1940s Archive

Along the Boulevards

Originally Published August 1947

Times are reportedly very tough in England, once the luxury center of a world empire, but you'd never know it from lunching amidst the wonderments of the magnificent “Mauretania” at her pier in the North River. Even granting that the chef, a veteran of the old “Mauretania” and accustomed to pleasuring the trans-Atlantic great since 1905, had access to American gustatory resources not available in England, it can safely be said that his hand hasn't lost its cunning at evolving an authentic double consommé, which for some reason is one of the most difficult of all soups to come by, or roasting a baby pheasant with a dressing of solid Strasbourg foie gras. The “Mauretania” is by no means one of these colossal ocean- crossing cities of prewar times, but in splendor of appointments and general glitter of maintenance it transcends anything within memory of this department in a maritime manner.

For a select group of gastronomic investigators, Chef J. Wills and Chief Steward Walter Wilson thought it would be nice to set out some hot hors d'oeuvres, served from a rolling voiture in the cocktail lounge; a full course of fresh caviar, each egg as large and individual as a Cartier pearl; the aforementioned double consommé, jellied; filet of sole à la Mauretania; a separate course of cold asparagus with tongs in the English manner; beautiful baby pheasant en casserole Souvaroff; and for dessert one of those elaborate fruit, ice, and cake arrangements so dear to the hearts of pastry chefs and known as a “buche,” all of the above accompanied by a polite deluge of Chambolle-Musigny 1920, Château Olivier 1928, and Veuve Cliquot 1934. It would have been hard to reduce under the circumstances and even harder to imagine one was lunching, both technically and by inference, in austerity-ridden England.

Like wistful souvenirs of spacious and splendid times departed, however, the asparagus tongs somehow caught a little at the heart, with a memory of long-ago lunches in Claridge's in West Brook Street when June was all over London and all the world was young.

It is improbable that since the time of its most celebrated practitioner, Pietro Aretino, in sixteenth-century Venice, the pasquinade, or expertly vicious and hilarious pamphlet circulated anonymously while its author is known to everyone, has ever had such a champion as Richard Knight. This Knight, unable to resist the impious joys of authorship, just as in the rememberable past he has been unable to resist practices which the law declared provocative or standing on his head in Sherry's Bar at the Metropolitan Opera, is now presumably a resident among the rich Freddy Beckman set in Cuernavaca, Old Mexico; and from this international vantage point he feels it safe to conceive and utter such dainty trifles as Life With Dorothy or Love Among the Rich, a copy of which has just come to these editorial mitts through channels that will not be disclosed here. It may even be an offense against the postal regulations to say that Mr. Knight uses the mails, and this department is taking no chances. It solemnly conjures you, however, if the opportunity offers and howsoever great the cost in gold or inconvenience, to come by a copy of this incomparable, if brief, autobiography.

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