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.
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