The desire for cheap holidays—as concerns going a long distance for
little money—is no doubt very general, but it is not universal. It
demands, like the bicycle, both youth and vigour. In mature years, not
only because we are more fastidious, but because we are less robust,
the element of cheapness, though always agreeable, is subsidiary to
that of comfort. For my own part, if the chance were offered me to
travel night and day for forty-eight hours anywhere—though it was to
the Elysian Fields—and that in a Pullman car, and for nothing, I would
rather go to Southend at my own expense from Saturday to Monday.
Suppose the former journey to be commenced by a Channel passage and
continued in a third-class carriage, I would rather stop at home. Or
if, in addition to the other discomforts, I am to be a unit among 100
excursionists, with a coupon that insures my being lodged on the sixth
floor everywhere, I had rather take a month's quiet holiday in London
at the House of Detention.
These things are matters of taste; but it is certain that a very large
number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position
which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet,
comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions
of a holiday. These views necessitate some expense and generally limit
the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but,
on the other hand, they have their advantages. They give one, for
example, a great experience in the matter of hotels.
As I idly flutter the yellow leaves of the advertisements of inns in
'Bradshaw,' they call up pictures in my mind quite undreamt of by the
proprietors. I have been a sojourner in almost all of these which are
described as 'situated in picturesque localities.' They are all—it is
in print and must be true—'first-class' hotels; they have most of them
'unrivalled accommodation;' not a few of them have been 'patronised by
Royalty,' and one of them even by 'the Rothschilds.' These last, of
course, are great caravanserais, with 'magnificent ladies'
drawing-rooms' and 'replete' (a word that seems to have taken service
with the licensed victuallers) 'with every luxury.' They make up (a
term unfortunately suggestive of transformation) hundreds of beds; they
have equipages and 'night chamberlains;' '_On y parle français_;' '_Man
spricht Deutsch_.' Of some of these there is quite a little biography,
beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their
happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar
novel. I remember them well: their 'romantic surroundings' or 'their
exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;' their
accurate resemblance to 'a gentleman's own house' (with 'a
reception-room 80 feet by 90 feet'); their 'douche and spray baths;'
their 'unexceptionable tariff;' and even their having undergone those
'extensive alterations,' through which I also underwent something,
which they did not allow for in the bill.
These hotels are all more or less satisfactory as to appearance;
furnished, not, indeed, with such taste, nor so lavishly, as their
rivals on the Continent, but handsomely enough; they are much cleaner
than foreign inns; and if their reference to 'every sanitary
improvement which science can suggest' is a little tall, even for an
advertisement, one never has cause to shudder as happens in some places
in France proper and in Brittany everywhere. Though it must be admitted
that _tables d'hôte_ abroad are not the banquets which the travelling
Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior
to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an
entertainment in private suffer from them. The guest who happens to
dine later than the _table d'hôte_ in his own apartment can hardly
escape getting things 'warmed up;' and if he dines at the same time he
has nobody to wait on him. There is one thing that presses with great
severity on paterfamilias—the charge which is made at many of the large
hotels of 1s. 6d. a day for attendance on each person. Half a guinea a
week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when this has
to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous. Young ladies
who dine at the same table and do not give half the trouble of 'single
gentlemen' ought not to be taxed in this way. It is urged by many that
since attendance is charged in the bill,' there should be no other
fees. But the lover of comfort will always cheerfully pay for a little
extra civility; nor do I think that this practice—any more than that of
feeing our railway porters—is a public disadvantage. The waiter does
not know till the guest goes whether he is a person of inflexible
principles or not, and, therefore, hope ameliorates his manners and
shapes his actions to all. As to getting 'attendance' out of the bill,
now it has once got into it, that I believe to be impossible. There it
is, like the moth in one's drawing-room sofa. And yet I am old enough
to remember how poor Albert Smith plumed himself on the benefit he
bestowed upon the public, as he had imagined, by introducing a fixed
charge for all services and doing away with 'Please, sir, boots.' In
this country, and, to say truth, in most others, 'Please, sir, boots,'
is indigenous and not to be done away with. We did very much better
under the voluntary system, although a few people who did not deserve
it, but simply could not afford to be lavish, were called in
consequence 'screws.'
To pay the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one
of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the
posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of
brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges
were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged
less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and
family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting the _Times_
upon a guest's breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of
grace. 'Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that
price,' said the landlord, when remonstrated with, 'and it was his
principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.'
It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better
in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that
may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you
are spending.
Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public
and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better
appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there
are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses
over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. The 'skimpy'
mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness,
leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that
called itself a feather bed, are only to be found in ancient
hostelries.
On the other hand, it must be confessed that the food has deteriorated;
the bill of fare, indeed, is more pretentious, but the materials are
inferior, and so is the cooking. The well-browned fowl, with its rich
gravy and the bread-sauce that used to be its homely but agreeable
attendant, has disappeared. The bird appears now under a French title,
and is in other respects unrecognisable; as an Irish gentleman once
explained it to me, it is not only that the thing appears under an
_alias_, but the _alias_ comes up instead of the thing. There is one
essential which the old hotel often omitted to serve with your chicken,
and which the new hotel supplies—the salad. This, however, few hotel
cooks in England—and far less hotel waiters—can be trusted to prepare.
Their simple plan is to deluge the tender lettuce with some hateful
ingredient called 'salad mixture,' poured out of a peculiarly shaped
bottle, such as the law now compels poisons to be sold in; and the
jewel is deserving of its casket—it is almost poison. Nor, alas! is
security always to be attained by making one's salad for one's self.
For supposing even that the lettuce is fresh and white, and not
manifestly a cabbage that is pretending to be a lettuce, how about the
oil? Charles Dickens used to say that he could always tell the
character of an inn from its cruets; if they were dirty and neglected,
all was bad. The cruets are now clean enough in all hotels of
pretension; but alas for that bottle which should contain (and perhaps
did at some remote period contain) the oil of Lucca! On the fingers of
one hand I could count all the hotels in England which have not given
me bad oil. Whether it was never good, or whether it has gone bad, I
leave to those philosophers who investigate the origin of evil. I only
know that it tastes as hair-oil smells. As to the soups, they are no
worse than they used to be, and no better; there is soup and there is
hotel soup.
'Gravy soup, fried sole, _entrée_, leg of mutton, and apple tart' used
to be the unambitious _menu_ of the old-fashioned inn. The _entrée_ was
terrible, but the fish, meat, and sweet were excellent. I will say
nothing of the _entrées_ now; I am not in a position to say anything,
for not being of a sanguine temperament, and having but a few years to
live, I do not venture upon them. But it is undeniable that our bill of
fare is greatly more varied than it used to be, and that the way in
which the table is arranged is much more attractive. At the great
hotels in the neighbourhood of London where rich, or at all events
prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially
the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom
it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear,
are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain
by looking at the corks; but the food! How many of their fancifully
named dishes might be included under the common title, Fiasco!
It was once suggested to a decayed man of fashion that an excellent
profession for him to take up would be the proprietorship of an hotel
of this class. 'You know what is really worth eating,' said an
influential friend of his, 'and these caterers for your own class
evidently don't; if you will undertake the management of the _Mammoth_
(naming an inn of very high repute), I will furnish the funds.' But the
man of fashion, who had spent his all with very little to show for it,
had at least acquired some knowledge of his fellow-creatures. 'I am
deeply obliged to you,' he said, 'but were I to accept your offer I
should only lose your money. There are but a very few people in the
world who know a good dinner when it is set before them; and a very
large class (including all the ladies, who are only solicitous about
its _looking_ good) do not care whether it is good or bad. In private
life if a dinner consists of many courses, is given at a fine house,
and is presumably expensive, nineteen-twentieths of those who sit down
to it are satisfied. The twentieth alone says to himself, 'How much
better I should have dined at home!' I have been at scores and scores
of great dinner-parties where the very plates were cold and nobody but
myself has observed it.'
I have no doubt the gentleman of fashion was right; delicate cooking
would be entirely thrown away upon the general palate. The fair sex,
the young, the hungry, the easy-going, the ignorant—how large a
majority of the 'frequenters' of hotels do these classes embrace! And
it must also be remarked that to cook food (except whitebait)
delicately in large quantities is a very difficult operation indeed.
