Part 6

I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that a _maître-chef_ can receive is that which comes from his brothers in art, and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel Cecil and their _chef de cuisine_ than that the Ligue des Gourmands, the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier, placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who, with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which there were three hundred guests present, in preference to that of any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the perfection of a dinner of ceremony. The _Dodine_ and the _Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt_ were the two sensational dishes of the feast, but it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting without being heavy:

Hors d'œuvre. Petite Marmite Béarnaise. Truite Saumonée aux Crevettes Roses. Dodine de Canard au Chambertin. Nouilles au Beurre Noisette. Agneau de Pauillac à la Bordelaise. Petits pois frais de Clamart. Poularde de France. Cœur de Romaine aux Pommes d'Amour. Asperges d'Argenteuil Crème Mousseline. Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt. Dessert. Café--Liqueurs. Bénédictine.

Whether the Cecil was the first of the great banqueting houses to effect a reform in the service of public banquets I am not sure, but it was at the Cecil that I first found that such a reform had taken place. In old days it was the custom for the waiters to trail a dish along the whole length of a banqueting-table, and the salmon, which went up the room a noble-looking fish, came down five minutes later to starvation corner, a head, a tail and a skeleton. It was at the Cecil that I first noticed the breaking up of the tables into manageable sections of guests, with a waiter and his aids to each section, and the dinner served straight from the kitchen to that section. The restaurant and the banqueting halls and the private dining-rooms by no means exhaust the list of the accommodations of those who dine that the Cecil affords. There is below the Rose du Barri room another one, the Indian room, decorated in Oriental fashion with blue and yellow tiles, and in this a grill dinner and a _table d'hôte_ dinner are both served, and when this room overflows another equally spacious room is opened and becomes the grill-room.

(As I correct the proofs of this chapter news comes to me that "Sunny Jim" will in 1914 become a joint partner in the management of the St James's Palace Hotel in Bury Street and will give special attention to its restaurant.)

XI

CLARIDGE'S

I reach back in memory farther in touch with Claridge's than with any other hostelry in London, One of the stories of her early life that my mother often told me when I was a small boy was how my grandfather, as crotchety an elderly widower as ever ruled an Indian district, when he finally retired from the service of John Company, arrived in London with his bullock trunks and sandalwood boxes lined with tin, his bedding rolled up in bundles, his guns, his fly-whisks, and palm-fans, and all the strange paraphernalia that an Anglo-Indian official gathered about him in those days. With him came his faithful bearer, and an ayah, and his little pale daughter, and they all descended at Claridge's Hotel--though perhaps in those days it might have been Mivart's. The first great grief of the little girl's life was that the "Nabob," as my grandfather was called in the family, delivered a "hookum" to the manager of the hotel that an English nurse must be provided directly for his small daughter, as the ayah ought to return at once to her own country, and my mother was obliged to say good-bye to her devoted Indian attendant. My first personal introduction to Claridge's was when, as a schoolboy, I was invited by another schoolboy, who wished to show off, to go with him to visit a German _Graf_, a nobleman with a very long string of minor titles, whose greatest glory was that he owned a castle on the Rhine. The _Graf_ was very polite to the two little English boys, and talked to us in very bad English; and when we took our departure he saw us to the door as though we had been persons of the greatest importance. Mr Claridge, wearing a skull-cap of velvet, happened to be in the hall as we passed through, and I remember well the beautiful bow that he gave to the Count. Mr Claridge's bows were celebrated; they were of a different depth, according to the rank of the person to whom he bowed, and there was even a delicate difference in the salute that he gave to a Serene Highness to that with which he welcomed a Royal Highness. Claridge's in those days consisted of half-a-dozen houses connected with each other, and the best rooms in these houses formed the suites where the various royalties who patronised the hotel lodged, Mr Claridge and his staff of servants being always on the watch that the privacy of his guests should not be invaded. On one occasion, when a famous caricaturist took a room at the hotel, Mr Claridge waited on him and informed him that he must transfer his custom elsewhere, for, though he, Mr Claridge, was a great admirer of the artist's talent, and decorated the walls of some of the rooms with his work, he could never allow a royal personage to be caricatured within the walls of his hotel. Not that Mr Claridge himself always spoke too respectfully of the great ones of the earth. Archbishop Temple used to tell a story that when in 1846 the Pope seriously thought of taking refuge in England, Mr Claridge remarked that he was so full up with kings and royal dukes that he could only offer his Holiness a small back room, but that, being a bachelor, he, the Pope, would probably not mind.

