differ widely. The truth is probably as far from the indignant
Briton's assertion, based probably upon one flagrant instance in New
York, that "it is ten times worse than in England and tantamount to
robbery with violence," as from the patriotic American's assurance
that "The thing, sir, is absolutely unknown in our free and
enlightened country; no American citizen would demean himself to
accept a gratuity." To judge from my own experience, I should say that
the practice was quite as common in such cities as Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia as in Europe, and more onerous because the amounts
expected are larger. A dollar goes no farther than a shilling.
Moreover, the gratuity is usually given in the form of "refreshers"
from day to day, so that the vengeance of the disappointed is less
easily evaded. Miss Bates, a very friendly writer on America, reports
various unpleasantnesses that she received from untipped waiters, and
tells of an American who found that his gratuities for two months at a
Long Branch hotel (for three persons and their horses) amounted to
£40. In certain other walks of life the habit of tipping is carried to
more extremes in New York than in any European city I know of. Thus
the charge for a shave (already sufficiently high) is 7-1/2_d._, but
the operator expects 2-1/2_d._ more for himself. One barber with whom
I talked on the subject openly avowed that he considered himself
wronged if he did not get his fee, and recounted the various devices
he and his fellows practised to extract gratuities from the unwilling.
As one goes West or South the system of tipping seems to fall more and
more into abeyance, though it will always be found a useful smoother
of the way. In California, so far as I could judge, it was almost
entirely unknown, and the Californian hotels are among the best in the
Union.
Among the lessons which English and other European hotels might learn
from American hotels may be named the following:
1. The combination of the present _à la carte_ system with the
inclusive or American system, by which those who don't want the
trouble of ordering their repasts may be sure of finding meals, with a
reasonable latitude of choice in time and fare, ready when desired. It
is a sensible comfort to know beforehand exactly, or almost exactly,
what one's hotel expenses will amount to.
2. The abolition of the charge for attendance.
3. A greater variety of dishes than is usually offered in any except
our very largest hotels. This is especially to be desired at
breakfast. Without going to the American extreme of fifty or a hundred
dishes to choose from, some intermediate point short of the Scylla of
sole and the Charybdis of ham and eggs might surely be found. There is
probably more pig-headed conservatism than justified fear of expense
in the reluctance to follow this most excellent "American lead." The
British tourist in the United States takes so kindly to the
preliminary fruit and cereal dishes of America that he would probably
show no objection to them on his native heath.
4. An extension of the system of ringing once for the boots, twice for
the chambermaid, and so on. The ordinary American table of calls goes
up to nine.
5. The provision of writing materials free for the guests of the
hotels. The charge for stationery is one of the pettiest and most
exasperating cheese-parings of the English Boniface's system of
account-keeping. If, however, he imitates the liberality of his
American brother, it is to be hoped that he will "go him one better"
in the matter of blotting-paper. Nothing in the youthful country
across the seas has a more venerable appearance than the strips of
blotting-paper supplied in the writing-rooms of its hotels.
Nothing in its way could be more inviting or seem more appropriate
than the cool and airy architecture of the summer hotels in such
districts as the White Mountains, with their wide and shady verandas,
their overhanging eaves, their balconies, their spacious corridors and
vestibules, their simple yet tasteful wood-panelling, their creepers
outside and their growing plants within. Mr. Howells has somewhere
reversed the threadbare comparison of an Atlantic liner to a floating
hotel, by likening a hostelry of this kind to a saloon steamer; and
indeed the comparison is an apt one, so light and buoyant does the
construction seem, with its gaily painted wooden sides, its
glass-covered veranda decks, and its streaming flags. Perhaps the
nearest analogue that we have to the life of an American summer hotel
is seen in our large hydropathic establishments, such as those at
Peebles or Crieff, where the therapeutic appliances play but a
subdued obbligato to the daily round of amusements. The same spirit of
camaraderie generally rules at both; both have the same regular
meal-hours, at which almost as little drinking is seen at the one as
the other; both have their evening entertainments got up (_gotten_ up,
our American cousins say, with a delightfully old fashioned flavour)
by the enterprise of the most active guests. The hydropathists have to
go to bed a little sooner, and must walk to the neighbouring village
if they wish a bar-room; but on the whole their scheme of life is much
the same. Whether it is due to the American temperament or the
American weather, the palm for brightness, vivacity, variety, and
picturesqueness must be adjudged to the hotel. For those who are young
enough to "stand the racket," no form of social gaiety can he found
more amusing than a short sojourn at a popular summer hotel among the
mountains or by the sea, with its constant round of drives, rides,
tennis and golf matches, picnics, "germans," bathing, boating, and
loafing, all permeated by flirtation of the most audacious and
innocent description. The focus of the whole carnival is found in the
"piazza" or veranda, and no prettier sight in its way can be imagined
than the groups and rows of "rockers" and wicker chairs, each occupied
by a lithe young girl in a summer frock, or her athletic admirer in
his tennis flannels.
The enormous extent of the summer exodus to the mountains and the seas
in America is overwhelming; and a population of sixty-five millions
does not seem a bit too much to account for it. I used to think that
about all the Americans who could afford to travel came to Europe. But
the American tourists in Europe are, after all, but a drop in the
bucket compared with the oceans of summer and winter visitors to the
Adirondacks and Florida, Manitoba Springs and the coast of Maine, the
Catskills and Long Branch, Newport and Lenox, Bar Harbor and
California, White Sulphur Springs and the Minnesota Lakes, Saratoga
and Richfield, The Thousand Isles and Martha's Vineyard, Niagara and
Trenton Falls, Old Point Comfort and Asheville, the Yellowstone and
the Yosemite, Alaska and the Hot Springs of Arkansas. And everywhere
that the season's visitor is expected he will find hotels awaiting him
that range all the way from reasonable comfort to outrageous
magnificence; while a simpler taste will find a plain boarding-house
by almost every mountain pool or practicable beach in the whole wide
expanse of the United States. The Briton may not have yet abdicated
his post as the champion traveller or explorer of unknown lands, but
the American is certainly the most restless mover from one resort of
civilisation to another.
Perhaps the most beautiful hotel in the world is the Ponce de Leon at
St. Augustine, Florida, named after the Spanish voyager who discovered
the flowery[32] State in 1512, and explored its streams on his
romantic search for the fountain of eternal youth. And when I say
beautiful I use the word in no auctioneering sense of mere size, and
height, and evidence of expenditure, but as meaning a truly artistic
creation, fine in itself and appropriate to its environment. The hotel
is built of "coquina," or shell concrete, in a Spanish renaissance
style with Moorish features, which harmonises admirably with the
sunny sky of Florida and the historic associations of St. Augustine.
Its colour scheme, with the creamy white of the concrete, the
overhanging roofs of red tile, and the brick and terra-cotta details,
is very effective, and contrasts well with the deep-blue overhead and
the luxuriant verdancy of the orange-trees, magnolias, palmettos,
oleanders, bananas, and date-palms that surround it. The building
encloses a large open court, and is lined by columned verandas, while
the minaret-like towers dominate the expanse of dark-red roof. The
interior is richly adorned with wall and ceiling paintings of
historical or allegorical import, skilfully avoiding crudity or
garishness; and the marble and oak decorations of the four-galleried
rotunda are worthy of the rest of the structure. The general effect is
one of luxurious and artistic ease, with suggestions of an Oriental
_dolce far niente_ in excellent keeping with the idea of the winter
idler's home. The Ponce de Leon and the adjoining and more or less
similar structures of the Alcazar, the Cordova, and the Villa Zorayda
form indeed an architectural group which, taken along with the
semi-tropical vegetation and atmosphere, alone repays a long journey
to see. But let the strictly economical traveller take up his quarters
in one of the more modest hostelries of the little town, unless he is
willing to pay dearly (and yet not perhaps too dearly) for the
privilege of living in the most artistic hotel in the world.