Upon the whole, I think, our large hotels, 'arranged on the Continental
system,' are well adapted for those who frequent them, and they show a
readiness to adopt improvements. An immense number of well-to-do people
go to Brighton, to Scarborough, and scores of other places to get a
change and fresh air, but also to find the same amusements to which
they have been accustomed in London; and, on the whole, they get what
they want without paying very much too much for it. But what drives
many quiet folks abroad is their disinclination to meet with all this
gaiety and public life; they do not mind it so much when it is mixed
with the foreign element, and they are also under the impression that
picturesque scenery is a peculiarity of the Continent. I believe that
more English people have visited Switzerland than have seen the Lake
District and the Channel Islands, and very many more than have
travelled in North Devon and Cornwall. The chief reason of their
abstinence in this respect is, however, their dread of the want of
'accommodation.' To the last two counties, with the exception of some
towns, such as Ilfracombe, approachable by sea, or a direct railway
route, folks never go in crowds, and never will go. It is true there
are no mammoth hotels to be found there; but for picturesque situation
and a certain homely comfort, that takes one not only into another
world, but another generation, there is nothing equal to certain little
inns in these out-of-the-way places. In Wales also, and even in the
Isle of Wight, there are perfect bowers of bliss of this description,
still undesecrated by the excursionist. Not ten years ago, in a part of
North Devon which shall be nameless, I came, with my wife and daughter,
upon an inn of this description. We were all enraptured with the
exquisite beauty of its situation, and were so imprudent as to express,
in the presence of the landlady, our wish to live and die there. 'Well,
indeed, sir,' she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but I hope you are
not going to stay very long.' 'My dear madam,' I remonstrated, aghast
at this remark, 'are we, then, such very objectionable-looking
persons?' 'Bless your heart, no, sir, it isn't that; but the fact is,
we have only room for three, and if parties come and come, and always
find us full (through your being here, you know), they will think it is
no use coming, and we shall lose our custom.' We did stay on, however,
a pretty long time—it was a place of ineffable beauty, such as one
parts from almost with tears—and when on our departure I asked for my
bill, the landlady said, 'Dear me, sir, would you kindly tell me what
day you come upon, for I ha' lost my account of it?' The life we led at
that inn was purely pastoral; the clotted cream was of that consistency
that it was meat and drink in one; but although the fare was homely, it
was good of its kind, and admirably cooked. There was fresh fish every
day—for we were too far from railways for that Gargantuan ogre, 'the
London market,' to deprive us of it—and tender fowls, and jams of all
kinds such as no money could buy.
The landlady had a genius for making what she called 'conserves,' and
every cupboard in the queer little house was filled with them. In the
sitting-room was a quantity of old china and knick-knacks, brought by
the sailors of the place from foreign lands; the linen was white as
snow, and smelt of lavender. Outside the inn was a sea that stretched
to Newfoundland, and cliffs that caught the sunset—such scenery as is
not surpassed by that of the Tyrol (though, of course, in a very
different line), and be sure I was afraid of no comparison between our
'Travellers' Rest' and any Tyrolean inn. It is noteworthy that this
hostelry of ours was so peculiarly and picturesquely placed that it
could only be approached on foot, which reminds me of another place of
entertainment for man, but not for beast.
In appearance, 'The Strangers' Welcome' (as I will take leave to term
it) is more ambitious than 'The Rest,' but it is of the same simple
type. In some respects it is even more primitive; no sign hangs over
its door, nor is any other symbol of its vocation visible, 'Liberty,'
not 'License,' as one may say without much metaphor, being its motto.
It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is
impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made
up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it
lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the
ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and
when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the
fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias
grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as
though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like
the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and
there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse
without the farm; there is a goat or two and a donkey to be seen about
it, which would account for the milk having an alien flavour, if it had
one. But the 'Welcome' has excellent milk, so that there must be some
cows somewhere. From the cliff-top you may see Alderney, for our inn is
among the Channel Islands. When a storm comes you must stop where you
are; for until the last waves of it have ceased there is no approach to
us from the world without. To the stranger it seems probable at such
seasons that the little place will burst up from below, for beneath it
are caverns innumerable, filled with furious waves like sea monsters
roaring for our lives. The sea, in short, has honeycombed it, and
renews her vows to be its ruin with every gale. Yet the 'Welcome' lasts
our time, and will last that of many generations, who will continue,
however, doubtless to believe that the sublimities of Nature are
unattainable short of Switzerland.
My memory now transports me to a mountain district in the north, but on
this side of the border; and here, again, the inn is signless, and has
no appearance of an inn at all. It is situated on the last of a great
chain of hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies,
but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in sunshine, when
the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with
diamonds. There are no 'trencher-scraping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in
the house, but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame,
their mistress, expresses her hope every morning that you have slept
well. If you have not, it is the fault of your conscience: you have had
a poet's recipe for it, for you have been 'within the hearing of a
hundred streams' all night. Will you go up the Fells, or will you row
on the Lake? These are your simple alternatives; there is no brass
band, no promenade, no pier, no anything that the vulgar like. Yet once
a week at least a great spectacle can be promised you without crossing
the inn threshold (indeed, when the promise is kept it is better to be
on the right side of it)—a thunder-storm among the hills. The
arrangements for lighting the place, of which you may have complained,
not without reason, are then in perfection, and the silence is broken
with a vengeance. It is difficult to imagine the grandeurs of a
sham-fight—a battle without corpses—but here you have them. First the
musketry, then the guns, with the explosion of the
powder-magazine—repeated about forty times by the mountain echoes—at
the end of it. When all is over you sit down to such a supper as
Lucullus would have given a year of life for, and which, in all
probability—for he had no prudence—would have shortened it for him. At
the 'Retreat,' as it is called, among other native delicacies, they
give you fresh char cooked to a turn. I like to think that this was the
fish that Monte Christo had sent him in a tank to Paris on the occasion
of a certain banquet; but all the wealth of the Indies could not have
accomplished that; the char (in spite of its name) does not travel.
