Fifth Avenue Part 14

Ham, Tongue, Lobsters.

Entrees.

Frica.s.see of chicken, a la New York.

Tete de Veau en Tortue.

Cotellettes de mouton, saute aux pommes.

Filet de veau, pique a la Macedoine.

Tendon d'Agneau, puree au navets.

Fois de volaille, sautee, a la Bordelaise.

Croquettes de pommes de terre.

Stewed oysters.

Boeuf bouilli, sauce piquante.

Macaroni a l'Itallienne.

Roast.

Beef, Veal, Lamb, mint sauce, Chicken, Duck.

Vegetables.

Mashed potatoes. Asparagus.

Spinach. Rice.

Turnips. Pears.

Pastry.

Rice custard. Roman punch.

Pies. Tarts, etc.

Dessert.

Strawberries and cream. Almonds.

Raisins. Walnuts, etc.

The day came when the hotels farther downtown yielded the palm to the Metropolitan, opened in the middle fifties at Broadway and Prince Street. The late Alfred Henry Lewis thus rhetorically pictured the Metropolitan, in the winter of 1857-58, when to dine there was the thing to do. "Over near a window are Bayard Taylor, the poet Stoddard, and Boker, who wrote 'Francesca da Rimini,' which Miss Julia Dean is playing at Wallack's. Beyond them is Edmund Clarence Stedman, with lawyers David Dudley Field and Charles O'Connor. The second table from the door is claimed by Sparrow Gra.s.s Cozzens and Fitz-James...o...b..ien, who have adjourned from Pfaff's beer-cellar near Leonard Street, where, under the Broadway sidewalk, they were quaffing lager and getting up quite an appet.i.te on onions, pretzels, and cheese. They have with them Walt Whitman, who, silent and wholly wanting in that barbaric yawp, is distinguished by what William Dean Howells, ever slopping over in his phrase-making, will one day speak of as his 'branching beard and Jovian hair.' The theatres have a place in the Leland cafe, and that dark, thin-faced scimetar-nosed Jewish woman, who coughs a great deal, is the French actress, Rachel. She has been playing at the New York Theatre, and caught a cold on that overventilated stage, as open to the winds as a sawmill, which will kill her within a year. With her are the singer, Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore Thomas. The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stoddard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talking of the operatic failure at the Academy of Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, of Mrs. Wood's success at Wallack's, and of Burton's reopening of the old Laura Keene Theatre, in Broadway across from Bond. Thomas mentions the accident at Niblo's the other evening, when Pauline Genet, of the Revel troupe, was so savagely burned. Speculation enlists O'Connor, Stedman, and Field, and Field is prophesying impending money troubles, which prophecies the panic six months away will largely bear out."

Then, quietly at first, but none the less surely, Fifth Avenue began to play its part to the town and to the visiting stranger. Now that the Astor House and the old Fifth Avenue Hotel are gone it is to the Brevoort, or the Lafayette-Brevoort, just as you choose to call it, that one turns to find the ghosts of yesterday. They are nothing to shy at, being comfortable, well-fed spirits, compositely cosmopolitan. For legend has it that the management in the old days was particularly gracious to the captains of the transatlantic steamers when they were in this port, and the seamen were correspondingly appreciative. So as the vessel was pa.s.sing the Nantucket Lights.h.i.+p the t.i.tled Englishman bound for the Canadian Rockies to hunt big game, or the French banker, seeking first-hand information about values in mines or railroads, or the Neapolitan tenor about to fill an engagement at the Academy of Music, turned to the captain for advice as to where to stay during the sojourn in New York, the Briton, or the Gaul, or the Italian was likely to hear such a flattering account of the comfort of the Brevoort and the excellence of its _cuisine_, that any previous suggestions were promptly forgotten. In the old-time novels of New York visiting Englishmen in particular always "stopped" at the Brevoort. It would have been heresy on the part of the novelist to have sent them elsewhere. Nor can any blame be attached to romancer or steams.h.i.+p captain. It was always a good hotel, but in the old days it had not yet been invaded by those who like to play at Bohemia.

Delmonico's has had many incarnations since the day when the brothers, Peter and John, established themselves in the humble bas.e.m.e.nt at No. 27 William Street, back in 1827. First there was the move to 76 Broad Street, and then to Broadway and Chambers Street. But to that generation of New Yorkers of which only a few remain, there has been only one great Delmonico's, the one which in 1861 opened its doors at the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. It was the centre of the town in the sixties and early seventies. Two blocks away was the Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Opera House of the time, and Fourteenth Street was burgeoning out as the new Rialto. Society set its seal upon the establishment. The clubs of the immediate neighbourhood, of which there were several, did not think it necessary to install _cuisines_ when Delmonico's was so close at hand. The name of the house is still a byword in the land, but the names of Filippini and Lattard, two of the _maitre d'hotel_ who helped to make Delmonico's famous, have been forgotten by all but a very few. What supper parties were given in the old establishment, and what dances of that exclusive circle to which Mr.

Ward McAllister was later to give the sticking designation of the "Four Hundred," before the house again marched on northward to Madison Square, and a rug-man installed himself and his wares in the halls that had been the scene of such good cheer and so much well-bred revelry!