It is a long cry from Florida to California, where stands another
hotel which suggests mention for its almost unique perfections. The
little town of Monterey, with its balmy air, its beautiful sandy
beach, its adobe buildings, and its charming surroundings, is, like
St. Augustine, full of interesting Spanish associations, dating back
to 1602. The Hotel del Monte, or "Hotel of the Forest," one of the
most comfortable, best-kept, and moderate-priced hotels of America,
lies amid bluegrass lawns and exquisite grounds, in some ways
recalling the parks of England's gentry, though including among its
noble trees such un-English specimens as the sprawling and moss-draped
live-oaks and the curious Monterey pines and cypresses. Its gardens
offer a continual feast of colour, with their solid acres of roses,
violets, calla lilies, heliotrope, narcissus, tulips, and crocuses;
and one part of them, known as "Arizona," contains a wonderful
collection of cacti. The hotel itself has no pretension to rival the
Ponce de Leon in its architecture or appointments, and is, I think,
built of wood. It is, however, very large, encloses a spacious
garden-court, and makes a pleasant enough impression, with its
turrets, balconies, and verandas, its many sharp gables, dormers, and
window-hoods. The economy of the interior reminded me more strongly of
the amenities and decencies of the house of a refined, well-to-do, and
yet not extravagantly wealthy family than of the usual hotel
atmosphere. There were none of the blue satin hangings, ormolu vases,
and other entirely superfluous luxuries for which we have to pay in
the bills of certain hotels at Paris and elsewhere; but on the other
hand nothing was lacking that a fastidious but reasonable taste could
demand. The rooms and corridors are spacious and airy; everything was
as clean and fresh as white paint and floor polish could make them;
the beds were comfortable and fragrant; the linen was spotless; there
was lots of "hanging room;" each pair of bedrooms shared a bathroom;
the _cuisine_ was good and sufficiently varied; the waiters were
attentive; flowers were abundant without and within. The price of all
this real luxury was $3 to $3.50 (12_s._ to 14_s._) a day. Possibly
the absolute perfection of the bright and soft Californian spring when
I visited Monterey, and the exquisite beauty of its environment, may
have lulled my critical faculties into a state of unusual somnolence;
but when I quitted the Del Monte Hotel I felt that I was leaving one
of the most charming homes I had ever had the good fortune to live in.
The only hotel that to my mind contests with the Del Monte the
position of the best hotel in the North American continent is the
Canadian Pacific Hotel at Banff, in the National Rocky Mountains Park
of Canada. Here also magnificent scenery, splendid weather, and
moderate charges combined to bias my judgment; but the residuum, after
all due allowance made for these factors, still, after five years,
assures me of most unusual excellence. Two things in particular I
remember in connection with this hotel. The one is the almost absolute
perfection of the waiting, carried on by gentlemanly youths of about
eighteen or twenty, who must, I think, have formed the _corps d'élite_
of the thousands of waiters in the service of the Canadian Pacific
Railway. The marvellous speed and dexterity with which they ministered
to my wants, the absolutely neat and even dainty manner in which
everything was done by them, and their modest readiness to make
suggestions and help one's choice (always to the point!) make one of
the pleasantest pictures of hotel life lurking in my memory. The other
dominant recollection of the Banff Hotel is the wonderfully beautiful
view from the summer-house at its northeast corner. Just below the
bold bluff on which this hotel stands the piercingly blue Bow River
throws itself down in a string of foaming white cataracts to mate with
the amber and rapid-rushing Spray. The level valley through which the
united and now placid stream flows is carpeted with the vivid-red
painter's brush, white and yellow marguerites, asters, fireweed,
golden-rod, and blue-bells; to the left rise the perpendicular cliffs
of Tunnel Mountain, while to the right Mt. Rundle lifts its weirdly
sloping, snow-flecked peaks into the azure.
In the dense green woods of the Adirondacks, five miles from the
nearest high road on the one side and on the other lapped by an ocean
of virgin forest which to the novice seems almost as pathless as the
realms of Neptune, stands the Adirondack Lodge, probably one of the
most quaint, picturesque little hotels in the world. It is tastefully
built in the style of a rustic log-hut, its timber being merely
rough-hewn by the axe and not reduced to monotonous symmetry by the
saw-mill. It is roofed with bark, and its wide-eaved verandas are
borne by tree-trunks with the bark still on. The same idea is carried
out in the internal equipment, and the bark is left intact on much of
the furniture. The wood retains its natural colours, and there are no
carpets or paint. This charming little hotel is due to the taste or
whim of a New York electrical engineer (the inventor, I believe, of
the well-known "ticker"), who acts the landlord in such a way as to
make the sixty or seventy inmates feel like the guests of a private
host. The clerk is a medical student, the very bell-boy ("Eddy") a
candidate for Harvard, and both mix on equal terms with the genial
circle that collects round the bonfire lighted in front of the house
every summer's evening. As one lazily lay there, watching the wavering
play of the ruddy blaze on the dark-green pines, listening to the
educated chatter of the boy who cleaned the boots, realising that a
deer, a bear, or perchance even a catamount might possibly be lurking
in the dark woods around, and knowing that all the material comforts
of civilised life awaited one inside the house, one felt very keenly
the genuine Americanism of this Arcadia, and thought how hard it would
be to reproduce the effect even in the imagination of the European.
It was in this same Adirondack Wilderness that I stayed in the only
hotel that, so far as I know, caught on to the fact that I was a
"chiel amang them takin' notes" for a guidebook. With true American
enterprise I was informed, when I called for my bill, that that was
all right; and I still recall with amusement the incredulous and
obstinate resistance of the clerk to my insistence on paying my way. I
hope that the genial proprietors do not attribute the asterisk that I
gave the hotel to their well-meant efforts to give me _quid pro quo_,
but credit me with a totally unbiassed admiration for their good
management and comfortable quarters.
Mention has already been made (p. 30) of a hotel at a frequented
watering-place, at which the lowest purchasable quantity of sleep cost
one pound sterling. It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that the rest
procured at this cost was certainly not four or five times better than
that easily procurable for four or five shillings; and that the luxury
of this hotel appealed, not in its taste perhaps, but certainly in
its effect, to the shoddy rather than to the refined demands of the
traveller. Shenstone certainly never associated the ease of his inn
with any such hyperbolical sumptuousness as this; and it probably
could not arise in any community that did not include a large class of
individuals with literally more money than they knew what to do with,
and desirous of any means of indicating their powers of expenditure.
It has been said of another hotel at Bar Harbor that "Anyone can stay
there who is worth two millions of dollars, or can produce a
certificate from the Recorder of New York that he is a direct
descendant of Hendrik Hudson or Diedrich Knickerbocker."
Many other American hotels suggest themselves to me as sufficiently
individual in character to discriminate them from the ruck. Such are
the Hygieia at Old Point Comfort, with its Southern guests in summer
and its Northern guests in winter; looking out from its carefully
enclosed and glazed piazzas over the waste of Hampton Roads, where the
"Merrimac" wrought devastation to the vessels of the Union until
itself vanquished by the turret-ship "Monitor;" the enormous
caravansaries of Saratoga, one of which alone accommodates two
thousand visitors, or the population of a small town, while the three
largest have together room for five thousand people; the hotel at the
White Sulphur Springs of Virginia, for nearly a century the typical
resort of the wealth and aristocracy of the South, and still
furnishing the eligible stranger with a most attractive picture of
Southern beauty, grace, warm-heartedness, and manners; the Stockbridge
Inn in the Berkshire Hills, long a striking exception to the statement
that no country inns of the best English type can be found in the
United States, but unfortunately burned down a year or two ago; the
Catskill Mountain House, situated on an escarpment rising so abruptly
from the plain of the Hudson that the view from it has almost the same
effect as if we were leaning out of the car of a balloon or over the
battlements of a castle two thousand feet high; the colossal
Auditorium of Chicago, with its banquet hall and kitchen on the tenth
floor; and the Palace Hotel of San Francisco, with its twelve hundred
beds and its covered and resonant central court. Enough has, however,
been said to show that all American hotels are not the immense and
featureless barracks that many Europeans believe, but that they also
run through a full gamut of variety and character.
The restaurant is by no means such an institution in the United States
as in the continental part of Europe; in this matter the American
habit is more on all fours with English usage. The café of Europe is,
perhaps, best represented by the piazza. Of course there are numerous
restaurants in all the larger cities; but elsewhere the traveller will
do well to stick to the meals at his hotel. The best restaurants are
often in the hands of Germans, Italians, or Frenchmen. This is
conspicuously so at New York. Delmonico's has a worldwide reputation,
and is undoubtedly a good restaurant; but it may well be questioned
whether the New York estimate of its merits is not somewhat excessive.
