introduction to what was to follow. The _turbotin Beaumarchais_ is a

noble dish, a strong white wine sauce with the essence of the fish in it, and sliced truffles, and mushrooms and carrots being served therewith, parsley, and just a suspicion of onion. The _suprême de volaille Bagatelle_ I recommend to anyone who, like myself, is occasionally warned off red meats by sundry twinges, as being a dish of fowl which is interesting and not in the least vapid. Asparagus and mushrooms and truffles go with it, and the principal ingredients of the sauce are port and cream reduced. The _entremet_ consisted of peaches and grapes, raspberries, and a cream ice with, I fancy, more than one liqueur added, the whole forming a noble _Coupe-Jacques_, served in a silver bowl. My dinner being a short one, I had plenty of appetite left for this admirable fruit dish. The Berkeley, both the hotel and the restaurant, always seem to be a stronghold of the country gentleman. If I heard that an M.F.H. of my acquaintance whom I wished to see was in town and I did not know his address, the hotel to which I should telephone first to ask whether he was staying there would be the Berkeley, and no doubt the wonderful frieze of the restaurant is a compliment to the mighty hunters who stay in the hotel. Many squarsons and the higher ranks of the clergy are amongst the patrons of the Berkeley, and whenever I dine at the restaurant it seems to me that it ought to be the week of the Oxford and Cambridge or Eton and Harrow cricket matches, for I always see amongst the guests at the dinner-parties pretty girls with complexions of cream and rose, the sisters of Varsity lads and public schoolboys, country maidens whom I always associate with "Lord's," light and dark blue ribbons, and wild enthusiasm. I have never dined at the Berkeley without coming away a pleased man, and the dinner that M. Granjon cooked for me when I was dinnerless in the wilderness which borders the Green Park sent me away from the Berkeley rejoicing. XXXIII THE JOYS OF FOREIGN TRAVEL THE RESTAURANT GUSTAVE There are one or two tales of wonderful discoveries of excellent little restaurants in unexpected places abroad that, with variations, I hear over and over again from travelled folk. One of these stories is a motoring one. The scene is usually the south of France, and a long day's journey, an early _déjeuner_, a breakdown in some desolate spot and a long delay before the damage could be repaired are the preliminaries, all told at considerable length. Then comes a harrowing description of the oncoming of darkness, of the discovery that the town at which the travellers intend to spend the night is still many, many kilometres away, of a shortage of petrol, of the faint feeling that comes through lack of food. A shower of cold rain, or mud up to the axles, a broken-down bridge or a swollen stream generally come into the story at this period to lead up to the sense of relief, described with rapture, which the travellers experience when, at a turning of the road, a light is seen at a distance. This is found to be the window of a little inn, quite unpretentious outside, with a sanded floor inside, everything quite clean, the host a retired _maître d'hôtel_ who had in his time been a waiter in Soho, and talks a little English, the hostess an excellent cook. And then the story ambles along to its happy ending with the description of the _soupe à l'oignon_ which is put on table, over which a clean napkin is spread, of the delicious savour it emits and how beautifully hot and strong it is, of the grilled wings of a chicken which follow; of an _omelette au confiture_, which the cook herself brings to table; of country wine and country butter; a long stick of bread and some cheese made on a neighbouring farm. And the "tag," in a dozen words, tells how the chauffeur, who has also been well fed, finds a fresh supply of petrol, and how the contented travellers reach at midnight the town where they intend to sleep. The scene of another story is a minor cathedral town in Italy or Spain, and the tale commences with a vigorous denunciation of the principal hotel in the place: stuffy rooms, vile food cooked in rancid oil; an impudent head waiter and an unhelpful hall-porter. The central division of the story deals with a long day of sight-seeing; a midday meal of sandwiches, "horrid things made of the ham of the country and coarse bread"; and a terrifying adventure when, having lost their way in a network of streets, the ladies of the party are stared at by some horrible unshaven men who say un-understandable things in patois, and then laugh. The tale concludes thus:--"Just as we thought that we should have to pay one of the impudent little boys to show us the way back to that disgusting hotel we turned a corner, and there we saw a clean little restaurant with little trees in front of the window and a bill of fare, with lots of nice things on it quite cheap, hanging on the door-post." There are unlimited variations on the above, and the tale can take from two minutes to three-quarters of an hour in the telling, according to the volume of guide-book gush and the amount of lip-smacking over the food that is introduced into it. But why go to France, Italy or Spain to obtain these materials for a story? The circumstances can be exactly reproduced in London. The preliminaries are to eat nothing between breakfast and dinner-time and to tire yourself out with exercise. Then, if you wish to indulge in the motoring adventure, engage the most rickety taxi-cab to be found on any stand and drive round and round the inner circle of Regent's Park until the inevitable breakdown occurs. When, after a quarter of an hour's delay, the chauffeur says that he is ready to go on again, tell him to drive to Soho Square, then to go down Greek Street, and to stop when he comes to the Restaurant Gustave. Or if it is the cathedral city incidents you would like to live through once more, start in a worn-out condition from Golden Square, and make your way in a zigzag through the narrowest streets and alleys you can find to St Anne's, Soho, which is big enough to be a second-class cathedral, and go on, still zigzagging, till you reach Greek Street and Gustave's. And this is what you will find when you get there. A little restaurant with a chocolate face and with a plate-glass window, on which the fact is announced that it is an _à la carte_ establishment. Two little trees are in front of the window--little evergreen trees are fashionable just now in Soho--and the name "Gustave" is well in evidence above, with an electric lamp to throw light upon it. Inside the window a long lawn curtain gives privacy to the restaurant. The card of the day, with half-a-hundred names of dishes written in black ink, hangs in a brass frame by the door. Go inside, and you find yourself in a little room--a French gentleman who went on my recommendation to Gustave's described it to me afterwards as a _boîte_--with cream-coloured walls and a chocolate skirting. A counter, to which the waiters go to fetch the dishes, with a girl behind it very busily engaged, is at one side of the room. Oilcloth is on the floor, and a little staircase leads to the first floor. Eleven tables are in this room, all of them generally occupied, mostly by French people; but there is a second smaller room on beyond, which holds four tables, and on the two occasions lately that I have dined at Gustave's I have found one of these tables vacant. Everything is very clean at Gustave's, and if the napery is thin and the glass is thick, that is quite in keeping with the travel story. The people at the other tables are probably French. They belong to the respectable classes, and they behave just as well as though they carried innumerable quarterings on their escutcheons. A young waiter puts the _carte du jour_, with an ornamental blue border, on the table in front of you, and Monsieur Gustave, who, napkin on arm, bustles about his little restaurant, comes to give advice, if needed, as to a choice of dishes. Gustave--who must not, of course, be confused with that other Gustave who was manager of the Savoy, and who is now at the Lotus Club--is a little Frenchman, with a moustache, who is very wide awake. He has a sense of humour, and he talks excellent English. He was for a time at an hotel in Hatton Garden, and at the Restaurant des Gourmets before he came to Greek Street. The first item on a bill of fare that I took away, with me reads: "½ doz. Escargots, 8d.," but long ago, at Prunier's in Paris, I tried to attune my palate to snails, and failed, so on this particular night I did not even consider their inclusion in my dinner. Nor did I dally with _hors d'œuvre_, though I might have had sardines, or _filets de hareng_, or _anchois_, or _salmis_ for twopence. But I ordered soup, and I think I went up in Gustave's opinion when I preferred three-pennyworth of _soupe à l'oignon_ to _pot au feu_ at the same price. There were three fish dishes on the card, _moules Marinières_, 6d.; _merlan frit_, 6d.; _sole frit_, 10d.; and Gustave recommended the _moules_ as being a dish of the house, and having come in that morning. Looking down the list of entrées to find something sufficiently bizarre in taste to match the commencement of my dinner, I hesitated over a _pilaff_, which would have cost me 8d., almost plumped for a _râble de lièvre_, which meant an outlay of 1s., and then, remembering that it was Christmas-time, as near as possible ordered a _boudin_, which is the sausage that all good Frenchmen eat once a year at the _réveillon_ suppers on Christmas Eve. But I remembered the nightmare that followed the last _réveillon_ supper to which I went in Paris, and, passing over all the entrées, ordered nothing more exciting than a wing of chicken, 1s., and a _salade chicorée_. A _crème chocolat_, 4d., was my _entremet_. The onion soup proved to be excellent--quite strong and quite oniony, which, as I was not going into polite society that evening, could offend no one. The mussels quite justified M. Gustave's eulogium, but as I did not eat the whole bowlful, and left some of the savoury liquid, M. Gustave, with an expression of concern on his face, came to my table to ask whether I had found any fault with the dish. I assured him that my appetite, not the mussels or the cook, was alone to blame. The wing of the chicken was plump and tender, and had I paid half-a-crown it could not have been better. The _crème chocolat_ certainly tasted of chocolate, if the cream was not a very pronounced feature in it. It was a very excellent meal--at the price--and had I carried out the starvation and strong exercise and vivid imagination preparation that I have so strongly recommended to you, instead of lounging out to tea in the afternoon with a pretty lady and eating tea cake and sugary things at five o'clock, I should have recorded all the beautiful things about the little restaurant that I hear in the travel stories. XXXIV A SUPPER TRAIN One day last year I ate two meals under roofs owned by the Great Eastern Railway Company. I lunched in the dining-room of the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street, a splendid, airy room, light grey and gold, with brown Scagliola marble columns. The tables in this dining-room are set a good distance apart, rather a rare luxury in the City, where space is very limited; one is not forced to overhear the conversation of the people dining at other tables, and waiters do not kick one's chair every time they pass. The people lunching seemed to be a happy blend of visitors staying in the hotel and City men who had come in from their offices, but there was none of that breathless hurry-scurry that I always associate with a lunch in the City. A curious piece of furniture, glass above, wood below, caught my eye as we went into the room. It looked at a distance like a jeweller's showcase, and I asked my host if it was that. He laughed and told me to inspect the jewels that it contained. It was a sideboard for the cold meats, showing them, but at the same time keeping the dust from them. It is cooled by ice. It is such a happy idea that the Carlton Club has copied it. This is the menu of the lunch that I might have eaten in its entirety had I chosen: Consommé Pluche. Potage Solferino. Boiled Salmon, Caper Sauce. Fried Fresh Haddock. Omelette Alsacienne. Grilled Kidney, Vert Pré. Roast Haunch of Mutton, Red Currant Jelly. Roast Veal à l'Anglaise (Or choice of cold meats). Cabbage. Tomatoes. Boiled and Lyonnaise Potatoes. Roast Partridge and Chips. Damson Pudding. Baked Custard. Stewed Apricots. Cheese. Radishes. Watercress. I know of old that the cookery at the hotel is excellent, for I have often lunched both there and at the Abercorn Rooms, next door, so I did not feel in honour bound to form myself into a tasting committee of one, and to go through the menu. I ate salmon and partridge and damson pudding, and found them excellent. On the menu I saw that the price of the lunch was 3s. 6d. My host, being a Freemason of high degree, asked me if I had ever seen the Masonic temple in the Abercorn Rooms, and as I said that I had not we crossed on the first floor from the hotel to the rooms, and, meeting Mr Amendt, the manager of all the Great Eastern catering enterprises, on the way, he showed us the temple, splendid with panels of onyx and columns of delicately tinted marble, the lamps of onyx, dish-shaped and throwing their light up to the ceiling, seeming to me to be the most beautiful things of their kind I have ever seen in a temple. Mr Amendt, having his master key in his pocket, took us through many ante-rooms and small banqueting-rooms, with pictures by Lely of some of the beauties of Charles II.'s Court on the walls, and we looked in, on my way to the street, at the great Hamilton Hall, a replica of the banqueting-room of the Palais Soubise, where the waiters, lunch being finished, were putting the chairs upside down on the tables, and at the grill-room, named after the county of Norfolk, which, with its violet marble pilasters and its paintings of City celebrities--Nell Gwynne being cheek by jowl with such eminent respectabilities as Whittington and Gresham--is at night one of the pleasantest little banqueting-rooms in which I have ever feasted. As I said good-bye to my host and to Mr Amendt, I remarked that I should be at Liverpool Street again early next morning, as I was going down to Southend for the week-end, and that if I had not been due at a London theatre that night I should have enjoyed sleeping in the fresh sea air. Whereon Mr Amendt pointed out to me that I could perfectly well go to the play and catch the supper train down to Southend at midnight. If this suited me I had only to telegraph to the hotel at which I was going to stay, and Mr Amendt said that he himself would order my supper for me. It all seemed to fit in so admirably that I said, "Thank you very much," and sent off my telegram at once. I had abundant time to change my clothes after the theatre, and taxied down to Liverpool Street Station through the deserted City streets. At the station, however, there were many people on the platforms, the refreshment rooms blazed with light, and scores of little parties in them seemed to be partaking of midnight tea. I found that a table had been reserved for me in the restaurant car of the Southend train, and a white-jacketed waiter told me that my supper would be served immediately the train started, and that a compartment in the carriage next to the restaurant car was at my disposal. Mr Amendt had been even better than his word. Waiting on the platform, I watched another train, a suburban one, on the next line of rails, fill up. Bare-headed ladies, clutching in their hands the programmes of the theatres to which they had been, came sailing along; little messenger boys, their evening's work over, climbed into the carriages, and one gentleman, who evidently thought his time for rest had arrived, took the whole of one side of a third-class compartment to himself, lay down, and went at once to sleep. When the suburban train had left, a few minutes before midnight, the stream of passengers set towards the Southend train, and I wondered which of them were going to be my fellow-supperers in the restaurant car. A party consisting of an elderly gentleman--I am sure he was an uncle, for he had the good-natured look that all genuine Dickensy uncles acquire--had evidently brought up two nieces and a little schoolboy nephew to see some play. They were returning in the highest of spirits, and got into the restaurant car at once, the uncle asking whether his champagne had been properly iced. A clergyman with a paper bag in his hand, which I think must have contained sponge cakes, looked regretfully at the car, and told the guard that had he known that it was running he would not have brought his supper with him. I saw nobody else who was an obvious supperer, but when the whistle blew and the flag was waved, and the train started, I found that in the section of the restaurant car where my table was there were two elderly ladies at one of the tables, a young man in spectacles at another, the good uncle and his little party at the third and that the fourth was reserved for me. There was on my table a little bunch of chrysanthemums in a glass vase with a heavy foot to prevent it from overturning, and I noticed with appreciation several devices for holding in their places cruets, water bottles, salt cellars and glasses should the train at express pace threaten to shake things off the table. This was the menu of the supper that Mr Amendt had ordered for me: Lobster Mayonnaise. Mutton Cutlets Reform. Roast Grouse. Straw Potatoes. Salad. Omelette au Confiture. Devilled Sardines. Cheese. Biscuits. Butter. Watercress. Lettuce. Celery. Black Coffee. Like my lunch earlier in the day, the Great Eastern offered me more than I had sufficient appetite to cope with. I found the _mayonnaise_ excellent, and did full justice to the grouse, the _omelette_ and the devilled sardines. The young man in spectacles, I could see, had ordered for his supper fried cod and a glass of porter; the elderly ladies were drinking tea and eating cake; and the uncle and his little party were, like myself, eating a sumptuous meal.wAs I ate my supper the train rushed through the East of London, and Bethnal Green and Stratford were patches of lighted windows in the darkness, but when we were out of the zone of bricks and mortar and in the country there was a full moon high above, and fields and trees all grey and shadowy in the mist that was rising. The two elderly ladies had gone back to their compartment, the young man in spectacles paid his bill, and I judged from this that we must be nearing Southend, and asked for mine. The waiter bowed politely and informed me that I was the guest of the Great Eastern Company. As I could not argue with such an indefinite thing as a railway company, I had to accept the situation, and therefore I cannot set down how much the excellent meal I ate should have cost me. When the train ran in to the terminus at Southend it certainly did not seem to me that I had been travelling for an hour. XXXV THE ADELAIDE GALLERY There is no story of the success of a London restaurant more interesting than that of the Adelaide Gallery, which is more generally known as Gatti's. The first Gatti to come to this country from the Val Blegno in the Ticino Canton of Switzerland, on the Italian side of the Alps, was the pioneer of penny ices in England, and his shop in Villiers Street by the steps leading down to the steamboat pier below Hungerford Market was for the sale of these ices and _gaufres_, the thin batter cakes pressed in a mould and baked, a delicacy the small children of Continental countries love, but which has never ousted the British penny bun for its pre-eminence in these islands. When Hungerford Market was swept away to give space for the building of Charing Cross Station, its name, however, being perpetuated by the bridge, the first Gatti's was re-established under the arches of the station and became in due course the Charing Cross Music Hall. To the Gatti of Villiers Street and the Arches came from their native village two of his young nephews, Agostino and Stefano--the wags of the later Victorian days called them Angostura and Stephanotis. They determined, as soon as they felt their feet, to launch out on their own account. They leased the derelict Adelaide Gallery, which had its entrance in Adelaide Street, converted it into a café restaurant after the Continental pattern, and opened it on 21st May 1862. So juvenile were these enterprising young Swiss that the younger brother could not legally sign the lease, being under twenty-one. The Adelaide Gallery was then right in the centre of the triangle of buildings bounded by King William Street, Adelaide Street and the Strand: it was parallel to the Lowther Arcade, and the entrance to it was by a narrow corridor from Adelaide Street, a street named, of course, after King William the Fourth's queen. The gallery had been built in 1832 as the Gallery of Practical Science, at a time when object lessons in science were considered essential for the improvement of youthful minds; and in the long gallery, which is now a part of the restaurant, were working models of shaft wheels, while down its centre ran, waist-high, a long tank with a suspension bridge across it and a lighthouse in its midst. In this tank, working models of steamboats with very long smoke stacks puffed up and down. A gallery ran round this long hall and had pictures on its walls and models on stands of the various forms of architectural pillars. The Polytechnic, opened six years later, which this generation still remembers in its Diving Bell and Pepper's Ghost days, was run on similar lines. The gallery became subsequently a Marionette theatre, a casino and the home of some negro minstrels, but it never settled down successfully to any form of moneymaking until the young Gattis started it on its career as a café restaurant. An habitué of the Gallery in its scientific or in its casino days would only recognise the building to-day by its arched ceiling and by the circular openings in the roof for light and air. Agostino and Stefano Gatti put marble-topped tables in the Gallery, couches against the walls and chairs on the other side of the tables, and in the basement they made billiard-rooms. Chops and steaks and chip potatoes, the last a novelty to London, were the trump cards of their catering. At first the magistrates, possibly suspecting that the casino might be revived under another name, refused the Gallery a music licence, but that was granted later on in its existence. The Adelaide Gallery as a restaurant was a direct challenge to the old chop-houses. It gave very much the same fare under more airy and more cheerful conditions, and the Londoners took a wonderful fancy to the "chips." My earliest memory of a visit to the Adelaide Gallery is a schoolboy one, for I was taken there to sup after seeing Fechter play in _The Duke's Motto_ at, I think, the Lyceum. I ate on that occasion chops and tomato sauce, went on to pastry, and finished with a Welsh rarebit--a schoolboy has no fear of indigestion. I came to know the restaurant very well in the eighties, when I was quartered at Canterbury and at Shorncliffe for a spell of home service. I got at that time as much fun out of life in London as a Captain's pay and a small allowance would permit. I had sufficient knowledge of matters gastronomic to know that I received excellent value for my money at Gatti's, and the ladies to whom I used to give dinners said that they liked Asti Spumante and Sparkling Hock just as well as champagne--and perhaps they really did, bless them. Early in the eighties most of the improvements made to the Gallery had been completed, and the restaurant ran right up to Adelaide Street and down to the Strand. Whether the entrance and new rooms on the King William Street side had then been made I forget, but if they had not been they soon after came into existence. One special friend of mine in those days was the big man in uniform who stood at the Strand entrance, and whose constant companion was a large St Bernard dog. The big man always had a cheerful turn of conversation, and if by any chance I grew impatient because a lady whom I expected to dine did not appear, he would console me by saying that "probably nothing worse than a cab accident has happened." The St Bernard in its old age grew snappy, and eventually, when it had come back twice from new homes which had been provided for it, had to be destroyed. Both Messrs Agostino and Stefano Gatti were still alive in those days, grave-faced, pleasant gentlemen, who lunched together and dined together at a table not far from the entrance to the kitchen, and who when their meals were finished, sat at a semicircular desk and took the counters from the waiters as they had done ever since the first days of the restaurant. I was somewhat later to make their acquaintance, and this was how it happened. Little "Willie" Goldberg, who was known to all the English-speaking world as The Shifter, was a man of brilliant ideas, which he rarely had the patience to carry into effect. I received one morning from him a telegram asking me to meet him at ten minutes past one at the Strand entrance of Gatti's, adding that it concerned a matter of the highest importance, which would bring much profit to both of us. I arrived at Gatti's in time, and was met at the door by The Shifter, who told me that the Gattis wanted a military melodrama for the Adelphi, that theatre being their property; that he had thought of a splendid title for a soldier play; that he and I would write it together; that the Gattis had asked him to lunch to talk the matter over; and that he had suggested that I should come too. Then we hurried into the restaurant. We lunched with Messrs Gatti, and when, after lunch, they very gently said that they were ready to hear anything that we might have to tell them, The Shifter disclosed the title, which pleased them, and then sat back in his seat as though the matter was settled. The Messrs Gatti asked for some slight outline of the play, but The Shifter put it to them that an advance of authors' fees should be the next step in the business. This, the Gattis said, was not the way in which they transacted the business of their theatre, whereon The Shifter closed the discussion by saying farewell. When we were outside in the street again, I suggested that the next thing to do would be to get out a scenario to submit to the Gattis; but The Shifter was in high dudgeon; he wrinkled up his long nose in haughty scorn and then said: "These Gattis don't understand our English ways of doing business"--and that was the beginning and the end of our great military melodrama. But I had made the acquaintance of the Gattis, and was always afterwards on very pleasant terms with them. It is not within the scope of this article to deal with the Gattis' enterprises in theatres, but the tale of their purchase of the Vaudeville Theatre should be told as an instance of their kindness of heart. Amongst the many Gatti enterprises was the establishment of a great electric-light-distributing business. This began with a very small installation in the cellars of the Adelaide Gallery, and increased and increased until it is now one of the greatest electric light companies in London. At one time the electric light plant was established in a building just behind the Vaudeville