Rod Collins

I thought I would share this fabulous letter with you.
It originated from The Caterer and Refreshment Contractors Gazette and was published 15 August 1884.
Deliciously indicative of the time and, to me at least, extremely funny.
Our thanks go to Little Brother for finding it and Caterer and Hotelkeeper Magazine

I was dining with a friend at one of the most noted restaurants in London. “Fritz,” I said (all German waiters in London answer to the name of “Fritz,” and all English ones to that of “George”), “your face is very familiar to me; where have I seen you before? Were you at the Criterion?”
“No, sir,” he answered very quietly. “I met you in Berlin at dinner, when you and Mr B dined with Herr Engel.”

“Why, you’re Baron von G,” I said. “The same,” he replied, “minus the moustache.”

Every German down on his luck can trace the cause of his misfortunes to Bismarck, and my waiter friend was no exception. He was one of seven sons, all barons. The eldest looked after the ancestral acres. My waiter friend had been living on his wits for a good few years, his slender income eked out by an allowance of 1,000 marks (about £250) from the elder brother. Finally, the allowance had to be stopped.

Now, it is hard to maintain baronial dignity on £250 per annum; but when it comes to maintaining it upon nothing, the task is beyond even a Teutonic shrewdness. So the Baron came to England, in the first place, for the sake of the change; secondly, because here they were more likely to remain undiscovered; and thirdly, because Englishmen disburse shillings as gratuities where their more frugal neighbours would only give pfennigs.

From the London correspondent of the Philadelphia Telegraph

A time I would not have minded living in