DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51521#0055
07)
Augustus had friends in the country with whom he
ordinarily spent Saturday and Sunday, and he once per-
suaded me to come with him to Sussex, where there were
tennis courts and rabbit shooting, and I tried to please,
but I was not much success with this family. They pre-
ferred Augustus and I did not return to Sussex, nor did
I follow him when he asked me to dine with him at
Romano’s. “You had better come,” he said, “you will not
write well when you are tired,” but Augustus’s friends
were so different from me that I said, “Well, Augustus,
you had better go your way and I will go mine, our ways
do not meet,” and whilst he went off dressed in his
fashionable clothes to Romano’s I walked up the street
to Simpson’s, a
great restaurant where one could dine off
an excellent shoulder of mutton for half-a-crown. Celery
and cheese were offered to the customer as a relish, and
when the waiter asked “What will you take to drink,
sir?” the customer answered, even when he was myself,
a pint of bitter. Ale in the early eighties cost fourpence a
pint. The price and the bite in the throat are remembered
by me, also that dining at Simpson’s meant living above
the rate that I had prescribed to myself, and one evening
on paying the bill and giving threepence to the waiter I
resolved that I would not again indulge myself in a dinner
at Simpson’s but would dine next evening at Gatti’s,
opposite Charing Cross, where the best loin chop in
London, or the best steak, cooked to perfection, could be
Augustus had friends in the country with whom he
ordinarily spent Saturday and Sunday, and he once per-
suaded me to come with him to Sussex, where there were
tennis courts and rabbit shooting, and I tried to please,
but I was not much success with this family. They pre-
ferred Augustus and I did not return to Sussex, nor did
I follow him when he asked me to dine with him at
Romano’s. “You had better come,” he said, “you will not
write well when you are tired,” but Augustus’s friends
were so different from me that I said, “Well, Augustus,
you had better go your way and I will go mine, our ways
do not meet,” and whilst he went off dressed in his
fashionable clothes to Romano’s I walked up the street
to Simpson’s, a
great restaurant where one could dine off
an excellent shoulder of mutton for half-a-crown. Celery
and cheese were offered to the customer as a relish, and
when the waiter asked “What will you take to drink,
sir?” the customer answered, even when he was myself,
a pint of bitter. Ale in the early eighties cost fourpence a
pint. The price and the bite in the throat are remembered
by me, also that dining at Simpson’s meant living above
the rate that I had prescribed to myself, and one evening
on paying the bill and giving threepence to the waiter I
resolved that I would not again indulge myself in a dinner
at Simpson’s but would dine next evening at Gatti’s,
opposite Charing Cross, where the best loin chop in
London, or the best steak, cooked to perfection, could be