On Monday everything is in favour of the great unwashed holding holiday. They are refreshed by the rest of the previous day; the money received on the Saturday is not all spent; and those among them who consign their best suits to the custody of the pawn-broker during the greater part of each week are still in the possession of the suits which they have redeemed from limbo on Saturday night. Masters make less objection to a workman not "turning in" on a Monday than after he had settled down to his work. Besides, the remains of the Sunday dinner being on hand, either to serve as an early make-shift meal at home, or an economic provision for a day out, and the household work being at this early period of the week well under hand, our wives and families are afforded an opportunity of sharing the forms of holiday. And since Saint Monday has become a recognised institution, each individual worshipper has additional inducements for keeping his saint's day in the knowledge that he is sure to meet with numerous other devotees; and that "enterprising lessees" of pleasure-grounds, and other caterers to the pleasures of the unwashed, provide entertainments for his special delectation. And the holiday spirit engendered by the partial holidays of Saturday and Sunday, the sight of the Sunday clothes not yet returned to the seclusion of the clothes-box, produce an irresistible desire to avail themselves of their opportunities in the minds of the pleasure-loving; and so the worship of Saint Monday goes on.
But the Saint Mondayites are by no means of one mind as to what constitutes a holiday, and their modes of spending the day are as various as their opinions upon this point are diversified. Numerous day-trips, at prices suitable to the incomes of the poor, and allowing those who go by them to spend a certain number of hours at the seaside, are run every Monday during a great portion of the year; and these trips, special galas at the holiday resorts of the Crystal Palace class, and "outs" to suburban recreation grounds and public parks, are largely patronized by the more affluent and sedate Saint Mondayites. These, the most rational and healthy of the holidays, are mostly supported by young mechanics, who wish to give their wives, or the "young ladies" with whom they are keeping company, a day out, as well as by some family men. The younger couples, as becomes their youth, their position towards each other, and the spirit of the times, go out "quite genteel." The young ladies, who are probably milliners or dressmakers, or, if in domestic service, call themselves ladies'-maids, will be dressed in the height of cheap fashion; they will put on their most young-ladyish airs; and as they have often pretty faces, good figures and bearing, and some taste in dress, they might sometimes pass for "real ladies" if they would only keep their tongues still. But considering it essential to their gentility to discard the language of every-day life in favour of the long words and flowery periods of the tales in their favourite cheap magazine, and persisting in an artfully artless manner to speak these words at other people, by way of impressing them with the fact that they (the young ladies) do not belong to the "commonality," the result is that they generally make a mess of it. When a young work-girl, who is out with her lover enjoying "eight hours at the sea-side for three-and-sixpence, "rapturously exclaims, as she gazes on the sea,- "Oh, Arry, ain't it beautiful !" there is nothing essentially vulgar or ridiculous in the exclamation; which is more than can he said of it when a young lady strikes an attitude, and delivers the sentiment thus- "Is not it picturescue, Enry, de-ah ?" The young men, both on their own account and in order to play up to the ladies in a worthy manner, do all in their power to contribute to the successful doing of the genteel during their day out.
"They dress themselves with studious care,
And in their best apparel dight,
Their Sunday clothes on Monday wear."
They banish the pipe of work-day life, and smoke instead "matchless Havannas" at seven for a shilling; they wear their "unequalled Parisian kids" at 1s. 9d. per pair, and manfully persist in wearing them throughout the day, notwithstanding the uncomfortable cribbed, cabined, and confined sort of feeling which they give to their hands; for they know that their hands, if left uncovered, will betray them, however genteelly they may be got up in other respects. Then they address the waiters who attend upon them in eating-houses or tea-gardens in a superb and authoritative manner, intended to impress those persons with the conviction that they and their young ladies are members of the aristocracy, who are merely indulging in a working-class holiday by way of a novelty. While the younger couples behave so grandly, the older couples and family parties do the economic and comfortable with the remains of the Sunday dinner made into sandwiches, and washed down with ale.
These latter are the parties who dine comfortably under a tree in public parks, and exchange jokes with those who come to see them "at feeding-time;" and they are the chief supporters of those establishments in the neighbourhood of holiday resorts, in the windows of which is displayed the announcement- "The kettle boiled at twopence a head." For the matrons, although out for a holiday, are too thoroughly imbued with the housewifely spirit to patronize, or allow their husbands or children to patronize, the teas of the tea-gardens, or of those establishments which supply "tea and shrimps for ninepence" - which teas these matrons declare to be iniquitously dear, and of a quality that would make them dear at any price. So they bring their own packets of tea, and a substantial pile of bread and butter and "bun-cake," and have the kettle boiled for twopence a head. Thus they are enabled to enjoy tea at once cheap and good.
Thomas Wright, Some Habits and Customs of the Working-Classes, 1867