Theatre, and Mr Tom Thorne, the actor, whose management had not prospered greatly, told the Messrs Gatti that his ill-success of late was owing to the noise the engines made behind the stage. Messrs Gatti, to obviate this grievance, bought the theatre, or at least as much of it as is freehold. There always has been a strong theatrical element amongst the clientele of Gatti's, and the authors who wrote the Adelphi melodramas--Dion Boucicault, Henry Pettitt, George R. Sims, Robert Buchanan and others--used constantly to be amongst the people lunching and dining in the Gallery. In their theatrical enterprises the Gattis never forgot the Adelaide Gallery, and the one thing essential in an Adelphi melodrama was that it should conclude in time to allow the audience to sup at the restaurant. All the black-coated classes patronised the Gallery, from the comfortable business man, who got as good a chop there in the evening as he did in his City restaurant in the middle of the day, to the little clerk who took the girl he was engaged to there because she liked the music and the brightness of the place. The country cousins all knew Gatti's, and knew that it was a place where they would get a good meal at a reasonable price, and that no advantage would be taken of their ignorance of London charges. Salvini, the great actor, used to take his meals at Gatti's when he was in England, and the great Lord Salisbury had a fondness for a chop and chips, and used to gratify it by going to the Adelaide Gallery. An old Garibaldian, a fine, white-haired old gentleman in a slouch hat and a long, threadbare cloak, was the most remarkable of the clientele of Gatti's in the early eighties; he was evidently very poor and one dish with him constituted a meal, but because he had fought as a red-shirted hero, the waiters at Gatti's treated him with more deference than they would show to any prince, and took the copper he gave as a tip with as much gratitude as they would have expressed for the gold of the millionaire. The Gatti's of to-day has adapted itself to modern requirements, but it caters for much the same class as of yore, and its food is still excellent material, well cooked, though there is a great deal more variety now than there was in the old chops and chips days. It retains, however, all its old democratic ways. Its clients choose their own tables and their own seats, hang up their own coats and then catch the attention of the waiter who has charge of the table. The restaurant--cream and gold, with French grey panels in its roof--has now four entrances: the Adelaide Street one, two in King William Street and one in the Strand. While the main restaurant remains an _à la carte_ establishment with a plentiful choice of dishes, including a list of grills, there is a _table d'hôte_ room at the King William Street side, a handsome hall with a gilded roof and pink-shaded electroliers, which throw their light up on to the ceiling. The latest addition to the dining-rooms is a banqueting hall, reached by marble stairs from King William Street. It is a handsome and well-proportioned room, with a musicians' gallery at one side, and an ante-room half-way up its stairs, and it holds one hundred and fifty feasters quite comfortably. At the same little table where their father and their uncle sat, the two Messrs Gatti of to-day--John (ex-Mayor of Westminster) and Rocco--sit, young copies of their predecessors, in that one of them has kept a plentiful head of hair, whereas the other one has been less conservative. They give the same attention to the business of the restaurant that the original Gattis did, but the semicircular desk has vanished and the work of taking the counters is now done by deputies on either side of a great screen which stretches before the wide entrance to the kitchen. Mr de Rossi, dapper and energetic, is the manager of the restaurant, and it is always a comfort to me that when I lunch or dine under the musicians' gallery the _maître d'hôtel_, whom I have known for thirty years, comes and gives me fatherly advice as to the choice of dishes for a meal. The kitchen of the Adelaide Gallery is one of the few in London that possess a large open fire for roasting, and its Old English cookery is, therefore, always good. It caters, however, for all nationalities, and as an indication of what its prices are, and of the variety of its fare, I cannot do better than give you the list of entrées I find on the _carte du jour_, which I took away the last time I dined at Gatti's: _Carbonnade de bœuf à la Berlinoise_, 1s. 2d.; _lapin sauté Chasseur_, 1s. 4d.; _vol-au-vent de ris d'agneau Financière_, 1s. 6d.; _pieds de porc grillés Sainte Menehould_, 1s. 2d.; _fegatino di pollo alla Forestiera_, 1s. 4d.; _terrine de lièvre St Hubert_ (cold), 1s. 9d.; _côte de veau en casserole aux cèpes_, 1s. 9d.; _tournedos Rouennaise_, 2s.; _chump chop d'agneau, purée Bruxelloise_, 1s. 6d.; _tête de veau en tortue_, 1s. 6d.; _salmis de perdreaux au Chambertin_, 2s.; _langue de bœuf braisée aux nouilles fraîches_, 1s. 6d.; _escalopes de veau Viennoise_, 1s. 6d.; _mironton de bœuf au gratin_, 1s. 4d.; _côtelettes d'agneau Provençale_, 2s.; _pigeon St Charles_, 2s. 6d.; _noisettes de pré-salé Maréchal_, 1s. 9d.; _entrecôte Marchand de Vin_, 2s. 6d.; _demi faisan en casserole_, 4s. And here is the menu of the five-shilling dinner I ate one Friday in October in the _table d'hôte_ room, in company with many people, who were evidently going later to theatres:-- Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne. Consommé Julienne. Crème d'Huîtres. Turbotin d'Ostende Réjane. Anguilles Frites. Sce. Tyrolienne. Côtelettes de Volaille Pojarski. Petit Pois au Sucre. Pommes Comtesse. Faisan Ecossaise Rôti en Casserole. Salade Sauté. Glacé Mokatine. Délicatesses. Gatti's, like every other restaurant of standing, has its own special dishes, and some of these were included in a lunch which I ate with Messrs John and Rocco Gatti when they were good enough in a chat we had to refresh my memory in regard to the early days of the restaurant: Hors d'œuvre à la Parisienne. Zéphire de Sole Adelaide. Suprême de Volaille Royal. Asperges vertes. Sce. Chantilly. Perdreau Rôti à la Broche. Cœur-de-Laitue à la Française. Cerises Montmorency Sarah-Bernhardt. Corbeille de Délices. Café. The _zéphire de sole Adelaide_ is an admirable _filet de sole_ and oysters therewith; the breast of the chicken was served with an excellent white sauce; and the _entremet_ was worthy of the distinguished tragedienne after whom it is named. The wine list at Gatti's is a document to be carefully studied. The Gattis of the previous generation laid down some very fine wines, and clarets and Burgundies of the great years of the end of the last century are to be found in the Adelaide cellars. The champagnes of great years and of great houses are priced far lower than they are to be found on the lists of fashionable restaurants, and there is some old cognac in the cellars to which I take off my hat whenever I am privileged to meet it. It was bought by the Gattis at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, when stocks of old brandy were sold at low prices. It is marked so as to show a profit on the purchase-money--not at its worth--and I know of no better brandy at any London restaurant, whatever price customers may choose to give. XXXVI THE COMPLEAT ANGLER I deserted, shamelessly and openly deserted, but I had an excuse. When we started, a boatload of men in a launch from above Boulter's Lock on a still, hot summer Sunday afternoon, the sky was grey above and the river and Cliveden Woods were all in pleasant shadow; but when we were come to Odney Weir and Cookham Ferry the sun broke through the clouds and sucked them up, and at Bourne End the river sparkled and the sails of the sailing-boats tacking up the long stretch below Winter Hill gleamed in the sunlight. It was as hot an afternoon as we ever get in England, and as we steered into the eye of the sun the glare hurt my eyes, and there was no dodging it. When we came to the Compleat Angler, just below Marlow Bridge, and lay alongside its green lawn, with the flower beds and rose-trees right at the garden edge, I looked at the people sitting on the rustic chairs by the rustic tables in the shadow of the line of trees that acts as a screen against the western sun, and the villagers who loll the Sunday through on the railing of the bridge and stare at the hotel, and I thought how pleasant it would be to sit in the shade until dinner-time came, to eat that meal with the burble of the water falling over the weir in my ears, and afterwards to go back to town by a late train. So I deserted openly and shamelessly. The Compleat Angler is a very old inn, so old that no one knows when it was built. But it was very probably in existence when the bodies of Warwick, the King-maker, and his brother Montacute were carried to Bisham Abbey to be buried. An engraving of a hundred years ago shows the old inn with a rope walk by its side, where the gardens of the hotel now stretch on the bank of the swift stream below the weir. The old wooden bridge which the present suspension bridge has replaced started at the angle of land by the weir, an angle now covered by the dining-room of the hotel, and it was under this bridge--not the present one--that a legendary hero of gastronomy, the Marlow bargee, ate the Puppy Pie. In the pre-railway days the Compleat Angler looked for its patrons amongst the fishermen and the simple folk who gained their living on the river. The hotel to-day is one of the most comfortable old-fashioned riverside inns between Oxford and London, an inn that stoutly upholds its old English characteristics. The brown roofs of the old building and its old brick walls are still there, and the old fruit-trees of the orchard give shade on its lawn; but new wings have been built on as the custom of the hotel has increased, and the great stretch of delightful garden behind the hotel, from which there is a glorious view of the Quarry Woods, must be a comparatively new addition. Mr Kilby, the present landlord, his face tanned by the river air and river sunshine, his hair and moustache almost white, has been in possession of the house for twenty-two or twenty-three years; but before this time it had been in the hands of one family from generation to generation, right back into the misty past. Mr Kilby has kept the hotel Old English in character in all essential particulars. There is good black old oak panelling in the little hall, and Jacobean furniture and an old grandfather clock, and on its walls, in glazed cases, are monster perch and other giants of the Thames caught at Marlow, and engravings of local celebrities and local magnates of past days; while in the dining-room are caricatures by Gillray and other wielders of the pencil in Georgian days. The gardens, kitchen garden and flower garden and lawns, behind the house, are also delightfully English, for the flowers that grow there are the Old English flowers, roses and lilies, stocks and pinks, ladies'-slippers and cherry pie, and a host of others, flowers that are old friends and which fill the air with scent on a hot afternoon. There are roses everywhere around the Compleat Angler. Those who land from their boats pass under a great arch of roses, and in the garden the roses climb over many bowers--for "pergola" is a word I hesitate to use in writing of this Old English pleasance. Honeysuckles grow up the supports of the verandah that gives shade to the windows of the dining-room, and there are bright flowers in all the window-boxes. Above all, there is the charm of the river, the indescribable freshness that always comes with tumbling water, the delight of the long, trembling reflections thrown by the trees and the spire of the church across the river, the grace of the white-clad girls who punt upstream and of the swans that sail quite secure by the edge of the weir, and the pleasant "lap, lap" of the water as the launches cut through it. If I wished in one hour to give an American friend an idea of the charm of the Thames I would take him to the chairs under the great willow that stands by the weir in the grounds of the Compleat Angler, and when he had sat in this shade for half-an-hour watching the calmness of the river and the eddies of the weir stream, the rushes, the reeds, the trees, the long line of wooded hills, the swans and the boats, if he did not understand what the Thames is to an Englishman, I should despair of him. If I was interested in a young couple who were hesitating on the brink of matrimony, and I wished to push them into it, I would invite them to take tea with me on the lawn of the Compleat Angler, and when the sun dropped low and the shadows of the trees lengthened and the air grew heavy with the scent of the roses, I would leave them together for an hour, and if in that hour the man had not proposed I would consider him a base deceiver, a heartless wretch incapable of sentiment. In the late afternoon, when the bells of the church were ringing for evening service, I walked up the High Street, in which the lads of the village and the lasses all in white were abroad, and looked at Marlow's sole antiquarian relic--the stocks, which stand in an enclosure of turf and trees and flower-beds. I continued my pilgrimage to Shelley's house in West Street, and then on over the wooden bridge of old grey wood to the Lock. The sun had set and the west was all opal with the dying light when I came back to the lawn of the Compleat Angler. The launch that had lain the afternoon through by the steps was gone, with its load of merry people, and the motor cars were all off on their return journey to London. Only the people staying in the hotel remained. It was dinner-time, but I was loth to leave the open air, for the hush of the evening had fallen. I could hear faintly the sound of a hymn being sung in the church, and that sentimentality, which is not religious feeling, but which is akin to it, had fallen upon me. I was at peace with all mankind. I forgave the architect who designed Marlow Church tower for the triviality of his Gothic; I had no rancour against the tailor who took three weeks to make me three white evening waistcoats; I could think kindly of the people who send me insufficiently stamped letters from abroad, and I could remember that even the income-tax collector is a fellow-man. Had there been anyone by to whom I could recite poetry I would have been prepared to quote Herbert to my purpose, but the only companionable soul available at the moment was a friendly Irish terrier, and terriers have no soul for verse. At last I went in to dinner. A corner table in the biggest of the three dining-rooms, a real summer-house, its walls being all windows, had been reserved for me, and from my seat I could look across the river to one side and on to the weir stream on the other. The light of day was not all gone, and I hardly needed the shaded lamp which kept company on the table with a great bunch of sweet-smelling flowers from the garden. I had not ordered any special dinner, but ate the _table d'hôte_ meal of the house, the charge for which is six shillings. It was a good English dinner, and my only complaint regarding it is that there were some tags of unnecessary French upon the menu card. This, in plain English, was the dinner I ate and enjoyed: Thick Mock Turtle. Salmon. Clear Butter Sauce. Braised Ham. Broad Beans. Madeira Sauce. Roast Chicken. Chip Potatoes. Green Peas. Raspberries and Cream Ice. I might have added a savoury to this, but I like to end my dinner with a sweet taste to linger on my palate. My bill altogether came to seven-and-six. Feeling contented with myself, and life, the Compleat Angler, and my fellow-men, I sauntered to the railway station in time to catch the nine-forty train back to London. XXXVII ARTISTS' ROOMS DIEUDONNÉ'S. PAGANI'S There used to be two little rooms in London restaurants with walls made interesting by the signatures of great artists of song and colour and sculpture and music, who, some of them, had sketched little scenes above their names, and others had dotted down a few notes of music. One of these little chambers was the sitting-room of Madame Dieudonné, in Ryder Street. Madame Dieudonné was an old French lady who kept a boarding-house much patronised by the great artists who came over to London from France. In her kitchen was an admirable chef, and the fame of the _table d'hôte_--a real _table d'hôte_ in its original sense, for Madame always sat at the head of her own table--was so great that people who loved good cooking used to ask permission to be allowed to dine at it. But Madame Dieudonné did not give this permission to all comers, and it was necessary that the would-be guest should be presented to Madame and should obtain from her an invitation to her circle before a place was laid for him. Any special favourites amongst the guests were asked by Madame to come after dinner into her sitting-room, there to drink coffee and to chat, and amongst these favourites were the great musicians, and the great actors and great painters of her own land, who stayed at the boarding-house. When any man, or any lady, was asked for the first time into this holy of holies, he or she placed a signature upon the wall and any further embellishment that came to mind. Gradually the middle portion of the walls became a perfect treasure-house of autographs. Madame Dieudonné died, and her circle was broken up, the old lodging-house became a hotel, and when M. Guffanti, its present owner, brought his great energy to bear upon it, it soon became prosperous. Alterations were made, the white room on the first floor, with its panel pictures of gallants and ladies in silks and brocades, which is now used for banquets, was constructed, and when Madame Dieudonné's little room was thrown into what is now the entrance hall, the workmen destroyed the signatures on the walls, evidently regarding them as mere dirt, in spite of all the precautions M. Guffanti had made to preserve them, and the only remembrances left of the stately old lady who used to sit at the head of her own table is in the name of the hotel and restaurant. Dieudonné's has flourished exceedingly, and M. Guffanti, his hair a little thinner on the top of his head than when first I made his acquaintance, but with the same majestic curve to his moustache ends, and possessing the same invincible energy, has increased the size of his hotel by taking in several other houses. The Dieudonné's of the present day is a large building of white stone and red brick, always very spick and span, and decked out with flower boxes. The restaurant on the ground floor is a fine room in the Adams style, a very light grey in colour, with some of the ornamentation just touched with gold. At one end are three large bow-windows, and at the other end there is a musicians' gallery for the orchestra. On the side walls the ornamentation suggests doorways with mirrored panels, pink shades on the electroliers have subdued the light, which, when the room was first built, I found too white and too brilliant, and the lamps on the tables are also pink-shaded. The carpet is of a deep rose, and the white chairs are also upholstered in that colour. It is a very pleasant dining-room, and the people who dine there are all pleasant to look at, and do good food the compliment of going dressed in becoming garments. I very rarely dine at Dieudonné's without seeing a ladies' dinner-party in progress, for Dieudonné's has always been a favourite dining place of the gentler sex since the early days when Giovanini, the old _maître d'hôtel_, with bushy eyebrows and Piccadilly weepers, used to consider any ladies without an escort as being put under his special and fatherly protection. Dieudonné's chiefly relies on two _table d'hôte_ dinners, one the opera dinner, at six-and-six, and the other the Dieudonné dinner, at eight shillings. On the last occasion that I dined at Dieudonné's before going on to the Russian Opera at Drury Lane I ate the opera dinner, the menu of which I give below. It was the day of President Poincaré's state entry into London, and that event is celebrated by two of the dishes in the dinner: MENU. Hors d'œuvre Variés. Consommé à la Française. Crème de Laitues aux Perles. Saumon d'Ecosse Poché. Sauce Mousseline. Pommes Nature Concombres. Côtes de Pré-Salé Poincaré. Canetons d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise. Petits Pois Nouveaux. Coupe Entente Cordiale. Friandises. The Dieudonné dinner on this day only differed from the shorter one by the inclusion in it of _escaloppes de ris de veau George V._ The other restaurant which created and retains an artists' room is Pagani's, in Great Portland Street, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Queen's Hall and St George's Hall. When, in 1871, Mario Pagani opened a little shop, which became a restaurant, in a house in Great Portland Street, the German Reeds were in possession of St George's Hall, with, I think, Corney Grain, as a newly risen star, in their company. The Queen's Hall had not been built and St James's Hall, the site of which is now occupied by the Piccadilly Hotel, was the musical centre of London. M. Pagani, being an Italian, gave his customers Italian cookery, and very good Italian cookery too, and the journalists and the painters and the singers soon heard of the new little restaurant where there were always Italian dishes on the bill of fare. Pellegrini, the _Vanity Fair_ cartoonist, and Signor Tosti were two of the first patrons of the restaurant. Mr George R. Sims, doyen to-day of literary gourmets, loved the restaurant as it was in its early state, and wrote of the good Italian food to be obtained there, and his portrait, on a china plaque, occupies, rightly enough, the centre of one of the walls up in the artists' room. In 1887 M. Mario Pagani retired, and for a time his brother and his cousin carried on the restaurant; the latter, M. Giuseppe Pagani--left, in 1895, in sole control--taking as partner M. Meschini, the latter of whom eventually became the sole proprietor, bequeathing, when he died, the restaurant to his widow and to his son. Pagani's in the forty odd years of its existence, has increased in size to an extraordinary extent, and the building, with its elaborately ornamented front of glazed tiles with complicated figures in the pattern and ornaments of Della Robbia ware, its squat pillars of blue and its arches, luminous at night with electric light, differs immensely from the little, stuffy Italian restaurant that it originally was. It has a second entrance now in a side street, and a Masonic banqueting-room, and a lift, and its restaurant on the ground floor is a very large one and always reminds me of those great establishments that I see in the German cities. It is a very comfortable restaurant, and its brown walls, its mirrors with trellis-work and creepers painted on them set in brown wooden frames, and its ceiling painted in quiet colours, all give a sense of cosiness. There is in this downstairs restaurant a dispense bar, which looks very picturesque seen through a glazed screen, and just by this screen is the entrance from which the waiters stream out from the kitchen carrying the dishes ordered by the patrons of the restaurant, which they show as they pass to a clerk. To dine habitually at Pagani's at a table facing the kitchen entrance is to obtain a complete knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the Italian waiter. He is not run into a mould as a French waiter is, but retains many individualities. He always wears a moustache, and is pleasantly conversational with his fellows and with the customers. In its early days, the cookery at Pagani's was Italian and nothing but Italian, but with ever-increasing prosperity the scope of the kitchen has broadened, and now most of the dishes on the _carte du jour_ have French names. The head cook, however, is a good Italian, M. Faustin Notari, who has climbed the ladder of promotion to the top during the twenty years he has been in the kitchens of Pagani's, and there are always some Italian dishes on the bill of fare. The following are the dishes that I most frequently see on the card:--_Minestrone, minestrone alla Genovese, zuppa alla Pavese, filetti di sole alla Livornesse, spaghetti,_ and Macaroni done in every way possible, _ravioli al sugo_ or _alla Bolognese, gnocchi alla Romana, fritto misto alla Tosti, ossi buchi, arrostino annegato,_ and I generally finish my dinner at Pagani's with a _zambaglione_. Pagani's has its specialities of the house apart from Italian dishes, and when I have dined, as I often do, as one of the committee of an amateur dramatic club, in the Artists' Room, I generally find _poulet à la Pagani_--a very toothsome way of cooking the domestic fowl--on the menu of our little feasts. _Filet de sole Pagani_ is another excellent dish, an invention of the house. _Poule au pot_ and _cassôlet à la Provençale_ and the _bisque_, and the _bortsch_ at Pagani's are always excellent. The diners whom I see at the other tables downstairs at Pagani's all seem to me to belong to that very pleasant world, artistic Bohemia. The great singers of the opera and the great musicians who play at the Queen's Hall go there to lunch and dine and sup, and their artistic perception is not confined entirely to music, for I notice that they generally bring very pretty ladies with them to eat the good dishes of the restaurant. A little touch of Bohemia that always pleases me at Pagani's is the boy who comes round with a tray selling cigars and cigarettes. The restaurant-rooms on the first floor used, in the early days when Pagani's was quite a small place, to be the rooms to which the sterner sex used to take ladies to dine, and there was a particular corner by a window with a tiny conservatory in it which was the favourite spot in the room. The gentler sex now dines everywhere in the restaurant, but in the first-floor rooms, with pleasant red walls, glazed screens put between the tables give a sense of privacy. 