Part 9

“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, sir,” said Sam Weller, “that poverty and oysters always seem to go together; the poorer a place is the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir! blest if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor he rushes out of his lodgings, and eats oysters for regular desperation.”

The Colchester Oyster Feast is an annual function which is usually graced by the presence and assistance of political and other notabilities. The Mayor and Corporation open the proceedings by “sizing” the oysters, eating a large number at luncheon, and following the luncheon with prescribed draughts of gin and slices of gingerbread. This historic repast seems, on the face of it, to be of a somewhat incongruous nature; but it is said by those who have survived it, and their number is very large, that the cates and beverage go well together, and never quarrel among themselves.

Until comparatively recent times, another annual Oyster Feast took place at Edinburgh, with a kind of civic ceremonial, known as the Feast of Shells. A voyage was made by Provosts and Bailiffs to the oyster beds in the Firth of Forth, and “though the solemnity of wedding the Frith formed no part of the Chief Magistrate’s office, as wedding the Adriatic with a gold ring did that of the Doge of Venice,” three cheers were given by all present as the first “dredge” was hoisted on to the deck of the civic barge.

There is an old fisherman’s song, now almost forgotten, one verse of which runs:--

The Herring loves the merry moonlight, The Mackerel loves the wind, But the Oyster loves the dredger’s song, For he comes of a gentle kind.

Many years ago a sort of popular belief was current to the absurd effect that Oysters could be trained to sing. It is impossible to says whence the superstition arose, but it was helped by a noted exhibition, in London, of a “Whistling Oyster” which was supposed to emit certain sibilant sounds. Thousands flocked to hear it, but it was more or less conclusively proved, however, that it was a trick of ventriloquism on the part of the showman.

In Tom Hood’s “Miss Kilmansegg and her Golden Leg,” there is an apt reference to a Colchester Oyster, when they were very much cheaper than they are to-day, and, as before mentioned, were practically poor men’s food.

What different fates our stars accord! One babe is welcomed, and wooed as a lord, Another is shunned like a leper; One to the world’s wine, and honey, and corn, Another, like Colchester native, is born To its vinegar only, and pepper.

The Americans always seem to do things on a larger scale than we, in our effete little island, are able to do. They excel even in the fecundity of their oysters. The British mollusc _Ostrea edulis_ produces about a million young in a season. One of the American variety, _Ostrea Virginiana_, about ten times as many.

There is a great Oyster cult in the United States, and the different manners of cooking, preparing, and serving the oyster are manifold. A book might be written on the pros and cons of cooking an oyster at all, and opinions as to its legitimacy differ, even among the erudite on the subject. Be that as it may, the Americans certainly owe much of their nerve-strength, hustlesomeness, and vigour to their enormous oyster consumption. It is the ideal food to replace and restore nerve power. It is hardly too much to say that the oyster is the foundation of America’s commercial success.

Oliver Wendell Holmes says somewhere that two immense oysters should be carved in marble and placed on top of the Washington monument in Baltimore, instead of the statue of the immortal George. “I am not in favour of removing the Father of his Country from off his imposing pedestal, but should like to compromise matters by making him sit on a pile of oyster-shells in lieu of a curule chair.”

When Thackeray went to Boston in 1852 he had some trouble with the very large American oyster. “He first selected the smallest one of the half-dozen (rejecting a larger one because, as he said, it resembled the High Priest’s servant’s ear that Peter cut off), and then bowed his head as though he were saying Grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. ‘Profoundly grateful,’ he said, ‘as if I had swallowed a small baby.’”

But Thackeray was not an authority, for he ranked “the dear little juicy green oysters of France” above the “great white flaccid natives in England that look as if they had been fed on pork.” This is ungenerous.

The poet Gay wrote in praise of Oysters when Fleet Ditch, now turned into the Farringdon Street sewer, was still a London eyesore. It appears to have been a centre of London Oyster hucksters.

If where Fleet Ditch with muddy current flows You chance to roam, where oyster tubs in rows Are ranged beside the posts, there stay thy haste, And with the savoury fish indulge thy taste.

Oysters are not unconnected with Pearls, although a real Oyster-lover must necessarily regret that a large number of his darling food is sacrificed for the trivial purpose of feminine adornment. It seems such waste! It were well to cast pearls before swine, if the molluscs were reserved for the pig-keepers. The pearls, by the by, which are used in heraldry to denote the gradations of rank in the coronets of peers, are the produce of the _Pinna marina_, the large pearl-oyster of the East Indies.

