Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk—quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an ex-palace—that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah’s legend, “per scalam ascendimus,” we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a “penn’orth” of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge—a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegrove’s; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.
“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. “Try the beef, guv’ner—the weal and ’am won’t do. Somethin’s turned, either the weal or my stummick.”
A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests “line o’ mutton,” while a very red-nosed man in front—red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins—quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful of rinder and every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.
In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef—roast.
“And taters?”
“And taters.”
“And brockylow?”
“And brockylow.”
“Stout?”
“Stout’s hard,” hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon “half-and-half.”