CITY HOUSE AND MANNERS.
The next evening, as Mrs. Lawyer and this present writer were rattling
along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour in the tail of the
iron horse, my bride, imagining that she would like to know somewhat of
the law, which had been my mistress for many years, and the _ennui_ of
the honeymoon having already commenced, asked me what was the legal
definition of an inn.
I replied: “The definitions of an inn, like those of lovely woman, are
very numerous: but perhaps the most concise is that given by old
Petersdorff, who says it is ‘a house for the reception and entertainment
of all comers for gain.’[37] Judge Bayley defined it to be a house where
the traveler is furnished with everything he has occasion for while on
the way.”[38]
“I should dearly love to stop at such an inn,” broke in my wife. “The
worthy host would find my wants neither few nor small.”
“Oh, of course, the _everything_ is to be taken not only _cum grano
salis_ but with a whole cellar full of that condiment. For instance, the
landlord is not bound to provide clothes or wearing apparel for his
guest.[39] But to proceed with our subject. Best, J., tried his hand--a
good one, too--at definition-making, and declared an inn or hotel to be
a house, the owner of which holds out that he will receive all travelers
and sojourners who are willing to pay a price adequate to the sort of
accommodation provided, and who come in a state in which they are fit to
be received.[40] Another judge says it is a public house of
entertainment for all who choose to visit it as guests without any
previous agreement as to the time of their stay or the terms of
payment.[41] The judges have, also, got off definitions of the word
‘innkeeper.’ It has been said that every one who makes it his business
to entertain travelers and passengers and provide lodging and
necessaries for them and their horses and attendants, is a common
innkeeper.[42] But Bacon, very wisely and prudently, adds to this
description the important words ‘for a reasonable compensation.’[43] One
who entertains travelers for payment only occasionally, or takes in
persons under an express contract, and shuts his doors upon those whom
he chooses, is not an innkeeper, nor is he liable as such.[44] Stables
are not necessary to constitute an inn;[45] nor is it essential that
the meals should be served at _table d’hôte_.[46] A house for the
reception and entertainment principally of emigrants arriving at a
seaport and usually remaining but a short time, is yet an inn.”[47]
Here I stopped because I had nothing more to say; but seeing that my
wife was gazing out of the window in a most inattentive manner, yet not
wishing her to think that my fund of knowledge was exhausted, I added:
“But a truce to this style of conversation. Remember that we are a newly
married couple, and are not expected to talk so rationally.”
A pause ensued, during which, with great amusement and no little
surprise at the facts and doctrines enunciated, we listened to the
following dialogue between two rosy-cheeked Englishmen sitting in the
seat behind us:
First Briton (_loquitur_).--“How disgusting it is to see those vile
spittoons in hotels, in private houses, in churches--everywhere; and
notwithstanding that their name is legion, the essence of nicotine is to
be seen on all sides, dyeing the floors, the walls, the furniture.”
Second Briton.--“I have sometimes doubted whether the Americans
expectorate to obtain good luck, or whether it is that they have such
good fortune ever attending upon their designs and plans because they
expectorate so much.”
First B. (rather dazed).--“I don’t understand you.”
Second B. (in tones of surprise at the other’s want of
comprehension).--“Don’t you know that many Englishmen spit if they meet
a white horse, or a squinting man, or a magpie, or if, inadvertently,
they step under a ladder, or wash their hands in the same basin as a
friend? In Lancashire, boys spit over their fingers before beginning to
fight, and travelers do the same on a stone when leaving home, and then
throw it away, and market people do it on the first money they receive.”
First B. (interrogatively).--“But, if these dirty people do indulge in
this unseemly habit, what then?”
Second B.--“Why, they consider it a charm that will bring good luck, or
avert evil. Swedish peasants expectorate thrice if they cross water
after dark. The old Athenians used to spit if they passed a madman. The
savage New Zealand priest wets two sticks with his saliva when he
strives to divine the result of a coming battle.”
First B.--“But the why and the wherefore of all this expectoration?”
Second B.--“Because the mouth was once considered the only portal by
which evil spirits could enter into a man, and by which alone they could
be forced to make their exit; and the idea was to drive the fiends out
with the saliva. The Mussulmans made spitting and nose-blowing a part of
their religious ceremonies, for they hoped thereby to free themselves
from the demons which they believed filled the air; and a Kamtschatkan
priest, after he has sprinkled with holy water the babe brought to the
baptismal font, spits solemnly to north and south, to east and west.”
A wild shriek of the locomotive, announcing that we were drawing near
our destination, and the necessary preparations consequent upon such
arrival, prevented us listening further to this conversation. I remarked
to my wife that if I had never known of evil spirits being laid by the
efflux of saliva, I had at least heard of their being raised thereby,
and instanced Shylock and Signor Antonio.