One more reminiscence of country inns; and, though I have more of them
in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done. I conjure up an
ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty
hill. Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the
seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence. It is on the very
highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea.
From the windows, all day long, we can watch the ships pass by that
carry the pilgrims of the earth, for their freight is chiefly human. It
is here 'the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up
from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all
we love below the verge.' Even at night there is no cessation to this
coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes
of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole
signs of all this motion. What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts
under those moving stars! Is it nothing to have the opportunity to
watch them from the ivied porch of the 'Outlook,' and to welcome the
thoughts they arouse within us? On land, too, there are stars, not made
in heaven, but their shining is intermittent. As I lie in my bed I can
see the great revolving light on the farthest point of rock that juts
to sea. That is the 'Outlook's' watchman, not of much use to it,
indeed, in a practical way, but imparting a marvellous sense of
guardianship and security.
The chief means of amusement at inns of this kind is supplied by
science in the telescope. You note through it all that comes and goes,
and after a day or two can tell-for yourself whither each stately ship
is bound, or whence it comes. At the 'Outlook' the food is plain, but
good; the prawns in particular (which the young people, by-the-bye, can
catch for themselves) are of an exquisite flavour, and in size approach
the lobster. Twice a week for four hours this earthly Paradise is as a
town taken by assault and given over to pillage. An excursion steamer
stops at the little pier and discharges a cargo of excursionists. But
those to whom the happiness of their fellow-creatures is intolerable
can withdraw themselves at these seasons to the neighbouring Downs and
Bays, and on their return they will find peace with folded wing sitting
as before on the 'Outlook's' flagstaff.
Such are the inns which I have known, and there are hundreds in
beautiful England like them. On its rivers in particular there are many
charming little inns, but, to say truth, although the
gentlemen-fishermen are as quiet as mice (from their habits of caution
in their calling), the disciples of the oar are noisy; they get up too
early and go to bed too late, and are too much addicted to melody.
Moreover, these houses of entertainment often carry the principle of
home production to excess: their native fare is excellent; but, spring
mattresses not growing in the neighbourhood, the stuffing of the beds
is supplied, to judge by results, from the turnip-field. For the
purpose for which they are intended, however, these little hostels are
well fitted and have a river charm that is indescribable.
I could speak, too, of excellent hotels set in the grounds of ruined
castles or abbeys; but the attractions of the latter interfere with the
repose of the visitor. Moreover, it has been my chief object, while
admitting the merits of the _Crown_ (and) _Imperial_, to paint the
lily—to point out the violet half hid from the eye. It seems to me a
pity that so many persons should leave their native land and spend
their money among foreigners through ignorance of the quiet
resting-places that await them at home. I have in no way exaggerated
their merits, but it must be confessed that they have one serious
drawback, which, however, only affects bachelors; if Paterfamilias is
troubled by it he ought to be ashamed of himself. I allude to the happy
couples on their honeymoon whom one is wont to meet with in these
retired bowers. It is aggravating, no doubt, to see how Angelina and
Edwin devote themselves to one another without the slightest regard for
the feelings of the solitary stranger. The poor creature has no wish,
of course, to thrust his company upon them, still he would like to have
his existence acknowledged; and they ignore it. They have not a word to
throw to him, nor even a glance. Then there are certain endearments,
delightful, no doubt, to those who exchange them, but which to the
spectator are distraction. What I would recommend to the bachelor as a
remedy is a wife of his own. The good Mussulman's idea of future
happiness is a perpetual honeymoon; and these little Paradises are the
very places to spend it in. The customs of our own country forbid the
agreeable variety which has such charms for the Faithful; but, even as
it is, I have seen in these pleasant inns a great deal of human
happiness, such as to the sober lover of his species only adds to their
attraction.
[Illustration]