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. [Illustration: JOSEPH CARVING A DUCK _After a drawing by Paul Renouard_] 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: MON CHER COLONEL,--Vous me demandez pour votre nouveau livre des recettes. Méfiez-vous des recettes. Depuis la cuisinière bourgeoise et le Baron Brisse on a chanté la chanson sur tous les airs et sur tous les tons. Et qu'en reste-t-il; qui s'en souvient? Je veux dire dans le public aristocratique pour qui vous écrivez, et que vous comptez intéresser avec votre nouvelle publication, cherchez le nouveau dans les à propos de table, donnez des conseils aux maîtresses de maison, qui dépensent beaucoup d'argent pour donner des dîners fatiguants, trop longs, trop compliqués; dîtes leur qu'un bon dîner doit être court, que les convives doivent manger et non goûter, qu'elles exigent de leur cuisinier ou cuisinière de n'être pas trop savants, qu'ils respectent avant tout le goût que le bon Dieu a donné à toutes choses de ne pas les dénaturer par des combinaisons, qui à force d'être raffinées deviennent barbares. On a beaucoup parlé du cuisinier. Si nous exposions un peu ce que doit être le Maître d'Hôtel. LE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL FRANÇAIS La plus grande force du Maître d'hôtel Français, je dis Maître d'hôtel Français à dessein, car si le cuisinier Français a su tirer parti des produits de la nature avec un art infini, pour en faire des aliments aimables, agréables, et bienfaisants, le Maître d'hôtel Français seul est susceptible de les faire accepter et désirer. Or voilà pour le Maître d'hôtel le champ qu'il a à explorer. Champ vaste s'il en fût, car deviner avec tact ce qui peut plaire à celui-ci et ne pas plaire à celui-là, est un problème à résoudre selon la nature, le tempérament et la nationalité de celui qu'il doit faire manger. Il doit donc être le conseil, le tentateur, et le metteur en scène. Il faut pour être un maître d'hôtel accompli, mettre de côté, ou de moins ne pas laisser percer le but commercial, tout en étant un commerçant hors ligne (je parle ici du maître d'hôtel public de restaurant, attendu que dans la maison particulière, le commerce n'a rien à voir, ce qui simplifie énormement le rôle du maître d'hôtel. Pour cela il faut être un peu diplomate, et un peu artiste dans l'art de dire, afin de colorer le projet de repas que l'on doit soumettre à son dîneur). Il faut donc agir sur l'imagination pour fair oublier la machine que l'on va alimenter, en un mot masquer le côté matériel de manger. J'ai acquis la certitude qu'un plat savamment préparé par un cuisinier hors ligne peut passer inaperçu, ou inapprécié si le maître d'hôtel, qui devient alors metteur en scène, ne sait pas présenter l'œuvre, de façon à le faire désirer, de sorte que si ce mets est servi par un maître d'hôtel qui n'en comprend pas le caractère, il lui sera impossible de lui donner tout son relief, et alors l'œuvre de cuisinier sera anéanti et passera inaperçu. Ce maître d'hôtel doit être aussi un observateur et un juge et doit transmettre son appréciation au chef de cuisine, mais pour apprécier il faut savoir, pour savoir il faut aimer son art, le maître d'hôtel doit être un apôtre. Il doit transmettre les observations qu'il a pu entendre pendant le cours d'un dîner de la part des convives, observations favorables ou défavorables, il doit les transmettre au chef et aviser avec lui. Il doit aussi être en observation, car il arrive le plus souvent que les convives ne disent rien à cause de leur amphitryon mais ne mangent pas avec plaisir et entrain le mets présenté: là encore le maître d'hôtel doit chercher le pourquoi. Il y a aussi dans un déjeuner ou un dîner un rôle très important réservé au maître d'hôtel. La variété agréable des hors-d'œuvre, la salade qui accompagne le rôti, le façon de découper ce rôti avec élégance, de bien disposer ce rôti sur son plat une fois découpé, découper bien et vite, afin d'éviter le réchaud qui sèche. Savoir mettre à point une selle de mouton, avec juste ce qu'il faut de sel sur la partie grasse, qui lui donnera un goût agréable. Pour découper le maître d'hôtel doit se placer ni trop près ni trop loin des convives, afin que ceux-ci soient intéressés, et voient que tous les détails sont observés avec goût et élégance, de façon à tenter encore les appétits qui n'en peuvent presque plus mais qui renaissent encore un peu aiguillonnés par le désir qu'a su faire naître l'artiste préposé au repas, et qui a su donner encore envie à l'imagination, quand l'estomac commençait à capituler. Le maître d'hôtel a de plus cette partie de la fin du dîner, le choix d'un bon fromage, les fruits, les soins de température à donner aux vins, la façon de décanter ceux-ci pour leur donner le maximum de bouquet; le maître d'hôtel ne peut-il encore être un tentateur avec la fraise frappée à la Marivaux? ou avec la pêche à la cardinal, qu'accompagne si bien le doux parfum de la framboise, légèrement acidulé d'une cuillerée de jus de groseille. Notre grand Carême qualifiait certains plats le "manger des Dieux." Combien l'expression est heureuse! Depuis que je suis à Londres j'ai trouvé un nombre incalculable d'inventeurs de ma "pêche à la Cardinal." Il me faudra leur donner la recette un jour que j'en aurai l'occasion. N'est-ce pas de l'art chez le maître d'hôtel qui tente et charme les convives par ces raffinements, et qui comme un cavalier sur une moture essoufflée sait encore relever son courage et lui faire faire la dernière foulée qui décide de la victoire? Après un bon repas le maître d'hôtel a la grande satisfaction d'avoir donné un peu de bonheur à de pauvres gens riches, qui ne sont pas toujours des heureux. Et comme l'a dit Brillat Savarin "Le plaisir de la table ne nuit pas aux autres plaisirs." Au contraire, qui sait si _indirectement_ je ne suis pas le papa de bien des Bébés rieurs, ou la cause au moins de certaines aventures que mes jolies clientes n'évoquent qu'en souriant derrière leur éventail? JOSEPH _Directeur du Savoy Restaurant, Londres, et du Restaurant de Marivaux, Paris._ XLIV THE SAVOY TO-DAY After the Houses of Parliament, the Law Courts, the National Gallery, St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the Savoy Hotel is probably the building that the well-to-do Londoner knows best. He cannot walk or drive down the Strand without his eye being caught by its milk-white frontage on that tumultuous street, and by the stern-faced gilded warrior above the courtyard entrance who leans on a shield that bears an heraldic bird, which I have no doubt is a very noble eagle, but which looks as though it had been plucked. When he comes home from abroad he, if he is looking to the right as he crosses the railway bridge to Charing Cross, sees the garden front of the hotel, with its balconies and many windows, and its flag aflutter, and recalling many good dinners in the past, looks forward to many others in the immediate future. All the preliminaries to a dinner at the Savoy are pleasantly dignified. The drive into the courtyard, the cessation of noise as the wheels of car or carriage come upon the india-rubber paving under the glazed roof, the cream and dark green marbles of the entrance front, the trellis and flowers outside the Café, all contribute to pleasant anticipation; and once inside the doors, the hall panelled with dark woods, the glimpse through a long window of the light-coloured reading-room, and the progress down a flight of crimson-carpeted stairs, with walls of buff and brown marble on either side, form the first stage of the diner's progress to the restaurant. Servants in the handsome state livery they wear in the evening--French grey and dark blue--take one's coat and hat, and it always gives me a moment of gratification that I am such an old habitué that it is not considered necessary to give me a ticket. Then if one is a host there is nothing to do except to sit in one of the comfortable chairs in this ante-chamber and to look alternately up the crimson stairs to see whether one's guests are arriving and down another flight of stairs across the great lounge to the crystal screen of great panes framed in gilt metal which is the transparent barrier between the restaurant and its approaches. The lounge--crimson under foot, with walls light cream in colour, good copies of portraits by British old masters in panels alternating with looking-glass doorways; with pillars of buff marble, veined with brown and having gilt capitals, and bronze amorini and sculptured groups of the Graces as supports for electroliers--is a delightful room, as one realises after dinner when the hour of coffee has come. The band, wearing in the evening their uniform of dark blue, the leader distinguished by a silver sash--in the daytime they are in crimson--are in a corner of the lounge close against the crystal screen that their music may be heard in the restaurant. Arched entrances in the eastern wall lead into the Winter Garden, another great hall with a glazed ceiling, with roses climbing up trellis-work, and with a great recess, up a broad flight of stairs, with pillars of green marble and a gilded fountain against its wall. The _salon de verdure_, as it is grandiloquently called, is above the new ballroom, the two great apartments occupying the space where the courtyard used to be. My guests of the particular night I am describing were my friend and old comrade, Pitcher, the editor of _Town Topics_, and his wife and his pretty daughter. I had determined that they should eat a typical Savoy dinner, and had been at some pains to obtain a really representative feast. Before I went away on my travels in the summer I had interviewed M. Blond, the general manager (who was brought back when he was half-way to Rome two years ago to take up the management of the Savoy), in his sanctum, telling him that when in the autumn I intended to write a couple of chapters concerning the Savoy, I should like to give a dinner including some of the specialities of the cuisine, and that I should like to have something descriptive to say as to such of the dishes of which the Savoy is proud that were not included in my little feast. We took into our conference M. Rouget, the Maître-Chef of the Savoy, who looks the genial, burly, contented person that the head of a great kitchen should be, and we chatted over new dishes and dishes with new names (which are not the same thing), and he gave me some particulars of his kitchens and of the great army of cooks employed in the Savoy, there being as many as two hundred and ten in the brigade. When, being back again in London, I carried out my intention of asking my editor to dinner, M. Soi, the manager of the restaurant, came into counsel. When I had made up my mind on the important matter whether my dinner should cost twelve-and-six or fifteen-and-six a head, and had stated that I should like the more expensive feast, I added that I hoped that no beef would be included in the menu, for Pitcher had been complaining of preliminary symptoms of gout. M. Soi on the day we were to dine--a Sunday--submitted to me a menu which I duly initialled as approved. My guest and his wife, looking as young as her pretty daughter, duly arrived to the moment. M. Soi, young and good-looking, with a light moustache--he was under Ritz in various restaurants, and has been at the Grand Hotel in Rome as restaurant manager, going in the summer to the Palace Hotel at St Moritz, before three years ago he came to the Savoy--received us at the entrance, and we were piloted to a table a comfortable distance away from the band, from which the ladies had a full view of the room, full, as it always is, with good-looking people, the softer sex all being in frocks that gave my lady guests plenty to talk about. I gave my guests the menu, which, of course, I had previously seen, to look at, as soon as they had settled down, and I used my eyes to take in my surroundings. Though I regret the disappearance of the mahogany panelling, which is stowed away somewhere in the hotel, as one regrets the loss of an old friend, the pleasant buff colouring of the present restaurant, with its frieze of raised decoration and the electric light thrown up on to the ceiling and reflected down, which is most comfortable to the eye, make for lightness; and light as distinguished from glare is an aid to good spirits in a restaurant. The balcony of to-day, twice the width of the old balcony, and fitted with a long awning for use on sunshiny days--an awning which cost an almost incredible sum of money--is in request both at lunch and dinner and supper-time; and at lunch it has the supreme advantage of commanding the one great view in Central London, the river and the gardens and the Houses of Parliament grouping into a splendid picture, only spoiled by the blot of the unlovely railway bridge. This was the menu of the Savoy dinner that M. Soi considered typical: Délices de Sterlet. Blinis de Sarrasin. Consommé de Terrapine en Tasse. Kapusniack. Suprême de Sole Divine. Diablotin Cancalaise. Filet de Perdreau Bonne Bouche. Croquettes de Marrons. Noisette d'Agneau de Galles Eldorado. Fond d'Artichaut Clamart. Poularde soufflée Savoy. Salade Cornelia. Poire de Paris Tosca. Frivolités. Canapé Esperanza. --and as the accompanying wine I had ordered some sherry with the _caviar_, a magnum of Pommery and some Mattoni water. A most admirable dinner it was, rather long, perhaps, to my taste, but it would have been difficult to get enough distinctive dishes into a shorter menu. The _sterlet caviar_ on the little Russian pancakes made an admirable _hors d'œuvre_; the _consommé_ was of turtle, but much lighter than the usual turtle soup; the _kapusniack_ is a Russian soup, in which leeks, celery, turnips, onions, mushrooms, pig's ear, crushed tomatoes and cabbage seasoned with vinegar play a part, and it is served with cream stirred into it, and with those little _pâtés_ of which the Russians are so fond when broken into the soup. The sole was garnished with fried oysters covered with bread-crumbs, and the _filet de perdreau_, which was the supreme triumph of the dinner, consisted of grilled _suprêmes_ of partridges and grilled rashers of bacon dipped in _poivrade_ sauce. The _noisettes_ were the one plain dish of the dinner, but the asparagus ends tucked away in the hearts of artichokes gave it its cachet. The cold chicken filled with a _mousse_ of _foie gras_ was a very noble dish, and tiny mushrooms, formed from some kind of _mousse_, which apparently grew amidst the truffles, and slices of chicken breast which surrounded the white bird adorned with Pompeiian drawings, were a very happy idea. The nuts soaked in Kummel which we found in the interior of the pears, which were served with a red currant ice, was another happy idea much appreciated by the ladies, and the _canapé esperanza_ proved to be soft roes on toast. This dinner takes a very high place amongst the many good dinners I have eaten in my time in the Savoy Restaurant. My bill came to £5, 2s. Some of the Savoy specialities for which there were not room in one dinner menu are _huîtres Baltimore_, which are oysters grilled with bacon; _bortsch Polonaise, homard Miramar, sylphide Savoy,_ which is a very attractive way of serving lamb sweetbreads; _mignonettes d'agneau à la Delhi, soufflés belle de nuit,_ which is a variant of the _soufflé surprise_, peaches and strawberry and vanilla ice being used in it; and the noble _bécasse à la Soi_, an invention of M. Soi, which is the breast of a woodcock served with a most delightful sauce on toast covered with _foie gras_. I have mentioned the ballroom which has taken the place of the old courtyard and its fountain, and in which many of the great banquets given at the Savoy are held. It is a fine room, light grey in colour, splendidly spacious, and when lighted up its colour shows off the ladies' dresses to perfection. My only objection to it as a banqueting-room was that the white light, which is admirable for a ballroom, was rather too glary for a dining-room. This has now been obviated by lessening the light when dinners are given in the room. If the Savoy could find some means of shading the lamps with pink or putting on pink glasses to the lamps on the occasion of banquets, it would, I think, please those like myself who think that the best light for a dining-room is a pink one. I asked M. Blond to give me the menu of any recent Savoy banquet of which the management was especially proud, not that I have not preserved many menus of many great dinners, but that I wished to shift the responsibility of selection on to his shoulders. This is the menu of the banquet and wines he has sent me as being typical of great Savoy feasts: Caviar de Bélouga. Blinis à la Gouriew. Queue de Bœuf à la Française. Crème Germiny. Filets de Sole à l'Aiglon. Suprême de Volaille à l'Aurore. Côte d'Agneau de Lait au Beurre Noisette. Pommes Lorette. Velouté Forestière. Délice de Strasbourg à la Gelée de Vin du Rhin. Bécassine Double Flambée à l'Armagnac. Perles du Perigord. Cœurs de Laitues Suzette. Asperges Vertes de Paris. Comices Toscane. Soufflé Pont l'Évêque. Corbeilles de Fruits. WINES. Schloss Johannisberg Cabinet, 1893. Veuve Clicquot, 1904. Magnums Pommery and Greno (Nature), 1904. Chât. Haut Brion "Cachet du Château," 1888. Cockburn's 1890 (Bottled 1893). Croft's 1881 (Bottled 1884). Hennessey's 70 year old Cognac. Many of the dishes included in this great dinner I hope I may meet at a future time at Savoy banquets. XLV THE RESTAURANT DES GOURMETS Dining one wet night in September at the Restaurant des Gourmets in Lisle Street I told the young manager, with whom I chatted, that it must be ten years since I dined there, and that at that time M. Brice was the proprietor. The manager's reply was that fourteen years ago M. Brice sold the restaurant to its present proprietors. I looked up the date of my last visit to the Gourmets when I got home, and found that it was in 1898. It was a queer little place of very eatable food at extraordinarily cheap prices when first I made its acquaintance. It then occupied the ground floor of one of the little houses in Lisle Street, the street in which is the stage door of the Empire Theatre, and Mr George Edwardes' offices at the back of Daly's Theatre. The outside of the restaurant in those days did not look inviting. The woodwork was painted leaden grey, and a yellow curtain hung inside the window to screen the interior from the view of the public. The glass of the door was whitened and "Entrée" written across it in black paint. There were as many little tables, to hold two or four, as could be crammed into the little room; the benches by the wall were covered with black leather, the walls were grey, with wooden pegs all round on which to hang hats and coats, and, here and there, notices on boards "La Pipe est interdite." By the window was a long counter, on which were bowls of salad and stacks of French loaves, and a metal coffee-making machine. By this counter stood a plump Frenchwoman in black with an apron, who shouted orders down a lift, and up the lift came presently in response the dish called for. M. Brice, a little Frenchman with a slight beard and wearing a grey cap, came and sat on a chair by the table and told me who the star guests were amongst the people of all nationalities who filled all the space on the chairs and benches. The _chef d'orchestre_ of the Moore and Burgess Minstrels at St James's Hall was one of the celebrities; another, a gentleman wearing a red tie, was a journalist who contributed articles on Anarchists to the newspapers; there were some Frenchmen who were big men in the greengrocery line, and came over occasionally to Covent Garden; and the greatest celebrity of all was a clean-shaven, prosperous-looking person, the coachman of the Baron Alfred de Rothschild. My bill that evening totalled 2s. 7d., and for this I obtained _hors d'œuvre_, 2d.; _pain_, 1d.; _potage, pâté d'Italie_, 2d.; _poisson_, 8d. (the expensive dish of my dinner, turbot and caper sauce); _gigot haricot_, 6d.; an _omelette_, 4d.; cheese, 2d.; and a pint of claret, of which M. Brice had purchased a supply at the sale of the surplus wines of the Café Royal, which cost me no more than 6d. The front of the Restaurant des Gourmets to-day stretches across three of the houses in Lisle Street, and it has, besides the ground-floor rooms, quite a spacious restaurant on the first floor, made by throwing the three rooms of the houses into one. Its ground-floor front is painted chocolate colour, and its principal entrance, between two of the houses, is quite imposing, has little Noah's Ark trees and a _chasseur_ in buttons, stationed there to direct visitors to the different rooms and to call taxis. The staircase, with brass edges to the steps and a brass rail, and with walls of white panelling, leads to the restaurant upstairs, and a little pay-desk, with an opening like those in a railway ticket office, faces one at the entrance, and it is here that every visitor pays his bill as he goes out. I looked in at all three downstairs rooms, which are bright with coloured papers on their walls, and found all the tables occupied, before I went upstairs into the larger restaurant. There I found a little table vacant, and sat down at it with grim apprehension that I might have what scanty hair I possess on the top of my head blown off, for just above it was a large electric fan. It was, however, not necessary, the night being cool, to set this going, and I ate my dinner in a calm atmosphere. The Gourmets has become quite smart since Madame H. Cosson and her son succeeded M. Brice in the proprietorship. The upstairs restaurant is panelled with white woodwork above a green skirting, there are mirrors in the panelling, and the range of windows looking out on to Lisle Street have white lace curtains. There is a table in the middle of the room, and upon it fruits and big-leaved plants and a basket with bunches of grapes hung invitingly along the handle. Two big stands of Austrian bent-wood for hats and coats are placed as sentinels on either side of this table. There is a round-faced clock on the wall to tell the time, and at intervals notices to say that all drinks must be paid for in advance, which means, I suppose, that the Gourmets has not yet obtained a wine and spirit licence. No notice forbidding pipes is now necessary. The waiters in dress clothes and black ties bustle about, and when I had given my order for _crème de laitue, cabillaud frit, poulet au riz, sauce suprême,_ and pudding Gourmets, I looked round at my fellow-guests to see if I could pick out any celebrities. There was no M. Brice this time to act as a "Who's Who in Lisle Street," and most of the people who were dining seemed to me to be young couples. Indeed from the tables in my vicinity a painter could have limned a series of pictures of the various stages of matrimony. At the table next to mine sat a young couple who were still in the holding hands state of love, who were thinking a great deal about each other and very little about their dinner, and who ordered anything that the waiter suggested to them; further on was a couple, each of whom was reading a newspaper, and next to them again a young husband and wife, who had brought out to dinner a pig-tailed little girl of six or seven, whose manners were most admirable, for she bade the waiter "Good-night" when she went away with all the grace of a duchess. Beyond these again was an elderly couple, who sat together at one side of a table, an affectionate Darby and Joan. My soup when it came tasted rather too strongly of pepper, but the fried cod was excellent. The _poulet au riz_ was all that it should be, and the pudding Gourmets was a simple version of the well-known pudding Diplomate. Prices have gone up a little at the Gourmets since my first visit there, owing, of course, to the general rise in the price of material. I was charged 3d. for the soup, 6d. for the cod; I had rushed into wild extravagance in ordering chicken, for that cost me 1s. 3d., and the price of the pudding Gourmets was 4d. XLVI THE MAXIM RESTAURANT There may not appear at first blush to be any close connection between Wardour Street, that length of it which lies between Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street, and the pleasant Austrian watering-place of Marienbad; but whenever I traverse the thoroughfare where the wax figures simper in Clarkson's, the wig-maker's, windows, and where the French library at one of the corners always keeps some passers-by in front of it looking at the illustrated papers and post cards, the china figures and the covers of the novels, there rises before me when I come to the Maxim Restaurant a vision of hills covered with pine-woods and of the Café Rubezahl, a castellated building of great red roofs and turrets and spires, high up on the green hill-side, the café at which the late King Edward often drank the good Austrian coffee of an afternoon during his annual August trip to the town of healing waters. The Rubezahl was, in an indirect manner, the parent of the Restaurant Maxim in Wardour Street, for when the organisers of the Austro-Hungarian Exhibition at Earl's Court cast about for attractions which would be in keeping with the spirit of the exhibition it occurred very naturally to them that an Austrian restaurant where the admirable plain Austrian dishes could be eaten and where the Hungarian wines and the cool beer of Pilsen could be drunk would be a pleasant novelty; and such a restaurant was established opposite to the Welcome Club, and was eminently successful. And to manage this restaurant the son-in-law of the proprietor of the Rubezahl came from the Austrian Highlands, and when King Edward lunched at the restaurant and was given a typical Austrian meal of "cure food" he recognised M. Maximilian Lurion, the manager, and chatted with him concerning Marienbad and the Rubezahl. When Earl's Court had closed its doors for the winter M. Maxim Lurion was not unwilling to stay in London, and he, in conjunction with a British syndicate, thought that a site at the corners of Wardour and Gerrard Streets, which was then in the market, would be a suitable position for a restaurant. A small public-house carrying a licence was included in the purchase, and when everything else on the site was pulled down the business part of the old house of refreshment stood, looking like a saloon of the Wild West, amidst the ruins. When a name had to be found for the new restaurant, the shortened form of M. Lurion's Christian name was chosen, and the building became the Restaurant Maxim. No doubt Maxim's, in Paris, came by its name in a like manner, for Maximilian is a very usual name in central and eastern Europe. Maxim's has always kept a clean face in a street not remarkable for smartness, and its white exterior, the touches of gilding on the wreaths that embellish its outer walls, its rows of mauresque white-curtained narrow windows on the first floor, its turret domed with silver, the flowers in its green and gold balconies, and the commissionaire in a well-fitting coat who stands by the front door, near the two large menus which set forth what is the dinner of the day, make it a pleasant feature of the street. When the Maxim was first opened M. Lurion took me over the establishment from garret to basement, and showed me how the coffee is made in Austria, though Austrian coffee never tastes so well in London surroundings as it does under the little trees of the hill-side cafés in Carlsbad or Marienbad, or in one of the open-air restaurants in the Prater of Vienna. The Maxim, however, did not at first fulfil the hopes of its promoters. Whether its name frightened people or whether it was too ambitious in its aims I do not know, but it soon changed hands. When one evening last summer I went to the Maxim to dine before going to one of the theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue, I found M. Ducker, the present manager, in the entrance hall near the cloak-room where hats and coats are left, and he told me all about the varying fortunes of the restaurant, who are its present proprietors, and of the struggle that was necessary to bring it to its present state of prosperity, for prosperous it now is, there being not a vacant table either on the ground floor or the first floor when I came in. While I talked to M. Ducker a couple, who had finished their dinner, rose from a table by the brass ornamental rail surrounding the oval opening which makes the restaurant on the first floor a balcony to the room below, a waiter slipped a clean cloth on to the table, and in a few seconds it was ready for my occupation. M. Ducker hoped I would have a good dinner, and left me to the care of the _maître d'hôtel_, and as the waiter covered the table with little dishes containing _hors d'œuvres_ I looked at the menu, at my surroundings, and at the company. This was the menu of the half-crown dinner of the house, the arms of the establishment, three stags' heads on