Royal Hotel

“ The plumbers' bills would drive them to drink, and even in the present Élysées Palace Hôtel, with all its paint, glass, and glitter, unless one has a large suite one has to walk a distance down the hall to the bath and often wait half an hour. The day may come when Europe will boast the convenience of such hotels as one finds in every American city, but she cannot do so now, and in Berlin it is reported that the Royal Palace has no bathrooms, that his Majesty's tub is behind a curtain at the end of a hall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 like an exquisite dream. The scene seems to thrill like the sweetest chords of music. The hotel is like a palace, such lovely roses, charming walks, sculpture and vases on all sides, broad flights of stone steps leading in and out of the grounds to the hotel, and around the grounds massive trees with all manner of names. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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} ”

“ With what I hope may be deemed a pardonable curiosity, we peeped and sometimes stepped into these interiors, and were gratified by the neatness and even elegance which they exhibited. We found the people remarkably civil, and apparently too much accustomed to English travellers to trouble themselves about us. The hotel was not of the best class, and we only saw some very inferior cafés, consisting of one small room, with a curtain before the open door, and on the outside a rude representation, on a board, of a coffee-pot, and a cup and saucer. ”

“ I am not now describing the London or new railway hotels, Heaven forbid! they are less comfortable, and far more expensive than those in America; but I allude to the charming “hostelries” of the olden times, some of which still exist, though “few and far between.” Thanks, however, to the kind consideration of Mr. D’Arcy, we were ushered at once to our suite of elegantly furnished rooms, only too thankful to seek and find repose in the luxurious beds of this splendid Hotel. ”

“ 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 will not be seriously argued, I suppose, that the first twenty years of grand hotels have added as much ugliness to the world’s stock of ugliness as the first twenty years of railway stations. If there exists a grand hotel as direfully squalid as King’s Cross Station (palace of an undertaking with a capital of over sixty millions sterling) I should like to see it. Hotel architecture is the outcome of a new feature in the activity of society, and this fact must be taken into account. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing, however, is to exert a vaster influence on our style than the hotel. This 'institution,' as we have it, is comparatively unknown in Europe; beyond all nations are we a travelling and hotel-building people. Our hotels have not grown up with the scant traffic of the post chaise or diligence; they overleaped that feeble infancy, and started at once with the railroad and steamboat. Large, luxurious, and well appointed, they are usually the prominent buildings in all our large cities.
But as yet it is only their size and social importance that distinguishes them, not their architecture. ”

“ Of these old-fashioned hotels,—barbarous relics of another day,—few are to be found now, and, though existing in reality, are being fast robbed of their clientièle, which demand something more in the way of conveniences—with no diminution of comforts—than it were possible to get in the two or three private houses thrown into one, and dubbed by the smugly respectable title of "Private Hotel." ”

“ They are the logical outcome of the times, the direct successors of the coaching and posting inns that originally came into existence to supply the wants, in food and lodging, of travellers set down at the places where the coaches stopped. The final expression of the coaching hostelry is still to be seen in London, in instructive company with one of the largest of the railway hotels, in the Strand, where the “Golden Cross,” built in 1832, looks upon the [Pg 73] “Charing Cross Hotel” of the South-Eastern Railway.
The management of a great modern hotel is no easy thing. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The outlook from our hotel was nearly the same as before—over a low building with a colonnade, at the masts of the abundant shipping. But there was a striking change in the interior of the hotel. It was like the other, a palace adapted to the purposes of an inn; but be-carpeted and be-furnished with an exaggeration of English fashion.
We lost no time in turning out, after breakfast, into the morning sunshine. George was enchanted with the aspect of the place, as we drove or walked along the streets. ”

“ CHAP. IV.—THE CAPTAIN'S ROOM.
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. ”

“ It is an hotel the solid comfort of which attracts many of those [Pg 270] fortunate people who have acquired large sums of money in business; and indeed it is no rare news to be told of some family who have made this hotel their home for years. The especially delightful nooks and corners, filled by lounges, with which this hotel abounds, have always pleased me much; and there is, on the ground-floor, a drawing-room with a most dignified decoration of painted silk panels, a very noble room, with a fine view over the Thames, where ladies who are pleased to do so make their own dishes of tea. ”

“ Those who are educated understand that by the "inside" of a hotel is meant everything except the four outer walls of it—the fittings, the furniture, the bar, Billy the desk-clerk, the three dining-room girls, and above all the license granted by King Edward VII., and ratified further by King George, for the sale of intoxicating liquors. ”

“ The features of the Grand Hotel, the longest established of these three, are well-known, but former patrons will scarcely recognize the reception-room, which, with its new, solid-looking furniture and rich, dark decorations, is now one of the most attractive apartments of its kind to be seen, even in these days of the upholsterer and decorator. While artistic and costly, it has an air of utility and comfort which you will not find very often repeated. ”

“ The hotels in Europe have been transformed from simple boarding houses to marble palaces, equipped with every luxury and comfort. A room and bath in any first-class hotel brought seven dollars a day and a suite of rooms at thirty was not considered extreme. Many of the restaurants were so fine and fashionable that they didn't even print prices on their bills of fare. ”

“ There are grander hotels in the world than the Grand Hotel of Paris,—but it is only in Paris that the Grand Hotel is matched and fronted in every direction by houses which in style and architecture correspond with the hotel. ”

“ The Grand Hotel, which occupies a large portion of one side of the Plaza, is an old-fashioned but very comfortable caravansary with flowery patios and lofty rooms, and a fore court in front, which is used as an open-air dining space. As rain seldom, if ever, falls upon this town, it is always safe to take a seat and a meal in this pleasant spot. ”

“ One hears that this sort of open conviviality tempts by its facility to those excesses of hospitality which are such a drain on English incomes; but again that is something of which an outsider can hardly venture to have an opinion. What is probably certain is that the modern hotel and restaurant, with their cheerful ease, are pushing the old-fashioned lodging as well as the old-fashioned hotel out of the general favor, and have already driven them to combine their attractions or repulsions on a level where they are scarcely distinguishable as separate species. ”