Patience and the Waiter.
The slowest waiter I know is the British railway refreshment-room waiter.
His very breathing--regular, harmonious, penetrating, instinct as it is
with all the better attributes of a well-preserved grandfather's
clock--conveys suggestion of dignity and peace. He is a huge, impressive
person. There emanates from him an atmosphere of Lotusland. The
otherwise unattractive refreshment-room becomes an oasis of repose amid
the turmoil of a fretful world. All things conspire to aid him: the
ancient joints, ranged side by side like corpses in a morgue, each one
decently hidden under its white muslin shroud, whispering of death and
decay; the dish of dead flies, thoughtfully placed in the centre of the
table; the framed advertisements extolling the virtues of heavy beers and
stouts, of weird champagnes, emanating from haunted-looking chateaux,
situate--if one may judge from the illustration--in the midst of desert
lands; the sleep-inviting buzz of the bluebottles.
The spirit of the place steals over you. On entering, with a quarter of
an hour to spare, your idea was a cutlet and a glass of claret. In the
face of the refreshment-room waiter, the notion appears frivolous, not to
say un-English. You order cold beef and pickles, with a pint of bitter
in a tankard. To win the British waiter's approval, you must always
order beer in a tankard. The British waiter, in his ideals, is mediaeval.
There is a Shakespearean touch about a tankard. A soapy potato will, of
course, be added. Afterwards a ton of cheese and a basin of rabbit's
food floating in water (the British salad) will be placed before you. You
will work steadily through the whole, anticipating the somnolence that
will subsequently fall upon you with a certain amount of satisfaction. It
will serve to dispel the last lingering regret at the reflection that you
will miss your appointment, and suffer thereby serious inconvenience if
not positive loss. These things are of the world--the noisy, tiresome
world you have left without.
To the English traveller, the foreign waiter in the earlier stages of his
career is a burden and a trial. When he is complete--when he really can
talk English I rejoice in him. When I object to him is when his English
is worse than my French or German, and when he will, for his own
educational purposes, insist, nevertheless, that the conversation shall
be entirely in English. I would he came to me some other time. I would
so much rather make it after dinner or, say, the next morning. I hate
giving lessons during meal times.
Besides, to a man with feeble digestion, this sort of thing can lead to
trouble. One waiter I met at an hotel in Dijon knew very little
English--about as much as a poll parrot. The moment I entered the _salle-
a-manger_ he started to his feet.
"Ah! You English!" he cried.
"Well, what about us?" I answered. It was during the period of the Boer
War. I took it he was about to denounce the English nation generally. I
was looking for something to throw at him.
"You English--you Englishman, yes," he repeated.
And then I understood he had merely intended a question. I owned up that
I was, and accused him in turn of being a Frenchman. He admitted it.
Introductions, as it were, thus over, I thought I would order dinner. I
ordered it in French. I am not bragging of my French, I never wanted to
learn French. Even as a boy, it was more the idea of others than of
myself. I learnt as little as possible. But I have learnt enough to
live in places where they can't, or won't, speak anything else. Left to
myself, I could have enjoyed a very satisfactory dinner. I was tired
with a long day's journey, and hungry. They cook well at this hotel. I
had been looking forward to my dinner for hours and hours. I had sat
down in my imagination to a _consomme bisque_, _sole au gratin_, a
_poulet saute_, and an _omelette au fromage_.
Waiterkind in the making.
It is wrong to let one's mind dwell upon carnal delights; I see that now.
At the time I was mad about it. The fool would not even listen to me. He
had got it into his garlic-sodden brain that all Englishmen live on beef,
and nothing but beef. He swept aside all my suggestions as though they
had been the prattlings of a foolish child.
"You haf nice biftek. Not at all done. Yes?"
"No, I don't," I answered. "I don't want what the cook of a French
provincial hotel calls a biftek. I want something to eat. I want--"
Apparently, he understood neither English nor French.
"Yes, yes," he interrupted cheerfully, "with pottitoes."
"With what?" I asked. I thought for the moment he was suggesting potted
pigs' feet in the nearest English he could get to it.
"Pottito," he repeated; "boil pottito. Yes? And pell hell."
I felt like telling him to go there; I suppose he meant "pale ale." It
took me about five minutes to get that beefsteak out of his head. By the
time I had done it, I did not care what I had for dinner. I took _pot-du-
jour_ and veal. He added, on his own initiative, a thing that looked
like a poultice. I did not try the taste of it. He explained it was
"plum poodeen." I fancy he had made it himself.
This fellow is typical; you meet him everywhere abroad. He translates
your bill into English for you, calls ten centimes a penny, calculates
twelve francs to the pound, and presses a handful of sous affectionately
upon you as change for a napoleon.