If price be the criterion, it has certainly few superiors. The _à la
carte_ restaurants are, indeed, all apt to be expensive for the single
traveller, who will find that he can easily spend eight to twelve
shillings on a by no means sumptuous meal. The French system of
supplying one portion for two persons or two portions for three is,
however, in vogue, and this diminishes the cost materially. The _table
d'hôte_ restaurants, on the other hand, often give excellent value for
their charges. The Italians have especially devoted themselves to this
form of the art, and in New York and Boston furnish one with a very
fair dinner indeed, including a flask of drinkable Chianti, for four
or five shillings. At some of the simple German restaurants one gets
excellent German fare and beer, but these are seldom available for
ladies. The fair sex, however, takes care to be provided with more
elegant establishments for its own use, to which it sometimes admits
its husbands and brothers. The sign of a large restaurant in New York
reads: "Women's Coöperative Restaurant; tables reserved for
gentlemen," in which I knew not whether more to admire the
uncompromising antithesis between the plain word "women" and the
complimentary term "gentlemen" or the considerateness that supplies
separate accommodation for the shrinking creatures denoted by the
latter. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to note that it is
usually as unwise to patronise a restaurant which professedly caters
for "gents" as to buy one's leg-coverings of a tailor who knows them
only as "pants." Probably the "adult gents' bible-class," which
Professor Freeman encountered, was equally unsatisfactory.
Soup, poultry, game, and sweet dishes are generally as good as and
often better than in English restaurants. Beef and mutton, on the
other hand, are frequently inferior, though the American porterhouse
and other steaks sometimes recall English glories that seem largely
to have vanished. The list of American fish is by no means identical
with that of Europe, and some of the varieties (such as salmon) seem
scarcely as savoury. The stranger, however, will find some of his new
fishy acquaintances decided acquisitions, and it takes no long time to
acquire a very decided liking for the bass, the pompano, and the
bluefish, while even the shad is discounted only by his innumerable
bones. The praises of the American oyster should be sung by an abler
and more poetic pen than mine! He may not possess the full oceanic
flavour (coppery, the Americans call it) of our best "natives," but he
is large, and juicy, and cool, and succulent, and fresh, and (above
all) cheap and abundant. The variety of ways in which he is served is
a striking index of the fertile ingenuity of the American mind; and
the man who knows the oyster only on the half-shell or _en escalope_
is a mere culinary suckling compared with him who has been brought
face to face with the bivalve in stews, plain roasts, fancy roasts,
fries, broils, and fricassées, to say nothing of the form "pigs in
blankets," or as parboiled in its own liquor, creamed, sautéd, or
pickled.
Wine or beer is much less frequently drunk at meals than in Europe,
though the amount of alcoholic liquor seen on the tables of a hotel
would be a very misleading measure of the amount consumed. The men
have a curious habit of flocking to the bar-room immediately after
dinner to imbibe the stimulant that preference, or custom, or the fear
of their wives has deprived them of during the meal. Wine is generally
poor and dear. The mixed drinks at the bar are fascinating and
probably very indigestible. Their names are not so bizarre as it is
an article of the European's creed to believe. America possesses the
largest brewery in the world, that of Pabst at Milwaukee, producing
more than a million of gallons a year; and there are also large
breweries at St. Louis, Rochester, and many other places. The beer
made resembles the German lager, and is often excellent. Its use is
apparently spreading rapidly from the German Americans to Americans of
other nationalities. The native wine of California is still fighting
against the unfavourable reputation it acquired from the ignorance and
impatience of its early manufacturers. The art of wine-growing,
however, is now followed with more brains, more experience, and more
capital, and the result is in many instances excellent. The _vin
ordinaire_ of California, largely made from the Zinfandel grape, has
been described as a "peasant's wine," but when drunk on the spot
compares fairly with the cheaper wines of Europe. Some of the finest
brands of Californian red wine (such as that known as Las Palmas),
generally to be had from the producers only, are sound and
well-flavoured wines, which will probably improve steadily. It is a
thousand pities that the hotels and restaurants of the United States
do not do more to push the sale of these native wines, which are at
least better than most of the foreign wine sold in America at
extravagant charges. It is also alleged that the Californian and other
American wines are often sold under French labels and at French
prices, thus doing a double injustice to their native soil. Coffee or
tea is always included in the price of an American meal, and these
comforting beverages (particularly coffee) appear at luncheon and
dinner in the huge cups that we associate with breakfast exclusively.
Nor do they follow the meal, as with us, but accompany it. This
practice, of course, does not hold in the really first-class hotels
and restaurants.