DINNERS AND DINERS

WHERE AND HOW TO DINE IN LONDON

BY

LIEUT.-COL. [NATHANIEL] NEWNHAM-DAVIS

London

GRANT RICHARDS

9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

OFFICE OF THE PALL MALL PUBLICATIONS
18 CHARING CROSS ROAD, W.C.

1899

[To all the gentlemen, the managers of the various restaurants and the masters of the culinary art, who have assisted me in the making of this little book, I give my most grateful thanks.]

THE AUTHOR.

[PREFACE]

When the series of articles now collected in this volume was first discussed between their author and myself in the early part of 1897, we found it a matter of no slight difficulty to determine what range they should take, and to what class of establishments they should be confined. There is no accounting for the variety of people's tastes in the matter of eating and drinking, and among the readers of the Pall Mall Gazette persons no doubt could be found ranging from the Sybarite, who requires Lucullus-like banquets, to him of the simple appetite for whom little more than a dinner with Duke Humphrey would suffice. Consequently, the choice of places to be visited had to be made in a catholic spirit, with the necessary result that a formidably long list was prepared. In selecting Colonel Newnham-Davis to carry out this commission for the Pall Mall Gazette, I knew I was availing myself of the services of a thoroughly experienced, trustworthy, and capable commissioner, who would deal with the task entrusted to him in a pleasantly mixed anecdotal and critical spirit, while at the same time supplying useful guidance to persons wanting to know where to dine and what they would have to pay. In the following pages it will be seen how well he carried out the duty he undertook, and I am able to add that "Dinners and Diners" had a great vogue and very wide popularity among the readers of the Pall Mall Gazette. There were very many requests from various quarters that they should be collected into book form, and this has now been done with some valuable additions included in the shape of recipes and other information. In these days, when the taste for dining at restaurants is so largely on the increase, I have little doubt that the republication of these articles will be welcomed, and that they will supply not only interesting but useful information.

The Editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette.
March 1899.

CONTENTS

[Transcriber's note: The advertisements bound in at the beginning and end of the original publication have been grouped together at the end of this digital edition.]

[FOREWORD]

THE DIFFICULTIES OF DINING

I would be willing to make you, my dear sir, a very small bet, that if in the early afternoon you go into the restaurant where you intend to dine in the evening and disturb the head waiter, who is reading a paper at one of the side tables, suddenly breaking the news upon him that you want a simple little dinner for two at eight o'clock, and wish to commence the repast with clear soup, he, in reply, after pulling out a book of order papers and biting his lead pencil, will, a moment of thought intervening, suggest petite marmite.

It is not his fault. Hundreds of Britons have taken the carte de jour out of his hands, and, looking at the list of soups, puzzled by the names which mean nothing to them, have fallen back upon petite marmite or croûte au pot, which they know are harmless homely soups which the lady they are going to bring to dinner cannot object to.

It requires a certain amount of bravery, a little consciousness of knowledge, for the ordinary man looking down a list of dishes to put his finger on every third one and ask, "What is that?" He is much more likely, the head waiter, who has summed him up, prompting him, to order very much the dinner that he would have eaten in his suburban home had he been dining there that night.

Every good cook has his little vanities. They are all inventors; and when any one of them, breaking away from the strict lines of the classic haute cuisine, finds that a pinch of this or two drops of that improves some well-known dish, he immediately gives it a new name. It is the same with explorers. Did any one of them find a goat with half a twist more in its horns than another explorer had noticed, but he called it a new species and christened it Ovis Jonesi, Browni, or Robinsoni, according to his surname. If you see filets de sole à la Hercules John Jones on the carte do not be afraid to ask what it is. It is probably some old acquaintance slightly altered by the chef, who has had a flash of inspiration when preparing it for Mr. Hercules John Jones, a valued client of the restaurant.

I should have begun this foreword by warning all experienced diners to skip it and go on to Chapter I. It is not too late to do so now. I, who have gone through all the agonies that a simple Briton struggling in the spider web of a carte de jour can endure, am only trying to warn other simple Britons with a liking for a good dinner by an account of my experiences.

If you or I, in the absence of the maître d'hôtel and the head waiter, fall into the hands of an underling, Heaven help us. He will lure you or me on to order the most expensive dinner that his limited imagination can conceive, and thinks he is doing his duty to the patron. Luckily, such ill-luck as this rarely occurs. The manager is the man to look for, if possible, when composing a menu. The higher you reach up that glorious scale of responsibility which runs from manager to marmiton, the more intelligent help you will get in ordering your dinner, the more certain you are to have an artistic meal, and not to be spending money unworthily.

That you must pay on the higher scale for a really artistic dinner is, I regret to say, a necessity. No doubt the luxurious surroundings, the quick, quiet service appear indirectly in the bill; but the material for the dinner is costly. No pains are spared nowadays to put on the table of a first-class restaurant the very best food that the world can produce. Not only France, but countries much farther afield are systematically pillaged that Londoners may dine, and I do not despair of some day eating mangostines for dessert. All this costs money; but the gourmets, like the dilettanti in any other art, do not get a chef-d'œuvre for the price of a "pot-boiler."

I, personally, always prefer a dinner à la carte to a table-d'hôte one. The table-d'hôte one—which is a misused word, for the table-d'hôte was the general table presided over by the host—has advanced, with the more general appreciation that dining does not mean simply eating, and at a good restaurant the dinner of the day is cooked to the minute for the groups at each separate table; but it has the disadvantage that you have to eat a dinner ordered according to somebody else's idea, and you have no choice as to length or composition. With a friendly maître d'hôtel to assist, the composing of a menu for a small dinner is a pleasure. To eat a table-d'hôte dinner is like landing a fish which has been hooked and played by someone else.

Mr. Echenard, late of the Savoy, in chatting over the vagaries of diners, shook his head over the want of knowledge of the wines that should be drunk with the various kinds of food. No man knows better what goes to make a perfect dinner than Mr. Echenard does, and as to the sinfulness of Britons in this particular, I quite agreed with him. In Paris no man dreams of drinking champagne, and nothing but champagne, for dinner; but in London the climate and the taste of the fair sex go before orthodox rules. A tired man in our heavy atmosphere feels often that champagne is the one wine that will give him life again; and as the ladies as a rule would think a dinner at a restaurant incomplete without champagne, ninety-nine out of a hundred Englishmen, in ordering a little dinner for two, turn instinctively to the champagne page of the wine-card. It is wrong, but until we get a new atmosphere and give up taking ladies out to dinner, champagne will be practically the only wine drunk at restaurants.

On the subject of tips it is difficult to write. I have always found that a shilling for every pound or part of a pound, or a shilling for each member of a party brings a "thank you" from the waiter at any first-class restaurant. I should be inclined to err a little on the liberal side of this scale; for waiters do not have an easy life, are mainly dependent on the tips they get, and have it in their power to greatly add to, or detract from, the pleasure of a dinner. I always find that the man who talks about "spoiling the market," in this respect is thinking of protecting his own pocket and not his neighbour's.

Finally—and I feel very much as if I had been preaching a sermon—I should, to put it all as shortly as possible, advise you, my brother simple Briton—not you, the experienced diners, who have been expressly warned off from this lecture—in ordering your dinner to get the aid of the manager, and failing him the maître d'hôtel, never to be hustled by an underling into ordering a big dinner when you want a small one, and never to be afraid of asking what the composition of a dish is.

The following little essay on the duties of a maître d'hôtel which Mons. Joseph has sent me speaks most eloquently for itself:

Mon cher Colonel—

Vous me demandez pour votre nouveau livre des recettes. Méfiez-vous des recettes. Depuis la cuisinière bourgeoise et le Baron Brisse on a chanté la chanson sur tous les airs et sur tous les tons. Et qu'en reste-t'il; qui s'en souvient? Je veux dire dans le public aristocratique pour qui vous écrivez, et que vous comptez intéresser avec votre nouvelle publication, cherchez le nouveau dans les à propos de table, donnez des conseils aux maîtresses de maison, qui dépensent beaucoup d'argent pour donner des dîners fatiguants, trop longs, trop compliqués; dîtes leur qu'un bon dîner doit être court, que les convives doivent manger et non goûter, qu'elles exigent de leur cuisinier ou cuisinière de n'être pas trop savants, qu'ils respectent avant tout le goût que le bon Dieu a donné à toutes choses de ne pas les dénaturer par des combinaisons, qui à force d'être raffinées deviennent barbares.

On a beaucoup parlé du cuisinier. Si nous exposions un peu ce que doit être le Maître d'Hôtel.

Le Maître D'Hôtel Français

La plus grande force du Maître d'hôtel français, je dis maître d'hôtel français à dessein, car si le cuisinier français a su tirer parti des produits de la nature avec un art infini, pour en faire des aliments aimables, agréables, et bienfaisants, le Maître d'hôtel français seul est susceptible de les faire accepter et désirer. Or voilà pour le Maître d'hôtel le champ qu'il a à explorer. Champ vaste s'il en fût, car déviner avec tact ce qui peut plaire à celui-ci et ne pas plaire à celui-là, est un problème à résoudre selon la nature, le tempérament et la nationalité de celui qu'il doit faire manger. Il doit donc être le conseil, le tentateur, et le metteur en scène. Il faut pour être un maître d'hôtel accompli, mettre de côté, ou du moins ne pas laisser percer le but commercial, tout en étant un commerçant hors ligne (je parle ici du maître d'hôtel public de restaurant, attendu que dans la maison particulière, le commerce n'a rien à voir, ce qui simplifie énormement le rôle du maître d'hôtel. Pour cela il faut être un peu diplomate, et un peu artiste dans l'art de dire, afin de colorer le projet de repas que l'on doit soumettre à son dîneur). Il faut donc agir sur l'imagination pour fair oublier la machine que l'on va alimenter, en un mot masquer le côté matériel de manger. J'ai acquis la certitude qu'un plat savamment préparé par un cuisinier hors ligne peut passer inaperçu, ou inapprecié si le maître d'hôtel, qui devient alors metteur en scène, ne sait pas présenter l'œuvre, de façon à le faire désirer, de sorte que si ce mets est servi par un maître d'hôtel qui n'en comprend pas le caractère, il lui sera impossible de lui donner tout son relief, et alors l'œuvre du cuisinier sera anéanti et passera inaperçu.

Ce maître d'hôtel doit être aussi un observateur et un juge et doit transmettre son appréciation au chef de cuisine, mais pour apprécier il faut savoir, pour savoir il faut aimer son art, le maître d'hôtel doit être un apôtre.

Il doit transmettre les observations qu'il a pu entendre pendant le cours d'un dîner de la part des convives, observations favorables ou défavorables, il doit les transmettre au chef et aviser avec lui. Il doit aussi être en observation, car il arrive le plus souvent que les convives ne disent rien à cause de leur amphitryon mais ne mangent pas avec plaisir et entrain le mets présenté: là encore le maître d'hôtel doit chercher le pourquoi. Il y a aussi dans un déjeuner ou un dîner un rôle très important réservé au maître d'hôtel. La variété agréable des hors-d'œuvre, la salade qui accompagne le rôti, le façon de découper ce rôti avec élégance, de bien disposer ce rôti sur son plat une fois découpé, découper bien et vite, afin d'éviter le réchaud qui sèche. Savoir mettre à point une selle de mouton, avec juste ce qu'il faut de sel sur la partie grasse, qui lui donnera un goût agréable.

Pour découper le maître d'hôtel doit se placer ni trop près ni trop loin des convives, afin que ceux-ci soient intéressés, et voient que tous les détails sont observés avec goût et élégance, de façon à tenter encore les appétits qui n'en peuvent presque plus mais qui renaissent encore un peu aiguillonnés par le désir qu'a su faire naître l'artiste préposé au repas, et qui a su donner encore envie à l'imagination, quand l'estomac commençait à capituler.

Le maître d'hôtel a de plus cette partie de la fin du dîner, le choix d'un bon fromage, les fruits, les soins de température à donner aux vins, la façon de décanter ceux-ci pour leur donner le maximum de bouquet; le maître d'hôtel ne peut-il encore être un tentateur avec la fraise frappée (à la Marivaux)? La pêche à la cardinal, qu'accompagne si bien le doux parfum de la framboise, légèrement acidulé d'un de jus de groseille, notre grand carême qualifiait.

Certains plats de "manger des Dieux," combien l'expression est heureuse.

Depuis que je suis à Londres j'ai trouvé un nombre incalculable "d'inventeurs de ma pêche à la cardinal." Il me faudra leur donner la recette un jour que j'en aurai l'occasion.

N'est-ce pas de l'art chez le maître d'hôtel qui tente et charme les convives par ces raffinements, et qui comme un cavalier sur une moture essoufflée sait encore relever son courage et lui faire faire la dernière foulée qui décide de la victoire? Après un bon repas le maître d'hôtel a la grande satisfaction d'avoir donné un peu de bonheur à de pauvres gens riches, qui ne sont pas toujours des heureux.

Et comme l'a dit Brillat Savarin "Le plaisir de la table ne nuit pas aux autres plaisirs." Au contraire, qui sait si indirectement je ne suis pas le papa de bien des Bébés rieurs, ou la cause au moins de certaines aventures que mes jolies clientes n'évoquent qu'en souriant derrière leur éventail?

