Hanky-panky

Before l lay Lutyens aside for a while, I'll finish the week with before and after photos of his Moghul garden at the Viceregal Palace in New Delhi. The Viceregal Palace is magnificent, appreciated by the likes of Philip Johnson and Le Corbusier, and totally worth another post but not today.

I live with a Gilbert and Sullivan fanatic who's given, at any moment, to breaking out into song and dance based on his favorites (all of 'em). Today, whilst I was driving home he called, gigglingly delighted, to tell me that we are to fly to New York in the morning as we have tickets for The Mikado and Ruddigore.

This being the end of the week I intended to have a Friday cocktail and liking to link the cocktail to something I've mentioned during the week I found there are not many cocktails connected to Lutyens. I searched with little hope for a cocktail connected to Gilbert and Sullivan and eventually came across this cocktail, the Hanky Panky, created at the beginning of the 20th century in the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. It occurred to me before I discovered the Hanky-Panky that I could have suggested a Bloody Mary as a pun on Ruddigore but not being able to stand the damned stuff I passed on by.

the Hanky-Panky is a sweet Manhattan with the addition of Fernet Branca, an Italian digestif instead of Angostura bitters. Proportions, I guess, are up to the bartender.

Colored photo by Dana Hyde from David Hicks: My Kind of Garden, Garden Art Press, 1999.

Black and white photo from Edwin Lutyens Country Houses, Gavin Stamp, Aurum Press, 2001.