Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing’s hotel for Families and
Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest depression, scorned by the
bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several days.
Or take another case. Take your own case.
You are going off by railway, from any Terminus. You have twenty
minutes for dinner, before you go. You want your dinner, and like
Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine. You present to your mind, a
picture of the refreshment-table at that terminus. The
conventional shabby evening-party supper – accepted as the model
for all termini and all refreshment stations, because it is the
last repast known to this state of existence of which any human
creature would partake, but in the direst extremity – sickens your
contemplation, and your words are these: ‘I cannot dine on stale
sponge-cakes that turn to sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on
shining brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and
offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in
leaden pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich that has
long been pining under an exhausted receiver. I cannot dine on
barley-sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee.’ You repair to the nearest
hotel, and arrive, agitated, in the coffee-room.
It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.
Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot
deny that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see you, he does
not want you, he would much rather you hadn’t come. He opposes to
your flushed condition, an immovable composure. As if this were
not enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to
look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little
distance, with his napkin under his arm and his hands folded,
looking at you with all his might. You impress on your waiter that
you have ten minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you shall
begin with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That
proposal declined, he suggests – as a neat originality – ‘a weal or
mutton cutlet.’ You close with either cutlet, any cutlet,
anything. He goes, leisurely, behind a door and calls down some
unseen shaft. A ventriloquial dialogue ensues, tending finally to
the effect that weal only, is available on the spur of the moment.
You anxiously call out, ‘Veal, then!’ Your waiter having settled
that point, returns to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin
folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window engages
his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue fingerglass,
a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen casters
with nothing in them; or at all events – which is enough for your
purpose – with nothing in them that will come out. All this time,
the other waiter looks at you – with an air of mental comparison
and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to him that you are
rather like his brother. Half your time gone, and nothing come but
the jug of ale and the bread, you implore your waiter to ‘see after
that cutlet, waiter; pray do!’ He cannot go at once, for he is
carrying in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to finish
with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and water-cresses. The
other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new view of you,
doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance to his
brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic
indignation, to ‘see after that cutlet!’ He steps out to see after
it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back
with it. Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off,
without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as
if he were surprised to see it – which cannot possibly be the case,
he must have seen it so often before. A sort of fur has been
produced upon its surface by the cook’s art, and in a sham silver