Twenty years have passed since I first wrote this book on rediscovering the English food of the 1920s and 30s, and it must be harder than ever for readers now to understand how things were, in that brief interval between the two world wars.
In the years between the wars English food underwent a brief flowering that seems to have gone almost unremarked at the time, and later passed into oblivion. The pomposity of the Edwardian meals that dominated the early years of the century was a thing of the past; meals became shorter and more informal, and the dishes themselves more light-hearted. Meals were rarely more than three courses, except for a formal dinner, and a more relaxed attitude became the norm.
It is regrettable that this trend was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Such things take time to reach all levels of society, and this one had hardly had time to spread beyond the sophisticated world in London and the south before war was declared, and the country was plunged into austerity. Food rationing dragged on for fifteen years, and when Elizabeth David’s first book, A Book of Mediterranean Food, was published in 1950, it found a public starved of foreign travel and of interesting food – for monotony, not hunger, was the curse of our wartime diet. The reading public embraced this vision of a Mediterranean world wholeheartedly, and with an enthusiasm that has never abated. Restaurants with names like Le Matelot sprang up, with strings of garlic and fishing nets incorporated in their decor. These were soon followed by a rash of Italian trattorias, and our own English food was forgotten.
The misplaced passion for foreign food still continues; today it is north Italian food that dominates the scene, with its robust dishes of sausage and polenta, Parmesan and olive oil, while the more exotic cuisines of the Far East may tempt the more adventurous cook. All this is intrinsically good, and enjoyable in the extreme when eaten in Tuscany, or in a good restaurant, but it does seem slightly ridiculous that pesto should have become a national dish.
The English are a strange mixture of complacency and insecurity, for they genuinely don’t seem to value their own culinary inheritance. Foreigners know better, and I learnt many years ago that the way to please visiting French, Italians, Americans or Swiss is to present them with a meal composed entirely of classic British delicacies. Some oysters or smoked eel to start with, then some lightly roasted game with all the traditional accompaniments, or a sirloin of Scotch beef, or a saddle of Welsh mountain lamb. A salad of mixed green leaves to follow, and don’t be misled into thinking that mâche, rugola and pourpier have always been foreign imports, for all three were commonly grown in England in medieval times under their English names: lamb’s lettuce (or corn salad), rocket and purslane. With the salad, two or three unusual English cheeses: a Single Gloucester, a Cornish Yarg, and a Spenwood made with ewes’ milk; with them, some Miller’s Damsel wheaten wafers made on the Isle of Wight, unsalted English farm butter, and hearts of celery. Then, in summer, a fruit fool made with raspberries or blackcurrants, served partly frozen, with a thinly iced lemon cake. In winter, a marmalade tart, served warm, with Devonshire cream.
Few people today seem aware that a discreet revolution in food took place in the 1920s and 30s. As Constance Spry wrote in 1942, looking back: ‘the decade before the war seems to have had uncomplicated elegance as its keynote. The criterion of good food was subtlety of flavour and contrast, combined with that perfection of simplicity which is the hardest thing to achieve. That intelligent aim in food towards fewer courses and more discernment in their choice was in no sense dictated by austerity. On the contrary, it indicated a high level of epicurean taste.’
By the 1950s, this clearness of vision had been lost by all but very few. As Ruth Lowinsky, herself the author of three excellent pre-war cookery books, wrote, ‘a palate is dwindling into a thing of the past’. And this is why, presumably, having lost touch with their own traditions as the English are wont to do, they went overboard for Mediterranean food.
English food of the 1920s and 30s is curiously hard to define, partly because it is understated. It lies at the other end of the spectrum from robust peasant dishes, for it is basically bland in flavour, although the accompanying sauces and garnishes are often sharp, sour or spicy. Since a contrast in flavour was often the aim, the individual foods were almost always cooked and served separately, so that they met for the first time on the plate. This is in direct opposition to the French traditions, whereby different foods are encouraged to merge in the cooking process, and where sauces are an intrinsic part of the dish. The English food of the period demanded skill in execution, and elegance in presentation. It was above all careful cooking, requiring first-rate ingredients, precise timing, and stylish presentation. When practised without due care, it could be the worst food in the world, as many will remember to their cost.
Even when it was well done, the food of the time had its weaknesses, judged by today’s standards. For their criteria were different from ours; there was not the same wish for variety, for a start. Every middle-class family had a cook, albeit a modest one, whereas people living at a comparable level today do the cooking themselves. Most families had the same dish for lunch every Sunday, either a roast chicken, or a joint of beef or mutton, and the same series of dishes to follow. Even the very best cooks had a more limited range than good cooks do today. The professional cook who went out to cater for dinner parties, arriving with her sauces already made lest a prying kitchen maid should learn her secrets, did not offer a very wide range, whereas most cooks in private practice prided themselves on their specialities, which favoured guests of the household seemed happy to eat time after time. This was in direct contrast to the post-war habit, whereby hostesses were urged to keep a notebook of menus, and when they were served, to avoid serving guests the same dish more than once.
Mrs Woodman, the redoubtable cook to the Mildmays for fifty years, had an asparagus ice for which she was famous. When the Queen Mother, then the Queen, was staying at Flete she asked for the recipe, but Mrs Woodman stoutly refused to part with it. ‘Yer husband asked me for that,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t give it to him.’
There were two significant outside influences on our food during this period: both affected only a small section of society, basically the moneyed upper classes and the intelligentsia, yet they had lasting effects and would have spread further had it not been for the outbreak of war. The first came from the United States, for a number of American women had married Englishmen and come to live over here. Some, like Nancy Astor and Emerald Cunard, had married before the First World War; others, like Lady Astor’s niece Nancy Lancaster, married during the inter-war years. Many of these young women were talented exponents of the minor arts: interior decoration, entertaining and clothes. Almost without exception, they seemed to have a social ease and a lack of shyness that many Englishmen found irresistible. Their high spirits, wit and sense of fun put many of their English contemporaries in the shade. A prime example was Wallis Simpson, a clever and manipulative woman who knew just how to amuse the Prince of Wales and his friends by providing the sort of relaxed and frivolous ambiance he craved, in striking contrast to the stuffy family circle at Sandringham and Windsor. Wallis Simpson was a perfectionist who prided herself on always being immaculately turned out, and having exquisite food.
Although the dishes Mrs Simpson served at her table were hardly typical, being a highly sophisticated version, American food was not widely divergent from our own, in that both shared common roots. Many of the early settlers who went out to America in the 1620s and subsequent years must have taken their receipts with them, and in some ways their food had stayed closer to its past than our own. Dishes like pumpkin pie and cheesecake are clear descendants from Stuart times, while some American recipes for mincemeat still include minced steak, as ours once did. Words like broil, skillet, grind and scallion have stayed the same, while the US pint still holds 16 fluid ounces, as ours did until 1878.
