Hôtel d'Angleterre

“ Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever.
MARSEILLES. Hotel d'Angleterre, January 15th.—On Tuesday morning, (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly ordered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent hall, in any palace, than the dining-saloon, with its profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compartments ”

“ On one side of us is the King’s Head, whose steep tiled roof and square front has just that air of respectable importance that one expects to find in an old-established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. ”

“ And where the old palaces stood in Tudor days, stand now enormous hotels—the palaces of our own day—each newer hotel in its turn eclipsing the other in size, magnificence, expense. The picturesque "Savoy," with its (p. 33) river balconies, the stately "Cecil," with its wonderful banqueting halls, and, further from the river, the spacious "Métropole," the "Grand," the "Victoria." All these hotels are so recent as to impress one fact upon us—the fact that London has really only lately become a tourist haunt. ”

“ It is an exceedingly picturesque old structure of red brick, with conspicuously fine chimney-stacks. The buildings enclose a beautiful courtyard full of the richest architectural detail. The dining-hall is oak-panelled almost to the ceiling, and contains oak tables, benches, and stools. The chapel in the north-east corner contains an alms-box and a "Vinegar" Bible, and two of the windows are remarkable for their fine old glass.
The Angel Hotel in the High Street is built over a thirteenth-century crypt and contains much panelling. ”

“ These hotels are, next to the cathedrals, perhaps the greatest wonder of England, and in Manchester the railway hotel is in some ways more wonderful than the cathedral, which is not so much planned on our native methods. Yet this has the merit, if it is a merit, of antedating our Discovery by nearly a century, and pre-historically it is indefinitely older. ”

“ Although the spread eagle figures largely as the patron genius of American hotels, still nine-tenths of them bear the names of states, counties, towns, or national or local celebrities. But here natural history comes out strong and wide. The heraldry of sovereigns, aristocracy, gentry, commercial and industrial interests, puts up its various arms upon hundreds of inns in town and country. All occupations and recreations are well represented. Thus no country in the world approaches England in the wide scope and play of hotel nomenclature. ”

“ Statistics, indeed, show now that London attracts more visitors than any other great European town. Twenty-five years ago, it was as hard to find a good, clean, and thoroughly satisfactory London hotel, as it was to get a cup of tea for less than sixpence; or, indeed, a good one at all! But times have changed. Big hotels now, like flats, threaten to be overdone. We can well imagine the disappointment of the foreign visitor to London on discovering the names and uses of the fine buildings that adorn the river front between Westminster and Blackfriars. ”

“ In general, all the rooms on each floor must resemble each other, possessing the same advantages. If one has a balcony, all must have balconies. There must be no sacrificing of the amenities of a room here and there to demands of variety or balance in the elevation. Again, the hotel must be relatively lofty—not because of lack of space, but to facilitate a complex service. The kitchens of Buckingham Palace may be a quarter of a mile from the dining-room, and people will say, “How wonderful!” ”

“ The almost universal defect of the older class of hotels in London is, that they are too often private dwellings extemporized for purposes of public accommodation—not buildings erected with the distinct object for which they are used. Hence the London hotels, generally, are confined and awkward in their arrangements—a huddle of apartments on different levels, narrow passages, and the offensive odour of cookery being common. Rarely is there anything to parallel the larger hotels of New York, or the Hotel du Louvre at Paris. ”

“ If it cannot be said altogether to open a new era in the history of hotels in this country, it makes at least a distinct advance in the character of English hotel accommodation.... The distinctively English hotel is a dismal and cheerless place, where one feels cut off from all human sympathy. ”

“ To complain is to draw forth the ill-disguised contempt of bibulous head-waiters and the stiff apologies of haughty proprietors. But beyond that mortal man will never get, because the English hotel is an immemorial and conservative institution, and as wise in its own conceit as the ancient sphinx. Of late and in London attempts have been made to organise hotels adapted to the best kind of requirement. ”

“ The hotel of the Northern Eagle, situated in one of the most respectable of the numerous small streets between the Rue St Honoré and the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, is one of several hundred establishments of the class, scattered over Paris, and which, although bearing the ambitious title of “hotel,” differ in no essential respect from what in London are styled third or fourth rate lodging-houses. ”

“ A short, brisk ride, of little more than a couple of miles, brought us to the celebrated Star and Garter Hotel,A at Richmond Hill, where one of the most beautiful English landscapes in the vicinity of London can be obtained. The hotel, which was situated upon a high terrace, commanded an extensive view of the Thames far below it, in its devious windings through a wooded country of hill and dale, with Windsor Castle in the distance. This house, so famed in novels and plays, is the resort of the aristocracy ”

“ After one week I returned to London “like a lion refreshed,” and I shall always say, as everybody in London says, “there’s a beautiful air at Margate.”{97}
TWO BRIGHTON HOTELS.
The company that owns the Grand Hotel and the Métropole in London, opened in March, 1890, a magnificent house at Brighton, on the English southern sea coast. “Magnificent” is the word. It is built of stone; it faces the sea; it has an acre or two at the back laid out in gardens, tennis courts, and pretty walks, after the style of the United States Hotel at Saratoga ”

“ This royal palace and park is to London what St. Cloud is to Paris. The palace stands on the banks of the Thames, and when completed, in 1526, for the great Cardinal, it contained 282 apartments, and as many beds. The Great Hall is inferior to none in England, and is ornamented with stained-glass windows, stags' heads, spears, flags, trophies, figures of men-at-arms, and other medieval ornaments, and the walls are hung with tapestry, depicting the story of the Patriarch Abraham's life. The largest grape-vine in the world grows in the park, and extends over a space of 3,000 feet. ”

