The Gourmet's Guide to LondonNewnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
General
The Gourmet's Guide to London
Newnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
Restaurants -- England -- London -- Guidebooks
The Pall Mall has an exceedingly _comme il faut_ clientele, and any man
who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant
would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time,
and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall
very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and
the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre
to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment
for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants.
And perhaps because the Pall Mall stands where the stage of one of the
theatres in the Haymarket used to be, the restaurant numbers amongst
its clientele many of the great people of the opera and of the theatre,
as its book of autographs shows. This is a book full of scraps of
wisdom and wit, and the Stars of Song and Politics and the Stage have
not been afraid to cap each other's remarks. Thus when Madame Patti
leads off on the top of a page with a charming platitude, "A beautiful
voice is the gift of God," Madame Yvette Guilbert inscribes below a
reminder that "An ugly voice is also the gift of God"; Sir Herbert
Tree, taking a different view from that of either of the ladies, asks
whether a voice should not be considered "A visitation of Providence";
Miss Mary Anderson sides with her sex, for she opines that "All things
are the gift of God"; and Sir Rider Haggard rounds off the discussion
with "But the greatest gift of God is Silence." Lord Gladstone, about
to depart for South Africa, writes, "Faith in the Old Country" as his
contribution, and Mr Lloyd George puts immediately below it a sentence
in Welsh, which being translated means "Liberty will conquer"; Mr
Ben Davies, also a man of gallant little Wales, writes in his native
tongue, below Mr Lloyd George's sentence, "You are quite right, Lloyd
George, but your liberality has taken most of my money." Mr John Burns,
dining at the restaurant on "Insurance Day, 1911," was not stirred up
to any poetic flights by the occasion, "Health the only wealth" being
his rhymed contribution.
Amongst the signatures in the book is that of Signor Marconi, who
is not inclined to write his name more often than is necessary. His
contribution was coaxed from him by a flash of wit on the part of M.
Boriani. On the menu of the dinner eaten by the inventor of wireless
telegraphy appeared the item "_Haricots verts à la Marconi_." The great
electrician asked why they were so named. M. Boriani trusted that the
beans were not stringy, and the inventor having reassured him on this
point, he said that in this case they might rightly be described as
"_Sans fil_."
MM. Degiuli and Boriani have chosen as the motto of their restaurant,
"_Venez et vous reviendrez_," and this confident prediction has been
justified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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