Once the first war was over, young American women came over in hordes, hoping to find a titled husband. In some cases, this took the form of a bargain: he provided the title while she brought the fortune. To digress for a moment and tell you about my mother’s case, she was in a different situation, for she had no fortune to bring, nor had she set her sights on an English peer. It was 1924, and she was rather fed up, staying alone in a hotel in Paris, buying clothes. She was twenty years old, and had just returned to Europe from a fabulous journey in the Far East with a school friend, and her friend’s mother and brother.
During the trip she and the brother had become secretly engaged, but before the voyage was over he changed his mind, saying she was not serious enough for him to marry. While not exactly heartbroken, she was understandably put out, and was dreading the return to New York for a third debutante season.
Then my father turned up, on his way to shoot game in Kenya. They had met the previous winter in New York, where he had spent a brief visit. He must have fallen in love with her then, and when they met again in Paris he proposed. In her impulsive way, she accepted, and they were married within a few weeks. Her aged parents came over from New York, rather flummoxed by the turn of events; my father’s mother came from Scotland, travelling to the Continent for the first time in her life.
What was a twenty-year-old American girl thinking of, to commit herself to a life in a country (Scotland) she did not know, surrounded by a family she had never met?
After a honeymoon in Venice, my parents arrived at what was to be their first home, Donibristle, a charming house, not very big, on the edge of the sea on the south coast of Fife, steeped in history and romance; here the 2nd Earl of Moray had been murdered by his rival, Huntly, in 1592, as recounted in the ballad ‘The Bonny Earl of Moray’.
I doubt if any of the young American women who came to marry in England were more accomplished than my mother was; but many of them were bright, and socially ambitious. She, on the other hand, was bored by the subject of food and completely ignorant on the subject. She told me how, in her first weeks at Donibristle, she had gone shopping in Edinburgh and come back with a leg of Canterbury lamb. Misled by the name, which conjured up images of salt marshes in Kent, she was unaware that it was frozen, imported from New Zealand; one can imagine the sniggers in the servants’ hall as Lady Doune makes a fool of herself again.
A young woman marrying into a big house was in a perilous situation. Coming into a large establishment with no experience (I doubt that my mother had hardly ever set foot in the kitchen at her parents’ house), she found herself faced with a phalanx of servants ranged against her, quick to intimidate her and laugh at her mistakes. It was not considered necessary to give her any sort of training, just as she was not given any help or advice in dealing with married life. All was left to chance.
The second influence on English cooking of the 1920s and 30s came from France, in the endearing personality of Marcel Boulestin. Boulestin arrived in London as a penniless young man in 1906, having escaped from the clutches of Willy, Colette’s first husband, for whom he had worked as a general dogsbody. In London he worked first as a journalist, then as a decorator. When war broke out in 1914, he enlisted in the French army, where he made friends with the painter and illustrator Jean-Emile Laboureur.
Once the war was over Boulestin returned to London, where he tried to re-establish himself as a decorator, but without success. Several of his former clients, like Syrie Maugham, had become professional decorators themselves; others were beginning to feel the effects of the coming recession.
In 1923 Boulestin published his first cookery book, with illustrations by Laboureur. This small book, Simple French Cooking for English Homes, was an instant success, and was to be the first of many. The same year, Boulestin wrote cookery articles for the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Express, the Morning Post, the Spectator and Vogue. (He wrote regularly for Vogue until the end of 1928.) In 1925 he opened his first restaurant on the corner of Panton Street and Leicester Square; a few years later it moved to Southampton Street, where it stayed until it closed for good in 1994. Also in 1925, he started a cookery school where society ladies went, taking their cooks with them; in 1937 he became the first ever person to demonstrate cookery on television.
In 1932 André Simon and A. J. A. Symons founded the Wine and Food Society. André Simon, its president, was a French wine historian living in England, an anglophile who delighted in helping to spread knowledge of good food and wine. The Society published regular newsletters, and its influence was considerable.
At a certain level, there had always been a French influence on food and drink in this country. Some of the best cooks, like the Duke of Devonshire’s, had trained under French chefs. (Mrs Tanner, cook at Chatsworth in the 1920s and 30s, had been sent by her former employer, Lord Savile, to learn under Escoffier while he was chef at the Hotel Cecil in London and in the south of France. She in turn trained her daughter Maud, who succeeded her mother as cook to the Devonshires.)
It was the practice to have menu cards on the table in the evening, for weekend parties in the big country houses, and for dinner parties in London, and these were always written in French. French wine, especially claret, was the most highly prized, while French brandy, Cognac, Armagnac and other digestifs, also sweet liqueurs like crème de menthe, were extremely popular.
Yet Marcel Boulestin was the first person to introduce the English to the cuisine bourgeoise. He was the ideal exponent of French family cooking, being at the same time sophisticated and down to earth. The dishes he taught his pupils and wrote about were far removed from those of the haute cuisine as served in his restaurant. They were simple, homely dishes, well within the capabilities of a modest cook. Thanks to him, unpretentious dishes like canards aux navets and veau braisé aux carottes began to find their way into the homes of the English middle class.
In 1934, Boulestin’s place as food writer for Vogue was taken by June Platt, a cosmopolitan American who had lived for some years in France. Her recipes were an appealing blend of French and American which fitted in well with the mood of the time. This new style of food caught on with the fashionable set, a narrow circle of people who could afford to travel, and who were as much at home in New York or Paris as in London. They lived for the most part in London, in houses or flats, or in medium-sized country houses, or divided their time between the two. These were not the aristocracy, whose lifestyle seemed to remain in a semi-permanent status quo, about twenty-five years behind the times, where only the smallest changes were allowed to ruffle the surface. (At Flete, the Mildmays’ house near Plymouth, years after electricity had been installed, the footmen still continued to carry the lamps in each evening, and remove them next morning, just as they had done with oil lamps which needed to be cleaned and refilled.)
Many of the great landowners, rich as they were, had been forced to retrench after the end of the First World War, as a result of increased taxation and the growing agricultural depression which preceded the recession. Almost without exception, they chose to do this by selling off their London properties, rather than diminish the size, or the style, of their country estates, or impoverish their collections of furniture and paintings. Most of the great private houses in London were sold to property developers and demolished between the wars, while others were destroyed by bombs during the second war. Devonshire House was sold for one million pounds in 1919, and demolished in 1924. This great house was built by William Kent in the eighteenth century; it stood in Piccadilly, opposite the Ritz, taking up a whole block, with a vast garden stretching away behind it. Hotels like Grosvenor House and the Dorchester, and blocks of flats like Brook House – in its turn destroyed by bombs – were erected on the sites of the great family houses, often bearing the same name. By the end of the Second World War only a few remained, like Apsley House, Spencer House and Londonderry House.
