HOTELS
My first experience of hotels goes back to 1879, when I arrived in
Belfast as a seaman before the mast, and was invited by my good friend,
George Hunter, a gentleman who for motives of economy had worked his
way home with us before the mast, to dine with him at the Eglinton and
Winton Hotel. I was staying at the Sailors’ Home at the time, the best,
by the way, that I ever did stay in, but as we had not yet been paid
off, my wardrobe was not strictly according to shore ideas. I had a
good coat and waistcoat, but I had to wear a pair of moleskin trousers.
They were milk-white with energetic washing, but they must have looked
funny, for I remember a hilarious commercial after dinner asking me if
I was one of the Welsh miner-heroes (there had been a terrific colliery
accident in North Wales not long before, attended by the usual heroic
endeavours to save life).
I also remember that the food seemed to me the finest of which I had
ever dreamed, but then I was fresh from five months of forecastle grub.
That, however, was no excuse for my lifting the last cauliflower out
of the dish proffered me, even if it was no bigger than a duck egg. To
a seaman fresh from five months’ utter privation of vegetables, it was
but a mouthful, but something of the enormity of my offence was borne
in upon me when the waiter (he was an Irishman) proffered the empty
dish to my neighbour.
“Get me some cauliflower,” said that gentleman promptly, not without a
stern glance at my plate.
“There’s no more,” replied the waiter, and the silence that ensued
was thick enough to cut. For four persons had not been served with
cauliflower. Yet, British fashion, no man complained, and the dinner
proceeded in grim silence. And I felt bewildered, for my senses told me
that I had not been greedy, and yet I could not help feeling also that
I had annexed the cauliflower of four diners.
Two years afterwards I arrived at Dundee, and remembering my former
experiences, went to a hotel for the one night I was to stay there. And
when I sat down to the laden table and the waitress placed a 20-lb.
joint of cold roast beef before me to help myself, the hungry months
behind me faded away, and I fed blissfully. They only charged me 2s.
for my meal, but I am sure they were heavy losers, for I must have
eaten over a pound of meat, to say nothing of bread, butter, jam and
cake. But I feel that they could have few such appetites as mine then
was to cater for.
It was many years before I was a guest at a hotel again, and then,
alas! my appetite had gone. Gone so completely that I did not want any
breakfast at any time, and for my principal meal in the middle of the
day the smallest quantity of the plainest food. And if that food were
tough or badly cooked or unpleasant, I wanted nothing but a piece of
bread. This made me fiercely critical of hotel charges. I could not
remember that to keep up a great establishment it was necessary to
charge a fairly high price, and to cater for people with appetites, not
abnormalities like myself, satisfied with a cup of coffee and a slice
of bread and butter for breakfast, and fiercely resentful at having to
pay 2s. for it.
Nevertheless, it is possible to recognise facts that you cannot alter,
and I speedily became passive under the infliction of comfortless
splendour and high charges for meals that I couldn’t eat. I need hardly
say that I never by any chance took a table d’hôte dinner _so_ cheap
at 5s., or ditto luncheon at 3s. 6d., fulfilling the requirements of
the hotel, which threatened a fine of 2s. if I did not take meals in
the house, by paying 2s. for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and
butter at breakfast-time. But in Scotland I found attached to every
large hotel a restaurant where the food was really excellent; quality,
quantity, variety and price being all that one could desire. There I
could dine or lunch for about 1s. 6d. as well as I desired, one plate
always serving me, always being sufficient. I know that some people on
reading this will esteem me mean, but I am really not so, only I do
hate having to pay for a succession of dishes whereof I can only eat
one.
I always found, too, that the better the hotel the more moderate were
the charges as compared with second- and third-rate places, with the
vile old system of charging for attendance, which benefits nobody but
the proprietor, and means that you have to pay twice or the attendants
get no tips. It is not a bit too emphatic to call the system vile,
for these places hire their servants for a few shillings a month, on
the distinct understanding that they, the servants, make up for their
scanty wages by tips, which the customer has already paid in the bill.