a shield, with a boar's head as a crest, and two stags as supporters, being at the top of the menu card: Hors d'œuvre à la Russe. Consommé Chiffonnette. Crème Gentilhomme. Suprême de Barbue Niçoise. Carré de Pré-Salé Bourguignonne. Pommes fondantes. Poulet en Casserole. Salade. Glacé Chantilly. Dessert. In the upper restaurant of the Maxim, where I sat, the walls are papered deep red, with white woodwork and white classic ornamentation. There are mirrors on the walls, and on a large panel the arms of the house are displayed in proper heraldic colours. The cut glass electroliers, some hanging, some fixed to the ceiling, give light both to the upper and lower restaurants. The lower restaurant is panelled and is all white, red-shaded lamps on the tables and some palms making a contrast of colour. Down in the basement is a grill-room. The chairs are of white wood upholstered in green leather, and the carpets are a deep rose in colour. The little string band of the establishment plays in the upper restaurant, its leader, who is a talented violinist, standing close by the brazen railing so that his music shall be as well heard below as it is above. Every table, as I have written, was occupied this evening in both the stages of the restaurant. There are two circular lines of tables above, one close to the railings, one against the walls, and the people who sat at them belonged to all the various grades of respectable London. At the table by the wall level with mine were a young man and a pretty girl. He was smoking a cigarette, she was drinking a cup of coffee, and they were evidently obtaining their evening's entertainment in listening to the music. At the table beyond them were a little lady whom I include amongst my pleasant acquaintances, her husband and a friend. Four men, in dinner jackets and black ties, were at the table beyond them, and then other couples, young and old, and other little parties of three and four. Here and there were people, like myself, dressed to go to a theatre; but the Maxim is in the land of Bohemia, where there are no customs as to wearing clothes of ceremony. What chiefly struck me as to the diners at the Maxim was that they were all enjoying to the uttermost their half-crown's worth of dinner and music. There were smiling faces at all the tables, and the applause at the conclusion of each item of the band programme was very enthusiastic. The eating of satisfactory food and the drinking of sound wine are not the only dining pleasures that make glad the heart of an epicure, and to be amongst people who are enjoying themselves thoroughly is a delight that cannot be written down on a menu or contained between the covers of a wine list. To come to the important matter of the dinner I ate at the Maxim, the _crème gentilhomme_, a thick green soup, flavoured, I fancy, with spinach, was excellent, and there was no fault to find with the fish and its pink accompaniment of tomatoes and shrimps. When I came to the next course a strange thing happened. I had noticed, and appreciated as a special personal compliment, the presence of a jar of caviare amongst the _hors d'œuvres_; but when, instead of _pré-salé_ mutton, a tender _tournedos_ of beef was put before me, a great fear came upon me that I was eating somebody else's specially ordered dinner, perhaps that of the manager himself. On consideration, when a plump roast chicken was brought me instead of a portion of the bird _en casserole_, I came to the conclusion that the manager had conspired with the cook to give me more than my half-crown's worth of food, and when a noble bowl of _fraises Melba_ was placed before me instead of the small _glacé Chantilly_ I felt sure that I had been put on the "most-favoured nation" basis. But this overkindness was not needed, for, watching my neighbours, I saw that the mutton they ate looked toothsome; I would just as soon have been served my wing of a chicken from a white-metal _casserole_ as from a plate, and I am quite sure that the temptation to eat too many strawberries and ice brought me near the deadly sin of greediness. To anyone making a dining tour of the restaurants of London, I commend the Maxim Restaurant as a bright and cheerful place, in a neighbourhood where brightness is not the rule, where good-tempered, pleasant diners appreciate the food and the music they get for their half-crowns. XLVII BIRCH'S No. 15 Cornhill, which dates back to about 1700, is a little slip of a building, old-fashioned in appearance and tall in comparison to its breadth, its ground area being just fifteen feet by thirty. This is Birch's, the famous little pastry-cook's shop, which for years almost unnumbered has supplied the Lord Mayor's Mansion House banquets and the great feasts at the Guildhall. Its ground floor has an old-fashioned carved front with three windows with little panes, one of ground glass in the centre of each window setting forth that soups, ices and wine are to be obtained within. The woodwork of the front is curiously carved, the carving having reappeared in recent years, when coat after coat of paint was taken off, a section of the various layers being of as many colours as a Neapolitan ice. The double door of the little shop, unusual in shape, also has glass panels. There used to be on the woodwork of the door an old brass plate on which, in letters almost worn out by constant rubbing, the name of the proprietor was given as Birch, late Hornton. But some young bloods one night screwed this off and it has disappeared. Through the glass windows can be seen many wedding cakes, biscuits in tall glass cylinders and a royal crown which was probably part of the table decorations at some great feast. The little shop has an atmosphere of its own. Directly one goes into it one smells the good scent of turtle soup and Old Madeira, with an added aroma of puff pastry. The shop is divided into two parts by an open screen, and a counter runs its full length. There are old black bottles in glass cupboards, and decanters on shelves, and an old clock. The floor is saw-dusted, and men in white aprons bustle about attending to the wants of the customers. Tray after tray of pastry of all kinds is put on the counter and cleared within a few minutes of their appearance. Dignified City men, plate in hand, jostle each other to get a first chance at the macaroons, to obtain a still smoking bun, or a three-cornered puff fresh from the oven. Plates of sandwiches are put before customers to disappear with great rapidity. Whiskies and sodas, glasses of Old Madeira or Port or East Indian Sherry seem to be the favourite drinks. When a customer has eaten all he wants and drunk all he wants, he tells an amiable lady in black what he has taken, and she, being a lightning calculator, tells him in reply what he has to pay. The soup-room on the first floor, to which a flight of narrow little steps ascends, has a calmer atmosphere. Here, in a room with walls the paper of which has been turned to a deep amber tint by the London atmosphere, gentlemen sup, sitting down, their plates of turtle soup or oxtail, and drink their wine with dignified composure. There are tall white wedding cakes under glasses in this room also. The servitors in white aprons are busy in the soup-room, though not quite as busy as downstairs amongst the jam puffs. Up yet another Jacob's ladder of stairs is the ladies' room, which I fancy is used as a chapel of ease for the soup-room, though it is said that rich old widow ladies going quarterly to draw their income from the Bank of England always go into Birch's for a plate of turtle soup and a glass of sherry. Yet one flight of stairs higher is the office of the firm of Messrs Ring and Brymer, who have owned Birch's since 1836. In this room, in old leather-covered books, are wonderful records of hecatombs of baked meats and roasted fowl served at City banquets without end. The two oldest members of the firm have died of late years. These two old gentlemen, Mr Ring and Mr Brymer, who looked like archdeacons in mufti, and had exactly the right dignity for men who provide and control the Lord Mayor's feasts, had both a wonderful memory for banquets that the firm had provided. I happened to mention one day in their presence that a forbear of mine, a banker and brewer, Alderman Newnham, had been Lord Mayor of London, and at once they said that in their books were the details of a feast given by the worthy old gentleman when he was sheriff, and taking down an old volume they showed me how many gallons of turtle soup, the number of sirloins of beef, and the quantity of fair white chickens, orange jellies and plum puddings that the old alderman paid for. It is a very cosy little room in which to lunch, this office of the firm, and the turtle soup, with its great squares of turtle flesh in it, a sole Colbert, a grouse pie, angels on horseback, and a big helping of that wonderful orange jelly, a clouded delicacy that has the flavour of the orange stronger than any other jelly made by any other pastry-cook, and which is a speciality of the house, taste all the better for being eaten in the little room on the walls of which are old Guildhall menus and old pictures of City feasts and portraits of city celebrities, and many letters from the great panjandrums of City companies, giving praise to Messrs Ring and Brymer for the excellence of the banquets supplied by them. All the preparations for a Guildhall or a Company banquet, except the cooking that goes on in the kitchens of the halls, used to be made in the kitchens below No. 15 Cornhill, and the houses on either side of it, and it used to be one of the free afternoon sights of the City to see the kitchen-men carrying out through the little entrance door the soup and the pastry, the jellies and the cakes for a City banquet. When two great insurance offices squeezed in on either side of the pastry-cook's shop, Messrs Ring and Brymer had to look for other kitchens, and they now have a house in Bunhill Row, where on the top storey there is a great kitchen for the cooking of the soup and other delicacies, and where in the basement the turtles spend their last sad days before being butchered to make a Lord Mayor's holiday. At Bunhill Row there is also a cosy little office with the arms of many of the City companies as its wall ornaments. Old Tom Birch, who was the second of his line, the son of Lucas Birch who succeeded the Hornton dynasty, was a man of many interests and a great celebrity of the City. His Christian name was Samuel, but he was "Tom" in the mouths of all City men. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1814, the only pastry-cook who has ever attained to that high dignity. He was a great orator, and an enthusiastic supporter of Pitt; he was Lieut.-Colonel of the first regiment of Loyal London Volunteers raised at the time of the French Revolution, and he wrote several comedies which were performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. There is still extant a song of the day, which no doubt in its time had a great success in City circles, in which a Frenchman coming to London, and being taken round the sights, is surprised to learn that the colonel of a regiment he sees on parade is old Tom Birch, the pastry-cook; that a governor holding forth to the boys at St Paul's School; that an orator in the Guildhall; and that the author of a comedy at Covent Garden, are all one and the same estimable old Tom. A Lord Mayor's Guildhall banquet to-day has all the same outward pomp and gorgeousness that it had eighty or a hundred years ago. But a Lord Mayor's banquet, so far as good things to eat and to drink are concerned, is absolutely different to-day from what it was half-a-century ago. This is the menu of the feast that Messrs Ring and Brymer provided on Lord Mayor's day 1913 for the Guildhall banquet. The baron of beef is, of course, just as much a civic dish as is the turtle soup, but the dinner is, on the whole, quite a light one: Turtle. Clear Turtle. Fillets of Turbot Duglère. Lobster Mousse. Turban of Sweetbread and Truffles. Baron of Beef. Salad. Casserole of Partridge. Cutlets Royale. Tongues. Orange Jelly. Italian Creams. Strawberry Creams. Maids of Honour. Princess Pastry. Ices. Dessert. The wines for this occasion were: Punch. Sherry--Gonzalez. Hock--Rüdesheim. Champagne--Clicquot, 1904; Bollinger, 1904. Moselle--Scharzberger. Claret--La Rose, 1899. Port--Dow's, 1896. Bénédictine. Grande Chartreuse. Perrier. The cost of the dinner, including wine, came to about two guineas a head. And now as a contrast I give you the menu of the banquet given in the Guildhall on Lord Mayor's Day, 1837. This was a Royal entertainment. The menu is a yard in length, and it comprises the dishes at the Royal table and the general bill of fare as well. I only give you the dishes served at the Royal table, which form an extraordinary mass of flesh, of fish, fruit, fowl, in season and out of season. The buffet, no doubt, held the dishes for which there was not room on the table. The wines served at this banquet are put down simply as Champagne, Hock, Claret, Burgundy, Madeira, Port, Sherry: THREE POTAGES. Potage de Tortue à l'Anglaise. Consommé de Volaille. Potage à la Brunoise. THREE PLATS DE POISSON. Turbot bouilli garni aux Merlans frits. Rougets farcis à la Villeroi. Saumon bouilli garni aux Eperlans. THREE RELEVÉS. Poulets bouillis, aux Langues de Veau Glacés, garnis de Croustade à la Macédoine. Noix de Veau en Daube décorée à la Bohémienne. Filet de Bœuf à la Sanglier en Chasse. EIGHT ENTREMETS. Ris d'Agneau piqués à la Turque aux petits Pois. Sauté de filets de Faisans aux Truffes. Pâté chaud aux Bécassines à l'Italienne. Casserole de pieds d'Agneau aux Champignons. Sultanne de filets de Soles à la Hollandaise, garnis aux Ecrevisses. Timbale de Volaille à la Dauphine. Filets de Lièvre confis aux Tomates. Côtelettes de Perdreaux au Suprême. BUFFET. Potage à la Turque. Hochepot de Faisan. Tranches de Cabillaud. Eperlans frits. Langue de Bœuf. Jambon à la Jardinière. Bœuf rôti. Mouton rôti. Agneau rôti. Agneau bouilli. Hanche de Venaison. Pierre grillé au Vin de Champagne, Petit Pâtés aux Huîtres. Croquettes. Côtelettes d'Agneau aux Concombres. Dindon rôti aux Truffes à l'Espagnole. SECOND SERVICE. THREE PLATS DE RÔTI. Faisans. Bécasses. Cercelles. THREE RELEVÉS. Souflet de Vanille. Pommes à la Portugaise. Gaufres à la Flamande. FOUR PÂTISSERIES MONTÉES. Vase en Croquante garni de Pâtisserie aux Confitures. Fontaine Grecque, garnie aux petit-choux. Vase de Beurre frais aux Crevettes. Fontaine Royale garnie de Pâtisserie à la Genévoise. TWELVE ENTREMETS. Crème d'Ananas garnie. Gelée au Vin de Champagne garnie aux fruits. Homards à la Rémoulade. Mayonnaise de Poulet à l'Aspic. Fanchonettes d'Orange, garnies aux Pistaches. Compôte des Pêches, en petits Panniers. Tartelettes aux Cerises, en Nougat. Petites Coupes d'Amarids à la Chantilly. Culs d'Artichauts en Mayonnaise. Anguille au Beurre de Montpellier. Gelée au Marasquin, décorée. Gâteaux de Pommes en Mosaïque, à la Crème d'Abricot. BUFFET. Poulets rôtis. Bécassines rôties. Canards Sauvages rôtis. Tourte aux Pommes. Tourte aux Cerises. Beignets de Pommes. Fondu de Parmesan. Trifle à la Crème. Plum Pudding. Mince Pies. No wonder our grandfathers mostly died of apoplexy! XLVIII A CITY BANQUET THE MERCERS' HALL I do not think that of all the dinners I have eaten with various hospitable City Companies in their halls I could select a more representative one than one I ate with the Mercers. That we drank 1884 Pommery at the banquet shows that it did not take place yesterday. * * * * * If there was one City Company that I was anxious to dine with it was the Mercers, for most of my forebears had been of the guild. My great-great-uncle, who was Lord Mayor and an M.P., and who fell into unpopularity because he advocated paying the debts of George IV., was a Mercer; my great-uncle was in his turn Master of the Company, and my grandfather, who was a very peppery and litigious old gentleman, has left many pamphlets in which he tried to make it warm for everybody all round because he was not raised to the Court of Assistants when he thought he should have been. I had looked out Mercers' Hall in the Directory, and found its position put down as 4 Ironmonger Lane, Cheapside; so a few minutes before seven o'clock, the hour at which we were bidden to the feast, I found my way from Moorgate Street Station to Ironmonger Lane, and there asked a policeman which was the Mercers' Company Hall. He looked at me a little curiously and pointed to some great gates, with a lamp above them, enshrined in a rather dingy portal. I passed a fountain, of which two cherubs held the jet and three stone cranes contemplated the water in the basin, and found myself in a great pillared space. A servant in a brown livery, of whom I asked my way, pointed to some steps and said something about hurrying up. At the top of the steps a door led me into a passage, on either side of which were sitting gentlemen in dress clothes. I looked at them and they looked at me, and I thought for a second that the Mercers' guests were rather a queer lot; and then the true inwardness of the situation burst on me. I had come in by the waiters' door. I was soon put right, my hat and coat taken from me, and my card of invitation placed in the hands of a Master of the Ceremonies, who in due time presented me to the Master, to the Senior Warden, and to the House Warden, who stood in a line, arrayed in garments of purple velvet and fur, and received their guests. The ceremony of introduction over, I was able to look around me and found myself in a drawing-room that took one away from the roar of Cheapside to some old Venetian Palace. The painted ceilings, the many-coloured marbles, the carved wood, the gilding and inlaying make the Mercers' drawing-room as princely a chamber as I have ever seen. While the guests assembled my host's sons took me away into another room, which, with its long table, might have been a council chamber of some Doge, and here were hung portraits of the most distinguished of the Mercers. Dick Whittington looked down from a gilt frame, and so did Sir Thomas Gresham, and there was Roundell Palmer in his judge's robes. But, preceded by someone in robes carrying a staff of office, the Master was going into the hall, and the guests streamed after him. "It only dates from after the Fire," said my host, as I gazed in admiration at the magnificent proportions of this banqueting-house, the oak almost black with age, relieved by the colours of the banners that hang from the walls, by the portraits of worthies, by some noble painted windows, by the line of escutcheons which run round the room, bearing the arms of the Past-Masters of the Company, and by the carved panels, into all but two of which Grinling Gibbons threw his genius, while the two new ones compare not unfavourably with the old. At the far end of the hall is a musicians' gallery of carved oak. A bronze Laocoon wrestles with his snakes at one side of the hall, and on the other, on a mantel of red marble, a great clock is flanked by two bronzes. Three long tables run up the room to the high table, at the centre of which is the Master's chair, and behind this chair is piled on the sideboard the Company's plate. And some of the plate is magnificent. There are the old silver salt-cellars, there are great silver tankards, gold salvers, and the gold cup given to the Mercers by the Bank of England and the Lee cup and an ornamental tun and waggon, the first of which is valued at £7000 and the second at £10,000. "Pray, silence for grace," came in the deep bass tones of the toast-master from behind the Master's chair, and then all of us settled down to a contemplation of the menu and to a view of our fellow-guests. This was the dinner that Messrs Ring and Brymer, who cater for the Mercers, put upon the table: Tortue. Tortue claire. Consommé printanière. Salade de filets de soles à la russe. Saumon. Sauce homard. Blanchaille. Ortolans en caisse. Mousse de foie gras aux truffes. Ponche à la Romaine. Hanches de venaison. Selles de mouton. Canetons. Poulets de grain. Langues de bœuf. Jambons de Cumberland. Crevettes en serviette. Macédoines de fruits. Gelées aux liqueurs. Meringues à la crème. Bombe glacé. Quenelles au parmesan. WINES. _Madeira. Hock. Steinberg_, 1883. _Sauterne. Château Yquem_, 1887. _Champagne. Pommery_, 1884. _Burgundy. Chambertin_, 1881. _Claret. Château Latour_, 1875. _Port_. 1863. I always rather dread the length of a City dinner, but in the case of the Mercers a happy compromise seems to have been arrived at, the dinner being important enough to be styled a banquet, and not so long as to be wearying. Messrs Ring and Brymer's cook is to be congratulated, too, for his _mousse de foie gras_ was admirable. There were some distinguished guests at the high table. At the far end, where the Senior Warden sat, there were little splashes of colour from the ribbons of orders worn round the neck, and the sparkle of stars under the lapels of dress-coats. The Master had on his right a well-known baronet, and on his left a special correspondent who had just returned from the Far East, where for a time he was a prisoner of war. Next to him was an ex-M.P. and next to him again one of the House of Commons--an Irish Q.C., with clean-shaven, powerful face. At the long tables sat as proper a set of gentlemen as ever gathered to a feast; but with no special characteristics to distinguish them from any other great assemblage. The snow-white hair of a clergyman told out vividly against the background of old oak, and a miniature volunteer officer's decoration caught my eye as I looked down the table. The dinner ended, the toast-master's work began again, and first from the gold loving-cup and from two copies of it, the stems of which are said to have been candlesticks used when Queen Elizabeth visited the Company, we drank to each other "across and across the table." The taste of the liquor in the cup was not familiar to me, and when my host told me how it was compounded I was not surprised. It is a mixture of many wines, with a dash of strong beer. Grace was sung by a quartet in the musicians' gallery, and then the company settled down to listen to speeches interspersed with song. By each guest was placed a little cigar-case, within it two cigars; but these were not to be smoked yet awhile. While we sipped the '63 Port, we listened to an M.P. as he responded for "The Houses of Parliament." Later the Irish Q.C., who spoke for "The Visitors," caught up the ball of fun, and tossed it to and fro, and charming ladies and mere men sang songs and quartets, and my host told me, in the intervals, of the great store of the old Clarets and Ports that the Mercers had in their cellars, which was enough to make a lover of good wine covet his neighbour's goods. And still later, after the cigars had filled the drawing-room with a light grey mist, I went forth, this time down the grand oaken staircase, with its lions clasping escutcheons. I passed into Cheapside with a very lively sense of gratitude to the Mercers in general, and my hospitable host in particular. XLIX THE CAVENDISH HOTEL A GREAT BRITISH WOMAN COOK Often enough during the past quarter of a century I have heard some hostess say reassuringly to someone whom she had asked to a dinner-party to meet someone else of the first importance: "Mrs Lewis is coming to cook the dinner." That short sentence has meant a great deal, for Mrs Lewis is the most celebrated woman cook that this or probably any other age has produced. I do not even except the great Mrs Glasse. If in England there was a _cordon-bleu_ for women cooks Mrs Lewis would be a Grand Officer of the Order. She is the proprietress of the Cavendish Hotel, which occupies three houses, 81 to 83 Jermyn Street, and it was to Jermyn Street that I went to make her acquaintance. I waited in the tea-room of the hotel, a room, round the walls of which hangs a line of photographs of some of the great ones of the world, and I wondered what kind of a lady it might be that I was presently going to meet, for though I had tasted Mrs Rosa Lewis's handiwork often enough I had never set eyes on her in the flesh. Somehow my ideas of a successful petticoated ruler of the kitchen have always been associated with portliness, majesty, black silk, a heavy gold chain and cameo jewellery. I think that a boyish remembrance of my mother's cook in her church-going attire must have left this impression on my mind. But these vague ideas were shattered and sent spinning into space when into the tea-room came a slim, graceful lady with a pretty oval face and charming eyes, and hair just touched with grey. She was wearing a knitted pink silk coat, and one of those long light chains that mere men believe were intended to support muffs. She was arm in arm with one of the prettiest of the young comediennes of to-day, and when she told me that amongst the people she had asked to lunch was an ex-Great Officer of the Household, a young officer of cavalry, and an American editor, I began to feel that at last I was moving in Court circles, and instead of formulating the questions that I intended to ask about cookery began to babble of great houses and coroneted personages just as though I was a newsman getting together my column of society gossip. [Illustration: MRS. LEWIS] But Mrs Lewis brought me back to Jermyn Street and my object in going there by telling me at the lunch-table in the grey dining-room that all the members of her kitchen brigade are girls, that she was going presently to take me down to show me them at work, and that Margaret, who is twenty-six years old, was responsible for the lunch we were going to eat, even to the _pommes soufflés_, and she further declared her entire belief that it was more satisfactory to have an accomplished woman cook than an accomplished chef in a kitchen; for the women are more resourceful, are less apt to make difficulties, and grumble less at their work, but that, on the other hand, they are as a rule more extravagant than the men cooks, for they do not understand the economic side of kitchen finance. And very excellent indeed Margaret's handiwork proved to be. Our first dish was of grilled oysters and celery root on thin silver skewers, and then came one of those delicious quail puddings which are one of Mrs Lewis's inventions and for which King Edward had a special liking. There was a whole quail under the paste cover for everyone at table, with a wonderful gravy, to the making of which go all sorts of good things and which when it has soaked into the bottom layer of paste makes that not the least delicate part of the dish. Had not a turn of the conversation taken Mrs Lewis off to a description of how beautiful the twins just born to a member of the aristocracy are, I should have liked to have heard more concerning King Edward's tastes in cookery, for no one, except, perhaps, M. Ménager, who was his Majesty's chef, knew them better than did Mrs Lewis, to whom many an anxious hostess entertaining Royalty for the first time has looked as her sheet-anchor. A turn of the conversation brought up the name of the Duke of Connaught, who, I know, has the same admiration for Mrs Lewis's handiwork that the late King so often expressed. Another appreciative monarch for whose appetite Mrs Lewis has catered is the Kaiser, for she ruled the kitchen at Highcliffe Castle during the Emperor's stay there of three weeks. A personal gift of jewellery marked H.I.M.'s approval. Mrs Lewis lays it down that three dishes are