HOSPITALITY--_continued_
While I am upon this subject of hospitality, I may as well say what
I really believe, that as far as my experience goes--and I am fully
aware that it does not go very far--I give the palm for knowing how to
be really hospitable to my own countrymen, with a slight reservation
in favour of the Scotch. But first of all it is necessary to define
exactly what I mean by hospitality. Let me say that I am considering it
entirely from the point of view of the lecturer. Of the man or woman
who has made a long journey, involving very likely all sorts of trying
inconveniences, in order to fulfil an engagement to entertain some
hundreds of people for a couple of hours or less, and whose first duty
is to those people, his employers for the time being.
When a local magnate invites a lecturer to accept his hospitality
during the lecturer’s stay, he should remember what the lecturer’s
business is, and that he has very likely to deliver another lecture
the following night at some town a long distance away. Most hosts and
hostesses do remember this, and act accordingly; some few, a very few,
act as if the lecturer simply came to entertain them and their guests,
and had no other business in life. They are not hospitable in the
present sense, if, indeed, they are in any other. No one has a right to
ask a lecturer to stay with him unless he has the means to make such a
public servant comfortable; no one should act as if the lecturer would
be homeless for the night if they do not give him a shelter, unless
indeed there be no place of public entertainment in the town, or means
of getting out of the town after the lecture.
For it should always be remembered that while lecturers are prepared to
put up with a good deal of inconvenience and fatigue in the course of
their business, it is not hospitable to add to their burdens in those
directions. But perhaps I shall better explain by giving an example of
what I mean by an ideal host, an actual experience of course, since
fiction finds no place in these pages.
I was booked to lecture in a quiet town not far from Edinburgh, and a
gentleman wrote to me some time before, offering me hospitality during
my stay, and asking me from what direction I should be coming, and
at what time I proposed to arrive. I replied that I should be coming
from Glasgow, where I had been staying for a few days with a friend,
and that I could come when it would be most convenient for him. He
appointed a time to meet him at his club in Glasgow, where I changed
and dined with him, then we drove to the station. I made to get my
ticket, but he stopped me, saying:
“We have a system of ‘guest’ tickets in Scotland, Mr. Bullen, and here
is yours,” putting the piece of pasteboard into my hand. Of course
we travelled first-class, and at our arrival were met by my host’s
carriage and pair. A happier time I never spent than with him and his
amiable family, but I was never _entertained_, I was one of themselves
without duties. On the day I was to leave my host took me into his den,
and said gravely:
“Mr. Bullen, I pay my servants well on the understanding that none of
my guests are to be taxed in tips. You will greatly oblige me, then, if
you will refrain from giving any money to anyone in my service. I ask
this as a personal favour.”
And having ascertained that my next visit was to be to Hawick, my
“guest” ticket was made available to that place, I was driven to the
station, accompanied by my hostess, and sent upon my way feeling
particularly happy. Now I must hasten to say that such treatment is
not, could not be, expected everywhere by me or anybody else. But
what a contrast to the behaviour of the man who invites you over an
undecipherable signature to be his guest at the Laurels, Edgbaston,
say, and leaves you to find your way there at the cost of an expensive
cab fare, has nobody to greet you when you arrive, invites ten or a
dozen people to dinner, at which you are expected to entertain his
guests, and after your return, fagged, from your lecture, expects you
to entertain a roomful of people until midnight! I needn’t go on. For,
as I say, such people are very rare, but I am sure they are the cause
of many lecturers declining all offers of hospitality whatever.
Not quite so bad as the gentleman I have just sketched was a
preparatory schoolmaster for whom I lectured once. The time of the
lecture and the distance from London both made it possible for me
to catch a train from home which gave me an opportunity not to be
missed, for at that time my nights at home during the winter were very
few, and therefore precious. So upon hiring my cab at the station I
made arrangements for it to call for me after the lecture, and thus
satisfactorily fixed for my return I went on gaily through a very jolly
lecture. When I had finished the headmaster advanced upon me, and
taking my arm, said:
“Come on, Mr. Bullen, dinner is all ready, and I am sure you must want
it, I do.”
“I’m sorry to say that meals are to me only a necessary evil,” I
replied, “but, apart from that, I have ordered my cab to catch the
London train, and I see I must be off at once if I am to do so.”
“Oh, nonsense,” he snapped. “It’s absurd for you to talk about
returning to London to-night. You mustn’t do it.”