In the vast country houses like Blenheim, Chatsworth and Eaton Hall, there had been little change since Edwardian times. Like cumbersome ocean liners which continue to move days after their engines have been switched off, these huge establishments ploughed on majestically. As Lord Lambton remarked, recalling his youth at Lambton Castle and Fenton: ‘The meals consisted of five courses, where they used to be six or seven.’
Few people thought of modernizing their kitchens until after the Second World War. It took the butler at Chatsworth six minutes to walk from the kitchen to the dining-room. Most of the cooking was still done on Aga-style solid-fuel ranges; a thermostatically controlled gas oven was introduced in 1923, but there was no gas supply in the country. Electric thermostatically controlled ovens appeared on the market in 1933; Mrs Tanner, the cook at Chatsworth, persuaded the Duke of Devonshire to install one near the dining-room, so that she could serve soufflés. But her plan failed, for it took the butler too long to walk around the huge table, and the soufflé collapsed before it could be served. It was not here, in the houses of the mega-rich, that the move towards a new simplicity began, but in the more modest homes of a younger, more fashionable set.
The food in our own home was a good example of Scottish country house food. We lived in a fairly remote part of north-east Scotland, with little social life apart from shooting parties. My father was a purist about food, and liked only the very plainest things. He had a horror of rich sauces, butter and cream, which literally made him ill. As I have said, my mother had little interest in food, unlike so many of her American contemporaries who came to live in Britain in the 1920s. But she learnt to cook after the Second World War, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We lived for the most part on prime ingredients, very simply cooked. We had our own farms, and a large kitchen garden, salmon river and grouse moor, so that we were almost self-supporting.
Each Sunday we had roast beef: a sirloin with the fillet attached. My father was an expert carver, and gave each person a thickish slice of the fillet, with one or two thinnish slices of the sirloin. For the next two or three days we ate cold roast beef, rather rare, which we adored. I don’t remember ever having it hashed up or reheated in any form. Salmon was always poached; when hot, it came with a sauce made from its cooking liquor, reduced. When cold, with mayonnaise. We ate a lot of salads, for my father loved cold food. He insisted on making the salad dressing himself; bottles of olive oil and vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar and Worcestershire sauce were laid out on a side table. My father was terribly fussy about his food; the only comments I remember hearing were criticisms.
Each winter, before the war, my parents would spend two months travelling to warm places like Mexico or South America, or sailing with friends. My father had had tuberculosis as a young man, and had been advised to winter abroad. Then my sisters and I would have food that seemed even duller than when our parents were at home. For good as our food was, in its way, it was not the sort to appeal to a child. It never occurred to me then that food could be fun, or in any way enjoyable.
In the 1930s my parents had a small house in St James’s Place, and each summer my mother would travel south to enjoy herself. My father would join her for a little while, then he would go back to Scotland with a sigh of relief. For although he loved travelling, he disliked London and social life equally. In the early 30s, before I was born, my sisters would also go to London, but they had to stay with Nanny in the Stafford Hotel next door, for the house was too small to hold them all. In London the two little girls found themselves thrown into another world without warning, with terrifying ordeals like Lady Astor’s fancy-dress parties, and dancing classes with the little Princesses. Our Scottish nanny took it all in her stride, and remained unimpressed. When one of the smart nannies at the dancing class enquired whether we were going away for the summer, Nanny replied dourly: ‘We’re away the noo.’ My elder sister was less phlegmatic. When faced with a crowded London street for the first time, she burst into tears, wailing: ‘All these people, and nobody knows us.’
This privileged way of life changed abruptly – and for good, in our case – with the outbreak of war in 1939. Our house in Scotland was turned into a hospital for wounded soldiers and the family moved into one end of it. Our cook, Mrs Jones, found herself cooking for about a hundred people, including patients and nurses. It was to her credit, and to the nature of our somewhat austere diet, that our food changed hardly at all. (Mrs Jones was later awarded the OBE.)
After only eighteen years the country found itself again in the grip of food rationing. But this time the Government was prepared, and ration books were already printed, awaiting distribution. Much had been learnt during the First World War, when rationing had only been introduced halfway through, in 1916. By 1920 it was already coming to an end, unlike the aftermath of the Second World War, when rationing dragged on for almost ten years. The study of our national diet brought about by the First World War was to prove of immense value, not only in combating the war to come, but also in the Depression of the early 30s. By 1931 the nation’s health was causing grave concern, especially in poor mining districts like Yorkshire and Lancashire. The Ministry of Health set up an Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which issued a series of pronouncements, urging the British to eat more fruit and raw vegetables, cheese, milk and oily fish. As usual, their advice was largely ignored, for, as George Orwell pointed out in The Road to Wigan Pier, it is only the rich who want to eat healthy food and breakfast on orange juice and Ryvita. The poor, living on the breadline in a permanent state of lassitude and depression, needed the quick lift they got from food like sliced white bread and jam, sweet tea, and fish and chips.
For the well-off, and especially for the young, the end of the First World War was followed by a period of euphoria. Everyone wanted to enjoy themselves and to live, at least for a time, purely hedonistic lives. As Loelia Lindsay recalled in her memoirs: ‘Wounded soldiers in their blue suits and red ties disappeared from the square gardens and hospital wards became ballrooms again. London was dancing mad – it seemed we couldn’t have enough of it.’
The same mood, influenced by the United States, brought in its wake such things as gramophones, dinner jackets, cocktails, sports cars, nightclubs and jazz. Cocktail parties became fashionable, and buffet dinners replaced the formal dinners of the past. Meals were held later than ever before. Staying at Fort Belvedere, country home of the Prince of Wales, in 1930, Diana Cooper wrote to Conrad Russell: ‘Everything is a few hours later than in other places. (Perhaps it’s American time.) A splendid tea arrived at 6.30. Dinner was at 10. Emerald (Cunard) arrived at 8.30 for cocktails.’
Fort Belvedere was an exaggerated case, but even in traditional country houses the meals were served later than in other places, and this still goes on today. Breakfast at nine, or nine thirty on Sundays, lunch at one thirty, tea at five, and dinner at eight thirty was, and still is, considered normal.
There was a general resolve among the younger generation never to return to the stuffy formality of pre-war days, or seven-course meals, and batteries of servants. This coincided with a growing reluctance on the part of the working classes to spend their lives in domestic service, as many had been happy to do before the First World War. Most of the men who had served in the armed forces showed little inclination to go back into service; having tasted independence, they preferred to find jobs in factories. It became progressively harder to find male living-in staff for the big houses, and the balance of indoor servants became predominantly female. For young women, domestic service for a good employer still offered a fairly enjoyable life, with chances of improvement, and the possibility of finding a husband among the male employees. Lady Anne Hill remembered the servants in her parents’ house in Suffolk in the 1920s: ‘They were tremendously overworked and underpaid, but they had great fun. I knew the maids frightfully well – I used to play whist with them. I remember roars of laughter.’
