I had always to let food speak for itself. `It's
cheap' was the only paean that in Soho's bad moments ever occurred to
me, and this of course I did not utter. And was it so cheap, after
all? Soho induces a certain optimism. A bill there was always larger
than I had thought it would be.
Every one, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much by
cheque more light-heartedly than he pays little in specie. In
restaurants I should have liked always to give cheques. But in any
restaurant I was so much more often seen as guest than as host that I
never felt sure the proprietor would trust me. Only in my club did I
know the luxury, or rather the painlessness, of entertaining by
cheque. A cheque--especially if it is a club cheque, as supplied for
the use of members, not a leaf torn out of his own book--makes so
little mark on any man' s imagination. He dashes off some words and
figures, he signs his name (with that vague momentary pleasure which
the sight of his own signature anywhere gives him), he walks away and
forgets. Offering hospitality in my club, I was inwardly calm. But
even there I did not glow (though my face and manner, I hoped,
glowed). If my guest was by nature a guest, I managed to forget
somewhat that I myself was a guest by nature. But if, as now and then
happened, my guest was a true and habitual host, I did feel that we
were in an absurdly false relation; and it was not without difficulty
that I could restrain myself from saying to him `This is all very
well, you know, but--frankly: your place is at the head of your own
table.
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