JOSEPH
Directeur du Savoy Restaurant, Londres,
et du Restaurant de Marivaux, Paris.

[CHAPTER I]

PRINCES' HALL (PICCADILLY)

She is a charming little lady, and her husband, to tell the truth, spoils her just a little. Most married dames would have been content, if they wished to dine at a restaurant on the occasion of their birthday, with one dinner; but Mrs. Daffodil—if I may so call her, from her favourite flower—insisted on having a dinner out on Saturday, and another on Sunday, and another on Monday, because, though her twenty-first birthday really fell on Saturday, she was going to keep it on Monday, when a great party of her husband's people were to meet at the Savoy, and on Sunday her people were organising a feast at the Berkley; but Mrs. Daffodil said that unless she dined out on the evening of her real birthday she was sure she would have no luck during the coming year, and I was told that I was to have the privilege of being the third at the little dinner which was to be the veritable birthday dinner, and that, as a return for this great favour, I was to order the dinner and choose the restaurant.

I was too wise to take the full responsibility of anything so important, and in a council of three we ran down the list of dining places. Of those we paused over in consideration, the Princes' Hall was the nearest to Mrs. Daffodil's flat, and the little lady remembered that she had not dined there this year, and suddenly decided that it was the very place for a birthday dinner; and should she wear her new white dress, or would the black dress with the handsome bit of lace suit her better? Her husband looked a little helpless at the mention of dress, and I at a venture suggested the black, for I remembered that the roof of the grand salon of the Princes', with its heavy mouldings, was white picked out with gold, while the great panels of brick red, powdered with golden fleurs-de-lys and the palms filling-in the corners, would show up a black dress just as well as a white one.

Black it was to be, and, this important matter decided, I was sent off as an advance messenger in a hansom cab to order the best table available and a dinner, not too elaborate and not too small, which was to be ready by the time little Mrs. Daffodil had dressed and could drive down to the restaurant in her brougham.

My hansom was a fleet one. A party of guests at one of the tables by the windows, evidently bound for a theatre, had finished their dinner and were just off and away as I arrived, and I pounced like a hawk upon the table they left vacant. The first preliminaries were soon over, for the little dapper maître d'hôtel, whom I had known in previous days at the East Room of the Criterion, had the table cleared at once, found some yellow flowers which, if they were not daffodils, were very like them, and had big bouquets of them put upon the table. Then came the important question of the dinner. Hors-d'œuvre variés, suggested the little maître d'hôtel; but I moved as an amendment that it should be caviar, for the caviar at the Princes' is Benoist's, and no man imports better. "Turtle," suggested the maître d'hôtel, a little doubtfully, after being defeated in his first venture, and as I passed the suggestion with a nod potage tortue went down on the slip of paper. Mrs. Daffodil had made a suggestion as to salmon which she withdrew as soon as made, but I had remembered it, and saumon à la Grenobloise was scribbled down. "Now," said the maître d'hôtel a little decisively, "since the soup and the fish are brown, we must have a white entrée," and as I was not prepared at the moment with any practical suggestion, having thought of noisettes de mouton and a woodcock as the rest of the solid part of the dinner, I allowed the proposal to go by default, and fricassée de poulet à l'Ancienne was ordered. "A tiny saddle of lamb?" was the next suggestion, and although I regretted my prospective woodcock I let the matter go, for we had a bird already in the menu. "Pommes nouvelles risolées. Salade de mâche, céleri, betterave. Asperges anglaises," reeled off my mentor, and I nodded at the mention of the English asparagus; and then to show that I was going to have a word in the ordering of the dinner I added macédoine de fruits à l'orientale and friandises without requiring any prompting.

I waited in the bright, French-looking entrance hall, with its mirrors and screens decorated with painted flowers, and watched the people coming in and going out. A party of smart young men from the Stock Exchange, most of whom I knew, on their way to a row of stalls they had taken at the Gaiety, passed and chaffed me for my waiting; but the sound of the band within in the great white railed-in musicians' gallery was cheerful—and an excellent band it is, each artist in it being a soloist of some celebrity—and presently M. Fourault, the manager, who is the brother-in-law of M. Benoist, came out and talked to me, saying that M. Azema, the chef, was personally superintending the cooking of the dinner, to which I replied that I was much obliged that the great artist from the Café Anglais should have paid me the compliment. Then M. Fourault launched forth into details of the service and the building: how the dishes are brought direct to the guests by hand so as to avoid the chance of draughts in lifts; of the beauty of the kitchen; the arrangements to keep in touch with and co-operate with the Royal Institute on the top floor, and a variety of other topics. And as he talked Signor Bocchi's band inside was softly playing, and I was growing hungry waiting for little Mrs. Daffodil, for I knew that it would not be her husband who caused the delay.

The brougham drew up before the glass portico with its brass ornamentations, and Mrs. Daffodil in the wonderful black dress was helped out. She would bring her ermine cape in with her, she thought; and having arrived at the table smiled graciously at seeing her name-flowers there. I explained that the table by the door protected by the glass screens was my favourite one, and that I should have taken it if possible, but that it had been engaged for days, and Mrs. Daffodil was pleased to think the one we had obtained was quite as nice. Didn't she think the room, with its big panels, its few long mirrors, its clusters of electric lights and electric candles on the tables, and its musicians' gallery over the entrance to the offices and kitchen, very handsome? I asked. And as she helped herself to the caviar, each little ball as separate as if they had been pellets of shot, she assented; but to show that she was critical, thought there ought to have been more palms. Then the little lady took up the questioning, and wanted to know who everybody was who was dining. I was able to point out a well-known artist taking a quiet meal with his wife, who at one time was an ornament of the comedy-stage; a party of soldier officers up from Aldershot (and I had a story of the gallantry of one of them, and how he should have won by right a Victoria Cross); an ex-Gaiety girl who was the heroine of a breach of promise case, and who had at the table she occupied quite a crowd of gilded youths; a youngster whose good looks have won him a very rich but not too young wife—and there I had to pause, for though the room was full of well-dressed, smart-looking people, I knew no more of them by name.

I was reproved for not knowing my London better, and tried to turn the conversation by telling my host that I would sooner share the burgundy with him than drink the champagne which Mrs. Daffodil thought a necessary part of her birthday dinner, but at that moment, the soup being brought, we all relapsed into serious criticism. The turtle soup was good undoubtedly, as good as at any City dinner, with its jade-coloured semi-solid floating in the darker liquor, and we praised that unreservedly, but I was told that I was in a carping mood because I stated that I like my salmon as plainly cooked as possible. As to the fricassée, I liked it immensely; but Mrs. Daffodil, because her shoe pinched, or for some other good reason, said that she hated truffles. The lamb, the most delicate little selle d'agneau de lait, with the potatoes and the dark green salad relieved by the crimson of the beetroot, was admirable. English asparagus never can be anything but good, and though my hostess insisted on my eating a cherry from among the friandises, I left the sweets, as is my custom, alone.

And the bill. I asked my host to let me look at it, and here it is:—three couverts, 3s.; caviar, 3s.; tortue, 6s.; saumon, 6s.; fricassée de poulet, 7s.; selle d'agneau, 8s.; pommes risolées, 2s.; salade, 1s. 6d.; asperges, 10s. 6d.; macédoine de fruits, 4s. 6d.; one '67 (Burgundy), 12s.; ½ 140 (champagne), 7s. 6d., three cafés special, 1s. 6d.; three liqueurs fine champagne (1800), 6s.; total, £4: 0: 6.

1st February.

This was a dinner ordered in a hurry and without perhaps due consideration. Talking over it some days later on with Mons. Fourault, I asked him to give me a suggestion as to what he considered a typical Princes' Hall dinner for a larger number, and I also asked him to be my ambassador to M. Azema, the chef, for the recette of the poulet à l'Ancienne, which I had liked so much.

This is the menu for a dinner of six covers, a very admirable dinner of ceremony. As to its cost, I am not prepared to guess.

Le Signi du Volga.
Les petits coulibiacs à la Czarine.
La crème Ste-Marie.
Les suprêmes de truites à la Princesse.
Les poulardes à la Georges Sand.
Le Baron de Pauillac aux primeurs.
Les bécasses au champagne.
La salade Impériale.
Les asperges d'Argenteuil Ste-Mousseleine.
Le soufflé chaud succès.
La glace Leda.
Une corbeille de friandise.
Les canapés Diane.
Dessert.

Mons. Azema thought the fricassée Ancienne, the recette of which I had asked for, too simple a dish, and instead sent me the recette for the poularde Georges Sand, which is a very lordly dish. Here it is as Mons. Azema wrote it, and a translation for any good people who, like myself, are puzzled sometimes by the terms employed in la Haute Cuisine.

Recette de la poularde G. Sand

Lever les membres d'une belle poularde très blanche bien régulièrement. Faire la tomber à blond, avec un oignon émincé, une bonne pointe de paprika, et deux verres de vin blanc, environ quarante-cinq minutes. Retirer la poularde et passer le fonds à l'étamine, le monter avec un bon beurre d'écrevisse, et garnir avec queues d'écrevisse, belles truffes, en olives, et croûtons de feuilletage. Servir très chaud.

Dismember a large white fowl very carefully. Stew it in white stock, with a chopped onion, a good pinch of paprika, and two glasses of white wine, for about forty-five minutes. Take out the fowl, and pass the stock through the tammy. Flavour with a good cray-fish butter, and garnish with tails of cray-fish, large truffles, olives, and croûtons of French puff-paste (feuilletage). Serve very hot.

[CHAPTER II]

THE CHESHIRE CHEESE

I had been kept late in Fleet Street on Saturday, and at a little before seven I woke to the fact that it was near the dinner hour, that I was in the clothes I had worn all day, that I was brain-weary and tired, and not energetic. I should be late for dinner if I went home, half across the width of London; I could not well dine at a club without evening clothes, and a smart restaurant was equally out of the question, for I felt, being in the state of humiliation which weariness and London grime bring one to, that I could not have held my own as to the choice of a table or the ordering of a dinner against even the least determined maître d'hôtel.

The easiest way was to dine at one of the Fleet Street hostelries, and I ran such of them as I know over in my mind. How they have changed since Herrick rang them into rhyme! Then they were the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tun. Now they are the Rainbow, the Cock, Anderton's, the Cheshire Cheese, and a host more. It was a pudding day at the Cheshire Cheese, not the crowded day, which is Wednesday, but a day on which I was sure to get a seat in the lower room and be able to eat my meal in comfort and content; and that finally decided me in favour of the hostelry in Wine Office Court.

It is not a cheerful thoroughfare that leads up to the Cheshire Cheese. It is a narrow and dark passage, and the squat little door of the tavern itself is not inviting, for it is reminiscent of a country public-house. It is not until one is through the sawdusted passage and into the lower room that one is in warmth and comfort.

I was a little late. The man who loves the Cheshire Cheese pudding is in his place at table a few minutes before the pudding is brought in at 6.30 P.M., a surging billow of creamy white bulging out of a great brown bowl, and then when the host begins to carve—and there is a certain amount of solemnity about the opening of this great pudding—the early guest gets the best helping. By a quarter-past seven, when I made my entry, the pudding had sunk down into the depths of the bowl.

Most of the tables were full, but the long table, at the head of which Dr. Johnson is alleged to have sat with Goldsmith at his left hand, had some vacant places, and I took one of them. "Pudding?" said the head waiter. I assented, and Mr. Moore, the host, a dapper gentleman, with a wealth of dark hair and a dark moustache, who had been chatting to a clean-shaven young gentleman who had the seat opposite to mine, moved to the great bowl to give me my helping, for no one but the host touches the sacred pudding. The clean-shaven young gentleman relapsed into a newspaper, and while I waited the few seconds before the brown mixture of lark and kidney and oyster and steak was put before me I looked round at my neighbours. A gentleman, bald of head and with white whiskers, who was addressed as "Doctor," sat in the great lexicographer's seat, and talking to him was a bearded gentleman whom I put down at once as a press-man, a sub-editor probably. The only other guest at our table was a good-looking, middle-aged man in clothes that had the gloss of newness on them, a flannel shirt, a white collar, and a gaudy tie. He had finished his meal, was evidently contented with the world, and there was a conversational glint in his eye when he caught mine that made me look away at once; for I was hungry and downcast and not inclined for cheerful converse until I had eaten and drunk.

"Pudding, sir," and the head waiter put the savoury mass before me; "and what else?" I ordered a pint of beer and stewed cheese. I ate my pudding, and being told that the cheese was not ready, ate a "follow" afterwards, for there is no limit to the amount of pudding allowed, and some of the "followers," as the host of the tavern calls them, have been known to have half a dozen helpings; and then the brown and fizzling cheese in its little tin tray, with a triangle of toast on either side, was put before me. The cheese, mixed with mustard and neatly spread on the toast, according to custom, eaten, the last drops of the bitter beer poured from the pewter tankard into the long glass which is supposed to give brilliancy to the malt liquor; and then, feeling a man again, I looked across at the flannel-shirted gentleman who had been smoking a pipe placidly, with a look which meant "Come on."