We drove up to the “Occidental House” in the bus belonging to that
famous establishment. The satchel of a fellow-traveler was lost off the
top of the carriage. I endeavored to console him with the information
that years ago, where the keeper of a public house gave notice that he
would furnish a free conveyance to and from the cars to all passengers,
with their baggage, and for that purpose employed the owner of certain
carriages to take passengers and their baggage, free of charge, to his
house, and a traveler, who knew of this arrangement, drove in one of
these cabs to the hotel, and on the way there had his trunk lost or
stolen through the want of skill or care of the driver, the innkeeper
was held liable to make good the loss. The court that decided the point
held that it was immaterial whether he was responsible as a common
carrier or as an innkeeper, as in either case the consideration for the
undertaking was the profit to be derived from the entertainment of the
traveler as a guest, and that an implied promise to take care of the
baggage was founded on such consideration.[48]
My fellow-traveler seemed not a little pleased with my information, and
expressed his intention of seeking an early interview with the landlord
of the “Occidental” on the subject of the lost satchel.
While in the bus, a man who appeared to be an agent for a rival house
made some very disparaging remarks with regard to the “Occidental,” with
more vehemence than elegance or truthfulness, evidently with the design
of inducing some intending guests to change their minds and go
elsewhere. It was well for him that none of the “Occidental” people
heard him, for if they had he might speedily have become the defendant
in an action at law, for misstatements like his are actionable.[49]
What a contrast between the palatial mansion at which we now
alighted, and the hovel which the previous night had covered our
heads--(protection it had not afforded). The small and dirty entrance of
the one was exchanged for a spacious and lofty hall in the other, paved
with marble and fitted up with comfortable sofas and cushions, on which
was lounging and smoking, talking and reading, a multifarious lot of
humanity; the parlor, with its yellow paint and rag carpet, was replaced
by large, well lighted and elegantly furnished drawing-rooms, with
carpets so soft that a footstep was no more heard than a passing shadow,
and gorgeous mirrors reflecting the smiles, faces and elaborately
artistic toilets of city belles, and the trim figures and prim
moustaches of youthful swells; a pretty little room, yclept an elevator,
neatly carpeted, well lighted, free from noxious scents, with
comfortable seats and handsome reflectors, led up on high, instead of
the groaning, creaking stairs of the country inn. The bedrooms, with
their spotless linen, luxurious beds, dainty carpets, and cosy chairs,
rested and refreshed one’s weary bones by their very appearance. The
noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and
gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies
patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the
arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a
zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred
fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables,
pastry, and dessert of the _menu_ differed from the bill of fare of the
previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter.
As we were ascending in the luxuriously furnished, brilliantly lighted
and gently moving elevator, a ninnyhammer tried to get on after the
conductor had started. In doing so he well nigh severed the connection
between his ill-stored head and well-fed body. I told him that his
conduct was most foolhardy, for if he had been injured he could have
recovered nothing from the hotel proprietor, for the accident would have
been directly traceable to his own stupid want of ordinary care and
prudence.[50]
At the dinner table we found that many of the people, notwithstanding
the luxurious surroundings, seemed quite oblivious of the sage advice
given by Mistress Hannah Woolley, of London, in the year of grace 1673.
That worthy says in her “Gentlewoman’s Companion”: “Do not eat
spoon-meat so hot that tears stand in your eyes, or that thereby you
betray your intolerable greediness. Do not bite your bread, but cut or
break it; and keep not your knife always in your hand, for that is as
unseemly as a gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as
she had mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas by spoonfuls,
but took them one by one and cut them in two before she would eat them.
Fill not your mouth so full that your cheeks shall swell like a pair of
Scotch bag-pipes.”
One of the company near by ate as if he had never eaten in any place
save a shanty all the days of his life; he was not quite so bad,
however, as the celebrated Dr. Johnson, who, Lord Macaulay tells us,
“tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his
forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks;” but yet, in
dispatching his food, he swallowed two-thirds of his knife at every
mouthful with the coolness of a juggler.
“Such a savage as that ought not to be permitted to take his meals in
the dining-room,” said my wife.
“I am not sure that he could be prevented on account of his style of
eating,” I replied, as the man began shoveling peas with a knife into
his mouth, which could not have been broader unless Dame Nature had
placed his auricular appendages an inch or two further back. (By the
way, how did they eat peas before the days of knives, forks, and
spoons?)
“Do you mean to say that if an individual makes himself so extremely
disagreeable to all other guests, the proprietor has no right to ask him
to leave?” queried Mrs. L.
“Well, my dear, it was held in Pennsylvania that the host might request
such an one to depart; and that if he did not, the hotel-keeper might
lay his hands gently upon him and lead him out, and if resistance was
made might use sufficient force to accomplish the desired end.”[51]
“Then please tell that waiter to take that man out,” broke in my wife.