The number of living-in servants seems unbelievable today. In a sense, it became a vicious circle, for the more numerous they were, the more junior servants were needed to wait on them. At Chatsworth in 1930 there were thirty-nine living-in servants, with about twenty more coming in each day. At times like Christmas, when all the family came to stay, they must have been kept busy, for this meant six rival nurseries installed, with six resident nannies and nursery-maids, for the old Duke had twenty grandchildren at that time. While the nursery-maids were responsible for making breakfast and tea, both the main meals had to be carried up to the various nurseries by the footmen.
Chatsworth was exceptional, even among country houses, but in more modest establishments the number of staff was still considerable. In 1928, Sir Roderick Jones and his wife, the writer Enid Bagnold, were living in London and Rottingdean. The Joneses were not especially rich, although Sir Roderick must have been earning a good salary as head of Reuters, yet they employed thirteen indoor servants and five outdoor ones, including a chauffeur, two grooms and two gardeners. All were ruled by Cutmore, the butler/valet, who supervised the weekly move from London to Sussex. The cook and most of the servants were sent ahead by train, with a taxi to meet them, while the Joneses and their children, Cutmore and the silver canteen were conveyed in two cars. Milk and papers were stopped in one house and started in the other. For longer periods, caretakers were installed in the empty house.
All things considered, life below stairs must have been more fun in the really big houses. Flete had about fifty bedrooms, and a living-in staff of eighteen. A Devon lady who had been second kitchen maid there from 1936 to 1938 spoke to me nostalgically of their life, which involved travelling round the three great Mildmay houses at different times of year, leaving a skeleton staff behind in each one. The maids had alternate evenings off, unless there were people staying, and alternate Sundays, with two weeks’ holiday a year. This gave them lots of time to visit their families, and a bus was sometimes laid on to take them to the local hops. She told me she left regretfully after two years, to ‘better herself’. She had to do this, she explained, as there was no future for advancement if you stayed in the same house all the time, especially one like Flete, where the housekeeper, cook, butler and valet all stayed for fifty years.
In less old-fashioned houses, the decreasing number of servants was offset by the advances in domestic technology. Central heating began to replace the endless series of coal fires, while refrigerators simplified the preparation and storage of food. Gas and electric cookers gradually ousted the old black ranges, which had to be cleaned every day. By 1939 there were 9 million gas cookers throughout the UK, and 1½ million electric cookers. Both, by this time, boasted thermostatically controlled ovens.
The standard of cooking varied from house to house, just as it always has. In many, the food must have been tedious in the extreme, with menus that rarely changed except in detail, based on a series of culinary clichés. In others, it was exceptional, as described by one writer in 1929: ‘Clean, tasty English cooking – the fruits of a thousand years of civilization.’
Few of my contemporaries seem to be aware of the good food that existed, at least in certain circles, before the war. When asked the subject of this book, I was met with general incredulity. ‘Good food before the war – was there any?’ was a typical response. ‘Rather a non-starter, surely?’ was another. ‘Bangers and mash? Toad-in-the-hole?’ enquired a third, while another, getting his timespan confused, ventured: ‘Woolton pie?’
Yet every now and then a random hint surfaces, suggesting that here and there, in unexpected corners, this sort of cooking still goes on, hidden from public scrutiny, just as it always has been. While writing this book in the 1990s, I read in Tatler an account of staying with the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton. ‘Three large cooks toil permanently in the kitchen, with a brief to produce top quality English dishes. You do not find elaborate cuisine at Badminton, which the Beauforts regard as “restaurant food” which you would have “during the week, in London”. In the country they eat fish pie with white sauce, hard-boiled eggs in cheese sauce, rather a lot of lamb and pheasant, and chops in aspic with minted peas arranged concentrically around the plate.’
Does this sort of cooking still go on today, I wonder, in the kitchens of the grand houses that we never see? I doubt it, fearing that the dread hand of Masterchef may have taken over.
Entertaining in the country houses did not change much, except the visits became shorter. Apart from Christmas and the summer holidays, guests came for weekends which were called ‘Saturday to Monday’, and for shooting parties. These usually lasted for three days in the middle of the week, which meant that no serious ‘shot’ could hold down a job and still be free to accept invitations to shoot.
One of the hardest things for us to envisage nowadays is the sheer scale of life in the big houses. At their first dinner party after their marriage in 1930, the Duke and Duchess of Westminster entertained seventy-two guests to dinner. They were all seated at one table, covered with a single damask cloth. This was at Eaton Hall, in Cheshire, where they could put up forty weekend guests. In London, at her house in Charles Street, Mrs Ronnie Greville had fifty-six guests to dinner in 1928. They had an eight-course meal, and Ambrose’s band played throughout. In the same year, in the process of changing and redecorating their house at Rottingdean, Sir Roderick and Lady Jones commissioned Alan Walton, the fashionable decorator of the day, to marble two dining tables for them, to seat twenty-eight guests. Lady Astor was another hostess who liked to entertain on a massive scale, although not always successfully, according to Harold Nicolson’s diaries. In 1930 he wrote: ‘Down to Cliveden. A dark autumnal day. Thirty-two people in the house. Cold and draughty. Little groups of people wishing they were alone: a lack of organisation: a desultory drivel. The party is in itself good enough. (Duff and Diana Cooper, Tom and Cimmie Moseley, Harold and Dorothy Macmillan, Bob Boothby etc.) But it does not hang together. After dinner, in order to enliven the party, Lady Astor dons a Victorian hat and a pair of false teeth. It does not enliven the party.’
Behaviour was different in those days, when to be entertaining was considered a social duty. As Cynthia Asquith remarked, in her memoirs: ‘We were brought up to believe that silence is never golden.’ In his book of Anne Fleming’s letters, Mark Amory described social life at Stanway in the 1920s. ‘The atmosphere to be created was gaiety this side of boisterousness, of wit but not self-conscious exhibitionism. Serious topics were treated lightly, light matters given serious consideration, solemnity banned. Politicians might be present but they would not discourse on politics. Conversation should be general but sparkling.’ At the table, guests would start to eat as soon as they had been served; only the governess waited until everyone had helped themselves. Women rarely drank spirits, or even much wine; barley water was always much in evidence. In many houses, as at Flete and Eaton Hall, drinks were never served before dinner, while at Cliveden, alcohol at any time was banned outright.
Although there had been notable hostesses in earlier times, they had mostly operated within specific fields, like Trollope’s Lady Glencora and her political soirées in the Palliser novels. In the 20s a new sort of entertaining became fashionable; one might call it entertaining for entertaining’s sake. No longer did its proponents seek power, either for themselves or for their protégés. Entertaining had become an end in itself.
Few of the hostesses were beauties, or even especially good-looking. Beauties had other things to do. The talents that made a good hostess were the very ones that a clever woman could cultivate, as a compensation for lack of beauty. What was needed was wit, originality, a light touch, boundless energy and a lot of money. A streak of frivolity and driving ambition also helped. Armed with most of these, a worldly and intelligent woman could create an amusing life for herself and her friends, while the beauties sat back and led a passive existence, receiving compliments, invitations and proposals of marriage from all sides.
