FROM A HOTEL SPONGE
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: I feel it my duty to publicly express my disapproval of the recent ruling of certain hotel proprietors of this city, and to publicly protest against their hasty and ill-advised agreement that hereafter they will discourage, in every way possible, the visits of outsiders who make use of their lobbies and halls.
I am myself one of the best-known non-resident patrons of the hotels in this city, or, in the vulgar language of the innkeepers themselves—a hotelsponge. That is to say, I do not register at these hotels as a guest, but I do make it a point to drop into one or two of them every afternoon and evening, and I think I may say, without undue egotism, that you will seldom see a more debonair and smart-looking man than I appear upon these occasions.I am, I believe, as my tailor says, “an ornament to any assembly,” and my presence in a hotel lobby or corridor is sufficient to stamp that hotel as a proper place in the minds of all those who are sufficiently acquainted with the hall-marks of thehaut tonto recognize a gentleman when they see one.
I have been a familiar figure about a certain hotel on Thirty-fourth Street for the last ten years, and though the tide of fashion which once flowed through those corridors is now somewhat diminished, having set in a northerly direction, yet that hotel continues to hold its own with the visitors from out of town. And do you know why this is so, Mr.Idler? Do you know why it is that this hostelry is still enabled to present an appearance of smartness and exclusiveness? I presume that you do not, and so I shall tell you. It is simply that I have chosen to continue to appear there. Though the social leaders whose names are known across the continent desert the place for the newer and no less pretentious hotels farther up-town, this place, by reason of my loyalty, has suffered noloss of standing. I, Sir, am to the hotels of New York what John Drew is to the American stage. I am that rosy-faced, perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion.
If it were not for me and for the other members of my class, how long do you suppose these hotels could go on charging the enormous prices they now charge for food and lodging? How long do you suppose they could induce the thrifty countryman to part with such sums of his hard-earned money if he were not provided with the inspiring spectacle which I present when arrayed in my full regalia? Not one month, Sir. In less than a fortnight the word would go forth to all parts of the United States that these hotels had lost caste and were becoming back numbers.
It is to me, and to others like me, that the great modern hotels of this city owe theirprosperity; indeed, I might say, their very existence. It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a proper setting. Do you suppose, Sir, that the expensive furniture, the music, the luxurious reading and smoking-rooms, the glittering bars and the comfortable armchairs of the modern, up-to-date New York hotel were necessary to obtain the custom and patronage of the provincial visitors, or even necessary to hold that patronage? No, Sir! ButIam necessary to hold the business of these people, and the luxuries are necessary to hold me. All this is so plain, so perfectly apparent to any observing person, that it seems almost incredible that these managers should dare to risk our indignation. Drive us out, indeed! They will be very luckyif we do not withdraw altogether of our own accord, after such a gratuitous insult. A strike of waiters, Sir, would not prove one-half so demoralizing as a strike of theatmosphere creators, or, to use the insulting term of the hotel men, the “hotel sponges.”
Can you imagine, Sir, trying to paint a forest scene without a tree in sight? That task would be as easy as trying to conduct an aristocratic hotel without an aristocrat in sight. “But,” you say, “you fellows are not really aristocrats—you are only imitation aristocrats.” In so saying, Sir, you fall into the same error into which these hotel men have fallen. We are aristocrats. We are the ideal aristocrats, and let me tell you, Sir, we are much more convincing than those whom you would doubtless call the real aristocrats. I have not lived as a man-about-town for the last ten years without coming to know these dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats of yours very well indeed. I assure you that you would be much surprised and disappointed should you see them, as I have seen them, at our leadinghotels. They would no more correspond to the countryman’s idea of an aristocrat than an Indian Chief would fulfil the romantic maiden’s ideal of a ruler of men. Sir, where I am urbane, they are ill at ease. Where I am clad in the very pink of fashion, they are often dowdy, not to say shabby. Where I appear indifferent and slightly bored, they are often irritable, easily upset and worried-looking. Oscar Wilde once said that he was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can imagine that his disappointment was not deeper than that of the rural visitor who happens to stumble upon a member of what is known as our best society.
Doubtless you fancy that I and the others of my kind concern ourselves with aping the dress and manners of these society people. If so, you were never more mistaken in your life. It is they who copy and imitate us. They go where we go, they wear what we wear, they eat what we eat and they drink what we drink. Only, as is always the case with imitators, they fall far short of their models. How is it possiblethat any man can appear the perfect gentleman of leisure unless, indeed, his life is actually a life of ease and pleasure? We have no cares and no responsibilities. They have a thousand. We have no social duties to distract our attention. They are constantly consulting their watches. And, lastly, Sir, we have art, and they have none.
I can not imagine what has led these misguided innkeepers to think that they can do without us. But I can tell you, they will soon regret their recent action, whatever motives may have moved them to take it, for they will find very shortly that their hotels are not nearly so necessary to us as we are to their hotels. I am, Sir,
Percival Pigeonbreast.