Kitchen’s friend did not think it necessary to warn him about whom he was going to meet. And Kitchen’s reaction after visiting Maxim is a reminder, if one were necessary, of why Frederick was never tempted to return to the United States.
“‘Thomas’s’ is indeed presided over by an American,” Kitchen recalled later, “and a blacker American I never saw in all my life”:
“Mr.” Thomas is a “cullud” gentleman who came to Russia some years ago as a valet to a grand duke. His Highness took such a fancy to him that he started him in business, and to-day “Mr.” Thomas is the proprietor of one of the largest and finest restaurant music-halls in Russia. He expressed himself as delighted to meet a New Yorker and offered to show us his establishment—which saved us ten roubles entrance fee.
As the owner and host at Maxim, Frederick was used to being part of the show. By claiming to have been a personal servant of a son or grandson of the tsar of all the Russias, Frederick was implying that he had been close to and richly rewarded by one of the most important men in the land. This was a far more intriguing story than that he had worked his way up from the restaurant floor, especially if he was telling it to a visiting white American whom it would be amusing to shock.
Frederick could not have failed to recognize the note of disapproval in Kitchen’s reaction to him, which Kitchen preserved in his memoir by putting ironic quotation marks around “Mr.” and by parodying Frederick’s black southern accent. But Frederick remained genial throughout the visit, showing that as master of an impressive domain he could ignore slights from a white American who was ultimately of little consequence.
Kitchen, by contrast, was dazzled by the size of Maxim’s building and especially its main restaurant, which he noted could seat several hundred people and was filling up even before the evening’s performance had begun. He also found the crowd to be “stylishly dressed,” although he quickly added that it was “far from distinguished in appearance.” What he actually meant by this is that he disapproved of the mix of ethnicities that he saw. “‘See that little feller over there,’ said ‘Mr.’ Thomas, pointing to a short man with an Oriental cast of countenance. ‘He’s a Persian silk merchant—one of the best sports we have in Moscow; always orders champagne by the dozen and spends five or six hundred roubles every time he comes in here.’” For Frederick and the Muscovites, money and personal flair trumped ethnicity or race, with the glaring exception of Jews, as far as many Russians were concerned.
Whether Kitchen realized it or not, Frederick was not only showing off but also subtly rubbing Kitchen’s face in his own bias. Surveying the stage in the café chantant, Frederick casually remarked, “The performance won’t be very good to-night”: “One of the grand dukes is givin’ a party at his Moscow palace and I’m helpin’ him out, jest as a friend. I’ve sent half my talent there, but I likes to help out these Russian gentlemen, especially if they is grand dukes. They is great sports and spend lots of money with me.” These are the kinds of glittering connections that were bound to impress any tourist, and especially Americans who had no domestic equivalents to the mystery and glamour of royal “blood.”
Frederick guided Kitchen through Maxim’s other spaces as well, thus giving the visitor a good sense of how the establishment was designed to keep customers entertained and spending money all night long.
The cabaret room was empty, “Mr.” Thomas explaining that it did not open until 2.30 A.M. The tango room was also deserted —not until 2 A.M. would the first dance begin. There were forty or fifty people in the dimly lighted Turkish room, where a Hindu orchestra was playing, and as many in the American champagne bar, where only bubble stuff at thirteen and fourteen roubles ($6.50 and $7) a bottle is served.
This price would be several hundred dollars per bottle in today’s money, so the Persian merchant must have spent thousands each time he visited. No wonder Frederick called him one of the best “sports” in the city.
Frederick’s easy grace in dealing with a character like Kitchen reflects his self-assurance as well as the pleasure he took in his own success. But foreign tourists were not the only ones he attracted. Frederick was equally smooth when dealing with what he saw as the preposterous claims of someone who wanted a piece of his hard-won profits. Some of the problems he had faced, like the one involving church zoning, required effort and ingenuity; the one that followed was more like waving off a buzzing nuisance.
In December 1912, the Russian and French Societies of Dramatic Writers and Composers signed an agreement about intellectual property rights that was scheduled to take effect on October 30, 1913, just around the time when Frederick was rushing to reopen Maxim for his second winter season after rebuilding the interior. Previously, theater directors in Russia and France had done whatever they wanted with music and works created abroad. The new agreement was supposed to end unauthorized use and plagiarism. Because Parisian styles and fashions ruled in Russia at this time, the French had much to gain and were especially eager to have the agreement enforced with regard to one of their most valuable exports—popular music.
In Moscow, the agent of the French society was an energetic, fussy, but not very intelligent or successful Russian lawyer by the name of Grigory Grigoryevich Konsky. This was potentially a very lucrative assignment for him because the city had a good number of venues that performed a lot of the latest French music and because he would get a percentage of any royalties he managed to recover for his patrons. Konsky doggedly pursued Frederick over a five-year period. However, the prey proved to be much wilier than the hunter.
In early April 1913, five months before the agreement was even officially supposed to take effect and just when the summer season was starting, Konsky began to make the rounds of the prominent theaters and restaurants in Moscow where popular French music was usually performed. His first, exploratory conversation with Frederick, whom he approached as the most important member of the Aquarium partnership, did not go well. Frederick began by feigning inexperience. He pleaded that he was a novice at directing a variety theater and could not risk angering his partners by setting a precedent and being the first to pay royalties openly. He did not deny the validity of the French claims but suggested a cunning solution: perhaps the best way to handle the payments would be if he made them secretly and without signing a contract.
Konsky could not accept this offer because it amounted to subverting the international agreement by substituting cash under the table for legally mandated fees. Frederick had obviously decided that he could “play” with Konsky rather than pay him. He tried to shift Konsky’s attention away from himself by suggesting that the lawyer should approach Aleksey Akimovich Sudakov (the well-known and respected owner of Yar and Frederick’s former employer) to set the example of cooperating with the new law.
This ploy worked initially in distracting Konsky, but in the end he got nowhere with Sudakov either. Veteran entrepreneurs like Sudakov were accustomed to making free use of French music, plays, and operettas and naturally balked at suddenly having to pay for the right. Undaunted, and still following Frederick’s advice to pursue someone prominent, Konsky next turned to Yakov Vasilyevich Shchukin, the owner of Hermitage Garden, Aquarium’s rival. Shchukin initially agreed to pay something, but then abruptly changed his mind and put off paying, ostensibly because the spring season was cold, his garden was empty, and no money was coming in. Nonetheless, Konsky was very encouraged by the initial promise, and believing that his plan was working he went back to Frederick to ask him if he and his partners would sign a contract now that Shchukin was leading the way. As Konsky reported to his superior in St. Petersburg, “Thomas replied that given the importance and authority of Shchukin, Aquarium would negotiate without a doubt.”