HOTELS.The desire for cheap holidays—as concerns going a long distance for little money—is no doubt very general, but it is not universal. It demands, like the bicycle, both youth and vigour. In mature years, not only because we are more fastidious, but because we are less robust, the element of cheapness, though always agreeable, is subsidiary to that of comfort. For my own part, if the chance were offered me to travel night and day for forty-eight hours anywhere—though it was to the Elysian Fields—and that in a Pullman car, and for nothing, I would rather go to Southend at my own expense from Saturday to Monday. Suppose the former journey to be commenced by a Channel passage and continued in a third-class carriage, I would rather stop at home. Or if, in addition to the other discomforts, I am to be a unit among 100 excursionists, with a coupon that insures my being lodged on the sixth floor everywhere, I had rather take a month's quiet holiday in London at the House of Detention.These things are matters of taste; but it is certain that a very large number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet, comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions of a holiday. These views necessitate some expense and generally limit the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but, on the other hand, they have their advantages. They give one, for example, a great experience in the matter of hotels.As I idly flutter the yellow leaves of the advertisements of inns in 'Bradshaw,' they call up pictures in my mind quite undreamt of by the proprietors. I have been a sojourner in almost all of these which are described as 'situated in picturesque localities.' They are all—it is in print and must be true—'first-class' hotels; they have most of them 'unrivalled accommodation;' not a few of them have been 'patronised by Royalty,' and one of them even by 'the Rothschilds.' These last, of course, are great caravanserais, with 'magnificent ladies' drawing-rooms' and 'replete' (a word that seems to have taken service with the licensed victuallers) 'with every luxury.' They make up (a term unfortunately suggestive of transformation) hundreds of beds; they have equipages and 'night chamberlains;' 'On y parle français;' 'Man spricht Deutsch.' Of some of these there is quite a little biography, beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar novel. I remember them well: their 'romantic surroundings' or 'their exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;' their accurate resemblance to 'a gentleman's own house' (with 'a reception-room 80 feet by 90 feet'); their 'douche and spray baths;' their 'unexceptionable tariff;' and even their having undergone those 'extensive alterations,' through which I also underwent something, which they did not allow for in the bill.These hotels are all more or less satisfactory as to appearance; furnished, not, indeed, with such taste, nor so lavishly, as their rivals on the Continent, but handsomely enough; they are much cleaner than foreign inns; and if their reference to 'every sanitary improvement which science can suggest' is a little tall, even for an advertisement, one never has cause to shudder as happens in some places in France proper and in Brittany everywhere. Though it must be admitted thattables d'hôteabroad are not the banquets which the travelling Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an entertainment in private suffer from them. The guest who happens to dine later than thetable d'hôtein his own apartment can hardly escape getting things 'warmed up;' and if he dines at the same time he has nobody to wait on him. There is one thing that presses with great severity on paterfamilias—the charge which is made at many of the large hotels of 1s. 6d. a day for attendance on each person. Half a guinea a week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when this has to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous. Young ladies who dine at the same table and do not give half the trouble of 'single gentlemen' ought not to be taxed in this way. It is urged by many that since attendance is charged in the bill,' there should be no other fees. But the lover of comfort will always cheerfully pay for a little extra civility; nor do I think that this practice—any more than that of feeing our railway porters—is a public disadvantage. The waiter does not know till the guest goes whether he is a person of inflexible principles or not, and, therefore, hope ameliorates his manners and shapes his actions to all. As to getting 'attendance' out of the bill, now it has once got into it, that I believe to be impossible. There it is, like the moth in one's drawing-room sofa. And yet I am old enough to remember how poor Albert Smith plumed himself on the benefit he bestowed upon the public, as he had imagined, by introducing a fixed charge for all services and doing away with 'Please, sir, boots.' In this country, and, to say truth, in most others, 'Please, sir, boots,' is indigenous and not to be done away with. We did very much better under the voluntary system, although a few people who did not deserve it, but simply could not afford to be lavish, were called in consequence 'screws.'To pay the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting theTimesupon a guest's breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of grace. 'Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that price,' said the landlord, when remonstrated with, 'and it was his principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.' It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you are spending.Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. The 'skimpy' mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness, leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that called itself a feather bed, are only to be found in ancient hostelries.On the other hand, it must be confessed that the food has deteriorated; the bill of fare, indeed, is more pretentious, but the materials are inferior, and so is the cooking. The well-browned fowl, with its rich gravy and the bread-sauce that used to be its homely but agreeable attendant, has disappeared. The bird appears now under a French title, and is in other respects unrecognisable; as an Irish gentleman once explained it to me, it is not only that the thing appears under analias, but thealiascomes up instead of the thing. There is one essential which the old hotel often omitted to serve with your chicken, and which the new hotel supplies—the salad. This, however, few hotel cooks in England—and far less hotel waiters—can be trusted to prepare. Their simple plan is to deluge the tender lettuce with some hateful ingredient called 'salad mixture,' poured out of a peculiarly shaped bottle, such as the law now compels poisons to be sold in; and the jewel is deserving of its casket—it is almost poison. Nor, alas! is security always to be attained by making one's salad for one's self. For supposing even that the lettuce is fresh and white, and not manifestly a cabbage that is pretending to be a lettuce, how about the oil? Charles Dickens used to say that he could always tell the character of an inn from its cruets; if they were dirty and neglected, all was bad. The cruets are now clean enough in all hotels of pretension; but alas for that bottle which should contain (and perhaps did at some remote period contain) the oil of Lucca! On the fingers of one hand I could count all the hotels in England which have not given me bad oil. Whether it was never good, or whether it has gone bad, I leave to those philosophers who investigate the origin of evil. I only know that it tastes as hair-oil smells. As to the soups, they are no worse than they used to be, and no better; there is soup and there is hotel soup.'Gravy soup, fried sole,entrée, leg of mutton, and apple tart' used to be the unambitiousmenuof the old-fashioned inn. Theentréewas terrible, but the fish, meat, and sweet were excellent. I will say nothing of theentréesnow; I am not in a position to say anything, for not being of a sanguine temperament, and having but a few years to live, I do not venture upon them. But it is undeniable that our bill of fare is greatly more varied than it used to be, and that the way in which the table is arranged is much more attractive. At the great hotels in the neighbourhood of London where rich, or at all events prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear, are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain by looking at the corks; but the food! How many of their fancifully named dishes might be included under the common title, Fiasco!It was once suggested to a decayed man of fashion that an excellent profession for him to take up would be the proprietorship of an hotel of this class. 'You know what is really worth eating,' said an influential friend of his, 'and these caterers for your own class evidently don't; if you will undertake the management of theMammoth(naming an inn of very high repute), I will furnish the funds.' But the man of fashion, who had spent his all with very little to show for it, had at least acquired some knowledge of his fellow-creatures. 'I am deeply obliged to you,' he said, 'but were I to accept your offer I should only lose your money. There are but a very few people in the world who know a good dinner when it is set before them; and a very large class (including all the ladies, who are only solicitous about itslookinggood) do not care whether it is good or bad. In private life if a dinner consists of many courses, is given at a fine house, and is presumably expensive, nineteen-twentieths of those who sit down to it are satisfied. The twentieth alone says to himself, 'How much better I should have dined at home!' I have been at scores and scores of great dinner-parties where the very plates were cold and nobody but myself has observed it.'I have no doubt the gentleman of fashion was right; delicate cooking would be entirely thrown away upon the general palate. The fair sex, the young, the hungry, the easy-going, the ignorant—how large a majority of the 'frequenters' of hotels do these classes embrace! And it must also be remarked that to cook food (except whitebait) delicately in large quantities is a very difficult operation indeed.Upon the whole, I think, our large hotels, 'arranged on the Continental system,' are well adapted for those who frequent them, and they show a readiness to adopt improvements. An immense number of well-to-do people go to Brighton, to Scarborough, and scores of other places to get a change and fresh air, but also to find the same amusements to which they have been accustomed in London; and, on the whole, they get what they want without paying very much too much for it. But what drives many quiet folks abroad is their disinclination to meet with all this gaiety and public life; they do not mind it so much when it is mixed with the foreign element, and they are also under the impression that picturesque scenery is a peculiarity of the Continent. I believe that more English people have visited Switzerland than have seen the Lake District and the Channel Islands, and very many more than have travelled in North Devon and Cornwall. The chief reason of their abstinence in this respect is, however, their dread of the want of 'accommodation.' To the last two counties, with the exception of some towns, such as Ilfracombe, approachable by sea, or a direct railway route, folks never go in crowds, and never will go. It is true there are no mammoth hotels to be found there; but for picturesque situation and a certain homely comfort, that takes one not only into another world, but another generation, there is nothing equal to certain little inns in these out-of-the-way places. In Wales also, and even in the Isle of Wight, there are perfect bowers of bliss of this description, still undesecrated by the excursionist. Not ten years ago, in a part of North Devon which shall be nameless, I came, with my wife and daughter, upon an inn of this description. We were all enraptured with the exquisite beauty of its situation, and were so imprudent as to express, in the presence of the landlady, our wish to live and die there. 