In London, Paris and New York, standards of entertaining grew higher and higher. People in society were restless, spoilt, easily bored. The leading hostesses of the day were smart in the American sense, adept at creating an elegant and stylish ambiance, with interesting men and amusing, pretty women, sparkling conversation and delicious food.
The two most successful hostesses between the wars were indubitably Lady Cunard and Lady Colefax. Neither wrote a cookery book, but both were reputed to have excellent food. Yet food was only one of the important assets a hostess needed to have up her sleeve: the talent to amuse, or to entertain, certainly ranked higher, and this both ladies possessed in abundance. Both were intelligent and cultivated women, although both were sometimes portrayed as silly geese by their acquaintances, for each had their own camp, with their champions as well as their detractors. Lady Cunard’s field of activities was primarily musical, for the love of her life was the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Lady Colefax had a passion for royalty and high society, but she also loved and prized intellectuals, and numbered Virginia Woolf among her friends. (Which did not stop Virginia Woolf being extremely malicious about her on occasion.)
Lady Cunard was American, born Maud Burke. In 1895 she married Sir Bache Cunard, of the shipping fortune, and came to live in England. Sir Bache was twenty years older than Lady Cunard, and by 1911 she had fallen in love with Thomas Beecham, and left Sir Bache. She installed herself and her daughter Nancy, later to become a symbol of the 1920s, in a large house in Grosvenor Square, and concentrated her energies on entertaining, for which she had a genius. Like most of the great hostesses, Lady Cunard had little time for domestic – or family – life. In later years, when Nancy was looking for a house, her mother remarked: ‘Only the banal need a home.’ Relations between mother and daughter grew steadily worse. Nancy felt she had been neglected by her mother as a child, and never forgave her. Once, as an adult, Nancy startled other guests during after-dinner games in a country house when she met the query, ‘Who would you most like to see come into the room?’ with the chilling reply: ‘Lady Cunard, dead.’
Yet Emerald Cunard (she changed her name from Maud in 1926, at the age of fifty-four) was dearly loved by friends of all ages. Loelia Lindsay, in her memoirs Grace and Favour, writes: ‘Beloved Emerald Cunard. From my gawky schoolgirl days onwards she was always kind and fun-providing, and of all the people I have known well, I am most grateful for having had Emerald as a friend.’
Osbert Sitwell paid tribute to her qualities as a hostess. ‘Her airy and rather impersonal alertness, her wit, made her drawing room unlike any other. Lady Cunard loves to be amused, but she tires so quickly of dullness that she has her own method of dealing with it. She can goad the conversation like a bull, and she a matador, and compel it to show a fiery temper.’ Sitwell also praises her dedication: ‘It was largely her support and the way she marshalled her forces, that enabled the wonderful seasons of opera and ballet to materialise. Her will power was sufficient, her passion for music fervent enough to make opera almost compulsory for those who wished to be fashionable.’
As we have already noted, the great hostesses were rarely, if ever, beauties, and Lady Cunard was no exception. Loelia Lindsay describes her appearance: ‘She has yellow, fluffy hair, a sharp little beaked nose, eyes swimming in mascara, and she has been unkindly described as “a canary of prey”.’ Siegfried Sassoon, never the most charitable of men, refers to ‘that bobbed and bedizoned blonde with startled and unspeculative eyes in a clown-painted face’.
During the latter part of her life, Lady Cunard showed great courage in facing adversity from two directions. Persecuted by her daughter Nancy’s vindictive campaign in print, and deserted by Sir Thomas Beecham for a younger woman, she sailed back from New York in the middle of the war to find her house in Grosvenor Square had been destroyed by bombs. She sold off her possessions, moved into the Dorchester, and proceeded to entertain with all her old verve until her death in 1948.
Lady Colefax was inevitably in competition with Lady Cunard. They each had their own circles, which overlapped here and there, and their own admirers, but were rarely to be found in each other’s houses. One of Lady Colefax’s camp was Harold Nicolson, who commented in his diary: ‘I think Sybil Colefax is a clever old bean who ought to concentrate on intellectuals and not social guests.’ Like Lady Cunard, Lady Colefax was married to a much older man, the barrister Sir Arthur Colefax. They lived in Argyll House in the King’s Road (opposite the fire station today), which is a hostess’s dream, with its romantic façade, wrought-iron gates, stone-flagged courtyard and lovely garden. But Lady Colefax was another redoubtable character who showed courage in adversity, for in 1930 they lost all their capital in the New York stock market crash. The same year Sir Arthur became deaf, and was forced to retire. Undaunted by this dramatic change in their fortunes, Sybil Colefax set herself up as an interior decorator, doing much of the work herself. She made £2,000 in her first year, which was no mean sum for those days, while continuing to entertain in Argyll House. By 1934 she started her own firm, Sybil Colefax, with premises in Bruton Street, and in 1938 she took on John Fowler, a Chelsea neighbour, as her partner. (In 1950 she was bought out by Nancy Lancaster, and the firm continues today as Colefax and Fowler.)
Sybil Colefax continued to live, and to entertain, at Argyll House until her husband’s death in 1936, when she gave a series of ‘last dinners’ before quitting the house. Desmond MacCarthy describes one of these in his diaries: ‘Sybil had excelled even her own standards of lion hunting by assembling for dinner Harold Nicolson, Winston and Clementine Churchill, Duff and Diana Cooper, Somerset Maugham, Artur Rubinstein and many others.’
In the immediate circle of the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, Lady Cunard and Lady Colefax found themselves in direct rivalry, both deeply disapproved of by the rest of the royal family, who considered them a bad influence.
Both were guests at a dinner party given by Mrs Simpson for the King in 1936. Luckily for us, that inveterate diner-out Harold Nicolson was there to record the scene: ‘It is evident that Lady Cunard is incensed by the presence of Lady Colefax, and that Lady Colefax is furious that Lady Cunard should have been asked. Lady Oxford appears astonished to find either of them at what was to have been a quite intimate party.’
Another successful hostess-turned-decorator was Syrie Maugham, who lived next door to her rival Sybil Colefax in the King’s Road, and immediately opposite the other fashionable decorator, John Fowler. The daughter of Dr Barnardo, Syrie had been married briefly – and unhappily – to Somerset Maugham. After the breakdown of her marriage, she started working as a professional decorator. Of all the decorators of her day, she was one of the most brilliant, and the most innovative. As Ursula Wyndham recalls in her memoirs, Astride the Wall, ‘Syrie Maugham was the first society decorator who started the fashion for the all-white drawing room, celadon green having been the previous “safe” colour, not likely to be mocked by sardonic friends.’
