When Jane in High Wages was a lowly employee in Chadwick's drapers she used to "gaze with longing at the dummy tea in...the Victoria Café". But when she becomes the proprietress of a dress shop, she feels emboldened to join the "high-class" (male) clientele and to share the "big table" with them as an equal. The novel is earlier than this painting, Café (1948, Herbert Art Gallery) by Oldham-born James Fitton (1899-1982), but this in itself reflects the fact that most tea rooms and cafes did not change for decades, which is why the likes of Lyons disappeared in the 1970s. One of the few to survive is the small group of Bettys tea rooms in Yorkshire which have not changed, and are all the better for it.