visitor or the avowed commercially inclined. But aside
from these, and the exclusive and presumably extravagant class of smaller
houses, represented by such names as "Claridge's," "Fenton's," "Limner's,"
_et als._, there was no other accommodation except the "taverns" of
masculine propensities of Fleet Street and the City generally.

The great joint stock hotels, such as "The Metropole," "The Savoy," and
"The Cecil," did not come into being until well toward the end of Dickens'
life, if we except the excellent and convenient railway hotels, such as
made their appearance a few years earlier, as "Euston," "King's Cross,"
and "Victoria." The first of the really great modern _caravanserais_ are
best represented by those now somewhat out-of-date establishments, the
"Westminster Palace," "Inns of Court," "Alexandra," and others of the same
ilk, while such as the magnificently appointed group of hotels to be found
in the West Strand, Northumberland Avenue, or in Pall Mall were unthought
of.

The prevailing customs of an era, with respect to clubs, taverns,
coffee-houses, etc., mark signally the spirit of the age. The taverns of
London, properly so called, were, in the earliest days of their prime,
distinguished, each, for its particular class of visitors. The wits and
poets met at "Will's" in Covent Garden, and the politicians at "St. James'
Coffee-House," from which Steele often dated his _Tatler_. Later, in the
forties, there were perhaps five hundred houses of entertainment, as
distinguished from the ordinary "public house," or the more ambitious
hotel.

The "dining-rooms," "a la mode beef shops," and "chop-houses" abounded in
the "City," and with unvarying monotony served four, six, or ninepenny
"plates" with astonishing rapidity, quite rivalling in a way the modern
"quick lunch." The waiter was usually servile, and in such places as the
"Cheshire Cheese," "Simpson's," and "Thomas'," was and is still active. He
was a species of humanity chiefly distinguished for a cryptogrammatic
system of reckoning your account, and the possessor of as choice a crop of
beneath-the-chin whiskers as ever graced a Galway or a County Antrim
squireen.

The London City waiter, as distinguished from his brethren of the West
End, who are most Teutonic, is a unique character. Here is Leigh Hunt's
picture of one:

"He has no feeling of noise; even a loaf with him is hardly a loaf; it is
so many 'breads.' His longest speech is making out a bil