Hôtel Ritz

“ I lodge at the Hôtel Montesquieu, if you would know.”
“Where is that, may I ask?”
“It is in the Rue Montesquieu, but a step from here.”
“I should like, if you don’t mind, to hear something of it. I am at the Ritz, true, but in a furiously economical mood.”
“Certainly,” he answered, with perfect good-humour. “It would not suit all people; it does not even figure in the guides; but for those of an unexacting disposition—well it might serve—to pass the time. You can have your good bedroom there and your adequate petit déjeuner—nothing more. ”

“ Each hotel has its own especial merit, which to some minds would outweigh all others and render possible a decision without personal observation; many will prefer to spy out the land for themselves. It has been said that there is no really first-class hotel in Rio, but a Ritz Carlton now being constructed on the Avenida with accommodations for 1200 visitors, will be opened in 1914. As hotels are liable to be full, it is wise to telephone before going to look at rooms. ”

“ So we came to the Ritz Hotel and the Ritz Hotel is devine. Because when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is devine. I mean when a girl can sit there and look at the Dolly sisters and Pearl White and Maybelle Gilman Corey, and Mrs. Nash, it is beyond worlds. Because when a girl looks at Mrs. Nash and realizes what Mrs. Nash has got out of gentlemen, it really makes a girl hold her breath. ”

“ Suzor, on arrival, went to the Ritz, where he has a private suite, and after I had watched him safely there I took up my quarters at the Palace on the other side of the Square, and started to keep a watch upon our friend. I got the concierge at the Ritz to do something for me for which I paid him generously, so as to pave the way for information concerning Suzor, in case we may want it.”
“Good,” I said. “There’s nothing like making friends with a concierge. He knows everything about the visitors to his hotel, and about their friends also.” ”

“ Hospitality, which is still to-day greater in the East than in our more selfish Western regions, and which has, until quite recently, obviated for strangers and pilgrims the necessity for hotels, is now unable to cope with the increasing flood of visitors and wanderers; as the need becomes more pressing, so will the supply, consequent upon the demand, improve both in quality and quantity; and we have already heard of the new Taj Mahal Hotel at Bombay, the fame of which has been trumpeted through India, and which is said to rival in luxury the palaces of Ritz! ”

“ He at once remembered that he had not finished reading about his old Egyptian, and with a smoothed brow he ran into the house.
The sun had set and it was growing dark among the bushes in the garden, where the children, with red cheeks, were seeking each other and hiding again. All of a sudden there came a loud, penetrating call: "To bed, to bed!" Ritz had just found a fine hiding-place in the henhouse, where he had comfortably settled, secure from being discovered, when this terrible call reached him. ”

“ In the afternoon the long passage with its chairs, carpets, and hangings all of crushed strawberry colour is filled with tea-drinkers, for the "5 o'clock" is very popular in Paris, and the Ritz is one of the smartest if not the smartest place at which to drink tea. In the evening the big restaurant, with its ceiling painted to represent the sky and its mirrors latticed to represent windows, is always full, the contrast to a smart English restaurant being that three-quarters of the ladies dine in their hats. ”

“ The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. ”

“ Ritsky showed them through the apartment, which was roomy, furnished in good taste and artistically decorated. The floor plan was quite simple and ordinary. First came the large living-room that extended across the front of the house. This opened at the right into the dining-room and at the center into a hallway which led through to the back of the building. Behind the dining-room was the kitchen, and behind that the servant’s room. Ritsky’s bedroom was directly across the hall from the dining-room. Then came his niece’s bedroom, a spare bedroom and a bathroom. ”

“ She did not say a word as we came panting up to where she stood, but motioned that Looie bring the lamp. She preceded us into her room and nodded to a little alcove, jutting out into the broad balcony which girdled the second story of the hotel. There her trunk stood, opened. By it was a sprawling blotch of blue—the blue of the Japanese coolie’s surtout.
It was Bethell who turned the dead man over so that his coarse, simian face with its topping brush of black wire hair lay in the light. ”

“ It must have been a fairy palace at one time or other, this Hôtel du Nil, with an enchanted garden. In the day it is intolerably hot, but the mornings and evenings are simply perfection. If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this. I feel inclined to pitch my tent here, and for ever bid adieu to my native land. The dinners are all that can be desired, the bedrooms large and lofty, and the servants, who, with the exception of the German waiters, are Soudanese—tall, white-robed, with a girdle round the middle—seem to me to be the best and most attentive in the world. ”

“ Karschoff insisted. "To-day let us listen to the call of the world. Woman is at her loveliest in the spring. The Ritz Restaurant will look like a bouquet of flowers. Perhaps 'One for you and one for me.' At any rate, one is sure of an omelette one can eat."
The two men turned together towards Piccadilly.
CHAPTER IV
Luncheon at the Ritz was an almost unexpectedly pleasant meal. ”

“ Life in hotels has done away with the intimacy of the home, and whereas formerly one only invited to dine at a restaurant people one would not have cared to entertain in one’s own house, now it is the reverse, and those whom it is desired to honour are asked to lunch or to supper at the Ritz or the Meurice, or some other fashionable place of the same kind. ”

“ Richardson's, a large hotel on Conti-street, is a bachelor establishment, where the up-country merchants usually put up, when they arrive in the city to purchase goods; though many of them, from choice or economy, remain as boarders or lodgers on board the steamers which bring them to New-Orleans, and on which, with their goods, they return to their homes. Young unmarried men here, usually have single furnished rooms, where they lodge, breakfast, and sup, dining at some hotel. ”