Syrie Maugham was a gifted hostess, as was the American-born decorator Elsie de Wolfe. Unlike the others, Elsie de Wolfe was a decorator first, before going on to become a social figure. Like Ladies Colefax and Cunard, she married a rich English husband much older than herself: Sir Charles Mendl, the Paris representative in the News Department of the Foreign Office. The Mendls had two homes in France: an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli, and the exquisite Villa Trianon at Versailles. They entertained ceaselessly, both in France and in London during the season. Lady Mendl published a small cookery book under her maiden name, Elsie de Wolfe’s Recipes for Successful Dining, filled with good recipes and outrageous comments: ‘At Christmas time 1931, I had a table of gold (lamé), hoping that it might in some way draw us all back to the old gold standard …’ Yet the recipes themselves are excellent, and grounded in common sense.
Lady Astor was primarily a political hostess, as was Margot Asquith, later to become Lady Oxford. Born Margot Tennant, she was the second wife of Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister who was later made Lord Oxford. Each weekend, according to Edith Olivier’s Journals, Margot Asquith ‘collected together fourteen people who had little in common, and who she hardly knew herself’.
Then there was the racing world: rich philistines for the most part, who were prepared to spend vast sums of money on their parties. Desmond MacCarthy describes one such event at the house of Mrs Rupert Beckett, in 1931: ‘I enjoyed the glitter and splendour. It was a new “set” for me, rich, smart, racing people and I was amused. The enormously rich Lady Granard was there in ropes of pearls and her mild, exquisitely clean husband with a pearl the size of an electric button in his shirt.’
Some of the hostesses operating on a more modest scale were authors of contemporary cookery books. One of the most accomplished was Lady Jekyll, whose Kitchen Essays first appeared in The Times on Saturdays in 1921 and 1922. Agnes Jekyll was a remarkable woman; the youngest daughter of William Graham, a friend and patron of the pre-Raphaelites, she had been brought up in an intellectual and artistic environment, and became a notable hostess among the intelligentsia. She was at the same time an excellent organizer, and played an active part in many facets of public life. A pillar of the St John Ambulance Brigade, she was also a JP, a governor of Godalming Secondary School, of a hospital in the East End of London, and of a borstal for girls.
Another remarkable cookery book was published in 1925, when its author was in her late seventies. This was Minnie Lady Hindlip’s Cookery Book. According to her great-grandson, Lord Hindlip, Lady Hindlip was by all accounts a remarkable lady, no beauty but very amusing and a wonderful hostess. When she was asked why she liked going to children’s parties, she replied: ‘My dear, I ask who the little children are and then I think who they really are!’
Also published in the 1920s was A Book of Scents and Dishes by Dorothy Allhusen. It was in Mrs Allhusen’s charming country house that Jessica Mitford first met her cousin Esmond Romilly, then on sick leave from fighting with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Over the weekend they fell in love and made plans to elope. A week later they left secretly for Spain, and another of the Mitford legends began to unfold.
Most admired of all the cookery books published in the 1930s was probably Lady Sysonby’s Cook Book. This is an unusually interesting book, with illustrations by Oliver Messel and an introduction by Osbert Sitwell. Ria Sysonby, whose daughter Loelia married the Duke of Westminster (and later, Sir Martin Lindsay of Dowhill), was married to a courtier. Fritz Ponsonby, later Lord Sysonby, was Private Secretary first to Queen Victoria, and then to Edward VII. The Sysonbys lived in a grace-and-favour apartment in St James’s Palace, and, in the country, near Guildford. Unlike most great hostesses, Lady Sysonby was a beauty, and much in demand. Although they were by no means rich, she was always beautifully dressed, and had excellent food. Her daughter Loelia told me: ‘Any cook seeking a new situation had only to mention that she had been employed by Lady Sysonby, and she was at once engaged.’
Another esteemed hostess who wrote cookery books was Ruth Lowinsky, whose first book, Lovely Food, is a collector’s item. Published in 1931 by the Nonesuch Press, it is beautifully produced on hand-made paper, with elegant and idiosyncratic illustrations by her husband, Thomas Lowinsky. Ruth Lowinsky was an heiress. Her father, Leopold Hirsch, was a cultivated banker of German descent who had made a great fortune in gold and diamonds in South Africa in the 1870s. The Hirsches lived in a magnificent house in Kensington Palace Gardens and Ruth was a student at the Slade, where she met her husband-to-be. Thomas Lowinsky was an original and interesting painter, also a discerning collector. In 1990 there was a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Tate Gallery.
Ruth gave up painting on her marriage, and turned her gifts to entertaining. Dumpy and undistinguished in appearance, she was immensely cultivated, sophisticated and amusing. The Lowinskys lived in Kensington Square with their four children. Each summer they were in the habit of taking a large country house; one year they rented Stanway from the Wemysses. (Since many aristocratic families owned several large country houses, it was considered quite normal to rent one or other of them out at certain times of year, when they did not want it themselves.)
Ruth Lowinsky published three cookery books in the 1930s. Her recipes are original, but erratic. Since she did not learn to cook herself until the outbreak of war, she must have relied on information from her Austrian cook. I sometimes wonder what her friend Constance Spry must have made of the Lowinsky oeuvre in this respect, for Mrs Spry was the first cookery writer whose recipes actually worked. But it is for the spirit of her book that Ruth Lowinsky will be remembered. As she says in the introduction to Lovely Food, ‘Remember that food must above all things be varied, surprising and original.’
There were also other more specialized writers: herbalists like Mrs Leyel, who wrote The Gentle Art of Cookery with Miss Olga Hartley in 1925, then went on to found the Society of Herbalists, known today as the Herb Society, and the Culpeper shops. Another herbalist/author was Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, who wrote a number of books about herbs, herb gardens and vegetables in the 1930s.
Another influential publication was The Week-End Book, which was edited and published by Francis Meynell, the founder of the Nonesuch Press, and friend and publisher of Ruth Lowinsky. The Week-End Book was published annually, with revisions and additions, both in England and the USA, from 1924 until the 1950s. It was rather like a magazine in content, with sections on such disparate subjects as birds, architecture, music and after-dinner games. The cookery section dealt with such things as lists for the weekend store-cupboard, sandwich fillings, picnic food and dishes for the inexperienced cook. It proved immensely successful, and sold more than 50,000 copies in the first four years.
Mrs Simpson did not waste her time writing cookery books, for she had better things to do. Of all the hostesses of her day, she must rate as the most successful, in that her aim was clearly defined. She set out to please and entertain the Prince of Wales, and in this she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. In social terms she was a brilliant figure, an instigator who enjoyed setting trends, and a perfectionist for whom no detail was too much trouble. She was always immaculately dressed, and proved herself well able to provide a stimulating ambiance, with witty repartee and first-rate food. In his diaries, Cecil Beaton describes going to draw Mrs Simpson shortly before the abdication, in her rented house in Regent’s Park. After the session was over, they were joined by the King and Wallis’s Aunt Bessy for a quick drink before going on to dine with Emerald Cunard. Even on this informal occasion, a silver tray was handed round with no less than nine different sorts of canapés, eight of them hot, to accompany the cocktails.
