On the Shores of the Mediterranean (54 page)

Inside, what one might call the foyer was of a theatrical splendour that made one glad not to have arrived shoeless and with a shrimping net. In it other varlets, dressed in what I imagined was the eighteenth or some earlier century equivalent of scarlet track suits, were waiting to take over our bags for what one hoped was the last lap – and the last lot of servitors if we had to tip them all – panting to go like runners in a relay race. Even the high official in charge of reception wore a scarlet suit, albeit a twentieth-century double-breasted one. We did not find him sympathetic and he didn’t appear to approve of us, the only man so far who, presumably, didn’t approve of Volkswagen Transporters.

Scarcely moving from this glistening marble hall which, when the man in the scarlet suit goes away, is dominated by the
concierge
and a splendid bust by Pron the Younger of Charles Duc de Berry, grandson of Louis XIV, one could see what Niermans and Negresco’s indefatigable successor, the present owner, had between them accomplished, which goes some way to explaining why, in 1974, the French Government was prevailed upon to declare the Negresco a national monument.

The present owner is the daughter of Jean Mesnage, who bought it in 1957, Madame Jeanne Augier, wife of a lawyer, its apparently (for we never saw her) red-headed head, who has an insatiable passion for antiques, particularly those of the period of Louis XIV, and an equal enthusiasm for interior decoration and running
hotels, which she does with the aid of M. Michel Palmer, an
hôtelier
of genius. Between them they changed large parts of the interior beyond recognition, from Niermans’
style modern
of 1912 to whatever period Madame Augier decreed – not, as Palmer said subsequently,
‘une mince
[insignificant]
affaire
’. By doing so they saved it from one of two alternative fates, instant demolition or being turned into a dormitory hotel catering for tourists en masse. Now it is a highly polished museum, animated by its staff and guests. Whatever else inspires the owner it is not the profit motive, although in 1981, to everyone’s surprise and possibly alarm, the hotel made one.

To the left, looking into the interior from the entrance, was the Salon Louis XIV, Madame’s preferred period (what Versailles would have looked like if she had been alive then and caught the eye of
Le Roi Soleil
can only be a matter of conjecture), used for receptions and such. In it she had installed a monumental stone fireplace which weighed ten tons, two fine seventeenth-century tapestries from the Gobelins workshops and a coffered ceiling from the Château de St Pierre d’Albigny in Savoy which has painted panels recalling the love life of Hortense Mancini, Cardinal Mazarin’s niece, with a seventeenth-century prince of Monaco.

And straight ahead was Niermans’ masterpiece, the enormous, oval, white and gold Salon Royal with a glass dome supported by several dozen columns with gilded capitals grouped in pairs, from which a whole host of 24-carat gilded
putti
looked down through the glazing behind which they were more or less innocently disporting themselves on 1196 square feet of white marble floor, half of which was covered by a round Savonnerie carpet which cost Negresco, the automobile manufacturer Darracq and another captain of industry who put up the money for the hotel, 560,000 old francs, about a tenth of the total investment. This salon, as big as an airship hangar, which dwarfs human beings and makes
those suffering from agoraphobia scuttle round the edge of it rather than cross it direct, was hung with enormous oils depicting seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French royalty (school of Van Loo) and was illuminated by a Baccarat crystal chandelier six feet high which weighed a ton. In one corner of it there were some luxury shops of the sort that one finds in palace-hotels from which no one ever seems to buy anything, built by the owner and for which she bought the stock, but the Salon was so large they were scarcely noticeable.

And to the right was the bar, glimpsed momentarily as we were escorted by a non-varlet in scarlet to the lift, which one normally worked oneself after the induction ceremony – these boys were slipping, at the Carlton they had a brace of
liftiers
in white jackets and gloves to press the buttons. In the bar, itself now a French national monument, its panelling reminiscent of some epoch or other, a room to me, who finds most palace-hotel bars sad, of monumental sadness, the monumental habitués were already dipping into their first drinks and a distinguished-looking Negro pianist was playing my tune, Scott Joplin’s
Solace
.

Upstairs in the corridors on one of the five floors things were much the same but with whiffs of comparative modernity provided by works of Léger, Picasso, Cocteau, Arp and so on, not all of them felicitous, and with boldly conceived carpets signed by a M. Yvaral underfoot.

