All the words dedicated to places of eating and drinking are pure
and poetic words. Even the word “hotel” is the word hospital. And St.
Julien, whose claret I drank this Christmas, was the patron saint of
innkeepers, because (as far as I can make out) he was hospitable to
lepers. Now I do not say that the ordinary hotel-keeper in Piccadilly or
the Avenue de l’Opera would embrace a leper, slap him on the back, and
ask him to order what he liked; but I do say that hospitality is his
trade virtue. And I do also say it is well to keep before our eyes the
supreme adventure of a virtue. If you are brave, think of the man who
was braver than you. If you are kind, think of the man who was kinder
than you.
That is what was meant by having a patron saint. That is the link
between the poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel
proprietor who (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers. But a word yet
weaker than “hotel” illustrates the same point--the word “restaurant.”
There again you have the admission that there is a definite building or
statue to “restore”; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the
image of God. And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring
thing that, by a blast of magic, turns a man into himself.
This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the modern
capitalist. His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of
Shallot, if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties--ready
to live and ready to die. And that horror of holidays which marks the
modern capitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole
human being: something that is not a “hand” or a “head for figures.” But
an awful creature who has met himself in the wilderness. The employers
will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to
think.
To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that
holidays have been destroyed. As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more
history than you or I, recently pointed out in the “Pall Mall Magazine,”
Shakespeare’s title of “Twelfth Night: or What You Will” simply meant
that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth
night after Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices
or factories might ask their employers for twelve days’ holidays after
Christmas. And they might let me know the reply.