I was taking a meal once at a London restaurant--not one of the great
eating-places to which men most resort, but a small establishment on the
same model in a quiet neighbourhood--when there entered, and sat down at
the next table, a young man of the working class, whose dress betokened
holiday. A glance told me that he felt anything but at ease; his mind
misgave him as he looked about the long room and at the table before him;
and when a waiter came to offer him the card, he stared blankly in
sheepish confusion. Some strange windfall, no doubt, had emboldened him
to enter for the first time such a place as this, and now that he was
here, he heartily wished himself out in the street again. However, aided
by the waiter's suggestions, he gave an order for a beef-steak and
vegetables. When the dish was served, the poor fellow simply could not
make a start upon it; he was embarrassed by the display of knives and
forks, by the arrangement of the dishes, by the sauce bottles and the
cruet-stand, above all, no doubt, by the assembly of people not of his
class, and the unwonted experience of being waited upon by a man with a
long shirt-front. He grew red; he made the clumsiest and most futile
efforts to transport the meat to his plate; food was there before him,
but, like a very Tantalus, he was forbidden to enjoy it. Observing with
all discretion, I at length saw him pull out his pocket handkerchief,
spread it on the table, and, with a sudden effort, fork the meat off the
dish into this receptacle. The waiter, aware by this time of the
customer's difficulty, came up and spoke a word to him. Abashed into
anger, the young man roughly asked what he had to pay. It ended in the
waiter's bringing a newspaper, wherein he helped to wrap up meat and
vegetables. Money was flung down, and the victim of a mistaken ambition
hurriedly departed, to satisfy his hunger amid less unfamiliar
surroundings.
It was a striking and unpleasant illustration of social differences.
Could such a thing happen in any country but England? I doubt it. The
sufferer was of decent appearance, and, with ordinary self-command, might
have taken his meal in the restaurant like any one else, quite unnoticed.
But he belonged to a class which, among all classes in the world, is
distinguished by native clownishness and by unpliability to novel
circumstance. The English lower ranks had need be marked by certain
peculiar virtues to atone for their deficiencies in other respects.