XXV In the Hands of Pi(e)rates
The Connaught Rooms
When it was decided by the contributors to Printer’s Pie to entertain their editor, “The Pieman,” a little committee of artists and writers, with the editor of The Tatler as secretary, considered various plans for giving Mr Hugh Spottiswoode a dinner with unusual surroundings.
A decision was arrived at that the contributors to the Pie should become Pi(e)rates, for one night only, and in that guise should entertain the Pieman in a pirate haunt, and then the next question was the choice of a dining place and the difficult matter of finding the proprietor or manager of a restaurant who would enter thoroughly into the spirit of the burlesque and would provide a real pirate feast with blood-curdling piratical surroundings. A member of the committee suggested Mr George Harvey, who controls the Connaught Rooms in Great Queen Street, as the very man, and to the next meeting of the committee Mr George Harvey came, quiet, humorous and resourceful, and when he heard the outlines of our scheme he smiled, and said that he thought he quite understood what we wanted.
It was essential to the success of our little joke that the guest of the evening should know nothing of the reception he would get, and when the Pi(e)rates were informed that the dress of a bold buccaneer was to be the wear at dinner at the Connaught Rooms, they were entreated to keep this a secret from the Pieman. Strangely enough, the secret was kept; he had no inkling of what was going to happen to him. When, heralded by a commissionaire, he came up the grand staircase of the restaurant, faultlessly attired in his best evening clothes, he gave a jump when the Master-at-Arms of the Pirates, attired in the levee uniform of a pirate king, suddenly appeared before him with drawn cutlass and a ferocious look, and told two stalwart members of the pirate gang to “Arrest that man!”
If it would interest you to know who the pirates are, when they are not pirating, you have only to look at the contents pages of Printer’s Pie and you can there read the list of the authors and artists who were busy between seven and eight o’clock one Friday, in a little room in Great Queen Street, transforming themselves from fairly respectable members of society into the most shocking criminals that ever went to sea. There were pirates of all kinds, all centuries and all classes. There were gentlemen pirates with nickel-plated revolvers; one pirate of particular ferocity from the Barbary Coast had given himself an emerald-green complexion; another pirate, who feared that his good-natured face might belie his costume, carried on his breast a large placard with a photo on it for identification purposes, and the legend “I am an [adjective] pirate.” Some of the pirates wore long false noses; many of them had the skull and crossbones on their jerseys; cocked hats with feathers were quite fashionable wear, and no belt had less than three pistols stuck into it. One writer of humorous short stories came as an old growler cabby, explaining that cabmen were the only pirates that he had ever met. The chairman of the dinner, who had been selected for that onerous post because, as the designer of the covers of all the Printer’s Pies he had always come first amongst its contributors, had added an Afghan sheepskin coat to his other piratical garment—luckily for him the night was very cold—and was attended by a minor pirate, who carried on a long stick a triangular lantern as a sign of authority.
When the pirates’ prisoner was arrested he was requested to step into a little boat on wheels, the doors of the ante-room were flung wide open and the boat was dragged into the presence of the pirate Captain, who stood in the centre of the room, with the pirate band playing “Down Among the Dead Men” on silvered papier-maché instruments to his left, and to his right the pirate crew flourishing pistols and cutlasses. The little boat paused for a moment while the pirates gave a blood-curdling boarding yell, and then continued its career at hydroplane pace into the dining-room, with the pirates following after.
The Crown Room had become a pirates’ lair prepared for a feast. The walls had been shut out by scenery representing sea and mountain; the floor was an inch deep in sawdust; in the corners of the room were plantations of palm-trees, with parrots in cages in the midst of them. These parrots missed the opportunity of their lives, for they were so stunned by the noise the pirates made at their meal that they never uttered a single scream.
At one side of the pirates’ lair was a great dhow, such as one sees sailing in and out of Aden. It was really a stage for the band and the after-dinner performers, but it had been converted into a dhow. In its tall stern a piano was housed; it had high bulwarks, a tall mast and a great lateen sail. From the mast-head flew the “Jolly Roger,” and in the rigging was a huge red lantern.
A dozen round tables had been prepared for the pirates, with sheets of brown paper laid on them as tablecloths. The room was lighted by candles stuck into bottles and set on the tables. Of knives and forks there were none apparent; the salt was great lumps of the rock variety, the mustard was in teacups and the pepper in screws of brown paper. The menu, which is reproduced at the head of this chapter, was written with an inky stick on torn bits of brown paper, and each pirate’s place was marked for him by a card with blood spots on it. Every table had a big card in a split cane set up to mark a pirate locality. There were Skeleton Cove and Murder Gulch, Coffin Marsh, Gallows’ Hill, Cannibal’s Creek, Dead Man’s Rock and others, and the ship’s officers, the roll of which included the Stale Mate, the Hangman, the Powder Monkey and the Ship’s Parrot, presided each at a table. The first mate sat next to the Captain, and it was his business to wave a black flag over his great commander’s head at intervals, and to beat constantly a big drum which was concealed under the table.