the right number at any lunch, for she, like all other really great authorities on gastronomy, is opposed to a long menu; but she, as great authorities sometimes do, broke her own rule in giving us, after the quail pie, a dish of chicken wings in bread-crumbs and kidneys before the pears and pancakes, an admirable combination, with which our lunch ended. After lunch Mrs Lewis took the little gathering that had congregated about the lunch-table for coffee down in the lift to her kitchen, a splendidly airy and spacious one, running the full length of the three houses, and with its windows opening out on a courtyard at the back. It is as cheerful and light and as well ventilated a kitchen as I have seen anywhere. The rooms which should be cold for the keeping of provisions are just at the right temperature, the lines of pots and pans shine brilliantly, and bustling about were half-a-dozen girls of all ages, from the light-haired Margaret, head of the kitchen, to a little girl of fourteen, the youngest recruit, all wearing the white caps that men cooks wear, which form a very becoming head-dress. And Mrs Lewis, talking of "my girls," as she calls them, told me that she was a year younger than the youngest of them when she first, with a pig-tail of hair down her back, began to learn the art of cookery in the kitchen of the Comtesse de Paris, and she added that she could show me the character she received from her first place when, as a beginner, she was earning the large sum of a shilling a week. Her second place was with the Duc d'Aumale at Chantilly, and the first kitchen over which she had complete rule was that of the Duc d'Orléans, when he was at Sandhurst. She at one time controlled the kitchen of White's Club, and Mr Astor, both at Hever and in London, puts his kitchens in Mrs Lewis's charge when he gives his great parties. No cook with her training completed leaves Mrs Lewis's kitchen for another place at less than £100 a year, but her girls are never anxious to go elsewhere, which I can quite understand, for they seemed a very happy family down in that cheerful, airy kitchen. And presently in the tea-room I gained Mrs Lewis's undivided attention for a minute or two and drew from her some opinions as to the changes in dinners that she had noticed since she first began to rule the roast. One difference is a matter of finance, that people in Victorian days were quite content to pay three guineas a head for a dinner, but that now hostesses bargain that their dinners shall not cost them more than a guinea a head. Dinners have become much shorter, but people in society have a greater knowledge of gastronomy than they used to possess. In past days a small jar of compressed caviare was all that was needed for a dinner-party; nowadays a large bowl or jar of the fresh unpressed caviare is required. People were satisfied at one time with half a stuffed quail, but now a whole roasted quail is the least that can be set before any one person. Again, in times now past, a sliced truffle went a long way, whereas now each individual guest likes to have a whole truffle "as big as your fist" offered her or him. And, making the most of my opportunity, I asked Mrs Lewis what was the time-table of her day when she went out to cook one of those dinners that have made her so famous. It is a very long day's work. She is at the market at five A.M. to buy her material; at seven her staff is ready to help her in her own kitchen, and she begins with the last dishes of the dinner, preparing the sweets and ices; next she turns to the cleaning and preparation of the vegetables, and then to the materials for the soup and the making of the cold dishes. By one o'clock the meats and birds are all prepared for the cooking, and at six all the things to be cooked at the house where the dinner is to be given are put in hampers and taken over there. To step for an evening into command of a kitchen, very often over the heads of one or two men cooks, is not always an unmixed pleasure, and Mrs Lewis, who has a very keen sense of humour, told me some of her experiences in some kitchens which will make very amusing reading if ever she writes her reminiscences, as she should do. Sometimes she is asked to build up a tent for some great dinner, which she is ready to do, and she often furnishes it, and ornaments its walls with china and pictures. Sometimes when a host or hostess wishes to entertain many guests to dinner and a ball Mrs Lewis takes a big vacant house and furnishes it for one night, in all the rooms that are seen, as completely as though its owners were still occupying it. "I have made almost as much in the past year out of my gold chairs and my china as I have out of my pots and pans," she told me. She has a little army of devoted waiters who have been at her call for twenty years and who are always ready to serve under her banner. A menu of one of Mrs Lewis's ball suppers, at Surrey House, may well find a place here. She, I believe, first made the great discovery that young men who have danced an evening through prefer eggs and bacon and Lager beer in the small hours of the morning to _pâté de foie gras_ and champagne: _Chaud_. Consommé de Volaille. Cailles Schnitten. Poussin à la Richelieu. Poulet grillé, Pommes soufflées. _Froid._ Petites Crabes. Homard. Truite au Bleu. Poularde en Gelée. Dindonneaux Hezedia. Canard pressé en Parfait. Bœuf et Agneau à la Mode. Mousse de Jambon en Belle-Veu. Asperges. Fraises du Bois Monte Carlo. Mélange de Fruits. Pâtisserie. Café Noir (à deux heures). Grenouilles à la Lyonnaise. Œufs pochés au Lard. Rognons grillés. Pilsener Lager Beer. She has cooked dinners for the regiments of the Household Cavalry when they entertained a sovereign; when a good fellow, now dead, kept open-house for all his friends in the club-room during Warwick Races, Mrs Lewis undertook the difficult task of providing the best of lunches for an unknown number, and she has contracted for many of the feasts of the great Government Departments. Mrs Lewis has the artist's appreciation of a critical judgment of her handiwork, but to cook a dinner for people who cannot understand its excellences is, in her opinion, like "feeding pigs on mushrooms." There is not one iota of jealousy in Mrs Lewis, for when I told her that in my opinion she held, as a woman ruler of the kitchen, a parallel position to that which M. Escoffier holds as a man, she told me how much she admires the great French Maître-Chef, not only as a great cook, but as a great gentleman. Before I left the Cavendish Hotel Mrs Lewis showed me some of the rooms, and when I was loud in praise of the perfect taste and the happy combination she has achieved of keeping all the charm of the fine old chambers and yet adding to them all the modern conveniences, she laughed, told me that she had been her own architect, added that it was not an expensive education that had enabled her to do all this, and likened herself in her apprentice years to the little girl of fourteen whom we had seen down in the kitchen. L THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES Of clubs formed for the noble purpose of eating good dinners--clubs that have no club-houses--there are very many. Sometimes there is a literary tinge as an excuse for the dinners, sometimes a Bohemian, sometimes a Masonic. But there are two dining clubs that deserve especial recognition in a Gourmet's Guide, for they are clubs of professional gourmets whose business concerns the organisation of good feeding. One of these clubs, which held its annual dinner this year in the new banqueting-room of the Piccadilly Hotel, is the Réunion des Gastronomes. This association consists of proprietors, managing directors and managers of hotels, restaurants and clubs. It holds meetings to discuss and take action in all matters which concern the prosperity and welfare of the gastronomic art, and once a year its members and their guests banquet at one of the hotels or restaurants which are represented by members of the Réunion. I have been fortunate enough to be a guest of late years at many of these banquets, and look back with pleasure to the feasts held at the Hyde Park Hotel, at the Café Royal, at Prince's Restaurant, and other temples of gastronomy. Two lifts take banqueters down from the entrance hall of the Piccadilly Hotel to the ante-chamber of the new banqueting-room somewhere down in the bowels of the earth. The new rooms are below the grill-room, and the Piccadilly must have almost as much depth below the street level as it has height above it. The ante-room is classic in its ornamentation, is white, or a very light grey, in colour, and its decoration is elaborate. Here, between eight o'clock and half-past eight, some three hundred Gastronomes and their guests assembled, and I received a warm welcome from Mr Louis Mantell, of the National Liberal Club, the hon. secretary of the society, and from Mr J. L. Kerpen, of the Hyde Park Hotel, the president of the society, who was wearing his jewel of office, hung by a gold chain round his neck. Colonel Sir William Carington, the hon. president of the society, was to have taken the chair at the dinner, but a bereavement prevented him from being present, and the president of the year presided in his place. I found pleasant familiar faces all about me. There were, amongst many others, Mr Judah of the Café Royal, M. Soi of the Savoy, M. Kramer of the Carlton, M. Jules from Jermyn Street, M. Gustave from the Lotus Club, Mr George Harvey from the Connaught Rooms, M. Luigi of Romano's, Mr Edwardes, M. Pruger from the Automobile Club, M. Boriani from the Pall Mall, Messrs Harry and Dick Preston up from Brighton, and scores of other pleasant acquaintances. At the half-hour punctually, a young toast-master with a most majestic voice announced that dinner was served, and the three hundred of us made our way next door into the new great banqueting-room that was receiving its gastronomic baptism. It is a fine spacious room, though its construction is rather curious, for, no doubt owing to exigency of space, the roof of a portion of it is comparatively low, though the major part is quite lofty. It must, however, have admirable ventilation, for at no period during the evening did the room become uncomfortably warm or the atmosphere uncomfortably smoky. The colouring of the walls is of stone with a slight tinge of chrome. Round a portion of the hall runs a gallery with a handsome railing of black and gold, and a double staircase at the end of the room leads up to this gallery. The ceiling is ornamented with fine paintings of gods and goddesses in the clouds; there are large mirrors on one side of the room and, in spite of the different heights of portions of the ceiling, the acoustic properties of the great hall are excellent. An admirable band, the leader of which I think I remember as a solo violinist on the stage, played us in to dinner and made music during dinner, there being loud calls for M. Boriani, the Caruso of the gastronomic world, when a selection from _La Bohème_ was played. A long table ran the whole length of the room, and smaller ones branched off from it like the prongs of a rake. The tables were decorated with flowers of all shades of crimson and flame colour, and the effect was quite beautiful. This was the menu of the dinner, and the manager of the Piccadilly and the chef were both warmly congratulated on a most admirable feast. Following the menu are the wines which accompanied it: Caviar Frais d'Astrakan. Blinis. Tortue Claire. Délices de Sole au Coulis d'Ecrevisses. Selle de Chevreuil Grand Veneur. Purée de Marrons. Suprême de Volaille Princesse. Neige au Champagne. Reine des Prés en Cocotte. Salade Trianon. Rocher de Foie Gras à la Gelée au Porto. Vasque de Pêches aux Perles de Lorraine. Corbeille d'Excellence. Croûte Piccadilly. Fruits. Moka. * * * * * Zeltinger Auslese, 1906. Niersteiner Rollaender, 1911. Volnay, 1903. Ernest Irroy and Co., 1906. Giessler and Co., 1906. Bouget Fils, 1906. Château Pontet Clanet, 1895. La Grande Marque (60 years old) Specially selected for the Gastronomes' Dinner. Liqueurs. The crawfish sauce with the filleted sole was of a most delicate taste; the venison admirable; the _volaille princesse_ a most dainty dish of fowl, and the quail, the "Queen of the Fields," admirably plump little fellows. The _foie gras_, served in the shape of a circular fort, I did not taste, for I had already dined very well. The _vasque de pêches_ was one of those combinations of fruit and _confitures_ and ice that are now so popular. With the coffee came the Royal toasts, and then the cigars, and as the smoke curled up and the liqueurs were brought round the musical programme which had been arranged commenced. A gentleman in Highland costume assured us that the joys of lying in bed were greater than the joys of getting up in the morning, and a young lady with a fascinating dimple sang "You Made Me Love You," to the three hundred of us. "The Guests" was the next toast, to which Dr O'Neill responded, thanking the professors of gastronomy for the patients who so often came by means of _gourmandise_ into the hands of his profession. Then after "Snooky Ookums," by another fascinating lady, who wore a large red feather in her hair, there was a little ceremony which delighted the Gastronomes and their guests very much. It was a presentation of a handsome silver-gilt cup on behalf of the Réunion des Gastronomes to their hon. secretary, Mr Louis Mantell, to whose cheery management of the feasts so much of their success is due. The whole company united in singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," so as to give Mr Mantell time to collect his thoughts before acknowledging his Christmas box in the shape of a cup. Some good stories from Mr Cooper Mitchell, a little more oratory, though speeches at the Gastronomes' banquet are always kept within the shortest space, and with more songs, a very merry evening ended. If future banquets in the Piccadilly banqueting-hall are all nearly as successful as the first one held there it will become a hall of good will and good fellowship as well as a hall of good cheer. LI THE LIGUE DES GOURMANDS Saint Fortunat has deposed Saint Laurent from his position as Patron Saint of Cooks. Saint Laurent was an impostor in the matter of _gourmandise_ for he owed the proud position he occupied for so many centuries as the Patron of the Chefs to the exceedingly uncomfortable position in which he met his martyrdom. He was broiled on a gridiron. Saint Fortunat not only thoroughly enjoyed good things to eat and drink, but wrote excellent Latin verses in praise of gastronomy, some of which M. Th. Gringoire, the secretary of the Ligue des Gourmands and the editor of the _Carnet d'Epicure_, a clever Parisian journalist who has settled in London, has translated into flowing French verses. Saint Fortunat was the father-confessor to the Queen-Saint Radegonde and to Saint Agnes, and these two ladies, the first of the _cordons-bleus_, prepared _ragoûts_ and _friandises_ for the holy man, who thanked them in poetry. He died in the odour of sanctity as Bishop of Poitiers. The Ligue des Gourmands, which is the association of the great French chefs in London, and whose president is Maître Escoffier, the eminent chef of the Carlton, celebrates the feast day of the Saint, in December, by a banquet in his honour. The dinner in 1913 was the second of the St Fortunat banquets and the fourteenth feast held by the Ligue. The Ligue has branches pretty well all over the world wherever there are French cooks. If London, under the presidency of M. Escoffier, takes the lead with sixty members, Paris comes a good second with forty-three members, and Marseilles, New York and Montreal tie for third place, with twelve members each. Brussels has a group of six members, and there is a forlorn hope of five devoted French chefs in the heart of the enemy at Berlin. Delhi and Dakar, Constantinople and Ajaccio, Bombay and Gumpoldskirschen, Lowestoft and Lahore, Shanghai and Syracuse, Yokohama and Zurich, and a hundred other towns are advance posts of the Ligue, and wherever there is a group of the leaguers they and their guests eat the St Fortunat dinner, the menu of which is composed by M. Escoffier, and the _recettes_ of the especial dishes in which are sent in advance to the members before the Saint's day. In 1913 the most important dinner of the Ligue next to that held at Gatti's was the one at Paris, where the leaguers dined together at Paillard's and sent congratulations to their brethren in London. M. Jean Richepin, the great French poet, is bracketed with M. Escoffier in the presidency of the Ligue, and many of the dishes that M. Escoffier has invented for the feasts of the Gourmands are named after celebrities in art and letters. The _fraises Sarah Bernhardt_, which was the surprise dish of the first dinner of the Ligue, has become a household word in all the restaurants of all the nations. M. Escoffier is no believer in keeping his inventions as _secrets de la maison_, and his _recettes_ for the dinners of the Ligue are always published both in French and English, in the _Carnet d'Epicure_, which is the mouthpiece of the Ligue. In this open-handedness and open-mindedness, M. Escoffier is very wise. I always assure ladies who ask me to obtain for them recipes of various dishes, and remind great chefs when I beg _recettes_ from them, that it is not so much the ingredients of a dish as the hand of the cook that makes a masterpiece. No painstaking amateur, following exactly the directions given by a master of the art, ever reproduces a _chef-d'œuvre_, any more than an amateur painter, copying the work of some great master of the brush is able to obtain that master's effects. The dish that M. Escoffier had invented for the Dîner St Fortunat in 1913 was the _cochon de lait St Fortunat_, with _pommes Aigrelettes_ and _sauce groseille au Raifort_. We, the hosts and the guests, began to assemble at eight o'clock in the ante-room half-way up the great staircase on the King William Street side of the Adelaide Gallery. The great cooks are not so selfish as many other banqueters are, for they welcome ladies to their feasts, and very pretty indeed are most of the chefs' wives and daughters, and cousins and aunts, who grace these feasts. No one, unless he knew who the members of the Ligue are, would tell by seeing them as they gathered for their banquet what their profession is. M. Escoffier, the president, with thoughtful eyes and gentle expression, looks, as I have, I know, before said, like an ambassador or some great painter or sculptor. M. Cedard, the King's chef, who is usually at these feasts, but who was absent from this one, looks like an attaché of an embassy; M. Malley, of the Ritz, has the appearance and the aplomb of an officer of Chasseurs à cheval, and so on through the whole list. Some of them, of course, are the plump and rosy gentlemen that artists love to draw presiding over pots and pans, but great cooks are not all run into one mould, either in figure or in intellect. And the guests of the Liguers vary in type, as the Liguers themselves do. I shook hands on Saturday night with distinguished soldiers and their wives, with _bon-vivants_, with proprietors of restaurants, with representatives of the great champagne firms of Rheims, with journalists and authors who are epicures, with doctors who do not practise themselves in the matter of diet all that they preach to their patients. The banqueting-room at the Adelaide Gallery holds comfortably one hundred and fifty diners, and we must have been quite that number, for more gourmets wished to make trial of the sucking-pig of the Saint than it was possible to find room for, and though as many tables as possible had been put into the space M. Gringoire had to refuse tickets to would-be diners who had postponed the request until the eleventh hour. Soon after half-past eight, which is the dinner-hour of the Ligue--for the great chefs like to see the dinners from their kitchens well under way before they change from their professional white clothing into dress clothes--we streamed up the stairs from the ante-room into the banqueting hall--a fine room, with a musicians' gallery occupied for the occasion by an Hungarian orchestra in hussar uniform, and with, for this especial occasion, the French and the English flags draped together at each end of the room. A long table ran the full length of the room, and from it jutted out smaller tables, each presided over by an officer of the Ligue. When we were seated I could see some faces of well-known chefs whom I had missed in the press downstairs. There were there, besides the names I have already mentioned, M. Aubin, of the Russell Hotel; M. Espezel, of the Union Club; M. Briais, of the Midland Hotel; M. Grunenfelder, of the Grand Hotel; M. Vicario, of the Carlton; M. Müller, of the Hyde Park Hotel; M. Görog, who was one of the four founders of the Ligue; M. Génie, of Prince's Restaurant; M. Ferrario, of Romano's; M. Vinet, who was for many years chef at "The Rag"; Mr Coumeig, chef to the Duchess of Marlborough; and M. Saulnier, _sous-chef_ of the Piccadilly, a rising star. If all these names are not French names, those amongst the chefs of the Ligue who were not born in France have, by adopting the cult of the Haute Cuisine Française, become naturalised Frenchmen in gastronomy. There are various little ceremonies observed at the dinners of the Gourmands, one of them being that at the commencement of dinner a member of the Ligue rises and reminds his fellow-members that only French wine should be drunk at these banquets. Another little ceremony is that each dish in turn is announced by the toast-master--of course, for this occasion a Frenchman--who rolls his "r's" with fine resonance as in a thunderous voice he tells us what we are going to eat. This was the menu with Escoffier's signature appended to it: Crêpes au Caviar frais. Huîtres pimentées. Croûte au Pot à l'Ancienne. Turban de Filets de Sole au gratin. Chapon fin à la Toulousaine. Cochon de Lait Saint-Fortunat. Pommes Aigrelettes. Sauce Groseille au Raifort. Bécassines Rosées. Salade Lorette. Pâté de foie gras. Biscuit glacé Caprice. Mignardises. The caviar and the little pancakes are always delightful, and the _croûte au pot à l'Ancienne_, in its delicate plainness, always makes an excellent beginning to a dinner. The _gratin_ with the sole made it a rather drier dish than fish dishes usually are, and I know that this was the criticism passed on it by the president of the Ligue, but it was very excellent to the taste. The _chapon_, with its rich sauce, was admirably cooked, and served in dishes with at either end heads of fowls admirably reproduced by the sculptors in the kitchen, and then to a triumphal march from the band a little sucking-pig, its crackling golden from the fire, was brought in processionally and shown to the chairman of the feast and the guests in general before it was carried out to be carved. And very admirable the flesh of this piglet and his companions was when brought to table, with round each dish apples in their skins, the top of each apple being cut off to serve as a little lid. A sharp-tasting sauce, in which the flavours of red currant and horse radish mingled, formed an agreeable bitter-sweet. What the various ingredients were that formed the admirable stuffing of the little pigs I do not exactly know, but there were barley and chestnuts amongst them, but, like all good stuffing, one flavour after another chased each other over the palate. M. Escoffier's own criticism on his own creation was that a sucking-pig is more suited for a _petit comité_ than for a large gathering; but, though I quite agreed with him that the right party in numbers to eat a sucking-pig is just that number that one sucking-pig will satisfy, I think it very hard luck if greater numbers were to be prevented by this very fine distinction between a dish for a dinner-table and a dish for a banqueting-table from eating a very great delicacy. The snipe and salad, the _pâté de foie gras_, served on a great bed of crust, and an admirable ice, finished the banquet. Then came the after-dinner ceremonies and songs, which at these feasts are varied and lively. The toast of "The King" and "The President," with the two National Anthems, was followed by a little discourse in honour of the Patron Saint by the chairman, who coupled the name of the saintly patron of gastronomy with those of his two _continuateurs_, the great poet and the great chef, and to this speech M. Escoffier replied with great modesty. The toast of "The Ladies" next brought all the male guests to their feet, and then followed the hymn to St Fortunat, sung by a gentleman from the musicians' gallery, with orchestral accompaniment, the guests taking up the refrain: "Saint Fortunat, honneur à toi, O notre chef! O notre roi! Saint Fortunat!" If the leaguers were a little slow in picking up the air and paid very little attention to the time, the heartiness with which they chorused the Saint's name made amends for any other shortcomings. "The Ligue," "The Visitors," "The Press"--for whom Mr John Lane, of _The Standard_, returned thanks--and "The Cuisine and Wines of France" were toasted by various orators, some of whom spoke in English, some in French. And then M. T. Fourie, the chef of the Adelaide Gallery, bearded, and blushing in his white uniform of the kitchen, was called up to the high table that the president of the Ligue and the chairman of the dinner might shake him by the hand and congratulate him on the admirable feast which he had prepared. This is a very pretty little ceremony always observed at these feasts, and a very right one, for at most banquets the chef who has been the cause of so much pleasure to the guests is not asked to come in person to receive the thanks which are so legitimately due to him. After this ceremony the concert, an Anglo-French one, commenced. Mademoiselle Suzanne Ollier, Miss Marianne Green and Miss Winifred Green, of the Gaiety, Mademoiselle Bianca Briana, and Miss Mabel Martin all sang charmingly, and were presented with bouquets on behalf of the Ligue, and M. Siffre, the president of the Club Gaulois, sang "Margot" quite excellently, without an accompaniment. He was presented with a cabbage stuck on a fork, for the leaguers dearly love their little jokes at their banquets. At last the band played the _Père la Victoire_ march and the National Anthem, and the dinner came to an end. In gratitude to M. Escoffier, the president, to M. Th. Gringoire, the secretary, and to all the members of the Ligue for being permitted in their company to taste for the first time the sucking-pig of St Fortunat--a dish that will go the round of the globe--let me quote a few words appropriate to the occasion from Charles Lamb's prose Hymn of Praise in honour of roast pig: "Pig--let me speak his praise--is no less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices." LII THE CAVOUR RESTAURANT FOR AULD LANG SYNE I head this chapter "For Auld Lang Syne," for the future of the Cavour Restaurant has been, since the death of Philippe, who brought the restaurant into celebrity, uncertain. The Cavour has been put up of late years once to public auction and bought in, and there have been rumours without number that this, that and the other actor-manager was going to purchase the building. In spite of all these rumours, the Cavour still continues in the hands of Mrs Dale, who was manageress under Philippe in old days, and to whom he left the