swordsmanship, and his preparation of a _canard à la presse_ was quite sacrificial in its solemnity. There was in his day a dinner given at the Savoy at which Madame Sarah Bernhardt was the chief guest, and most of the other people present were "stars" of our British stage. Joseph cooked before them at a side table most of the dishes of the dinner, and told me that he did so because he wished to show actresses and actors, who constantly appeal to the imagination of their audiences, that there was something also in his art to please the eye and stimulate the imagination. When I asked why he never went to the theatre, he told me that he would sooner see six gourmets eating a well-cooked dinner than watch the finest performance that Madame Bernhardt and Coquelin could give. Joseph had quite a pretty wit and facile pen. This was the _jeu d'esprit_ that he once wrote in a young lady's album:--"C'était la première côtelette qui coûta le plus cher à l'homme--Dieu en ayant fait une femme." And he wrote for me a little essay on the duties of a _maître d'hôtel_ that was very sprightly in style. He was even a greater believer than M. Ritz in the short dinner, and declared that we in England only tasted our dinners and did not eat them. Three dishes he considered quite enough for a good dinner, and this was a tiny feast which he ordered for me on one occasion when I took a lady to dine at the Savoy:

Petite marmite.
Sole Reichenberg.
Caneton à la presse. Salade de saison.
Fonds d'artichauts à la Reine.
Bombe pralinée. Petits fours.
Panier fleuri.

The _panier fleuri_ he carved himself at table from an orange.

Joseph became homesick, for he was a thorough Parisian, and went back eventually to the Marivaux, but he soon after died.

The directors of the Savoy Company, which owns the Berkeley and Claridge's as well as the Savoy Hotel, brought jolly, genial, rosy-faced M. Jules, under whose rule the Berkeley had prospered exceedingly, from that white-faced hotel to the Savoy, and his rule on the Thames Embankment was as successful as it had been in Piccadilly. It was during his managership that the additions that were to give the entrance on to the Strand were planned, and, I fancy, were begun, and when M. Jules left the Savoy to make for himself a restaurant and hotel in Jermyn Street, M. Renault, from the Casino at Biarritz, came to the Savoy Restaurant, and the quick-witted M. Pruger became general manager.

This was a period of great activity and of many alterations in the building. No Savoy manager has ever had more brilliant inspirations for great feasts than M. Pruger had. The gondola dinner was one of his ideas and he always thought of something novel and amusing for the Christmas and New Year's Eve parties. M. Renault is now in Rome at the hotel there owned by the Savoy Company; M. Pruger was tempted away to America to manage a mammoth restaurant on modern lines, but came back from New York to take over the management of the Royal Automobile Club when its great club-house in Pall Mall was opened. M. Gustave, of the russet beard, who had steered the newly built Café Parisien of the Savoy to great success, next became manager of the hotel, and that brings us down to the history of to-day, for when he resigned his appointment M. Blond, the present manager, succeeded him.

XLIII

THE DUTIES OF A _MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL_

I have mentioned in the previous chapter that Joseph wrote me a sprightly letter on the duties of a _maître d'hôtel_. This is it: