In 2021, I bought a book called The Tavern is My Drum from a one-armed man in Manchester. An autobiography published in 1948, its author was a man called Joseph Vecchi, who had been maître d’ in many of Europe’s grandest hotels during the Roaring Twenties. Though he is cloying and overzealous with his adoration of the aristocracy, the book is worth reading for anyone who enjoys sipping Manhattans below chandeliers, as I do.
Vecchi ran the restaurant at Claridge’s when George V was crowned and later oversaw the French restaurant at the Astoria in St Petersburg, where his encounters with royalty continued and where his accounts became more compelling still. His reminiscing of an all-female party hosted by the sultry night wizard Rasputin is titled “Russia Dances to Destruction”; it is duly disparaging of the man, who apparently ate with his “talon-like” fingers, raucously drinking all the while before slipping away down a hidden staircase to cavort in telltale faux philosophical grandeur.
