It is a nice point⁠—this discrimination between the washing of dishes and their preparation. In the scullery, it would seem, absence of character does not matter: it is, I suppose, difficult to abstract a soup tureen or conceal a dish. But when it comes to the roasting of joints or the boiling of potatoes, custom steps in with a rigid hand. Alas! there was no admission for me into anybody’s kitchen, save as a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, and both these pursuits were too poorly paid for me to consider; I always went back to the match trade.

I thought it probable that I might find less rigid requirements in the foreign quarters of Soho, where little restaurants jostle small cafés in every street. In the course of my pilgrimage I visited many kitchens where succulent repasts are prepared. Dark underground places, where the temperature is like that of a hothouse and the air vibrates with dramatic directions in the French and Italian tongues. Here again I could have got work as a vegetable maid at ninepence an hour, but the employment would have been irregular, and, as I early experienced, I could make more than that in the fine art of matchselling.