The people are civil. The whole work of
the house is carried on upon fixed rules which tend to the comfort
of the establishment. They are not cheap, and not always quite
honest. But the exorbitance or dishonesty of their charges rarely
exceeds a certain reasonable scale, and hardly ever demands the
bitter misery of a remonstrance.
The inns of the Tyrol are, I think, the cheapest I have known -
affording the traveler what he requires for half the price, or less
than half demanded in Switzerland. But the other half is taken out
in stench and nastiness. As tourists scatter themselves more
profusely, the prices of the Tyrol will no doubt rise. Let us hope
that increased prices will bring with them besoms, scrubbing-
brushes, and other much-needed articles of cleanliness.
The inns of the north of Italy are very good; and, indeed, the
Italian inns throughout, as far as I know them, are much better than
the name they bear. The Italians are a civil, kindly people, and do
for you, at any rate, the best they can. Perhaps the unwary
traveler may be cheated. Ignorant of the language, he may be called
on to pay more than the man who speaks it and who can bargain in the
Italian fashion as to price. It has often been my lot, I doubt not,
to be so cheated; but then I have been cheated with a grace that has
been worth all the money. The ordinary prices of Italian inns are
by no means high.
I have seldom thoroughly liked the inns of Germany which I have
known. They are not clean, and water is very scarce. Smiles, too,
are generally wanting, and I have usually fancied myself to be
regarded as a piece of goods out of which so much profit was to be
made.
The dearest hotels I know are the French - and certainly not the
best. In the provinces they are by no means so cleanly as those of
Italy. Their wines are generally abominable, and their cookery
often disgusting. In Paris grand dinners may no doubt be had, and
luxuries of every description - except the luxury of comfort.
Cotton-velvet sofas and ormolu clocks stand in the place of
convenient furniture; and logs of wood, at a franc a log, fail to
impart to you the heat which the freezing cold of a Paris winter
demands. They used to make good coffee in Paris, but even that is a
thing of the past. I fancy that they import their brandy from
England and manufacture their own cigars. French wines you may get
good at a Paris hotel; but you would drink them as good and much
cheaper if you bought them in London and took them with you.
The worst hotels I know are in the Havana. Of course I do not speak
here of chance mountain huts, or small, far-off roadside hostels, in
which the traveler may find himself from time to time. All such are
to be counted apart, and must be judged on their merits by the
circumstances which surround them. But with reference to places of
wide resort, nothing can beat the hotels of the Havana in filth,
discomfort, habits of abomination, and absence of everything which
the traveler desires. All the world does not go to the Havana, and
the subject is not therefore one of general interest. But in
speaking of hotels at large, so much I find myself bound to say.
In all the countries to which I have alluded the guests of the house
are expected to sit down together at one table. Conversation is at
any rate possible; and there is the show, if not the reality, of
society.
And now one word as to English inns. I do not think that we
Englishmen have any great right to be proud of them. The worst
about them is that they deteriorate from year to year, instead of
becoming better. We used to hear much of the comfort of the old
English wayside inn, but the old English wayside inn has gone. The
railway hotel has taken its place; and the railway hotel is too
frequently gloomy, desolate, comfortless, and almost suicidal. In
England, too, since the old days are gone, there are wanting the
landlord's bow and the kindly smile of his stout wife. Who now
knows the landlord of an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no
there be a landlady? The old welcome is wanting; and the cheery,
warm air, which used to atone for the bad port and tough beef, has
passed away - while the port is still bad and the beef too often
tough.
In England, and only in England as I believe, is maintained in hotel
life the theory of solitary existence. The sojourner at an English
inn - unless he be a commercial traveler, and as such a member of a
universal, peripatetic tradesman's club - lives alone. He has his
breakfast alone, his dinner alone, his pint of wine alone, and his
cup of tea alone. It is not considered practicable that two
strangers should sit at the same table or cut from the same dish.
Consequently his dinner is cooked for him separately, and the hotel
keeper can hardly afford to give him a good dinner. He has two
modes of life from which to choose. He either lives in a public
room - called a coffee-room - and there occupies, during his
comfortless meal, a separate small table, too frequently removed
from fire and light, though generally exposed to draughts, or else
he indulges in the luxury of a private sitting-room, and endeavors
to find solace on an old horse-hair sofa, at the cost of seven
shillings a day. His bed-room is not so arranged that he can use it
as a sitting-room.
