Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

I will give three instances of the progress of the reform. I select Gatti’s in the Strand, Romano’s in the same thoroughfare, and Pagani’s in Great Portland Street. Of the three, Gatti’s is the least characteristically French, although an excellent French meal may be obtained there. The Gattis aimed to be all things to all men; and I hope it may not prejudice the reader if I mention that it is to-day a favourite resort of Mr. Lloyd George, who may frequently be seen at the Adelaide Gallery in company with a brother Welshman, the esteemed proprietor of Ally Sloper. The growth of the Gatti concern is one of the commercial marvels of the day. It started as a café in Adelaide Street, where fried chops and steaks with chipped potatoes were served on marble-topped tables. The meal was washed down with generous draughts of coffee or chocolate, and the prices were strictly moderate. To-day the establishment has struck right through into the Strand, and spread itself halfway along Adelaide Street. Its proprietors own two playhouses in the immediate vicinity—the Adelphi and the Vaudeville—and supply half the Strand with electric current from their own dynamos. It is the culinary Mecca of the suburban, and actors as well as Chancellors find it a convenient place at which to lunch.

As a rule a restaurant fails or forges ahead on its own merits or demerits. But now and then the chance visit of an influential customer lifts it from obscurity into the warm light of popular favour. You have seen how E. S. Dallas made the fortune of Kettner’s. Carr’s, in the Strand, was made by an article which appeared in All the Year Round, an article which was generally attributed to Dickens, but was in reality the work of one of his staff—Sala, Halliday, Hollingshead, or another; in fact, the writers on that magazine had so entirely acquired the descriptive trick of “the Master” that it was a difficult thing to “tell t’other from which.” Poor Pellegrini was the man who discovered Pagani’s. It was a poky little place, indifferently patronized, when he first entered it. But he soon discovered that he could get there spaghetti cooked and served as in his native Italy. It was served, too, with a puree of tomato very different from the watery and acid preparation to which in this country we had become habituated. Tosti the composer followed where Pellegrini had led. The small refreshment-room was enlarged; an “artists’ room” was established upstairs. At last adjoining premises were acquired. Old Pagani’s was rebuilt into the handsome and popular restaurant as it is known to the present generation of diners. The Paganis have retired on substantial fortunes to the mountainous land of their nativity.

In carrying out structural alterations, the Paganis, with characteristic astuteness, determined that the “artists’ room” should not be tampered with by the builders. In London no interior is so rich in mural decorations contributed, gratis and off-hand, by distinguished men using the apartment. Tosti has written up some bars of a song, dear old Pellegrini has contributed some sketches, and other artists have from time to time added to the exhibition, happy to enrich it if only by an autograph. The sketches, signatures, and bits of musical composition, have been covered with glass. In other respects the famous upper chamber remains much what it was in the old days. In that room I have spent many happy, interesting, and memorable nights. One of the most memorable of these was on the occasion of a supper given by my friend Patrick Edward Dove, to the members of the first company that performed “Cavalleria Rusticana” in London. Dove was a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, famous for his knowledge of Patent Law, his acquaintance with the music of the bagpipes (he had made a collection of several hundred pibroch “scores”), and his unerring taste as a gastronome. When last I visited Pagani’s, they still mixed a salad known as salad à la Dove. The new opera had been produced at the Shaftesbury, conducted by Arditi, and the tenor part had been entrusted to Vignas, a singer new to the town. All the principals responded to Dove’s invitation, and the “artists’ room” became the arena of more noise and enthusiasm than had ever been exhibited there before. The tenor turned up rather late, being, I have no doubt, a nice judge of the psychological moment at which to contrive a dramatic entrance. These children of art and of the South proceeded “to signify their approval in the usual manner.” They rushed upon the poor man, and—men and women alike—fell upon his neck and kissed him. To a mere Englishman the scene was rather embarrassing. But it was soon over, and the rest of the night passed in immense chattering and jabbering, everybody seeming to talk at once, and the utmost amity and joyousness informing the polyglot crowd.

