1856.

Hotels.

to charge each individual guest in the height | the conditions of an hotel. Nor is it a small
of the season as though all the months were matter, either to the party who furnishes, or
the same and the house continually crowded. the party who enjoys the breakfast, that all
His guests must pay for not coming oftener the appliances of rich plate and fine linen are
-for the time when they are absent as well there to give grace to the meal; that the
as the time when they are present. The consumer sits in a handsome room, lounging
tax is one that falls principally upon the over the morning paper as long as he likes;
pleasure-seeker-a tax upon the luxury, not that he receives his letters and his visitors
the necessity of travel. We scarcely think, under the landlord's roof, and that, (assuming
indeed, that the whole question of hotel him to be a coffee-room guest,) he lives in a
charges is fairly considered. That a reform handsomely furnished salon altogether free
in this direction has long been needed we of expense.
The expense of private apartments at all
admit; and there are even now symptoms
hotels, whether in England or the Continent,
that it has not been called for in vain.
it has become common to contrast foreign is heavy; and English families have long
hotels with our own in a manner very inju- felt the tax as one of the most serious evils
rious to the latter. The continental hotel of home travel. The common charge for a
system is widely different from our own, bed-room and sitting-room is from twelve
because the habits of the people are differ- shillings to a guinea a day. And it used
ent. The continental hotel-keeper has al- always to be considered essential to the re-
ways a number of resident customers. He spectability of a lady traveller that she
depends greatly, but not wholly, upon tra- should occupy private apartments. Indeed,
vellers and tourists. At all times of the under no other circumstances could a lady
year there is business going on in his house. travel at all. But something of this exclu-
His table d'hôte is never deserted. He has siveness has recently been rubbed off. We
probably a café and a restaurant attached to have learnt something from our Continental
his hotel. He draws enough even in the neighbours. We have not yet learnt to live
slack season to enable him to keep his house in our bed-rooms, we have not yet intro-
open without loss. In England we only duced into our hotels those large rooms,
enter an hotel in strange places far away with little beds, furnished also as sitting-
from home. Such houses of entertainment rooms, in which in Germany and elsewhere
have no place in the thoughts and concerns we consider it no discredit to receive our
of our every-day life. Our men (we are friends. We have not yet introduced the
speaking now of the higher classes) have, table-d'hôte system into our first-class hotels.
for the most part, their club houses, and our But we have introduced into a few of them
women have their homes. We shall speak what are called "Ladies' Coffee-rooms."
more fully in another place of the national- There are several first-class hotels, in which
ities of the question. We allude to them the expenses of residence are much lightened
now only with reference to the subject of by the opening of these public rooms, in
hotel charges, the extravagance of which, in which a man may dine with his wife and
many places, results from the necessity of daughter, and sit there when not at meals,
making the proceeds of three or four months
meet the disbursements of the whole year.
People, when they calculate what these
charges ought to be, seldom bear in mind,
that during a great part of the year the pro-
fits of the house cannot possibly cover its
expenses.

be

without extra charge for accommodation. Such rooms are a convenience even to those who have private apartments in the house, and many resort to them in order that they may keep their sitting-room free from the perfume of dinner. We have no doubt that un these family coffee-rooms will every year The matter is, indeed, not fairly one of more commonly used, and we think it proordinary calculation. It is easy to say that bable that they will lead in time to the instia penny roll costs a penny; that eggs are a tution of tables-d'hôte. We seem all of us shilling or eighteen pence a dozen, and tea perfectly to understand the advantages of 4s. 6d. a pound. It is easy to compute that association in gastronomic, as in other af the breakfast for which we pay two shillings fairs. At the Clubs, you may see every costs the landlord only a fourth of the day three or four members throwing their amount. But it is no small advantage to dinners into a common stock, and so really the consumer to get everything he wants at dining well, (if diversity of dishes constia moment's notice, and no small loss to the tutes a good dinner,) at a comparatively trisupplier to have everything continually ready. We must take into consideration the quantity of perishable commodities which it is necessary to keep on hand to fulfil at all

fling cost. This is the table-d'hôte system-
and yet tables-d'hôte have never yet thriven
amongst us. The coffee-room carries every-
thing before it. Go into the coffee-room of