Of the hundred and sixty or so rooms and suites, each was furnished with what were said to be genuine pieces of a particular period of French interior decoration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

This breadth of choice, one which is not actually offered to the prospective guest, has its disadvantages for those sensitive to their surroundings, especially when they are paying anything from 540 francs for the quietest double room with a view of the well above
the glass-domed Salon Royal, to 1495 francs and upwards for a seaward-looking suite, service and VAT included. When they opened the door of ours it was a bit of a shock. ‘Golly!’ I said, taking it all in as varlets dashed all over the place running taps, looking under the bed for dead guests who might discommode us, opening windows, indicating the view, showing us how to work the lock of the drink cupboard, dusting away non-existent dust, all putting on a similar, more polished performance than the employees at the El Nil Hotel at the other end of the Mediterranean. It was furnished with a bulbous oaken four-poster that had been stripped and was now of an unseemly milk chocolate hue, my unfavourite colour for furniture. There was a lot more scarlet, which was beginning to seem like Madame’s favourite colour, and the walls were hung with tapestries. It had a view of the sea and was rather small. Altogether it produced a feeling that Douglas Fairbanks,
père
or
fils
, disguised as d’Artagnan, might suddenly swing into it, on a knotted sheet, waving a rapier. It could have been worse. There was one room we discovered later which was draped entirely
en tricolore
.

What almost all palace-hotels are proud of, and the Negresco was no exception, is their clientele. Wherever possible they leave lying about printed lists of the kings and ex-kings and queens, princes, shahs, maharajahs and their ladies, pretenders, politicians and film stars and ‘great names of the artistic world’ they have opened their doors to: lists that, taken together, make an ordinary sensitive person think that he is an occupant not of an hotel but of a chamber of horrors. It was the management of the Carlton, not the Negresco, who suggested to the late Aga Khan, head of the Ismaili Muslims, that they would be happy to bottle his bath water for sale to the Faithful as an elixir of life.

We dined at Chantecler, the Negresco’s principal restaurant; one of the best restaurants in France; something rare for the
restaurant of an
hôtel-palais
. It rates two stars in
Michelin
. Many people think it should have three, but then
Michelin
has never awarded three stars to the restaurant of an
hôtel-palais
. Anyway, it was not
Michelin
that first drew attention to Chantecler. In fact
Michelin
is unable to do so coherently, even if it would like to do so, since it works with symbols rather than words. It was Gault and Millau in their annual survey of French restaurants,
Guide France
. They wrote so extravagantly about the chef, Jacques Maximin, in the 1982 edition, that, reading their advanced and convoluted French, one seriously began to wonder whether they had gone round the culinary bend. They accorded him four chef’s
toques
– hats – in red as opposed to black, which indicated that his cooking was
‘inventive’
as opposed to
‘classique’
, and 19 points out of a possible 20 (which no restaurant has ever received), describing the meal as the
‘meilleur repas de l’année’
. This put him in a class with five other immortal chefs, four in France and one in Switzerland, all of whom produced, according to Gault and Millau,
‘repas exceptionels de l’année’
.

Maximin came to Chantecler by a circuitous route. At the time we ate his dinner he was thirty-three. At fourteen he began to work in the kitchens of a small hotel, Le Chalet, in his native Le Touquet. Perhaps the most important of his formative years were the two he spent working under Roger Vergé in his restaurant le Moulin de Mougins at Mougins near Cannes, which he himself described as
‘la révélation de la cuisine’
.

He came to Chantecler in 1979 from what Gault and Millau described as
‘un clinquant
[flashy]
restaurant de Marina-Baie-des-Anges’
, lured there by Madame Augier and her administrator, who carried out the negotiations, agreeing to give him everything he wanted in the way of assistants and the right to cook whatever he chose, buying all the ingredients himself.

That year he was declared Meilleur Ouvrier de France, together
with one of his team, Joël Ray, which made them members of a select band of 24 which includes Paul Bocuse, the late Jean Troisgros and Alain Chapel. That year,
Michelin
accorded Chantecler its first star and Gault and Millau gave it sixteen points out of twenty. In eighteen months business increased by one hundred per cent.

