Since darkness o’ershadows the prospect before me,
More dear is the beam of the past to my soul.
But if through the course of the years which await me,
Some new scene of pleasure should open to view,
I will say, while with rapture the thought shall elate me,
“Oh, such were the days which my infancy knew.”
Byron used to lay on the tombstone above referred to for hours, when labouring, even as a boy, under those morbid excitements that embittered his comparatively short life. It is still called “Byron’s Tombstone.”
[79] Subjoined is Sir Francis Head’s description of the Wolverton Refreshment Rooms as they were in their palmy days:—
“In dealing with the British Nation, it is an axiom among those who have most deeply studied our noble character, that to keep John Bull in beaming good humour it is absolutely necessary to keep him always quite full. The operation is very delicately called ‘refreshing him;’ and the London and North-Western Railway Company having, as in duty bound, made due arrangements for affording him, once in about every two hours, this support, their arrangements not only constitute a curious feature in the history of railway management, but the dramatis personæ we are about to introduce, form, we think, rather a strange contrast to the bare arms, muscular frames, heated brows, and begrimed faces of the sturdy workmen of railways.
“The Refreshment Establishment at Wolverton is composed of—1. A matron or generalissima. 2. Seven very young ladies to wait upon the passengers. 3. Four men and three boys, ditto ditto. 4. One man-cook, his kitchen-maid, and his two scullery-maids. 5. Two housemaids. 6. One still-room maid, employed solely in the liquid duty of making tea and coffee. 7. Two laundry-maids. 8. One baker, and one baker’s boy. 9. One garden-boy; and lastly, what is most significantly described in the books of the establishment—10. ‘An odd-man.’
“‘Homo sum, humani nihil à me aliemun puto.’
“There are also eighty-five pigs and piglings, of whom hereafter.
“The manner in which the above list of persons, in the routine of their duty, diurnally revolve in the ‘scrap drum’ of their worthy matron, is as follows:—very early in the morning—in cold winter long before sunrise—‘the odd-man’ wakens the two housemaids, to one of whom is intrusted the confidential duty of awakening the seven young ladies exactly at seven o’clock, in order that their ‘première toilette’ may be concluded in time for them to receive the passengers of the first train, which reaches Wolverton at 7·30 a.m. From that time until the departure of the passengers by the York mail train, which arrives opposite the refreshment room at about eleven o’clock at night, these young persons remain on duty, continually vibrating, at the ringing of a bell, across the rails (they have a covered passage high above them, but they never use it), from the north refreshment room for down passengers to the south refreshment room, constructed for hungry up-ones. By about midnight, after having philosophically divested themselves of the various little bustles of the day, they all are enabled once again to lay their heads on their pillows, with the exception of one, who in her turn, assisted by one man and one boy of the establishment, remains on duty receiving the money, &c., till four in the morning for the up mail. The young person, however, who in her weekly turn performs this extra task, instead of rising with the others at seven, is allowed to sleep on till noon, when she is expected to take her place behind the long table with the rest.