ACCIDENTS, ROOMS, DOGS.
Next morning, as we were arranging whither we would wend our way, I
proposed taking a bus. My wife remarked positively that she wished that
I would not use that vulgar word. I returned:
“Humph! Did you ever hear the story about Lord Campbell and the
omnibus?”
“What was it?” she asked.
“A lawyer while arguing before him continually spoke of a certain kind
of carriage as ‘a brougham,’ (pronouncing both syllables) whereupon his
lordship, with that pomposity for which he was rather noted, remarked
that ‘broom’ was the more usual, and not incorrect, pronunciation; that
such pronunciation was open to no grave objection, and had the great
advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering an extra syllable.
Shortly afterward Campbell spoke of an ‘omnibus.’ The counsel whom he
had shortly before corrected, jumped up with such promptitude that the
judge was startled into silence, exclaiming: ‘Pardon me, my Lord, the
carriage to which you draw attention is usually called ‘a bus’: that
pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and has the great advantage
of saving the time consumed by uttering _two_ extra syllables.’ You can
easily draw the moral from that little tale, my dear.”
Into a bus we got, and out of it we got, in course of time. We went up
and down and in and out and roundabout, seeing the sights and doing the
town like many another couple had done before us, and will do again
during that most awkward of seasons, the honeymoon.
While my spouse gazed in at some lovely silks, sweet feathers, and ducks
of bonnets, unmindful of the troubles that Moses underwent in obtaining
the latter part of the Decalogue, I took the opportunity of instilling
some legal doctrines and decisions into her head.
“Remember,” I said, “the solemn words of the poet:
‘Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.’”
“I fear that a woman like myself will have to wait very long before she
gets her little wants supplied,” she saucily interjected.
“I was about to remark,” I sternly continued, “that if you are very
extravagant in your wardrobe and tastes, I will not be liable to pay all
your little bills. Once upon a time an English judge decided that a
milliner could not make a husband pay £5,287 for bonnets, laces,
feathers and ribbons supplied to his dear little wife during a few
months.”[62]
“No power on earth could make you pay that sum, or anything like it; so
don’t worry yourself, my darling,” coolly and somewhat sarcastically
remarked Mrs. Lawyer.
“Please do not interrupt. In another case it was held that the price of
a sea-side suit, some £67, could not be collected from a husband--a poor
barrister--who had forbidden his wife to go to the watering place.”[63]
“He must have been a very poor lawyer if he never had a suit that cost
more to some unfortunate client.”
“Again, the Rev. Mr. Butcher”----
“I like that name for a parson,” again interposed my wife. “It suggests,
you know, a slender frame, a pale face, taper fingers.”
I paid no heed, but went on:
---- “Was excused payment of some £900 for birds--loreèes, avadavats,
lovebirds, quakers, cutthroats--furnished his wife during the short
space of ten months.”[64]
“But I will not be as extravagant as any of those misguided ladies
were,” remarked my wife, most sensibly.
“Well, then, there will be no trouble. Everything necessary I will of
course pay for willingly, as I could be made to pay for them, if
unwilling. Even a piano, perhaps, I will stand;[65] or false teeth;[66]
but, mind you, not quack medicines,[67] though you are a duck.”
“I am glad to hear ‘that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food’;
please begin now with the last named necessary article, for I am
hungry.” Mrs. Lawyer was a practical woman.
“I presume it is time for lunch,” I replied. “Ah me! I wish lawyers in
this nineteenth century could get their dinners as cheaply as they could
in days gone by, when the client paid therefor, as appears in many an
ancient register. The clerk of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, entered on
his books that he paid to Robert Fylpott, learned in the law, for his
counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 6d. for his dinner. _Tempora mutantur._
There’s a restaurant. Let us enter.”
We entered accordingly, and a very good luncheon we had, except for one
slight _contretemps_. While engaged upon my macaroni soup, a long,
reddish thread--as I surmised--revealed itself to my vision. Calling the
waiter, I demanded how it came there.