“ A Rich and Royal Suite.—Taken as a whole, there are more prettily furnished bedrooms in Long’s Hotel, London, than in any other hotel I have ever seen. The tower rooms in the Oglethorpe, at Brunswick, Georgia, are large and remarkably beautiful, and the bridal suite in the Ponce de Leon is supposed to be very choice, but the Ponce de Leon “show” apartments will not compare in beauty nor in completeness of detail with the bridal suite in Hotel del Coronado. ”

“ The finest of all the public buildings of the British government in London, the Houses of Parliament, are on the bank of the Thames in Westminster, and are of modern construction. The old Parliament Houses were burnt nearly fifty years ago, and Sir Charles Barry designed the present magnificent palace, which covers nearly eight acres and cost $20,000,000. The architecture is in the Tudor style, and the grand façade stretches nine hundred and forty feet along a terrace fronting on the Thames. ”

“ During the past twelve years, however, many superb buildings for hotel purposes have been erected in the English metropolis. Among the largest and most popular are the three grouped together, as it were, in one short street, Northumberland avenue, which, only two blocks long, extends in a southerly direction from Trafalgar square to the banks of the Thames. These are the Grand, the Métropole and the Victoria, to name them in the order they were erected. ”

“ To-day, when we stand on Westminster Bridge or Lambeth Bridge, and survey the huge building which provides London with one of its greatest landmarks, we are looking at a new Palace: from the River not a stone of the old structure is visible. A magnificent Palace it is too! Its towers, one at each end, rise high into the air, one of them 320 feet high, the other 20 feet more; and its buildings cover a matter of 8 acres. ”

“ Such a family now frankly goes into one of the hotels which abound in London, of a type combining more of the Continental and American features than the traits of the old English hotel, which was dark, cold, grim, and silently rapacious, heavy In appointments and unwholesome in refection. The new sort of hotel is apt to be large, but it is of all sizes, and it offers a home reasonably cheerful on inclusive terms not at all ruinous. ”

“ Situated in a commanding position, underlooking the Heath, this hotel is positively the deepest in London. The Management has decided to extend the accommodation during one week in each month by offering beds on the steps of the staircase. No one has ever been known to walk either up or down this staircase, and patrons are therefore assured of an uninterrupted night's repose. ”

“ That is not only the smartest hotel in London, but it is the most typically British. The rooms are let from season to season to the best country families. There you will find yourself plunged headlong into English life with not an American environment to bless yourself with, and you will soon get your English point of view. ”

“ Gawky though this hotel is, and very uncertain in its use of French precedent, contemporaries generally recognized its inspiration as derived from the period of Louis XIV. The complex massing and the broken skyline, with roofs of different heights and pavilion-like towers at the ends, are much more obviously a premonition of the Second Empire mode in the form the world outside France would shortly adopt it than were the London and New York houses of two years earlier. ”

“ Buckingham Palace, the London residence of the monarch, is the most familiar of all the royal palaces to the general British public, in so far as everyone, sooner or later, migrates to London. Unfortunately the spectator sees only a somewhat depressing and stereotyped building, lacking the majestic proportions of Windsor and the stately beauty of Hampton Court, representing, indeed, the very lowest ebb of English architecture. ”

“ The night has closed, a full English moon floats silently in the heavens, white snowy powder hangs over our heads like a film of lace—the clock-tower at Westminster Palace booms out the hour of midnight over the dark surface of the Thames, and we escape from the bustle of that vile dancing hall with gladness. ”

“ Not far from the bridge, in old Palace Yard, stands Westminster Hall.
p. 5354. Westminster Hall
Is thought to be the largest room in Europe unsupported by pillars, being two hundred and seventy feet in length, and seventy-four in breadth. The roof is of curious workmanship in oak, and reminds the beholders of a grove of trees, whose top branches extend toward each other till they unite. A great feast was held in this vast apartment, and other rooms of the palace, in the days of King Richard the Second, who is said to have entertained ten thousand guests, with his usual hospitality. ”

“ One may well stay a day at the hotel, than which there are few in England more comfortable, more beautifully located, or better in appointment.
We have covered three thousand miles in our wanderings and a certain weariness possesses us. We feel that a rest of a day or two will not come [Pg 188] amiss, and no place within reach appeals to us as old York. To our notion the resort towns with their ostentatious hotels—Harrogate and Ilkley are nearer—cannot compare with the cathedral city and its Station Hotel as a place where one may be at ease. ”

“ In fact, no one would suppose that it was a palace at all were it not for the soldiers, in red uniforms, [Pg 145] which are to be seen at all times walking to and fro, or standing sentry, before their little boxes, at every door and gateway.
Buckingham Palace, on the other hand, is farther out of town. It stands by itself, on the margin of one of the immense parks for which London is so famous—or, rather, on the margin of two of them. ”

“ The sky-scrapers, Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Garden, and some vast rocketing hotels offer themselves rather shrinkingly for the contrast with those miles of imperial and municipal architecture which in London make you forget the leagues of mean little houses, and remember the palaces, the law-courts, the great private mansions, the dignified and shapely flats, the large department stores, the immense hotels, the bridges, the monuments of every kind. ”

“ The Royal Hotel, which is contiguous to the Station, has undergone thorough alteration, and every care has been taken to adopt all modern improvements, with a view of securing to travellers and families every accommodation which a first-class hotel can afford. It is fitted up in a style of elegance which renders it one of the most complete establishments of the kind in the kingdom, and in every way suited for visitors of the highest grade of society; it is fit to accommodate Royalty itself, and we opine the day is not far distant when it will be honoured with such illustrious guests. ”