The cheating waiter is common to all countries, though in Italy and
Belgium he flourishes, perhaps, more than elsewhere. But the British
waiter, when detected, becomes surly--does not take it nicely. The
foreign waiter is amiable about it--bears no malice. He is grieved,
maybe, at your language, but that is because he is thinking of you--the
possible effect of it upon your future. To try and stop you, he offers
you another four sous. The story is told of a Frenchman who, not knowing
the legal fare, adopted the plan of doling out pennies to a London cabman
one at a time, continuing until the man looked satisfied. Myself, I
doubt the story. From what I know of the London cabman, I can see him
leaning down still, with out-stretched hand, the horse between the shafts
long since dead, the cab chockfull of coppers, and yet no expression of
satiety upon his face.
But the story would appear to have crossed the Channel, and to have
commended itself to the foreign waiter--especially to the railway
refreshment-room waiter. He doles out sous to the traveller, one at a
time, with the air of a man who is giving away the savings of a lifetime.
If, after five minutes or so, you still appear discontented he goes away
quite suddenly. You think he has gone to open another chest of
half-pence, but when a quarter of an hour has passed and he does not
reappear, you inquire about him amongst the other waiters.
A gloom at once falls upon them. You have spoken of the very thing that
has been troubling them. He used to be a waiter here once--one might
almost say until quite recently. As to what has become of him--ah! there
you have them. If in the course of their chequered career they ever come
across him, they will mention to him that you are waiting for him.
Meanwhile a stentorian-voiced official is shouting that your train is on
the point of leaving. You console yourself with the reflection that it
might have been more. It always might have been more; sometimes it is.
His Little Mistakes.
A waiter at the Gare du Nord, in Brussels, on one occasion pressed upon
me a five-franc piece, a small Turkish coin the value of which was
unknown to me, and remains so to this day, a distinctly bad two francs,
and from a quarter of a pound to six ounces of centimes, as change for a
twenty-franc note, after deducting the price of a cup of coffee. He put
it down with the air of one subscribing to a charity. We looked at one
another. I suppose I must have conveyed to him the impression of being
discontented. He drew a purse from his pocket. The action suggested
that, for the purpose of satisfying my inordinate demands, he would be
compelled to draw upon his private resources; but it did not move me.
Abstracting reluctantly a fifty-centime piece, he added it to the heap
upon the table.
I suggested his taking a seat, as at this rate it seemed likely we should
be doing business together for some time. I think he gathered I was not
a fool. Hitherto he had been judging, I suppose, purely from
appearances. But he was not in the least offended.
"Ah!" he cried, with a cheery laugh, "Monsieur comprend!" He swept the
whole nonsense back into his bag and gave me the right change. I slipped
my arm through his and insisted upon the pleasure of his society, until I
had examined each and every coin. He went away chuckling, and told
another waiter all about it. They both of them bowed to me as I went
out, and wished me a pleasant journey. I left them still chuckling. A
British waiter would have been sulky all the afternoon.
The waiter who insists upon mistaking you for the heir of all the
Rothschilds used to cost me dear when I was younger. I find the best
plan is to take him in hand at the beginning and disillusion him; sweep
aside his talk of '84 Perrier Jouet, followed by a '79 Chateau Lafite,
and ask him, as man to man, if he can conscientiously recommend the Saint
Julien at two-and-six. After that he settles down to his work and talks
sense.
The fatherly waiter is sometimes a comfort. You feel that he knows best.
Your instinct is to address him as "Uncle." But you remember yourself in
time. When you are dining a lady, however, and wish to appear important,
he is apt to be in the way. It seems, somehow, to be his dinner. You
have a sense almost of being _de trop_.
The greatest insult you can offer a waiter is to mistake him for your
waiter. You think he is your waiter--there is the bald head, the black
side-whiskers, the Roman nose. But your waiter had blue eyes, this man
soft hazel. You had forgotten to notice the eyes. You bar his progress
and ask him for the red pepper. The haughty contempt with which he
regards you is painful to bear. It is as if you had insulted a lady. He
appears to be saying the same thing:
"I think you have made a mistake. You are possibly confusing me with
somebody else; I have not the honour of your acquaintance."
How to insult him.
I do not wish it to be understood that I am in the habit of insulting
ladies, but occasionally I have made an innocent mistake, and have met
with some such response. The wrong waiter conveys to me precisely the
same feeling of humiliation.
"I will send your waiter to you," he answers. His tone implies that
there are waiters and waiters; some may not mind what class of person
they serve: others, though poor, have their self-respect. It is clear to
you now why your waiter is keeping away from you; the man is ashamed of
being your waiter. He is watching, probably, for an opportunity to
approach you when nobody is looking. The other waiter finds him for you.
He was hiding behind a screen.
"Table forty-two wants you," the other tells him. The tone of voice
adds:
"If you like to encourage this class of customer that is your business;
but don't ask me to have anything to do with him."
Even the waiter has his feelings.