Nothing could well be more paltry, dishonest and irritating than such
a system, for even the seaside lodging-house keepers’ extras are
not nearly so annoying. Fortunately the better class of hotels have
abolished the system altogether. You know what you have to pay, and
even if you feel that the old extras are added in, that is not half so
irritating as the old system.
One of the strangest things that I have noted in my hotel experience is
the inferiority of the Temperance Hotel. There must be some exceptions,
of course, or how can the popularity of the huge Cranston Hotels be
explained; but, speaking generally, so far as my experience goes, in
a temperance hotel, food, attendance, accommodation, and civility are
all far below what is obtainable in licensed hotels. I do not pretend
to explain it, but I have known many men who were total abstainers who
shuddered at the thought even of going to a temperance hotel. Is it,
I wonder, anything to do with the fact that all temperance drinks are
vile, thirst-provokers and stomach-destroyers. Except perhaps water,
and even water in satisfying quantity is not good for the middle-aged.
It is a puzzle which I leave to wiser heads than mine.
Then there is the Commercial Hotel. If you are a commercial, nothing
can well be better. The food is of the best, the charges are
reasonable, and the tips exceedingly modest. But if you are not one
of the knights of the road, you are in parlous case. The worst room
in the house, the almost undisguised scorn of the attendants, the
quite undisguised dislike of the guests are yours without asking. The
very last hotel I stayed in was a Temperance Commercial Hotel, which
outside looked like a large and charming family villa--but my room was
positively filthy, with black rotten paper hanging off the walls, a bed
apparently made of dumplings, no fire-place, and for light a feeble
gas-jet in a remote corner, where it only served to show what a den the
room was. I asked for a fire to be made in my room, for the night was
bitterly cold, and the two public rooms downstairs were full of tobacco
smoke, which I cannot breathe for coughing, but I was told that it was
impossible, as there was no fire-place--I had not then seen the room.
Why did I go there? Well, the room was taken for me by the secretary of
the society I was to lecture for--I attach no blame to him--and when I
found out it was too late, in my weak condition, to go anywhere else.
But this was in a town of 200,000 inhabitants in the North of England.
Let it be understood once for all that I dislike hotels as necessary
evils, but that my sense of justice compels me to admit that one may
be made comfortable in a gigantic caravanserai where it would seem
impossible for the personal element to have any chance to express
itself, and, conversely, that one may be made abjectly miserable
in a very small hotel where it might naturally be thought that the
proprietor would make it his sole business to see that his guests
were comfortable. Management is the keynote of it all, but even that
is powerless against other advantages such as position, want of
competition, etc. Most gratefully do I bear tribute to one splendid
characteristic of all the great hotels owned by the Midland Railway
Company--the quality and get-up of their bed-linen. It must be an
education in comfort to some people, wealthy folks, too, who stay in
them; for I can honestly say that in no private house, however costly
in its appointments, have I ever enjoyed contact with such sheets and
pillow-slips as in any Midland hotel that I have ever stayed in, and I
think I have sampled them all.
For sheer magnificence, which does not always mean comfort by any
means, the Great Scottish Railway Hotels are easily first of all
the hotels I know, which, of course, does not mean anything of the
“Carlton” or “Ritz” type. Why is it, I wonder, that Edinburgh and
Glasgow can and do so easily excel our great metropolis in railway
stations and hotels? The finest terminus in London is a mere
undistinguished siding compared with Waverley, Princes Street or
Central Stations; nor, although St. Pancras Hotel is architecturally
very fine, does it compare with the castellated splendour of the North
British Hotel at Waverley.
But if only they could be found now I would infinitely prefer the old
English inns, with their plain roast and boiled, chops and steaks and
simple vegetables. Even now may be found in some of them, daily, alas!
growing fewer, the same high quality of meat and vegetables, and the
same almost reverent care in their simple preparation, a preparation
that did not depend upon some mysterious sauce to give flavour to
the meat, but brought out all the delicious qualities that the
unsophisticated food itself possessed. Unfortunately, even a wayside
inn will now give you a _menu_ written in amazing French, and dishes
more amazing still, concocted by people who doubtless would have been
good at plain boiled or roast, but who make an awful mess of a ragout,
an entrée, or a fricassee. Still, as they would very justly retort,
these unholy mix-ups are asked for and expected by their patrons, who
having eaten heartily of them, go away and growl that it is only in
France that you can get food decently cooked.