T

an hotel, between six and seven o'clock, and the chances are, that you may see the eternal fried sole, and the everlasting rump steak, before a majority of the number. Let all their several four shillings be thrown into a common fund, and what an excellent dinner it will purchase. But still we cling, with a constancy almost heroic, to the greasy sole and the tough steak, and pay our four shil. lings for the meal as loyally as though it were a national institution.

eating and drinking. In England, under the present system, a man at an hotel has generally some business to do; he must sit down when it is convenient to him, and rise when it is convenient to him. He likes to read the paper or to write his letters, or make memoranda between his sole and his steak, and between his steak and his cheese. There are few of our large towns in which Englishmen sojourn even for a few days at an hotel, unless they have some business to do, and we need not add that foreigners do not travel in England as Englishmen travel on the Continent. In London itself, it may be taken as a general rule, that if a man is necessitated to remain a week there, he takes a lodging. The same may be said of our English watering-places. It is generally believed that good hotels must necessarily be expensive, and that lodgings are more com fortable than bad ones.

At almost every table-d'hôte on the Continent, may be seen a large number of Eng. lish people, of both sexes, greatly enjoying the multitudinous dishes and the gregarious meal. They are not ashamed of eating in company, and they are by no means above the pure animal enjoyment of a long series of strange courses. They talk at first, perhaps, apologetically, about the custom of the country, the advantage of seeing foreign manners, and they pretend to gratify an ap But there is no doubt that, although the petite only for knowledge, when they taste irksomeness of the restraint imposed by the this or that national dish. But they soon fixed hour of meals, and the extreme length leave off all pretences and all excuses. They of the sederunt, are among the chief causes do it because they like it-because they get of the unpopularity of the table-d'hôte amongst an excellent dinner at a low price, which us, they do not constitute the whole of them. they could not in their own rooms, and be- Much may be laid to the account of the na cause it is extremely amusing to see a vari- tional character. People do a great number ety of strangers of many nations, eating of things abroad which they shrink from together at the same board. Why, then, doing at home. It has often been said that have we nothing of the kind in England, ex- we Britons are excellent people out of our own cept in hotels given up wholly to foreigners, country. It is certain that we are much less beyond the market ordinaries, which are formal, stately, and priggish than at home. held in some country towns; and the house- This may have arisen, in the first instance, dinners at the large boarding-house hotels at from a notion that our doings abroad are Harrogate, Buxton, &c., where people once less likely to be seen and known by our went to drink the waters in days, when a friends-that we are strangers in a strange journey to one or the other was a far greater country, and that what we do passes for undertaking than one, in these days, to Kis nothing among people who do not know sengen or Wiesbaden? Is the absence or the what we are. But we put it to any one failure of effort in this direction, whichsoever who has travelled on the Continent, whether it may be, to be attributed to the general he is not more likely, in these days, to meet exclusiveness and unsociability of the nation- his friends in Paris or in Frankfort than in al character, or to a dislike of the restraint | Exeter or York. The chances are, that in imposed by the necessity of dining at a fixed a single autumn day, you will meet more hour? It might seem that the latter impediment would exist on the Continent no less than in Great Britain. But such is not the case. Except in the show-places of which we have spoken, few of our English hotels rely on the pleasure-traffic of the country; and men travelling on business are not sufficiently masters of their own time either to dine at a fixed hour, or to tolerate the length of the table-d'hôte dinner. The Englishman on the Continent "does" the hotels, as he "does" the cathedrals or the casinos. Hav- *It is always to be borne in mind, too, that Eng ing nothing particular to do but to amuse lishmen travelling in England are frequently enabled himself, he may afford to spend a couple of to avail themselves of the hospitality of friends. hours in what he persuades himself, perhaps, is the study of character, but in reality is

people whom you know in a German town, or watering.place, than in the course of a week's journey in England. Let no one think that he can do exceptionable things, or visit exceptionable places abroad, unknown to his countrymen. He is more likely to be detected in such places abroad than at home, because they are more visited by respectable Englishmen. Now-a-days, indeed, the feeling that we shall not be seen

would always be the better customers of houses of On this account alone, foreigners, cæteris paribus, public entertainment.