“Ah!” said the man, quite cheerfully, “I can tell you where that came
from. Our cook’s in love, sir, and is constantly opening a locket
containing a lock of his sweetheart’s hair. Of course, some of it
occasionally falls into the dishes.”
“Disgusting!” said my wife.
“Beastly!” said I.
The waiter calmly continued: “Beg pardon, sir, but would you mind giving
me the hair? You see, the cook is so fond of her that he is quite
pleased when I bring him back a stray hair or two.”
Of course, I knew that accidents will, etc.; and everything else was
very good. My wife, however, wasted a good deal of time in listening in
wondering amazement to the calculations made at an adjoining table.
“I don’t see how a waiter can remember such a long list of things, and
tell what they all come to so rapidly; or how any two men could eat as
much as those two did,” she remarked to me.
“Pshaw!” I replied, “that is nothing to Mr. Smallweed’s arithmetical
powers, or to the gastronomic achievements of himself and his friends.”
“And pray what did Mr. S. do?” asked my wife.
“Why, when their little luncheon was over, and he was asked by the
pretty waitress what they had had, he replied, without a moment’s
hesitation: ‘Four veals and hams is 3 and 4 potatoes is 3 and 4 and one
summer cabbage is 3 and 6 and 3 marrows is 4 and 6 and 6 breads is 5 and
3 Cheshires is 5 and 3 and 4 pints of half-and-half is 6 and 3 and 4
small rums is 8 and 3 and 3 Pollys is 8 and 6 and 8 and 6 in half a
sovereign, Polly, and 18 pence out.’”
When we rose to leave the room, we found that some one had left before
us with Mrs. Lawyer’s new umbrella. Silently I quitted the place, for I
knew that it had been decided that a restaurant is not an inn, so as to
charge the proprietor with the liabilities of an innkeeper toward
transient persons who take their meals there; (and the same rule applies
even though he does in fact keep in the same building an hotel, to which
the eating-house is attached;[68]) and therefore it would be useless to
expect the proprietor to make good the loss. Nor is a refreshment bar
(where persons casually passing by receive the good things of this life
at a counter) an inn, although it is connected with an hotel, and kept
under the same license, but entered by a separate door from the
street.[69] Where, however, a servant once asked permission to leave a
parcel at a tavern, and the landlady refused to receive it; the man,
being a thirsty soul, called for something to drink, putting the parcel
on the floor behind him while imbibing, and while thus the spirit was
descending more rapidly than it ever did in the most sensitive
thermometer, the package disappeared, and never was seen again by the
owner; yet the innkeeper was held responsible for the loss.[70]
An umbrella was bought and money expended for divers little odds and
ends before we went back to the hotel for dinner. On our return, Mr.
