Read Ebook: Dinners and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London by Newnham Davis Lieut Col Nathaniel

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 673 lines and 103543 words, and 14 pages

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.

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 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.

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."

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?

"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.

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'oeuvre, 2s.; cr?me Pink 'Un, 2s.; truite, 2s. 6d.; c?telettes de mouton, 2s. 6d.; petits pois, 1s.; pommes, 1s.; perdreau, 6s.; salade, 1s.; artichauts, 2s.; glace, 2s.; champagne , 13s. 6d.; caf?, 3s.; liqueurs, 5s.; total ?2: 4s.

Hu?tres natives. Petite bouch?e norv?gienne. Tortue claire. Cr?me Dubarry. Homard saut? ? la Julien. Aiguillette de sole. Sauce Germanique. Z?phir de poussin ? la Brillat-Savarin. Selle d'agneau ? la Grand-Veneur. Petits pois primeur ? la Fran?aise. Pomme nouvelle persillade. Spongada ? la Palermitaine. Jambon d'York brais? au champagne. Caille ? la Crapaudine. Salade de saison. Asperges vertes en branche. Sauce mousseuse. Timbale Marie-Louise. Bombe ? la Romano. Petits fours assortis. Dessert. Caf?.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 apr?s 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.

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.

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'oeuvre ? la Russe. Consomm? Brunoise ? la Royale. Potage en tortue. Supr?me de saumon ? la Chambord. Tournedos ? la Montgador. Poularde ? la Demi-Doff. Caille r?ti sur canap?. SALADE. Flageolets Mtre. d'H?tel. Bombe Chateaubriand. Corbeilles de friandises.

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.; caf?s, 3s.; liqueurs, 3s.; total, ?3: 18s.

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

THE BLUE POSTS

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 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.

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, habitu?s 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.

VERREY'S

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.

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 matin?e 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.

Petite marmite. OEufs ? la Russe. Souffl? de filets de sole ? la Verrey. Timbale Lucullus. Noisettes d'agneau ? la Princesse. Petits pois ? la Fran?aise. Pommes Mirelle. Aiguillettes de caneton ? l'Orange. Salade V?n?tienne. 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.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet