Marcel Boulestin
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(Xavier-)Marcel Boulestin (1878 – 1943) was a chef, one of the outstanding French restaurateurs of his generation and the author of several cookbooks that popularized French cuisine in the English-speaking world. His London publisher was Heinemann, his Paris publisher Librairie Dorbon-aîné, which had been founded in 1900 by Louis Dorbon as a bookseller, and ventured into publishing with a very select list of travel books and memoirs.[1]
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[edit] Early career
As a young man fresh from the Périgord countryside, about 1900[2] Boulestin started to work as secretary and as one of the ghostwriters or 'secrétaires-nègres' of author Henry Gauthier-Villars, also known under his pseudonym 'Willy'. Gauthier-Villars employed several authors for his sensational and well-selling books, among them Curnonsky and his own wife Colette, who later was to embark on a grand career on her own.
Willy's stories and novels often were written with characters taken from his friends and collaborators. His Claudine and Minne series and other novels sketched Colette's youth, peppered with characters taken from other spheres, like the clearly homosexual 'Hicksem' and 'Blackspot', both taken from Boulestin's personality[3]. Willy's novel En Bombe (1904) even portrayed his life with Willy and his other secretaries, illustrated with 100 posed photos showing Willy himself as Maugis, Marcel Boulestin as Blackspot, another secretary Armory as Kernadeck, Colette as Marcelle, Marcelle as Jeannine and Colette's famous dog Toby-Chien as itself. Also, in 1905, Boulestin's translation into French of The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm was published.
From his early adolescence, Boulestin felt attracted to Britain. About 1907, he started to live on-and-off in London and Paris, later in London only, befriending people like Max Beerbohm, Robert Ross and Reginald Turner. At first he earned his money by writing humorous 'Letters from London' for several magazines, among them Akademos (magazine), the sumptuous monthly of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen (1909). For Akademos, Boulestin also wrote his only full-fledged novel, brilliantly chatty like all his books, Les Fréquentations de Maurice under the pseudonym 'Sidney Place'. It was published by Dorbon-Ainé in 1911. Some of his feuilletons from London were published as Tableaux de Londres in an attractive limited edition (1912).
[edit] Cuisine
However, in November 1911 Boulestin opened his first restaurant, Boulestin's in Covent Garden. 'My stock was small, but modern and first-rate. I had made no concessions. The silks, the velvets, the linens, the knick-knacks and the wallpapers came from Martine, André Groult, and Iribe. I had bought stuffs at Darmstadt, Munich and Vienna; Berlin and Florence supplied me with certain papers, Paris with new and amusing vases, pottery, porcelain, glass, and a few fine pieces of Negro art.'[4] As a restaurant chef, Boulestin embarked on his new and most successful career.
Under his credo Good meals should be the rule, not the exception, Marcel Boulestin remained as an expatriate to make a huge success with his famous restaurant, which was unrivalled among small establishments between the First and Second World Wars, followed by his cooking courses, and his popular books, with their chatty narrative recipes that introduced British cooks to la cuisine bourgeoise of France. Boulestin's downstairs premises with Art Deco decor opened in 1926. The superb cuisine he served, adjusted to seasonal ingredients from the central market of Covent Garden outside his door, attracted the haut monde of Britain, the Continent and America: connoisseurs of food, famous writers, artists, and diplomats became intimate friends. His The Conduct of the Kitchen (1925) is part of the mainstream history of cuisine. He wrote many occasional pieces on food, in Vogue and The Manchester Guardian. His memoirs, Ease and Endurance (A Londres Naguère) were published in 1948.
Boulestin was the first television chef, appearing on a BBC program in television's earliest experimental days, in 1937.
[edit] Books
Most modern readers know Boulestin from the anthology published in 1951, The Best of Boulestin, edited by Elvia and Maurice Firuski. His Boulestin's Round-the-Year Cookbook has been reprinted by Dover press (1975). The similarly-arranged What Shall We Have Today has been republished by Columbia University Press.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Other authors published by the firm included Maurice Des Ombiaux, Claude Farrère, Camille Saint-Saëns, René Boylesve, Jules Lemaître, Claude Debussy, Francis de Miomandre, and the comtesse de Noailles.
- ^ François Caradec: Feu Willy avec et sans Colette. Paris, Carrère / Pauvert, 1984
- ^ Feu Willy, p. 126
- ^ X. Marcel Boulestin, Ease and Endurance, translated by Robin Adair. London, Home & Van Thal, 1948. p. 58