But I am reminded that tastes differ. I only wish that folks would
practise toleration in food matters as well as religion. To the latter
we are all coming--even the Catholics will, I understand, allow you
to do and believe anything you like, so long as you say you are a
Catholic, go to your duty once in a while and pay up--sure that’s all
easy. Then why shouldn’t men admit that what is one man’s meat is
another man’s poison, and let it go at that? They don’t, though. One
of the most frequent remarks made to me during my lecturing days by
hostesses was:
“Now, Mr. Bullen, tell me just what you would like before you lecture
and what afterwards. I only want to know, because I am aware how
necessary it is that a lecturer should have just what food agrees with
him and at the time he needs it.”
My invariable reply that whatever the family were taking for dinner
would suit me admirably, and that I wanted nothing after a lecture, was
always received with polite astonishment--I will not say incredulity,
but certainly there was conveyed to me an idea that I could not be
sincere, or, if so, that I must be a totally different subject from the
majority of lecturers and other public men. As far as lecturers go, I
hasten to say that I do not think that any with whom I am acquainted
are difficult to please or at all _tête montée_. Still, you never know.
But public men! Ah, there you have me. They may be a fearful sort of
wild-fowl to entertain, especially if they have only recently arrived.
Alas, I am wandering far away from my chapter heading, which is
hotels. And no hotel in which I ever stayed was at all concerned
about anything but what I chose to order and pay for. And if that was
served as I wanted it, well, glory! all was as happy as could be.
But of all the infernal places on earth to stay at, defend me from
a hotel whose iron-bound rules forbid any guest to have anything in
the nature of food or drink except at certain stipulated hours. These
dens, I can call them nothing else, flourish in the United States,
where the democracy submit to more tyranny than any place outside
of Turkey. Shall I ever forget an occasion when I lay groaning with
acute indigestion in a hotel in Chatauqua Lake summer resort? I was
parched with thirst, knotted up with pain, empty as a drum, but knew I
dared not eat. At last (it was Sunday morning about ten o’clock), at
something like the thirteenth ring, a youth came and slammed my door
open.
“Waal!” he said. “Waat ye want?”
I looked, at him with glazed eyes, and said faintly:
“A little milk and soda, please, as soon as you can.”
“Ye cain’t have nothin’ till dinner-time!” with an air of finality
perfectly Rhadamantine.
That did me good. I sat up in bed, the excruciating pain temporarily
forgotten, and enquired:
“In heaven’s name, why can’t I have a milk and soda?”
His answer was concise, and closed the discussion in one direction.
“Bekase th’ manager’s gone out, an’ he has th’ key of the kitchen, an’
nothin’ k’n be served till he comes back at one o’clock.”
Then I recognised, as they say, what I was up against, and I pleaded
hard. But it was of no avail, I had to wait until one o’clock, and
then--while milk could be had in plenty, there was no soda! So I was
as badly off as ever, for milk alone in the state I was enduring was
so much poison to me. I could not understand it, nor can I now. So
difficult is it to understand that I never expect to be believed when
I tell the following story. The next evening I was to lecture in the
auditorium, a huge, umbrella-shaped building set apart for the purpose,
and before the lecture I sought the janitor, and endeavoured to enlist
his sympathies in the matter of soda and milk, at any rate. I assumed
that he would be as surprised as I was that soda was not to be got
in so highly civilised a place, and apparently I was right, for he
responded at once with a snort of contempt for the fools, as he called
them, and assured me that he would get me my milk and soda in two
ticks. I gave him a dollar, and in less than ten minutes he returned
with a jug of milk and a pound of washing soda! I know I can never be
believed, but I declare that this is true.