The English pattern of eating was by no means as hidebound as people pretend. The customary roast on Sunday, followed by a series of dishes of hashed and reheated meat on successive days, was widespread, but only at a certain level of affluence. Below that level, the weekly budget would not rise to a joint, while above that level, in the large country houses for instance, the remains of the joint would have been sent up to the nursery, or served in the servants’ hall. In really big houses like Chatsworth, a whole carcass of beef or lamb would be consumed at one time: the prime joints in the dining-room, and the lesser parts in the nursery, schoolroom, housekeeper’s room or servants’ hall.
There has been a lot of talk, usually tinged with nostalgia, about ‘nursery food’. In effect, it was probably less good than people like to recall, for bad relations often existed between nursery and kitchen. In her memoirs, Astride the Wall, Ursula Wyndham’s memories of nursery food add a sour note: ‘greasy mutton, overcooked vegetables wallowing in the water they had been cooked in, burnt rice puddings … This prison fare was the unsupervised production of the kitchen maid.’
Like all periods of transition, the two decades between the wars showed a wide variation in patterns of eating. These depended not only on the affluence of the households concerned, which would previously have been the main factor in deciding culinary habits, but also on the position of the family as regards fashionableness. In a household like that of the Mildmays, where Edwardian values were upheld and old ways adhered to, meals were still formal and lengthy. Before a dinner party in their London house in Berkeley Square, for instance, the male guests were informed on arrival who they were to take in to dinner. The guests would assemble in the library and make desultory conversation, without drinks in any form, then they would line up in couples and troop in to dinner.
This would start with a choice of thick or thin soup, followed by a hot fish dish. Then came an entrée, either poultry or game, and a second meat dish. This might be followed by a separate vegetable course, like the celebrated asparagus ice, then a pudding and a savoury. Finally the table was cleared of all extraneous dishes and the fruit plates would be handed round, each one bearing a small lace mat with a glass fingerbowl half filled with water, and a silver gilt knife and fork. A series of dishes of fruit would then be handed round, probably three or four or even five, each one bearing just one sort of fruit which had been sent up from the garden at Flete. These were followed by a silver cream jug and sugar bowl. Then came coffee, after which the ladies would withdraw, leaving the men to their port and brandy.
An unusual pattern can be found in the menus of Mrs Ronnie Greville, at the dinners she held in her house in Charles Street, or at Polesden Lacey. After three hot dishes – soup, fish, and poultry or game – a cold main dish was often served, possibly boeuf en gêlée, or ham mousse, accompanied by a salad.
At Faringdon, where Lord Berners was renowned for his food, the meals were rather idiosyncratic. Lord Berners loved rich food, and judging from the description of his meals, it would seem that his cook indulged him up to the hilt. Lobster was often served – as a first course – for Sunday lunch, followed by a chicken pie, or a roast fillet of beef. Friends spoke fondly of a cold dish of Dover sole, poached fillets lying in a horseradish cream sauce with chives. Sliced chicken was served in aspic, with strips of red pepper set in the jelly. The vegetables were home-grown, very small, and beautifully cooked, and there was always home-made bread baked in a plait. The puddings were very popular with his guests: baked apples stuffed with chopped walnuts in a toffee sauce, summer pudding, strawberry shortcake, and pudding Louise, which was not unlike a Bakewell tart.
One group that broke with tradition in gastronomic matters, as in many others, was the Bloomsbury set. The writers and painters of the 1920s and 30s loved to eat and drink well, but lacked the funds – or the desire – to do it in the traditional ways. Having freed themselves from class distinctions, they ignored current patterns of behaviour in the kitchen and the dining room, and chose to adopt a totally different way of eating, much closer to our own. They were almost without exception badly off, making do with a maid-of-all-work, who also did the cooking. These girls were such modest cooks, usually untrained and inexperienced, that their employers ended up doing much of the cooking themselves. Virginia Woolf used to bake bread, which she enjoyed doing, and Carrington cooked frequently, often preparing food for weekend parties at Ham Spray. In a letter to Lytton Strachey she describes making ‘brews of quince cheese which [scent] the whole house’; in another, dated April 1928, she describes making zabaglione: ‘I made a Zambalione [sic] last night and just as it was finished Henry (Lamb) stepped backwards and knocked the bowl all over the carpet! But fortunately there were masses of eggs, so I quickly whisked up another one.’
The Bloomsbury set loved to travel, and they did this in a way that is familiar to many of us today, but was very unusual at that time. Whereas the rich and fashionable flitted about from Paris to New York to Cap Ferrat, staying in grand hotels, villas or yachts, the intelligentsia were more adventurous in that they were not afraid of discomfort, although their scope was limited, and rarely stretched beyond France, Italy or Spain. Staying in inns and eating very simply, they became familiar with the local cuisine and the vins du pays in a way that the rich never did, for the food in smart hotels had already become international, much as it is today. In another letter to Lytton Strachey, Carrington describes a meal in France while travelling with Augustus and Dorelia John: ‘Lunch was served outside under the planes. Hare pâté, grilled red mullet, a marvellous salad and delicious coffee, and Château des Papes Telegraphes, a whole bottle; our resolution for a cheese and salad lunch faded away!’ Carrington’s letters are filled with enthusiastic references to food and wine; one in particular refers to having had a very good Nuit Sans (sic) George. Spelling was not her strong point.
Back home, meals in the Bloomsbury circle were simple, and very wholesome, most of the time, with the occasional splurge for a special occasion. Frances Partridge wrote: ‘Our Ham Spray food between the wars was simple and home-produced. We favoured an almost permanent ham, potted in one of the bathrooms, really wonderful brawn to a recipe by Boris Anrep, and ways of eating every piece of our own pig except the chitterlings, and a wonderful beestings pudding (this was a super-rich bread and butter pudding from a calving cow’s first milk, plus sultanas). Home-grown local dishes were jugged hare and perdrix aux choux. We prided ourselves on growing all our own vegetables and fruit; raspberries were splendid, we had fine figs, grapes, peaches and nectarines, average apples and pears. Vegetables simply cooked, though salsify à la crème became a main dish. Seakale, simply boiled with butter, asparagus, celeriac, chicory forced in the woodshed for winter. Cabbages (I did have a splendid way of cooking them very slowly with cinnamon, brown sugar, bacon and sultanas). When we came to London our restaurant meals were most untypical, and a glorious treat – the Basque was a rarity – the Ivy a special favourite. Birthday dinner was often canard sous presse, and crêpes suzette.’
A dinner given by Chips Channon at Moir House, St James’s Place, February 1925.
