When I dined out, I usually went to the Maison Suisse. I shall never
have the chance of going again, even if, as a married man, I were
allowed to do so, for it has been pulled down to make room for the
Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. When I did not dine there, I
attended a quaint survival of last century's coffee-houses in
Glasshouse Street: Tall, pew-like boxes, wooden tables without
table-cloths, panelled walls; an excellent menu of chops, steaks, fried
eggs, sausages, and other British products. Once the resort of bucks
and Macaronis, Ford's coffee-house I found frequented by a strange
assortment of individuals, some of whom resembled bookmakers' touts,
others clerks of an inexplicably rustic type. Who these people really
were I never discovered.

"I generally have supper at Pepolo's," said Julian, as we left the
theatre, "before a Covent Garden Ball. Shall we go on there?"

There are two entrances to Pepolo's restaurant, one leading to the
ground floor, the other to the brasserie in the basement. I liked to
spend an hour or so there occasionally, smoking and watching the
crowd. Every sixth visit on an average I would happen upon somebody
interesting among the ordinary throng of medical students and
third-rate clerks--watery-eyed old fellows who remembered Cremorne, a
mahogany derelict who had spent his youth on the sea when liners were
sailing-ships, and the apprentices, terrorised by bullying mates and
the rollers of the Bay, lay howling in the scuppers and prayed to be
thrown overboard. He told me of one voyage on which the Malay cook went
mad, and, escaping into the ratlines, shot down a dozen of the crew
before he himself was sniped.