'Well, indeed, sir,' she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but I hope you are not going to stay very long.' 'My dear madam,' I remonstrated, aghast at this remark, 'are we, then, such very objectionable-looking persons?' 'Bless your heart, no, sir, it isn't that; but the fact is, we have only room for three, and if parties come and come, and always find us full (through your being here, you know), they will think it is no use coming, and we shall lose our custom.' We did stay on, however, a pretty long time—it was a place of ineffable beauty, such as one parts from almost with tears—and when on our departure I asked for my bill, the landlady said, 'Dear me, sir, would you kindly tell me what day you come upon, for I ha' lost my account of it?' The life we led at that inn was purely pastoral; the clotted cream was of that consistency that it was meat and drink in one; but although the fare was homely, it was good of its kind, and admirably cooked. There was fresh fish every day—for we were too far from railways for that Gargantuan ogre, 'the London market,' to deprive us of it—and tender fowls, and jams of all kinds such as no money could buy.The landlady had a genius for making what she called 'conserves,' and every cupboard in the queer little house was filled with them. In the sitting-room was a quantity of old china and knick-knacks, brought by the sailors of the place from foreign lands; the linen was white as snow, and smelt of lavender. Outside the inn was a sea that stretched to Newfoundland, and cliffs that caught the sunset—such scenery as is not surpassed by that of the Tyrol (though, of course, in a very different line), and be sure I was afraid of no comparison between our 'Travellers' Rest' and any Tyrolean inn. It is noteworthy that this hostelry of ours was so peculiarly and picturesquely placed that it could only be approached on foot, which reminds me of another place of entertainment for man, but not for beast.In appearance, 'The Strangers' Welcome' (as I will take leave to term it) is more ambitious than 'The Rest,' but it is of the same simple type. In some respects it is even more primitive; no sign hangs over its door, nor is any other symbol of its vocation visible, 'Liberty,' not 'License,' as one may say without much metaphor, being its motto. It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse without the farm; there is a goat or two and a donkey to be seen about it, which would account for the milk having an alien flavour, if it had one. But the 'Welcome' has excellent milk, so that there must be some cows somewhere. From the cliff-top you may see Alderney, for our inn is among the Channel Islands. When a storm comes you must stop where you are; for until the last waves of it have ceased there is no approach to us from the world without. To the stranger it seems probable at such seasons that the little place will burst up from below, for beneath it are caverns innumerable, filled with furious waves like sea monsters roaring for our lives. The sea, in short, has honeycombed it, and renews her vows to be its ruin with every gale. Yet the 'Welcome' lasts our time, and will last that of many generations, who will continue, however, doubtless to believe that the sublimities of Nature are unattainable short of Switzerland.My memory now transports me to a mountain district in the north, but on this side of the border; and here, again, the inn is signless, and has no appearance of an inn at all. It is situated on the last of a great chain of hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies, but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in sunshine, when the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with diamonds. There are no 'trencher-scraping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in the house, but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame, their mistress, expresses her hope every morning that you have slept well. If you have not, it is the fault of your conscience: you have had a poet's recipe for it, for you have been 'within the hearing of a hundred streams' all night. Will you go up the Fells, or will you row on the Lake? These are your simple alternatives; there is no brass band, no promenade, no pier, no anything that the vulgar like. Yet once a week at least a great spectacle can be promised you without crossing the inn threshold (indeed, when the promise is kept it is better to be on the right side of it)—a thunder-storm among the hills. The arrangements for lighting the place, of which you may have complained, not without reason, are then in perfection, and the silence is broken with a vengeance. It is difficult to imagine the grandeurs of a sham-fight—a battle without corpses—but here you have them. First the musketry, then the guns, with the explosion of the powder-magazine—repeated about forty times by the mountain echoes—at the end of it. When all is over you sit down to such a supper as Lucullus would have given a year of life for, and which, in all probability—for he had no prudence—would have shortened it for him. At the 'Retreat,' as it is called, among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char cooked to a turn. I like to think that this was the fish that Monte Christo had sent him in a tank to Paris on the occasion of a certain banquet; but all the wealth of the Indies could not have accomplished that; the char (in spite of its name) does not travel.One more reminiscence of country inns; and, though I have more of them in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done. I conjure up an ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty hill. Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence. It is on the very highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea. From the windows, all day long, we can watch the ships pass by that carry the pilgrims of the earth, for their freight is chiefly human. It is here 'the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all we love below the verge.' Even at night there is no cessation to this coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole signs of all this motion. What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts under those moving stars! Is it nothing to have the opportunity to watch them from the ivied porch of the 'Outlook,' and to welcome the thoughts they arouse within us? On land, too, there are stars, not made in heaven, but their shining is intermittent. As I lie in my bed I can see the great revolving light on the farthest point of rock that juts to sea. That is the 'Outlook's' watchman, not of much use to it, indeed, in a practical way, but imparting a marvellous sense of guardianship and security.The chief means of amusement at inns of this kind is supplied by science in the telescope. You note through it all that comes and goes, and after a day or two can tell-for yourself whither each stately ship is bound, or whence it comes. At the 'Outlook' the food is plain, but good; the prawns in particular (which the young people, by-the-bye, can catch for themselves) are of an exquisite flavour, and in size approach the lobster. Twice a week for four hours this earthly Paradise is as a town taken by assault and given over to pillage. An excursion steamer stops at the little pier and discharges a cargo of excursionists. But those to whom the happiness of their fellow-creatures is intolerable can withdraw themselves at these seasons to the neighbouring Downs and Bays, and on their return they will find peace with folded wing sitting as before on the 'Outlook's' flagstaff.Such are the inns which I have known, and there are hundreds in beautiful England like them. On its rivers in particular there are many charming little inns, but, to say truth, although the gentlemen-fishermen are as quiet as mice (from their habits of caution in their calling), the disciples of the oar are noisy; they get up too early and go to bed too late, and are too much addicted to melody. Moreover, these houses of entertainment often carry the principle of home production to excess: their native fare is excellent; but, spring mattresses not growing in the neighbourhood, the stuffing of the beds is supplied, to judge by results, from the turnip-field. For the purpose for which they are intended, however, these little hostels are well fitted and have a river charm that is indescribable.I could speak, too, of excellent hotels set in the grounds of ruined castles or abbeys; but the attractions of the latter interfere with the repose of the visitor. Moreover, it has been my chief object, while admitting the merits of theCrown(and)Imperial, to paint the lily—to point out the violet half hid from the eye. It seems to me a pity that so many persons should leave their native land and spend their money among foreigners through ignorance of the quiet resting-places that await them at home. I have in no way exaggerated their merits, but it must be confessed that they have one serious drawback, which, however, only affects bachelors; if Paterfamilias is troubled by it he ought to be ashamed of himself. I allude to the happy couples on their honeymoon whom one is wont to meet with in these retired bowers. It is aggravating, no doubt, to see how Angelina and Edwin devote themselves to one another without the slightest regard for the feelings of the solitary stranger. The poor creature has no wish, of course, to thrust his company upon them, still he would like to have his existence acknowledged; and they ignore it. They have not a word to throw to him, nor even a glance. Then there are certain endearments, delightful, no doubt, to those who exchange them, but which to the spectator are distraction. What I would recommend to the bachelor as a remedy is a wife of his own. The good Mussulman's idea of future happiness is a perpetual honeymoon; and these little Paradises are the very places to spend it in. The customs of our own country forbid the agreeable variety which has such charms for the Faithful; but, even as it is, I have seen in these pleasant inns a great deal of human happiness, such as to the sober lover of his species only adds to their attraction.[Illustration]
The desire for cheap holidays—as concerns going a long distance for little money—is no doubt very general, but it is not universal. It demands, like the bicycle, both youth and vigour. In mature years, not only because we are more fastidious, but because we are less robust, the element of cheapness, though always agreeable, is subsidiary to that of comfort. For my own part, if the chance were offered me to travel night and day for forty-eight hours anywhere—though it was to the Elysian Fields—and that in a Pullman car, and for nothing, I would rather go to Southend at my own expense from Saturday to Monday. Suppose the former journey to be commenced by a Channel passage and continued in a third-class carriage, I would rather stop at home. Or if, in addition to the other discomforts, I am to be a unit among 100 excursionists, with a coupon that insures my being lodged on the sixth floor everywhere, I had rather take a month's quiet holiday in London at the House of Detention.