‘We began with blinis served with Swedish schnapps, to wash down the caviare. Then soup, followed by salmon, then an elaborate chicken. Then a sweet and a savoury. The candle light was reflected in my gold plate and the conversation was incessant. Eventually Cole Porter was sufficiently intoxicated to play the piano. He played for hours. I got to bed at 4.30 absolutely exhausted.’
A typical day in the life of Siegfried Sassoon, who in the mid-1920s decided to stay in bed all day and work at night. February 1924.
‘In bed all day. (As usual.) Haddock and baked apple at 5.30 p.m. Soup, omelette and stewed prunes at the Monico 10.45. It is now 4 a.m. and I’ve just had some tea and bolted three sponge cakes.’
Luncheon with Lady Cunard, May 1930.
A poached egg in a baked potato
A lamb cutlet with six different vegetables
A silver bowl of tapioca beaten to a froth with cream, served cold, with strawberries
A dinner at Buckingham Palace, March 1927.
Consommé Messaline
Rosettes de Saumon de Balmoral, Régence
Cailles Epicurienne
Filets d’Agneau des Gourmets
Poulardes Rôties, Salade
Asperges, Sauce Mousseline
Soufflé Glacé Daphne
Paniers de Friandises
Kisch [sic] LorraineOne of the guests, Lady Mildmay, commented: ‘The dinner table was one solid mass of gold plate, and the flowers were too lovely, yellow daffodils, blue iris and very golden mimosa. Everyone said the dinner was the best they had ever eaten, but I do not really agree. There were six things in succession, all hot, and the peas were quite uneatable.’
Marcel Boulestin’s suggestion for a late supper, November 1928.
‘Nothing better, say at 3 o’clock in the morning, than a boiling hot soupe au choux and cold meat, with a very fresh, crisp salad. And you should drink with this one of those little pink or white wines from Anjou or Touraine, which have such a pleasant, sharp taste. (This is more suitable, though, for Chelsea than Bayswater – unless you happen to feel, for once, delightfully Bohemian.)’
Dinner with Mrs Ronald Tree (Nancy Lancaster), in the 1920s.
Fish Chowder
Poulets Rôtis au Cresson
Legumes, Salade
Mousse à l’Orange – Compote d’Oranges
Dinner (for the Japps) at Ham Spray, September 1925. From a letter to Lytton Strachey from Carrington.
‘The dinner was indescribably grand. Epoch making; grapefruit, then a chicken covered with fennel and tomato sauce, a risotto with almonds, onions, and pimentos, followed by sack cream, supported by Café Royal wine, perfectly warmed. (The cradle took Mrs Japp’s breath away.)’
A buffet dinner at Lady Mendl’s, at the Villa Trianon, Versailles, July 1932, as described in Vogue.
‘Some forty of us dined on the enclosed terrace by candlelight, with the illuminated garden for a background. Of course it was a buffet dinner, as every big dinner is now. Elsie Mendl’s menu was hot soup, boeuf braisé with all kinds of vegetables, and ice cream and strawberries. Nothing could be simpler, and nothing better.’
Supper with Frances Partridge, November 1927.
‘We expected Dadie (Rylands) and Gerald (Brenan) at 41 about ten o’clock, and I had oysters for them, and cold partridges in aspic.’
A summer luncheon, suggested by Quaglino, 1935.
Caviar de Sterlet, or Crab Cocktail
Goujons de Sole Frites, Sauce Dugléré
Noix de Veau en Aspic
Mousse de Jambon – Salade Niçoise
Fraises Monte Carlo – Biscuits à la Cuillère
Canapé Diane
Breakfast served at a ball, 1927, as described in Vogue.
‘At 2 a.m. tankards of pale and light draught bitters replace the champagne, and ordinary roasting tins full of delicious little chipolata sausages, still steaming in the medium in which they were cooked, oust the more elegant quail. Bacon and eggs are still popular, as are kippers.’
Dinner with Mrs Ronnie Greville at Polesden Lacey, Christmas 1931. (Note the cold main course.)
Gnocchi à la Suisse
Faisans Braisés au Céleri
Viandes Froides – Salade
Bavarois Vanille – Compote de Mirabelles
A luncheon suggested by Marcel Boulestin, 1928.
Oeufs à la Gelée
Pilaf aux Fruits de Mer
Pintade Farcie, Pommes Pailles & Salade Verte
Poires au Chocolat
An autumn luncheon, as suggested by Quaglino, 1935.
Honey Dew Melon – Jambon de Bayonne
Ravioli au Jus de Veau
Grouse en Papillote, Pommes Soufflés
Aubergines Provençales
Compote de Fruits Frais – Gâteau au Chocolat
Luncheon with Lady Mendl, 1930.
Cream of Green Pea Soup
Crayfish Gloucester
Baked Chicken
Vanilla Ice with Hot Cherry Sauce
A dinner at Ham Spray, May 1929, from a letter to Lytton Strachey from Carrington.
‘We had a fine dinner with Moselle and Burgundy, cold salmon and tartar sauce, followed by gammon and salad, followed by strawberries and kirsch, followed by brandies and coffee.’
Dinner for Edward VIII, given by Chips Channon at 5 Belgrave Square, June 1936.
‘Dinner was perfect, we began with blinis and caviare, then sole muscat followed by boeuf provençal. It was served so speedily that we had finished before eleven, and then the ladies left, curtseying as they got up.’
Luncheon with Madame (Helena) Rubinstein, May 1933, as described in Vogue.
‘At lunch with Madame Rubinstein, you might begin with a clear bouillon, then progress to a divine entrée of spinach purée rolled up in little crêpes. Then a fish curry (made with lobster claws and baby scallops), served with rice and chutney, followed by fresh pineapple, or strawberries with kirsch. The coffee is black as the ace of spades, in bright red cups.’
A dinner for four at Fort Belvedere, home of the Prince of Wales, in the 1930s.
‘It began with oysters in unlimited quantity, followed by a mousse of ham and foie gras, and a salad, and ended with a dish of very hot cheese fritters.’
A dinner given by Mrs Ronnie Greville at Polesden Lacey, January 1932. (Note the cold main course.)
Crème Crécy
Sole Frite, Sauce Diable
Soufflé de Jambon à la Parisienne
Boeuf à la Gelée – Salade
Poires à la Marquise
Barquettes de Caviar
Dinner at the Eiffel Tower, now the White Tower, in October 1929, from a letter to Julia Strachey from Carrington.
‘In the evening we had dinner with old Augustus (John) at the Eiffel Tour [sic]. Rather fun. Very late, at 9.30. Such a delicious meal. Snails. Wild duck and orange salad, and real iced raspberries with cream and two bottles of Burgundy.’
A dinner given for King George V and Queen Mary at Chatsworth, July 4th, 1933.
Crème Sarah Bernhardt
Barbue Grimaldi
Caneton à l’Anglaise, Poussins Rôtis, Légumes
Mousse de Jambon, Salade Waldorf
Soufflé Esterhazy, Fraises Romanoff
Chester Cakes