“Very sorry,” I persisted, “but my plans are all made, and my people
are expecting me. Had you intimated to me beforehand that you would
expect me to stay the night, I should then have told you that I could
not under the circumstances.”
“Well, all I can say is, that if I had known I certainly would not
have engaged you. I don’t care twopence for the lecture; it was the
yarn afterwards that I was looking forward to, and I am extremely
disappointed.”
Now there was a nice state of affairs! I did the only thing I felt
possible--bade him good night, and got into my cab, feeling very angry
at what I thought was the perversity of the situation, and leaving my
would-be host doubtless very angry at what he considered to be _my_
perversity. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that I never got another
engagement at that particular school.
Speaking of cabs being retained for the homeward journey reminds me of
a wretched experience I had once in Surrey. I was engaged to lecture
at a preparatory school, the headmaster of which was a most kindly,
courteous gentleman. He warned me some time before I came that the
school was six miles from the nearest station, that I must engage a
cab to wait and bring me back, the lecture being arranged so that I
should have ample time to dine and return to catch a train somewhere
about 10.50. But when I was all ready to depart the cabman could not
be found--and by the time he did turn up, it was obvious that things
were being cut rather fine. And so I told him, but he only replied
nonchalantly that there was “plenty of time,” and did not hasten one
bit. Two or three times on the way I tried to liven him up, but he took
no notice, and we arrived at the station to find the train gone. A
belated porter came up and gave me the information that the next train
was about midnight, due at Waterloo about 1 a.m., and then my cabman
said, “How long’s she ben gone?”
I am glad to say that I do not remember what I said then. I know it was
copious and bitter, but it was utterly lost on the cabman, who simply
turned and drove off, leaving me to wait about on a bitter January
night in a fireless waiting-room or on a windswept platform until the
coming of the last train. I arrived at my hotel in London chilled to
the marrow at 1.30 a.m., and owe it to my extraordinary immunity from
chills and colds that I did not have a bad bout of illness.
But to return to this matter of hospitality. Taking it all round, I am
convinced that there is none so perfectly acceptable to a lecturer at
any rate as that in England and Scotland. Irish hospitality is warm,
effusive and well meant, but it is too casual, there are too many
discrepancies. These can be made fun of, and indeed enjoyed by the
young and vigorous, but to the middle-aged, who are none too strong,
they are apt to be trying. Such as, for instance, a peat fire in your
bedroom on a bitter winter night, which only smoulders and smokes, and
gives not the slightest heat. And then to find your pyjamas in the bed
wrapped round a leaking hot-water bottle, which has made it necessary
to perch precariously upon one edge of the bed, in order to keep dry,
but, of course, entailing the destruction of sleep.
But I am in honour bound to say that although I have enjoyed the
hospitality of several hundreds of families in this United (as yet)
Kingdom of ours, I could count my experiences that were unpleasant on
the fingers of one hand, so well is the virtue understood and carried
out. In the United States, where I once had a lecture tour, I was
never offered hospitality, beyond a meal, but once. And if that once
was a fair sample of the custom of the country in that direction, I am
very glad. For both my host and hostess regarded me as their property,
bound to go through certain performances as a sort of return for my
entertainment; and when I jibbed they were immensely surprised. They
seemed to think that addressing Boards of Trade, attending Clam Bakes,
and speaking pieces from my books to a drawing-room packed with guests
invited for the purpose, ought to please me beyond measure, and that
all arrangements of the kind might be made without any reference to me
or my personal affairs. I am quite willing to believe, however, that
such hospitality may be exceptional. Anyhow, I do not want, as Martin
Ross has it, to be “entertained within an inch of my life.”
Only once in Australia and New Zealand was I given hospitality--I beg
pardon, twice; but as both cases were exceptional, and the pleasure
they gave me of the deepest and most lasting kind, I will say no more
about them here. As far as I am concerned, hospitality in Australasia
and America has been non-existent for me, for the exceptions which
I have quoted only go to prove this rule. And now I must close this
chapter, not, indeed, that my matter on the subject is exhausted, but
because--well, because I want to get on to the burning topic of hotels.
And this is a discursive yarn at best, its only virtue, as far as I
can see, being its absolute truthfulness. So we will get on, if you
please, to a subject that is of the deepest interest to all travellers,
but especially to those who travel to earn a living, and to whom hotel
charges are a most serious item.