s is desirable for the future comfort of all parties." If Dickens
had developed this character at full length in a book he would have
preserved for ever in literature a type of great humour and great value,
and a type which may only too soon be disappearing from English history.
He would have eternalised the English waiter. He still exists in some
sound old taverns and decent country inns, but there is no one left
really capable of singing his praises. I know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has
done something of the sort in the delightfully whimsical account of
William in _You Never Can Tell_. But nothing will persuade me that Mr.
Bernard Shaw can really understand the English waiter. He can never have
ordered wine from him for instance. And though the English waiter is by
the nature of things solemn about everything, he can never reach the
true height and ecstasy of his solemnity except about wine. What the
real English waiter would do or say if Mr. Shaw asked him for a
vegetarian meal I cannot dare to predict. I rather think that for the
first time in his life he would laugh--a horrible sight.

Dickens's waiter is described by one who is not merely witty, truthful,
and observant, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, but one who really knew the
atmosphere of inns, one who knew and even liked the smell of beef, and
beer, and brandy. Hence there is a richness in Dickens's portrait which
does not exist in Mr. Shaw's. Mr. Shaw's waiter is merely a man of tact;
Dickens's is a man of principle. Mr. Shaw's waiter is an opportunist,
just as Mr. Shaw is an opportunist in politics. Dickens's waiter is
ready to stand up seriously for "the true principles of waitering,"
just as Dickens was ready to stand up for the true principles of
Liberalism. Mr. Shaw's waiter is agnostic; his motto is "You never can
tell." Dickens's waiter is a dogmatist; his motto is "You can tell; I
will tell you." And the true old-fashioned English waiter had really
this grave and even moral attitude; he was the servant of the customers
as a priest is the servant of the faithful, but scarcely in any less
dignified sense. Surely it is not mere patriotic partiality that makes
one lament the disappearance of this careful and honourable figure
crowded out by meaner men at meaner wages, by the German waiter who has
learnt five languages in the course of running away from his own, or the
Italian waiter who regards those he serves with a darkling contempt
which must certainly be that eith