The old Claridge's was pulled down and the new Claridge's built in the nineties, and I remember the opening day, when a great crowd of fashionable people came to look at its _salons_ and ballroom and restaurant, and the royal suite. The india-rubber roadway in the entrance, then a novelty, was much admired, and the six footmen in the hall, in their state livery, looked mighty splendid. Mr D'Oyly Carte, who more than anyone else had been the moving spirit in the creation of the new hotel, was wheeled about in a chair through the crush of pretty ladies and distinguished gentlemen, for he was then very ill.

The new Claridge's soon found its own particular atmosphere, an atmosphere of perfect serenity. The little army of footmen, who were too gorgeous for ordinary occasions, were reduced in numbers, and now only one superb being in plush and silken calves moves about the hall and arranges the papers in the reading-room. The inner hall, with its pillars and walls of white, and its reflected light, is a most comfortable lounge in which to sit after dinner and listen to the orchestra, and out of this open two rooms, one of Wedgwood blue with Wedgwood designs on it, and the other of old gold. The restaurant has been considerably altered since its first opening, for it has been divided into two rooms, the colouring of it has been brightened, and at night an abundance of light is now thrown on to the painted ceilings from cunningly concealed lamps. The bases of the great arches which support the roof are cased in dark oak, with an inset of olive wood; the carpet is of rose and grey and the chairs are of green leather with the arms of the hotel stamped upon it.

It is a restaurant in which dinner takes its right place as one of the tranquil pleasures of life. The music of the band is never too loud, the fine napery and the admirable glass are pleasant to the touch, the flowers in the silvered stands of the table lamps give an agreeable touch of colour, the cut glass of the pendent electroliers sparkles, and the first and the second _maîtres d'hôtel_, M. Invernizzi, who comes from the Palace Hotel, at St Moritz, to London for the season, and M. Castelani, who is a permanency at Claridge's, are tactfully attentive, while M. Gehlardi, the manager of the hotel, walks through the rooms during the course of dinner to bow here and there at a table, and to assure himself that all is well. It is the clientele of Claridge's that has made its atmosphere, for the well-dressed, good-looking, quiet people who dine at the tables, put a comfortable distance apart, are folk whose names bulk largely in the Society columns of the newspapers, and the list of the diners on any given night in Claridge's Restaurant would be for the most part a string of titles. Good manners are in the air, and I do not think that even the rawest plutocrat could be unmannerly amidst such surroundings.

On the night that I last dined at Claridge's, I had written beforehand asking that a table for three should be reserved for me, and I had intended to give my guests the larger of the two dinners of the restaurant, the twelve-and-six one, which runs through the usual courses, and which is by no means a set dinner, for any dish which does not exactly match the fancy of a dinner-giver is changed for another to suit his whim or his palate. But I found that a special little feast had been ordered for me by M. Gehlardi, and the menu of it was as follows:--

Melon Cantaloup. Bortch à la Russe. Filets de Sole Newnham-Davis. Noisette d'Agneau aux Fines Herbes. Petits pois frais. Pommes Noisettes. Coq en Pâte. Salade de Romaine à l'Estragon. Fraises Parisienne. Friandises.

The _chef de cuisine_ at Claridge's is M. Maurice Bonhomme, who had passed through the kitchens of two great Parisian restaurants, the Café de Paris, and Ledoyen's, in the Champs Elysées, before he came to London. He is a chef of high repute, and these are the specialities of his kitchen:--_filet de sole Tosca, suprême de sole Pré Catalan, Coulibiac de saumon, suprême de volaille d'Orléans, cailles Hacchi Pacha, Coq en Pâte Claridge's, pêches Caprice, fraises Delphine_.

Of the dishes of my dinner, the excellent _Bortch à la Russe_ was served as it is in Russia, with little _pâtés_ to break into it. The list of these _pâtés_ in the menu of a Russian dinner is often a long one. The _filet de sole_, which M. Bonhomme paid me the compliment of christening to my name, is a quite admirable _sole poché au Madère_, with all the fumet of the fish retained and served with sliced _champignons_ and _pointes d'asperges_. I sent my very best compliments to M. Bonhomme on his masterpiece. The _coq en pâte_ is an ornamental dish, for the fowl stuffed with all manner of rich things is encased in a paste shaped like a cock, crest and all. The outer covering is broken before the bird is carved. It is a dish of almost terrifying richness.