Not everyone, including the Newbys, goes overboard about the décor at Chantecler. The walls covered with flower-patterned, genuine seventeenth-century cotton percale, the chairs upholstered in red velvet, the crystal chandeliers are all the product of Madame’s discussable taste; but you can’t eat the decorations and the table arrangements were beautifully done, and when course after course arrived escorted by the least forbidding sort of
maître d’hôtel
, under silver covers that were whipped away simultaneously to reveal dishes of such insubstantial-looking beauty that one was reminded of eighteenth-century water-colours of flowers and vegetables, everything else was forgotten. Among the dishes that we ate were
courgettes à la fleur et aux truffes
, a dish in which the baby vegetables were scooped out, the orange flowers folded and filled with the purée and then cooked in batter with basil, the courgette from which the flower sprouted being sliced, launched into a butter sauce and surmounted with slivers of black truffle. There was also
galette de pigeonneau aux cèpes et girolles
, a fan of underdone slices of pigeon’s breast with almonds and a mushroom sauce composed of fresh
cèpes
and
chanterelles
, and, most wonderful of all,
saumon au gros sel et tous les légumes frais
, fresh salmon flown from Scotland, steamed, surrounded by freshwater crayfish, minute cucumbers, carrots and sliced turnips so small that they could hardly be seen, served with crystals of sea salt, a masterpiece, like no other salmon I have ever eaten. For a sweet we were given one of the creations of Jacques Torres, one of Maximin’s adjutants,
gratin de fraises des bois au beurre de Grand
Marnier
, wild strawberries in a sort of crême brulée with Grand Marnier. There are two
cartes
for the desserts, one by Torres, the other, with twelve different dishes, by Maximin, all made with chocolate.

This dinner for two, with a bottle of still, red champagne (Pinot France, Laurent Perrier) which cost about 200 francs, produced a bill of £137 ($192) without any liqueurs, twice as much as we had ever spent on a single meal. But in spite of this rudely expensive awakening from what seems in retrospect a beautiful dream, we rose from the table like balloons, thinking about nothing else but where could we lay our hands on a similar amount of money to make possible a return the following day, to eat another version of the best, most imaginative and most beautifully presented meal we have ever eaten in our lives, either on the shores of the Mediterranean or anywhere else.

After this scrumptious interlude we set off along the grotesquely overbuilt shores of the Mediterranean through the macabre principality of Monaco and along what the Italians call – with what is now perhaps an excess of Latin imagination – the Riviera dei Fiori, bound for home in Tuscany.

Gastronomically-speaking the dinner at Chantecler marked a fitting end to a protracted journey, little of which could be described as
une route des gastronomes
. Just as we had seen a lot of things and places we never wanted to see again, and with which I hope I have not burdened the reader, we had also eaten a lot of things of which one helping was an ample sufficiency. It is a pity in a way that one could not make a litany or a song about them, as someone once
did about hangovers: ‘the
cachets faivres
we bought in Sèvres, the
Enos
in Buenos Aires …’ Instead one must try to think about the more memorable foods for which one has a lingering affection: in Greece, where the food stands or falls according to the quality of the oil, we had eaten
avgolemoa
, delicious rich, spiced soup with oriental affiliations made with chicken, rice, eggs and lemon and served with black pepper, etc., etc.; in Turkey, where the vegetables were the freshest and the meat the best almost anywhere in the Mediterranean, we had allowed ourselves to be fooled into eating
kadin budu
, lady’s thighs, which turned out to be pastry and good old unerotic meat croquettes; in Israel we had eaten chickens’ testicles and bulls’ testicles, described on the menu as ‘eggs of adult ox in extent’; and elsewhere in Israel,
kreplach
made with chopped meat and dumplings, and so many
blintzes, knishes, bagels
and helpings of
lox
that I imagined myself back on Broadway; and in Egypt we had been treated to a meal which took what seemed an eternity to materialize, consisting of
ful
, dried brown beans cooked with red lentils incredibly slowly over a low charcoal fire, eaten with chicken cooked with the aromatic
mulukhia
plant and prickly pears, not all of which had been adequately de-prickled.

