My old tutor was considering the diners at the other tables benignantly, and having quite an unjustifiable belief that I know the face or everybody in London, asked me who they were. Whether we had come to dine on an exceptional night I do not know, but all our fellow-guests were in couples: the men, I should fancy, principally gentlemen who spend their days in offices in the City, or in banks, fine specimens, most of them, of young England; and the ladies with them, either their wives or ladies who will eventually honour them by becoming so, as handsome representatives of British womanhood as I have ever seen collected under one roof. Out of all this gathering of stalwart men and pretty ladies there was not a single face that I recognised, and I am afraid I went down in the good old man's estimation as being a walking dictionary of London celebrities. My old tutor said that the escalope de barbue was excellent, and it certainly looked good. I tried the whitebait, and found it too dry. The fillet was good. The chef had surrounded the riz de veau with truffles and tiny mushrooms and many other good things, and my old tutor, who ate it, said that it was excellent.
The little tables on the ground floor had all filled by now, and the lady behind the long bar, with piles of plates on it, and with a long line of looking-glasses behind it reflecting many bottles, was very busy. A subdued hum of talking and the faint rattle of knives and forks against crockery mixed with the music of the band.
The pheasant was a fine plump bird; the ice was excellent. I insisted on my old tutor having a glass of port to end his dinner, and after much pressing—for one glass of wine is all he allows himself as a rule at a meal—he was over-persuaded. Then he rubbed his hands and beamed, and told me stories of his own schoolboyhood: how he once fought another boy, now a Colonial Governor, and smote him so severely on the nose that it bled; and of a dreadful escapade, which still weighs on his mind—nothing less than going to see a race-meeting, and being subsequently soundly birched.
This was the bill I paid:—Two dinners at 5s., 10s.; one bottle 6A, 7s.; half-bottle 61, 5s. 6d.; total, £1: 2: 6.
My old tutor went away with his enthusiasm of the summer still unimpaired; and when next I have a country cousin to take out to dinner I shall go to Frascati's.
8th November.