III
OFF DUTY
When one ponders what the New Yorker in his leisure hours most enjoys, one answers without hesitation: feeding. The word is not elegant, but neither is the act, as one sees it in process at the mammoth restaurants. Far heavier and more prolonged than mere eating and drinking is this serious cult of food on the part of the average Manhattanite. It has even led to the forming of a distinct “set,” christened by some satirical outsider: “Lobster Society.”
Here are met the moneyed plutocrat and his exuberant “lady friend,” the mauve-waistcoated sporting man, the society déclassée with her gorgeous jewels and little air of tragedy, the expansive Hebrew and his chorus girl, the gauche out-of-town couple with their beaming smiles and last season’s clothes: all that hazy limbo that hovers on the social boundary-line, but hovers futilely—and that seeks to smother its disappointment with elaborate feasts of over-rich food.
Underwood & Underwood
“NEW YORK’S FINEST”: THE FAMOUS MOUNTED POLICE SQUAD
It is amazing the thousands of these people that there are—New York seems to breed them faster than any other type; and the hundreds of restaurants they support. Every hotel has its three or four huge dining-rooms, its Palm Garden, Dutch Grill, etc.; but, as all these were not enough, shrewd Frenchmen and Germans and Viennese have dotted the city with cafés and brauhausen and Little Hungaries, to say nothing of the alarming Egyptian and Turkish abortions that are the favourite erection of the American restaurateur himself.
The typical New York feeding-place from the outside is a palace in terra cotta; from the inside, a vast galleried room or set of rooms, upheld by rose or ochre marble pillars, carpeted with thick red rugs, furnished with bright gilt chairs and heavily damasked, flower-laden tables—the whole interspersed and overtopped and surrounded by a jumble of fountains, gilt-and-onyx Sphinxes, caryatids, centaurs, bacchantes, and heaven knows what else of the superfluous and disassociated. To reach one’s table, one must thread one’s way through a maze of lions couchant, peacocks with spread mother o’ pearl tails, and opalescent dragons that turn out to be lights: proud detail of the “million dollar decorative scheme” referred to in the advertisements of the house. Finally anchored in this sea of sumptuousness, one is confronted with the dire necessity of ordering a meal from a menu that would have staggered Epicurus.
There is the table d’hôte of nine courses—any one of them a meal in itself; or there is the bewildering carte du jour, from which to choose strawberries in December, oranges in May, or whatever collection of ruinous exotics one pleases. The New Yorker himself goes methodically down the list, from oysters to iced pudding; impartial in his recognition of the merits of lobster bisque, sole au gratin, creamed sweetbreads, porterhouse steak, broiled partridge and Russian salad. He sits down to this orgy about seven o’clock, and rises—or is assisted to rise—about ten or half past, unless he is going on to a play, in which case he disposes of his nine courses with the same lightning execution displayed at his quick-lunch, only increasing his drink supply to facilitate the process.
Meanwhile there is the “Neapolitan Quartet,” and the Hungarian Rhapsodist, and the lady in the pink satin blouse who sings “The Rosary,” to amuse our up-to-date Nero. I wonder what the Romans would make of the modern cabaret? Like so many French importations, stripped in transit of their saving coat of French esprit, the cabaret in American becomes helplessly vulgar. Extreme youth cannot carry off the risqué, which requires the salt of worldly wisdom; it only succeeds in being rowdy. And the noisy songs, the loud jokes, the blatant dances—all the spurious clap-trap which in these New York feeding-resorts passes for amusement—point to the most youthful sort of rowdyism: to a popular discrimination still in embryo. But the New Yorker dotes on it—the cabaret, I mean; if for no other reason, because it satisfies his passion for getting his money’s worth. He is ready to pay a handsome price, but he demands handsome return, and no “extras” if you please.