From Poverty to Affluence

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1028, 19 July 1930, Page 18

From Poverty to Affluence

LUCKY LUIGI’S SECRETS

HUIGI XAIXTRE of the Embassy Club, whose death the West End of London has deplored lute the passing of a personal friend, was one of the outstanding figures of his time. Fame and wealth came to him easily and lavishly, as it comes to a great stage artist or a prominent boxer. Everything he touched seemed to turn to money overnight. * hat was his secret? The answer may be found in two words efficiency and diplomacy. The Prince of Piedmont, the heir to the Italian Throne, remarked, after visiting the Embassy Club, that a first-rate diplo mat had been lost to Italy when Luigi Naintre decided to devote his life to the business of catering. Born a poor boy in Sorrento, he came, like many another Italian lad. to seek his fortune in London. He wanted to get a job as waiter in a W est End hotel, but his applications were all turned down on the grounds that his knowledge of the English language was not good enough. Undaunted, Luigi set himself to remedy this deficiency. He took a post as butler’s assistant in a private house in Hampstead at a wage of Cs a week. That was 35 years ago. A New Era Then he went as apprentice-waiter, or "commis,” as it is called in hotel parlance, to the Savoy, Haying learned the job thoroughly, he went on to Romano’s, where he steadily climbed the ladder until, at the end of six years, he was appointed general manager at a salary of £6OO. The war came. Officers home on leave demanded a place they could take their sweethearts and wives to dine and dance, and forget the horror of the trenches. Luigi founded Ciro’s Club—and started a new era in fashionable entertaining. Ciro’s was in fact the forerunner of the night clubs, of the hotel th6s dansant and soupers-dansant, of cabarets, and of West End night life as it is lived today. Before it came into being women of high social position rarely dined in public restaurants, even with their husbands. To have done so would have been considered Bohemian and daring. It was only some of the bolder spirits In society, and a few stage beauties, who ventured to flout tradition by doing so.

When Ciro’s came into being, it changed all that. People who enjoyed dining and dancing at this club—and one of the foremost among them was the Prince of Wales—began to ask each other why they should not seek

relief from the worry of war-time entertaining in their own homes by taking advantage of the good food and entertainment offered by smart restaurants. It was then that that exclusive circle, later to be the nucleus of the Embassy Club, was formed. Netted £130,000 It included the Prince of Wales and bis brothers; Lord Louis Mountbatten and the beautiful Miss'Edwina Ashley whom he married: those two peerless society beauties, the Hon. Mrs. Richard Norton and the Hon. Mrs. Dudley Ward; the Grand Duke Michael’s fascinating daughters, now Lady Milford Haven and Lady Zip. Werner; the Marquess and Marchioness of Carisbrooke; Lady Patricia Ramsay, Miss Myrtle Farquharson, now Mrs. Robin D’Erlanger, Princess Mary's friend, and Queen Mary’s charming niece, Lady Mary Cambridge, now Duchess of Beaufort, a circle which later came to be known as “the Prince's set.” Encouraged by the success of Ciro’s, Luigi looked out for another club, to be run on even more exclusive lines The Embassy was in the market and he bought it from Albert De Courville for £6,000. He borrowed the purchase money from a wealthy Greek merchant. Two years later Luigi sold the Embassy Club, as a going concern, for £12,000, with the stipulation that he remained as manager at a salary of £6,000 a year. The sale of the Embassy Wine Company, which he had founded, brought the lump sum which he netted into the region of £130,000. Yet it was impossible for Luigi’s patrons to regard this slim, elegant, dignified man, with the silver hair and kind brown eyes, as a purely commercial figure. They looked on him rather as a friend. It was one of the clues to his unfailing success that he never presumed on this friendship, whether it was with members of the blood royal or with famous boxers; with painters or politicians or theatrical folk. Unlike many popular maitres-d’hotel. he never came uninvited to sit at the tables of his patrons. He was always courteous—but never servile. Once, when an irascible peer snarled at him. “What the blazes is the matter with the’ smoked salmon today?” Luigi replied, with imperturbable calm: “What is the matter with your palate, my lord?”—a reply which is typical of the skilful manner In which he could parry a thrust. Luigi’s Secret The first time I ever entered the Embassy Club (writes a contributor to the “Competitors’ Guide”) the

Prince of Waiters — And Diplomat, T 00... £I,OOO From a Maharajah. . . . Gave Millionaire 2s 6d to Dine Elsewhere!. . .

Prince of Wales and Prince George were just vacating the most soughtafter table in a snug sofa-corner. They had scarcely left it when it was taken by Prince Paul of Serbia and Trince Obolensky, whom many Russian royalists regard as a possible future Tsar. In another corner Georges Carpeutier was the centre of a distinguished gathering.