1856.

Hotels.

gives place to the notion that we do not price, and there is a comfortable readingcare if we are seen. People think that they room, where you may sit as long as you may "do anything abroad." We have no-like. Or if you go from the town to the thing here to do with the moral or with the watering-place you are equally well accomgeneral bearings of the question. We sim-modated, with the additional advantage, perply speak here of the feeling as it affects haps, of some charming gardens, and an the gregarious style of living from which admirable German band.

men shrink so sensitively at home. In We think we hear some one say, "All Paris, an Englishman boldly enters a res- this may be very well in France, or in Gertaurant with his wife on his arm, and sits many, but it will not do in England. I go down to his little table not caring at all by to a table-d'hôte with my wife, and I sit next what sort of people he may be surrounded. to my tailor." What then? Your tailor is, Or he takes her to some gardens at which in all probability, a highly respectable and there is dancing of rather an energetic kind, intelligent man; and unless you have done and people generally are more mirthful than him an injury by not paying his bills, there sedate. Perhaps he meets a friend as re- need be nothing disagreeable in the contact. spectable and decorous as himself, and they Moreover, in these days you will be more mutually observe that it is a funny place. But in England, his wife must eat her dinner in her own private apartment, and as for taking her to a tea-garden, he might as well divorce her at once.

likely to meet him in the kur-saal of Wiesbaden, or any similar place abroad, than at a table-d'hôte in St. James' Street. The answer to this will be, "We don't care what we do, or whom we meet abroad. It is alNow this conventionality is really a very together a different thing." The difference serious social evil. In London itself there is precisely that which causes it, as we have is absolutely no place except some of the observed, to be said, that the English are a great railway hotels, in which there is a very good sort of people abroad, but at ladies' coffee-room, and the situation of these home, in their reserve and exclusiveness, is often a prohibition-where a lady can ob- little better than prigs. But we are not without a hope that this tain a dinner, without hiring a private room for the purpose; and that, in a busy season, exclusiveness is every year diminishing, she may not always be able to secure. A rubbed off, as it were, by the attrition of lady, or a party of ladies, with or without a foreign travel. Thousands complain of the gentleman, come up to London for the day restraint which is imposed upon them, or to do some shopping, to visit the picture which, perhaps, they are imposing on themgalleries, or to pay some visits, and, per- selves. But they have not courage to set haps, to hear Jenny Lind in the evening. the example of breaking through the conThey do not want their dinner the less for ventionality which oppresses them. Others, spending an active bustling day. But where however, we believe, seek only the opporThey must either tunity. "Show us where to go," they say, are they to get it? go to a pastry-cook's, where they may have" and we will go. Show us to what public a basin of viscid soup and some oily pastry, place we can resort not frequented by objec or they must go to an hotel and hire an tionable characters." Now there is someapartment, if they can. The one is very thing in these two last words which calls uncomfortable, the other is very expensive. for an observation or two. Doubtless in How different is the case in a Continental many houses of entertainment, especially in town. You go, for example, to spend the the metropolis, "objectionable people" are day at Frankfort, from some neighbouring to be met. The conduct of such persons in watering-place, and you have nothing to do such places is seldom objectionable; but we when you require your dinner but to walk still would not advocate resort to any place into the Hotel de Russie, or the Hotel d'Angleterre with your party, and to tell the kelners that you are going to dine there. You get a first-rate dinner, at a very moderate

where there is a chance of being shocked by any outward impropriety of behaviour on the part of other inmates of the room. What we wish to observe is, that respectable people make respectable places; and that there are many houses of entertainment which are *The same evil exists with regard to supperhouses. A party of friends go together to a play, or frequented by "objectionable people" only a concert, or a lecture, and would fain sup together because unobjectionable people are not after the performance is over. But some live in one pleased to frequent them. There are some, part of town, some at another. To meet afterwards doubtless, which now have got a taint not to at the house of any one of the party is to travel a be eradicated. But there would be no fear great number of additional miles, and to incur a vast that houses opened for the entertainment of deal of superfluous fatigue. There is never any nepeople of a different class would be frequentcessity for this on the Continent.