A curious pearl case came before the law courts in Hamburg recently. A merchant and his wife, dining at a local restaurant, began their dinner, as right-minded folk always should, with oysters. In one of the shells they found quite a considerable-sized and admirably formed pearl. They were about to carry it off in triumph, when the restaurant-keeper interfered and claimed it as his property. This was disputed, and the matter taken to law, the pearl in question being valued by experts at one hundred and fifty pounds. Eventually the decision was given against the restaurant proprietor, the judge holding that by purchasing the oysters the guest was entitled to anything found in them. A just and upright judge!

Between 1775 and 1818 there lived and flourished (more or less) in Malta, Naples, Paris, and elsewhere, a notable composer, Nicolo Isouard, more generally known as Nicolo. He wrote many operas, all of which are now forgotten. Having lived in Naples he was a great macaroni eater, and prepared the dish himself in a somewhat original manner. He stuffed each tube of macaroni with a mixture of marrow, _pâté de foie gras_, chopped truffles, and cut-up oysters. He then heated up the preparation, and ate it with his left hand covering up his eyes, for he asserted that he could not afford to allow the beautiful thoughts engendered by such exquisite food to be disturbed by any extraneous mundane sights. No wonder he died young.

There is a Russian story, averagely true I opine, of the emancipation of a serf through the agency of oysters. One of the ancestors of the banking firm of Sjalouschine was originally a serf of Prince Cheremeteff. The serf, by dealing in corn and cattle, had become very well-to-do, and he asked the Prince again and again to set him free, even offering him large sums of money as the price of his emancipation. But the Prince always refused, as he was rather tickled by the idea of owning a serf who was comparatively a rich man.

In the beginning of one September the serf went to St. Petersburg on business, and brought back with him a barrel of oysters, the first of the season. When he returned he asked to see the Prince, but was told that His Highness was in a terribly bad temper because his chef had forgotten to order any oysters. Whereupon the serf went straight to the Prince and offered him his barrel of oysters in exchange for his freedom. The Prince being, as aforesaid, of a humorous disposition, and besides, wanting the oysters badly, was taken by the notion. He agreed to the bargain, and clenched it by saying, “We will now lunch together on the oysters.”

The family of Sjalouschine is said to bear oysters on their coat-of-arms in memory of the emancipation.

At a dinner-party where there were twelve covers, one of the courses consisted of scalloped oysters in silver shells. The set of shells was broken--there were only eleven. The mistress, therefore, told the butler that she would not eat any oysters. When the oyster course came, he placed before his mistress one of the shells. To his horror she did not decline it. She took up her fork and was about to plunge into it, when the man flew to her side. “Pardon me, madam,” he murmured, “but you said I was to remind you that the doctor forbade your eating oysters on any account.”

“Will you walk a little faster?” said the Whiting to the Snail; “There’s a lobster close behind me and he’s treading on my tail.”

LEWIS CARROLL

The collocation of Waiters and Snails under one chapter-heading is not entirely fortuitous. The remote connexion which may fairly be said to exist between the two is not perhaps as marked to-day as it was some time ago, for waiters are improving rapidly, and snails--well, snails are remaining very much where they used to be. The advent of the well-trained foreign waiter has done much to improve our restaurant dinner-table, and, incidentally, the temper of the average diner. Of the expert, deft, and _sober_ British waiter there is also nothing but good to be said. The snail has no family relationship with either of these classes.

Unfortunately, however, there are others, many others, who are slow, dirty, ignorant, and only occasionally sober. It is such as these who degrade waiterdom, and to whom the snail is a fit comparison--save that the waiter is not edible. Nothing could be smarter than a good English waiter with a knowledge of foreign dishes, or a good foreign waiter with a knowledge of English; and thanks to the interest now taken in everything appertaining to dining in public places, neither is now as uncommon as he used to be.

One P. Z. Didsbury, an American deipnosophist, once said in his wisdom: “In a restaurant when a waiter offers you turbot, ask for salmon, and when he offers you a sole, order a mackerel; as language to men, so fish has been given to the waiter to disguise his thoughts.”

This maligns the individual waiter, of course; the man who is used to attending on you, who knows your likes and dislikes, and takes a personal interest in your contentment, but it is fairly typical of the average restaurant waiter who sees you for the first time and thinks you just one of the ordinary mob. For the casual customer is the facile dupe of the waiter. He comes, he orders his dinner, or preferably, permits it to be ordered for him, pays his bill, and goes away. Eating with him partakes of the stoking process, and he recks little of the particular _à la_ offered to him, if it be toothsome, and saucily disguised.

In the best restaurants, as well in England as on the Continent, deception, fraud, and trickery are comparatively rare. They would not pay. But in nearly every restaurant below the class of the best some one or other or all of the traditional time-honoured wiles of the waiter are practised on the more or less unsuspecting customer.

