New York is a vast boarding-house. Let him who doubts this assertion
turn to the columns of the _Herald_, and there read its confirmation in
the long columns of advertisements of "Boarders wanted," which adorn that
sheet. Or, better still, let him insert an advertisement in the
aforesaid _Herald_, applying for board, and he will find himself in
receipt of a mail next morning that will tax the postman's utmost
capacity. The boarding-houses of New York are a feature, and not the
pleasantest one, of the great city. How many there are, is not known,
but in some localities they cover both sides of the street for several
blocks. Those which are termed fashionable, and which imitate the
expensiveness of the hotels without furnishing a tithe of their comforts,
are located in the Fifth avenue, Broadway, and the Fourth avenue, or near
those streets. Some are showily furnished as to the public rooms, and
are conducted in seemingly elegant style, but the proprietress, for it is
generally a woman who is at the head of these establishments, pays for
all this show by economizing in the table and other things essential to
comfort. The really "elegant establishments," where magnificence of
display is combined with a good table and substantial comfort in other
respects, may be almost named in a breath.
Whether fashionable or unfashionable, all boarding-houses are alike.
They are supremely uncomfortable. The boarder is never really satisfied,
and lives in a state of perpetual warfare with his landlady. The
landlady, on her part, takes care that her guests shall not be too
comfortable. People generally become accustomed to this feverish mode of
life; so accustomed to it indeed that they cannot exist without it. They
find a sort of positive pleasure in boarding-house quarrels, and would
not be able to exist without the excitement of them.
The majority of boarders in the city are persons who have not the means
to live in their own houses. Others there are, who fancy they have less
trouble in boarding than in keeping their own establishments. This is a
singular but common delusion, and its victims endure with what patience
they can the wretched fare, the constant changes, and the uninterrupted
inconvenience and strife of a boarding-house, and imagine all the while
that they are experiencing less trouble and annoyance than they would
undergo in keeping house. The truth is, living is so expensive in New
York, that all modes of life are troublesome to those who are not wealthy
enough to disregard expense. But, here, as elsewhere, the privacy of
one's own home is better than the publicity of a boarding-house, and a
fuss with Bridget in one's own kitchen preferable to a row with a
landlady, who may turn you out of doors at the very moment you are
congratulating yourself that you are settled for the season. To persons
with families, boarding-house life ought to be intolerable. Those who
have children find that they cannot rear them as properly as they could
within their own homes, that they cannot as surely shield them from
unfavorable outside influences. Indeed, the troubles which these
"encumbrances" cause are so great that the wife and mother comes to the
conclusion that more children will simply add to her difficulties of this
kind, and so she commences to "regulate" her family, and the little ones
cease coming. Some boarding-houses will not receive children at any
price. Year by year the number of such establishments is increasing.
What will be the result? The question is not hard to answer.
The boarding-house is generally a cast-off mansion of gentility. There
are a score of things about it to remind you that it was once a home, and
to set you to speculating on the ways of the grim fate that has changed
it into a place of torment. Whole volumes have been written on the
subject, and all agree that is simply what I have described it to be.
From the fashionable Fifth avenue establishment down to the cellar
lodging-houses of the Five Points, all boarding-houses are alike in this
respect. Their success in tormenting their victims depends upon the
susceptibility and refinement of feeling and taste on the part of the
latter.
Landladies and boarders are mutually suspicious of each other. The
landlady constantly suspects her guest of a desire to escape from her
clutches with unpaid bills. The latter is always on the look-out for
some omission on the part of the hostess to comply with the letter of her
contract. Landladies are frequently swindled by adventurers of both
sexes, and guests most commonly find that the hostess does not comply
very strictly with her bargain. Furthermore, the boarder has not only to
endure his own troubles, but those of the landlady as well. Her sorrows
are unending, and she pours them out to him at every opportunity. He
dare not refuse to listen, for his experience teaches him that his
hostess will find a way to punish him for his unfeeling conduct. It is
of no use to change his quarters, for he may fare worse in this respect
at the next place. And so he submits, and grows peevish and fretful, and
even bald and gray over the woes of his tormentor. He consoles himself
with one thought--in the next world landladies cease from troubling and
boarding-houses do not exist.
All boarding-houses begin to fill up for the winter about the first of
October. Few of the proprietors have any trouble in filling their
establishments, as there is generally a rush of strangers to the city at
that time. The majority of boarders change their quarters every fall, if
they do not do so oftener. At first, the table is well supplied with
good fare, the attendance is excellent, and the proprietress as obliging
as one can wish. This continues until the house is full, and the guests
have made arrangements which would render a removal inconvenient. Then a
change comes over the establishment. The attendance becomes inferior.
The landlady cannot afford to keep so many servants, and the best in the
house are discharged. The fare becomes poor and scanty, and there begin
to appear dishes upon which the landlady has exercised an amount of
ingenuity which is astounding. They are fearfully and wonderfully
compounded, and it is best to ask no questions about them. The landlady
keeps a keen watch over the table at such times; and woe to him who
slights or turns up his nose at these dishes. She is sorry Mr. X---'s
appetite is so delicate; but really her prices of board do not permit her
to rival Delmonico or the Fifth Avenue Hotel in her table. Mr. P---, who
was worth his millions, and who boarded with her for ten years, was very
fond of that dish, and Mr. P--- was a regular _bon vivant_, if there ever
was one. Hang your head, friend X---, mutter some incoherent excuse,
gulp down your fair share of the dish in question--and fast the next time
it makes its appearance at the table.
[Picture: UNION SQUARE.]
The landlady has shrewdly calculated the chances of retaining her
boarders. She knows that few care to or can change in the middle of the
season, when all the other houses are full; and that they will hang on to
her establishment until the spring. If they do not come back the next
fall, others will, and as the population is large, she can play the same
game upon a fresh set of victims for many years to come. It is of no use
to complain. She knows human nature better than you do, and she adheres
rigidly to her programme, grimly replying to your tale of woes, that, if
you do not like her establishment, you can go elsewhere. You would go if
you could find a better place; but you know they are all alike. So you
make up your mind to endure your discomforts until May, with her smiling
face, calls you into the country.
Boarding-houses allow their guests a brief respite in the summer. The
city is then comparatively deserted, and the most of these "highly
respectable" establishments are very much in want of inmates. Expenses
are heavy and receipts light then, and the landladies offer an unusual
degree of comfort to those who will help them to tide over this dull
season.
As regards the ferreting out of impropriety on the part of her guests,
the New York landlady is unequalled by the most skilful detective in the
city. She doubts the character of every woman beneath her roof; but in
spite of her acuteness she is often deceived, and it may be safely
asserted that the boarding-houses into which improper characters do not
sometimes find their way are very few. It is simply impossible to keep
them out. The average boarding-house contains a goodly number of men who
are so many objects of the designs of the adventurers. Again, if the
adventuress wishes to maintain the guise of respectability, she must have
a respectable home, and this the boarding-house affords her. One is
struck with the great number of handsome young widows who are to be found
in these establishments. Sometimes they do not assume the character of a
widow, but claim to be the wives of men absent in the distant
Territories, or in Europe, and pretend to receive letters and remittances
from them. The majority of these women are adventuresses, and they make
their living in a way they do not care to have known. They conduct
themselves with the utmost outward propriety in the house, and disarm
even the suspicious landlady by their ladylike deportment. They are ripe
for an intrigue with any man in the house, and as their object is simply
to make money, they care little for an exposure if that object be
attained.