XXII The Welcome Club
In the days when I was still an enthusiastic amateur actor, I was once “cast” for the insignificant part of an aged peasant—the organiser of the performance assured me that though there were only a dozen lines in the part, it nevertheless “stood out”—and in a smock-frock, a pair of second-best trousers tied up with hay-bands, fishing boots, a bandana handkerchief round my neck, a long, straggly white beard, a red nose and an old tall silk hat, brushed the wrong way to give it the appearance of beaver, I depicted the rude forefather of the village. I spoke in a trembling, squeaky voice and I was addressed by the lads and lasses, yes, and even by the noble old squire and by the black-browed villain, as “Granfer.” The part did not, apparently, stand out enough to catch the notice of our audiences, but to those who played with me that drama of village life I have remained “Granfer” to the present day, and every summer I ask three of them, my Pet Grandchild, my Tiny Grandchild and Little Perce to dine with me one evening at the Welcome Club and to go the round of the side-shows afterwards, that being very much the sort of entertainment that every real grandfather ought, I think, to give his grandchildren.
I made my acquaintance with the Welcome Club in the year that it was first built, at the beginning of all things at Earl’s Court. Mr Alec Knowles was the first secretary of the club. The idea of the Welcome Club, of which distinguished foreigners could be made honorary members, originated at the great Chicago Exhibition, in the grounds of which there was a club of this name.
The trees that were planted in front of the lawn of the club have grown to a good size now, but even more picturesque than the formal lines of planes are the thorns and other old trees which were on the ground before the makers of the exhibition gardens took things in hand, and which were left there. Year after year, additions and improvements have been made to the Welcome Club. What was originally a dining-room and a lawn has become a club-house in a garden. The long shelter, a pleasant place in which to dine on a summer’s evening, has been enlarged more than once, and now, with its alcoves, each a tiny dining-room, with vines growing up its supports and flower beds edging its railings, it pleases the eye of the artist and architect as well as the eye of the diner. On the other side of the club-house is a pretty drawing-room for ladies, and Time, which always works in sympathy with a clever architect, has done its share in deepening the colour of the tiles, in bringing the lawn to velvety perfection, and in drawing up the young trees inch by inch. Never before have the garden beds been so gay with flowers as they were in 1913, and the interior of the club-house has been brightened up to concert pitch.
To organise the staff of a club that is only open for four months in the year is no easy matter, for the pick of maîtres d’hôtel and cooks and waiters do not as a rule care to accept engagements that only last for a third of a year. A club as far from its bases of supply as is the Welcome cannot arrange its catering so easily as can clubs in the centre of London, which have their fishmonger’s and butcher’s shops just round the corner, and a wet or a cold night means almost empty dining-rooms at Earl’s Court. Difficulties, however, only exist to be overcome, and Mr Payne, the chairman of the Earl’s Court Company, determined that it shall no longer be said that it is impossible to get a good dinner in any exhibition, has brought all his energy to bear on the problem, and with Mr Charles Bartlett, as secretary, with a Bond Street firm of caterers responsible for the personnel and material and with M. G. Thuillez in charge of the club kitchens, I think that Mr Payne made good his promise. I certainly have never before at the Welcome Club eaten a dinner so satisfactory in every way as the one I gave one fine evening last July to my three grandchildren.
I had written word to the secretary, an old friend, saying on what evening I was coming to dine and asking him to give the manager a hint whether to reserve for me a table in the dining-room or the shelter, according to whether the evening was warm or cool. The weather that day was fine, but the temperature kept about the temperate line. As the manager was unable to guess whether the ladies would find the shelter chilly and as there was that evening no great rush for tables, he reserved until I should appear upon the scene, a table for four in the dining-room and another for the same number in one of the alcoves of the shelter.
When I came to the club, five minutes before the hour of dinner, I opted at once for the table in the alcove, looked at the menus of the table d’hôte dinners, one a five-shilling one and the other a seven-and-six one, and chose the latter, ordered my wine, a magnum of Krug, and then sat in one of the big wicker chairs on the lawn and waited for my guests.