In the early days of Pagani’s the patrons of the restaurant were nearly all Italians, and among them the most picturesque figure was that of a very old gentleman with long silvery hair, extremely classic features, and scrupulously clean linen, a circumstance remarkable in an Italian restaurant of the period. The old gentleman made his appearance each day between twelve and one, and was always respectfully saluted by his compatriots. He had a very frugal midday meal, consisting principally of a decoction of eggs in a tumbler. After this he would sit chatting over his coffee with friends, who took chairs near him, until well on into the afternoon. They were informal receptions of a kind, these afternoons of the handsome old man; for he had been Garabaldi’s doctor, and naturally was held in high regard by his compatriots. His disappearance all at once from his accustomed place was, of course, much commented on. It was supposed that he was ill. On inquiry, however, it was discovered that he was only married. A lady had fallen in love with the dear old chap, carried him off, and married him. The bride probably considered that the domestic hearth was more suited to her husband than life in restaurants, and so Pagani’s knew him no more.

Romano had been a waiter at the Café Royal; and while engaged in this capacity he must have picked up a great deal of experience of London Society and its ways, which stood him in good stead when he found himself the owner of a smart restaurant in the Strand. A good many men, and, indeed, some well-known publications, like to pose as the “discoverers” of Romano’s. As a matter of fact, Romano was discovered by George Piesse, an epicurean West End book-maker; and its first regular customers were the London representative of the New York Herald, and the ubiquitous and frugal “Ape.” It gradually became known to those who liked œuf à la cocotte and other Parisian delicacies. Then it made one of those sharp and sudden ascents into popularity, its prices ascending with a proportionate sharpness and suddenness. At luncheon-time there was a difficulty in getting a table in the long narrow saloon, looking like a disused shooting-gallery. The bar that ran in front was crammed with book-makers, pressmen, chorus-ladies, champagne-shippers, and young peers seeing life. In a word, Romano’s was “booming.” Bessie Bellwood made it one of her usual haunts of an afternoon; Hughie Drummond dropped in after a day on the Stock Exchange; “Billy” Fitzwilliam was a supporter of its clever proprietor; poor “Kim” Mandeville (afterwards Duke of Manchester) was a regular customer. The two least popular members of the congregation joined somewhat later. These were the Marquis of Ailesbury and Abingdon Baird, commonly called “the Squire.” These two gentlemen rarely appeared in public except accompanied by a couple of “bruisers,” and their attitude to society in general entirely justified the precaution they took in providing themselves with bodyguards—or body-blackguards, shall I say? Romano’s was for a long time the rallying-point of the more rapid section of men-about-town and their lady friends. But it was always more than this. Romano had learned his business in the best French school in London, and in his catering he always regarded the traditions of la haute cuisine, and he had a fine taste in wine, the advantages of which were at the disposal of his customers.

The evolution which I have described as working itself out in three establishments, all of which originated in small and unpromising beginnings and under somewhat adverse conditions, was elsewhere evident. While the small caravanserai of Soho, with its cheap dinner and vin compris was extending itself into the outer streets, and even as far as the suburbs, the founding of more swagger restaurants was taking place all round, and competent chefs began to look to London, and not any more to Paris, as the summit of their ambition. The Savoy was one of the first to take full advantage of the new direction of public taste. But at the present moment it has a hundred competitors, from the restaurant at the Waldorf, on the eastern confines of dinner land, to the Ritz, on its western frontier.

