The second class of coffee-houses, and those I have particularly in my
eye, are altogether different from those I have just mentioned. The prices
are remarkably moderate in most of these places; the charge is no more
than three-halfpence for half a pint of coffee, or _threepence for a whole
pint_. The price of half a pint of tea is twopence, _of a whole pint
fourpence_. If you simply ask bread to your tea or coffee, two large
slices, well buttered, are brought you, for which you are charged
twopence. Or should you prefer having a penny roll, or any other sort of
bread, you can have it at the same price as at the baker's.
In most coffee-houses, you may also have chops or steaks for dinner. If
the party be a _rigid economist(!)_ he may, as regards some of these
_establishments_, purchase his steak or chop himself, and it will be
prepared gratuitously for him; but if that be too much trouble for him to
take, and he prefers ordering it at once, he will get, in many houses, his
chop with bread and potatoes with it for sixpence, and his steak for
ninepence or tenpence.
These coffee-houses have many advantages over hotels, besides the great
difference in the prices charged. In the first place, there is not so much
_formality_ or _affected dignity_ about them, and they are far better
provided with means of rational amusement; and the promptitude with which
a customer is served is really surprising.
Are not these passages declarations of the individual? Winding himself up
with twopenny-worth of cheese! Pleading for the additional penny for the
waitress, whose personal charms and obliging disposition must be
considered to extort the amount! And above all, unable to conceive any
motive, except aversion to trouble, for disliking to carry "his chop" upon
a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the
recollection of having dined, and speaks how seldom! while the
_well-buttered_ bread infers the usual fare. Still it is not meanly
written. There are a glorying and exultation in every word that redeem it,
and show the author is more to be envied than compassionated; though a
little further on we perceive the shifts to which his homeless state has
reduced him.