property, just as it used to be in Philippe's time, which is to say that it is one of the best bourgeois French restaurants to be found in London. Every Londoner knows the white-faced restaurant almost next door to the Alhambra in Leicester Square. It is one of the few restaurants that still retains a bar, though it is nowadays called a buffet, and the three-and-six dinner which is served in the restaurant is still as it used to be, a most excellent meal, unstinted, well cooked, and all its material of excellent quality. The bar of the buffet has always been a favourite resort of actors, and it was there that I first heard Arthur Roberts tell the story of "The Old Iron Pot," a tale the success of which led to the invention of the game of "Spoof," that masterly feat of bamboozling the guileless which gave amusement in the eighties to all Bohemia and added a new word to the English language. The Old Iron Pot figured largely in a tale which Arthur Roberts never wearied of telling to "Long Jack" Jarvis, another actor. No one ever heard the beginning of the tale, for it was always well in progress when the victim of the harmless pleasantry came on the scene. Arthur was so intent on the story, the other conspirator so immensely interested, that the new-comer was at once interested also, dispensed with all greetings, and tried vainly to understand all the ramifications of the story into which new characters seemed constantly to come, and which all revolved round an old iron pot. Jack Jarvis apparently thoroughly understood the story, occasionally asked questions, and now and then corrected Arthur Roberts as to the relationship of the various characters, and the other listener very soon found himself pretending that he too comprehended all the twists and turns. Somehow or another, in those days the spirit of harmless practical joking seemed to be in the atmosphere of the Cavour bar. Perhaps it was, because in the days when Leicester Square was a waste ground with the damaged equestrian statue of George the Third in its midst some practical jokers sallied out one night from the little restaurant which occupied the site of the bar, to play the best practical joke of the last century. They painted the statue's horse with red spots, put a fool's cap on the statue's head, and a long birch broom in the hand which should have held a field-marshal's baton. Philippe was the one and only waiter in those days at the little restaurant which was kept by a Frenchman and his wife. Next door, and extending behind the restaurant, was a tin shanty, where judge and jury entertainment was held and _poses plastiques_ were exhibited. It was a disreputable place, for Brookes, who was its proprietor, and who had been associated with "Baron" Nicholson at the Coal Hole, had not the Baron's wit, though he had the same flow of doubtful oratory. When the old couple died, and Philippe succeeded to the business, he soon bought up the tin shanty and the ground belonging to it, built the Cavour as it now is, the bar occupying the site of the original restaurant, and made a little garden on the space now occupied by a cinema show. Of this little garden Philippe was very proud. He liked to be able to go out of his restaurant and pick a bunch of mignonette to give to any lady, and he grew some vegetables and oranges there as well as flowers. He had an eye also to the main chance, for when anyone pointed out to him that he was wasting a valuable site by making a garden of it, he nodded his head, and replied: "The earth he grow more valuable every day." Philippe, short, grey-haired, with a little close-clipped moustache, always wearing a turned-down collar and a black tie, had a very distinct personality of his own. He was a first-class man of business, was up every morning at five o'clock to go the rounds of the market, riding in one four-wheeled cab, with another one following behind, into which he put his purchases and brought them home with him. He had no love for teetotalers, and he budgeted for the very liberal dinner of the house on the understanding that his customers should drink wine therewith. When he found that some of the guests were drinking only water, he used at once to send a waiter to them or to talk to them himself, and to tell them that he would charge them sixpence extra. After a time he found it entailed less loss of temper to notify this on the bill of fare, and the Cavour menu still bears the legend: "No beers served with this dinner. Dinner without wine, sixpence extra." The restaurant of the Cavour is a large white room, with a smaller room, also white, running back from it. Access to the big room is obtained from Leicester Square by a narrow corridor decorated with allegorical figures of the various months of the year--awful daubs, whoever it was who painted them. The big room is lighted from above by a sky-light, and there are large globes of electric light in the ceiling. There are many large mirrors let into the walls, and down each side of the room run brass rails for hats and coats. There is oilcloth on the floor, with strips of carpet over it in the gangways. The waiters go to a bar near the entrance door for the wine and other drinkables, which are served out there by Mrs Dale, or by her deputy. Some of the waiters, mostly French, were in the restaurant for many years under Philippe, but there is a new manager now with a curled-up black moustache. If any of the habitués wish to entertain guests to an elaborate dinner at the Cavour, the custom is to pay five shillings instead of three-and-six, and certain extra dishes are put into the dinner of the day for this price. The ordinary dinner, however, is so good that these additions are hardly needed. This is the menu of a three-and-six dinner I ate at the Cavour this winter. It is served from five to nine, so as to meet the convenience of all the patrons of the restaurant, from the actor who makes a hurried meal before going to the theatre, to the City man who comes in very late after a day of hard work and goes home after his dinner: Hors d'œuvre variés. _Soup._ Consommé de Volaille à la Royal. Crème à l'Indienne. _Fish._ Boiled Turbot au Sauterne. Fried Fillet of Plaice. Grilled Herring. _Entrée._ Filet Mignon aux Haricots panachés. Calf's Head à la Reine. _Roast._ Chicken. Quails on Toast Salad. Cheese. Dessert. There was a fine selection of _hors d'œuvre_ to choose from, and plenty of each, not the one sardine looking lonely in a little dish, the two radishes and the potato salad that so often are the sole representatives of the first course at cheap dining-places. I was given a big plateful of good thick mulligatawny soup, and when I had eaten the very liberal helping of boiled turbot, excellently firm, I felt that I had finished quite a good dinner. However, I summoned up enough appetite to dispose of the little _vol au vent_ put before me, the pastry of which was noticeably excellent, and then attacked a quail, which was quite a good bird, even if it had not those layers of fat which distinguish a "special" quail on a club dinner list from the ordinary one. A scoop from an excellent Stilton cheese ended my repast. It may be selfish to hope that Mrs Dale may not sell her property to be converted into a theatre, but the Cavour dinner is such a good meal of its kind that I should be sorry if it disappeared from the map of London That Dines. LIII VERREY'S If I compare Verrey's in Regent Street to Borchardt's in the Französischerstrasse of Berlin, I am paying Verrey's a high compliment, for Borchardt's is the classic restaurant of the German capital, run on good French lines by a German proprietor. Mr George Krehl the First, founder of Verrey's as a restaurant, was born near Stuttgart, and came over from Germany in 1850; and the recent manager of the restaurant, Mr Stadelmaier, is also German born, for he, like Mr Krehl, came from near Stuttgart, and he, before he went to Egypt, to Paris, to Düsseldorf and elsewhere, to become a cosmopolitan, served his apprenticeship in gastronomy under old Mr George Krehl at Verrey's. But French--French of the second empire--Verrey's is, particularly at dinner-time. At lunch-time the restaurant is always quite full of ladies who shop in Regent Street, and of their escorts, and the rooms on the first floor are also given over to lunchers--and even then, sometimes, would-be customers have to wait a little while to obtain tables. Therefore the luncheon menu is adapted to the wants of ladies who are probably in a hurry, for though there is a very full list at lunch-time of delicacies that can be ordered, there are also several entrées and several joints always ready. It is, however, at dinner-time that Verrey's enjoys the peaceful, unhurrying atmosphere that always should surround a classic restaurant, and which is so thoroughly in keeping with the old bow-windows with small panes of the café, which look out on to Regent Street. A little corridor leads from the street to a tiny waiting-room--a comparatively recent addition, for it used to be the old still-room, a room which is so small that the round table of ormolu with a china plaque in its centre, on which is a portrait of Louis XV., and smaller oval plaques all about it, almost fills all the available space. The restaurant, lighted from above, used in old Mr Krehl's days to be known as the Cameo Room, for on the centre of each of its panels was a medallion in the style of Wedgwood. I rather wish that this old decoration had been retained, but I remember the pride with which Mr George Krehl the Second showed me the new Oriental decorations--decorations which still remain--the silvered roof with mirrors reflecting it, the electric lights on the cornice with great shells to act as reflectors, an electric clock shaped like a star, and the panels of old gold Oriental silk. Time has mellowed the gorgeousness of this Eastern setting, which in its first bloom I thought a little too _voyant_, and the dark carpet and the dark wood and upholstery of the chairs, all keep the scheme of colouring a restful one. The napery at Verrey's is the good thick napery of the classic restaurant. Its glass is thin; its silver is heavy--all trifles which are important as adding to the delight of a good dinner. The lights at the tables are wax candles, with pink shades, in old silver candlesticks, and there is a Japanese simplicity in the two great bunches of flowers in glass vases, one of which is on a dark wooden stand in the centre of the room, and the other on the sideboard. There are flowers also, in glasses, on all the tables. It adds to the pleasure of dining at Verrey's to be known and to be recognised by the old servants who have been in the restaurant as long as I can remember it. There is an old head waiter, a fine specimen of a Briton--portly, with little side whiskers, dignified and unhurrying, who might have stood as a model for that Robert whose wit and wisdom used to enliven the pages of _Punch_, who always remembers my name and all my gastronomic history. And the head waiter in the café, who now has a full head of grey hair, I remember when he first came to Verrey's a youth with the blackest of black hair. Mr Stadelmaier, though he looks on the right side of forty, remembers how young Mr George Krehl, in the days of his father's rule, one day took me out into the yard at the back of the house to show me his dogs and the kitchen which looks out on to this open space, and the last time I dined at Verrey's brought me in from the yard, to look at a delightful little Samoyede puppy, looking like one of the woolly toy dogs in the shops, for he too, like Mr George Krehl the younger, is a breeder of prize dogs, and has established a club for the owners of sleigh dogs. Mr Stadelmaier has now left Verrey's and is manager of Kettner's. The patrons of Verrey's at dinner-time are some of them grey-headed, for I am sure that all its old patrons always return to their first love; but there are young couples as well, and the restaurant, though it is quiet, is by no means dull. It has this distinction, rare amongst modern restaurants, that it has never surrendered to the modern craze for music during meals, and it is possible to talk to a neighbour at the dinner-table without raising one's voice to a shout. I fancy that Mr Albert Krehl, the survivor of the two sons of old Mr George Krehl, would as soon think of introducing gipsy music into the restaurant as they would of engaging Tango dancers to do "the Scissors" in and out of the tables. Verrey's has so far acknowledged the tendencies of to-day towards a _table d'hôte_ dinner that it offers its patrons, if they wish it, a dinner at seven-and-six. But it is true to its old traditions in that although it offers this dinner, no dish of the dinner is cooked until the order has been given, and it is practically a dinner _à la carte_ selected for the diner at a settled price. This is the menu of one of these dinners: Hors d'œuvre Variés. Consommé Duchesse. Crème de Volaille. Suprême de Sole Regina. Filet de Bœuf Jussieuse. Pommes Château. Faisan rôti. Salade d'Endive. Celeri braisé au jus. Parfait de Vanille. Friandises. Croûte Baron. But to eat a dinner ordered by somebody else, because I am too lazy to order it myself, is to me just as unsporting as it is to land a fish that somebody else has hooked, so that when I dine at Verrey's I pay M. Schellenberg, the _chef de cuisine_, who is an Alsatian, the compliment of giving careful consideration as to which of his _plats_ I shall order, and I generally like to include in my dinner some of Verrey's specialities, of which there are quite a number. The last time I dined there I was given an excellent _bortsch_ soup, one-and-three--it is the custom at Verrey's to charge for a half-portion, which is ample for one person, a little more than half what is charged for a whole portion, which suffices for two; _sole à la Verrey_, a filleted sole with an admirable sauce, which is one of the secrets of the house, but in which the taste of ketchup is discernible, two shillings; and a _soufflé Palmyre_, two shillings. This with a pint of good claret was a dinner not to be despised. I asked Mr Stadelmaier whether the Queen's Hall and the Palladium, two neighbouring places of music and entertainment, had brought the restaurant many customers. The concerts at the Queen's Hall, he told me, had done so, and he said that people going to the Palladium, when it gave a one-house variety entertainment, used often to dine at Verrey's, but that its present "two houses a night" policy did not send diners to the restaurant. There is an abundance of history behind Verrey's, and if a careful record had been kept of the great dinners given in the rooms on the first floor, such a record as the Café Anglais in Paris kept, it would make very interesting reading. One of the merriest dinners probably ever given in those upper rooms was the one at the time of the late Victorian revival of road coaching, at which most of the guests were well-known whips. Every man at this dinner was presented with a pink waistcoat, and as after dinner most of the men went on either to music halls or theatres, the appearance in the boxes of the young bloods wearing pink waistcoats astonished the audiences, who thought that a new fashion was being set. A quieter dinner, but an even more distinguished one, was that at which King Edward, when he was Prince of Wales, was present. This was its menu: Œufs à la Ravigote. (Vodkhi.) Bisque d'écrevisses. Consommé Okra. Rougets à la Muscovite. Selle de mouton de Galles. Haricots panachés. Tomates au gratin. Pommes soufflées. Timbale Lucullus. Fonds d'artichauts. Crème pistache. Grouse. Salad Rachel. Biscuit glacé à la Verrey. Soufflé de laitances. Dessert. Many distinguished men have dined in the Cameo Room--Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, was a great crony of Mr George Krehl the elder, and he kept all kinds of mementoes of the poet. Mr Gladstone was another frequenter of the Cameo Room, and he liked to talk to Mr Krehl of the revolutionary days of '48 in Germany. The tragedy which is associated with the name of the house was the fate of the beautiful Miss Fanny Verrey. Verrey, from whom the restaurant takes its name, was a Swiss confectioner, who came over from Lausanne in the second decade of the last century and established his shop in Regent Street. To add to the attractions of his establishment he brought over from Lausanne his pretty young daughter, who was engaged to a Swiss pastor. She was young and lively and beautiful; she chatted with her father's customers, and learnt English by talking with them; the bucks of those days made her a toast; and Lord Petersham wrote some verses in honour of "The Pretty Confectioner," in which he dubbed her "Wild Switzerland's Queen," and ended one of the verses with these lines: "Thy mind--brightest gem--is the Temple of Love; But bright as thou'rt fair--thou'rt pure as a dove"; which shows that his lordship, though his sentiments were praiseworthy, was not a great poet. The fame of Miss Verrey's beauty drew crowds not only into the shop, but outside it, and spiteful and jealous rivals spread rumours concerning Miss Verrey's lightness of behaviour, which were entirely untrue. The crowds outside the shop became such a nuisance that the authorities interfered in the matter. Mr Verrey removed his daughter from the shop, and she kept to her room to avoid public notice. The turmoil, the unmerited scandal, and the lampoons in the papers so affected the girl's health that she pined away and died. But even then her memory was not respected, and as a good example of the want of taste of the time--the year was 1828--this riddle was published in one of the papers: "Why was Miss Verrey's death like a window front?" _Answer:_ "Because it is a paneful case." At one period Verrey's was known as the Café François; but I can find no particulars concerning it under this title. I also think that Verrey must at some time or another have occupied another shop in Regent Street, for some of his advertisements, notably one of Howqua's teas, "as patronised by their Majesties," were issued from 218 Regent Street, whereas Verrey's to-day occupies 229 Regent Street. LIV THE CATHAY RESTAURANT [Illustration] In full view of all who pass to and fro through Piccadilly Circus, there shines on one of the tall houses which encircle it the announcement that the upper part of the building is occupied by the Cathay Restaurant, which modestly on its menu describes itself as a "pioneer, first-class, Chinese restaurant." As I take into my descriptive net every manner of eating-house, so long as the food and drink to be obtained there is good of its kind, I experimented in the first days of this year of grace, at lunch-time, on the Cathay Restaurant, and found that it has selected in its very long _carte du jour_ those Chinese dishes which are palatable to the European, as well as to the Chinese taste. Chinese food is no novelty to me, for during the five years that I was quartered in the Far East--at Penang, Singapore and Hong-Kong--I was frequently one of the guests at feasts given by Chinese merchants, and learned by experience which were the dishes that one could safely eat and which were the Chinese delicacies that it was wise to drop under the table. A Chinaman, when he wishes to be very polite at table, takes up with his chop-sticks some especially dainty morsel from his own plate and pops it into the mouth of his European neighbour at table. A kindly young Chinaman once thus put into my mouth a slip of cold pig's liver wrapped round a prune, and I do not think that I ever tasted any nastier combination. Two Chinese banquets at which I was a guest remain very clearly marked in my memory. One was given by a rich Chinaman at Penang, on the occasion of the marriage of his son, to all the European officials and the officers of the garrison and the leading British merchants. It was a feast at which the dishes were alternately Chinese and European ones, and by each man's and by each lady's dish, for the ladies were also invited, were chop-sticks, and knives and forks and spoons. One Chinese dish I remember at this feast as being quite excellent--a salad of vegetables and of small fish of all kinds. All the guests ate quite heartily both of the European dishes and the Chinese dishes, but that night nearly all the Europeans who had been to the banquet believed that they had suddenly been stricken with Asiatic cholera. I was one of the happy exceptions, and I suppose that I must have skipped whatever was the dish that worked such havoc amongst my fellow-guests. Messengers from half the bungalows in the leafy lanes of Penang were sent off post-haste to the civil surgeon, begging him to come at once to the bedside of unhappy sufferers, and each messenger as he arrived at the civil surgeon's house received the news that the doctor believed himself to be in the throes of the same dread Asiatic disease, and did not think that he would survive the dawn. Nobody, however, did die, and two or three days later all the aristocracy of Penang, looking even paler than Europeans always are in that land of lily-white complexions, and very shaky about the knees, gathered together at a cricket match and discussed the matter. Somebody had already gone to the Chinese merchant and had told him of the havoc that his banquet had made. He was profoundly grieved, pointed out that none of his Chinese guests had suffered the slightest inconvenience, and laid the blame on the European dishes, which he had procured as a compliment to his white guests, saying that he "always mistrusted the cookery of the barbarians." The other unforgettable feast was given by the head Shroff, the native cashier, of one of the banks in Hong-Kong. I had been talking at the house of one of the bankers as to my experiences of Chinese dishes, and had rather decried the cookery of the Flowery Land. I had (I was afterwards told) been especially sarcastic as to the Chinaman's partiality for puppy-dog, and more or less ranked all Chinese dishes with the detestable rat soup which a Chinaman sold in the early mornings just outside the barrack gates to the coolies on their way to their work. The orderly officer going to inspect rations always had to pass the unsavoury cauldron from which the soup was ladled out, and, in the hot weather, the only thing to do was to put a handkerchief to one's nose and run past it. Some little time after these conversational flourishes of mine the banker asked me if I would like to eat a real, well-cooked Chinese dinner, for the head Shroff of his bank had asked him to honour him with his company at his villa in Kowlun--which is where the "Mr Wu's" come from--and had told him that he would be delighted if he would bring some of his European friends. The dinner, which consisted chiefly of fish, was an excellent one, the all-pervading taste of soy not being too persistent, and I was especially delighted with a white stew of what my host said was Cantonese rabbit, which I thought quite the most tender and the fattest rabbit I had ever tasted. When the dinner was over, the banker told me that the "Cantonese rabbit" to which I had given such unlimited praise was really a Cantonese edible puppy, fattened on milk and rice. After that incident I found that whenever I dined out in Hong-Kong, conversation always seemed to turn on to Cantonese puppies, and I was gently chaffed for at least six months as to my sudden conversion to the delights of baby chow as a _pièce de résistance_. I found, however, neither puppy-dog nor rat on the _carte du jour_ of the Cathay Restaurant. The restaurant is on the first floor above a bank. A commissionaire stands at the outer portals, and there is a lift for the benefit of anyone who is too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs. The restaurant itself is hardly sufficiently Oriental in appearance to be a Cockney's beau ideal of a Chinese restaurant. It is just what a progressive restaurant for Chinamen in Peking would be, for though the food is Chinese food, cooked by a Chinese cook, the appearance of the restaurant is almost European, an exaggerated copy of a French restaurant, with here and there Chinese touches which redeem the place from tawdriness. There is on the wall a paper with a pattern of gold fleurs-de-lis, the carpet is crimson, the chairs and tables are of European make, the waiters are of European nationalities and wear dress clothes. But a strip of good Chinese embroidery is hung along that side of the restaurant where the serving-room is behind a glassed screen; there are porcelain vases on the two mantelshelves; a great Chinese ornament of carved wood, gold and crimson and black, hangs by a ribbon just inside one of the windows; the big curtains to the windows are of old gold Chinese silk, and the little curtains, also of Oriental silk, are lilac in tint. The manager of the restaurant is a Chinaman with short-cut hair, and he wears the same neat, dark garments that all European managers assume. I sat down at one of the tables, asked the young Italian who came to wait on me to show me a _carte du jour_ and the menu of the set lunch, if there was one, and then looked round at the people who were taking their meal there. The Chinese in London certainly patronise their own restaurant, for quite half the people who were eating luncheon were Celestials. There were two young Chinese boys in the charge of a grey-haired English lady. There were several young Chinamen whom I mentally put down as students. An older Chinese gentleman had brought his wife out to lunch; and before I left, a party of Chinese gentlemen came in, whom, from the respect shown to them by the manager, I judged to be secretaries of the Chinese Embassy--the Chinese Ambassador, whom I know by sight, was not amongst them. Nowadays when Chinese gentlemen and ladies wear European clothes, and the men have their hair short, one has to look at their faces to detect the difference between them and Europeans. There were some Londoners lunching in the restaurant. A party of ladies in furs were enjoying the novelty of the Chinese dishes; two youngsters, whom I took to be medical students, were ordering various dishes from the _carte du jour_, and were cross-examining the waiter keenly as to the cooking arrangements and how the delicacies were imported from China; and two schoolgirls, one of the flapper age and one younger, came into the restaurant giggling and looking round as though they expected a pantomime Chinaman to spring up before them or to jump round a corner. The menu of the day at the Cathay is on a large folding mauve card, and the dishes are both in Chinese characters and in English letters with an explanation in English below each name. The first division is for chop sueys and noodles. A chop suey is to the Chinese what Irish stew is to the English and a _ragoût_ is to the French. Pork is its foundation, and chicken livers and chicken gizzards, celery, mushrooms, peas, onion, garlic, peppers, oil and salt all go into it. Noodle is any paste dish, and macaroni or vermicelli would be described on a Chinese menu as a noodle. Of the dishes on the card, Loo min is noodle in Pekinese style. Lat chew chop suey is chop suey with green chutney. Chop suey min is chop suey with noodle, and so on. There is a little list of dishes which are ready, and a longer list of dishes which will take some minutes to prepare, such as fried crab and Chinese omelet; fried rice, with meat, mushroom, egg and vegetables; sliced jelly-fish with