Having now indicated the extent and importance of the reform which has been effected in our eating and drinking during the passing of a few short years, I must return for a moment to my muttons, and record one or two of the fading memories of other days. There was a table reserved in the Café Royal grill-room at which, of an afternoon, there was always a considerable amount of laughter. Here were wont to meet MacMahon, the inventor of the electric “tape” machine; Jenks, a gentleman who had made a million by running gaming-hells; Ives, of the Morning; and Jo Aaronson, the brother of the well-known New York entrepreneur. There were others who were made welcome at this grill-room gathering, so that as often as not the table had to be doubled by adding another. Aaronson was a quaint American with a national sense of humour, a nice knowledge of the moment at which to “chip in” with a story, and a slight stutter, which gave an added value to everything he said. I remember one day quite well when, with a face drawn and melancholy, he recounted to us the details of a misfortune which had overtaken him. His uncle John had died in London, and Jo had been entrusted with the melancholy duty of having the body cremated and buried. Jo described the cremation with great detail and picturesqueness, showed himself receiving the sacred ashes in an urn, and hurrying with his precious vase to the railway-station, in order to catch a train to town. When Jo arrived in town, he hurried out of the train, got into a cab, and automatically told the driver to go to his club. It was not until Jo arrived at the club that he recollected that he had forgotten all about Uncle John! He had placed the ashes of the deceased in the hat-rack of the railway-carriage in which he had travelled, and, when he arrived at Waterloo, had forgotten all about it. And the ashes of Uncle John have not been recovered even unto this day.

The café off which the grill-room opens, and which covers the greater portion of the ground-floor, became the most cosmopolitan rallying-point in London. For while the atmosphere of the place attracted Continental visitors of all nationalities, the quality of both the viands and wine, with the excellence of the cooking and service, soon made it a favourite resort of self-respecting Englishmen. Among the illustrious exiles who from time to time have sipped coffee over its domino-tables were Pilotel, the artist, who had left Paris after the Commune. Under that extraordinary form of misgovernment Pilotel had been Minister of Fine Arts. In London he discovered his métier in designing models for the Court milliners, and fashion-plates for the ladies’ newspapers. A ribald wag once nicknamed him “the waister,” employing that word, not in any derogatory sense, but as a tribute to the wasp-like proportions with which the great big man could endow a woman’s bodice.

Boulanger has waxed voluble over his fortunes in this Regent Street refuge. And here the notorious Esterházy, in later days, has consoled himself in exile, his moments soothed by the adulation of a female admirer. Here I have sat with Fred Sandys, the artist, while he has discussed politics from the Conservative point of view with Michael Davitt, the Nationalist, the only Irish politician I ever met who gave me the idea that he believed all he said. It all comes back to me—the rattle of the dominoes on the marble slabs, the air charged with the blue, acrid smoke from a hundred cigarettes, the quick transit of the white-aproned waiters, the pungent odour of the café noir, the flow of conversational chatter in half a dozen languages, the froufrou of the passing skirt, the flash of dark eyes, the smile on vermilion lips, the high-pitched laugh over some picture in Le Petit Journal pour Rire, the general air of life and the joy of it. The history of the cellar at this famous restaurant is one of the romances of the wine trade, and would be out of place here. But it may just be noted that, when the vineyards in the South of France which had supplied the brandy grape were, in the seventies, laid bare by the phylloxera, the proprietor had provided for a shortage in the eighties; and when that shortage made itself felt, Frenchmen willingly paid the three shillings which were demanded then for a liqueur-glass of fin champagne.

Verrey’s, on the other side of Regent Street, I have mentioned as the second West End establishment at which a French dinner could be obtained in those gastronomically evil days which preceded the great awakening. When I first knew Verrey’s, it was run by old George Krehl, a most entertaining man of the old school. He was not a Parisian, or, indeed, a Frenchman at all; but he had been educated in the French methods, and his bisque was the most delicate to be obtained in London. At the death of the old man the restaurant descended to his son George, who has since died. George the younger Krehl was a dog-fancier in rather a large way of business. He ran a paper called The Stock-keeper, devoted to the interests of the “fancy.” Krehl the Younger introduced some new breeds to Society, among which were the basset-hound and the schipperké.