Page 374 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

‘In those days, meals followed a precise ritual. At 7 p.m. the first dinner gong was sounded
on each floor. All the guests who were not dining in their rooms were getting dressed. The

gentlemen wore dinner jackets and the ladies, whose personal maids did their hair and often
dressed them, wore long, elegant dresses, especially on Thursdays when there was a dinner-dance.
At ten past seven, the second gong sounded and everyone went to the table d’hôte,

the children having been served first in another restaurant under the watchful eye of their
respective governesses. The head waiters always offered guests the choice of two menus: one quite
generous for those in good health; the other, for those with a delicate stomach or liver, based on
Dr Combe’s dietetic theory and consisting of glazed carrots, boiled potatoes and stewed fruit […].

‘The American composer Courtland Palmer visited the Beau-Rivage every year with his sister
and their dogs. When he was staying with us on the third and fourth floors, I liked to listen to
him working on his own classical and romantic compositions at the piano. One day, Mr Palmer

took an interest in a very young apprentice lift attendant who showed a talent for music, arranging
for him to have lessons at the Conservatoire. The young man, whose foot he set on the first rung
of the ladder, went on to become a renowned conductor who often replaced Ernest Ansermet.
His name was Jean-Marie Auberson […]. And who can forget the eccentric American who lived
in the big room on the ground floor of the Beau-Rivage, overlooking the garden. He had wire

netting installed at all the windows, turning his room into a huge birdcage, so that from the garden
you could hear the sound of many exotic birds chirruping and singing.’

André MULLER, Souvenirs de Beau-Rivage, 2006, unpublished typescript, 2006.

375