But I can honestly say that I never but once had as good a meal
anywhere in America, and I always stayed at the best hotels I could
find (private houses I only know of two), as any workman can get in
London for eightpence. The exception was at President Roosevelt’s
table at Oyster Bay. We had lamb cutlets, potatoes and cauliflower,
with rice pudding to follow, and it was all delicious. It made me feel
quite homesick. But it was unique. I never got it again. In Canada it
is practically the same, though I will gladly admit of an exception in
the case of the Château Frontenac at Quebec, and, oh, yes, there is the
“Empress” at Victoria, Vancouver Island. The “Prince George” at Toronto
was better than any United States Hotel I ever stayed in, and quite
equal to any English hotel I know, but that is not saying a great deal.
As to the food in the trains, it makes me shudder to think of it. I
really cannot say all I know to be true about it, for fear of being
thought extravagantly biased, but in very truth I nearly starved on
the C.P.R. I have had lamb (so called) black and tough as leather, lake
trout that was positively putrid, and--but there, it is useless to make
a list. When I say that I was reduced to eating baked beans and bread
at every meal, and that I lost a stone in weight in one month, I best
convey the straits to which I was reduced. To my mind the strangest
thing about the whole business was that when we got on board the boat
to go from Vancouver to Victoria, although presumably the catering
arrangements were the same, the food was excellent. I could not wish
for anything better, but I tried in vain to discover any reason for the
difference.
As a matter of actual experience I never realised how good and
comfortable a place a hotel could be until I went to Australia seven
years ago. During my previous visits as a lad and a young man I
had learned to love and admire Australasia, because of its lavish
distribution of food at low prices. It will hardly be believed, but
it is a fact that when I went to Lyttelton in 1878 a carpenter could
earn 15s. per day, and could get board and lodging for 15s. per week,
the board meaning three huge meals with meat, vegetables, bread, and
pastry, also tea, and coffee and beer. Sixpence was the ordinary
workman’s price for a meal in an eating-house at all the ports in
Australasia, and better, more copious meals it would be hard to find.
But then Australasia had not, and never has, as far as I know, handed
over her food supply to a meat trust, and thereby bound her people,
no matter what their station in life may be, to eat whatever garbage
Chicago chooses to dole out to them.
Still, those early experiences of mine were only of eating-houses; I
never stayed in a hotel, of course. But on this last visit, after I
had become thoroughly well acquainted with hotels in Great Britain,
America and the Continent, I stayed in hotels all over Australasia, and
I firmly believe as a result of that experience that they can safely,
or that they could safely, be spoken of generally as the best hotels
in the world. But here arises a small difficulty. Every little pub,
no matter how small, ordinary or low class, calls itself a hotel, and
strangers are apt to be misled by the title. Still, titles are always
misleading people everywhere, so the hotel business in Australasia
cannot claim any monopoly in misnaming.
What I wish to point out from actual experience, and as entirely
unbiased as any opinion can ever be, is that in Australasia, as in
no other country that I have ever visited, may be found, in the
great cities as in remote country places, hotels which will give the
traveller an abundance of excellent food well and plainly cooked, with
a great variety of beautiful vegetables also in plentiful quantities,
such as a man would expect in his own comfortable home. Not only so,
but the tariffs charged were extremely reasonable, affording the
strongest possible contrast to Canada, where I believe the hotel
charges are the highest, and the treatment generally the worst, in
the world. But these were not the only matters I saw to admire in
Australasian hotels. In all my experience of them I was never charged
anything beyond the agreed daily tariff--there were no extras. And I
was always served with early morning tea and afternoon tea, while for
those who liked to eat between meals there was food at 11 a.m., no
table laid, and again at about 10 p.m. And baths were looked upon as a
necessary of life, and never charged for. Nor were there any tips.
Now I am perfectly well aware that hotel keepers everywhere else,
especially in my own beloved country, will, if they believe these
statements (a very large “if,” by the way), declare that such a
procedure on their part would only spell bankruptcy. Well, of course,
I do not know their business, but I may be permitted to disbelieve
such a statement entirely. In Australasia wages are higher, rent is
higher, food is certainly no cheaper, and hotel keepers certainly not
philanthropists, yet the thing is done, and done as I have said.