M. de Balzac, planning to entertain a Russian n.o.bleman at the Restaurant de Paris, asked the management to "put its best foot forward" for the occasion. "Certainly, Monsieur," was the retort, "for the simple reason that it is what we are in the habit of doing every day." Old-time patrons of the Fourteenth Street corner will tell you that such a reply might have fittingly come from the _maitre d'hotel_ of the "Del's" that was. But conceding the quality of the everyday service there were famous dinners that have stood out in the annals of the house. Here, for example, is the menu of what was known as the "Swan Dinner" held the evening of February 17, 1873.

Potages.

Consomme Imperial. Bisque aux crevettes.

Hor d'oeuvres.

Timbales a la Conde.

Poissons.

Red Snapper a la Venetienne.

Eperlan, sauce des gourmets.

Releve.

Filet de boeuf a la l'Egyptienne.

Entrees.

Ailes de canvas back, sauce bigurade.

Cotellettes de volaille Sevigne.

Asperges froide en branche.

Sorbet a l'Ermitage.

Rotis.

Chapon truffes. Selle de mouton.

Entremets.

Choufleurs, sauce creme. Carbons a la moelle.

Pet.i.ts pois au beurre.

Poires a la Richelieu.

Gelee aux ananas. Gaufres Chantilly Sultanne.

Gateaux a la Reine. Coupole a l'Anglaise.

Pain de peche Marechale. Gelee au fruits.

Dessert.

Delicieux aux noisettes. Biscuit Tortoni.

Fruit glaces.

Pet.i.t fours. Bonbons.

Pieces montes.

The musty inn of mid-Europe will boast till the end of time of the two-hour visit within its walls of a certain Elector and his suite in the year sixteen hundred and something or seventeen hundred and something. There is not a hostelry in England dating back to Tudor times without a bed in which Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have slept. But for famous guests, authentically established, there is probably no other hotel in the world that is to be compared to the Fifth Avenue. When the boyish Prince of Wales played leap-frog in its corridors at the time of his visit to the United States in 1860, he began a distinguished procession. Every president of the nation from the day the hotel was opened until it closed at some time stayed there. That meant Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt. At the time of Grant's funeral in August, 1885, the immediate family, the relatives, President Cleveland, Vice-President Hendricks, former Presidents Hayes and Arthur, the members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, the Diplomatic Corps, and the Governors of the various States were all guests of the hotel. Not only did great men stay there, but they did things there. It was at the Peabody dinner at the Fifth Avenue that the movement to nominate Grant for President started. In 1880, after his nomination, Garfield, at the solicitation of Arthur, came all the way from Mentor to meet Roscoe Conkling. But the haughty and powerful Conkling would not see him. If the hotel had not been the recognized shelter of visiting Republican statesmen in New York it is reasonably certain that Tilden, instead of Hayes, would have occupied the White House from 1877 to 1881, for it was there that a rescue of the Republican candidate was set on foot in 1876 after he had been given up as lost. In one of the parlours of the hotel the ill-advised Dr. S.A.

Burchard doomed Blaine to defeat when he said: "We are Republicans, and we do not intend to leave our party to identify ourselves with a party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."

Today it would be hard to find a hotel below Forty-second Street that still continues on what is known as the American plan. But when the Fifth Avenue was young that system of prices was supposed to embody the national spirit of democracy. Yet the idea had its wise critics, who found in it a certain injustice. For example there was an editorial on the subject, apropos of the Fifth Avenue, in the issue of October 1, 1859, soon after the hotel was opened, which ran, in part: "In the first place, what can be more preposterous than to establish a fixed rate of fare at hotels? Big, fat, bloated, bl.u.s.tering Guzzle goes to the Astor House for a week, and, in virtue of his standing and his paunch, gets a room near the dining saloon--a large, airy room looking on the Park, with lounge, arm-chairs, pier-gla.s.ses, Brussels carpet, and other furniture, all rich and luxurious; at dinner he eats _pate de fois gras_ and woodc.o.c.k, at supper he has elaborate little dishes which exercise an experienced cook for an hour or two, at breakfast he has salmon at fifty cents a pound, for all of which Guzzle pays two dollars and a half a day. The Rev. John Jones has a cup of weak tea for his breakfast, a slice of beef for his dinner, and a room under the tiles, and pays the same two dollars and a half." Perhaps there was a little exaggeration in the Harper editorial. But judge of Guzzle's opportunities from the following menu of the first dinner served by the Fifth Avenue, that of Tuesday, August 23, 1859.

Soups.

Green Turtle. Barley.

Fish.

Boiled Salmon, shrimp sauce. Baked Ba.s.s, wine sauce.

Boiled.

Leg of Mutton, caper sauce. Chicken, with pork.

Calf's Head, brain sauce. Beef tongue.

Turkey, oyster sauce. Corn Beef and Cabbage.

Cold Dishes.

Ham, Roast Beef, Pressed Corn Beef, Tongue, Ham.

Lobster Salad. Boned Turkey with truffles.

Entrees.

Frica.s.seed Chicken a la Chevaliere.

Macaroni, Parmesan.

Lamb cutlets, breaded.

Oysters, fried in crumbs.

Currie of Veal, in border of rice.

Queen Fritters.

Kidneys, champagne sauce.

Pigeons, en compote.

Sweetbreads, larded green peas.

Roasts.

Beef. Lamb, mint sauce.

Loin of Veal, stuffed. Goose.

Turkey. Chicken.