Deadhead and his wife entered the hotel just before us. They were
country cousins of the proprietor’s, and had been asked to dinner, or
had come without an invitation. As he was opening an inside door a large
pane of glass fell out of it, and, slightly grazing his hand, shivered
into a thousand pieces on the marble floor. I told him to rejoice that
he had been fortunate enough to escape with the loss of but a drop or
two of his vital fluid; for I remembered distinctly a similar accident
happening to my father’s old friend, Southcote, in England, years ago;
and although he sued the proprietor of the house, alleging that he (the
landlord) was possessed of an hotel, into which he had invited S. as a
visitor, and in which there was a glass door which it was necessary for
him (S.) to open for the purpose of leaving, and which he, by the
permission of the owner, and with his knowledge, and without any warning
from him, lawfully opened, for the purpose aforesaid, as a door which
was in a proper condition to be opened, yet, by and through the
carelessness, negligence, and default of defendant, the door was then in
an insecure and dangerous condition, and unfit to be opened; and, by
reason of said door being in such insecure and dangerous condition, and
of the then carelessness, negligence, default, and improper conduct of
the defendant in that behalf, a large piece of glass fell from the door,
and wounded Southcote--yet, although he said all this, the Court of
Exchequer, with Pollock, C. B, at its head, decided that no cause of
action against the proprietor was disclosed.[71] It was considered that
a visitor in a house was in the same position as any other member of the
establishment, so far as regards the negligence of the master or his
servants, and must take his chance of accidents with the rest.[72] Baron
Bramwell, however, well said that where a person is in the house of
another, either on business or for any other lawful purpose, he has a
right to expect that the owner will take reasonable care to protect him
from injury, and will not leave trap-doors open down which he might
fall, or take him into a garden among spring-guns and man-traps.[73]
At dinner--to which, in addition to the various condiments provided by
mine host, we ourselves brought that best of sauces, hunger--there was
seated at a neighboring table Mrs. Deadhead, a friend of the
proprietor’s, as I have said, a lady of considerable amplitude of
person, and extensively bedecked with the diamonds of Golconda, the gold
of Australia, the lace of Lyons, the feathers of South Africa, the
millinery of New York, and attired in a silk dress of most fashionable
shape, color, and make. As a waiter was helping this very conspicuous
member of society to a plate of soup, he caught his foot in the
extensive train, stumbled, and placed the soup in her ladyship’s
lap--minus the plate. Great was the commotion, loud the reproaches,
abject the apologies.
My wife thereupon whispered to me that the upset would not have mattered
much if the soup was any like hers.
“Why not?” I queried, in some surprise, and anxious to learn as speedily
as possible the chemical peculiarities of a lady’s toilet.
“Because then the dress would have been turned into a watered silk,” was
the only answer I got.
It was some time before I saw the point, and then I smiled a dreary,
weary smile, and remarked that I hoped the lady was able to re-dress
herself, for I thought that she could get no redress from the
proprietor--at least, that legal luminary, Pollock, C. B., so insinuated
on one occasion.[74]
My wife grew fidgety because the waiters were somewhat tardy in filling
her orders.
“Look,” she said, “at those lazy fellows! Half a dozen of them doing
nothing, while we are kept waiting, still waiting.”
“Doubtless,” I replied, “they have been deeply impressed with the truth
of that grand old Miltonic line:
‘They also serve who only stand to wait.’”
* * * * *
While taking my post-prandial smoke, my interrogator of the previous
evening again approached me, and asked, in a grumbling voice, if the
landlord had a right to turn him out of one room, and put him into
another.
“Oh, yes,” I replied; “he has the sole right of selecting the apartment
for each guest, and, if he finds it expedient, may change the room and
assign his patron another. There is no implied contract that one to whom
a particular room has been given shall retain it so long as he chooses
to pay for it.[75] You pay your money, but you don’t take your choice.”
“But I liked the room so much,” said Mr. Complaining Grumbler.
“It matters not. The proprietor is not bound to comply with your
caprices.[76] When you go to an hotel you have only a mere easement of
sleeping in one room, and eating and drinking in another, as Judge Maule
once remarked.”[77]
“Can he turn me out of the house altogether?”
“Certainly not, if you behave yourself; unless, indeed, you neglect or
refuse to pay your bill upon reasonable demand.”[78]
“I am going away by the night train,” said Mr. C. G., “and I did not
wish to go to bed; so he insisted upon taking my room, and told me I
might stay in the parlor until I left.”
“And quite right, too. Although he cannot make you go to bed, or turn
you out of doors because you do not choose to sleep, still you cannot
insist upon having a bed-room in which to sit up all night, if you are
furnished with another room proper for that purpose.”[79]
“I intend returning in the afternoon; can he refuse to take care of my
traps while I am absent?”