ed by these "objectionables." Men have a very strong reason for not going under equivocal circumstances to places where they may meet friends or acquaintances of a steadier class; and even fallen women have at least so much sense of propriety as not to desire to obtrude themselves into the presence of their happier sisters. The proprietor of the establishment, too, may always exercise some discretion as to admission, and retain some control afterwards. Of course he can- leaving home, or just before returning to it, not vouch for the characters of all who enter his house. He cannot ask to see their marriage lines, or demand a certificate of good conduct from the parson of their parish. All he can insist upon is the appearance of propriety, and what more, in such cases, is necessary? There are other places of public resort besides those where dinners and suppers are provided, in which our wives and daughters may sit beside people with anything but a clean bill of moral health.

or transact business in the neighbourhood of Tyburnia, or Westbournia, or by whatsoever name the extensive regions about Paddington and Kensington gravel pits are properly named. But if their business lies elsewhere, the visitor from Slough or Maidenhead will derive no more benefit from an hotel at the Terminus than if he lived at Croydon or Reigate. It is not at the beginning or the end of the day, just after

that the refreshment of which we speak is needed. A good central situation is required to give effect to such an establishment. Situation, indeed, in such matters, if not the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing, may be not, unfairly said to be the first and the second.

There is a project on foot for the formation of a company under the Lmited Liability Act, to be established for the purpose of erecting an enormous hotel in Trafalgar Square, London-a spot which has been described, by high authority, as "the finest site in Europe." Where now stands that unsightly building known as the National Gallery, it is proposed to erect the Imperial Hotel. It would be impossible to find a better situation. It is in the very centre of London. It is near the Palace, near the Parliament, near the public offices, near the clubs, near the theatres, and near many of the best shops in London. It is the point of divergence whence nearly all the public traffic of the town radiates towards the four great points of the compass. It is an elevated and an open situation, and it commands one of the most extensive and most cheerful views in the whole metropolis. It is unexceptionable, indeed, in itself, and unexceptionable for the purpose for which it

We hold, therefore, that the apprehension of meeting at places of public entertainment people "objectionable" on the score either of social position, or moral character, is in reality a bugbear, whilst the convenience and economy of such resorts are patent and undeniable facts. Liberal as she is in her hospitable invitations to men, London, bristling with conventionalities, seems to grudge poor woman a comfortable meal. Thus, in small things as in great, by the adoption of an er roneous and vicious system, better suited to an eastern than to a western atmosphere, do we heap injuries upon women. To a man walking from the Bank to Charing Cross it appears as though almost every third house invited him to enter, and yet he walks resolutely on, hungry though he be, because he knows that on the other side of Charing Cross lies Pall Mall, where his Club provides is required. Whether it is obtainable we better entertainment. But if his wife or do not pretend to know. But the National daughter be on his arm, they must content Gallery has been for some time doomed, themselves with an ice, a bun, or at best a and it is only a question of time as to when basin of soup at the pastry-cook's. our pictures are to find another habitation. The necessity for the establishment of The Barracks at the back of the National places of resort for ladies and families, in Gallery, (which, on many accounts, it is deLondon, and other great towns, is much sirable to remove,) and several private augmented by the facility with which the railways whirl them up to the metropolitan or provincial capitals from their houses in the country. It would seem that such an hotel as the Great Western at Paddington fulfils almost every condition of such a house of resort, the table-d'hôte only excepted. But the situation, save for the purposes for which it was especially erected, are fatal to it. To travellers by the Great Western Railway it is an immense boon. It may also be advantageously used by those who, living on the line, come up to visit friends,

houses must also be thrown down; and the purchase of this property also is embraced in the speculation. The proposed capital to carry out these objects is a million of money.

