Pension (hotel)

“ In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, and supposing people are constantly on the wing, they will find that upon the whole the saving is not large, but that, in any view, there is a clear advantage in using them in large and expensive towns such as Marseilles and Nice.
However, if it be intended to stay long enough in a hotel to warrant going upon pension, it can frequently be arranged to obtain pension at the same rate as is payable for the coupons, the effect of which is that lunch is thrown into the bargain, saving 3 francs per day. ”

“ If you go to a large hotel, with all its luxuries, you will pay anything from £1 a day upwards, and this may not include sports tax, etc. The smaller hotels will probably make arrangements for pension at about 16 francs, or even 14 francs, or less, per day, but may not be very comfortable, and comfort is important in winter. It is particularly necessary that the hotel should be well heated, as the drying of Ski-ing clothes is a very important point. ”

“ The French and Spanish form the bulk of the visitors during August and September, these months constituting, par excellence, what is called the season, while during the winter months the English take possession. In the winter months the hotel charges undergo great modification, and pension can then be had in some of the best hotels at 7 francs per day. [45] It is noteworthy that pension at Biarritz and Pau, and elsewhere in the south of France, includes wine. House accommodation, too, in the winter months is correspondingly cheap. ”

“ Chapter Thirty Seven.
The Hôtel des Bergues is certainly a splendid establishment; many people winter at this hotel in preference to going to a pension, which is, with the best arrangements, disagreeable, for you are obliged to conform to the usages and customs, and to take your meals at certain hours, hungry or not hungry, as if it were a pension of school-boys and girls, and not grown up people. The price demanded is the same as at the pensions, viz 200 francs, or 8 pounds per month, which includes everything but wine and fuel. The establishment is certainly very well conducted. ”

“ You going to Gèneva?"
"Yes."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"We expect to stop in a pension."
"I don't hardly believe you'll like that: there's very few Americans in the pensions. What hotel are you stopping at here?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"O, yes, I asked you that before, too. But I always ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so I've got my head all mixed up with hotels. But it makes talk, and I love to talk. It refreshes me up so,—don't it you—on a trip like this?" ”

“ When this takes place, the applications are either refused, or the visitors are accommodated in dependencies, which are either houses or chalets attached to the hotel, or in some cases simply houses in the villages in which the natives can spare a room, and therefore not always desirable. Pension in Italy and France is charged at a little higher rate than in Switzerland. We found that, upon an average, 10 or 12 francs a day was the [65] charge in these countries; but according to the accommodation, it would either rise above or fall below this rate, varying from 8 to 15 or 16 francs per day. ”

“ For two or three persons, it is upon calculation of the cost much less expensive, and in every respect more desirable, to take quarters in a hotel, where, if a servant be brought, the usual charge for pension for her or him is 5 francs, or at most 6 francs, and occasionally, though rarely, 4 francs per day. ”

“ Pension Etcherbest, in the Passage Planté Hôtel de Londres, on the route de Billères; and Maison Colbert, in the Rue Montpensier.
Well knowing the comfort of a good pension, and intending to make a long stay, we drove straight from the station to the well-known Maison Colbert, and were soon as comfortable as we could wish. There are many people we are aware who detest "pensions." "We don't approve," say they, "of meals at fixed hours, of a drawing-room common to all, and of such a small house that everybody must know everyone else before the first dinner is over!" Well! why should they? ”

“ Nevertheless, three hours elapsed before we returned to the hotel. We found the father and Margaret leaning their heads out of a corridor window, and when we asked them what they were about, she replied, "We have been wishing that the grand old mansion in yonder village were only a pension, where we could obtain rooms. But have you met with any success?"
"A pension! That sounds like Meran or Switzerland, instead of this primitive Pusterthal. Only let us have tea, and we will tell you what we have done." ”

“ The rate of pension varies according to the hotel and to the floor, and runs from 8 to 16 francs per day, exclusive of wine, candles, and firewood.
To those who prefer taking either a furnished house or rooms in a lodging-house, choice of villas or rooms can be had in abundance at very varying rates, but generally, like the hotels, high. The number of villas is constantly on the increase. When last in Mentone, there were no fewer than about 250. During a bad season, many remain unlet. ”

“ I never forget the pension in the Rue Madame. Thankfully it is still a reality. During the past decade it has housed our mothers and sisters and cousins and friends. We have gone there to see them. And we go there to see our first warm friend in Paris and her husband and children. From time to time we have a meal in the old dining-room. We hope the pension will not disappear or will not be converted into too grand a hotel. For us it is a Paris landmark.
CHAPTER VI
LARES AND PENATES IN THE RUE SERVANDONI WE spent the first anniversary of our wedding in Egypt. ”

“ Sometimes hotelkeepers make such excessive demands as practically to be prohibitive. Thus at Baveno we found the charge for a carriage and pair for a simple drive to be 8 francs the first hour and 5 francs for each hour thereafter. At Chateau d’Œx, in other respects one of the cheapest places we have visited, we were told by some of the young people at the hotel, that, wishing to go one evening to have a dance at a neighbouring pension in the village, not an eighth of a mile distant, but on an acclivity, [95] the hotelkeeper asked for the double drive no less than 20 francs. ”