The waiters at the feast looked even greater ruffians than the feasters, which is saying a great deal. They were the most shocking set of criminals and marine cut-throats that ever carried a dish of salt junk. Most of them had black eyes; their bare arms were wondrously tattooed, and they all smoked short clay pipes as they went about their work. The pirates, because of their superior station, smoked long churchwardens, of which, and playing-cards, there was a plentiful supply scattered about the tables. One waiter entered so thoroughly into his part that he danced a little hornpipe as he took round the dishes.
When the feast had commenced with oysters, the pirate waiters suddenly produced a supply of knives and forks, and menus of what the real dinner was. Below is the menu of the real dinner, and an excellent dinner it was. Pirates who had known better days nodded to each other approvingly across the table when they had eaten the fish dish, which was exceptionally good. Mr George Harvey most certainly has succeeded in regilding the faded glories of the Freemasons’ Tavern and in putting the Connaught Rooms, which is the title of the rebuilt house, very firmly on the dining map of London.
Huîtres Royales.
Consommé Excelsior.
Timbale de Sole Archiduc.
Poularde Hongroise.
Nouilles au Parmesan.
Noisette de Pré-Salé Montmorency.
Pommes Anna.
Faisan en Cocotte à la Truffe.
Salade Jolly Roger.
Jambon d’York au Champagne.
Poires St George.
Friandises.
Barquettes de Laitances.
Dessert.
Café Double.
The band, a real string orchestra, in white jackets, on the deck of the dhow, played rag-time melodies and other inspiriting airs, and occasionally made itself heard above the noise with which the pirates settled down to their feast. The big drum was always in action, and somewhere outside the hall a waiter shook a sheet of theatre-thunder in a vain attempt to equal the noise of the drum within; pistols were discharged in all parts of the lair, and the pirate with an emerald-green complexion, whenever he thought the Captain looked dull, walked over to his table and fired a pistol into his ear to cheer him up. When this failed to attract the Captain’s attention, a large cracker was set fire to under his chair.
One of the groups of pirates, thinking that the band were having far too peaceable a time, suddenly drew pistols and cutlasses, boarded the dhow, and put the musicians to the sword, which delighted the fiddlers very much. There was also dancing during the dinner, for two of the pirates, wishing to give a real society touch to the function, rose and performed a wild Tango in and out of the tables. That was not the only dance, for a fat carver, who wore a conical white cap and white garments plentifully besprinkled with gore, had stood during the early stages of dinner and had looked on at the pirates’ antics, being much amused thereat. One of the pirates, thinking that a spectator ought to have some share in the active work of the fun, seized him and forced him to dance, and dance the carver did, with such good will that he finally tired the pirate out, and remained, perspiring and smiling, the victor in the dance.
When dinner was over the guest of the evening was tried by court-martial. He was accommodated with a chair in the centre of the room and given a cigar and a drink; a wide circle of candles in bottles was put about him to give light to the proceedings, and all the pirates sat in groups in the sawdust, the master-at-arms, with drawn cutlass, behind the prisoner, the accuser, a picturesque ruffian, and the prisoner’s friend, an equally forbidding scoundrel, and the pirate Captain being the only individuals standing up. This grouping formed a really striking picture, and I have no doubt that many artistic eyes took in its possibilities. The accusation brought against the prisoner was that he had paid income tax (groans from the pirates), that he was even suspected of paying super-tax (yells of fury from the pirates), that he kept tame animals, notably Welsh rarebits, and that he fed them. The pirate Captain had already warned the prisoner that his sentence had been determined upon, and therefore that it was no use for him, or anybody else on his behalf, to plead his cause; but the prisoner’s friend had a speech ready, and loosed it off, making the case very much blacker against his client than it had been before. Sentence was then duly pronounced, but as the pirate Captain had mislaid the plank on which the victim was to walk, and as the goldfish which were to represent sharks had been left downstairs, the doom of the victim resolved itself into the presentation to him of a pair of silver hand-cuffs with a tiny watch at the end of one of them.
After the court-martial, the pirates gave themselves and their guest an entertainment. One pirate sang admirably; another pirate, whose name, I think, before he went to sea, was Walter Churcher, told excellent stories, and a third pirate went through the whole performance that the flashlight photographer inflicts on good-natured diners, his apparatus being a whisky bottle and a tin mug, and then handed round photographs he pretended to have taken of our guest.
There was more fun to come, but as midnight was drawing near, and as I belong now to the early-to-bed sect of sea-wolves, I departed quietly. The lift boy at my flat, when he saw the brick-dust of my marine complexion, said to me, as he took me up: “Good gracious, sir, whatever has happened to your face?”
It was a great night altogether!