These things are matters of taste; but it is certain that a very large number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet, comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions of a holiday. These views necessitate some expense and generally limit the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but, on the other hand, they have their advantages. They give one, for example, a great experience in the matter of hotels.
As I idly flutter the yellow leaves of the advertisements of inns in 'Bradshaw,' they call up pictures in my mind quite undreamt of by the proprietors. I have been a sojourner in almost all of these which are described as 'situated in picturesque localities.' They are all—it is in print and must be true—'first-class' hotels; they have most of them 'unrivalled accommodation;' not a few of them have been 'patronised by Royalty,' and one of them even by 'the Rothschilds.' These last, of course, are great caravanserais, with 'magnificent ladies' drawing-rooms' and 'replete' (a word that seems to have taken service with the licensed victuallers) 'with every luxury.' They make up (a term unfortunately suggestive of transformation) hundreds of beds; they have equipages and 'night chamberlains;' 'On y parle français;' 'Man spricht Deutsch.' Of some of these there is quite a little biography, beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar novel. I remember them well: their 'romantic surroundings' or 'their exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;' their accurate resemblance to 'a gentleman's own house' (with 'a reception-room 80 feet by 90 feet'); their 'douche and spray baths;' their 'unexceptionable tariff;' and even their having undergone those 'extensive alterations,' through which I also underwent something, which they did not allow for in the bill.
These hotels are all more or less satisfactory as to appearance; furnished, not, indeed, with such taste, nor so lavishly, as their rivals on the Continent, but handsomely enough; they are much cleaner than foreign inns; and if their reference to 'every sanitary improvement which science can suggest' is a little tall, even for an advertisement, one never has cause to shudder as happens in some places in France proper and in Brittany everywhere. Though it must be admitted thattables d'hôteabroad are not the banquets which the travelling Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an entertainment in private suffer from them. The guest who happens to dine later than thetable d'hôtein his own apartment can hardly escape getting things 'warmed up;' and if he dines at the same time he has nobody to wait on him. There is one thing that presses with great severity on paterfamilias—the charge which is made at many of the large hotels of 1s. 6d. a day for attendance on each person. Half a guinea a week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when this has to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous. Young ladies who dine at the same table and do not give half the trouble of 'single gentlemen' ought not to be taxed in this way. It is urged by many that since attendance is charged in the bill,' there should be no other fees. But the lover of comfort will always cheerfully pay for a little extra civility; nor do I think that this practice—any more than that of feeing our railway porters—is a public disadvantage. The waiter does not know till the guest goes whether he is a person of inflexible principles or not, and, therefore, hope ameliorates his manners and shapes his actions to all. As to getting 'attendance' out of the bill, now it has once got into it, that I believe to be impossible. There it is, like the moth in one's drawing-room sofa. And yet I am old enough to remember how poor Albert Smith plumed himself on the benefit he bestowed upon the public, as he had imagined, by introducing a fixed charge for all services and doing away with 'Please, sir, boots.' In this country, and, to say truth, in most others, 'Please, sir, boots,' is indigenous and not to be done away with. We did very much better under the voluntary system, although a few people who did not deserve it, but simply could not afford to be lavish, were called in consequence 'screws.'
To pay the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting theTimesupon a guest's breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of grace. 'Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that price,' said the landlord, when remonstrated with, 'and it was his principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.' It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you are spending.
Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. The 'skimpy' mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness, leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that called itself a feather bed, are only to be found in ancient hostelries.