The ripple of conversation broke at once. He had been out in Australia for fifteen years, went out there as a mere lad, and to-day was his first day in town after his return. He had been used in past times to come to the Cheshire Cheese for his mid-day meal, and the first place he had sought out when he came to London was the old hostelry. He missed the old waiters, he said, but otherwise the place was much the same and as homely as ever.

I recognised in the attraction that had brought this wanderer from the antipodes to the old-fashioned tavern, first of all places, the same force that had made me, the blasé man about town, unconsciously decide to dine there in preference to any other Fleet Street hostelry—its homeliness. The old-fashioned windows with their wire blinds, the sawdusted floor, the long clay pipes on the window-sill; the heirloom portrait of Henry Todd, waiter; the "greybeard" and leather-jack on their brackets (both gifts from Mr. Seymour Lucas the artist); the piles of black-handled knives, the willow-pattern plates and dishes; the curious stand in the centre of the floor for umbrellas; the great old-fashioned grate with a brass kettle singing merrily on it; the pile of Whitaker's almanacks putting a touch of colour into a dark corner; Samuel Johnson's portrait over his favourite seat, and a host of prints, relating to the great man, on the walls; the high partitions, one particular square pew being shielded by a green baize curtain; the simple napery; the ruin of the great pudding on its little table; all carried one back through the early Victorian times to those dimmer periods when even coffee-houses were unknown, and every man took his ease at his inn.

The floodgates of the friendly stranger's speech once unloosed, he told me of his life in Australia, and the hard times he had had, and how matters had come so far right that he was able to come home to England and enjoy himself for six months; and the clean-shaven young gentleman—he was going on later to assist in an entertainment to the poor of Houndsditch, he told us—emerged from his newspaper, and we all found a good deal to say. Nothing would satisfy the returned wanderer but that he must be allowed to ask us to join him in drinking a bowl of the Cheshire Cheese punch, and Mr. Moore, the host, must make one of the party. The other guests—most of them, I should think, connected in some way or other with the Fourth Estate—had gradually drifted away, and Mr. Moore, who had been going from table to table, came and sat down. "No celebrities here to-night, Mr. Moore," I said somewhat reproachfully, and he admitted the soft impeachment, but Irish-wise told us of the great men of the present day that we had missed by not dining at the Cheese on any night but the present one. Every journalist of fame, every editor, has eaten within the walls of the old hostelry, and there is no judge that sits on the bench who has not taken some of his first dinners as a barrister in the little house up Wine Office Court.

The hot punch was brought in in one of the china bowls, of which there are three or four in a little corner cupboard in the old-fashioned bar across the passage, and an old silver ladle to serve it with; and the talk ranged back from the great men of the present day to those of the past. Thackeray knew the "Cheese" well; Dickens used to come in his early days and tell the present host's mother all his troubles, and so we got back to Goldsmith and Johnson, the latter of whom is the especial patron saint of the hostelry, for when he lived in Gough Square and Bolt Court the Cheshire Cheese is said to have been his nightly resort.

The punch ended, the time came for the reckoning. Of old the head waiters were all clean-shaven, like Henry Todd, whose portrait hangs aloft, and all the reckoning was done by word of mouth. But the present head waiter has introduced innovations; he wears a moustache, and makes out his bills on paper. This was mine—Ye rump steak pudding, 2s.; vegetables, 2d.; cheese, 4d.; beer, 5d.; total, 2s. 11d.

8th February.

[CHAPTER III]

THE HOLBORN

The American Comedian and myself stood at a club window and looked out on London. He was rehearsing, and so enjoyed the rare privilege of having his evenings free to spend as he liked. I had no business, except to get myself a dinner somewhere, so we agreed to eat ours in company.

The difficulty was to decide where to dine. The Comedian dined at one club or another every day of his life before going to the theatre, so a club dinner was out of the question. Not having a lady to take out we agreed that we did not care to go to any of the "smart" restaurants: we wanted something a little more elaborate than a grill-room would give us, and more amusing company than we were likely to find at the smaller dining places we knew of.

I think that the suggestion to dine at the cheap table d'hôte dinner at one of the very large restaurants, to listen to the music, and look at the people dining, came from me. Our minds made up on this point, there was the difficulty of selecting the restaurant, so we agreed to toss up, and the spin of the coin eventually settled upon the Holborn Restaurant.

In the many-coloured marble hall, with its marble staircase springing from either side, a well-favoured gentleman with a close-clipped grey beard was standing, a sheet of paper in his hand, and waved us towards a marble portico, through which we passed to the grand saloon with its three galleries supported by marble pillars. "A table for two," said a maître d'hôtel, and we were soon seated at a little table near the centre of the room, at which a waiter in dress clothes, with a white metal number at his buttonhole and a pencil behind his ear, was in attendance waiting for orders. The table d'hôte dinner was what we required, and then I noticed that I had to ask for the wine list, and that it was not given me opened at the champagnes, as is usually the custom of waiters.

The menu, which on a large sheet of stiff paper peeps out from a deep border of advertisements, is printed both in French and in English. This is the English side of it on the night we dined:—

SOUPS.
Purée of Hare aux croûtons.
Spaghetti.
FISH.
Suprême of Sole Joinville.
Plain Potatoes.
Darne de saumon. Rémoulade Sauce.
ENTRÉES.
Bouchées à l'Impératrice.
Sauté Potatoes.
Mutton Cutlets à la Reforme.
REMOVE.
Ribs of Beef and Horseradish.
Brussels Sprouts.
ROAST.
Chicken and York Ham.
Chipped Potatoes.
SWEETS.
Caroline Pudding. St. Honoré Cake.
Kirsch Jelly.
ICE.
Neapolitan.
Cheese. Celery.
DESSERT.

We agreed to drink claret, and I picked out a wine third or fourth down on the list.

The Comedian said he was hungry, and I told him that I was glad to hear it, for it might check the miraculous tales which he generally produces at meal-times.

With the Spaghetti soup, which was brown and strong, the Comedian told me the tale of the mummy of one of the Ptolemies who lived some thousands of years b.c. which was revivified in the Boston Museum by having clam soup administered to it. It was not one of the Comedian's best efforts, and I capped it easily by a tale of the Japanese jelly-fish soup which is supposed to confer everlasting life, and which tastes and looks like hot water.

The darne de saumon was rather a pallid slice, which I attributed to package in ice; but which the Comedian said was owing to its having overgrown its strength. "And that reminds me," he had just begun when I had the presence of mind to anticipate him, and to tell the story of the 140 lbs. mahseer which it took my uncle, on my mother's side, three days to land from the Ganges. I felt bound to tell him that the anecdote he subsequently related of a tarpon, that his first cousin, twice removed, had hooked, towing a steamer's lifeboat from the Floridas to Long Island, sounded like an invention.

To avoid friction we talked of our neighbours. Next door to us was a merry little party of three ladies, one a widow, and a gentleman in a red tie, and the Comedian invented quite a storyette, after the manner of Dickens, of the kindly brother taking his three sisters out to dinner on the birthday of one of them—no brother would order champagne for his sisters except on the occasion of a birthday, he said. A couple, in mourning, were husband and wife, and the Comedian, being in the vein, wove a pathetic little story round the unconscious couple. Two young men, in spick-and-span black coats, with orchids in their buttonholes, dining with two pretty girls, were groomsmen from some wedding entertaining two of the bridesmaids. Some nodding plumes showing over the second balcony the Comedian declared must belong to the "principal boy" of some provincial pantomime.

The cutlet of mutton that was brought to each of us was small, and had suffered from having to journey some way from the kitchen; but it was well cooked, and there was unlimited sauce with it. When I told the Comedian the established fact that at the Cape the sheep have to have wheels fitted to their tails, he pretended that in New England there is a breed that draw their tails in miniature waggons. I flatter myself, however, that my tale of the Ovis Polii, the perpendicular shot and the three thousand feet fall down a Cashmerian gully left him breathless. To save the Comedian from brain-weariness caused by invention I drew the waiter into conversation, and, beginning with the band—a good band, but much too loud—learned that we should find the time each piece was played on the programme which was on the back of the menu. It was not a full night, our waiter told us, but we were early, it was only 7.15, and the saloon would fill up presently; and then he drifted into wonderful figures of the number of guests the Holborn could hold at one time. We wondered inwardly, but sent him off to get us our beef and Brussels sprouts. "When I was out with Buffalo Bill——" the Comedian began as the waiter returned; but as my only story to go with beef is a Wildebeeste story, not one of my best, I mentioned somewhat austerely, that our helpings were growing cold. Then the Comedian, who was invincible in appetite, ate a helping of chicken and ham and reported favourably. Encouraged by this, I ate a slice of the ham which, with a dash of champagne for sauce, was good. The Comedian told rather a foolish story of a nigger robbing a hen-roost, which gave me an opening to relate my celebrated anecdote of the Naval Brigade and the chickens during the Zulu War, an anecdote which has been known to make a rheumatic bishop and a deaf Chairman of Quarter Sessions laugh.

The sweets we took as read, and finished up our dinner with an ice, a trifle too salt, I thought. The waiter had been disappointed at our taking no sweets, but when we refused the offer of cheese and celery and dessert, he was afraid that something must be the matter with us, for most people at the Holborn eat their dinner steadily through.

The saloon had filled up as our waiter had predicted. There was a howling swell with tuberoses in the buttonhole of his frock-coat and a lordly moustache. There were two youngsters in dress clothes and "made-up" ties making merry with two damsels. There was a pretty actress—"she's going to play in our new piece. It's her first night off from playing at the Frivolity, and she has come here to be quiet," said the Comedian. There was a business man from the north being entertained by two City friends, and a host more diners whose history we had not time to invent, for our waiter had taken the pencil from his ear and was standing ready with a little book in his hand.

"Dinners, 7s.; attendance, 6d.; one bottle claret, 4s. 6d.; total, 12s." That was the bill our waiter gave us, and he said "Thank you" very heartily for a shilling for himself.

I should have appreciated my dinner more if the Comedian had confined his conversation to facts.

I regret to hear that the Comedian permitted himself to say, next day, at the Club that it was a thousand pities that I could not tell a story without exaggeration.

15th February.

[CHAPTER IV]

ROMANO'S

Sometimes after a period of depression one wants a tonic in dinners, as one does in health. My gastronomic malady had been a family feast at which I had sat next to a maiden aunt who, after telling me that I was getting unpleasantly fat, recounted anecdotes of my infancy and childhood all tending to prove that I was the most troublesome baby and worst conducted small boy that ever was. Something had to be done to banish that maiden aunt and her anecdotes from my memory. The happy thought came to me that, as the antidote, I had better, as I wanted cheering up, ask Miss Dainty, of the principal London theatres, to be kind enough to come out and dine at any time and at any restaurant she chose to name. I sent my humble invitation by express early in the day, and received her answer by telegram:—"Yes. Romano's. Eight. See I have my pet table. I have been given a beautiful poodle—Dainty. Be good, and you will be happy."

At luncheon time I strolled down to the restaurant, the butter-coloured front of which looks on to the Strand, and the proprietor, "the Roman," as he is called by the habitués of the establishment, being out, I took Signor Antonelli, his second in command, into my confidence, secured the table next to the door, sheltered by a glass screen from the draught, which I knew to be Miss Dainty's pet one, and proceeded to order dinner. Antonelli—I must drop the Signor—who has all the appearance of a cavalry colonel, led off with hors-d'œuvre. I followed with, as a suggestion for soup, crème Pink 'Un, a soup named after a light-hearted journal which practically made "the Roman's" fortune for him. Then, as there were some beautiful trout in the house, the only question was as to the cooking of them. Truite au bleu, my first thought, was too simple. Truite Chambord, the amendment moved by Antonelli, was too rich; so we compromised by Truite Meunière, in the sauce of which the lemon counteracts the butter. Côtelettes de mouton Sefton was Antonelli's suggestion, and was carried unanimously; but I altered his pheasant, which sounded greedy for two people, into a perdreau en casserole. Salad, of course. Then, taken with a fit of parsimony, I refused to let English asparagus go down on the slip of paper, and ordered instead artichauts hollandais. Vanilla ice en corbeille and petits fours wound up my menu.

When the handsome lady arrived—only ten minutes late—she swept like a whirlwind through the hall—past the flower-stall, where I had intended to ask her to pause and choose what flowers she would—in a dress which was a dream of blue with a constellation of diamonds on it, and as she settled down into her seat at the table, not quite certain whether to keep on the blue velvet and ermine cloak or let it drop, I was told the first instalment of her news at express speed. I need not look a crosspatch because she was late, the pretty lady said. It was the fault of the cabman, who was drunk, and had driven her half-way down Oxford Street. What was a good name for a poodle? The one she had been given was the dearest creature in the world. It had bitten all the claws off the Polar bear skin in the drawing-room, had eaten up a new pair of boots from Paris, had hunted the cat all along the balcony, breaking two of the blue pots the evergreens were in, and had dragged all the feathers out of the parrot's tail. Was Sambo a good name? Or Satan? Or what? Why couldn't I answer?

