ID: WW01_261 / Winifred Hone

TitleA. Dumas - yachtsman at the Victory. Winifred Hone memoirs
AbstractMr Dumas, owner of STORMCOCK, was a well known yachtsman that we inherited when we took the Victory, he used to come every evening for dinner and preferred a joint and two veg, followed by a boiled pudding of some sort. He had a tremendous capacity for food, he used to arrive at the beginning of the season in a double breasted reefer jacket, but he used to put on so much weight that it became a single breasted one at the end of the season. He was very prim and proper and on one occasion when we had a middle aged Romeo staying at the Victory (I won't mention his name as soon after he met his Juliet and married and lived happily every after) he handed him a warning which went as follows.

The waitresses are charming
Don't try to kiss them you old sinner
Or Mrs Hone will cook your goose
Before she cooks your dinner

He dined at the Victory every summer for ten years, and in my last year there he gave me a gold and blue enamelled brooch with a serpent entwined round th edge, and with great solemnity gold me he gave it to me as an emblem of constancy. I hadn't told him I was opening up the Sailing and Social Club, he did not believe in Clubs at that time and he was so angry when he found out that he would have to go without his meat and veg in the summer to come, cooked by me, that he completely ignored me until the war broke out. He came back in the forties to ask me to provide he same service. I had to refuse as I hadn't any meat and two veg for anybody.

AuthorWinifred Hone
Publishedc1969
SourceMersea Museum / Wendy Brady
IDWW01_261