On the other hand, it must be confessed that the food has deteriorated; the bill of fare, indeed, is more pretentious, but the materials are inferior, and so is the cooking. The well-browned fowl, with its rich gravy and the bread-sauce that used to be its homely but agreeable attendant, has disappeared. The bird appears now under a French title, and is in other respects unrecognisable; as an Irish gentleman once explained it to me, it is not only that the thing appears under analias, but thealiascomes up instead of the thing. There is one essential which the old hotel often omitted to serve with your chicken, and which the new hotel supplies—the salad. This, however, few hotel cooks in England—and far less hotel waiters—can be trusted to prepare. Their simple plan is to deluge the tender lettuce with some hateful ingredient called 'salad mixture,' poured out of a peculiarly shaped bottle, such as the law now compels poisons to be sold in; and the jewel is deserving of its casket—it is almost poison. Nor, alas! is security always to be attained by making one's salad for one's self. For supposing even that the lettuce is fresh and white, and not manifestly a cabbage that is pretending to be a lettuce, how about the oil? Charles Dickens used to say that he could always tell the character of an inn from its cruets; if they were dirty and neglected, all was bad. The cruets are now clean enough in all hotels of pretension; but alas for that bottle which should contain (and perhaps did at some remote period contain) the oil of Lucca! On the fingers of one hand I could count all the hotels in England which have not given me bad oil. Whether it was never good, or whether it has gone bad, I leave to those philosophers who investigate the origin of evil. I only know that it tastes as hair-oil smells. As to the soups, they are no worse than they used to be, and no better; there is soup and there is hotel soup.
'Gravy soup, fried sole,entrée, leg of mutton, and apple tart' used to be the unambitiousmenuof the old-fashioned inn. Theentréewas terrible, but the fish, meat, and sweet were excellent. I will say nothing of theentréesnow; I am not in a position to say anything, for not being of a sanguine temperament, and having but a few years to live, I do not venture upon them. But it is undeniable that our bill of fare is greatly more varied than it used to be, and that the way in which the table is arranged is much more attractive. At the great hotels in the neighbourhood of London where rich, or at all events prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear, are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain by looking at the corks; but the food! How many of their fancifully named dishes might be included under the common title, Fiasco!
It was once suggested to a decayed man of fashion that an excellent profession for him to take up would be the proprietorship of an hotel of this class. 'You know what is really worth eating,' said an influential friend of his, 'and these caterers for your own class evidently don't; if you will undertake the management of theMammoth(naming an inn of very high repute), I will furnish the funds.' But the man of fashion, who had spent his all with very little to show for it, had at least acquired some knowledge of his fellow-creatures. 'I am deeply obliged to you,' he said, 'but were I to accept your offer I should only lose your money. There are but a very few people in the world who know a good dinner when it is set before them; and a very large class (including all the ladies, who are only solicitous about itslookinggood) do not care whether it is good or bad. In private life if a dinner consists of many courses, is given at a fine house, and is presumably expensive, nineteen-twentieths of those who sit down to it are satisfied. The twentieth alone says to himself, 'How much better I should have dined at home!' I have been at scores and scores of great dinner-parties where the very plates were cold and nobody but myself has observed it.'
I have no doubt the gentleman of fashion was right; delicate cooking would be entirely thrown away upon the general palate. The fair sex, the young, the hungry, the easy-going, the ignorant—how large a majority of the 'frequenters' of hotels do these classes embrace! And it must also be remarked that to cook food (except whitebait) delicately in large quantities is a very difficult operation indeed.