“I fancy not, for a temporary absence does not affect the rights of a
guest.[80] Long since, it was laid down as law that if one comes to an
inn with a hamper, in which he has goods, and goes away, leaving it with
the host, and in a few days comes back, but in the meantime his goods
are stolen, he has no action against the host, for at the time of
stealing he was not his guest, and by keeping the hamper the innkeeper
had no benefit, and therefore is not chargeable with the loss of it. But
it would be otherwise if the man is absent but from morn to dewy
eve;[81] and where, in New York State, a guest, after spending a few
days at an hotel, gave up his room, left his valise--taking a check for
it--and was gone eight days, without paying his bill; on returning, he
registered his name, took a room, and called for his bag, when another
appeared in its place, having the duplicate check attached: the Court of
Common Pleas held that, whether the case was considered as an ordinary
bailment, or as property in an inn keepers’ hands, on which he had a
lien, he was bound to exercise due care and diligence, and that he must
account for the loss, the changing of the check being evidence of
negligence.”[82]
I rose to leave the room, for I was growing weary of this catechetical
performance; but my questioner’s budget was not yet exhausted, and, as I
made my exit, I heard him say:
“Pardon me--one inquiry more: I was at the St. Nicholas last week when
it was burnt down, and I lost some of my clothes. Is the owner liable to
make good the damage sustained?”[83]
I heeded not, and went to seek my wife. After some search through the
magnificent drawing-rooms of our sumptuous hotel, I at length found her
in an elegant parlor, seated at a piano, and gently playing some sweet
melodies. As I approached, she motioned me to be cautious. When I
reached her, I saw that a large spider was stationed at the edge of the
piano cover, apparently drinking in the harmony of sweet sounds to the
utmost extent of his arachnidian nature. My advent broke the spell, and
away the little hairy darkey rushed, hand over hand, up his tiny cable
of four thousand twisted strands, till he was safe in the cornice of the
ceiling. My wife was charmed at her novel listener, and exclaimed: “Did
you ever see such a thing?”
“No, but I have read of it,” I replied. “Michelet, in his charming book
on ‘The Insect,’ tells that a little musical prodigy, who at eight
astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin, was
forced to practice long weary hours in solitude. There was a spider,
however, in the room, which, entranced by the melodious strains, grew
more and more familiar, until at length it would climb upon the mobile
arm that held the bow. Little Berthome needed no other listener to
kindle his enthusiasm. But a cruel step-mother appeared on the scene
suddenly one day, and with a single blow of her slipper annihilated the
octopedal audience. The child fell to the ground in a deathlike faint,
and in three months was a corpse--dead from a broken heart.”
“How sad!” said Mrs. Lawyer, in husky tones, as she blew her nose in a
suspicious manner.
“Then there was also the musical spider of Pellison”---- A little
snarleyow of a dog here rushed in and barked so vigorously and furiously
that my wife never heard more of that spider. I tried to turn the
wretched creature out, but a puppy following--the owner--requested me to
leave it alone. I must say that I heartily concur with Mr. Justice
Manisty (and I sincerely trust that my concurrence will afford
encouragement to the learned gentleman in his arduous office) in
holding that a guest cannot, under any circumstances, insist upon
bringing a dog into any room in a hotel where other guests are. On the
same occasion on which Judge Manisty expressed his views, Kelly, C. B.,
remarked that he would not lay down the rule positively that under no
circumstances would a guest have a right to bring a dog into an inn;
there might possibly, he observed, be circumstances in which, if a
person came to an inn with a dog, and the innkeeper refused to put up
the animal in any stable or outbuilding, and there was nothing that
could make the canine a cause of alarm or an annoyance to others, its
owner might be justified in bringing it into the house. His lordship,
however, considered that a landlord had a right to refuse to provide for
the wants of a visitor who insisted upon coming with two very large St.
Bernard mastiffs, one a fierce creature, that had to be muzzled, the
other a dog of a gentler nature, but somewhat given to that bad habit
referred to in those Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king
of Judah, copied out, and by the apostle St. Peter in his second
epistle.[84]
* * * * *
The next day there was a gentle ripple of excitement pervading the
house. Two cases of larceny came to light, and made the guests
communicative and talkative.