The scarlet-coated band of an infantry regiment had taken their places in the band pavilion in the centre of the gravelled space and the bandmaster was rapping on his music stand to command his men’s attention. There were already many people sitting on the circle of seats which surrounds the pavilion. Away to the left men in dress clothes and ladies in evening frocks were going in little parties into the Quadrant Restaurant, and opposite to the Welcome Club, with the breadth of the open space in between, there were groups of men about the American bar and the tea pavilion. The great tower, which is part of one of the mountain railways, loomed big to the right, but the cars that run on the rails had for a time ceased to rattle and splash through the stream of real water which forms part of the scenery. The flying machines still farther to the right were also still for the moment, the wire hawsers which support them looking like the rigging of a ship. Presently I saw my three guests approaching, having come into the gardens by the most westerly entrance, and we were soon seated in the alcove, where an electric lamp hung from the ceiling and another lamp on the table was alight, though the sun had only just set. This was the menu of the dinner that we ate:
Melon Rafraîchi.
Consommé Tosca.
Crème Bonne Femme.
Turbot Bouilli Sauce Homard.
Tournedos Doria.
Pommes Rosette.
Noix de Ris de Veau en Cocotte Demidoff.
Sorbet Mandarinette.
Caneton d’Aylesbury rôti au Cresson.
Salade Cœur de Laitue.
Glacé Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
Our conversation naturally enough drifted on to stories of amateur acting; but not until my Tiny Grandchild had first described a deed of heroism she had done while staying at a country house. In the dead of the night she heard a bell ring continuously, and assuming that burglars were in the house and had carelessly set an alarm bell ringing, she woke up her husband in the next room and proposed that they should there and then rouse all the inmates of the house and capture the burglars. But her husband looked at his watch and as an amendment suggested that, as the ringing was probably an alarum clock, set by a diligent housemaid, instead of alarming the household it would be better for my T. G. to sleep out her beauty sleep. We re-christened the daring lady “The Little Heroine” as we supped our crème bonne femme and declared it to be good. With the tournedos my imperfections of memory with respect to “words” were cast into my teeth, and especially of a sentence. I introduced into His Excellency the Governor, when, as Sir Montague, I declared to Ethel that I would “dower her with the inestimable guerdon of my love,” words that Captain Marshall never wrote. And, further, it was recalled that most of us who had played together in this comedy, and its author, went one evening to see Mr H. B. Irving and Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Mr Dion Boucicault and Mr Marsh Allen and others play the comedy, and how a shout of delight went up from our row of stalls and puzzled our neighbours sorely when Mr Irving, primed, no doubt, by Captain Marshall, declared that he would dower his Ethel with the “inestimable guerdon” of his love.
To change the subject I drew the attention of my three grandchildren to their surroundings, for there are a few minutes of supreme loveliness at the Welcome Club when the light is fading from the western sky and all the electric lamps suddenly spring into brilliancy. The tower of the mountain railway no longer appears to be a thing of wood and canvas, but stands a great, dark, solid mass against the sky, with the twinkle of some letters of electricity upon its battlements. In the trees on the lawn, lamps, red and blue and golden, shimmer like fireflies; all about the bandstand are garlands of white light, and the flying machines, shadows dotted with coloured light, go swinging round in the distance.
When we had finished our dinner we sat in contentment for a while on the lawn, listening to the music of the band and drinking our coffee, and then, as an aid to digestion, went in to The Hereafter side-show, almost next door, where skeletons dance and a bridge swings and rocks over a torrent of painted fire; and then on to the booths where the china of “happy homes” can be broken up at a penny a shot, where the two ladies did desperate execution against the kitchen service. And next to the revolving cylinders, where we watched enterprising young gentlemen stand on their heads involuntarily, and to the variations on hoop-la stalls, at one of which we all tried unsuccessfully to win watches. And on to the summer ballroom; and to the bowl-slide; and finally, as the supreme digestive, we all four went down the water chute, I taking the precaution of leaving my tall hat below in charge of the gate man: for one year going down this chute my Tiny Grandchild, being shot into the air by the bump on the water, descended on my hat, which I held in my hand, and turned it into a good imitation of an accordion.