LVIII The Hyde Park Hotel
Newly engaged couples are rather kittle cattle to entertain at any meal. There was once a pretty young widow who was about to marry a charming young man, and I asked the pair to lunch with me one day at the Savoy and was very particular to secure a table in the balcony, for I thought that the view over the Gardens and up the Thames to the House of Lords and Westminster Abbey would harmonise very well with love’s young dream. And it did harmonise only too well with it, for the pretty widow sat with her face in her two hands gazing up the river with far-away eyes while the grilled lamb cutlets grew cold and the bomb praliné grew warm, and the charming young man, sat opposite to her with hands tightly clasped, gazing into her face and thinking poetry hard the while. Conversation there was none on that occasion. I do not believe that the couple knew in the least whether they were eating sole or cream cheese, and I still have such remnants of good manners that were instilled into me in the days of the nursery that I felt that I was doing an impolite thing to eat heartily while my guests were neglecting their food. I often subsequently wondered whether in the days when I fell desperately in love at least once in every six months, I behaved in public as much like a patient suffering from softening of the brain as did that nice young man on the day he lunched with me at the Savoy.
One of my nephews, a young soldier doctor, is going to do a very sensible thing in marrying an exceedingly nice girl early in his career, and as he is on leave in London it seemed to me that it would be a pleasant thing to ask him and the young lady to lunch or dine with me. Though I did not for a moment believe that the presence of his intended would cause him to neglect his food, I was not prepared, after my previous experience, to put the young lady to the tremendous trial of the view of the Thames from the Savoy balcony, and I decided that dinner, not lunch, should be the meal.
As I was curious to see whether a little dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel was as well cooked as the great banquets are in that flourishing establishment, I asked them to dine there with me one Sunday evening, and gave Mr Kerpen, the manager of the hotel, warning of our coming, asking him to suggest to M. Müller, the chef de cuisine, that I should like one or two specialities of his kitchen included in a very short menu.
If lunch had been the meal to which I invited the young couple the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room would have been a spot as inducive to day dreams as are the balconies at the Savoy and the Cecil, for the view the Hyde Park Hotel commands over the Park is one of the most beautiful and most varied in London. A strip of garden lies between the Hotel and the Ladies’ Mile, and beyond that is the branch of Rotten Row that runs up past the Knightsbridge Barracks. Beyond that again are green lawns and clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, and the grassy rise up to the banks of the Serpentine, the glitter of the water of which and the big trees about it closing in the landscape. The carriages go rumbling past; there are generally some riders in the Row and there is always movement on the footpath, and it seems to be one of the duties of the regiment of Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge to supply as a figure in the immediate foreground either a young orderly officer in his blue frock-coat setting out or returning from his rounds on a big black charger, or a rough-riding corporal in scarlet jacket teaching a young horse manners. The view up the river to Westminster may have a dreamy beauty on a sunshiny day, the vista of the long walk in the Green Park, down which the windows of the Ritz dining-room look, may have more sylvan beauty, but the outlook of the Hyde Park Hotel has more colour and more variety than those of the other big hotels I have mentioned.
The Hyde Park Hotel was one of Jabez Balfour’s speculations, and for a time it was a great pile of flats before it became technically an hotel. It had a fire, and I fancy that it was after the fire that M. Ritz was consulted as to its redecoration—for he had a great talent and indisputable taste in suggesting the ornamentation of large rooms—and that the Hyde Park Hotel became the exceedingly comfortable, quiet, luxurious house it is to-day.
In the big hall, with its dark-coloured marbles and handsome fireplace, I found the young couple waiting for me. They were before their time and were in holiday spirits, which reassured me, for no laughing girl is likely to slip suddenly into day dreams. After I had given my hat and coat to the dark-complexioned servitor in blue and gold Oriental dress, who looks like a very good-natured Othello, we waited for a while in the big cream and green drawing-room—a room so fresh in colour that it does not suggest an environment of London atmosphere, though it looks out on to Knightsbridge. At the quarter past eight we went into the big dining-room, and M. Binder, the maître d’hôtel, showed us to the table in a corner by a window which had been set for us.
The Hyde Park Hotel dining-room is an exceedingly handsome hall of mahogany, with panels of gold and deep crimson brocade; its pillars are of deep red wood with gilt Corinthian capitals; a band plays in a gallery above the crystal service doors and the colours of the panels are echoed in carpet and curtains and upholstery. In its comfortable colouring the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room reminds me very much of what the Savoy dining-room used to be before its beautiful mahogany panelling was taken down and the colour of the walls and ceiling changed to cream.