In one case a Mr. Blank, his wife, and amiable and accomplished
daughter, (I can vouch for the correctness of these adjectives; for I
had a very pleasant chat--to call it by a mild name--with her one day,
while Mrs. Lawyer was lying down after dinner) had a sitting-room and
bedroom _en suite_, so arranged that when the sitting-room door was open
one could see the entrances into both bedrooms. Mrs. B., being in her
room, laid upon the bed her reticule, in which was a by no means
despicable sum of money. She then rejoined her spouse and daughter in
the sitting-room, leaving the door between the two apartments open. Some
five minutes after, she sent Miss Blank--who was not too proud to run a
short errand for her kind mamma--for the bag; but lo! it was gone, and
was never again found by a member of the Blank family; for
“In vain they searched each cranny of the house,
Each gaping chink impervious to a mouse.”
The other robbery was of the goods of a young Englishman, who, the
previous evening, had been boastfully exhibiting some sovereigns in the
smoking-room. When he went to bed he had placed his watch and money on a
table in his room, left his door open, and, on morning dawning, was
surprised to find his time-piece and cash vanished with the early dew.
Other people would have been surprised if they had remained.
I fell into conversation on the subject of these depredations with a
gentleman whom I afterward discovered to be a member of Lincoln’s Inn, a
place which bears very little resemblance to our American hotels.
“’Tis very strange,” said Mr. Learned Inthelaw, “how history repeats
itself, even in insignificant matters.”
I bowed, and remarked: “A very sensible man once observed that there was
nothing new under the sun.”
“He did not live, however, in this our nineteenth century,” was the
reply. “But what I was going to say was that there are two cases
reported in our English law-books exactly similar to the two occurrences
of to-day.”
“That is singular. What were the decisions?”
“In the reticule case,[85] the hotel-keeper was held responsible for the
loss; in the other,[86] it was considered that the guest had been guilty
of negligence so as to absolve the host. You know that with us it was
decided, about the time that Columbus was discovering America, that an
innkeeper is liable for the goods of his guests if damaged or stolen
while under his care as an innkeeper;[87] and in such cases he is not
freed from his grave responsibility by showing that neither himself nor
his servants are to blame, but in every event he is liable unless the
loss or injury is caused by the act of God, or the queen’s enemies, or
the fault, direct or implied, of the guest[88]--and that even though the
poor man has not only not been negligent, but has even been diligent in
his efforts to save the property of his guest.”[89]
“The rule is the same with us,”[90] I replied, “and it extends to all
personal property the guest brings with him, whatever may be the value
or the kind.[91] And if the proprietor happens to be absent he is still
liable for the conduct of those he has left in charge.[92] Innkeepers,
as well as common carriers, are regarded as insurers of the property
committed to their care. The law rests on the same principles of policy
here as in England and other countries, and is wise and reasonable.”[93]
“But it seems very severe upon innkeepers,” remarked a by-stander.
“Rigorous as the law may seem, my dear sir,” replied my friend of
Lincoln’s Inn, “and hard as it may actually be in one or two particular
instances, yet it is founded on the great principle of public utility to
which all private considerations ought to yield; for travelers, who must
be numerous in a rich and commercial country, are obliged to rely almost
implicitly on the good faith of innkeepers, whose education and morals
are often none of the best, and who might have frequent opportunities
for associating with ruffians and pilferers; while the injured guest
could seldom or never obtain legal proof of such combinations, or even
of their negligence, if no actual fraud had been committed by them.”[94]
“What did the old Roman law say on the subject?” inquired old Dr.
Dryasdust, who considered that nothing done or said on the hither side
of the Middle Ages was worthy of consideration.
“They, sir, were equally anxious to protect the public against dishonest
publicans, and by their edicts gave an action against them if the goods
of travelers were lost or hurt by any means except _damno fatali_, or by
inevitable accident; and even then Ulpian intimates that innkeepers were
not altogether restrained from knavish practices or suspicious
neglect.”[95]
“Still,” said the by-stander aforesaid, “I do not see how the reticule
can be considered to have been under our landlord’s care.”
