Postscript . • •
By CYRIL RAY IT's only a month or so short of ten years since I wrote an obituary of Rosa Lewis, and now they are writing the obituaries of that inconsequen- tial establishment of hers, the Cavendish Hotel, which closed its doors for good this week. Not that it really needs an obituary : it 'is pre- served for all time in the first couple of pages of the third chapter of Vile Bodies, as Lottie Crump's Shepheard's Hotel, 'which, for the pur- poses of the narrative, may be assumed to stand at the corner of Hay Hill.' Only last week, when I looked in to say my farewells, there was still 'a good deal too much furniture,' in the Caven- dish, 'some of it rare, some of it hideous beyond description; plenty of red plush and red morocco and innumerable wedding presents of the 'eighties; in particular many of those mas- sive, mechanical devices covered with crests and monograms, and associated in some way with cigars.' And although Lottie-Rosa has been gone these ten years, there was still the ineluctable suggestion that her successors were being 'true to the sound old snobbery of pound sterling and strawberry leaves.'
There'll never be another hotel in .London like it. The only place I know that even re- motely resembles it is in Paris (where it is easier now than it is here to sniff the authentic at- mosphere of commencement-de-siecle St. James's), and I'm hanged if I'm going to say where.
I once lived in the Cavendish myself—for about a fortnight in 1941, while some rooms I had taken near by were being done up and blacked-out—and used to be stood double sherries at odd hours by Rosa herself, and bidden to stand her and her chums champagne at hours even odder. My bill was always enor- mously higher than it ought to have been, either because Rosa hadn't known my grandfather or didn't like my face, or both: it used to be put
right by her long-suffering secretary when Rosa's back was turned.
Mind you, I know that that's nothing to boast about: tnany have stayed at the Cavendish, and many been bidden to stand Rosa champagne. But in 1956 or 1957 I .answered an advertise- ment in the Times for an editor for a Labour weekly, and was bidden to the Cavendish, to meet a Member of Parliament, one of the edi- torial board, for a drink and a chat. (The paper turned out to be Forward, which eventually came under. the editorship of Mr. Francis Williams, as he was then, who didn't keep it going much longer than I would have done.) So although many may have stayed at the Caven- dish, and many others been stood drinks there, or seduced there, or signed their photographs for Rosa there, I may well be the only out-of- Work journalist interviewed there for the edi- torship of a Socialist, weekly newspaper by Mr. Woodrow Wyatt.
What we had to drink 1 can't now recall, but I know what it's going to he in my memoirs. Fizz.
*
Nobody so observant as a good draughtsman, and I am indebted to Ronald Searle for the information that at 'The English Pub' in Miami, Florida (where under the royal coat of arms and the bold words 'By Appointment' is the legend in smaller type, 'Purveyors of fine food and spirits to Gentlemen and their Ladies'), the `Specials 5 pm to Midnight' include: English Type Kosher Knockwurst and Sauer- kraut with French Fried Potatoes, and Fresh-made English Spaghetti and Meat Balk.
Mention of Miami reminds me, rather in- directly, that I noticed the other day that the North Wales seaside resort of Llandudno is still Were, let me throw that for you.'
advertising itself, as it did when I was a boy, as 'the Naples of the North.' The odd thing is that Naples has never yet thought of putting itself over as 'the Llandudno of the South.'
My wine of the week is one that doesn't exist, I suppose, save in private cellars. I was in Andre Simon's office the other day \Oen his secretary handed him the telephone, saying that a stranger was asking what to do with a bottle of -1934 Haut Brion that he'd just been given as a present --drink it or keep it? Without a moment for thought or recollection, and without consulting a note or a reference book, M. Simon picked up the telephone and said: ' 'Thirty-four Haut Brion? Oh, very nice, but it'll never be any better. It was a fine year, you know—a beautiful summer, with a lot of sun, but then the rains came, just when they were picking the grapes. Not exactly rain, though, so much as a sort of Atlantic sea-mist, but it meant an element of damp on the skins, and that's always against a long life, even for a fine year like 'thirty-four. So give that bottle a little rest, and then drink and enjoy. it,'
And I jotted it all down, as he spoke, because there can't be all that many men in London who can recall the Atlantic sea-mist of the autumn of 1934, just like that.
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