London was the capital of the world during the Victorian heyday of the British Empire. However, in the range of great luxury it lacked services as refined as those that Paris could offer, or as modern as some of New York. One of the most creative nightlife entrepreneurs of the time saw this unmet niche in hospitality and catering and decided to save the honor of his hometown while pocketing a few pounds.
Richard D’Oyly Carte had more than enough arrests for it. He was an investor as risky as he was insightful. For some reason he had been revolutionizing the musical spectacle since 1875. On that date he had brought together on a stable basis the kings of operetta in English, the hit machine formed by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Precursors of what would become, years later, with jazz and other influences, in West End and Broadway musicals, Gilbert and Sullivan were sonic gold. Hence, D’Oyly Carte launched its crazy productions of pirates, Japanese, gondoliers and a world of songs in a space tailored to those joyful extravagances.
To do this, he bought a plot of land located in the Strand, the central avenue that ran parallel to the north, good, bank of the Thames. It was only a couple of decades ago that the engineer Joseph Bazalgette had gained ground from the river, transforming that previously muddy bank into an aristocratic promenade with trees, granite platforms and wrought-iron streetlights. There, on the Embankment, just where the Thames made a bend with wonderful views, the Earls of Richmond had had their residence since the 13th century. They were the British branch of the House of Savoy.
The original palace was succeeded in the Renaissance by a charity hospital that, closed during the Enlightenment, ended up swallowed by a fire. This was the plot where D’Oyly Carte built the Savoy theater in 1881, Savoy in English.
It was quite a milestone. It was the first fully electrified stage hall in the United Kingdom. The fourteen operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, composed from 1871 to 1896, shone there in their greatest splendor. However, D’Oyly Carte dreamed even bigger. He built a magnificent luxury hotel adjacent to the Victorian musical mecca. It was an establishment inspired by the technical colossi where the businessman and his company had spent the night during their tours of the opulent USA of the golden age.
Opened in 1889, the Savoy Hotel was the most lavish and avant-garde business of its kind ever seen in London. Its creator displayed in it everything learned in performing arts. Its interior design was carried out, in fact, by the same professionals who had decorated the theater. As in him, no moldings or gilding were spared in the hotel. Nor floral wallpaper in the rooms, in Victorian style. The exterior of the building was no less impressive. It looked like a postcard of the elegant fashionable seaside resorts in Normandy, the Côte d’Azur, the Riviera and the Lido, but with the balconies facing the Thames in a row.
This style was to evolve from 1901, when both Queen Victoria and D’Oyly Carte died, while Prince Bertie, a regular at the Savoy, left his playboy days behind to assume the British throne as Edward VII.
Rupert, himself the son and heir of the hotel’s founder, extended it towards the Strand with the architect Thomas Edward Collcutt. The interior of the establishment would also be modified. Although this would add various reforms to the present – the most recent of great significance, one of 260 million euros between 2007 and 2010 -, the Edwardian seal would prevail among the Savoy’s main lines along with the later art deco.
But this dedication to delighting the senses was just one of the aspects that made the hotel a glittering showcase for high society. Comfort based on cutting-edge technology complemented this facet. It was the first public building in the world to be electrified from top to bottom.
It also had six hydraulic elevators, so new in the Victorian capital that the machinery had to be brought from the US. Speaking tubes made it possible to order drinks and food without leaving the room. There was hot water not only in private bathrooms, but even day and night.
Despite the heavy initial investment, D’Oyly Carte found in a few months that the hotel was making losses. Then he gambled again in a risky bet that would make history. In 1890 he hired the star couple of European hospitality. They were the Swiss manager César Ritz and the French chef Auguste Escoffier.
Although they did not abandon their businesses on the continent, they settled in the Savoy as their headquarters. His arrival in London marked a revolution for the cream of the nascent British tourism industry.
Because, backed by a creative businessman like D’Oyly Carte, both professionals were able to launch or perfect strategies that had previously only been dreamed of or outlined. It was Ritz who attracted the festive Prince of Wales to the Savoy. Bertie’s presence attracted, in turn, the local aristocracy and European royalty, who were supported by American billionaires and other celebrities. Among them, Sarah Bernhardt, preceded by her inseparable Irish setter Tosco.
The acclaimed stage actress and the rest of the exquisite cohort did not feel drawn to the Savoy solely by the Swiss manager’s interventions, such as palatial etiquette, immaculate facility hygiene, administrative efficiency, or orchestras playing trendy music here and there for hide awkward silences in conversations. Like other guests, Bernhardt, like a good Parisian, was also seduced by the delicacies coming from the kitchen of Escoffier, an old childhood friend of hers, on the other hand.
Opera divas were also frequent diners of the French chef, such as the Italian soprano Adelina Patti, born in Madrid, and the Australian Nellie Melba. The gourmet created delicacies such as peach and Melba toast for the latter. Furthermore, Escoffier introduced in the United Kingdom, from the Savoy kitchen, the hierarchization of work in brigades, which is a system still in force in European culinary temples.
This founding stage of the best hospitality and restaurant industry in the United Kingdom had a bitter end. It happened in 1897, in a buoyant period for the businessman, who, thanks to the profits of the Savoy, had acquired other hotels. That year, D’Oyly Carte held Ritz and the maître de Escoffier responsible for the disappearance of select wines and spirits worth today equivalent to half a million euros. According to the businessman, the chef would also have been being bribed by suppliers to choose his products.
Ritz and Escoffier responded to these accusations with indignation. The first was about to take D’Oyly Carte to court for unfair dismissal, until the cook dissuaded him. Nobody wanted trouble.
Some aspects of this traumatic break were revealed almost a century later, at the end of the 20th century. Only then could it be confirmed that Ritz, Escoffier and their immediate subordinates did not resign, as was maintained for decades. The Savoy board ordered them in writing to leave their positions immediately after an audit.
All the parties involved agreed to the story of the voluntary resignation so as not to further cloud a matter with edges that are still dark today, in a business with a clientele that is scared by the slightest scandal.
All in all, the story had a happy ending. Thanks to the knowledge and contacts accumulated during his years at the Savoy in London, the culmination of an impressive resume that began in the Alps and the Côte d’Azur, César Ritz founded his own emporium. The year after the incident with D’Oyly Carte he opened the iconic Ritz de la place Vendôme. It was at the request of Savoy clients who longed for a similar hotel in Paris.
Months later, in 1899, the Swiss manager tasted sweet revenge by returning in style to the British capital. He opened the Carlton, with Escoffier in the kitchen.
This return tasted even more glorious five years later. Opened in 1905, the Ritz in Piccadilly posed its most direct competition to the Savoy to date. The luxury chain would land in Madrid in 1910 and, with the founder now dead, in Barcelona in 1919.
But the main rematch took place in Edwardian London. There, the Ritz even stole old regulars from the Thames hotel, such as Lady de Gray or, from time to time, the Churchills. Even members of the royal family. Since then, the British power dine, negotiate, celebrate or spend the night in one of both hotels on special occasions. The future Elizabeth II and Philip of Edinburgh had their first public photo taken together at a party at the Savoy in 1946. Less happily, Margaret Thatcher died in 2013 in a suite at the Ritz.
This text is part of an article published in number 668 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