“To render him liable it is not necessary that the goods be placed in
his special keeping, or brought to his special notice. If they be in the
inn, brought there in an ordinary and reasonable way by a guest, it is
sufficient to charge the proprietor.”[96]
“Yes,” I chimed in, “and it does not matter in what part of the hotel
the goods are kept, whether ‘up-stairs, or down-stairs, or in the lady’s
chamber’: while they are anywhere within it, they are under the care of
Boniface, and he is responsible for their safe custody. He is equally
liable, whether baggage is put in a bedroom, a horse handed over to the
care of the hostler,[97] or goods placed in an outhouse belonging to
the establishment and used for that sort of articles.[98] My friend
Epps, on one occasion, went to an inn down in Mississippi, and had his
trunk taken to his bedroom, and it being broken into at night and the
money purloined, the innkeeper was held liable.”[99]
“A friend of mine,” said the English gent, “who was in the employ of a
sweet fellow of the name of Candy, on arriving at an inn gave his
luggage to Boots, who placed one package in the hall; afterwards the
servant wished to carry it into the commercial room, but the owner
requested him to leave it where it was; the parcel mysteriously
disappeared, and the innkeeper had the pleasure of paying for it.”[100]
“In fact, I believe an innkeeper cannot make his guest take care of his
own goods;[101] nor is a traveler bound to deposit his valuables in the
hotel safe, even though he may know that there is one kept for the
reception of such articles, and there is a regulation of the house
requiring articles of value to be so deposited,”[102] I remarked.
“Are you not stating that rather broadly?” questioned my legal confrere.
“No Vatican Council has proclaimed me infallible. I know full well that
when the poet said ‘to err is human,’ he spoke truth. Of course, I am
speaking only of the rule in States in which there is no special law or
statute on the point, limiting the liability of publicans,” I replied.
“I think, however,” said Mr. Inthelaw, the Englishman, “that it has been
held that the innkeeper may refuse to be responsible for the safe
custody of the guest’s goods unless they are put in a certain place, and
if the guest objects to this, the host will be exonerated in case of
loss.[103] And a guest who has actual notice of a regulation of the inn
as to the deposit of valuables, and has not complied with it, takes the
risk of loss happening from any cause, except, of course, the actual
sins of emission and commission of the landlord or his servants.”[104]
“And very reasonably,” remarked a by-stander.
“But clear and unmistakable notice of these regulations restricting the
publican’s liability must certainly be given,”[105] I asserted. “And,” I
continued, “I believe a distinction has been taken, and it appears to
rest upon good reason, between those effects of a traveler not
immediately requisite to his comfort, and those essential to his
personal convenience, and which it is necessary that he should have
constantly about him; so that, though personally notified, he is not
bound to deposit the latter with the innkeeper. And, perhaps, this
distinction will explain the apparently contradictory decisions.”[106]
“Doubtless the notice must be clear. Even a printed notification is not
sufficient. It must be brought home to the mind of the guest, or at
least to his knowledge, before he enters and takes possession of his
room, so that, if he does not like the regulations, he may go
elsewhere.[107] In one case, the register was headed with the notice,
‘Money and valuables, it is agreed, shall be placed in the safe in the
office; otherwise, the proprietor will not be liable for loss’; and Mr.
Bernstein duly entered his name in the book; still he was not held bound
by the notice, as there was no proof that it was seen or assented to by
him.”[108]
By-stander here remarked: “My father kept an inn in New York State, and
once told a man of the name of Purvis, when he arrived at the house,
that there was a safe for valuables, and that he would not be
responsible for his unless they were placed in it. Purvis, however,
neglected the caution, and left $2,000 in gold in a trunk in his
bed-room, locked the door, and gave the key to my father. Some thief
broke through and stole, and Purvis tried to make the old gentleman
responsible for the theft; but the court did not agree with him, and
considered that he alone must bear the loss.”[109]
“The host is not liable for the loss of goods if, at the time of their
disappearance, they were in the exclusive possession of their
owner,[110] and it will generally be left to an intelligent jury to say
whether or not the articles were in the sole custody of the guest,”[111]
remarked Mr. Inthelaw.