My humble suggestions as to a name for a poodle having been treated with scorn, Miss Dainty turned her attention to the hors-d'œuvre. There were no plain sardines among the numerous little dishes on the table, and the ordinary tinned sardine was what her capricious ladyship wanted—and got. The crème Pink 'Un was highly approved of, and I did my best to explain at length how the combination of rice with a Bisque soup softened the asperity of the cray-fish. Miss Dainty, changing the subject, demanded to know what the seascapes, which are framed all round the room, in mauresque arches, were. I told her that the distemper paintings of deep blue sea and castles and islands and mosques, which are the principal features of the room, a room in which everything, the clock, the musicians' gallery, the electric light brackets, are of Eastern type, were views on the Bosphorus; and, thinking to amuse, related how when the paintings were first put up, a celebrated battle-painter and myself had volunteered to give an up-to-dateness to them by adding some Armenian atrocities to lend life to the pictures, and of "the Roman's" horror, under the impression that we really meant to do as we said. My humorous anecdote fell rather flat, for Miss Dainty, who did not care much for her trout, though I thought it very excellent, but a trifle too buttery, said that that was just the sort of silly thing I would do.

The quiet person with a silver chain round his neck had brought our bottle of St-Marceaux, and the clean-shaven little Italian waiter in a white apron had replaced the trout with the cutlets à la Sefton. For these Miss Dainty had nothing but praise, which I echoed very heartily.

"Your dinner—everything go right, eh, Mister Esquire?" and "the Roman," a dapper little Italian in faultless dress-clothes, with a small, carefully tended moustache, a full head of black hair, turning grey at the temple, and talking English with a free admixture of Italian, stood by our table, going his round to see that all the diners were satisfied. Miss Dainty did not ask for the deep-red carnation that was in "the Roman's" button-hole; but before he had passed on she was pinning it into her dress, and when I ventured a very mild remark I was told that if I had not been mean enough to let her pass the flower-stall without offering her a button-hole she would not have had to accept one from anybody else—a retort which was scarcely fair.

I asked Miss Dainty if she knew who the pretty lady dining with a good-looking grey-haired man at a table at the end of the room was. She did know and gave me a full account of the lady's stage career, and while the perdreau en casserole was being cut up we ran over the professions of the various diners who occupied the triple line of little tables running down the room. The two men dining by themselves were powers in the theatrical world. "May I ask them to come and take their coffee and old brandy at our table?" I asked, and Miss Dainty graciously assented. There were as well a well-known theatrical lawyer talking business with the secretary to a successful manager; a dramatic author, who was proposing plays to a colonial manager; a lady with golden hair and a permanent colour to whom a small Judaic youth was whispering with great earnestness; a well-known sporting lord, dining by himself; a music-hall agent laying down the law as to contracts to a journalist; two quiet ladies in sealskin coats; and many others, nearly all connected with the great army of stage-land.

A little too much onion with the perdreau en casserole we both thought, otherwise admirable. Salad good, artichokes good, though we preferred plain vinegar as a dressing to the hollandais one, and the ice delicious. Then Miss Dainty trifled with cherries cased in pink sweetness and sections of oranges sealed in transparent sugar, and our two friends from the table at the far end came across and took coffee and liqueurs with us, and talked of the old days when Romano's was but a quarter of the size it is now, when it was far more Bohemian than it is now, when there was a little aquarium in the front window into which the sons of Belial used to try and force each other late at night, much to the consternation of the gold-fish, when everybody who took his meals there knew everybody else and the chaff ran riot down the single line of little tables, and when every Sunday morning a devoted but Sabbath-breaking band were led across the Strand by "the Roman" to see his cellars, "best in London," as he used to say.

All of a sudden Miss Dainty, whom these reminiscences did not interest very much, remembered that the door of the parrot's cage had been left open. She was quite sure that the poodle would be trying to kill the bird, and she must go back at once to see to the matter.

I put Miss Dainty, who said that she had enjoyed her dinner, into a hansom, two brown eyes full of laughter set in a pretty face looked out at me as she told me to be good and that then I should be happy, the cabman cried "Pull up" to his horse, and the pretty lady was off to the rescue of the parrot.

Then I went back and paid my bill: Two couverts, 6d.; hors-d'œuvre, 2s.; crème Pink 'Un, 2s.; truite, 2s. 6d.; côtelettes de mouton, 2s. 6d.; petits pois, 1s.; pommes, 1s.; perdreau, 6s.; salade, 1s.; artichauts, 2s.; glace, 2s.; champagne (107), 13s. 6d.; café, 3s.; liqueurs, 5s.; total £2: 4s.

22nd February.

When I asked Antonelli for a specimen menu of a dinner of ceremony such as is often given in the pretty Japanese room on the second floor he looked pleased and said that I should certainly have it; but when I asked for the recette of the crème Pink 'Un he looked as doleful as if he had just heard of the death of his grandmother. But Signor Romano came to the rescue. "The chef he say that soup what-you-call-a secret du maison; but I tell him no matter secret or not he just write it out for you." So I got my recette. This is the dinner, and a noble feast it is, that Antonelli recommends for a party of twelve. The Homard sauté à la Julien is a speciality of Romano's; but I have some respect for the feelings of Antonelli and the chef, and did not ask for a recette of that.

Huîtres natives.
Petite bouchée norvégienne.
Tortue claire.
Crème Dubarry.
Homard sauté à la Julien.
Aiguillette de sole. Sauce Germanique.
Zéphir de poussin à la Brillat-Savarin.
Selle d'agneau à la Grand-Veneur.
Petits pois primeur à la Française.
Pomme nouvelle persillade.
Spongada à la Palermitaine.
Jambon d'York braisé au champagne.
Caille à la Crapaudine.
Salade de saison.
Asperges vertes en branche. Sauce mousseuse.
Timbale Marie-Louise.
Bombe à la Romano.
Petits fours assortis.
Dessert.
Café.

Pink 'Un Potage

The recette of the crème Pink 'Un is as follows:—

Mettez dans une casserole deux onces de beurre, deux cuillères-à-bouche d'huile d'olive; coupez en petits morceaux une carotte et un oignon, que vous laisserez cuire pendant cinq minutes tout doucement. Avez ensuite vingt-quatre écrevisses vivantes, un livre de crevettes et six tomates fraîches, que vous mettrez ensemble; ajoutez une demi-bouteille de Chablis, et, après avoir assaisonné de sel et poivre cayenne, couvrez votre casserole et donnez vingt minutes d'ébullition.

D'autre part prenez une livre d'orge perlée que vous aurez faite cuire pendant trois heures dans un bouillon ordinaire, brayez dans un mortier vos écrevisses et crevettes, ainsi que l'orge, mélangez, délayez avec un litre de bouillon, passez ensuite a l'étamine; ceci fait, remettez votre potage à chauffer sans lui donner de l'ébullition; additionnez une réduction de cognac où vous y aurez mis une branche de thym, deux feuilles de laurier, un petit bouquet de persil, d'estragon et cerfeuil. Finissez votre potage en y ajoutant six onces de beurre frais et servez avec croûtons.

Put in a saucepan two ounces of butter and two teaspoonfuls of olive oil. Cut a carrot and an onion into small pieces, and let them cook gently for five minutes. Then take twenty-four live cray-fish, a pound of prawns, and six fresh tomatoes. Put these in altogether, and then add half a bottle of Chablis, and after having seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper, put the lid on the saucepan, and let it boil for twenty minutes. Have ready a pound of pearl barley which has been cooked for three hours, in ordinary stock. Pound in a mortar the cray-fish and prawns, with the barley, dilute with a pint and three-quarters of stock, and pass through a fine sieve. This done, put the soup back to warm again, without letting it boil. Add then a little cognac, in which you have steeped a bunch of thyme, two laurel leaves, and a little bunch of parsley, tarragon and chervil. Finish your soup by adding six ounces of fresh butter, and serve with sippets of fried bread.

[CHAPTER V]

SIMPSON'S

The battle-painter and I were walking down the Strand, uncertain where to lunch, when just by the theatrical bookshop a man in a shabby suit of tweed and a billycock hat, drawn rather low down on his forehead, passed us quickly, looking into our faces for a second as he did so. "It's Smith," said the battle-painter. "Poor fellow!"

It was the man we had been talking about only that morning, the good fellow who had been at school with me, who had made a voyage on board a P. and O. in which both the battle-painter and I had gone out to India, and had been the life and soul of the ship; with whom we had spent a week in his station on the Bombay side, and who had come on a return visit to me in the Punjab when the battle-painter honoured me with his company at the quiet little garrison where I was quartered at the time. We knew he had left his cavalry regiment, and had heard vaguely that he had come to grief through some financial smash. Here was our man, and we turned at once and went after him.

"I didn't think you fellows would know me in this kit," he said, when we caught him up and laid friendly hands on him. "Most people don't seem over-anxious to recognise me now." He certainly did not look flourishing, though he had the smart carriage of the soldier about him, was as carefully shaved, and his light moustache as carefully trimmed, as if he were going on parade, and had the old buoyancy of manner. "Where will you come and lunch with us?" we both asked in a breath. "It's my dinner hour now," he told us, and somehow there was a touch of pathos in the way he said it. We proposed the Savoy grill-room to him, or Romano's across the way; but he said that, if we were anxious that he should come and eat with us, he would sooner have a cut from the saddle of mutton at Simpson's than anything else.

We turned back and went into the entrance to the old-fashioned eating-place, with its imitation marble columns, its coloured tile floor, its trees in tubs, and its two placards on either side, one announcing that a dinner from the joint is to be had for 2s. 6d., and the other that a fish dinner for 2s. 9d. is served from 12.30 P.M. to 8.30 P.M. Smith changed his mind. The last fish dinner he had eaten was at Greenwich more than half a dozen years ago, when he had asked a party of thirty down to celebrate an investment that was going to make his fortune, and if we didn't mind he would eat another now.

We took three seats at the end of one of the tables in the downstairs room. Smith looked round with an air of recognition. Nothing had changed, he said, since the days when he used to come to get a cut from the joint after a day's racing. And, indeed, Simpson's does not look like a place that changes. The big dumb-waiter in the centre of the room, almost as tall as a catafalque, with its burden of glasses and decanters, and four plated wine-coolers, one at each corner as ornament, the divisions with brass rails and little curtains that run down one side of the room; the horsehair-stuffed, black-cushioned chairs and lounges, the mirrors on one side of the room and ground-glass windows on the other; the painted garlands of flowers and fish and flesh and fowl, mellowed by age and London smoke, that fill up the vacant spaces on the wall, the ormolu clocks, the decoratively folded napkins in glasses on the mantelpieces, the hats and coats hanging in the room, the screen with many time-tables on it, the great bar window opening into the room, framing a depth of luminous shadow, all are old-fashioned. Only the two great candelabra that stand, a dozen feet high, on either side of the room have been modernised.

The waiters at Simpson's are Britannic and have that dignity which sits so well on the chairman of a company addressing his shareholders, or an M.P. entertaining his constituents, or the genuine English waiter taking an order. It is an undefinable majesty; but it exists.

Rubicund gentlemen of portly figure, dressed in white, the carvers, leisurely push carving dishes, with plated covers, running on wheels, from customer to customer.

A benignant waiter with a grey beard had stood and accepted our order, which was, to begin with, turbot and sauce; and while with becoming dignity he conveyed the news to one of the white-coated gentlemen, Smith gave us a résumé of his history since we had all three parted at a railway station in the Punjab. He had almost been a millionaire, he had ridden as a trooper in a squadron of American cavalry, he had fought in Matabeleland, he had tried gold-mining without success; and now he was going this afternoon down to the City to meet a man who was going to finance a marvellous invention of his, and presently he would make the fortunes of the battle-painter and myself. The battle-painter and myself smiled, and fell-to on our turbot and its rubicund sauce, for we knew Smith of old. A fine big slice of firm turbot it was, but I fancy the sauce owed its deep colour and some of its substance to the artistic methods of the cook. Next Smith voted for a fried sole, while the battle-painter and I ordered stewed eels, and as the first bottle of Liebfraumilch, which Smith had preferred to any other wine or spirit, was getting near low-water mark, I asked our waiter, who somewhat resembled the ex-Speaker, to bring us another. Smith having for the moment exhausted his historical reminiscences, we could look round at our neighbours. Half a dozen country gentlemen up to see the shire-horses at Islington, most of them confining their attention to those saddles of mutton which are the pride of Simpson's, a barrister or two, the good-looking husband of a popular actress, and four or five well-known bookmakers, for Simpson's is essentially sporting. Then our eels and the sole were brought. Smith said the sole was excellent; and except that I like my sauce with the eel a little richer than I got it at Simpson's, neither the battle-painter nor myself could find the slightest cause to grumble. The Liebfraumilch was pleasant and soft, and we were in the best of tempers when the whitebait, a trifle large, and the salmon for Smith—salmon which looked beautiful, and which we both secretly envied—arrived. A little group of men who bore the stamp of racing men about them had congregated round the bar window while we had been at table, and were being attended to by a rosy-faced maiden. Cheese and celery we paid but little attention to, for Smith, now quite the cheery, confident cavalryman of old, said that he must not miss his appointment in the City, but that when the splendid fortune that was in his grasp came to him he would give the battle-painter and myself, in return for our mid-day meal, a dinner at the Savoy that would outdo the celebrated rouge-et-noir one. It was pleasant to see the good fellow himself again, and we wished him success in his venture. Then, after seeing him off, we paid the bill. Dinner, 8s. 6d. (Smith's salmon was 3d. extra); two Liebfraumilch, 12s.; attendance, 9d.; total, £1: 1: 3.