Quite a number of the great people of the land give their banquets at Claridge's, and out of the sheaf of the menus of these feasts I select one of the Surrey Magistrates' Club Dinner, which shows that our Solons across the Thames dine and wine with much discretion and taste:

Royal Natives. Hors d'œuvre. Consommé Monte-Carlo. Bisque de Crabes. Turbotin braisé au Champagne. Whitebait diable noir. Selle de Béhague à l'Estragon. Haricots verts de Nice. Pommes nouvelles au Beurre. Timbale à la Galoise. Caneton d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise. Salades d'Oranges. Asperges vertes Sauce Hollandaise. Pêches Melba. Friandises. Bonne Bouche.

VINS. Oloroso Fine Old. Piesporter, 1904. George Goulet (mag.), 1900. Moët et Chandon. Dry Imper., 1904. Dow's 1896. Courvoisier Brandy. Fine Champagne, 1865.

I wonder how a club dinner of magistrates of fifty years ago would contrast with such a dinner as the above.

XII

THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT

Old "Rats," which is the disrespectful title by which most of his friends call Major-General Sir Ulysses Ratbourne, late of the Bundlekund Fusiliers, was holding forth to his crony, Colonel Bunthunder, late of the same distinguished regiment, in the hall of the Cutlass and Cross-bow Club as I passed through it, and the General paused for a second in his denunciation of Radicals and Socialists to say that he wanted to have a word with me, and then finished his peroration. Colonel Bunthunder muttered: "Very true, very true," and went on into the smoking-room shaking his head sorrowfully, and the General turned to me.

"Look here, my lad"--anyone under seventy is "my lad" to the General--said he, "I want you to give me a bit of advice."

I said the correct platitude, and awaited developments.

"My nephew Bill, the one in the Hussars, has just married, and he and his wife are coming up to town, and I want to know where to take 'em to dine."

I reeled off the list of the half-dozen most fashionable restaurants; but the General cut me short. "Ay, my lad, that's all very well; but the girl that poor old Bill's been and married is a vegetarian. What d'ye say to that, now?"

The General had put into the word "vegetarian" just the tone of astonished disgust he would have employed had he told me that the young lady was a militant suffragette; but I did not echo that at all. "Take them to the Eustace Miles Restaurant in Chandos Street," I advised; "and whatever your niece's fads may be, you can give her what she wants there."

Old "Rats" thanked me with the chastened thankfulness that men show when given the address of a specialist for some obscure disease of which they think they are a victim, wrote the address down on a card, and went after Colonel Bunthunder into the smoking-room to tell him all about it.

It occurred to me, however, directly the old General had left me, that I was sending him to a restaurant into which I had never myself been, and concerning which I knew nothing, except that I always look into its windows and at its bill of fare whenever I pass down Chandos Street; and, therefore, in order that I might be able to give the old man some detailed information from my own experience, I went next day to Chandos Street to lunch.

Before I set down what my experiences were, I wish to express my personal admiration for the single-mindedness of Mr Miles and his wife in doing the work they have set themselves to do. That Eustace Miles, half trained, went into a tennis court to defend his title of amateur world champion against a young American gentleman trained to the second, and that he made a fine fight for the championship with the odds desperately against him, shows that a diet of non-flesh food doesn't kill pluck or stamina. And before the authorities asked Mrs Miles not to send the E.M. soup barrow down to the Embankment on winter nights, as they wished to clear that thoroughfare of derelicts, she and her helpers had done much to feed the hungry and to reclaim some of those who were not irreclaimable, which shows that a kind heart thrives on Emprote and Protonnic and Compacto, and the other meatless foods with strange names. Lastly, that the Eustace Miles Restaurant celebrated last year the seventh anniversary of its opening, shows that London wanted such a restaurant, and that it has kept its clientele.

The big windows of the Eustace Miles Restaurant are "dressed" as if they were shop-windows. Sometimes they are full of tins and packets of the non-flesh foods arranged in piles and pyramids; sometimes they look like the windows of a book shop, piles of literature and charts of the human frame being in evidence; and sometimes boxing-gloves and foils and pictures of young men holding themselves upright and sticking out chests as full as those of pouter-pigeons draw attention to the fact that a physical school high up in the building is one of the Eustace Miles activities. Sometimes the windows look like those of a pastry-cook's shop, and sometimes they bristle with copies of _Healthward Ho!_ the monthly magazine which Mr Miles edits. Always outside the door in a glazed case is the bill of fare for the day printed in red and green type, and I have often wondered what "Egg and Mushroom Fillets and Duxelles Sauce with Asparagus and New Potatoes (N.)," or "Pinekernel Quenelles and Onion Sauce with Spring Cabbage and Potatoes (N., F.U.)," or "Hazel-nut Sausages and Gravy with Cauliflower and Roast Potatoes (N., F.U.)," taste like, and what the capital letters after each dish mean. Now, however, there was no reason to linger and look at the card. I was about to plunge into the great unknown, to sample the dishes with strange names, and to learn the secret of N.N. and F.U.

