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There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water.
At the old station there is an excellent hotel, kept by Mr. Robert Bacon, who was so many years house steward to the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall; and at the refreshment-rooms a capital table d'hote is provided four times a-day, at two shillings a-head, servants included, an arrangement extremely acceptable after a ride of 118 miles.
Bridgeman's guests began to flock around them from all the four quarters of the mansion, deserting even the neighbourhood of the guitars and the inviting seclusion of the various refreshment-rooms. From all sides rose the hum of comment and the murmur of speculation. Pince-nez were adjusted, eyeglasses screwed into eyes, fingers pointed, feet elevated upon uneasy toes.
At the new station similar refreshment-rooms are to be provided, and it is to be hoped that the architect will plan the interior first, and the exterior afterwards, so that comfort may not be sacrificed, as it usually is in English public buildings, to the cost of an imposing portico and vestibule. As a railway starting point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place.
There are a great many donkey-carriages, large vehicles, drawn by a pair of donkeys; bath-chairs, with invalid ladies; refreshment-rooms in great numbers, a place where everybody seems to be a transitory guest, nobody at home. The main street leads directly down to the sea-shore, along which there is an elevated embankment, with a promenade on the top, and seats, and the toll of a penny.
Here I am sitting utterly alone in a strange town, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my hand.... Domestic worries, the hard-heartedness of creditors, the rudeness of the railway servants, the inconveniences of the passport system, the expensive and unwholesome food in the refreshment-rooms, the general rudeness and coarseness in social intercourse all this, and a great deal more which would take too long to reckon up, affects me as much as any working man who is famous only in his alley.
The English probably eat with more simple enjoyment than any other people; not ravenously, as we often do, and not exquisitely and artificially, like the French, but deliberately and vigorously, and with due absorption in the business, so that nothing good is lost upon them. . . . It is remarkable how large a feature the refreshment-rooms make in the arrangements of the Crystal Palace.
So then Oswald roused himself, and the keg was rolled on to the fish where they lay filling the hold, and armfuls of fish thrown over it. "Is it really only water?" asked Oswald. "There's an awfully odd smell." And indeed, in spite of the many different smells that are natural to a fishing-boat, Oswald began to notice a strong scent of railway refreshment-rooms.
It being the night of rejoicing for the taking of Sebastopol and the visit of the Duke of Cambridge, we found it very difficult to get a cab on the Liverpool side; but after much waiting in the rain, and afterwards in one of the refreshment-rooms, on the landing stage, we took a Hansom and drove off.
Doubtless in the year 1900, the managers of a Jubilee would even let the refreshment-rooms within their Coliseum to a cook who would offer the public something not so much worse than the worst that could be found in the vilest shanty restaurant on the ground.
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