pickle; and soyed pork. Some especial dishes are on the menu for which a day's notice must be given, one of these being birds'-nests with minced chicken and another shark's fin with sliced chicken, ham, bamboo shoots, etc. At the end of the list comes the catalogue of teas, pastries and sweets, pickled onions being included in this category. After looking down the _carte du jour_, I turned my attention to the set luncheon, and first of all took up the card on which it was written in Chinese. In case you may be able to read Chinese fluently I reproduce this card on the next page. The first word on this only means menu. The first dish is a soup of chicken, ham, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. The second dish is fried chicken liver and vegetables, and the last dish is simply roast pork. I opted for this half-crown meal, and as a preliminary, the waiter put a tiny cup of soy and a Chinese porcelain spoon by the side of the European knives and forks and spoons which were already on the table. A wine list was offered me, but I preferred, as I was going to eat Chinese meats, to drink Chinese tea with them, and ordered a cup of Loong Cheng. The plates used at the Chinese restaurant are, like the cutlery, of European pattern, but the dishes in which the soups and the meats are brought to table are Chinese ones of all kinds of shapes and ornamented with Chinese paintings. My soup, with tiny strips of bamboo in it and morsels of chicken flesh, tasted very much like the chicken broth that one is given when one is ill and on a low diet. The fried chicken and vegetables were quite good eating, and the taste of the bamboo shoots in it was particularly pleasant to the palate. The roast pork I shied at, and asked instead to be given a plate of chow chow, an admirable sweet which I have known ever since boyhood, for one of my uncles, who was Consul at Foo Chow, used to send home to all his small nephews presents of this delicacy. The tea was excellent, and doing as the Chinese do, I did not spoil its taste by adding either sugar or milk to it. [Illustration] Altogether my luncheon at the Chinese Restaurant was quite a pleasant experiment, and I can advise any gourmets who would like to test the cookery of the Far East in comfortable surroundings to follow my lead. LV THE WHITE HORSE CELLARS A little glass canopy with a clock above it juts out into Piccadilly, and a tall commissionaire stands at an entrance where some stairs dive down, apparently into the bowels of the earth. Where the stairs make their first plunge there is above them on the wall the device of a white horse--a fine prancing animal, somewhat resembling the White Horse of Kent. The stairs, with oak panelling on either side of them, give a twist before they reach the bottom, where is the modern restaurant that occupies the site of what were originally known as the New White Horse Cellars, but which are now called the Old White Horse Cellars, probably on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle, for they have been modernised out of all recognition since the days when Charles Dickens recorded the departure of Mr Pickwick from these Cellars on his coach journey down to Bath. The Old White Horse Cellars were originally on the Green Park side of Piccadilly, and their number was 156, as some way-bills to be seen at the present White Horse Cellars testify. This ground is now occupied by the Ritz Hotel. Strype mentions the original cellar as being in existence in 1720. On the staircase walls of the New White Horse Cellars is a little collection of prints and way-bills, caricatures, etchings, old bills of Hatchett's Hotel, posters and advertisements from _The Times_ and other papers of the hours at which the coaches for the west started. In this curious little gallery of odds and ends are some documents relating to the old cellar on the other side of the road. But the White Horse Cellars were under Hatchett's in the great coaching days, from the year of the battle of Waterloo to 1840. It was from Hatchett's that Jerry, in Pierce Egan's book, took his departure when going back to Hawthorn Hall, and said farewell to Tom and Logic, and it was in the travellers' room of the White Horse Cellars, a title that was used alternatively with "Hatchett's," that Mr Pickwick and his friends sheltered from the rain, waiting for the Bath coach. Hatchett's in Dickens's time was not the comfortable house that I knew in the eighties, when the revival of stage-coaching was at its height. Indeed, there could not be a picture of greater discomfort than Dickens sketched in a few words when he wrote: "The travellers' room at 'The White Horse Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable; it would be no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen fireplace appears to have walked, accompanied by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is divided into boxes for the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in a small kennel for washing glasses, in a corner of the apartment." Dickens's word picture of the scene at the start of the coach at half-past seven on a damp, muggy and drizzly day is a fine pen-and-ink sketch, and Cruikshank, in one of his caricatures, "The Piccadilly Nuisance," shows very much the scene as Dickens described it, with the orange-women and the sellers of all kinds of useless trifles on the kerb; the coaches jostling each other, passengers falling off from them, and the pavement an absolute hustle of humanity. Cruikshank's various drawings and caricatures preserve the appearance of Hatchett's of the old days in the memory better than any word pictures could do. The bow-windows of the old hotel with many panes of glass in them; the stiff pillared portico, with on it the name "Hatchett's," and a little lamp before it, and above it the board with the inscription, "The New White Horse Cellar. Coaches and waggons to all parts of the kingdom." Above this board again was a painting of an old white horse. I fancy that the title of the Cellars, when they were on the other side of the way, must have been taken from some celebrated old horse--though Williams, who was the first landlord of the original cellars, is said to have given them their name as a compliment to the House of Hanover, and that it was the white horse, not the cellar, that was old. There are various other legends with respect to the horse that gave Hatchett's its title, one of them being that Abraham Hatchett, a proprietor of the tavern, had an old white horse with a turn of speed which had won him many a wager against more showy animals. The entrance to the Cellars below Hatchett's, in the old days, was down some very steep stairs just in front of one of the bow-windows, and an oval notice, hanging from a little arch of iron, directed people down into the depths to the booking-office. My reminiscences of Hatchett's are of the later revivals of road coaches; the days of old "Jim" Selby, the famous coachman who, though everybody called him "old," died a comparatively young man. His grey hair and his jolly, fat, rosy face gave him an appearance of being older than he really was. Those were the days when the late Lord Londesborough and Captain Hargreaves, Mr Walter Shoolbred, Captain Beckett, Baron Oppenheim and Mr Edwin Fownes were well-known whips, and when "Hughie" Drummond, and the host of other good fellows and lively customers in whose veins the red blood flowed in a lively current, who drank old port and despised early hours, were the men about town. "Hughie" Drummond taking old "Jim" Selby out to dinner after the arrival of the "Old Times" from Brighton and changing hats with him, which generally took place early in the evening, is one of my remembrances of Hatchett's. And many a time have I split a pint with "Dickie-the-Driver," the oldest in standing amongst my friends, then not the least lively of the young fellows, before climbing up on to the coach at Hatchett's to go down to the Derby. For many years eight of us, always the same men, went down by coach from Hatchett's on Derby Day, always with "Dickie" driving out of London and the last stage on to the downs, and our gallop down and up the hill on the course was a really breakneck performance. It was from Hatchett's that "Jim" Selby started on his celebrated drive with the Brighton coach, "Old Times," to Brighton and back, for a wager of a thousand pounds to five hundred against his accomplishing the journey in eight hours. On the coach were: Selby himself, driving; Captain Beckett, whom we all called "Partner"; Mr Carleton Blyth, who still sends yearly from Bude his greeting of "Cheero" to his old friends; Mr "Swish" Broadwood, Mr "Bob" Cosier, Mr A. F. M'Adam, and the guard. Harrington Bird's picture of the coach during the galloping stage, with the horses going at racing pace, gives an idea of how Selby drove on that day when he had a clear road. The coach reached the "Old Sip" at Brighton, having done the first half of the journey in just under four hours; stayed there only long enough to turn the coach round and to read a telegram from the old Duke of Beaufort, who was most keenly interested in the revival of coaching, and who was a very good man himself on the box seat--and then started again for London, reaching the White Horse Cellars ten minutes under the stipulated time and forty minutes within the record. I was one of the men amongst the crowd that gathered to see the return of the coach and to cheer old "Jim" Selby, who brought his last team in no more distressed than they would have been doing their journey under ordinary circumstances. How highly respected Selby was by all coaching men was shown by the long string of stage-coaches, every coach on the road having suspended its usual journey, which followed his body to the grave. In those days the bill of fare at Hatchett's was roast beef or boiled mutton and trimmings; duck and green peas, or fowl and bath-chap. There was an inner sanctuary then called "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was the bar parlour, into which only the most favoured patrons of the house were admitted, and Miss Wills, the manageress, used to keep any unruly spirits very much in order. When Hatchett's was rebuilt and changed its name it changed hands very frequently, though the White Horse Cellars always remained a restaurant. The Cercle de Luxe, a dining club, at one time occupied the upper floors of the building, and then it became the Avondale Hotel, with M. Garin as manager and M. Dutruz as chef. Since then the rooms have been put to many uses, and are now, I see, once again in the market. It is the memory of what Hatchett's and the White Horse Cellars have been in their old days--memories that haunt me like the sound of a horn afar off on one of the great roads--that makes me disinclined nowadays to eat a French dinner in what was a home of good English fare; and whenever I lunch or dine in the White Horse Cellars to-day I always, for the sake of old times, order a plate of soup, a mixed grill and a scoop from the cheese. The three-and-sixpenny dinner of to-day is, I have no doubt, a good one, and Mr Stump, the present manager, is most courteous and anxious to oblige. I look at the menu when I am in the restaurant, but for the old sake's sake I keep as close to the meals of old days as the resources of the establishment allow me to do. The White Horse Cellars of to-day is a modern, up-to-date restaurant, below the level of the ground, though the ventilation is so excellent and the lighting arrangements so good that one never has the sensation of being in a cellar. Half-way down the staircase, just where the little picture gallery commences, a door leads into a buffet. One's great-coat and hat are taken at the bottom of the stairs, and then one enters quite a lofty room with a groined roof, and with cosy nooks and various extensions of the bigger room, which, I fancy, have been thrown out under the side-walk above. The walls of the restaurant are of cream colour; the ornamentation is in the style of Adams, and there is deep rose colour in the arches of the roof. Many mirrors reflect the vistas and give the rooms the appearance of being more extensive than they really are: a string band is perched up in a little gallery; there are palms here and there, and a bronze galloping horse in a recess does something to recall the old horsy days of Hatchett's. There are many little tables, each with its pink-shaded lamp, in this restaurant, and it has a chic clientele, the "Nuts" of to-day appearing to patronise it just as much as the bucks and the bloods, the swells, and the "whips" of the last two generations used to. I see pretty actresses sometimes dining at Hatchett's, and it is a very cheerful restaurant in which to take a meal. It is, I believe, always crowded at supper-time, and the Glorias, the two excellent dancers who appear earlier in the evening on the Empire stage, dance the Tango, at midnight, in and out of the little tables. But to me the charm of the White Horse Cellars is that I can live again in memory, when lunching or dining there, those joyous days of youth and fresh air, when a jolly coach-load used to start from before its door for a day of delight in sitting behind good horses driven by a good whip, listening to the music of the shod hooves and the guard's horn, receiving a greeting from everyone along the road, and feeling that no king on a throne is happier than a man riding behind a picked team on a good coach. Motor cars have their uses and their pleasures, but they seem to have killed the fuller-blooded joys that came with coaching. LVI THE MONICO The Monico, in Piccadilly Circus, which is both café and restaurant, is an establishment which has been brought to its present prosperity by Swiss industry and Swiss thrift. The original M. Monico, the father of the present proprietors of the restaurant, came from the same village in the Val Blegno, in the Italian provinces of Switzerland, as did the Gattis. M. Monico was with that Gatti, the great-uncle of the present Messrs Gatti, who sold _gaufres_ and penny ices in Villiers Street, and who when Hungerford Market was swept away and Charing Cross Station built established the Gatti's restaurant under the arches. About fifty years ago, just at the time that MM. A. and S. Gatti were establishing themselves in the Adelaide Gallery, young M. Monico, who died only three years ago, was also making an independent start on the road to fortune. Looking about for a site on which to build a café he had found, off Tichborne Street, a large yard where coaches and waggons stood, and round which was stabling for horses. This yard he leased, and built on its site the Grand Café with the present International Hall above it. M. Monico had intended to put up a tall building, but the neighbours objected to this; he was obliged to alter his plans, and in consequence, whereas the café is a very high room, the International Hall above it is rather squat in its proportions. Those were the days in which billiards was a game much in favour, and in the International Hall above the café M. Monico established a number of billiard-tables. When the craze for billiards died away the long upper room, with its arched ceiling, became a banqueting hall. Fifty years ago the licensing magistrates looked with just as much suspicion on any new enterprises in restaurants as they do at the present day, and the Monico could not at first obtain a licence to sell wines and spirits. This, however, was later on granted to M. Monico. I fancy that there must have been a good deal of the Italian combative spirit in old M. Monico, for he seems to have been at loggerheads with more than one of his neighbours. To-day, when you have gone in under the glass canopy with two gables which protects the Piccadilly Circus entrance, when you have passed the little stall for the sale of foreign newspapers and have come into the café which acts as an ante-room to the great gilded saloon, you will notice that part of this café has a solid ceiling and that the other half is glazed over. The glazed-over portion was, in old M. Monico's time, an open space, and into this open space a neighbour, a perfumer, had the right to bring carts and horses in the course of his business. This right the perfumer exercised on occasion, to the great annoyance of M. Monico, and the present Messrs Monico recall with a smile how the perfumer would often bring in a great van with two horses to deliver a couple of small packages that any messenger boy could have carried. The clearing away of a block of houses when Piccadilly Circus was given its present proportions gave the Monico its entrance on to that centre, and when Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the network of small streets in Soho, M. Monico and his sons obtained a second frontage for their restaurant and built the block which contains the grill-room, the buffet and banqueting-rooms, now topped by the new masonic temple, the latest addition to the Monico. The Monico of to-day is one of those great bee-hives of dining-rooms that cater for every class of diner. It has its little café and its big _à la carte_ dining-saloon, its grill-room, its banqueting-rooms and its German beer cellar down in the basement. It has two marble staircases, one leading down to Piccadilly Circus and one to Shaftesbury Avenue, and its big saloon, the original café, is as gorgeous a hall as gilding can make it. Its walls are of gold and mirrors and raised ornamentation, with the windows high up, and with a golden balcony for the musicians. It has a gilded ceiling and its pilasters are also golden. An orchestra plays in this room, whereas in the grill-room those who like their meals without orchestral accompaniment can eat them in peace. Up and down the great gilded room walk four _maîtres d'hôtel_ in frock-coats and black ties, and a battalion of waiters are busy running from tables to kitchen. The bill of fare in the gilded chamber is a most comprehensive one, and any man of any nationality can find some of the dishes of his country on it. It is a beer restaurant as well as a wine restaurant, and the simplest possible meal, very well cooked, can be eaten there as well as elaborate feasts. The grill-room is less gorgeous in its decorations, though its buff marble pillars and walls are handsome enough. It is in this room that the _table d'hôte_ dinners at half-a-crown and three-and-six are served, and it is here that many men of business feed, and feed excellently well. Not many days ago I lunched in the grill-room, my host being a gourmet who knew all the resources of the establishment, and I enjoyed the _sole Monico_, a sole with an excellent white sauce; a woodcock _flambé_ and a salad of tender lettuce which, like the beautiful peaches with which we finished our repast, must have been grown in some Southern, sunshiny clime. I also enjoyed the cheese _fondue_, made, I think, from the _recette_ that Brillat Savarin set down in his "Physiologie du Goût." The Monico has gained special celebrity for its banquets, and the requests for dates for such feasts made to the Messrs Monico have been so overwhelming that they have turned the Renaissance Saloon, which used to be devoted to a _table d'hôte_ dinner, into a banqueting-room, and have redecorated it for its new uses. It remains in my memory that men who were present at the banquet given to Lord Milner in the International Hall of the Monico before he left England to take up his duties as Pro-Consul in South Africa, and who talked to me afterwards of the feast, told me that it was the best public dinner, best served and best cooked, that they had ever eaten, and last year, when I dined at the Poincaré dinner of the Ligue des Gourmands, which was held in the Renaissance Room (the occasion on which M. Escoffier's "creation" of the _poulet Poincaré_ was first disclosed to a discriminating gathering), I thought then that M. Sieffert's (the _chef_) handiwork was worthy of all the praise lavished on it, and that M. G. Ramoni, the manager, had arranged most admirably all the details of the banquet. The Renaissance Room now quite justifies its title, for its decoration of peacock blue panels and frames of gilded briar, with strange birds perched on the sprays, somewhat suggests Burne-Jones and the colouring of his school. As a specimen of a Monico banquet I cannot do better than give you one eaten by that famous Kentish cricketing club, the Band of Brothers, the menu of whose dinner bears their badge in dark and light blue, and has also a bow of their ribbon: Huîtres de Whitstable Fantaisie Epicurienne. Tortue verte en Tasse. Turbotin poché, Sauce Mousseline. Julienne de Sole Parisienne. Mousse de Volaille Régence. Côtelettes d'Agneau Rothschild. Pommes Anna. Punch Romaine. Bécassine sur Canapé. Salade de Laitue. Escalope de Homard Pompadour. Pêche Flambé au Kirsch. Paillettes au Parmesan. Fruits. Corbeille de Friandises Café. VINS. Amontillado. Marcobrunner, 1904. Bollinger and Co., 1904. Lanson, 1906. Martinez Port, 1896. Grand Fine Champagne, 1875. Many of the banquets given at the Monico are masonic ones, and the new temple at the top of the house on the Shaftesbury Avenue side is a very splendid shrine, with walls of marble and a dome round which the signs of the zodiac circle, and with doors and furniture of great beauty. LVII THE ITALIAN INVASION The plains of Lombardy, the pleasant mountain land of Emilia and the champaign that surrounds Turin, are studded with comfortable villas, the property of successful Italian restaurateurs who have made a comfortable little fortune in London and who go to their own much-loved country to spend the autumn of their days. Every young North Italian waiter who comes to England believes that in the folds of his napkin he holds one of these pleasant villas, just as every French conscript in Napoleonic days thought that he, amongst all his fellows, alone felt the extra weight of the field-marshal's baton in his knapsack. No race in the world is more thrifty and more industrious than are these North Italians, and they rival the Swiss in their aptitude for making considerable sums of money by charging very small prices. Spain and Great Britain are usually classed together as the two countries in which the natives know least of economy in housekeeping and cookery, and the Italians, spying the wastefulness of the land, have descended on England as a friendly invading force, whereas the Swiss have taken Spain in hand. There is no Spanish town in which there is not a café Suizio, and there are very few English towns in which an Italian name is not found over a restaurant, which is often a pastry-cook's shop as well. I have in preceding chapters written of some of the restaurants owned by Italians in London, but were I to deal at length with all the well-managed restaurants, large and small, controlled by Italians in London, I should have to extend the size of my book to very swollen proportions, so I propose to mention briefly those Italian restaurants at which at one time or another I have lunched or dined with satisfaction. One of the largest Italian restaurants is the Florence, in Rupert Street, which the late M. Azario, a gentleman of much importance in the London Italian colony, made one of the most successful moderate-priced restaurants in London. He was decorated with an Italian order, and when he died, not long ago, he was much mourned by his countrymen. Madame Azario (who is now Madame Mainardi and who has appointed her husband, whom I remember at the Savoy, to the supreme command of the establishment), to whom he left the restaurant, has made some changes in it, bringing it up to date. It now has a lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, and it has fallen a victim to the prevailing craze for Tango dancing at supper-time. Its three-shilling dinner is a most satisfying one at the price. The Florence is not too whole-heartedly Italian to please diners of other nationalities, but when an Italian gives a lunch or a dinner to his fellow-countrymen or to those who love the cookery of Italy, it can be as patriotic in the matter of dishes as any restaurant in Italy. This is the menu of a lunch given to one of the most Italian of Englishmen. It is a capital example of an Italian meal, and there is a little joke tucked away in it, for the "Neapolitan Vanilla" is another way of writing garlic: Antipasto Assortito. Ravioli alla Fiorentina. Trotta à l'Italiana. Scalloppine di Vitello alla Milanese. Asparagi alla Sant'Ambrogio. Pollo alla Spiedo. Insalata Rosa alla Vaniglia di Napoli. Zabaglione al Marsala. Formaggio. Frutta. * * * * * Chianti. Barolo vecchio. Asti naturale. Caffe. Liquori. One of the first established and one of the best of the Italian restaurants is Previtali's, in Arundel Street, that little thoroughfare that runs up into a cul-de-sac square, off Coventry Street. It was said a while ago that this little square and its approach were to be eaten up by a new great variety theatre, but I see that the ground is now advertised as being for sale. Below the great board which announces this is a smaller one, which tells that Previtali's is to remain where it is till September 1915, when it will find other quarters. Its _table d'hôte_ luncheon costs half-a-crown, and its _table d'hôte_ dinners are priced at three-and-six and five shillings, the latter giving such a choice of food that not even a starving man would ask for more when he had gone through the menu. Previtali's has an excellent cellar of Italian wines. Many of the restaurants owned by Italians in London have a clientele that suits the size of the house, and they do not cry aloud by bold advertisements for fresh guests. Such a quiet, unassuming restaurant is the Quadrant, in Regent Street, the windows of which keep their eyes half closed by pink blinds which shut off the view of the interior from passers-by. Messrs Formaggia and Galiardi cater there for very faithful customers, and I always look with interest as I pass at the menu of the half-crown dinner which is written in a bold hand and shown in a small frame by the window. It is always a well-chosen meal, and on the occasions that I have eaten at the Quadrant, I have been well satisfied with its fare. It was at the Quadrant that a gourmet with a taste for strange foods gave me a lunch of land-crabs which had been imported with much difficulty from either Barbadoes or the West Indies, and which Mr Formaggia's chef had cooked strictly in accordance with the recipe that came with them. They had, I remember, rather a bitter taste, but perhaps land-crabs, like snails, are not to everybody's taste. In Soho, the Italian restaurants jostle the French restaurants in every street. Perhaps the best known of the Soho restaurants owned by Italians is the Ristorante d'Italia, whereof Signor Baglioni is the proprietor, which thrusts out an illuminated arum amidst the electric globes and glittering signs of Old Compton Street. My memories of the half-crown _table d'hôte_ dinner there is of food excellently cooked under the superintendence of an erstwhile _chef de cuisine_ of the Prince of Monaco, of the noise of much talking in vehement Italian, of rather close quarters at little tables laid for four, and of a menu of rather portentous provender. The most Italian of any restaurant that I have discovered in my explorations in Soho is the Treviglio in Church Street, a little restaurant that might have been lifted bodily from a canal-side in Venice or a small street in Florence. It is whole-heartedly