AT HAMPTON COURT
We all know that in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, but it is not such common knowledge that in the early summer the thoughts of a man of mature age turn with equal agility to duckling and green peas. And with duckling and green peas I always associate the Mitre at Hampton Court. So it came to pass that I asked a crony of like tastes to myself to meet me on a spring Sunday at Hampton Court in the late afternoon, and suggested that we should walk in the gardens of the Palace and see the rhododendrons, which were then in great beauty, and that we should afterwards dine at the Mitre, sup green pea soup and eat duckling and green peas.
The Mitre is the most typically late Georgian, or early Victorian, inn that I know of in the neighbourhood of London, and its great attraction is that it has kept the old cookery, the old furniture, the old pictures, the old china, the old plate, and last, but not least, the old manners. It has been quite unconscious of the changes in the outside world, it knows nothing of electric light and such newfangled ideas, there are no French rolls to be found in its bread baskets, and its ducklings are spitted and roasted before an open fire, being well basted the while.
This, very briefly, is the history of the Mitre. It is the direct successor of the Toy Inn, an old house which stood on Crown property, and the lease of which expired about the year of the battle of Waterloo. The Toy was pulled down, and Mr Goodman, and Mr Sadler with him, were obliged to look for a new home in which to carry on the old traditions. This they found in three houses standing together near the wooden bridge (alas and alack that the picturesque old bridge has given place to the dull-red iron horror which was built in 1865!), and one of the charms of the Mitre is the quaint irregularity of its architecture, the brown bricks and red tiles of its face turned towards the Palace, its white face and slate roof on the river side, the great wistaria and the ivy knitting together all the various features.
And parenthetically I wish to protest against the hiding away of the Mitre from the view of the people as they cross the bridge, or of those who row or go by launch or river. Just in front of the Mitre Hotel is an eyot, which I believe is Government property. The willows on this have been allowed to grow so high that they entirely blot out the view from the river of the white face of the Mitre, and the long row of windows of its banqueting-room; and equally, of course, the trees obstruct the view of the river from the delightful little bowling-green with ivied arches which is between the hotel and the backwater. If, whoever he is, the Government official who has this eyot in his charge will walk across the Hampton Court bridge or sit for ten minutes on the lawn before the Mitre he will, I am sure, require no further prompting to order the pollarding of the trees.
Mr Goodman came to the three old houses and put up the name of the Mitre in golden letters, and gave orders that the pillars that support the great bow-window on the first floor should be painted as though they were of very variegated marble, and with him from the old inn he brought the little glass bow window which looks out from the bar parlour into the Mitre hall, and he also brought with him all the old Spode china from the Toy. Some of the original china is still preserved at the Mitre, and whenever new plates and new dishes are required Messrs Copeland, the successors to Spode, make them in the old moulds, though those moulds are now wearing out; and the plates from which the guests of to-day eat their lunches and dinners are identical with those that came across the Green from the Toy. After a while Mr Goodman moved on to the Whitehall Hotel, a big white-faced house which looks out on to the Green, and which abuts on Cardinal Wolsey's old stables, and Mr Sadler the First reigned in his stead.
It was Mr Sadler the First who bought the old Sheffield plate which makes such a brave show at the banquets at the Mitre, tureens in which the soup comes to table, and the platters on which the fish is served.
Six o'clock was the hour at which I had asked my crony to meet me on the steps of the Mitre that we might consult together as to the menu of our dinner, and I found him waiting for me chatting to Mr Sadler, the elder of the two sons of Mr Sadler the First, and in the background was Bagwell, the head waiter, who is a model to all British head waiters. He has the appearance and the comforting manner of a high dignitary of the Church, and I am quite sure would wear knee-breeches and an apron and rosetted tall hat with as good grace as any bishop in the land. The oldest inhabitants of Hampton Court, when I have sung Bagwell's praises to them, have said to me: "Ah, but you ought to have known Smith," the head waiter who flourished some thirty years ago. But to them I reply that not having known Smith it is a comfort to me to be acquainted with Bagwell. Bagwell had on a card a suggested menu for our dinner, which ran thus:—Green Pea Soup, Grilled Trout, Stewed Eels, Duckling and Green Peas and New Potatoes, cold Asparagus and Gooseberry Tart. The eels I looked upon as a superfluity, though they are one of the dishes of the house and are kept alive in the hotel in tanks until the moment comes for their sacrifice. I also parried the suggestion that sweetbreads should be included, for I hold that a duckling, if he be a good duckling, well roasted and filled with savoury stuffing, is so good a dish that he requires no supplement of any kind.