Upon the whole, I think, our large hotels, 'arranged on the Continental system,' are well adapted for those who frequent them, and they show a readiness to adopt improvements. An immense number of well-to-do people go to Brighton, to Scarborough, and scores of other places to get a change and fresh air, but also to find the same amusements to which they have been accustomed in London; and, on the whole, they get what they want without paying very much too much for it. But what drives many quiet folks abroad is their disinclination to meet with all this gaiety and public life; they do not mind it so much when it is mixed with the foreign element, and they are also under the impression that picturesque scenery is a peculiarity of the Continent. I believe that more English people have visited Switzerland than have seen the Lake District and the Channel Islands, and very many more than have travelled in North Devon and Cornwall. The chief reason of their abstinence in this respect is, however, their dread of the want of 'accommodation.' To the last two counties, with the exception of some towns, such as Ilfracombe, approachable by sea, or a direct railway route, folks never go in crowds, and never will go. It is true there are no mammoth hotels to be found there; but for picturesque situation and a certain homely comfort, that takes one not only into another world, but another generation, there is nothing equal to certain little inns in these out-of-the-way places. In Wales also, and even in the Isle of Wight, there are perfect bowers of bliss of this description, still undesecrated by the excursionist. Not ten years ago, in a part of North Devon which shall be nameless, I came, with my wife and daughter, upon an inn of this description. We were all enraptured with the exquisite beauty of its situation, and were so imprudent as to express, in the presence of the landlady, our wish to live and die there. 'Well, indeed, sir,' she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but I hope you are not going to stay very long.' 'My dear madam,' I remonstrated, aghast at this remark, 'are we, then, such very objectionable-looking persons?' 'Bless your heart, no, sir, it isn't that; but the fact is, we have only room for three, and if parties come and come, and always find us full (through your being here, you know), they will think it is no use coming, and we shall lose our custom.' We did stay on, however, a pretty long time—it was a place of ineffable beauty, such as one parts from almost with tears—and when on our departure I asked for my bill, the landlady said, 'Dear me, sir, would you kindly tell me what day you come upon, for I ha' lost my account of it?' The life we led at that inn was purely pastoral; the clotted cream was of that consistency that it was meat and drink in one; but although the fare was homely, it was good of its kind, and admirably cooked. There was fresh fish every day—for we were too far from railways for that Gargantuan ogre, 'the London market,' to deprive us of it—and tender fowls, and jams of all kinds such as no money could buy.
The landlady had a genius for making what she called 'conserves,' and every cupboard in the queer little house was filled with them. In the sitting-room was a quantity of old china and knick-knacks, brought by the sailors of the place from foreign lands; the linen was white as snow, and smelt of lavender. Outside the inn was a sea that stretched to Newfoundland, and cliffs that caught the sunset—such scenery as is not surpassed by that of the Tyrol (though, of course, in a very different line), and be sure I was afraid of no comparison between our 'Travellers' Rest' and any Tyrolean inn. It is noteworthy that this hostelry of ours was so peculiarly and picturesquely placed that it could only be approached on foot, which reminds me of another place of entertainment for man, but not for beast.
In appearance, 'The Strangers' Welcome' (as I will take leave to term it) is more ambitious than 'The Rest,' but it is of the same simple type. In some respects it is even more primitive; no sign hangs over its door, nor is any other symbol of its vocation visible, 'Liberty,' not 'License,' as one may say without much metaphor, being its motto. It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse without the farm; there is a goat or two and a donkey to be seen about it, which would account for the milk having an alien flavour, if it had one. But the 'Welcome' has excellent milk, so that there must be some cows somewhere. From the cliff-top you may see Alderney, for our inn is among the Channel Islands. When a storm comes you must stop where you are; for until the last waves of it have ceased there is no approach to us from the world without. To the stranger it seems probable at such seasons that the little place will burst up from below, for beneath it are caverns innumerable, filled with furious waves like sea monsters roaring for our lives. The sea, in short, has honeycombed it, and renews her vows to be its ruin with every gale. Yet the 'Welcome' lasts our time, and will last that of many generations, who will continue, however, doubtless to believe that the sublimities of Nature are unattainable short of Switzerland.
My memory now transports me to a mountain district in the north, but on this side of the border; and here, again, the inn is signless, and has no appearance of an inn at all. It is situated on the last of a great chain of hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies, but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in sunshine, when the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with diamonds. There are no 'trencher-scraping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in the house, but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame, their mistress, expresses her hope every morning that you have slept well. If you have not, it is the fault of your conscience: you have had a poet's recipe for it, for you have been 'within the hearing of a hundred streams' all night. Will you go up the Fells, or will you row on the Lake? These are your simple alternatives; there is no brass band, no promenade, no pier, no anything that the vulgar like. Yet once a week at least a great spectacle can be promised you without crossing the inn threshold (indeed, when the promise is kept it is better to be on the right side of it)—a thunder-storm among the hills. The arrangements for lighting the place, of which you may have complained, not without reason, are then in perfection, and the silence is broken with a vengeance. It is difficult to imagine the grandeurs of a sham-fight—a battle without corpses—but here you have them. First the musketry, then the guns, with the explosion of the powder-magazine—repeated about forty times by the mountain echoes—at the end of it. When all is over you sit down to such a supper as Lucullus would have given a year of life for, and which, in all probability—for he had no prudence—would have shortened it for him. At the 'Retreat,' as it is called, among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char cooked to a turn. I like to think that this was the fish that Monte Christo had sent him in a tank to Paris on the occasion of a certain banquet; but all the wealth of the Indies could not have accomplished that; the char (in spite of its name) does not travel.