“Not so fast, my dear; that decision was reversed afterward, and it was
said to be assault and battery so to eject a guest.[52] I have known
$600 damages given to a guest for an assault on him by his landlord.[53]
I remember, too, a case where a man rejoicing in the trisyllabic name of
Prendergast was coming from Madras to London round the Cape of Storms,
having paid his fare as a cabin passenger. His habit was to reach across
others at table to help himself, and to take potatoes and broiled bones
in his fingers, devouring them as was the fashion in the days when Adam
delved and Eve span, if they had such things then. The captain, offended
at this ungentlemanly conduct, refused to treat Master P. as a
first-class passenger, excluded him from the cabin, and would not allow
him to walk on the weather side of the ship. On reaching England,
Prendergast sued the captain for the breach of his agreement to carry
him as a cuddy passenger; the officer pleaded that the conduct of the
man had been vulgar, offensive, indecorous and unbecoming, but the son
of Neptune was mulcted in damages to the tune of £25, Chief Justice
Tindal observing that it would be difficult to say what degree of want
of polish would, in point of law, warrant a captain in excluding one
from the cuddy. Conduct unbecoming a gentleman in the strict sense of
the word might possibly justify him, but in this case there was no
imputation of the want of gentlemanly principles.[54] But here, at last,
comes our dinner; let us show our neighbors how to handle knife and fork
aright.”
And a very good dinner it was, too, although dished by a cook who had
not the talents of the ancient knights of the kitchen who could
dexterously serve up a sucking-pig boiled on one side and roasted on the
other, or make so true a fish out of turnips as to deceive sight, taste,
and smell. These antique masters of the gastronomic art knew how to suit
each dish to the need and necessity of each guest. They held to the
doctrine that the more the nourishment of the body is subtilized and
alembicated, the more will the qualities of the mind be rarefied and
quintessenced, too. For a young man destined to live in the atmosphere
of a royal court, whipped cream and calves’ trotters were supplied by
them; for a sprig of fashion, linnets’ heads, essence of May beetles,
butterfly broth, and other light trifles; for a lawyer destined to the
chicanery of his profession and for the glories of the bar, sauces of
mustard and vinegar and other condiments of a bitter and pungent nature
would be carefully provided.[55] As Lord Guloseton says, “The ancients
seem to have been more mental, more imaginative, than we in their
dishes; they fed their bodies, as well as their minds, upon delusion:
for instance, they esteemed beyond all price the tongues of
nightingales, because they tasted the very music of the birds in the
organ of their utterance. That is the poetry of gastronomy.”
I noticed at a table near by a merry party. I afterward learned that it
was composed of a number of fast young men from the city, who had come
in to have a good dinner, and exhibit themselves, their garments, and
their graces before the assembled guests; and that, when the hour of
reckoning came, the needful wherewith to liquidate the little bill was
not forthcoming. The landlord insisted that each one was liable for the
whole, as there was no special agreement, (and this would generally be
the case[56]) and that one who was solvent should pay the reckoning for
all; but, unfortunately for Boniface, his clerk had been told beforehand
that that moneyed man was the guest of the others, who were all as poor
as Job’s peahens; so that the poor man had no recourse against the
deadheads, in this direction, at all events,[57] and even the moneyed
gent got a free dinner. The worthies swaggered out, singing in an
undertone the words of an Ethiopian minstrel appropriate to the
occasion.
* * * * *
As my wife was returning to her room after dinner, she met a poor woman,
whose daily walk in life was from the wash-tub to the clothes-line,
looking in vain for some miserable sinner who had departed leaving his
laundry bill unpaid. After endeavoring in vain to console the woman,
Mrs. Lawyer, (who had a Quixotic way of interfering in other people’s
troubles) came running back to me to ask if the hotel-keeper was not
bound to pay for the washing. I told her of course not, unless he had
been in the habit of paying the laundry bills of guests who had left;
then an undertaking to that effect might be inferred, and it might be
considered as evidence of an antecedent promise.[58] With this small
crumb of comfort, my wife returned to the user of soap and destroyer of
buttons.
While sitting, _à la_ Mr. Briggs, in the smoking-room, “with my
waistcoat unbuttoned, to give that just and rational liberty to the
subordinate parts of the human commonwealth which the increase of their
consequence after the hour of dinner naturally demands,” and gently, (as
good Bishop Hall puts it) “whiffing myself away in nicotian incense to
the idol of my intemperance,” a fellow-puffer spoke to me about the
excessive charges of the house.
I told him that in the good old days of yore, and perchance even yet, an
innkeeper who charged exorbitant prices might be indicted, and that our
ancestors were wont to have the rates fixed by public proclamation.[59]
He then remarked that he would not mind about the prices, if the
landlord had allowed him to do a little business in the place.
“Your right to lodge and be fed in the house gives you no right to carry
on trade here,”[60] I replied.
“One of the waiters threatened to kick me yesterday for doing business.”
“Oh, if you are assaulted by any of the servants, the proprietor is
liable to you in damages, though he was not himself present at the time,
or even consenting thereto,”[61] I returned. Then, fearing lest I might
be nourishing a viper in the shape of a book-agent, or vendor of patent
articles, I left the room, the words of the poet running through my
brain:
“Society is now one polished horde,
Formed of two mighty tribes--the Bores and Bored.”