“What do you mean?” asked one.
“For instance, where a Brummagem man, traveling for orders, came to an
inn with three boxes of goods; the travelers’ room did not meet with his
approbation, so he asked for another one up stairs, where he might
display his wares. The lady of the house gave him one with a key in the
door, and told him to keep it locked. The boxes were taken to the new
apartment, and after dining in the travelers’ room, the Brummagem
gent--who seemed inclined to put on airs--took his precious self into
the new room, and there also he took his wine. After his repast, he
exhibited his wares--chiefly jewelry--to a customer, and in the cool of
the evening went out to see the town, leaving the door unlocked, and the
key outside. (So the reporter tells us, though why he need have taken
the trouble to leave the door unlocked if the key was on the outside, or
the key outside if the door was unlocked, I cannot understand.) While he
was away, two of his boxes went away, too. He sued the proprietor of the
house for damages, but got nothing. He applied for a new trial, but with
like success. Lord Ellenborough remarked that it seemed to him that the
care of the goods in a room used for the exhibition of the goods to
persons over whom the innkeeper could have no check or control hardly
fell within the limits of his duty as an innkeeper; that the room was
not merely intrusted to our friend in the ordinary character of a guest
frequenting an inn, but that he must be understood as having special
charge of it. And another learned judge gave it as his sentiments that
the traveler should be taken to have received the favor of the private
room _cum onere_; that is, he accepted it upon the condition of taking
the goods under his own care.”[112]
“But,” I said, “of course, simply ordering goods to be placed in a
particular room is not such a taking under one’s own care as to absolve
an innkeeper from his responsibility.[113] I recollect a case where a
traveler, on arriving, requested his _impedimenta_, as old Cæsar used to
say, to be taken to the commercial room; they were, and they were
stolen, and the innkeeper was held bound to recoup the man, although he
proved that the usual practice of the house was to place the luggage in
the guest’s room, and not in the commercial room, unless an express
order was given to the contrary. The chief justice remarked that if mine
host had intended not to be responsible unless his guests chose to have
their goods placed in their sleeping apartments, or such other place as
to him might seem meet, he should have told them so.”[114]
By-stander observed that the law seemed inconsistent, as there did not
appear to be much difference between the two cases.
“Mr. Justice Holroyd distinguished the latter from the former case by
saying that the Birmingham man asked to have a room which he used for
the purposes of trade, not merely as a guest in the inn.[115] In
Wisconsin, it was held that the retention by a guest of money or
valuables upon his person was not such exclusive control as to exonerate
an innkeeper from liability, if the loss was not induced by the
negligence or misconduct of the guest,”[116] remarked one who knew
whereof he affirmed.
“An hotel-keeper is of course liable for the conduct of another guest,
placed in a room already occupied, without the consent of the
occupant.[117] And where a guest left his door unlocked, because he was
told that he must either do so or get up in the night and open it, as
others had to share the room with him, the innkeeper was held liable for
everything lost.”[118]
This very learned and intensely uninteresting discussion was here
summarily put a stop to by the appearance in the room of several ladies
who had respectively claims upon the respective talkers, and who were
ready and willing to inspect the inside of the luncheon hall.
“How singularly our hours of refection have changed,” remarked Mr. L.
Inthelaw. “You remember that in the sixteenth century the saying was:
‘Lever à cinq, diner à neuf,
Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf,
Fait vivre d’ans nonante et neuf.’
