A book by
George Orwell about his experiences in the
1930s as a "
plongeur" in a
Parisian restaurant and a wandering
indigent mendicant (more or less) in
England. He concludes that the life of the poor was at the time a great deal worse than it needed to be. He generally backs this up, except that one of his problems was the difficulty of
keeping up middle-class appearances. He was in agony over
admitting to anyone, particulary
tradespeople, that he
had become poor. Well, I grew up middle class, and I've been poor, and
keeping up appearances was
the least of my worries.
The
Paris episode put me off eating in restaurants for a couple of years.