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.
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."