Afterwards the battle-painter and myself went upstairs into the ladies' dining-room, a fine room, which is lighter and fresher than the gentlemen's dining-room below, and there we had coffee and chatted with Charles Flowerdew, the head waiter, one of the real head waiters as they knew them in the old days, and listened to his stories and took a pinch of snuff out of his presentation snuff-box. And here Mr. Crathie, tall, clean-shaved, except for narrow side whiskers, with a white head of hair in which a ruddy tint still lingers, found us, and under his guidance we went farther upstairs and peeped through the glass doors into the room where half a dozen games of chess were being played. Mr. Crathie, who has been proprietor and, later, managing director of Simpson's for half a long lifetime, told us something of the history of the place, how it originally consisted only of a cigar-shop on the ground floor and the chess divan above, how he purchased it and formed it into a small company, and how now a larger company was to have control of it.

Before we left the old-fashioned house, about which the steam of saddles of mutton seems to cling, we looked in on the Knights of the Round Table, who have their club-room at Simpson's, who possess a wonderful collection of portraits of past worthies of the club, and a unique book of playbills, whose motto is, "I will go eat with thee and see your Knights," and who once a week dine together off plain English food at the round table, one piece of mahogany, from which they draw their name.

1st March.

Since I wrote the above, Simpson's has been acquired by a company which has also taken over The Golden Cross Hotel, Trafalgar Square. The old place has in no way been altered by its new masters, who believe in letting well alone. Charles Flowerdew has left the upper room, and retired with, I trust, a comfortable competency; but William, who for many years was head waiter at the Cock, and has as fine a store of reminiscences as any old-fashioned waiter to be found in London, now serves in the lower room, and is in himself a mine of amusing information.

[CHAPTER VI]

THE HANS CRESCENT HOTEL

If I had to set an examination paper on the art of dining, one of the questions I should certainly ask the examinee would be: "What occupation or amusement would you suggest for your guests after a dinner at a restaurant on Sunday?" The Hans Crescent Hotel management have answered this question in a practical way; and not the least pleasant part of a dinner at the smart hotel Sloane Street way is the coffee and liqueur and cigarette taken under the palms in the winter garden, where the red-shaded lamps throw a gentle light, and M. Casano's band playing Czibulka's waltz-whisper, "Songe d'amour après le bal," sends one back in a dream to the days when an evening of dancing was a foretaste of the seventh heaven, and every woman was a possible divinity.

The Editor does not write long letters, but the card with his initials at the bottom gave me place and time, and told me that I should find myself one of a partie carrée. What was the exact reason of the dinner that the good Editor gave to the gracious lady and the handsome niece and myself, I do not know; but I rather think that it was a propitiatory offering made for non-appearance on the editorial tricycle when warned for escort duty to the gracious lady, who had gone that day for a long bicycle ride. If it was so, the dinner at the Hans Crescent Hotel, plus the excuse given, whether it was church-going or letter-writing, did not save the Editor during the evening from little barbed conversational shafts as to sloth and laziness and the evil habit of lying late in bed on the Sabbath morning.

I never commit the unpardonable offence of being late for dinner, and three minutes before my time I was waiting in the oak-panelled hall, which, with its stained-glass window, big staircase with a balcony at the back, its palms and great fireplace, always looks to me like an elaborate "set" for a scene in some comedy. The hands of the clock stole on to eight o'clock, and that feeling of righteousness which comes to the man who is in time when he believes that his fellow-creatures are late fell on me, when, on a sudden, M. Diette, the manager of the hotel, grey of hair and moustache, a black tie under his "Shakspeare" collar, and a faultless frock-coat, appeared, and recognising me, asked me whether by chance I was the gentleman for whom the Editor and two ladies had been waiting some ten minutes in the drawing-room. So it came that when I went into the drawing-room, where the two ladies were looking at the brocades in the panels and the editorial eye was fixed on the clock on the mantelpiece, it was I who had to stumble through apologies, and I felt conscious that my tale of waiting in the hall sounded hideously improbable.

M. Diette himself showed us to our table in the dining-room, which is as near a reproduction of an old baronial hall as modern comfort, electric light, and civilisation will allow. The baron of old, in the days when each man cut his own portion off the roast meat with his dagger, might have been able to boast of the open fireplace in green Connemara marble and the panelled walls, but the handsome frieze and the carved oak pillars would have been beyond his artistic dreams. He would probably have preferred rushes to the Oriental rugs that half cover the oak floor, and he would certainly have thought the palmery seen through the open French window in a glow of rosy light a vision called up by some magician.

The Editor, stroking his pointed beard with satisfaction, was reading through the menu, the gracious lady and the handsome niece were noting, one by one, the celebrities dining at the other tables, and the head waiter was standing watching the Editor with the calm but deferential confidence an artist shows when an important patron is inspecting his work. A minor servitor, a thin tape of gold on the collar of his livery coat and wearing white gloves, was also in attendance, and the overture in the way of hors-d'œuvre à la Russe was before us.

In quick succession our ladies had named the tall, slim, titled lady in black, who had come in leaning on a stick; the good-looking young musical critic, who was entertaining "Belle" and a very pretty girl; a newly-married Earl and his wife; the handsome stockbroker and his wife, who in the summer are to be found not far from Maidenhead Bridge, and at whose table were sitting the most hospitable of up-river hostesses and her son; a millionaire, who was entertaining a tableful of guests; and one or two titled couples whom the gracious lady knew, but whose names meant nothing to me. I was able to add my quota by pointing out a steward of the Jockey Club, at whose table was the owner of the good horse Bendigo.

The Editor, having learned that we all preferred for the moment claret to champagne, put down the menu with a little sigh of anticipatory gratitude, and ran his finger half-way down a page on the wine list. This was the menu which the gracious lady looked at, and then handed on to me:—

Hors-d'œuvre à la Russe.
Consommé Brunoise à la Royale.
Potage en tortue.
Suprême de saumon à la Chambord.
Tournedos à la Montgador.
Poularde à la Demi-Doff.
Caille rôti sur canapé.
Salade.
Flageolets M^tre d'Hôtel. Bombe Chateaubriand.
Corbeilles de friandises.

The handsome niece had approved of the people at the other tables as being most of them interesting and good-looking, had said she liked the table with its decoration of a ring of yellow flowers and leaves drawn round the basket of friandises, and we began dinner with good appetite and good temper.

The clear soup with its patchwork ground of minutely chopped vegetables seen through the amber of its liquid was excellent and hot; the fish deserved a special word for its sauce, in the making of which an artist's hand had been employed; and the tournedos with their attendant "fixings," to use an Americanism, a symphony in rich browns with the scarlet of the tomato to relieve it, gave no loophole for captious criticism. We had been talking of the respective merits of houseboats and cottages as summer residences, and from that had drifted on to the subject of the wonderful steam launch that the Editor owns, and inventions generally. The gracious lady had said her say on the wonders she knew of; and the handsome niece, not to be outdone, described the invention of the age through which by means of a little metal case half the size of the smallest pill box, every man is to make his own soda-water, which is to supersede all other inventions as a fuse for big guns, and is going to drive dynamite out of the field; and I, fired by the spirit of healthy emulation, had just started an account of the flying machine by which I hoped to reach Mars, to which the ladies, not noticing the twinkle in the Editor's eyes, were listening gravely, when the waiter brought the poularde à la Demi-Doff. The Editor was the only one of us who took any, and he, in very excellent French, told the head waiter, who was hovering round, that he thought it good. Whether it was that the gracious lady had caught the tail-end of the editorial smile at my Munchausen flying-machine story, or whether the non-appearance of the tricycle was remembered, it matters not; but the Editor was gravely warned not to talk Hindustani at the dinner-table.

The quails were a trifle over-cooked, and the artistic hand which had made the sauce for the salmon had not mixed the salad, which was too vinegary. I think our negative criticism must have hurt the feelings of the waiter, who probably paused on the way from the kitchen to wipe away a tear, for the flageolets, excellently cooked, were not quite as hot as they should have been. Then the dinner got into its stride again, for the bombe was admirable.

The band had been making music for the past half-hour in the winter-garden, and the diners at the various tables had gradually left the oaken hall for the tables, each labelled with the number of the corresponding dining-tables and name of the host, reserved under the rosy lamps and the palms. The violins played with a delightful softness, the rings of cigarette smoke curled and vanished up towards the glass dome. From table to table the men went, saying a word here, staying for a chat there; and at last, when the little band had played Gounod's "Ave Maria," and ended with the wail of Miska's "Czardas," it was time to gather in the hall to say good-night and be off homewards to the land of Nod. This was the bill that I asked the Editor to let me glance at:—Four dinners at 10s. 6d., £2: 2s.; three bottles claret, £1: 10s.; cafés, 3s.; liqueurs, 3s.; total, £3: 18s.

8th March.

Mr. Francis Taylor has now taken Mons. Diette's place as manager. Mons. Heiligenstein, as chef, rules the roast, and boiled, and fried.

[CHAPTER VII]

THE BLUE POSTS (CORK STREET)

"None of your d—d à la's, and remember I won't get into dress clothes for anybody." That was what the old gentleman wrote, and it was not an easy matter to find a dining place and a theatre to go to afterwards that would suit my prospective guest.

The old gentleman lives his life in a little country town which is favourable to the growth of characters; he always wears a plain, double-breasted broadcloth coat; a bird's-eye cravat, taken twice round his old-fashioned collar, folded in a manner that would puzzle a modern valet, and secured by a fox-tooth pin; his waistcoats, the irreverent youths of the club say, descended to him from his great-grandfather, and his watch chain is a leather chin-strap. He has a particular chair by a particular window of the county club on which he sits in the afternoon of non-hunting days, and drinks one stiff glass of brandy-and-water. He has never worn a greatcoat, never missed a day's hunting for the last fifteen years, will walk a mile, run a mile, and ride a mile against any man of his own age, and he is near seventy, dislikes the French on principle, and has never been to France, and comes to London as rarely as he can—very pressing business, the Cattle Show or a horse show being the only matters that would ever bring him up even for the day. The son, the grandson, and great-grandson of comfortable country solicitors, he preferred entertaining clients to advising them, always shut up his office on hunting days, and having a surplus of the world's goods, for a bachelor, he lives a very comfortable life in the beetle-browed old house in the High Street, with its great garden behind, its dark dining-room with a glint of reflected lights from polished mahogany and massed silver, its crooked oak staircase, its panelled passages, and bedrooms, each with a huge four-poster bed, its carved chimney-pieces and uneven floors; with, as servants, a prim housekeeper, a fat cook—the only woman, he says, in the county who can make a venison pasty—and an old butler, with whom he argues as to the port to be drunk after dinner.

I know the old gentleman's tastes, for he has asked me often enough to the wonderful oyster and woodcock lunches he gives, and the solid English dinners in which haunches of venison, saddles of mutton, great capons, turkeys almost as big as ostriches, cygnets, sucking pigs, and such-like dishes generally are the gros pièces, and it was not easy to select a suitable dining-place for him. He was up for the Hackney Show; had, after much pressing, consented to dine and go to the theatre, and where to take him I did not know.

The melodrama of the moment at the Adelphi was the play I thought he would like, and, after passing by mentally my clubs, because he might not care to be the one man in morning dress among a white-cravated crowd, and the "smart" restaurants for the same reason, and also because nothing but brute force would keep a maître d'hôtel from putting an à la on the menu, the happy thought came to me that at the Blue Posts the fare would suit my guest well.

I went down in the early afternoon through the Burlington Arcade, with its scent of perfumers' shops and its Parisian jewellery, into Cork Street, where the tavern hides itself modestly.

I have but vague remembrances of the old house which was burned down. To-day, if one did not know that the house holds still to its reputation of being one of the very best places where old-fashioned British food is to be obtained, it might, with its tiled floors, its stained-glass windows and doors, its wall-papers of quiet artistic shades, its electric light, be one of those small restaurants where the Parisian art of cooking is cultivated. Past the stained-glass doors leading into the wine-bars, upstairs and into the dining-room, sacred to the male sex, with its six or seven little square tables, and two round ones, I went, there to find Frank, the head waiter, not yet in his evening garb, sitting and reading a paper. Frank, who, with his white moustache and whiskers and white hair parted in the centre, has still about him a suggestion of the soldier who fought under the old Emperor William, has been for fifteen years head waiter at the Posts, and is a person to be confided in; so I told him particulars as to the old gentleman who was to be my guest, and asked for suggestions. The bill of fare, on a long slip of paper, which Frank put into my hand would have gladdened the old gentleman's heart. There was not an à la on it—not a word of French, "sauce tartare" excepted, and entrées were rigorously excluded. Frank advised soup, saying that all the soups were made from stock, no sauces of any kind being used; but I mistrust the Britannic soup, for we are not a nation of soupmakers, and would have none. "Grilled or fried?" was the question as to the fish, and after due discussion I ordered a grilled sole. I was all for a porterhouse steak, but at this Frank put his foot down. Rump steaks were the specialty of the house, he said, and explained how the cook kept the great joint of beef intact, only cutting a steak just before he put it on the grill, and this being so, a rump steak it had to be, with potatoes in their jackets, a salad, and cauliflower. Marrow-bones completed the dinner. For wine I ordered a bottle of Beaune supérieur and a pint of port.

