In the blue room on the first floor the tables were mostly occupied by couples, and Mrs. Tota wished to know if this was where the married musicians came. The gentleman with the clean-shaven face at the next table to ours, deep in conversation with a very pretty lady in a fur toque, was certainly a doctor, and the gentleman with a white moustache, who had secured the table in the little bow-window, was evidently a soldier; the two ladies dining tête-à-tête did not look musical, but on the first floor, as on the ground floor, the majority of the guests were evidently of the artistic temperament.
The Bortsch was excellent, and when the sole Pagani made its appearance M. Meschini, the partner of M. Pagani, came to our table to ask whether the dish was approved of. "It is beautiful," said little Mrs. Tota. "What are the wonderful little pink things with such a delicious taste?" M. Meschini, without moving a muscle of his face, told her that they were shrimps, which, with fresh mushrooms and moules, help to give a distinctiveness to this excellent dish. "How was I to know a shrimp without his head and tail and scales?" said Mrs. Tota, when M. Meschini had moved on.
Mrs. Tota ate some of the tournedos truffés, and gave her opinion that the truffles were perfectly heavenly; but I preferred to wait for the partridge and its casserole, with all its savoury surroundings. M. Notari, the chef, is an artist in his kitchen, and nowhere in London could we have found a better-cooked bird.
To establish my claim to be critical, I said that I had tasted better soufflés, but Mrs. Tota, telling me that I was a pampered Sybarite, ate her helping with perfect content. The two pints of Veuve Clicquot we drank were excellent, and with a Biscuit Pagani, two cups of Café Pagani and liqueurs, we ended a very good dinner.
I paid my bill: bread and butter, 4d.; hors-d'œuvre, 6d.; soup, 1s. 6d.; fish, 2s.; joint, 2s.; game, 5s.; vegetables, 1s.; sweets, 1s. 6d.; ices, 1s.; salad, 10d.; wine, 14s.; coffee, 1s.; liqueurs, 2s. 6d.; total, £1: 13: 2, and then asked M. Meschini to take us upstairs and show us the private dining-room, which is known as the artists' room.
When we came to the little room with its ruby velvet curtains and mantel drapings, its squares of what looks like brown paper, at about the height of a man's head, covered with drawings and writings, and protected by glass, its framed drawings and paintings, Mrs. Tota turned to me and asked me if I often brought my invalid maiden aunt to dine here.
"Invalid maiden aunt?" I said with astonishment, but remembered in a second that I had mentioned some such relative (or was it an uncle?) when we dined in the private room at Kettner's. Mrs. Tota laughed and turned to M. Meschini, who was beginning to explain the various works of art.
The name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye as soon as any other inscription on these sections of a wall of days gone by; 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 "sack" 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, Pucchini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti, Plançon, De Lucia, Melba, Menpes, Tosti, are some of the signatures; and as little Mrs. Tota read the names she became as serious as if she were in church, for this little chamber is in its way a temple dedicated to the artistic great who have dined.
17th December.