Dinners and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London

by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis

THE HANS CRESCENT HOTEL

If I had to set an examination paper on the art of dining, one of the questions I should certainly ask the examinee would be: "What occupation or amusement would you suggest for your guests after a dinner at a restaurant on Sunday?" The Hans Crescent Hotel management have answered this question in a practical way; and not the least pleasant part of a dinner at the smart hotel Sloane Street way is the coffee and liqueur and cigarette taken under the palms in the winter garden, where the red-shaded lamps throw a gentle light, and M. Casano's band playing Czibulka's waltz-whisper, "Songe d'amour après le bal," sends one back in a dream to the days when an evening of dancing was a foretaste of the seventh heaven, and every woman was a possible divinity.

The Editor does not write long letters, but the card with his initials at the bottom gave me place and time, and told me that I should find myself one of a partie carrée. What was the exact reason of the dinner that the good Editor gave to the gracious lady and the handsome niece and myself, I do not know; but I rather think that it was a propitiatory offering made for non-appearance on the editorial tricycle when warned for escort duty to the gracious lady, who had gone that day for a long bicycle ride. If it was so, the dinner at the Hans Crescent Hotel, plus the excuse given, whether it was church-going or letter-writing, did not save the Editor during the evening from little barbed conversational shafts as to sloth and laziness and the evil habit of lying late in bed on the Sabbath morning.

I never commit the unpardonable offence of being late for dinner, and three minutes before my time I was waiting in the oak-panelled hall, which, with its stained-glass window, big staircase with a balcony at the back, its palms and great fireplace, always looks to me like an elaborate "set" for a scene in some comedy. The hands of the clock stole on to eight o'clock, and that feeling of righteousness which comes to the man who is in time when he believes that his fellow-creatures are late fell on me, when, on a sudden, M. Diette, the manager of the hotel, grey of hair and moustache, a black tie under his "Shakspeare" collar, and a faultless frock-coat, appeared, and recognising me, asked me whether by chance I was the gentleman for whom the Editor and two ladies had been waiting some ten minutes in the drawing-room. So it came that when I went into the drawing-room, where the two ladies were looking at the brocades in the panels and the editorial eye was fixed on the clock on the mantelpiece, it was I who had to stumble through apologies, and I felt conscious that my tale of waiting in the hall sounded hideously improbable.

M. Diette himself showed us to our table in the dining-room, which is as near a reproduction of an old baronial hall as modern comfort, electric light, and civilisation will allow. The baron of old, in the days when each man cut his own portion off the roast meat with his dagger, might have been able to boast of the open fireplace in green Connemara marble and the panelled walls, but the handsome frieze and the carved oak pillars would have been beyond his artistic dreams. He would probably have preferred rushes to the Oriental rugs that half cover the oak floor, and he would certainly have thought the palmery seen through the open French window in a glow of rosy light a vision called up by some magician.

The Editor, stroking his pointed beard with satisfaction, was reading through the menu, the gracious lady and the handsome niece were noting, one by one, the celebrities dining at the other tables, and the head waiter was standing watching the Editor with the calm but deferential confidence an artist shows when an important patron is inspecting his work. A minor servitor, a thin tape of gold on the collar of his livery coat and wearing white gloves, was also in attendance, and the overture in the way of hors-d'œuvre à la Russe was before us.

In quick succession our ladies had named the tall, slim, titled lady in black, who had come in leaning on a stick; the good-looking young musical critic, who was entertaining "Belle" and a very pretty girl; a newly-married Earl and his wife; the handsome stockbroker and his wife, who in the summer are to be found not far from Maidenhead Bridge, and at whose table were sitting the most hospitable of up-river hostesses and her son; a millionaire, who was entertaining a tableful of guests; and one or two titled couples whom the gracious lady knew, but whose names meant nothing to me. I was able to add my quota by pointing out a steward of the Jockey Club, at whose table was the owner of the good horse Bendigo.

The Editor, having learned that we all preferred for the moment claret to champagne, put down the menu with a little sigh of anticipatory gratitude, and ran his finger half-way down a page on the wine list. This was the menu which the gracious lady looked at, and then handed on to me:—

Hors-d'œuvre à la Russe.
Consommé Brunoise à la Royale.
Potage en tortue.
Suprême de saumon à la Chambord.
Tournedos à la Montgador.
Poularde à la Demi-Doff.
Caille rôti sur canapé.
Salade.
Flageolets M^tre d'Hôtel. Bombe Chateaubriand.
Corbeilles de friandises.

The handsome niece had approved of the people at the other tables as being most of them interesting and good-looking, had said she liked the table with its decoration of a ring of yellow flowers and leaves drawn round the basket of friandises, and we began dinner with good appetite and good temper.