There is, for instance, the well-known trick of “Putting the change to bed.” It is preferably employed when a man is dining with a lady who, to the cynical and experienced eye of the waiter, is obviously not his wife. This is the very simple _modus operandi._ Your bill, we will say, as presented to you, discreetly folded in half on a plate, comes to one pound fifteen shillings. You place a couple of sovereigns under the upper fold of the bill. The waiter returns with the change. If you are careless you do not count it. You see half a crown on the bill, and say nonchalantly “All right.” Whereupon the waiter is exceeding glad, for you have given him five shillings. If, on the other hand, you are observant, accurate, and careful, you will say, “The change is not right.” The waiter, who has carefully concealed the second half-crown between the bill and the plate, will semi-indignantly say, “I beg your pardon, sir!” and drawing away the bill, the two half-crowns will be exposed to view. After having doubted his word, you cannot do less than give the poor man the two coins. So the waiter scores either way. “Putting the change to bed” rarely fails.

Mr. Pinero illustrated this trick very neatly in his delightful farce, “The Magistrate,” some years ago at the Old Court Theatre.

It is said that some of the most famous conjurers of to-day began life as restaurant waiters, and certainly the knack of palming the cork of the wine you ordered, and serving you with an inferior quality thereof, meanwhile gravely depositing the palmed cork next to the bottle, in its cradle, is a very old and usually successful trick. It is as well, too, to see that the label on the wine bottle is dry and stuck fast, because, unless you have ordered the man “just to take the chill off,” he may have helped himself from the common stock of red or white wine, and affixed the label of your particular vintage as he came upstairs.

It is quite extraordinary how many men who pride themselves on knowing a good bottle of wine are deceived in this way. There is an old story of three men dining together at a cheap restaurant. One ordered a pint of Pontet Canet, another a pint of Medoc, and the third a pint of Beaune. The waiter went to a speaking-tube, and shouted down it, “Three small reds!”

The question of the substitution of corks has many and quaint developments. An enormous trade is done at third- and fourth-rate restaurants with “faked” champagne, which it were mere flattery to call even “sparkling petrol.” The _restaurateurs_, foreigners it is to be hoped to a man, import a thoroughly innocuous thin white wine, and then bottle and aerate it, just as they would soda-water. The corks are replaced (after being drawn) by genuine corks of well-known brands, and there is a large market for good, sound, used champagne corks. This market is supplied by the waiters at good-class restaurants, where wines correct to designation are served. If the diner does not happen to collect champagne corks (and few of us have this weakness), the waiter carefully gathers them when clearing the table for dessert.

This is a genuine letter addressed by such a waiter to a reputable firm of champagne importers: “I beg to send you a hundred corks of the well-known brands of ---- and ----. They may be useful to you. I am waiter at ----, and am often asked by customers to recommend a wine. Awaiting your favourable reply, I am, etc.”

Another kind of waiter, neither as sharp nor as business-like as the foregoing, on being asked what liqueur brandies they had, replied, “Two, sir; one’s 1854 and the other’s a shilling.” That kind of waiter, however, is more fool than thief.

A very pretty dodge, and one, moreover, which the continental waiter finds very remunerative, is to add the date of the month to the amount of the bill. If you are dining on 24 June, and the addition comes to thirty-five francs, it is very easy to combine the two sums, particularly if the date be somewhat carelessly inscribed at the head of the account. The foreign waiter is a rare judge of character, and can usually (though not always) tell beforehand whether or no it be safe to try any of his little games.

A favourite _truc_ in foreign cafés, and one for which one should always be on the look out, is the giving of bad silver in the way of change, as many foreign coinages are now obsolete, and one cannot be too careful in this respect. It is usually a matter of date. The coin is not a bad coin, but simply not current. The Swiss two-franc piece, for instance, is all right if Madame Helvetia is depicted sitting down, but all wrong if she be standing up. Then the Greek, Roumanian, and Turkish coins are non-admissible, and certain Italian cart-wheels or five-lire pieces no longer acceptable. It requires some experience to recognize at a glance in a handful of silver how many coins are right and how many wrong.

A fraud of this kind was defeated, and met with its own just reward, only last summer at a French casino, a notorious haunt of the “slim” waiter. An Englishman having had _consommations_ to the amount of two francs, paid with a louis, and received eighteen francs change. Of this change he subsequently found that seven francs, a five-franc and a two-franc piece, were useless. He returned the next night with some friends, found out the same waiter, ordered sundry refreshment, and when paying-time came, settled the bill with the useless coins he had received the night before. The waiter refused to accept them, the guest refused on his part to pay in any other coin. The matter was referred to an official of the casino, the matter explained, and the English guest was supported. For once, therefore, the waiter was hoist with his own petard.

