Ritz Hotel

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The two officials had reference, however, to two different grades of lodging-houses. The cost of a night's lodging makes the difference. There is a wider gap between the "hotel "--they are all hotels--that charges a quarter and the one that furnishes a bed for a dime than between the bridal suit e and the every-day hall bedroom of the ordinary hostelry.
The metropolis is to lots of people like a lighted candle to the moth. It attracts them in swarms that come year after year with the vague idea that they can get along here if anywhere; that something is bound to turn up among so many. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The appointments of the place are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the Friederichsbad and infesting it.
We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in Baden-Baden—the Hôtel de France—and alongside my room I had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always went to bed just two hours after me and always got up two hours ahead of me. But this is common in German hotels; the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get up long before eight. ”

“ In shape Arundell Street is exactly like one of those flat stone jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability stand for generations to come. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lay floating many a rood,"
and two of us later signalize a stroll by becoming lost,—lost in Luz. We look helplessly down along the lanes and neat streets for the familiar little porch over the Gave and the open space in front and the overhanging eaves of our hotel. Gone the church, gone the store of the shoes and soap, gone the carriage-shed, the Hotel de l'Univers,—all landmarks gone. It is not until we are driven to the humiliation of actually asking our way, that the alleys are unraveled and show us safely home, into the scoffs and contumely of the unregenerate. ”

“ Of all this quasi-home life which belonged to the old inn of the past, the hotel of the present has not a trace. For certain forms of luxury the modern hotel is hard to beat. Thick carpets deaden the footsteps of stragglers through the corridors, and your boots, invariably kicked into infinities by midnight guests, do not—as they do in the older houses—fly noisily along the bare boards. The rooms are lighted with electric light, but usually set so high as to be useless for all purposes of reading or working. In the drawing-room are luxurious chairs of all shapes and sizes ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-room table. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turned back. And then—me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the dark downtown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. The dingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reach over that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell of disinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you. ”

“ This generally consists of a fair-sized room in which are a dozen or more little round wooden tubs where men, women and children all gather at the same time and perform their daily ablutions.
This, briefly, is the lay-out which a traveller finds when he stays at a Japanese hotel. As much of a novelty as it was for Richardson and me to experience the sensations of this kind of inn, it was an equal novelty for the Japanese to have us as guests. We often encountered considerable difficulty in convincing the proprietor that we really wished to stay [Pg 47] at his hotel. ”

“ The Sanatarium Hotel, which is always filled with sallow-faced officials and planters from the plains, consists of a large main building built in the Swiss chalet style and numerous bungalows set amid a gorgeous garden of old-fashioned flowers. Every bedroom has a bath—but such a bath!—a damp, gloomy, cement-lined cell having in one corner a concrete cistern, filled with ice-cold mountain water. The only furniture is a tin dipper. ”

“ This hotel, "magnifique construction ornee de statues," as the Guide-Joanne, usually so reticent, takes the trouble to announce, has an omnibus, and, I suppose, has statues, though I didn't perceive them; but it has very little else save immemorial accumulations of dirt. It is magnificent, if you will, but it is not even relatively proper; and a dirty inn has always seemed to me the dirtiest of human things, - it has so many opportunities to betray itself. ”

“ After so many weeks of wandering, I have settled down to a job again. The last six “huts” in which I have been were in a barracks, a casino, a private house, a convent, a college and a hospital. This “hut” is in a hotel. The hotel is situated directly back of the Conflans-Jamy railroad station. Before the war the hotel was a prosperous and pleasant place, judging from the photograph which Madame showed us; its windows filled with real lace curtains all matching! as she pointed out; the broad terrace in front on sunny days filled with little tables and crowded with well-dressed people. ”

“ The doctor did not see the necessity of my removal on such grounds. The lady herself did not wish it—in fact, would not hear of it; he pooh-poohed the “peculiarity” of the “situation,” good Doctor Reigart!—the accommodation of the hotel was none of the best; besides, it was already crowded with other sufferers; and here the speaker’s voice sank so low I could only catch odd phrases, as “stranger,”, “not an American,” “lost everything,” “friends far away,” “the hotel no place for a man without money.” Gayarre’s reply to this last objection was that he would be responsible for my hotel bill. ”

“ My belongings were bundled into the attendant ’bus and I was rattled off to one of the best hotels I saw abroad—the National—of the Ritz-Carlton system; very quiet, very ornate, and with all those conveniences and comforts which the American has learned to expect, plus a European standard of service and politeness of which we can as yet know nothing in America.
I am afraid I have an insatiable appetite for natural beauty. I am entertained by character, thrilled by art, but of all the enlarging spiritual influences the natural panorama is to me the most important. ”