At 7.45 to the second my old gentleman, his clean-shaven, ruddy face bringing a breath of country air with it, appeared, and as we sat at our table and waited for the sole, of which the cook had started the cooking as soon as I set foot within the dining-room, I was given much information as to the hackneys, told of some marvellous runs that the county hounds had had lately, and was lectured on the iniquity of the farmers wiring their fences. Then we looked at the room and the company. The proof print of the coronation of Her Majesty which hangs on the soft green-coloured wall was approved of as being patriotic, the frieze with its little tablets bearing the names of authors and composers and the stained-glass windows and skylight were considered Frenchified, and the Parian statuettes on the mantelpiece were dismissed as fal-lals. I wished that some of the stately bucks, habitués of old days, had been dining there—Mr. Weatherby in his blue coat and brass buttons, and a great publisher with his black satin stock; for the young gentlemen who sat at the other tables, most of them in dress clothes, though irreproachably correct, were not picturesque.

Frank brought the sole, piping hot, still sizzling, from the bars. The cook had given it the necessary squeeze of lemon, and, watching my guest, I could see that the first item of my dinner was a success. The Beaune, warmed to just the right temperature, was as good a Burgundy as a man could wish with his dinner. Then came the steak, not a thin slab of meat, but a fine, impressive solid mass of beef, great of depth and size, the typical dish for Englishmen. I cut it, and in the centre there was the ruddy flush which is as pleasing to the devout diner as the blush on a maiden's cheek is to the devout lover. The great potatoes, cooked in their skins, were so hot that they burned our fingers, the cauliflower was excellent, and there was a delicious beetroot salad powdered with spring onion. "Damme!" said the old gentleman, "they understand what a steak is, here." Then came the marrow-bones, each swathed in its napkin with its attendant square of toast leaning up against it. Now the first essential in a marrow-bone is that it should be hot, and the second that it should contain at least a fair amount of marrow. Our bones were so hot that they could hardly be held in spite of the protecting napkin, and from each gushed forth a flood of the steaming delicacy.

We sat and sipped our port, and trifled with a Cheddar cheese. My old gentleman had objected to the waiters in such a Britannic house being of foreign birth; but I comforted him by telling him of the battles against the French in which Frank had taken part, and of the history of his maimed hand. "Fought the French, did he?" said the old gentleman. "That's good. Damme, that's very good!" He had put a date to the port, and opened his eyes when I told him how little I was charged for it. Indeed, all the items of my bill were small. Dinners, 10s. 6d.; Burgundy, 7s.; port, 5s. 6d.; total, £1: 3s.

"I hope you have not dined badly?" I asked my guest as we rose to take cab for the Adelphi. "Well, my boy; very well," said the old gentleman.

15th March.

[CHAPTER VIII]

VERREY'S (REGENT STREET)

The little curly-headed, light-haired page, who is the modern Mercury, in that he gives warning when one is rung up at the telephone in the club, came to me in the reading-room and told me that a lady at the Hotel Cecil wished to speak to me.

"Hullo! Are you there?" was answered by a "Yes" in a lady's voice, and in a few seconds I was informed that Myra Washington was in London, that she would like to see me, that she would be busy all the afternoon shopping, but that if I was not otherwise engaged I might take her out to dinner and to a show afterwards.

Mrs. Washington is a lady whom it is a liberal education to have the honour of being acquainted with, for she knows most people who are worth knowing in Europe, has been to most places worth seeing, and is in every way cosmopolitan. She is generally taken for a Russian, until she speaks, chiefly, I think, because of her hair, which is so light that it is almost white, and because she smokes cigarettes at every possible moment. She is to be found in Paris, where she has a flat in one of the avenues branching from the Arc de Triomphe, and where she is kind enough, most years, to give me déjeuner on the morning of the Grand Prix. But her movements are always erratic. I first made her acquaintance at Suez, where I had the honour to be recorded on the tablets of her memory as having delivered her from some impertinent Arab hawkers, and she showed me what American hospitality is during the exhibition at Chicago, in which city her husband, John P. Washington, is always making or losing fortunes in the wheat pit.

I was glad, therefore, to hear the pretty lady's voice again, even though filtered through a telephone, and I proposed innumerable plans to her. She had come to London from Cannes to meet John, who was running over from America for a couple of days on business, and wanted to do as much as possible in the shortest time. She had been to the Gaiety after dining at the Savoy her first night in London, had lunched at Willis's and seen a matinée at Daly's, dined at the Princes' Hall and spent the evening at the Palace on the second, and now I was to be responsible for her evening's amusement on the third evening.

Did she know Verrey's? And as a reply I was asked whether I thought she knew her own name. Then would she dine with me at the restaurant in Regent Street, and I would have a box for her at the Empire afterwards? and Mrs. Washington said she would. "If I may, I will come and call for you at a little before eight," I said promptly, and Mrs. Washington wanted to know whether there were bandits in Regent Street. Eventually, I was told that if I was cooling my feet in the entrance at 8 to a second I should have the felicity of helping her out of her cab.

To give Mrs. Washington a satisfactory dinner is not one of the easiest things in the world, for she understands the art of dining, and is, as well, a most excellent cook herself when she chooses; so it was with a full sense of the responsibility I had incurred that I sought Mr. Krehl, the elder of the two brothers in whose hands Verrey's now is, and found him in the café. He knew Mrs. Washington, of course, and hearing that it was she who was to be my guest, he called in his brother Albert, almost a twin in resemblance to him, who now devotes all his time to the management of the restaurant, and we held a solemn council of three. I am a very strong believer myself in small dinners, but it was difficult to make up a menu which would be sufficiently substantial, without appearing gluttonous, for two. I held out against the second entrée; but the sense of the house was distinctly against me, and the pouding Saxon was an addition that I did not approve of, but gave in, being outvoted. This was the dinner that we settled on before I started home to dress:—

Petite marmite.
Œufs à la Russe.
Soufflé de filets de sole à la Verrey.
Timbale Lucullus.
Noisettes d'agneau à la Princesse.
Petits pois à la Française.
Pommes Mirelle.
Aiguillettes de caneton à l'Orange.
Salade Vénétienne.
Pouding Saxon.
Salade de fruits.

Mrs. Washington, enveloped in a great furry white cloak, and with a lace covering to her head, was punctual to the second, and as we settled down to our table in the dining-room, with its silver arches to the roof, caught and reflected a hundred times by the mirrors, and its suave dark-green panels, which formed an excellent background to the cream-coloured miracle of a dress that Mrs. Washington was wearing, she told me a few of the events of the last few weeks. She had stayed in New York for the second Assembly, and had gone from New York to the Riviera, where Cannes had been her headquarters, and I incidentally was given full particulars as to doings of the ladies' club there. Now, pausing for one night in Paris to see the new Palais Royal piece, which is a play, so Mrs. Washington says, that no respectable girl could take her grandmother to see, she had run over to England to meet John, and afterwards was going to leisurely travel to Seville, getting there in time for the Holy Week processions.

The soup, admirably hot, had been placed before us by the waiter, in plain evening clothes, while Mrs. Washington talked and pulled off her long white gloves, and before using her spoon she took in the company dining at the many little square tables, lighted by wax red-shaded candles, in one comprehensive glance; smiled to the well-known journalist whose love for dogs forms a bond between him and the Messrs. Krehl, themselves powers in the dog world; thought that the ruddy-haired prima donna looked well and showed no signs of her recent illness; wanted to know if it was true that the celebrated musician, who was dining with his wife, was to be included in the next birthday list of honours; and nodded to a gentleman with long black whiskers, her banker in Paris, who was entertaining a party of a dozen.

The œufs à la Russe, with their attendant vodkhi, met with Mrs. Washington's approval: there were no flies on them, was her expression. We did not quite agree as to the soufflé, I daring to say that though the fish part of the dish was admirable I thought the soufflé covering might have been lighter, a statement which my guest at once countered, and, by her superior knowledge of culinary detail reduced me to silence, overcome but certainly not convinced. As to the timbale, with its savoury contents of quenelles, foie gras, cocks'-combs, and truffles, there could be no two opinions; it was excellent, and the same might be said of the noisettes, each with its accompanying fond d'artichaut, and the new peas with a leaf of mint boiled with them. Mrs. Washington would have preferred pommes soufflées to pommes Mirelle, but I could hardly have known that when ordering dinner. The Venetian salad, a little tower of many-coloured vegetables, looking like poker chips, Mrs. Washington said, peas, beans, truffles, potatoes, beetroot, flavoured by a slice of saucisson and dressed with whipped white of eggs, was one of the triumphs of the dinner, and so was the salade de fruits. For Mrs. Washington to praise a fruit salad is a high honour, for she is one of the favoured people for whom François, late of the Grand Hotel, Monte Carlo and now of the Hotel Cecil, deigns to mix one with his own hands. The gourmets of Europe say that as a salad maker no man can approach François. I personally uphold the fruit salads that Frederic, of the Tour d'Argent, makes as being perfection, but Europe and America vote for François. I was told that the pouding Saxon was an unnecessary item, and I was rather glad, for I had shied at it when ordering dinner.

I reminded Mrs. Washington, who was sipping her Perrier-Jouët lazily, that the Empire ballet begins comparatively early, and to be in time for it, which she insisted on, we had to hurry over our coffee (which is always admirable at Verrey's) and liqueurs, and the cigarette, which is a necessary of life to the lady. Then, while Mrs. Washington drew on the long white gloves again, I paid the bill:—hors-d'œuvre, 1s.; potage, 1s. 6d.; poisson, 3s.; entrées, 2s. 6d. and 3s.; pommes, 6d.; légumes, 1s.; rôti, 10s. 6d.; salade, 1s.; entremets, 3s.; café, 1s.; liqueur, 2s.; cigarettes, 2d.; Perrier-Jouët, 1889, 13s.; total, £2: 4: 2.

22nd March.

I asked Mr. Albert Krehl to give me an idea of any special dishes which Verrey's is proud of, and pausing by the way to tell me how the house has always tried to wean its patrons from the cut from the joint at déjeuner time, and to induce them to eat small and light dinners, he said that entremet ices were one of the delights that Verrey's prides itself on, dwelt lovingly on a description of an entrecôte Olga, and then reeled off œufs à la Russe, omelette foies de volaille, sole Polignac, filets de sole à la Belle Otero, glace Trianon, sole à la Verrey, which has a flavouring of Parmesan, moules à la Marinière, poulet Parmentier en casserole.

If the Messrs. Krehl counsel small dinners in the salle, they do not always do so for the private rooms upstairs. This is the menu of a dinner at which H.R.H. the Prince of Wales was present:—

Œufs à la Kavigote
(Vodkhi).
Bisque d'écrevisses. Consommé Okra.
Rougets à la Muscovite.
Selle de mouton de Galles.
Haricots panachés. Tomates au gratin.
Pommes soufflées.
Timbale Lucullus.
Fonds d'artichauts. Crème pistache.
Grouse.
Salad Rachel.
Biscuit glacé à la Verrey.
Soufflé de laitances.
Dessert.

Mr. Krehl gave me the recette of the timbales à la Lucullus. Here it is—

Timbale Lucullus

La garniture Lucullus se compose de: crêtes de coq, rognons de coq, truffes en lames, quenelles de volaille truffées, champignons, foie gras dans une demi-glace bien réduite, un filet de madère, et un jus de truffes.

The Lucullus garnish is composed of cocks' combs, cocks' kidneys, truffles cut in slices, chicken quenelles, made with truffles, mushrooms, foie-gras well stewed down in a semi-liquid glaze,[1] with just a suspicion of Madeira, and a gravy made from truffles.

[1] Or a glaze which has not been boiled down so as to make it a very stiff jelly.

[CHAPTER IX]

THE HOTEL CECIL (THE STRAND)

It was in the noble cause of conversion of fellow-man that I dined at the Hotel Cecil. One of my uncles, the Nabob—so called by us because he spent many years in the gorgeous East—affects the belief that there is no good curry to be had outside the portals of his club, the East India; and for that reason, when he is not dining at home, dines nowhere but there. I would not dare to trifle with the Nabob's digestion, for I have reason to believe that he has remembered me in his will; but I also thought that he should not be allowed to go to his grave with the erroneous impression that curry can only be made out of India in St. James's Square. I have eaten good curry at the Criterion, where a sable gentleman is charged with its preparation, and I also remembered that at the Cecil they make a speciality of their curries.

The Nabob, doubting much, said that he would dine with me; and, with the possibility of the alteration of the terms of that will always before me, I went down to the Hotel Cecil to interview M. Bertini on the morning of the day of the dinner.

