THE OLD LONDON TEA GARDEN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 917, 14 February 1882, Page 3

THE OLD LONDON TEA GARDEN.

The old tea-gardens supplied a want which no other places profess tp meet. In the first place they were very cheap and very easy of access. To get to them entailed no railway or omnibus fares, no long journey, no shilling for admission. The frugallydisposed took their tea and sugar and bread and butter with them, and for a modest 2d or 3d per head obtained the use of crockery and an unlimited supply of hot water. The most profligate could seldom spend more than Is over the tea; and we all know how the ladies in “ Pickwick” objected to Mr Baddies’ order for tea for seven at the Spaniards, beeanse nothing could have been easier than for Tommy Bardell to have drunk out of anybody’s cup, or everybody’s, if that was all, when the waiter wasn’t looking.” As to the drinking that went on at these places, it may at once be admited that there was a certain amount ; but the quartern of gin or the pot of beer which the workman shared with his wife over his evening pipe was, after all, nothing very terrrible, and perhaps, on the whole, compared not disadvantageously with the potations of those gentry who make the public resorts hideous on certain popular fete-days. The charge of vulgarity is much more serious, and to it, I fear, the.tea-gardens of old must plea? guilty. It is very vulgar to drink tea in a public hqjise garden at 5 o’clock in the afternoon ; to' pick periwiqkles with a pin. and eat them coram populo, and to smack one’s lips over such relishes as shrimps and waterpresses. It is desperately vnlgsr to smoke public-house shag or bird’s-eye in a long clay-pipe while we play at skittks after teaStill more atrocious is it to quench our thirst with vulgar beer. Much better and more seemly is it to dine at 8 o’clock at a good club, and to smoke a good Cabana over a cup of coffee, and a nip of Curacao of Chartreuse af Billiards are a much more refined game and everyone who knows what the inside of a London club-house is like can certify that the conversation over the game is generally infinitely more elevating and

j improving than the discourse which may be heard in a skittle-alley. But, unfortunately, all these things are out of reach of our friends of the “ lower middies,” .and .posibly they ■would hardly care for them were the case different. Brown and Jones, and Smith, who have wrought their 50 or 54 hours in a 'hot .factory between Monday morning and Satur • day noon, will probably care infinitely more for a long clay and a cool tankard on a summer afternoon, than for all the kickshaws that any master cook could send up ; and for their sakes it is to be regretted .that the honest old vulgar suburban tea-gardens have ceased to exist.—London Society.