Law was represented by Lord Birkenhead; art by Augustus John, the theatre by Heather Thatcher and Tallulah Bankhead; wealth, beauty and fashion by Lady Louis Mountbatten, the Maharanee of Cooch Behar, and Miss Loelia Ponsonby, who has just married the Duke of Westminster. Yet the famous club, which lies at the bottom of a long narrow passage in Bond Street, is by no means large Its entire length is less than 100 feet, and its breadth less than 50. It was no mean effort to weld into a club this microcosm of the super-Bohemia which London Society has now become.

“The assets of a club are its members." Luigi once told me. "It must attract people from many different paths of life. How is this to be achieved?

“Well, I will let you into a secret. To start an exclusive club one must first carefully prepare a list of honorary members—men and women of distinction, who will bring the right, people. One must remember that, in a social club, politicians do not really want to meet other politicians. City men see each other all day in the city. Lawyers get bored with the sight of each other in the courts. Stuge people are always meeting other stage people. “A successful club, however, cannot be run for the aristocracy, the rich and idle, alone. Those who do not work are deeply interested in those who do. and vice-versa. If I can be said to have a secret it is, pei haps, that I understand the propo>tions in which these elements should be mixed."

Luigi was the mildest of autoeratsbut an autocrat all the same. Hiwould tolerate no breaches of the law at the Embassy. The licensing laws' were strictly observed by everyonwithin its portals. Once, when the King of Spain was supping there, J saw champagne bottles and glasses courteously but firmly removed from his supper table on the stroke of midnight. I do not think there were many maitres-d’hotel who would not have made a favoured exception in the case of such a client. The Snub Direct On another occasion, when a young

millionaire was entertaining a somewhat boisterous party of friends to a birthday luncheon, Luigi strolled up casually, and with a mysterious gesture, produced half a crown.

“What’s this for?” Inquired the wealthy host. “For you to pay for your lunch somewhere else,” whispered Luigi. The young man pocketed it, calmed the transports of his party, and afterward proudly produced it when re lating the story against himself. It was Luigi who first introduced the lovely Irene Vernon Castle to give in the Embassy Club au exhibition of ballroom dancing, and set the vogue for exhibition dancers at the leading restaurants.

“But I w'ould not care to be a theatrical producer,” he once told me. “How ever good a cabaret or an exhibition turn may be, it may flop after a few nights, particularly in a club. The reason is that the same people do not want to keep seeing the same eu tertainment. That, I think, is why few- of the hotels have ever made a cabaret pay.” One tiling. I fancy, which made it a stimulating experience for the rich flattered, and spoiled darlings of Society to go to the Embassy, was the unexpectedness of some of Luigi’s quips. Not very long before he died he tossed with a customer for 15 dozen of champagne—and lost! Since the Embassy wines are world-famous, this was certainly a snip for the lucky client. There is a story attaching to the way in which the club’s cellars were laid down. When the Embassy was founded, there was a balcony at one end of the room. The late Maharajah of Cooch Behar, who was orfe of the earliest members, disapproved, of this and suggested its removal to Luigi, who explained that at the moment, funds would not permit of the alteration.

The Maharajah thereupon pulled a thousand-pound note out of his pocket, "As a subscription toward the balcony’s removal.” It happened that a famous cellar was coming under the hammer the next day. Luigi attended it. bought a quantity of choice wines, and gave the Maharajah's note as a deposit on them. Later, the structural alteration was effected. Impish Fun

An impish sense of fun used sometimes to take possession of Luigi. He would arrange so that Society divorcees, who happened to be in the club at the same time, should be seated at adjoining tables. But, if the occasion seemed to demand it, he could be the soul of discretion. Once, seeing a quarrel to be imminent between an engaged couple, he walked over to the table and offered to toss for a five-pound note with the young man. He did so, and won. “We’ll make it double or quits,” he said. The client won, and the threatened storm passed over. Nobody ever seemed to feel envious of Luigi Naintre or grudge him his success. In the Italian quarter—the restaurateur’s colony—his name is revered like that of a king. The reason is, I think, that his famous tact was founded upon a real kindliness of heart and consideration for the feelings of others. if ever he heard of illness or misfortune among his employees or colleagues, he invariably made a generous, warm-hearted gesture. A few weeks ago he sent a huge bunch of roses to a former associate whom he knew to be in bad health and down on Itis luck. Tucked away in the centre was a fat wad of bank notes. Telephone Ruse

When the club members called him over for achat or a glass of wine with them, he hated to break away. So he devised a scheme by Which a page boy was told off to watch him, to tell him he was wanted on the telephone. I have seen this innocent device, intended to prevent his outstaying his welcome at a client’s table, brought into play when he has been the centre of a scintillating party of wit and beauty—lovely women like Lady Miibanke and the Hon. Mrs. James Beck, formerly the wife of Lord Tennyson, the famous cricketer—and men representative of every walk in life. like Mr. Eddie Marsh, Sir “Bufftes” Milbanke, Sir Robert Horne, Sir John Lavery and Earl Beatty.

Luigi is dead, but his name will live. He was the Prince of Waiters, and the uncrowned King of the West End. Like Romano, the idol of the mid-Vic-torian gilded youth, he made a tradition, and changed the habits of a city.