The Pump Room, however, stands as evidence that robbery, like dentistry, can be made painless, and there are even those who make special pilgrimages to Chicago for the sole reason of visiting Byfield's pavilion of gustatory wonders and gastronomic firehouse, much as pious British imperialists in the eighties and nineties headed straight for Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo when the opportunity offered. It is, in a very real sense, the social and professional crossroads of the United States, and film celebrities en route from Hollywood to the Waldorf, and shipping executives and lieutenant generals laying a course out of Washington for San Diego or Seattle ease their way happily onto its tall, leather-topped bar stools and wax lyric over its menu replete with “Fishes From the Seas and Rivers,” Welsh rabbits and roulades, Kansas City cuts of beef, Lake Superior whitefish, Indian curries and Greek-fire desserts. Lieutenant Colonel Serge Obolensky, ranking Russian royal exile in the United States and a person whose tastes in company may not be qualified as precisely democratic, has remarked to this reporter that he never yet has failed to encounter friends on stepping into the Pump Room, and the premises are a reunion ground for names that make news everywhere. It is possible at a single luncheon sitting to observe the presence of such an assortment of notables as Gertrude Lawrence, William M. Jeffers, Gladys Swarthout, Frank Chapman, Bruce Cabot, Averell Harriman, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Gloria Swanson, Bill Hearst, Jr., Mrs. Byron Harvey, Marshall Field, Frank Sinatra, or Helen Hayes with or without MacArthur.
The Byfield legend around Chicago is older than most folk are apt to believe. His first job was in the old Sherman House, an immemorial Midwestern institution owned by Byfield's father, Joseph, where Ernie went to work as a cashier in 1905. The Sherman was the scene of the College Inn, one of the first night restaurants in a hotel in the land and which survived into recent years when it split itself up by a process of binary fission into the Malaya and the Panther Rooms. The College Inn, which started young Ernie off on a career of expensive gestures whose end is not yet, was the scene of early triumphs for such headliners as Ruth Etting, Kate Smith, Ted Healy, Maurice and Walton, and Rigo, the gypsy violinist. The first Ambassador was opened on the west side of State Street in 1929, the year of the Charlot Revue, and the presence in its lounges and apartments of Beatrice Lillie, not yet Lady Peel, of Jack Donahue and Gertrude Lawrence, established the Ambassador, instanter, as the Algonquin of the Middle West. It also saw the commencement of a mutual admiration entente between Byfield and Miss Lawrence which has endured faithfully and in full flower to this day. Whether or not she may be in Chicago, London, or Antofagasta, the first table directly opposite the entrance to the Pump Room is permanently reserved for Miss Lawrence, and there is a gold plaque there for all the world to know. There is also a state suite upstairs with her name on the door, and this is maintained in a condition of expectancy whenever she is reported in the hemisphere, much as the beds were turned down and the tables laid in the various residences of the late J. P. Morgan whenever he was known to be at sea or otherwise in transit.
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