“And even in the early days of the reign of Louis XIV the dinner hour of
the court was eleven o’clock, or noon at the latest.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I have noticed that the historians say that one of
the causes which hastened the death of Louis XII was his changing his
dinner hour from nine to twelve at the solicitation of his wife. What a
fine house this is!”
“Well, sir,” was the response, “believe a stranger and a foreigner when
he tells you that, good as are some of the hotels in Europe, the
American ones surpass them all both in size and in general fitness of
purpose.”
“I am glad to hear you say so. I presume that the great extent of our
territory, the natural disposition of our people to travel, our
extensive network of railways, have developed our hotel system, and made
it, as you say, without a parallel in the world,” I replied.
“Have you traveled much, sir?” asked Mrs. Lawyer.
“Yes, well nigh all round the world. And so, I flatter myself, I have
had more experience in hotels than most men.”
“You must have seen a great variety,” I remarked.
The Englishman smilingly replied: “In far off China I have carried about
my own bedding from inn to inn, not caring to occupy that in which a
Celestial, a Tartar, or a Russian had slept the night before. In France,
I have taken around my little piece of soap, an almost unknown luxury in
Continental hotels. In India, I have lodged in the dak bungalows
provided by the government, where the articles of furniture are like
donkey’s gallops--few and far between. There you must manage the
commissariat department yourself if you would not starve. I remember
once stopping at one of the best country hotels in the Bombay
Presidency, and was given a sitting-room, a bed-room, and a bath-room;
but in the first a number of birds had built their nests, and flew in
and out and roundabout at their pleasure; in the bed-room a colony of
ants swarmed over the floor, while in my third room cockroaches and
other creeping things gave a variegated hue to the pavement; everything
else was in keeping.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Mrs. L.
“Unpleasant, to say the least,” I remarked, “unless, indeed, you were a
naturalist.”
“I think,” continued our traveled friend, “that one never feels at home
in an European hotel. You never know your landlord or your
fellow-sojourners; the _table d’hôte_ in the grand dining-halls prevents
all intercourse between the guests; they never have a smoking-room, a
billiard-room, a bar-room, or a bath-room; if you want to do ‘tumbies’
you are furnished with a regular old tub.”
“I know that from experience”, said my wife. “Once at a grand hotel in
Florence I wanted a bath, and was promised one. By-and-by, as I sat at
my window in the gloaming, I saw a man trundling a handcart containing a
bath and some barrels. In a few minutes two men solemnly ushered this
identical tub into my room, then in three successive trips they brought
in three barrels of water, two cold, the other hot; a sheet was spread
over the bath, and the water allowed to gurgle out of the bunghole into
it, while with uprolled sleeve the swarthy Italian mingled the hot and
the cold with his hand till what he considered a suitable temperature
was gained. When all was ready, the man coolly asked how soon he should
come back for his apparatus. Actually there was neither bath nor water
in the hotel, although the Arno rolled beneath its windows. As you say,
bath-rooms are unknown in civilized Europe.”
“Then, again,” I said, “if you want your dinner, and are not at _table
d’hôte_, you must write out a list of what you want as long as a
newspaper editorial, hand it in, and wait longer than it would take to
set it up in type before the eatables appear. I have known people wait
an hour at swell hotels, and then go away unsatisfied.”
“There are plenty of hotels in all large English towns,” said our
friend; “but none a quarter of the size of the large caravansaries to be
found in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or San Francisco. Their
exteriors are rather fine, a few rooms are well furnished; but, on the
whole, they are dark and dingy.”
“Were you ever at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, in Paris?” asked my wife.
“Yes. What a splendid place it is! The dining-room is not the largest,
but it is as fine as any in the world; its ornamentation is so chaste,
its chandeliers so splendid, its mirrors so magnificent, and the dinner
is perfection; in fact, as some one says, it is the elysium of the
_bon-vivants_ and the paradise of the esthetic. But if I go on in this
style you will take me for a ‘runner’ for first-class hotels.” We then
passed on to another subject, as the reader must to another chapter.