When the Ritz-Escoffier regime at the Savoy came to an end the directors bought the Restaurant Marivaux in the street by the side of the Opéra Comique in Paris, and brought over M. Joseph, the presiding genius of that restaurant, to take charge of the Savoy Restaurant. The Marivaux had a unique reputation in the Paris of that day for its cookery. Joseph came, bringing with him his chef, M. Thouraud. Joseph was, I think, the most inspired maître d'hôtel, with the exception, perhaps, of Frederic of the Tour d'Argent, I have ever met. The Savoy Restaurant was rather too large for his system of management, for he liked to take a personal interest in each dinner that was progressing in his restaurant and to give it his constant supervision. He was born of French parents in Birmingham, and his one great amusement was that northern sport, pigeon flying. He had pleasant brown eyes and bushy eyebrows, he wore all that remained of his hair rather long, and had a tiny moustache. He was quite wrapped up in his profession, and, as he told me once, looked at his boots the whole time that he took his afternoon constitutional walk, that he might think of new dishes. Whenever any novel idea occurred to him he tried it at home in his own little kitchen before asking M. Thouraud to make experiment on a larger scale. To see Joseph carve a duck was to see a very splendid exhibition of ornate swordsmanship, and his preparation of a canard à la presse was quite sacrificial in its solemnity. There was in his day a dinner given at the Savoy at which Madame Sarah Bernhardt was the chief guest, and most of the other people present were "stars" of our British stage. Joseph cooked before them at a side table most of the dishes of the dinner, and told me that he did so because he wished to show actresses and actors, who constantly appeal to the imagination of their audiences, that there was something also in his art to please the eye and stimulate the imagination. When I asked why he never went to the theatre, he told me that he would sooner see six gourmets eating a well-cooked dinner than watch the finest performance that Madame Bernhardt and Coquelin could give. Joseph had quite a pretty wit and facile pen. This was the jeu d'esprit that he once wrote in a young lady's album:—"C'était la première côtelette qui coûta le plus cher à l'homme—Dieu en ayant fait une femme." And he wrote for me a little essay on the duties of a maître d'hôtel that was very sprightly in style. He was even a greater believer than M. Ritz in the short dinner, and declared that we in England only tasted our dinners and did not eat them. Three dishes he considered quite enough for a good dinner, and this was a tiny feast which he ordered for me on one occasion when I took a lady to dine at the Savoy:
Petite marmite.
Sole Reichenberg.
Caneton à la presse. Salade de saison.
Fonds d'artichauts à la Reine.
Bombe pralinée. Petits fours.
Panier fleuri.
The panier fleuri he carved himself at table from an orange.
Joseph became homesick, for he was a thorough Parisian, and went back eventually to the Marivaux, but he soon after died.
JOSEPH CARVING A DUCK
After a drawing by Paul Renouard
The directors of the Savoy Company, which owns the Berkeley and Claridge's as well as the Savoy Hotel, brought jolly, genial, rosy-faced M. Jules, under whose rule the Berkeley had prospered exceedingly, from that white-faced hotel to the Savoy, and his rule on the Thames Embankment was as successful as it had been in Piccadilly. It was during his managership that the additions that were to give the entrance on to the Strand were planned, and, I fancy, were begun, and when M. Jules left the Savoy to make for himself a restaurant and hotel in Jermyn Street, M. Renault, from the Casino at Biarritz, came to the Savoy Restaurant, and the quick-witted M. Pruger became general manager.
This was a period of great activity and of many alterations in the building. No Savoy manager has ever had more brilliant inspirations for great feasts than M. Pruger had. The gondola dinner was one of his ideas and he always thought of something novel and amusing for the Christmas and New Year's Eve parties. M. Renault is now in Rome at the hotel there owned by the Savoy Company; M. Pruger was tempted away to America to manage a mammoth restaurant on modern lines, but came back from New York to take over the management of the Royal Automobile Club when its great club-house in Pall Mall was opened. M. Gustave, of the russet beard, who had steered the newly built Café Parisien of the Savoy to great success, next became manager of the hotel, and that brings us down to the history of to-day, for when he resigned his appointment M. Blond, the present manager, succeeded him.