I soon found that I was not either to be silent or to have the conversation all to myself, for the young people laughed and chatted away, and I found myself comparing descriptions of the Curragh as it was in the seventies, when we used to lie in bed in the huts and watch the marking at the butts through the cracks in the walls, with the Curragh of to-day when the last of the Crimean wooden huts are about to disappear. The reading of the menu, however, was gone through with due solemnity, and the young lady knew that an important moment in her life was about to approach, for she was going to taste caviare for the first time. This was the menu of our dinner:
Caviar Blinis.
Crème d’Asperges.
Sole à la H.P.H.
Selle d’Agneau de lait poëlée.
Haricots verts aux fines herbes.
Bécassines Chasseur.
Salade.
Pêches Petit Duc.
Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
The young soldier doctor watched his bride-that-is-to-be eat her first mouthful of caviare and little angle of the Russian pancake with interest and some curiosity. If she did not like the delicacy there would be no caviare for him in the days of their honeymoon, while if she took a violent fancy to them it might strain the resources of a very young establishment to provide caviare at two meals a day. She took her first mouthful, considered, and said that she liked it; but did not express any overwhelming attachment to it, so I think that so far as caviare is concerned it will be eaten with appreciation in the household-that-is-to-be but will not appear every day at table. The soup was an excellent thick cream; the sole was one of the specialities of the kitchen put by the chef de cuisine into the menu, and a most admirable sole it is. It is a mousse of chicken sandwiched between fillets of sole, and lobster and oysters and, I fancy, mushrooms also, have their part in this very noble dish. The tiny saddle of lamb was the plain dish of the dinner; the snipe were given a baptism of fire before they were brought to table. The peaches were another dish that is a speciality of the house. With the Bar-le-Duc currant jelly about the peaches there was mingled some old Fine Champagne, while the ice and the vanilla cream that went with it were served separately, as is the modern fashion, which is a great improvement on sending up the ice in a messy state with the fruit. The wine we drank was Clicquot 1904. I was charged half-a-guinea a head for our dinner, which was excellent value for the money: altogether an admirable dinner, admirably cooked, and I sent my compliments to the chef.
The other people who had dined had gradually melted away; the band had left its gallery and we could hear its strains coming from some distant room. The young people chattered away about theatres and dances and we might have sat at table until midnight had not the maître d’hôtel suggested that we might like to look at the other rooms on the ground floor before going into the smoking lounge, where the band was playing and where a lady was presently to sing. We walked through a charming little ante-room with golden furniture, into the great pink banqueting-room which is used for dances and balls as well as for great feasts. It is the part of the Hyde Park Hotel with which I am most familiar, and I told the young people, who were more anxious to know which way the boards ran and whether it was a good floor for dancing than they were for descriptions of banquets, how at one of the dinners of the Gastronomes in this fine room the table decorations were so arranged as to be high above the diners’ heads and that the air seemed full of flowers and how M. Müller had invented for that feast the beau-ideal of a vegetable sorbet—tomates givrées. I had thoughts of giving them details of a wonderful banquet given at the hotel by the Society of Merchants, but I am sure they would not have had patience to listen, so what I abstained from telling them then, lest they might think me a gluttonous old bore, I here set down for your consideration, for you can skip it if you will, whereas the two young people would, I am sure, have been kind enough to listen and to pretend to appreciate its beauties:
Cantaloup Grande Fine Champagne.
Caviar.
Consommé Florentine.
Crème de Pois frais.
Filets de Truite Saumonée au Coulis d’Ecrevisses.
Volaille de la Bresse Châtelaine.
Selle de Béhague à la Provençale.
Aubergines au Beurre Noisette.
Cailles Royales à l’Ananas.
Pommes Colerette.
Dodines de Canard à la Gelée.
Cœurs de Laitues aux œufs.
Pêches Framboisées.
Friandises.
Dessert.
Vins.
Sandringham Sherry.
Schloss Volkrads, 1904.
Pommery and Greno, 1900.
Château Brane Cantenac, 1899.
Sandeman’s, 1884.
Marett Gautier, 1830.
Liqueurs.
Then we went into the big room, a room of mahogany, and views of lake and river and sea painted on the panels, which is the room most used by the people who live in the hotel, where the papers and great arm-chairs are and where a man can smoke comfortably, and we listened to the little orchestra and to a young lady who sang us songs sentimental and songs cheerful until it was time for my nephew to do escort duty in taking the young lady back to the northern heights where she lives.