“ There are hardly enough of them to give each other confidence.
At the Ritz things are different. There one is likely to see the most famous half-world beauties of Paris drinking tea, and at the Elysées the percentage of notoriety is still greater than at the Ritz.
They love dearly to range themselves alongside of the haut monde, these cocottes of Paris, but they like a large and varied scene, a certain amount of moral—or immoral—support. The restricted intimacy of a rendezvous like Columbin's is not to their taste. ”

“ During the ensuing twenty years Lytham made steady, if not rapid, progress. Buildings of modern and pretty designs sprang up along the beach, whilst others of substantial workmanship were visible in the lines of various thoroughfares, especially in Clifton Street. The two hotels already specified, underwent enlargements, owing to the growing pressure on their accommodation, and a fresh inn, the Commercial, was erected on the land behind the present Market Hotel, the front and main entrance of the house having an easterly aspect, overshadowed by several lofty trees. ”

“ A good deal of building is going on outside the city walls. There is no scaffolding, no hodman with bricks and mortar; the solid stone walls seem to grow up in the most hopeless confusion. Of course you see no decent carriages. Around the door of the hotel there is a daily collection of donkeys and horses and carriages, the last all white with dust and of the most rickety character. One would think they would fall to pieces over the bad roads, almost as bad as those of Constantinople ”

“ To call it "the best hotel in the world" is to show a false conception of excellence as applied to hotels, but it presented everything that German luxury could demand.
We were given a row of excellent rooms on the first floor, with long windows opening on to a terrace which roofed the great restaurant, and whence there was a noble prospect. We went to bed early, and soon the whole vast establishment seemed wrapped in velvet silence. Not a sound broke in the dark warm summer night, not even a whisper from the river. Suddenly an amazing, an unintelligible riot woke the row of us from slumber. ”

“ Cardinal de Retz has told us, that the dinner-bell never fails to disperse a mob in France, and if English travellers are to be believed, it seldom fails to bring one together in an American hotel; but as a social summons, no such tocsin breaks the uniformity of the English ménage. The traveller may dine indeed in the public room, but it is at a separate table, on his separate repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases, but no contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can remove the impalpable but impassable partition which divides him from his neighbors. ”

“ Madeleine detained him.
"First let me explain to you the arrangements I propose making. If the countess will condescend to remain here, I will have the drawing-room, which opens into the room Count Tristan occupies, made into a bed-chamber for her. The apartment beyond is the dining-room. This little boudoir can be converted into a chamber for you. There is an apartment upstairs which I will occupy; and, as Bertha cannot remain at the hotel alone, I shall be truly happy if she will share my room, or that of the countess." ”

“ It only means that the hotels are improving. The truth is that as the typical old-fashioned hotel was built and conducted in America, with the main entrance opening directly from the street into the large paved lobby, where men congregated at all hours of the day to talk politics and to spit, where the porters banged and trundled luggage, and whither, through the door opening to one side, came the clamour of the bar-room, it was out of the question that women should frequent that common entrance. ”

“ It is one of the strangest features of French hotels that dressing-tables are not included in any suite of bedroom furniture; there are looking-glasses by the score, there are handsome marble slabs bearing ornate clocks that do not go, there are gorgeous armoires à glace, but never a good, commonplace, useful dressing-table. French people seem to do without them in the same simple, uncomplaining way that they do without baths.
We cannot pretend to say we slept well in our opera-box. Everything in the hotel seemed to stay up{23} ”

“ But if a pot of tea had to be carried a quarter of a mile in a grand hotel, from the kitchen to a bedroom, people would say, “How absurd!” or, “How stewed!” The “layer” system of architecture is from all points of view indispensable to the grand hotel, and its scenic disadvantages must be met by the exercise of ingenuity. There are other problems confronting the hotel architecture, such as the fitting together of very large public rooms with very small private rooms, and the obligation to minimise externally a whole vital department of the hotel (the kitchens, etc.) ”

“ For the old inn is to be pulled down, in the interest of street-widening, and a new hotel, with all the modern improvements, is to take its place. Visitors will hardly find themselves so comfortable among the marble and the gilding, and though one might not particularly miss the ghost of the hanged man, there are old associations which one will miss. A week ago the King's Arms was like the room in which Little Nell lies sleeping, in the beautiful illustration to one of the earliest chapters of "The Old Curiosity Shop" in the original edition ”

“ With the exception of the Washington street frontage and about 100 feet fronting on Avery street, which will be used for stores, the entire building will be devoted to the purposes of a first-class commercial hotel. On the first floor will be the office, reading-room, large public dining-room and buffet. In the basement, under the corner of Haymarket place and Avery street, there will be a rathskeller, entered both from the hotel and from the street, with the kitchens, serving-rooms, etc., in the rear, under the hotel lobby. ”

“ Long, low, dazzling with white colonnades, verandas, and balconies which retained, however, enough of the dampness of recent creation to make them too cool for loungers, except at high noon, the hotel nevertheless had the charms of freshness, youth, and cleanliness. Reddy's fastidious neatness showed itself in all the appointments, from the mirrored and marbled barroom, gilded parlors, and snowy dining-room, to the chintz and maple furnishing of the bedrooms above. ”

“ You must think of something dreadful, like a large fire, when everything is burnt up, the fortress and the soldiers in it and all historical books, and—all at once you think everything backwards and you have everything; then you are so glad that you think: what difference does a rabbit make? You still have everything else. Now Ritz, try that and see if it helps you, then you can find out whether everything passes away or whether you have to tell Daddy tomorrow."
"Yes, I will try it," said Ritz somewhat indistinctly, and soon after he took such deep breaths that Edi knew what was going on. ”