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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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