England 1936

Pages For this Section

Geneva 1924

Paris and London 1926

Germany 1928

Geneva 1927

Geneva 1928

England 1936

The family used to own several restaurants in London, including The Palmerston in the City, where a thousand meals a day were served between midday and three p.m. in seven restaurants and where my good friend Charles Weber was maitre de cuisine. Charles was born an Alsatian, humorous and temperamental, a gastronomic wizard who ruled his kitchen staff with a rod of iron, or perhaps more correctly a rod of steel, because he could pick up a knife and waive it about if he got into a tantrum.

I remember that he bought a royal sturgeon on one occasion that the King did not want and it was put on the menu on a Monday when I could not make the Palmerston for lunch. As I wanted to try sturgeon, I went on Tuesday and he told me he had bought a sturgeon, not a whale, and it was off. I ordered something from the menu, went to the bar and a few minutes later I was called by a waitress to my table, where I was served and enjoyed some roast veal, baked potatoes and sprouts. With my cheese was served a double brandy and ginger ale, so that I knew Charles was on his way to join me. After greetings and a few moments casual conversation, Charles asked me "Did you enjoy your sturgeon?" I had not known that my veal was sturgeon, but in self-defence I can add that the texture of both meats is identical.

Sometime in the autumn when I had started in Germany and was back on a visit, Charles asked me to look up his brother's family in a little village near Colmar, so I got in touch with his brother and drove over one Sunday from Heidelberg to spend the day with them. Charles' brother was the village cobbler and had six children between the ages of fourteen and four. They were very simple folk and made me very welcome. I talked French whilst playing with the children, all of whom understood me, but the cobbler and his wife did not understand a word. Similarly, when I spoke German to the latter, the children did not understand a word. The family amongst themselves spoke their own local patois, when, of course I did not understand a word. It was a riotous lunch as a result, but on that day there was born in me a love of alsatian wines that I have never lost.

To return to Charles and his culinary efforts, the Palmerston used to do a lot of regimental dinners, reunion and trade dinners in the evenings and during the month of July the secretary of the Leadenhall Poultry Dealers Association (or some similar organisation) booked their Christmas dinner. Nothing abnormal in that, you will say, but if I add that the secretary with his bowler hat, umbrella and yellow chamois gloves formed the habit of invading Charles' domain about one p.m., when Charles, with sweat pouring off his brow was shouting "Deux petits pois" down the pipe to the vegetable chef, to obtain some assurance about the menu for their Christmas dinner, you will agree that things had reached an explosive level. Charles was furious and swore he would kill him, so gently but firmly the secretary had to be kept out, soothed with assurances that should they so wish they could supply their own turkeys or we would supply the finest Norfolk turkeys obtainable. Things quieted down and all further communications went through the office.

I came back on Christmas leave and had to give Charles an eyewitness account of my visit to his brother's family, so I looked at the diary we had at home of the evening functions at the Palmerston to see when Charles would be available. I happened to pick the night of the L.P.D. Association dinner and purposely arrived when everything was dished up. I ran into one of the diners, whom I happened to know, who told me what a splendid meal they had had and that they had had Charles up to drink his health. "How shy he is - we had to get him dragged up." he commented. how Charles is anything but shy, but I thought no more of it. When I reached the kitchens all the lights were out, except the single light in Charles' bathroom-sized office. On his desk was his tall white hat, a bottle of champagne and a ?5 note beside it and Charles bent over his desk, his shoulders heaving and crying his eyes out. When I asked him what was the matter, he simply screamed "Les cochons, les salauds, etc. etc." I pointed out to him that they had drunk the sante du chef and given him a bottle of Pol Roger and a fiver, what else did he expect? More cochons and salauds, but eventually he explained. Instead of the promised Norfolk turkeys he had served-them tinned Italian turkeys and they had noticed nothing and the revenge he had nursed for six months went off like a damp squib. Poor Charles!