Word: voisin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ambitious son of a Swiss herdsman, César Ritz left home at 15 for a job emptying slops in small Paris hotels, moved on through other jobs till he became a manager. He quit to start at the bottom again in Paris' famed Restaurant Voisin, an international hangout for royalty and gourmets. There young César's instinct for the personal touch drew the attention of influential customers. During the siege of Paris in 1871, food was so scarce that the city zoo slaughtered its two elephants, of which Voisin's got the trunks. Thanks...
Cold Cigars. From Voisin's, Ritz moved on to successively bigger jobs in Nice, San Remo, Lucerne, Rome, BadenBaden, Vienna. He remembered and carefully catered to the whims of such tourists as Cornelius Vanderbilt (who liked to chew cold cigars), John Wanamaker (who asked "are you leading a Christian life?"), the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII (who liked his beef well-done). On one of the jobs, César Ritz formed a lifelong partnership with an obscure chef named Auguste Escoffier...
...captained the hockey and baseball teams (playing shortstop), was elected president of the student council, joined Hasty Pudding, Phoenix Club and Signet Society, among others. He developed a passion for foreign cars. He owned, in turn, a Mercedes, Voisin, Panhard-Levassor, Hispano-Suiza. After graduation, with only average grades, he put in a short tour of duty in the postwar army. Then his father's friend George Lee gave him a job in his investment banking house of Lee, Higginson...