Italian, and puts to the forefront of its window a list of the specialities of Italian cookery on which it prides itself. It is a favoured haunt of the Italian journalists in London, and that, I think, can be taken as a certificate that its cookery is not only thoroughly Italian but is also good Italian. Signori Pozzi and Valdoni are its proprietors. Pinoli's is a restaurant in Lower Wardour Street that offers almost as much at its two-shilling _table d'hôte_ dinner as some other restaurants do at twice or more that price. A quiet, flourishing restaurant owned by an Italian, Signor Antonio Audagna, who began life as a waiter at Romano's, is the Comedy Restaurant, in Panton Street, Haymarket. It is a comfortable restaurant, with cream walls and oval mirrors and pink-shaded lamps, and its back rooms are on a higher level than those of its Panton Street front. Its customers are very faithful to it, and, as its proprietor once told me, "when the fathers die the sons take their places as customers." There was some time ago a proposal to extend it so as to give it a front to the Haymarket, but that plan came to naught, and the Comedy goes on just as before in its old premises. This is a menu of the Comedy _table d'hôte_ dinner, and its proprietor apparently took a hint from Philippe of the Cavour for the menu bears the legend, "No beer served with this dinner": Hors d'œuvre Variés. Queue de Bœuf Printanière Crème Chasseur. Sole à la Bourguignonne. Noisette de Pré-Salé Volnay. Spaghetti al Sugo. Poulet en Casserole. Salade. Glacé Comedy. Dessert. Another quiet restaurant with a faithful clientele is Signor Pratti's, the Ship, in Whitehall. His _table d'hôte_ dinners are half-a-crown and three-and-six, and his eighteenpenny lunch, I fancy, brings to the restaurant many of the hard-worked gentlemen from Cox's Bank, just across the way, and from the Admiralty, which is suitably just behind the Ship. Signor Pratti, if I remember rightly, fines teetotalers by charging them sixpence extra. From Hampstead to Surbiton, from Richmond to Epping, the little Italian restaurants flourish. One gourmet whom I know, with a delicate taste in Italian wines, makes pilgrimages regularly to Reggiori's, opposite King's Cross Station, because he gets there a particular wine which this restaurateur imports; while I take an almost paternal interest in Canuto's Restaurant in Baker Street. The rise of that restaurant from a very humble place, that put out two boards with great sheets of paper on them, giving the dishes ready and the dinner of the day, to a rather haughty little restaurant with a very beautiful window and the _carte du jour_ and the menus of _table d'hôte_ dinners behind the glass in frames of restrained gorgeousness, typifies the gradual advance in social splendour of the long street that leads to Regent's Park. LVIII THE HYDE PARK HOTEL Newly engaged couples are rather kittle cattle to entertain at any meal. There was once a pretty young widow who was about to marry a charming young man, and I asked the pair to lunch with me one day at the Savoy and was very particular to secure a table in the balcony, for I thought that the view over the Gardens and up the Thames to the House of Lords and Westminster Abbey would harmonise very well with love's young dream. And it did harmonise only too well with it, for the pretty widow sat with her face in her two hands gazing up the river with far-away eyes while the grilled lamb cutlets grew cold and the _bomb praliné_ grew warm, and the charming young man, sat opposite to her with hands tightly clasped, gazing into her face and thinking poetry hard the while. Conversation there was none on that occasion. I do not believe that the couple knew in the least whether they were eating sole or cream cheese, and I still have such remnants of good manners that were instilled into me in the days of the nursery that I felt that I was doing an impolite thing to eat heartily while my guests were neglecting their food. I often subsequently wondered whether in the days when I fell desperately in love at least once in every six months, I behaved in public as much like a patient suffering from softening of the brain as did that nice young man on the day he lunched with me at the Savoy. One of my nephews, a young soldier doctor, is going to do a very sensible thing in marrying an exceedingly nice girl early in his career, and as he is on leave in London it seemed to me that it would be a pleasant thing to ask him and the young lady to lunch or dine with me. Though I did not for a moment believe that the presence of his intended would cause him to neglect his food, I was not prepared, after my previous experience, to put the young lady to the tremendous trial of the view of the Thames from the Savoy balcony, and I decided that dinner, not lunch, should be the meal. As I was curious to see whether a little dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel was as well cooked as the great banquets are in that flourishing establishment, I asked them to dine there with me one Sunday evening, and gave Mr Kerpen, the manager of the hotel, warning of our coming, asking him to suggest to M. Müller, the _chef de cuisine_, that I should like one or two specialities of his kitchen included in a very short menu. If lunch had been the meal to which I invited the young couple the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room would have been a spot as inducive to day dreams as are the balconies at the Savoy and the Cecil, for the view the Hyde Park Hotel commands over the Park is one of the most beautiful and most varied in London. A strip of garden lies between the Hotel and the Ladies' Mile, and beyond that is the branch of Rotten Row that runs up past the Knightsbridge Barracks. Beyond that again are green lawns and clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, and the grassy rise up to the banks of the Serpentine, the glitter of the water of which and the big trees about it closing in the landscape. The carriages go rumbling past; there are generally some riders in the Row and there is always movement on the footpath, and it seems to be one of the duties of the regiment of Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge to supply as a figure in the immediate foreground either a young orderly officer in his blue frock-coat setting out or returning from his rounds on a big black charger, or a rough-riding corporal in scarlet jacket teaching a young horse manners. The view up the river to Westminster may have a dreamy beauty on a sunshiny day, the vista of the long walk in the Green Park, down which the windows of the Ritz dining-room look, may have more sylvan beauty, but the outlook of the Hyde Park Hotel has more colour and more variety than those of the other big hotels I have mentioned. The Hyde Park Hotel was one of Jabez Balfour's speculations, and for a time it was a great pile of flats before it became technically an hotel. It had a fire, and I fancy that it was after the fire that M. Ritz was consulted as to its redecoration--for he had a great talent and indisputable taste in suggesting the ornamentation of large rooms--and that the Hyde Park Hotel became the exceedingly comfortable, quiet, luxurious house it is to-day. In the big hall, with its dark-coloured marbles and handsome fireplace, I found the young couple waiting for me. They were before their time and were in holiday spirits, which reassured me, for no laughing girl is likely to slip suddenly into day dreams. After I had given my hat and coat to the dark-complexioned servitor in blue and gold Oriental dress, who looks like a very good-natured Othello, we waited for a while in the big cream and green drawing-room--a room so fresh in colour that it does not suggest an environment of London atmosphere, though it looks out on to Knightsbridge. At the quarter past eight we went into the big dining-room, and M. Binder, the _maître d'hôtel_, showed us to the table in a corner by a window which had been set for us. The Hyde Park Hotel dining-room is an exceedingly handsome hall of mahogany, with panels of gold and deep crimson brocade; its pillars are of deep red wood with gilt Corinthian capitals; a band plays in a gallery above the crystal service doors and the colours of the panels are echoed in carpet and curtains and upholstery. In its comfortable colouring the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room reminds me very much of what the Savoy dining-room used to be before its beautiful mahogany panelling was taken down and the colour of the walls and ceiling changed to cream. I soon found that I was not either to be silent or to have the conversation all to myself, for the young people laughed and chatted away, and I found myself comparing descriptions of the Curragh as it was in the seventies, when we used to lie in bed in the huts and watch the marking at the butts through the cracks in the walls, with the Curragh of to-day when the last of the Crimean wooden huts are about to disappear. The reading of the menu, however, was gone through with due solemnity, and the young lady knew that an important moment in her life was about to approach, for she was going to taste caviare for the first time. This was the menu of our dinner: Caviar Blinis. Crème d'Asperges. Sole à la H.P.H. Selle d'Agneau de lait poëlée. Haricots verts aux fines herbes. Bécassines Chasseur. Salade. Pêches Petit Duc. Comtesse Marie. Friandises. Dessert. The young soldier doctor watched his bride-that-is-to-be eat her first mouthful of caviare and little angle of the Russian pancake with interest and some curiosity. If she did not like the delicacy there would be no caviare for him in the days of their honeymoon, while if she took a violent fancy to them it might strain the resources of a very young establishment to provide caviare at two meals a day. She took her first mouthful, considered, and said that she liked it; but did not express any overwhelming attachment to it, so I think that so far as caviare is concerned it will be eaten with appreciation in the household-that-is-to-be but will not appear every day at table. The soup was an excellent thick cream; the sole was one of the specialities of the kitchen put by the _chef de cuisine_ into the menu, and a most admirable sole it is. It is a _mousse_ of chicken sandwiched between fillets of sole, and lobster and oysters and, I fancy, mushrooms also, have their part in this very noble dish. The tiny saddle of lamb was the plain dish of the dinner; the snipe were given a baptism of fire before they were brought to table. The peaches were another dish that is a speciality of the house. With the _Bar-le-Duc_ currant jelly about the peaches there was mingled some old Fine Champagne, while the ice and the vanilla cream that went with it were served separately, as is the modern fashion, which is a great improvement on sending up the ice in a messy state with the fruit. The wine we drank was Clicquot 1904. I was charged half-a-guinea a head for our dinner, which was excellent value for the money: altogether an admirable dinner, admirably cooked, and I sent my compliments to the chef. The other people who had dined had gradually melted away; the band had left its gallery and we could hear its strains coming from some distant room. The young people chattered away about theatres and dances and we might have sat at table until midnight had not the _maître d'hôtel_ suggested that we might like to look at the other rooms on the ground floor before going into the smoking lounge, where the band was playing and where a lady was presently to sing. We walked through a charming little ante-room with golden furniture, into the great pink banqueting-room which is used for dances and balls as well as for great feasts. It is the part of the Hyde Park Hotel with which I am most familiar, and I told the young people, who were more anxious to know which way the boards ran and whether it was a good floor for dancing than they were for descriptions of banquets, how at one of the dinners of the Gastronomes in this fine room the table decorations were so arranged as to be high above the diners' heads and that the air seemed full of flowers and how M. Müller had invented for that feast the beau-ideal of a vegetable _sorbet--tomates givrées_. I had thoughts of giving them details of a wonderful banquet given at the hotel by the Society of Merchants, but I am sure they would not have had patience to listen, so what I abstained from telling them then, lest they might think me a gluttonous old bore, I here set down for your consideration, for you can skip it if you will, whereas the two young people would, I am sure, have been kind enough to listen and to pretend to appreciate its beauties: Cantaloup Grande Fine Champagne. Caviar. Consommé Florentine. Crème de Pois frais. Filets de Truite Saumonée au Coulis d'Ecrevisses. Volaille de la Bresse Châtelaine. Selle de Béhague à la Provençale. Aubergines au Beurre Noisette. Cailles Royales à l'Ananas. Pommes Colerette. Dodines de Canard à la Gelée. Cœurs de Laitues aux œufs. Pêches Framboisées. Friandises. Dessert. VINS. Sandringham Sherry. Schloss Volkrads, 1904. Pommery and Greno, 1900. Château Brane Cantenac, 1899. Sandeman's, 1884. Marett Gautier, 1830. Liqueurs. Then we went into the big room, a room of mahogany, and views of lake and river and sea painted on the panels, which is the room most used by the people who live in the hotel, where the papers and great arm-chairs are and where a man can smoke comfortably, and we listened to the little orchestra and to a young lady who sang us songs sentimental and songs cheerful until it was time for my nephew to do escort duty in taking the young lady back to the northern heights where she lives. LIX YE OLDE GAMBRINUS The one thing in the world that the friends of Germany do not tell us poor Englishmen is to be obtained better in the Fatherland than on this side of the Channel is things to eat, though of course Munich beer has been held up to our brewers for generations as an example of what they should brew. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are fewer German restaurants in London in comparison with the size of the German colony than there are French and Italian restaurants in comparison with the colonies of those countries. Yet good, simple German cookery is quite excellent of its kind. A German housewife knows how to make a goose into many delectable dishes which an English housewife knows nothing of, and the German tarts are excellent things amongst dishes of pastry. There are one or two German restaurants in Soho, and Mr Appenrodt in his restaurants considers the tastes of his fellow-countrymen, but the best known London restaurant devoted entirely to German and Austrian cookery is the Olde Gambrinus, in Regent Street, and it was an Italian, little Oddenino, who appreciated the long-felt want of the Germans in London and who gave them a restaurant in which they can imagine that they are once again back in their own country, eating German foods and drinking German drinks. The Gambrinus has entrances both in Glasshouse Street and in Regent Street. The Regent Street entrance echoes the decoration of that of its big brother, the Imperial Restaurant, a few paces farther along the street, and its marble pillars and revolving door do not suggest the entirely German surroundings we are in as soon as we have crossed the threshold. A comparatively narrow room, panelled half-way up its height with dark wood and with two rows of tables, is the first portion of the restaurant we see on entering from Regent Street, and it is here that those good Germans sit who do not want to eat a meal but wish to drink their "steins" of beer. Above the panelling on the walls are the heads of many deer and wild beasts from all parts of the world, and the first impression that this gives to anyone who does not know the Gambrinus is that it is a Valhalla for the denizens of some Wonder Zoo. In the midst of these heads of the wild things of the woods and the plains is that of a fine dog. No doubt he was the chosen companion of some mighty hunter, and one hopes that he was not like the rest, a spoil of the chase. After this first narrow room there comes a wider one with an arched roof, glazed with bottle-glass, and then the main restaurant itself, which has the appearance of a baronial hall. Its floor is of wooden blocks; there are many little tables in it, and chairs with backs of dark leather, and it is panelled like the entrance, with dark wood. Any chair not occupied is at our disposal, and we have found seats, and a waiter has put in front of us the big sheet with the menu of the day on it and a picture in blue of a crowned gentleman with a long white beard astride on a beer cask and drinking from a foaming tankard. We will order our dinner first and then look at our surroundings. For every day in the week there are special dishes: four soups, one of which is generally _bouillon mit ei_; three meat dishes and a fruit dish. There is a list of _hors d'œuvre_, amongst them _Berliner rollmops_ and _Brabant sardellen, Nürnberger ochsenmaul salat_ and Bismarck herring. There is a column in print of cold dishes in which various German sausages are given the place of honour, and then, written in violet ink, many ready dishes beyond those sacred to the day, and another list of dishes which can be had to order. As the most typical German dishes amongst those of the day let us order goose soup with dumplings, roast veal and peas, and pear tart, and we cannot do better than wash this down with two large glasses of light-coloured Munich beer. The waiter takes our orders, and from a pile of rounds of wadding put down by us two with some blue printing on them, which shows that we are going to drink Munich beer, whereas had we elected for the beer of Pilsen we should have been given rounds of wadding with red on them. On all the seats at all the tables are Germans of all types. Dark-haired Germans from the south, looking almost like Italians, and the typical fair-haired Teutons of the north with fat necks and hair cropped to a stubble. Anyone who thinks that the German fraus and frauleins resemble at all the unkind caricatures the French make of them should see the pretty ladies who accompany the worthy Germans who eat their dinners at the Gambrinus. They are as fresh and charming, as well dressed and as daintily mannered as the ladies who go to any restaurant of any other nationality. The windows that give on to Glasshouse Street are of the glass that looks as though the bottoms of wine bottles had been used, and in the centre of each window is an escutcheon with armorial bearings. At one side of the room is a gallery of dark wood, and on the front of this is also a wealth of heraldry. The heads of animals of all kinds, which seemed a little strange in the _brasserie_ by the entrance, seem quite in place in the big hall which has all the appearance of the dining-room of some old baronial castle converted into a German inn. On the side opposite to the gallery is a long counter under two arches of dark wood. On this counter are many beer mugs, and fruit in baskets, and on a series of shelves all the _delicatessen_ which are recorded on the _spiese karte_. On the wall at the back of the two arches hang the beer mugs which belong to the customers, rows upon rows of them forming a background of coloured earthenware and glass. By the side of this long counter is another, where a pretty girl sits and hands out to the waiters the liqueur bottles and keeps the necessary accounts. If the trophies of the chase in the _brasserie_ are various they are infinitely more various in the big hall, for the Herr Baron must have hunted on all the continents and did not disdain to add monsters of the deep to his trophies, for a spiky fish, looking like a marine hedgehog, dangles from the ceiling, and below it is one of those curious things which sailors call mermaids and the right name of which is, I believe, manati. He was a collector of curios also, this imaginary baron, for a curious lamp in the shape of an eight-pointed star hangs above the gallery, there is a carved owl immediately below it and various other wood carvings in different parts of the restaurant, and on the broad shelf above the panelling are a wonderful variety of earthenware and china and pewter mugs and dishes and jugs and candlesticks in quantities that would set up half-a-dozen antique shops. The heads of animals on the wall would supply material for an exhaustive lesson in zoology. There is the skull of an elephant, the head of a rhino, a bear grins sardonically on one side, and opposite to him a zebra appears to have thrust his head and neck through the wall. There are several boars' heads, an eagle with his wings spread dangles from the balcony, and a black cock appears to be rising from a forest of liqueur bottles. There are horns or heads of half-a-hundred varieties of deer, from the wapiti and elk to those tiny little fellows with horns a couple of inches long who run about like rabbits in the German forests. There are antlers of red deer and fallow deer, and heads of wildebesste and hartebesste, and black buck and buffalo, and of many more that are beyond my knowledge of horned beasts. There are in the room glass screens to keep off all draughts; there are bent-wood stands on which to hang coats and hats, and a staircase with a luxurious carpet on it and a brass rail leads down into the grill-room of the Imperial Restaurant next door. But the waiter, who had already put down by our places two long sloping glasses of the clear cold beer, now brings us the plates of smoking goose soup, and excellent soup it is, with the suet dumplings, as light as possible, in it, and pieces of the breast of the goose. Why we English neglect the goose as a soup-maker I do not know, as indeed I do not know why we neglect the goose at all and consign him to the kitchen as a meal for the servants while the turkey is being eaten upstairs. The veal, which, I should imagine, is imported from Germany, is excellent, and the huge chop of it that is given to each of us must, I think, be an extra attention on the part of the management, for M. Oddenino has just come in and has taken a seat at a table in a recess, where he dines frugally every night so as to be within call of his restaurant next door, and he has called the attention of the little manager to our presence. So perhaps we are being given what in Club life is known as the "Committee-man's chop." Our third venture is just as satisfactory as the two previous ones, for the great angle of open pear tart is in every way excellent. The bill presented at the close of our meal is as moderate as the food was good. We have each in our meal consumed three shillings and three pence worth of well-cooked food and cold beer. So again I ask, Why should the German _cuisine_ in London be the Cinderella of the daughters of Gastronomy? LX MY SINS OF OMISSION No one can be more aware than I am of the things I have left undone in writing of the restaurants of London, of the many interesting dining-places of which I have made no mention, of the eating-houses with historical associations that I have overlooked. I have done no more than touch the hem of the garment of the City. As I write I recall that the Ship and Turtle, the Palmerston and other notable restaurants I have passed by without even a word, and that I have given only a line to Pim's and Simpson's, and the George and Vulture, each of which is worthy of a chapter. The Liverpool Street Hotel, which I have singled out, is not by any means the only great railway hotel in London where the catering is excellent. I used at one time to dine every Derby night with the late Mr George Dobell at the St Pancras Hotel, and a better cooked dinner no one could have given me. The Euston Hotel had, and I have no doubt has, an admirable cellar of wines. There is a chapter waiting to be written concerning the changes that have taken place in railway refreshment-room catering, with, as examples, the dining-rooms at the two Victoria stations and the _table d'hôte_ dinner that is provided for playgoers at Waterloo. The luncheons provided for golfers in the club-houses of the golf courses near London was another subject to which I intended to devote a chapter, and yet another to the excellent luncheons that the racing clubs, following Sandown's example, provide for their members. There are roadside and riverside inns that deserve mention besides those of which I have written. Many of the large hotels that I have not mentioned deserve attention, but there is a certain similarity in the _table d'hôte_ meals at all big hotels nowadays and the difference between the rank and file of them lies more in their situation and decoration than in their _cuisine_. My excuse for paying a vague compliment to the big hotels in bulk will not hold good with respect to the many small hotels that I have not mentioned where the cookery is excellent. They at least have, each one, its distinct individuality. I can only plead that I have been frightened by their number. Almond's in Clifford Street, Brown's in Albemarle Street, where M. Peròs is the chef, are two which occur to me as I write in which I have dined admirably, and I have no doubt that "Sunny Jim" will make the restaurant of the St James's Palace Hotel a favourite dining-place. I feel that I have slighted Oxford Street and Holborn in having merely nodded as I passed by to some of the many restaurants, some of them important ones, that are to be found on the road from Prince Albert's Statue to the Marble Arch. My hope of making amends to them for this neglect lies in a hope that my book may run into more than one edition. In the streets that branch off from Shaftesbury Avenue there are several restaurants for which I should have found room in this book. The Coventry is one, and the by-ways of Soho teem with little eating-houses waiting to be discovered and to become prosperous and to possess globes of electric light and rows of Noah's ark trees in green tubs. I am not such a hardy explorer as I used to be, but I have gone through some terrible times in experimenting on some of the little restaurants in Soho--the ones that had better remain undiscovered. Some of my correspondents have asked me why I only write of places that I can conscientiously praise, and why I do not describe my failures. My answer to this is that it is not fair to condemn any restaurant, however humble it may be, on one trial, and that, when I have been given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion. I prefer to consign to oblivion the stories I could tell of bad eggs and rank butter and cold potatoes, stringy meat and skeleton fowls. It is so much better for one's digestion to think of pleasant things than to brood over horrors. Adieu, or rather, I trust, au revoir. * * * * * _P. S._--That changes have taken place in the personnel of the restaurants even in the space of time that it takes to pass the proofs of this book shows how difficult it is to keep such a publication right up to date. Most of the changes I have been able to note in their proper position, but the sale of Rule's by Mr and Mrs O'Brien to one of their old servants and the appointment of M. Mambrino to the managership of the Berkeley Hotel I must record here. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOURMET'S GUIDE TO LONDON *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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