Three gentlemen in gorgeous uniforms, and with as much gold lace round their caps as a field-marshal wears, received me at the door. A clerk in the reception bureau took my card, wrote something mysterious on a slip of paper, and sent a page-boy in blue off on the search for M. Bertini, while I stood and contemplated the great marble staircase.

M. Bertini would see me directly, I was told; and I went down a floor or two in the lift and was shown into a comfortable room, the big table in the centre covered with papers, a telephone at either side of the armchair by the table, and on the walls sketches for the uniforms of the gentlemen with gold-laced caps who had received me, a caricature of M. Bertini, and drawings of various Continental hotels. A yellow dog which had been asleep under the chiffonier rose, stretched himself, inspected me, and apparently thought me harmless, for he went to sleep again. Presently in came M. Bertini himself, looking cool and neat, his beard closely clipped, his moustache brushed out. I had interfered with his morning round of inspection; but he could spare a minute or two to talk over my needs for the evening. I told him at once what I wanted: a dinner for two with the curry course as the most important item, and M. Bertini, who is an expert in cookery, took a slip of paper and sketched out a menu. Here it is:—

Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Consommé Sarah Bernhardt.
Filet de sole à la Garbure.
Côtes en chevreuil. Sauce poivrade.
Haricots verts à la Villars.
Pommes Cécil.
Mousse de foie gras et jambon au champagne.
Curry à l'Indienne.
Bombay Duck, etc. etc.
Asperges.
Bombe à la Cecil.
Petites friandises choisies.

We had a table in the corner of the great restaurant, with its dozen marble pillars, its walnut panelling, its tapestries, the gilt Cecil arms on a great square of red velvet, its great crystal lamps that hold the electric light, its fireplaces of Sicilian marble, its gilt ceiling, its musicians' gallery in one corner. The waiters with their white aprons bustled silently about setting down the hors-d'œuvre, the important person with the silver chain round his neck took the order for a bottle of Deutz and Gelderman, and the curry cook, clothed in white samite, and with his turban neatly rolled, came up to make his salaam, and was immediately tackled by the Nabob, who in fluent Hindustani put him through an examination in the art of curry-making, which was apparently satisfactory, for he was dismissed with a Bot atcha.

Then the Nabob, hook-nosed, clean-shaven, except for two thin side-whiskers, turned to me. "When I was at Mhow, in '54, Holkar—not the present man, but his grandfather, had a curry cook named Afiz, who——" and just then the waiter brought the soup, which I was glad of, for I knew my uncle's story of Holkar and Afiz, and how the cook was to have been beheaded for giving his Highness a mutton curry instead of an egg one, and was saved by the Nabob's interference, and I knew that it took half an hour in the telling. The consommé Sarah Bernhardt, which has a foundation of turtle, to which is added consommé de volaille, quenelles and parsley, was worthy of M. Coste, erstwhile of Cubats', the gorgeous restaurant in the Champs Elysées, who has deserted the banks of the Seine for those of the Thames; and the filet de sole à la Garbure, over the description of the cooking of which M. Guy Gagliardelly, the most attentive of maîtres d'hôtel, waxed eloquent, was another masterpiece of the kitchen. It is a variation of the filet de sole Mornay, having vegetables added to it.

Then came a pause, and with it the Nabob's opportunity. "Holkar never gave a great curry feast without asking me to it, for he said that I was the only European who understood what a curry should be——" and just then the waiter put down our cutlets before us, and M. Gagliardelly was at my elbow to explain that the haricots verts were prepared with flour and egg and then fried like a sole, and M. Laurent, the chef du restaurant, who had been going the round of the tables, told us the secret of pommes Cecil.

My uncle drew a long breath, and I knew what was coming, when luckily a lady with a great dog-collar of diamonds passed and attracted his attention, and I staved off the dissertation on curries for a few minutes by telling him of the wonderful diamond stomacher the lady possessed, which made the collar look only like a row of brilliants. I called the Nabob's attention, too, to a quiet, almost shabbily-dressed gentleman, dining with his wife and two little girls, for he is a man with an estate in Australia big enough to form a principality in the Balkans, and people talk of the revenue he gets from his flocks and herds with a sort of awe. A little French chansonnette singer; the editor of a Society newspaper; a well-known musician and his daughter, who is a rising young actress, were other people of interest to be pointed out; and by that time our two wedges of the delicately-coloured mousse, with its flavouring gained from tongue and champagne and old brandy, were before us. The mousse was the only dish in the dinner that was really open to criticism, and I do not think that I am captious when I say that I prefer it made less solidly than M. Coste's creation at the Cecil.

Then came the dish of the evening, a tender spring-chicken for the foundation of the curry, and all the accessories, Bombay duck, that crumpled in our fingers to dust, paprika cakes, thinner than a sheet of note-paper, and chutnees galore, to add to the savoury mess. It was a genuine Indian curry, and the curry cook, his hands joined in the attitude of polite deference, stood and watched rather anxiously the Nabob take his first mouthful. I myself think the Malay curries the best in the world, those wonderful preparations of prawns, fish, fowl, meat, or vegetable, with one great curry as the foundation swimming in the delicious semi-liquid, which has always the taste of fresh cocoa-nut, with half a dozen subsidiary curries, and then a host of sambals, little dishes of ota-ota, which is fish brains pounded in cream, fresh cocoa-nut and chili, beans, shredded ham, Bombay duck, and a hundred other relishes; and I put next to it the Ceylon curry. But the Nabob swears by the curries of India, and even the old Quai Haies of his club pay attention when he gives his decision on a question of feeding. "Er, um, yes, good," said the old gentleman, and the cook salaamed. "Good, decidedly. I don't say as good as we get it at the club"—he was bound to say this—"but decidedly good." The success of the dinner was made, and I felt relieved in my mind as to the will. The asparagus and the bombe, with an electrically illuminated ice windmill as a background, were but the skirmishes after the pitched battle had been won.

As I lighted a cigarette, the Nabob, who does not smoke, began again. "Holkar always invited me and a fellow Afiz, whose life I saved—that's a devilish good story that I must tell you some day—used to make one special curry of lambs' tongues, which he called after me." "Pardon me, uncle, while I pay my bill," I said as a last resource, and this was the bill I paid:—Soup, 2s.; filet de sole, 3s.; côte de mouton, 3s.; haricots verts, 1s. 6d.; pommes, 1s.; mousse, 4s.; curry, 3s. 6d.; asperges, 7s. 6d.; bombe, 2s.; two cafés, 2s.; liqueurs, 3s.; cigarettes, 1s.; wine, 15s.; total, £2: 8: 6.

29th March.

M. Bertini has left the Cecil and Mr. A. Judah, young, alert, with something of the cavalry-officer in his appearance, reigns in his stead. Mons. François has deserted Monte Carlo and the Grand Hotel for the Strand and the Cecil, and now has charge of the restaurant. François has seen the rise of Monte Carlo, having been a dweller in Monaco before Mons. Blanc turned a rocky hill into a paradise by establishing a hell in the centre of it. To hear him tell the story of the early days of the Casino is very interesting. Mons. Laurent is now the maître d'hôtel at the Continental.

Mr. Judah was kind enough to give me the recette for the consommé Sarah Bernhardt, the soup I thought so excellent when I dined at the Cecil, and I also asked him to suggest a dinner for six people, with some specialities of the Cecil included in it.

Here is the recette, and here the menu, with an asterisk against the dishes which are specialities of the Cecil cuisine:—

Caviar frais de Sterlet.
Consommé Sarah Bernhardt.
*Suprême de truite Astronome.
*Poularde soufflée Cecil.
Selle d'agneau de Pauillac rôtie.
Petits pois nouveaux.
Caneton de Rouen à la Presse.
Salade de cœurs de Romaine.
Asperges de Lauris. Sauce mousseline.
Pêches rafraîchies au marasquin.
Comtesse Marie glacée.
Paniers de petits fours.
Fruits.

Consommé Sarah Bernhardt

II faut d'abord avoir un bon consommé de volaille; le lier avec du tapioca grillé, que l'on jette dedans pendant qu'il bouille, et laisser cuire environ trois quarts d'heure; y ajouter une infusion de cerfeuil, estragon, coriandre, avec une pointe de cayenne, ainsi qu'une ou deux eschalottes et un ou deux champignons émincés revenus au vieux Madère sec; verser le tout dans le consommé et laisser cuire environ dix minutes. Passer au linge fin ou à l'étamine; garnir de peluches, de petites quenelles d'écrevisses et de ronds de moëlle coupés à l'emporte, pièce d'environ un centimètre d'épaisseur.

You must first have a good stock, made from poultry, then add to it roasted tapioca, which you throw in while the stock is boiling. Let it cook for about three-quarters of an hour, then add to it an infusion of chervil, tarragon, coriander, and a pinch of cayenne pepper, as well as one or two shallots, and one or two minced mushrooms, which have been soaked in old dry Madeira. Pour the whole into the stock, and let it cook for about ten minutes. Pass through fine muslin or a sieve; garnish with little quenelles of crayfish, grated bread-crumbs, and rounds of marrow, cut out with the cutter, about three-quarters of an inch in thickness.

[CHAPTER X]

GATTI'S (THE STRAND)

I was somewhat in a quandary. I was going to the new play at the St. James's, and had made up my mind to dine at a little club not far from Charing Cross, of which I have the honour to be a member. I went into the sacred portals. I found the hall without a hat or coat hung up in it, and entering the big room of the club I disturbed the meditation of the club servants. There was, for a wonder, nobody in the club, no one had ordered dinner, and as I do not like being a solitary diner at a long table, with three guardian angels in white jackets hovering round me, I made up my mind to go and have my chop elsewhere. My time was short, for I was anxious not to miss a word of the first act. Any of the dinners of the hotels in Northumberland Avenue would be too long for my time; but I was within a stone's throw of Gatti's and thought that I would revisit an old haunt and revive memories of my days of subalternhood.

When I had a large crop of curly hair on my head, and just enough down to pull on my upper lip, when a small allowance and a sub-lieutenant's 5s. 3d. a day were all my wealth and I never entered the portals of Cox's Bank without trembling, I used to go much to Gatti's. If I had the felicity of entertaining a lady at a tête-à-tête dinner my ambition did not rise to the Café Royal—the Savoy and Princes' Hall, and Willis's and the rest did not exist at that time—where I should have fingered the money in my pocket and should have been desperately nervous when the waiter appeared with the bill. I went instead to Gatti's. One could get a large amount of good food at a very easy tariff there, one knew exactly the price of everything from the card, and there was no smiling head waiter with a nest of plovers' eggs at 7s. 6d. apiece, or a basket of strawberries for a guinea, to set one's poverty against one's gallantry. Asti spumante, too, is much cheaper than champagne, and I think most of the fair sex really like it better. Be that as it may, the financial question was the prominent one, and I sometimes found myself standing waiting at the Strand entrance alongside a gigantic porter and a huge hound. I made great friends with both the big man and the big dog, and, if after a quarter of an hour's waiting, my fair guest did not appear the big man invariably consoled me with, "Do not despaire, saire. Perhaps the lady 'as a dronken cabman."

Gatti's was not then as it is now. There was the straight run in from Adelaide Street, where strange-looking foreigners sat at the marble-topped little tables and made the most of one portion of some dish piled high with macaroni, and there was the curving entrance-hall leading in from the Strand, with its white-clothed tables, and its steps up to the biggest room, and between the long gallery with its clothless tables and the aristocratic end of the restaurant the Messrs. Gatti sat at an oval desk to which each waiter brought every dish that was to be served, and there was a mysterious interchange of what looked like metal tokens. All the theatrical demigods of my subalternhood used to be at the tables too. There I first (off the stage) saw Nelly Power, whose photograph had adorned my room at Harrow, and a gay young fellow called Toole, and another named Lionel Brough, and H. J. Byron, and half a hundred more. The modern lights of the stage and the dramatists go to Gatti's still, and no doubt are furtively stared at now by youngsters such as I was then. There were many interesting people at Gatti's in those days, as there are now, and most fascinating to me was an old aide-de-camp of Garibaldi, a fine, white-moustached old man in a slouch hat and voluminous cloak, with something of the look of his great chief about him, who always ordered only one dish, and that of the cheapest. The halfpenny he gave the waiter as a tip was always received with as many thanks as a reckless young swell's half-sovereign would be.