One more reminiscence of country inns; and, though I have more of them in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done. I conjure up an ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty hill. Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence. It is on the very highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea. From the windows, all day long, we can watch the ships pass by that carry the pilgrims of the earth, for their freight is chiefly human. It is here 'the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all we love below the verge.' Even at night there is no cessation to this coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole signs of all this motion. What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts under those moving stars! Is it nothing to have the opportunity to watch them from the ivied porch of the 'Outlook,' and to welcome the thoughts they arouse within us? On land, too, there are stars, not made in heaven, but their shining is intermittent. As I lie in my bed I can see the great revolving light on the farthest point of rock that juts to sea. That is the 'Outlook's' watchman, not of much use to it, indeed, in a practical way, but imparting a marvellous sense of guardianship and security.
The chief means of amusement at inns of this kind is supplied by science in the telescope. You note through it all that comes and goes, and after a day or two can tell-for yourself whither each stately ship is bound, or whence it comes. At the 'Outlook' the food is plain, but good; the prawns in particular (which the young people, by-the-bye, can catch for themselves) are of an exquisite flavour, and in size approach the lobster. Twice a week for four hours this earthly Paradise is as a town taken by assault and given over to pillage. An excursion steamer stops at the little pier and discharges a cargo of excursionists. But those to whom the happiness of their fellow-creatures is intolerable can withdraw themselves at these seasons to the neighbouring Downs and Bays, and on their return they will find peace with folded wing sitting as before on the 'Outlook's' flagstaff.
Such are the inns which I have known, and there are hundreds in beautiful England like them. On its rivers in particular there are many charming little inns, but, to say truth, although the gentlemen-fishermen are as quiet as mice (from their habits of caution in their calling), the disciples of the oar are noisy; they get up too early and go to bed too late, and are too much addicted to melody. Moreover, these houses of entertainment often carry the principle of home production to excess: their native fare is excellent; but, spring mattresses not growing in the neighbourhood, the stuffing of the beds is supplied, to judge by results, from the turnip-field. For the purpose for which they are intended, however, these little hostels are well fitted and have a river charm that is indescribable.
I could speak, too, of excellent hotels set in the grounds of ruined castles or abbeys; but the attractions of the latter interfere with the repose of the visitor. Moreover, it has been my chief object, while admitting the merits of theCrown(and)Imperial, to paint the lily—to point out the violet half hid from the eye. It seems to me a pity that so many persons should leave their native land and spend their money among foreigners through ignorance of the quiet resting-places that await them at home. I have in no way exaggerated their merits, but it must be confessed that they have one serious drawback, which, however, only affects bachelors; if Paterfamilias is troubled by it he ought to be ashamed of himself. I allude to the happy couples on their honeymoon whom one is wont to meet with in these retired bowers. It is aggravating, no doubt, to see how Angelina and Edwin devote themselves to one another without the slightest regard for the feelings of the solitary stranger. The poor creature has no wish, of course, to thrust his company upon them, still he would like to have his existence acknowledged; and they ignore it. They have not a word to throw to him, nor even a glance. Then there are certain endearments, delightful, no doubt, to those who exchange them, but which to the spectator are distraction. What I would recommend to the bachelor as a remedy is a wife of his own. The good Mussulman's idea of future happiness is a perpetual honeymoon; and these little Paradises are the very places to spend it in. The customs of our own country forbid the agreeable variety which has such charms for the Faithful; but, even as it is, I have seen in these pleasant inns a great deal of human happiness, such as to the sober lover of his species only adds to their attraction.
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