Hors-d'œuvre Russe.
Pot au feu.
Sole Waleska.
Noisette d'agneau Lavallière.
Haricots verts à l'Anglaise.
Parfait de foie gras.
Caille en cocotte.
Salade.
Pole nord.
When I suggested an ice, and Oddenino wrote down pole nord, I asked him what particular ice that meant. It was only a cream ice served on a pedestal of clear ice, he said; but he thought that pole nord to end a menu sounded grand and mysterious.
I should, out of compliment to my sister-in-law, have liked to have driven up to the Café Royal in an equipage such as dignitaries of the Church use, with a hammer-cloth and a white-wigged coachman; but a humble coupé had to suffice.
We went up the staircase, which has been regilt and refurbished, and has more flowers and plants than of yore, and into the little waiting-room at the top of the stairs, which Oddenino had promised to have built for me to save wear and tear of my temper. It is not a very large waiting-room, a promise only of better things to come, a slice of the first of the big rooms partitioned off by a screen of mirrors. Some easy-chairs look comforting even to a hungry man, and, no doubt, not only my temper, but that of others, will profit by it in the future. A table had been kept for us in the first room, and when my sister-in-law had settled down she began looking carefully at the diners at the other tables. I asked if there was any one whom she expected to see, and was told that she was looking for the actresses I had promised to point out to her. Our table commanded a fine view of the room we were in and the big room, the windows of which look on to Glasshouse Street. There was scarcely a vacant table, but nowhere could I see an actress to point out to my sister-in-law. There was a celebrated doctor, clean-shaven and with white hair, dining tête-à-tête with his wife; there was a well-known barrister, invincible in licensing cases, who was giving a dinner to his wife and daughter; there was a big dinner-party of men all hailing from the Stock Exchange; there was a smart little lady talking hunting to three entranced youths; but nowhere could I see a face that I recognised as belonging to an actress.
My sister-in-law thought that she had been defrauded, but luckily the fat waiter, an old ally of mine, appeared at the right moment with the caviar, and the sommelier was anxious to know whether I would have the Clicquot vin rosée, which poor M. Nicol used to say was the best champagne in the cellar, iced. My sister-in-law approved highly of the soup, and indeed it was excellent, simple and strong. Then came the sole Waleska, and I was anxious to see whether my sister-in-law—who, I have omitted to state, is the daughter of a dean—appreciated the delicacy of the sauce and the almost imperceptible flavouring of cheese. She did, and I forgave her on the spot for not liking oysters. The noisette d'agneau was not quite on a par with the glory of the remainder of the dinner, for the tiny morsels of lamb, the foundation of the plat, might have been more tender; but I am sure that if the dear departed geese of Strassburg could have looked upon their livers, placed snugly in a great terrine, to which the blocks of truffle gave a half-mourning effect, and covered decently with a fair coating of transparent jelly, they would have been consoled for all their over-eating and subsequent demise.
At this period of our dinner little Oddenino came up, and I asked him to point out some of the alterations to my sister-in-law. He showed her the new lamps, which cast a pleasant rosy light on the tables; the new carpet; sent the maître d'hôtel to fetch samples of the new china and glass and silver which by now have been taken into use; explained how the kitchen, which is under the rule of M. Charles, has been doubled in size; and how the serving arrangements, which of old were coram populo, and carried out with an accompaniment of shrill female voices and much clashing of plates, were now safely concealed behind a wall of mirrors. I told Oddenino that I thought that even now too much noise came through the open door which leads to the serving-room; for I hold a really good dinner to be so sublime a thing that the homage of absolutely silent attendance is due to it; and the little man, looking suddenly as sorrowful as if he had lost a near relation, promised to have swing doors put up, so that not a whisper should penetrate to the dining-rooms.
The quails were delicious. Their flesh almost melted in one's mouth, as my sister-in-law remarked. When the pole nord came the ice proved not to be an ordinary one, but a semi-fluid delicacy cased in harder cream ice. The ice pedestal was in the shape of a bird resting on rocks, and when I made a feeble little jest about Andrée's pigeons my sister-in-law laughed. I reproved her austerely, telling her that if she laughed thus she would be taken for an actress. Whereon she retorted that she did not want to be taken for an actress, but that she wanted to be one. I opened my eyes in a query, and she said that if actresses were given every night such a dinner as she had eaten she wanted to be an actress.
I paid my bill while my sister-in-law admired the beautiful flower-decked Minton china, a trayful of which was brought to her, the glasses with a golden N and a crown on them and the heavy silver. The bill was: two couverts, 1s.; hors-d'œuvre, 2s.; pot au feu, 2s.; sole Waleska, 3s. 6d.; suprême d'agneau, 3s. 6d.; haricots verts, 1s. 6d.; parfait de foie gras, 4s.; caille cocotte, 5s.; salade, 1s.; pole nord, 2s. 6d.; café, 1s. 6d.; one bottle '67, 15s.; liqueurs, 2s.; total, £2: 4: 6.
I told my sister-in-law that if we were not to miss the first act of the play we were going to see, we had better be going, so she laid down the straw through which she had been sucking her crème de menthe, and with a sigh, a tribute of remembrance to the quails, put on her gloves.