“ All these hotels have a south exposure, and are greatly run after in winter. Charge from 10 to 16 frs. per day, according to the room. The following charge from 9 to 13 frs., and are situated in the new streets a little way back from the Arno, and near the Cascine or Park of Florence (north-west side of plan) :—Hôtel and Pension Corona d’Italia, Via Montebello; Hôtel and Pension Iles Britanniques in No. 42; and Hôtel and Pension Venise in No. 33 Via della Scala. In the Iles Britanniques are also furnished apartments at from 250 frs. to 400 frs. per month. ”

“ I must add that I cannot find in my heart to object, even on grounds the most æsthetic, to the very beautiful and excellent inn at Ilfracombe, where such of my readers as are perchance actually wrestling with the question of “where to go” may be interested to learn that they may live en pension, very well indeed, at a cost of ten shillings a day. I have paid the American hotel-clerk a much heavier tax on a much lighter entertainment. ”

“ This can be reduced by travelling 3rd class in England and Switzerland, where at any rate it is quite possible to travel 3rd class on any mountain railway.
In addition to the expense of Pension at an hotel and of the journey, at least £5 will probably be required for local railway fares, subscription to entertainment fund, baths, gratuities, hire of Skis, lessons, guides, etc. £30 ought to cover a fortnight, and £35 three weeks, and a good deal less can be reckoned if a smaller hotel be chosen.
Most of the Sports Hotels will now quote an inclusive price per day, to which at least 10 per cent. ”

“ At hotels, the rule, sometimes relaxed for a party, is that people are not taken on pension under a week. A similar rule prevails in pensions proper, and indeed during pension season it is usually necessary to secure quarters in pensions proper, and even in hotels, by writing for rooms some considerable time previously. ”

“ Indeed, the accommodations are [Pg 423] often such that a person cannot be rendered comfortable, and yet the price paid would command all the comforts of a good boarding house in a large town. It is the same case with the hotels, or saloons, at some railroad depots. At others an abundance of life's good things is furnished. The tavern keepers of London have a pension society. ”

“ Nothing could well be more paltry, dishonest and irritating than such a system, for even the seaside lodging-house keepers’ extras are not nearly so annoying. Fortunately the better class of hotels have abolished the system altogether. You know what you have to pay, and even if you feel that the old extras are added in, that is not half so irritating as the old system.
One of the strangest things that I have noted in my hotel experience is the inferiority of the Temperance Hotel. ”

“ She cannot even estimate the value of the wage she is to receive in the majority of jobs. This is due to two uncertain elements in the earnings of hotel workers; tipping and compensation other than money in the form of board and room. Because she is not in a position to gauge the amount of the tips she will receive and the quality of the board and lodging, the only recourse of the applicant is to try out the job for a time. “Well, I’ll try it out for a week and see how I make out,” is the common expression of the new worker. ”

“ Up to the time during the Civil War, when the cost of living was advanced, the highest price per day for transients was two dollars, but on the claim that the cost of maintaining a boarder had doubled, the daily charge was doubled, and consequently the profits were also doubled. In 1845 I boarded at the United States Hotel, and paid for room and board five dollars a week, and during the winters of 1858 and 1859, while in the Senate, I boarded at the Tremont House and paid for board and room eight dollars per week. It is true that the comforts and conveniences in hotels have vastly improved. ”

“ The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up to a considerable total in the course of a year. The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling salary, and a portier who pays the hotel a salary. By the latter system both the hotel and the public save money and are better served than by our system. One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlin hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position, and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself. ”

“ Congress passed a law whereby those people receiving pensions, who entered soldiers’ homes or hospitals had to pay that money either to the superintendent of the hospital, the President of the Soldiers’ Home, or the Governor of the Home, to be cared for the benefit of the pensioner. Those who had beneficiaries at home received the benefit of their portion of the pension under supervision of the Pension Office, the Pension Office having machinery to find out what beneficiaries had dependents, etc., and what proportion of the pension should be paid to them. ”

“ If one be but a single night at a hotel, chamber-maid, waiters, concierge, porters, conductors, and even drivers of omnibuses—all expect donations, and stand hovering about (perhaps perform useless little services) , that they may not be lost sight of. Nor is the evil less at pensions, where I have had more than once to fee no less than seven attendants, being the whole menial establishment. It becomes a very heavy tax, amounting to no small sum at the end of a long tour, as one does not like to be shabby, or thought so. ”

“ Let us look at a few of the supposed characteristics of our ‘cousins’—one and all taken from the travelling citizen of other days, but who latterly has faded into the background before the true American, and is only now to be seen in second-class hotels or lodgings. Does he ask interminable questions with the curiosity of an inquisitor, till nothing remains but a point-blank demand to know the amount of your income? If so, engage rooms in a German pension, and relate your experiences after a three days’ stay. Does he worry you to death with a skilful display of the knife-trick? ”

“ Certainly there is no country in which the guest upon reaching his hotel is treated with such laughable condescension as in this. A wretched hole of a room, shabbily furnished, the dirty walls and a suspicious bed, with a quart of water and a pocket-handkerchief of a towel, for which he is to pay four or five dollars or more daily, is awarded to the humbly expectant visitor as a high favor. A great American hotel is a penitentiary for travellers, and the gentlemen at the office are the lofty turnkeys and lord high-constables. A self-respecting man will travel here as little as possible. ”

“ In addition to all these arrangements for promoting a real community of interests between the company and its employees, there is a pension fund out of which retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages earned by the pensioner, are granted to employees who have served the company for a certain number of years, or who find themselves disabled from further service by age or by disease. ”