It need hardly be said that the erection of the Hôtel du Louvre, at Paris-a gigantic and magnificent hotel which proposes to combine moderate charges with the best and most varied accommodation has proximately suggested this undertaking. But our hotels have been gradually expanding in size; and it has come now to be well understood,

heard it said that these grand new hotels are constructed in so costly a manner-that their internal and external decorations are such that large profits must be extorted from the customer on account of the capital sunk in mere ornament. "You must pay some how or other," it is said, "for all that carved stone and carved wood; all that plate glass, all that gilt and papier-maché. You cannot expect to live in & palace as cheap as in an ordinary dwelling-house." Now all this is true as regards the fact itself, but not as regards the inference which some people would draw from it. Against this disbursement something must be placed in the way of profit. There is the interest of the money sunk, and the wear and tear of ornament to be set down on the debtor side of the account. But this decoration brings custom every where. It brings custom to the shop, it brings custom to the gin-palace, and it brings custom to the hotel. The number of customers is so great that the individual contribution of each is infinitesimally small. The tax is too light to be felt. A large hotel can better afford to cover the walls of its coffee-room with artistical designs in papier-maché than a small one with a common flock paper. We travel at a cheaper rate now in large steamers magnificently decorated than we once did in small and dingy ones. Proprietors well know that money laid out in this way is advantageously expended. It brings custom, and soon returns to the coffers from which it was extracted.

that the larger they are, the better they are. | is perfectly well understood that the larger A different notion was once entertained. the scale on which a business of any kind is People used to say that they would be lost carried on, the more reasonable the terms on in such extensive buildings-that they would which the speculator can afford to supply the never find their way about them-that they individual consumer. A small profit on a would be sure not to get their orders attend-great number of transactions is better than ed to, that it was utterly impossible they a large profit on a few. Large concerns could be comfortable. "It may be all very always undersell small ones; and hotels are well," it was said, “for my Lord Duke and no exception to the rule. But we have the most noble the Marquis, with their suites of men-servants and maid-servants-their extensive orders and their large disburse ments to enter such palaces as these, but small people unattended, spending little, can only be looked upon as intruders, miserably out of place." But experience has shown all this to be a mistake. In these large hotels, with their simplicity of construction and their completeness of organization, we run far less chance of being lost and neglected than in establishments of inferior size. There are certain hotels, as Mivart's and the Clarendon, which have nothing to do with chance travellers; they rely principally upon an established connexion, and their profits are derived not from a continually incoming and outgoing crowd, but from a few wealthy customers who reside for weeks, perhaps months, in the house. These are a class of hotels sui generis, hotels for the few. We are writing now of hotels for the many. The proprietors of such establishments as the Great Western or the Lord Warden, know that it is not upon the custom of dukes and marquises, or even kings and emperors, that they are likely to grow rich. They look for their profits from a continual stream of small people. A man who merely seeks his bed and his breakfast, and spends his six or seven shillings at one of these magnificent houses, is treated with as much civility and attention as though he spent twice as many pounds. In these large establishments there is no confusion, no hurry, no delay, no neglect. Everything goes on with the precision and punctuality of clock- Experience, indeed, has hitherto shown. work. Every guest is treated with the same that large hotels are cheaper than small ones. attention. You are a small customer to-day, It is true that they are institutions of recent perhaps, but you may be a large one to-mor-growth, and as yet we cannot speak decirow; and every man's good word is the same. sively of the financial results of the experiment. It is only by looking at matters thus in the We are only writing now of the question as concrete, that the proprietor of such an hotel it affects the customer; and it is not to be can command success. doubted that he is the gainer. One very That large hotels are not meant for small great advantage afforded by these establishcustomers is clearly, therefore, a mistake. ments is the graduated scale of charge for They are meant for customers of all classes, accommodation. At the Great Western and no man should be deterred from entering Hotel at Paddington, for example, there is a them by the sight of their magnificent front-printed tariff placed in all the most conspicage, and the thought that he only intends to uous parts of the hotel, which enables the spend his half-a-dozen shillings under their visitor to choose the price at which he desires acres of roof. This imaginary objection, then, to be lodged. He may pay five shillings a to size being removed, no other remains. In night for his bed-room, or he may pay eigha commercial country like Great Britain, it teen pence. The difference is for the most