When at seven we returned from our walk through the gardens of the Palace a table had been spread for us in the bow-window, whence the view of the river, and the house-boats, and the towing path, and the walls of the Palace Gardens, and the big trees and the old gates, is a very splendid thing. A quiet-footed, quiet-mannered waiter was ready to attend on us, and on the table were the shining cruets and a little loaf and a slab of beautiful butter, and to the tick of half-past seven the soup in a plated tureen was put in front of me.
The soup was excellently hot and of a strength unusual in a vegetable soup. It had, I fancy, been laced with all manner of good things. It made an excellent commencement to the dinner. The trout, a fine salmon trout, of a beautiful pink, came straight up from the grill on a plated dish, and with it the Tartar sauce in a plated boat. When the cover was taken off from the duckling, set down before me to carve, the sweet savour of good roasting and the perfume of the stuffing gratified the sense of smell. And that duckling was as tender as a duckling should be, and the peas were large and cooked to the requisite degree of softness, and the apple sauce was excellent. That our plates were the old Spode plates, soft blue in their pattern, and that the knives and forks and spoons were all of an old pattern, were all tiny points of enjoyment. The asparagus was good green English asparagus, and the crust of the gooseberry pie was of meringue-like lightness.
At the table to one side of us in the big bow sat a couple who were also dining on duckling and drinking a bottle of champagne, for the Mitre has an excellent cellar of wines at prices far below those of London restaurants, and at the table on the other side were two ladies and three men who had been on the river and had brought river appetites and river good spirits to table with them. Farther back in the room were other little parties of diners. I had asked host Sadler some questions about the Masonic banquets which are held in the red-walled rooms the windows of which overlook the bowling-green, and after our dinner was finished he brought me a little sheaf of menus of banquets, and he also brought a bottle of the old Cognac of the house, which he was anxious that we should taste. I looked through the menus, and the following of a banquet of the Bard of Avon Lodge seemed to me to be that of a distinctly English feast. It has in it the matelote of stewed eels and the braised sweetbreads for which I did not find room in our little dinner for two:
Soup.
Purée of Asparagus. Spring.
Fish.
Grilled Trout. Sauce Tartare.
Stewed Eels en Matelote.
Entrée.
Braised Sweetbreads.
Removes.
Roast Fore Quarter of Lamb.
French Beans.
Ducklings. Peas.
Asparagus.
Sweets.
Gooseberry Foule. Cream.
Madeira Jellies.
Iced Pudding.
Dessert.
My crony and I sat sipping the old brandy, talking at intervals, and watching how the daylight gave place to the afterglow, how the people on the towpath thinned in numbers to single figures, and the homeward bound boats on the river became fewer and fewer. As the light died out the river became a sheet of dull silver, and the colour of the old brick walls of the Palace gardens and its out-buildings grew to deeper and a deeper purple, and the great trees became warm black silhouettes against the darkening sky and the lights in the house-boats moored by the bank began to throw reflections into the stream.
Everything, even a spring evening at Hampton Court, must come to an end, and at last I called for my bill. The dinner was eight shillings a head, and so moderate had we been in our summer beverages—the old brandy was host Sadler's contribution—that the total came to a sovereign.
We walked along the path up the river in the cool of the evening till we could see the lights in Garrick's Villa, and then my crony and I bade each other good-night and went our separate ways.