A commissionaire, looking just like other commissionaires, though he, like all the other employees of the restaurant, eats the food of the restaurant, opened the door to me and gave me a card for my bill, and my first impression was that I was in a Food and Cookery Exhibition, for in front of me was a stall piled high with tins of Emprote and a cash desk with a little model of the E.M. barrow by it, a stall for pastry and biscuits, and a book-stall; but beyond this first line of defence I saw little tables with white cloths on them, and many people sitting at them, and I walked on looking for a vacant seat. I came to a table with only one occupant, and sat down; a little waitress in a neat brown dress put the red and green printed bill of fare into my hand, and I found myself suddenly faced by a puzzle to which the purple ink _carte du jour_ of a small provincial French restaurant is as ABC is to a jig-saw puzzle. However, in larger print than anything else on the card was the announcement that a half-crown _table d'hôte_ luncheon and dinner was served, so I said to the waitress in an offhand manner, as though I were an habitué: "I'll take the half-crown lunch, please." She never budged. "Compacta _croûtes_ or roasted cashews?" she asked me, and I gasped out, "Compacta," and wondered what on earth I was going to eat.

Then, while the little waitress had gone to get me the first instalment of the unknown, I looked down the menu and made up my mind which of the two soups, the two entrées, the two sweets and two savouries I would order when the waitress came back again, and then turned my attention to the room and the people at the tables. There is a suggestion of a gymnasium about the restaurant, for it is a high room with a broad gallery running round it about half-way up its height, and it is lighted by a great space of skylight. All the boarding, and there is a good deal of it, is painted dark green, and on the walls is a dark green and white paper. A tea-stall, green and white, and a long buffet of green wood, with pots of flowers on it, are at one end of the restaurant; the floor is covered with oilcloth, with strips of crimson cocoa-nut matting laid over it, and there are flowers in vases on the little white-clothed tables which occupy all the floor space below and in the gallery. There is a sense of airiness and spotless cleanliness about the place. Big notices draw attention to the Normal Physical School and other of the Eustace Miles activities, and a request to gentlemen not to smoke till after six P.M. was just above my head.

The people at the tables were just like the people one sees at any other restaurant where the prices are not high--ladies who might be stenographers, or country cousins up for a day's shopping, young men who, I daresay, are bank clerks--a good, level, healthy-looking gathering. A man with clear blue eyes and a close-clipped white beard sat down in the seat opposite to mine, and ordered something without looking at the menu; a youngster in golfing kit took the other unoccupied place at the table, and a wrinkle came across his forehead as he plunged mentally into the intricacies of the _à la carte_ sheet, until the waitress helped him by pointing with her pencil to some dish printed in red ink, and he joyfully assented to her suggestion. A young man brought in a bull-dog on a leash, and the dog was petted on his progress up the floor by all the little waitresses.

The waitress who had me in her charge returned with the Compacto _croûtes_, two little angles of hot toast with something spread on them, and she took my order for the next course, of lettuce and sorrel _potage_, and for some ginger ale, which I ordered as having a vague feeling that it would be in keeping with the meal. The Compacto had a far-off taste of potted meat, and I had noticed that it was labelled N., F.U., which a note at the top of the menu told me meant nourishing and free from uric acid. The dishes marked N.N. are "Very Nourishing." The lettuce and sorrel soup, when it came, was distinctly to be commended, a trifle thin, perhaps, but having the taste of the vegetables in it, and being excellently hot. This also, I was pleased to see, was noted as N. and F.U.; and had I been subject to gout, which--"touch wood," I am not, I should have been eating an admirable non-gouty meal. Then came what on the menu was described as a main dish. It was asparagus and lentil timbale, cucumber sauce, stuffed vegetable marrow and new potatoes _sautés_. I rather hope that this will not be the main dish that old "Rats" will stumble up against when he takes his niece to dine at the Eustace Miles Restaurant, for the timbale did not seem to me to have any strong taste of asparagus in it--perhaps the lentils had killed it. The stuffed vegetable marrow was rather a watery delicacy, but I ate up the _sautés_ potatoes, feeling quite glad that I knew what their taste was going to be. The next dish, however--honey shortbread and stewed apricots--I can unreservedly praise; the shortbread was excellently light and the stewed apricots were good things of their kind. I had told the waitress that as a savoury I would have _matelote_ eggs on toast, but I cancelled that order, for I look on savouries as superfluities, and ate some cheese as a finish to my repast.