It is common knowledge that the waiters among themselves have a regular trade in these coins; they change hands at about one-third of their face value, and the dupe is, nine times out of ten, the British tourist.

It would be unfair to suggest that all waiters are guilty of these or similar wiles. There are hundreds of good, trustworthy waiters who would disdain them, and who know by experience, precept, or intuition that honesty is the best policy in the dining as in other worlds.

At a first-class waiters’ training school or college, such as the well-known Radunski’s, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, or one or other of the Swiss establishments, all such tricks are sternly discouraged, and the budding _maître d’hôtel_ is strongly impressed with the golden rule that it does not pay, in the long run, to cheat clients in any shape or form.

This is especially true of the highest class of restaurant, for waiters travel about Europe a great deal, and the man who waits on you at the Carlton to-night may turn up at the Ritz in Paris next week, at Monte Carlo next month, and at Homburg next year. If he has cheated you badly, you will remember him (though not in the time-honoured waiter’s sense), and his good name will be gone once and for all.

I referred just now to the foreign schools for waiters where they are systematically, and one might almost say scientifically, trained for their profession, which is neither an easy nor, in the end, an unremunerative one. Many sons of well-to-do German, Swiss, and Italian hotel and restaurant proprietors, lads who have been to good schools and received a first-class education, are content to begin at the very bottom of the ladder, even as _piccolo_ or boy attendant, and gradually to work their way through all the ranks even to that of _maître d’hôtel_.

A German lad who wishes to become a waiter goes, first to Radunski, at Frankfort, or to some other regular training school for waiters. At the end of two years’ hard work, if he has gained his certificate, he goes to an hotel or restaurant as an improver, without salary, for two years or more.

Then he comes to London, and, for the sake of learning English, enters an English family at a very small wage. Having mastered English, he is off to France to learn French on similar terms.

Finally, he returns to London as an “aid” waiter, and by attending to business he can rise to be a superintendent or a manager.

But the Englishman wants to undertake skilled labour and earn full money without a proper training. Look, on the other hand, at the case of the English butler. He is renowned throughout the world, but then he was content to begin as a page and pass through the second stage of footman.

A well-known restaurant manager once said to me: “Though we are patriotic, we cannot allow patriotism to stand in the way of efficiency. We must, for our customers’ sakes, employ the best men we can get, irrespective of nationality, although we should prefer Englishmen, of course.”

Some attempt has been made, is being made in fact, to establish a training school for British waiters, but its success is, I fear, problematical. And this for various reasons. Few, if any, professional men would dream of their boys being trained to be waiters; it would be beneath their shoddy suburban dignity. Also, the class from which the average British waiter is drawn seems to be constitutionally incapable of acquiring even the merest smattering of a foreign language. He despises any tongue but his own.

The British Waiters’ Association has done excellent work on the right lines, but very much remains still to be accomplished.

The average British waiter at the ordinary railway refreshment-room is usually a terribly slow and untidy individual. True, one has learned not to expect too much at a railway station. _A la gare, comme à la gare!_

Mr. Jerome K. Jerome has an amusing tirade on the subject. He says: “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 room becomes an oasis of repose amid the turmoil of a fretful world.”

Of course the waiter’s life is a trying and arduous one. There is much worry by thoughtless clients. There are disappointments, and swindlers, and rogues. Then the actual pedestrian exercise is not little. A waiter in a restaurant in Christiania one day provided himself with a pedometer before starting his work. According to his calculations he took rather under 100,000 steps, covering some thirty-seven miles, between 8 a.m. and 12.30 a.m. Working and walking four days a week, he calculated that he covered more than 7000 miles in a year.

Another danger is threatened by the waiter’s serviette. In the _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift_ Professor Kron inaugurated a crusade against the napkin which the waiter flourishes as a sign of his profession, but which, in the Professor’s opinion, is a deplorably unhygienic piece of linen and should be summarily abolished in all civilized countries.

Dr. Kron notices how waiters carry this thing, now in their hands, now in their trousers pockets, and sometimes under their arm. They wipe table-tops with it, wipe glasses, knives, forks with it, wipe the manly perspiration from their brows and the beer froth from their lips. No civilized man should tolerate its presence, and the Professor closes his article with the war-cry, “Away with the waiter’s napkin!” The Professor, it will be noticed, refers to the “rough” waiter only, and not to the civilized kind. He also fails to suggest a substitute for the serviette.

In a book entitled “Trouble in the Balkans” Mr. J. L. C. Booth says of Athenian waiters: “Robbery among the Greeks is not a cultivated art; it is a gift. They are all born with it. There is only one known method of getting square with an Athenian waiter, and that is to dine twice at the same place, near the door. You pay the first night.”

Enough of Waiters, however; let us to a more congenial, if allied topic, the edible Snail.