The entrance from King William Street is new since those days, and so is the room it leads into, making Gatti's, with its triple entrances, rather like the crest of the Isle of Man. I went in by this new entrance, noticing that the house next door had also been absorbed into the restaurant, and found myself again in the familiar scene of bustle. Every table was taken; here a single gentleman, pegging away at his cut from the joint, there a family party, the father with a napkin tucked under his chin, the child with one tied round its neck. There was a party of girls in much-flowered hats who unmistakably belonged to some theatre; two dramatists with a bundle of brown-paper-covered manuscript on the table between them; a little costumier in blue spectacles eating silently, while a light-bearded gentleman, who is the best-known perruquier in London, was telling him volubly of the wonderful wigs that Mdme. Sarah Bernhardt had ordered for her new piece. The dramatists would have had me stay and eat at their table; but I wanted to go if possible to my old seat, and so went on to the largest room, the centre of the restaurant, where I used to retain a corner table. Not a seat was to be had, everywhere were parties of respectable citizens and their wives in broadcloth and stuff, and the bustling waiters in dress clothes and black ties could only look round helplessly when I asked them to find me a table. I was the one man in dress clothes in the room, the waiters excepted, and I began to think, as I stood rather desolately amid all the bustle and clatter, that I should have done more wisely to dine in solitary dignity at the club, when I looked towards the table where the two Messrs. Gatti in old days, when they were not at the desk, used to sit, for they were always together, and there was the survivor of the two sitting in his accustomed seat. The author of Captain Swift, who had been sitting opposite to him, talking, no doubt, about a coming play for the Adelphi, rose at that moment, and Mr. Gatti, seeing my dilemma, motioned me to the vacant seat. We none of us grow younger, and as I shook Mr. Gatti's hand I thought that, though his hair, brushed straight back from the forehead, and his moustache are hardly touched with grey, he was looking very careworn.

One of the managers, in frock-coat and black tie, was at my elbow with the bill of fare. Croûte au pot, printed in bigger letters than the rest of the dishes, first caught my eye, and I ordered that; and, skipping the long list of fish and entrées, I was puzzling as to which of the many joints to have a cut from, when the manager suggested braised mutton, which I thought sounded well, and for drink I would have a big glass of cold lager-beer.

I looked round the rooms. Except for the new rooms and a new serving-room, everything seemed very much the same as of past times. The crowd at the marble-topped tables was not quite so picturesque as that I remembered of old; but the great counter, with its backing of dark wood and looking-glass, its lager-beer engine, and its army of bottles, was there, the oval desk with its two occupants was there, the carvers with the big dish-covers running up and down on chains were there. The decorations of blue and gold were of the same colours that I recall, the stained window I remembered, but a new portrait of the late Mr. Terriss, the actor, in the well-known grey suit, looked down on me from the wall.

The soup, strong and hot, with its accompanying vegetables on a separate plate, was brought, and, having disposed of it, I thought that it was a good opportunity to interview Mr. Gatti as to the transformations of the restaurant and as to his theatrical speculations. I learned that the first state of the Adelaide Gallery was a long entrance leading to one big room, that the floor of the restaurant was where the cellars are now, and that two balconies at that time ran round the room. Bit by bit the various changes were explained to me, until the advent of the braised mutton, with white beans and new potatoes, brought a pause. Capital mutton it was—a huge helping too—and the lager-beer delightfully cold and light. "A concert season at Covent Garden was your first theatrical speculation, was it not?" I had begun, when my eye caught the clock over the arch. I wanted to hear about Covent Garden and the Adelphi and the Vaudeville, and I wanted to eat cheese and drink coffee and some of the excellent old brandy the restaurant has; but the hands of the clock pointed to twenty minutes to eight, and at a quarter to eight the curtain would rise at the St. James's, so I called for my bill. Soup, 1s. 6d.; entrée, 1s. 4d.; vegetable, 4d.; bread, 1d.; beer, 6d.; total, 3s. 9d.

5th April.

[CHAPTER XI]

THE SAVOY UNDER MONS. RITZ (THAMES EMBANKMENT)

The first information that I received as to Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx having returned from Cannes was in a little note from the lady herself, delivered on Sunday at lunch-time, to the effect that Charlie had been asked to dine that evening with his official chief, and that if I was not otherwise engaged I might take my choice between dining quietly with the pretty lady at her home, or taking her out somewhere to dinner.

I went to the telephone at once.

"No. 35,466, if you please"; and being switched on to the Savoy, and having asked for a table, I received the answer I expected, having applied so late, that every one was taken, but that the management would do what they could to find space for me in a supplementary room. This meant dining in one of the smaller dining-rooms, and as at the Savoy the view of one's neighbours and their wives is no unimportant part of the Sunday dinner, I went to headquarters at once, and asked if M. Echenard, the manager, was in the hotel, and if he was, would he come to the telephone and speak to me.

M. Echenard was in the hotel, and as soon as I had secured his ear I made an appeal to him that would have melted the heart of any tyrant. I wanted to take Mrs. Sphinx out to dinner, and he must be aware that it would be quite impossible for her to dine anywhere except in the big room of the restaurant.

"If it is possible, it shall be done," said M. Echenard, and, telling him that I would come down by cab at once and order dinner, I switched off the telephone, wrote to Mrs. Sphinx that I should like to have the felicity of taking her out, and would call for her a little after eight, and then went down by cab to the Savoy.

In the office on the ground-floor, an office crowded up with books and papers, I found M. Echenard—who, with his little moustache with the ends turned upwards and carefully trimmed beard, always has something of the look of the Spanish senores that Velasquez used to paint—and his spectacled secretary.

I could have a table in the big room, I was told, and, having achieved this, I wanted to be given one of the two tables on either side of the door of entrance, tables from which one can see better than any others the coming and going of the guests. This was impossible. There was, however, a table for two which had been engaged, but the taker of which had given up his claim at the last moment; and though dukes and scions of Royalty would have to feed in the supplementary rooms, Mrs. Sphinx should have that table.

The ordering of the dinner came next, and to take on one's self the responsibility of this with such a chef as Maître Escoffier in the kitchen is no small matter.

Hors-d'œuvre, of course, and then I suggested Bortch as the soup, for of all the restaurants where they make this excellent Russian dish the Savoy takes the palm.

Timbales de filets de sole à la Savoy, hinted M. Echenard, and though I didn't quite know what that was, it sounded well, and went down on the slip of paper. I wanted a mousse for the entrée, for I know that there are no such mousses to be got elsewhere as the Maître can make; and then M. Echenard suggested Poulet de grain Polonaise, and as he described the method of cooking, and how the juices of the liver soaked into the bird, and the essence of the chicken permeated the liver, I gave up my first idea of the celebrated canard en chemise. That was my idea of a little dinner, but M. Echenard insisted on the finishing touches being administered by a parfait de foie gras, English asparagus, and pêches glacées vanille. It was a dinner that had, perhaps, an unusual amount of cold dishes in it; but it is one of the customs of Savoy cookery to have, if possible, one cold dish at least in the menu, for, the hot dishes being served scrupulously unadorned, the cold ones give M. Escoffier and his staff a chance of showing what they can do in the way of decoration.

Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx, being a soldier's wife, was ready to the second when I called for her, and during the few moments that I had to wait in the ante-room of the restaurant, with its two fireplaces, its white-and-gold paper, great palms in pots, comfortable armchairs of terra-cotta colour, and Satsuma china, I could look with a comfortable superiority on the less lucky men who were sitting staring at the door and looking disappointed each time that the African gentleman, whose place is there, swung it back to admit some lady who was not the much-expected guest.

Mrs. Sphinx was in blue and white, and was wearing diamonds and turquoises. She had on for the first time a new diamond crescent, and looking round the room where everybody was smart I was pleased to be aware that the lady I had the honour of squiring was quite the smartest there.

And the company in the restaurant, the great room with mahogany panels, golden frieze and gold and red ceiling, of the Savoy on a Sunday night is as fine a society salad as any capital in the world can show. There was on this particular evening in our immediate vicinity, a lady who once won celebrity on the stage, which she left to take a title, and then become the chatelaine of one of the great historical houses of England; there was a good-looking fellow who was one of the best-known men about town and left fops-alley at the opera for the green-room of a comedy theatre; there was an Indian prince, the first swallow of the dusky, jewelled flight that comes each summer to our shores; there was the manager of one of the best-known of our comedy theatres, with whom was dining one of the most beautiful of our actresses and her husband; there was a lady who has the notoriety of having nearly ruined the heir to the throne of one of the kingdoms of Europe, and whose brown diamonds are the envy of all the connoisseurs of the world; there was a party of South African stockbrokers, who from their appearance did not suggest wealth, but whose united incomes would make the revenues of half a dozen Balkan principalities. And around the tables the waiters in their white aprons and the maîtres d'hôtel and the silver-chained sommeliers moved noiselessly, and the master-spirit of the whole, M. Ritz, just back from Rome, with his hands clasped nervously, almost, with his short whiskers and carefully-clipped moustache, a duplicate of the present Secretary of State for War, went from table to table with a carefully graduated scale of acknowledgment of the patrons. M. Echenard was there also, and there is no restaurant in the world in which the chain of responsibility from manager to waiter is carried out with greater thoroughness. Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx was doubtful as to trying the caviar. I should have remembered that she did not care for it; but the grey-green delicacy in its setting of ice tempted her, and she owned to almost liking it. About the Bortch soup there could be no two questions, and the cream stirred into the hot, strong liquid makes it, in my humble opinion, the best soup in the world. The fish, a fish-pie, with its macaroni and shrimps, was delicious, and then came the triumph of the dinner. Cased in its jelly covering, served on a great block of ice, melting like snow in the mouth, Maître Escoffier's mousse was an absolute masterpiece. The poulet, too, was as good to eat as it had sounded when M. Echenard had described it to me, and the parfait de foie gras was another delight. The asparagus and the ice were but the trifles of the dinner; but the ice swan that bore the little mock peaches was a very graceful piece of table decoration.

Mrs. Sphinx through dinner, while sipping her glass of Clicquot, had told me all the gossip of southern France; of the dance at the club at Cannes at which she had arranged the cotillon and led it; of the races of the big yachts for the various cups; of a magnificent scheme she had evolved, by which, now that the Guards have been sent on foreign service, Gibraltar was to become a second Monte Carlo or Nice, a scheme which would involve a few batteries and casemates being removed to make way for a casino, and when we had drunk our café Turc, brought by the brightly clothed Asiatic, and when I had smoked my cigarette and my guest had despoiled the great basket of roses on the table, the band, which plays delightfully, softly, and unobtrusively, had come to the end of its programme, and it was time to be moving. This was the bill, a moderate one for such an admirable dinner:—Two couverts, 1s.; bortch, 3s.; sole savoy, 6s.; mousse jambon, 6s.; poulet polonaise, 8s.; salade, 2s.; foie gras, 6s.; asperges verts, 7s. 6d.; pêches glacées vanille, 7s.; one bottle champagne 133, 15s.; café, 2s.; liqueurs, 2s.; total, £3: 5: 6.

When I put Mrs. Sphinx down at her house-door, her last words were, "That mousse was an absolute dream."

12th April.

The following are the recette of the timbale de filets de sole Savoy, kindly written out for me by Maître Escoffier, and two menus of typical Savoy dinners for a party that numbers six or eight, a dinner-party in fact.

Timbale de filets de sole Savoy

(Proportions pour six couverts)

Avec de la pâte à foncer, préparez et cuisez une croûte à timbale; après l'avoir vidée glacez-la intérieurement et tenez à l'étuve. Préparez une petite garniture de bon macaronis cuit tendre, lié avec de la béchamelle et parmesan rapé, beurré et pincée de poivre rouge.

Prenez huit filets de sole moyenne, tendre et bien blanche, aplatissez-les légèrement, salez-les, masquez-les avec une mince couche de farce de poisson aux truffes; roulez-les sur eux-mêmes en forme de petit baril, entourez-les d'une bande de papier beurré. Rangez les filets de sole dans une casserole ou plat à sauter, en ayant soin que la casserole soit juste de grandeur pour les maintenir serrés; mouillez-les avec un bon court bouillon au vin blanc, faites partir le liquide en ébullition, couvrez la casserole, laissez pocher sans bouillir douze à quinze minutes.

Mettez dans une casserole dix-huit écrevisses moyennes avec beurre, un demi verre de vin blanc, sel, et poivre; couvrez la casserole et cuisez les écrevisses dix à douze minutes sur un feu vif; aussitôt vif retirez la chair des queues; mettez-les dans une casserole avec deux bonnes truffes coupées en lame, un morceau de beurre, tenez au chaud. Avec les carapaces préparez un beurre d'écrevisses.

Faites réduire quelques cuillerées de bonne béchamelle avec addition de crème double, passez la sauce a l'étamine et ajoutez le beurre d'écrevisses, tenir au chaud; au moment de servir garnisser le fonds de la timbale avec le macaronis; dressez sur le macaronis les filets de sole à la garniture de truffes et queues d'écrevisses, saucez le tout avec la sauce préparée au beurre d'écrevisses; recouvrez la timbale et servez bien chaud.

Make a crust (pâte à foncer) for the timbale. Bake it and scoop out the inside, then glaze the inside, and keep it on the stove. Get ready a little garnish of good macaroni, cooked until it is soft, add Béchamel sauce, grated Parmesan cheese, butter and a pinch of red pepper. Take eight fillets of medium-sized soles, tender and very white. Bat them out lightly, salt them, and just cover with a thin layer of fish stuffing made with truffles. Roll the fillets into the shape of little barrels, and put a band of buttered paper round each.

Arrange them in a saucepan, or a shallow pan (à sauter), taking care that this saucepan is of such a size that the fillets are all packed quite closely together, moisten them with a good strong stock, made with white wine, and then let all the liquid boil away. Put a cover on the saucepan, and let it simmer but not boil for twelve or fifteen minutes.