Sometimes we thanked our lucky stars that we had decided to give the islands a miss. In Sardinia, where they bury wild boar in trenches before baking them, which means you have to dig for your dinner with a spade, they also, as an afterthought, serve a cheese called
casu becciu
which once seen, let alone eaten, is never forgotten, as it literally swarms with worms. Sometimes there are so many that the cheese is actually seen to move across the platter on which it is served, as if the worms were carrying it in some sort of procession.

After passing Lerici, on the Gulf of Spezia, we turned off the deathtrap Via Emilia, the Roman road to Rome, on to a small
straight road that led off it to the foot of a range of hills that are outliers of the Apuan Alps, on the way passing something comparatively rare in this part of the world, a fine Renaissance villa.

When we first came to live here this had been good farmland, but the present owners of the villa, who had taken it over from the feudal lords, were selling it off piecemeal and apartment blocks were being built. Only a few of the former dependants of the old lords, the
mezzadri
, share-croppers who had rendered half their total produce to them in exchange for a roof over their heads, lived on in what remained of their humble but picturesque farmhouses, where they still stubbornly cultivated the pathetic remains of what had once been flourishing vineyards. Beyond the villa the road ran past a little chapel decorated with marble obelisks, in which the old family had gone to pray, and under a high brick archway which formed part of their huge stables.

Here the plain ended and the road began to climb the hillside, winding up among old farmhouses painted in faded pinks and surrounded by vineyards and groves of olives, and past new weekend houses – what the owners, most of whom come from Parma on the other side of the Apennines, call
villette
, constructions guarded by savage, German-type dogs trained for this purpose. These holiday houses are hemmed in with wire-mesh fencing, which the locals, who have gone wherever they wished to go by rights of way since time immemorial, bitterly resent but do nothing about, being peasants.

We drove up the hillside, counting the hairpin bends as we always did, and, as always, failing to come to the same total because it depends what you mean by a hairpin bend, past our local grocer’s shop and our local butcher’s and past what a notice on a rather decrepit building picturesquely described as a
cellula
, a cell of the local branch of the Italian Communist Party, to which many of our friends belong.

Then after another bend or two we turned off along a rutted track, so steep that for years we had found it worthwhile to own a Land Rover, running down through a wood of sweet chestnuts which here, in these hills and mountains, until recently provided the flour for the staple food, and across a little bridge that spanned a torrent that was always bone dry in summer unless there was a sudden storm.

Once across the bridge we saw the house, partly but never really forgotten, but certainly neglected, like Mole’s house in
Wind in the Willows;
for apart from coming to do the
vendemmia
and to dig and manure the land, when we had not bothered to open it up, two years had passed since we had last lived in it. It was autumn 1983 and we were home in time for the
vendemmia
.

It was a pity in some ways that this was the last year we should make our wine here at I Castagni. Something like eighteen years ago, I had dug this vineyard with my own hands using a pick and a spade, at a time when no one remotely considered using bulldozers or other labour-saving instruments for such a minor project. I excavated a series of trenches, each more than sixty feet long and four feet wide and deep, in what was heavy clay embedded with rocks. Having thrown in a bit of vegetation as I had been instructed, I solemnly refilled them. This was to give the roots of the vine a chance to establish themselves in the heavy soil. Then I planted the vines. By a miracle, of the hundred or so I planted, only one or two failed to take.

Twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn, we came to work our vineyard, and in the interval, when we were elsewhere, it was looked after by Signor Tarsiero and his wife, our nearest neighbours, he being a real professional who had worked in a very large vineyard for most of his life. He pruned the vines and sprayed them and did everything else that needed to be done except dig them, prune the shoots below ground level when they were young
and find the good manure and manure them, things that were in my province. But now he was over eighty, and although still active was unable to look after my vines in addition to his own property, and so from now on we were going to loan the vineyard to another neighbour so that he could make the wine for himself, and we would buy our wine elsewhere. We would do this because we made our wine in a particular way and could not expect anyone else’s to be quite the same.

It was perhaps appropriate that this should be our last
vendemmia
at I Castagni, for we had not only come to the end of what had been a very long journey round the shores of the Mediterranean, but had also, at the same time, come to the end of our wine.