I am beginning to flatter myself that I am a success in clerical circles. One week I took out to dinner my sister-in-law—who, I omitted to state, is the daughter of a dean; and the next week I successfully entertained a dear, simple-minded, white-haired old clergyman who had come from his parish in the North to London on business.
Two little boys home from Harrow are sitting at a table by an open window, looking through the frame of rose sprays and streamers of virginia-creeper to the turn of the road in the foreground, where the black wood of the sun-dial, put up to commemorate the battle of Waterloo, stands out against the rose red of the old brick wall behind it, where one of the posts of the village stocks still exists as a warning to evildoers, with beyond, in the middle distance, the great horse-chestnuts and the village cricketing ground, which serves as a promenade for the postmaster's geese. The whole landscape is closed in by a great forest of firs, on the outskirts of which red roofs and the tarnished gold of thatch chequer the dark green. Behind the two little boys stands a curate fresh from Oxford, who is trying to hammer into their thick little heads the translation of
——cur apricum
oderit campum——
his own thoughts all the time, like theirs, being on the cricket-ground, and not with Quintus Horatius Flaccus. That is the picture that always comes to me when I think of my old clerical friend.
He was a keen cricketer, and bowled underhand with a cunning break from the off which was too much for the yokels of the teams that our village eleven annually held battle with; and those daily two tiresome hours over, our holiday task done, he would bowl, at the net put up in the neighbouring field, as long as we chose to bat. His one dissipation now is a visit to London annually to see the Oxford and Cambridge cricket-match, and he always stays when he comes to London at my mother's house. Unexpected business had brought him south last week, and one evening he would have been alone had I not offered to take him out somewhere.
Where to take him was a puzzle. I did not think that he would appreciate the delicacy of Savoy, or Cecil, or Prince's, or Verrey's cookery; the refinements of the Berkeley and the Avondale, and the light touch of M. Charles's hand would be as naught to him. Luckily I remembered that last July he had been taken to dine at Frascati's, by a friend and old parishioner of his, and that the place and the dinner had made so great an impression on him that his conversation for the next day consisted chiefly of praise of the gorgeous palace in which he had been entertained. If Frascati's had proved such a success once, I saw no reason why it should not be so again, and suggested that we should dine there, a suggestion which met with decided approval; so I telegraphed to ask that a table might be reserved for me upstairs.
My previous experiences of Frascati's had been chiefly confined to the grill-room, a gorgeous hall of white marble, veined with black, with a golden frieze and a golden ceiling, where I often eat a humble chop or take a cut from the joint before going to listen to Dan Leno or some other mirth-provoker at the Oxford next door; but looking at the great restaurant after we had settled down into our seats I could quite understand that the building would appear as gorgeous as a pantomime transformation-scene to the eyes of any one not blasé by our modern nil admirari London. There are gold and silver everywhere. The pillars which support the balcony, and from that spring up again to the roof, are gilt, and have silver angels at their capitals. There are gilt rails to the balcony, which runs, as in a circus, round the great octagonal building; the alcoves that stretch back seem to be all gold and mirrors and electric light. What is not gold or shining glass is either light buff or delicate grey, and electric globes in profusion, palms, bronze statuettes, and a great dome of green glass and gilding all go to make a gorgeous setting. The waiters in black, with a silver number in their button-holes, hover round the tables; somewhere below a string band, which does not impede conversation, plays. My old tutor rubbed his hands gently and smiled genially round at the gorgeousness, while I told the light-bearded manager that what I required was the ordinary table-d'hôte dinner, and picked out a Château Margaux from the long lists of clarets.
This was the menu of the table-d'hôte dinner:
Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Consommé Brunoise.
Crème Fontange.
Escalope de barbue Chauchat.
Blanchaille.
Filet mignon Victoria.
Pommes sautées.
Riz de veau Toulouse.
Faisan rôti au cresson.
Salade.
Pouding Singapore.
Glacé vanille.
Fromage. Fruits.
A platter divided into radiating sections held a great variety of hors-d'œuvre, the rosy shade of the lamp threw its light upon a magnificent bunch of grapes on the summit of a pile of other fruits, and the manager in the background kept a watchful eye upon the waiter who was putting the consommé Brunoise on the table. I could not help wondering whether my telegram had not in some way divulged the fact that I carried a fork under the banner of the Press, and that I was getting in consequence a little better treatment than the ordinary. Certainly my bunch of grapes looked like the one that the Israelitish spies brought back from Canaan, in comparison with the ones on the other tables, and the chef had no niggard hand when he apportioned the truffles and little buttons of mushrooms to our dishes of the escalope de barbue and the riz de veau Toulouse.