AN ECCENTRIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1937, Page 10

AN ECCENTRIC

Nicholas Soyer, who has just died, inherited the culinary genius, but not the eccentricities, of his even more famous ancestor Alexis Soyer, of whom it was written that he "raised the divine art of cookery to its highest splendour," says the "Manchester Guardian." Alexis displayed his originality not only in his cookery, but in his ideas of dress. George Augustus Sala, who knew him intimately, recorded that "every article of Soyer's attire was cut on what dressmakers call a 'bias,1 or what he himself used to designate 'a la zoug-zoug.' He must have been the terror of his tailor, his hatter, and his maker of cravats and underlmen, since he had, to all appearances, an unconquerable aversion to any garment which, when displayed on the human figure, exhibited either horizontal or vertical lines. His very visiting-cards, his cigar-case, and the handle of his cane took slightly oblique inclinations."