Adam bought a paper. He had just ten shillings left in the world. It was too wet to walk, so he took a very crowded tube train to Dover Street and hurried across in the rain to Shepheard’s Hotel (which, for the purposes of the narrative, may be assumed to stand at the corner of Hay Hill).
III
Lottie Crump, proprietress of Shepheard’s Hotel, Dover Street, attended invariably by two Cairn terriers, is a happy reminder to us that the splendours of the Edwardian era were not entirely confined to Lady Anchorage or Mrs. Blackwater. She is a fine figure of a woman, singularly unscathed by any sort of misfortune and superbly oblivious of those changes in the social order which agitate the more observant grandes dames of her period. When the war broke out she took down the signed photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the menservants’ lavatory; it was her one combative action; since then she has had her worries—income-tax forms and drink restrictions and young men whose fathers she used to know, who give her bad cheques, but these have been soon forgotten; one can go to Shepheard’s parched with modernity any day, if Lottie likes one’s face, and still draw up, cool and uncontaminated, great, healing draughts from the well of Edwardian certainty.
Shepheard’s has a plain, neatly pointed brick front and large, plain doorway. Inside it is like a country house. Lottie is a great one for sales, and likes, whenever one of the great houses of her day is being sold up, to take away something for old times’ sake. There is a good deal too much furniture at Shepheard’s, some of it rare, some of it hideous beyond description; there is plenty of red plush and red morocco and innumerable wedding presents of the ’eighties; in particular many of those massive, mechanical devices covered with crests and monograms, and associated in some way with cigars. It is the sort of house in which one expects to find croquet mallets and polo sticks in the bathroom, and children’s toys at the bottom of one’s chest of drawers, and an estate map and an archery target—exuding straw—and a bicycle and one of those walking-sticks which turn into saws, somewhere in passages, between baize doors, smelling of damp. (As a matter of fact, all you are likely to find in your room at Lottie’s is an empty champagne bottle or two and a crumpled camisole.)
The servants, like the furniture, are old and have seen aristocratic service. Doge, the head waiter, who is hard of hearing, partially blind, and tortured with gout, was once a Rothschild’s butler. He had, in fact, on more than one occasion in Father Rothschild’s youth, dandled him on his knee, when he came with his father (at one time the fifteenth richest man in the world) to visit his still richer cousins, but it would be unlike him to pretend that he ever really liked the embryo Jesuit who was “too clever by half,” given to asking extraordinary questions, and endowed with a penetrating acumen in the detection of falsehood and exaggeration.
Besides Doge, there are innumerable old housemaids always trotting about with cans of hot water and clean towels. There is also a young Italian who does most of the work and gets horribly insulted by Lottie, who once caught him powdering his nose, and will not let him forget it. Indeed, it is one of the few facts in Lottie’s recent experience that seems always accessible.
Lottie’s parlour, in which most of the life of Shepheard’s centres, contains a comprehensive collection of signed photographs. Most of the male members of the royal families of Europe are represented (except the ex-Emperor of Germany who has not been reinstated, although there was a distinct return of sentiment towards him on the occasion of his second marriage). There are photographs of young men on horses riding in steeplechases, of elderly men leading in the winners of “classic” races, of horses alone and of young men alone, dressed in tight, white collars or in the uniform of the Brigade of Guards. There are caricatures by “Spy,” and photographs cut from illustrated papers, many of them with brief obituary notices, “killed in action.” There are photographs of yachts in full sail and of elderly men in yachting caps; there are some funny pictures of the earliest kind of motor car. There are very few writers or painters and no actors, for Lottie is true to the sound old snobbery of pound sterling and strawberry leaves.
Lottie was standing in the hall abusing the Italian waiter when Adam arrived.
“Well,” she said, “you are a stranger. Come along in. We were just thinking about having a little drink. You’ll find a lot of your friends here.”
She led Adam into the parlour, where they found several men, none of whom Adam had ever seen before.
“You all know Lord Thingummy, don’t you?” said Lottie.
“Mr. Symes,” said Adam.
“Yes, dear, that’s what I said. Bless you, I knew you before you were born. How’s your father? Not dead, is he?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he is.”
“Well, I never. I could tell you some things about him. Now let me introduce you—that’s Mr. What’s-his-name, you remember him, don’t you? And over there in the corner, that’s the
