Hors-d'œuvre, of course, and then I suggested Bortch as the soup, for of all the restaurants where they make this excellent Russian dish the Savoy takes the palm.
Timbales de filets de sole à la Savoy, hinted M. Echenard, and though I didn't quite know what that was, it sounded well, and went down on the slip of paper. I wanted a mousse for the entrée, for I know that there are no such mousses to be got elsewhere as the Maître can make; and then M. Echenard suggested Poulet de grain Polonaise, and as he described the method of cooking, and how the juices of the liver soaked into the bird, and the essence of the chicken permeated the liver, I gave up my first idea of the celebrated canard en chemise. That was my idea of a little dinner, but M. Echenard insisted on the finishing touches being administered by a parfait de foie gras, English asparagus, and pêches glacées vanille. It was a dinner that had, perhaps, an unusual amount of cold dishes in it; but it is one of the customs of Savoy cookery to have, if possible, one cold dish at least in the menu, for, the hot dishes being served scrupulously unadorned, the cold ones give M. Escoffier and his staff a chance of showing what they can do in the way of decoration.
Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx, being a soldier's wife, was ready to the second when I called for her, and during the few moments that I had to wait in the ante-room of the restaurant, with its two fireplaces, its white-and-gold paper, great palms in pots, comfortable armchairs of terra-cotta colour, and Satsuma china, I could look with a comfortable superiority on the less lucky men who were sitting staring at the door and looking disappointed each time that the African gentleman, whose place is there, swung it back to admit some lady who was not the much-expected guest.
Mrs. Sphinx was in blue and white, and was wearing diamonds and turquoises. She had on for the first time a new diamond crescent, and looking round the room where everybody was smart I was pleased to be aware that the lady I had the honour of squiring was quite the smartest there.
And the company in the restaurant, the great room with mahogany panels, golden frieze and gold and red ceiling, of the Savoy on a Sunday night is as fine a society salad as any capital in the world can show. There was on this particular evening in our immediate vicinity, a lady who once won celebrity on the stage, which she left to take a title, and then become the chatelaine of one of the great historical houses of England; there was a good-looking fellow who was one of the best-known men about town and left fops-alley at the opera for the green-room of a comedy theatre; there was an Indian prince, the first swallow of the dusky, jewelled flight that comes each summer to our shores; there was the manager of one of the best-known of our comedy theatres, with whom was dining one of the most beautiful of our actresses and her husband; there was a lady who has the notoriety of having nearly ruined the heir to the throne of one of the kingdoms of Europe, and whose brown diamonds are the envy of all the connoisseurs of the world; there was a party of South African stockbrokers, who from their appearance did not suggest wealth, but whose united incomes would make the revenues of half a dozen Balkan principalities. And around the tables the waiters in their white aprons and the maîtres d'hôtel and the silver-chained sommeliers moved noiselessly, and the master-spirit of the whole, M. Ritz, just back from Rome, with his hands clasped nervously, almost, with his short whiskers and carefully-clipped moustache, a duplicate of the present Secretary of State for War, went from table to table with a carefully graduated scale of acknowledgment of the patrons. M. Echenard was there also, and there is no restaurant in the world in which the chain of responsibility from manager to waiter is carried out with greater thoroughness. Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx was doubtful as to trying the caviar. I should have remembered that she did not care for it; but the grey-green delicacy in its setting of ice tempted her, and she owned to almost liking it. About the Bortch soup there could be no two questions, and the cream stirred into the hot, strong liquid makes it, in my humble opinion, the best soup in the world. The fish, a fish-pie, with its macaroni and shrimps, was delicious, and then came the triumph of the dinner. Cased in its jelly covering, served on a great block of ice, melting like snow in the mouth, Maître Escoffier's mousse was an absolute masterpiece. The poulet, too, was as good to eat as it had sounded when M. Echenard had described it to me, and the parfait de foie gras was another delight. The asparagus and the ice were but the trifles of the dinner; but the ice swan that bore the little mock peaches was a very graceful piece of table decoration.
Mrs. Sphinx through dinner, while sipping her glass of Clicquot, had told me all the gossip of southern France; of the dance at the club at Cannes at which she had arranged the cotillon and led it; of the races of the big yachts for the various cups; of a magnificent scheme she had evolved, by which, now that the Guards have been sent on foreign service, Gibraltar was to become a second Monte Carlo or Nice, a scheme which would involve a few batteries and casemates being removed to make way for a casino, and when we had drunk our café Turc, brought by the brightly clothed Asiatic, and when I had smoked my cigarette and my guest had despoiled the great basket of roses on the table, the band, which plays delightfully, softly, and unobtrusively, had come to the end of its programme, and it was time to be moving. This was the bill, a moderate one for such an admirable dinner:—Two couverts, 1s.; bortch, 3s.; sole savoy, 6s.; mousse jambon, 6s.; poulet polonaise, 8s.; salade, 2s.; foie gras, 6s.; asperges verts, 7s. 6d.; pêches glacées vanille, 7s.; one bottle champagne 133, 15s.; café, 2s.; liqueurs, 2s.; total, £3: 5: 6.
When I put Mrs. Sphinx down at her house-door, her last words were, "That mousse was an absolute dream."
12th April.