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18 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
or later they went berserk. I have an idea that they got that way because of Father's exacting demands and Gallic temperament.
At heart Father was an entrepreneur. He believed that a fine restaurant was more than a place to purchase a meal; to him it was the stage setting for a gastronomic drama in which the proprietor was both director and leading man. Father happened to be a great director and a first-rate leading man. To tell the truth, he had a bit of ham in him, which I inherited.
Whenever a new waiter was hired, Father gave him a course of instructions in the performance of his tasks. A good waiter, he used to say, could enhance a well-prepared rrieal, while a bad one could ruin it. A fine restaurant owed an obligation to the customer to make him feel like a pampered guest, a very important fellow whose appetite and gastric juices were the personal concern of the chef, the waiters, and even the bus boy.
Of course, Father always gave a better performance than anybody else in the cast. When he met an important customer at the door, it was as though a foreign minister were greeting an ambassador. He did it with a flourish and a savoir-faire that was delightful to behold. He could have been Leo Ditrichstein, that most suave, most polished of all old-school actors. By the time Father had seated his customer, the man felt that to have ordered anything less than the best, including a vintage wine and a glass of brandy with his coffee, would have lowered his social standing in the community.
But there were practical duties connected with running a restaurant that irked Father. Watching the larder, purchasing supplies, keeping books, and bickering with wholesalers were not for him. In these matters Mother was his right hand. She worked with him in most of his restaurants from early morning till the dinner hour. As a result, Henry and I were practically raised by Grand mere. And since she spoke nothing but French, we learned to speak that language as fluently as we spoke English.
She was no different from any grandmother. She was blind to our faults and defended our delinquencies with complete faith in