Part 5

The speed on Continental railways is, as compared with that on English railways, very slow. There are what are called express trains, but these express trains do not attain the celerity of our ordinary trains. For example, the express which leaves Paris at 11 A.M. reaches Mentone the following day at 3.50 P.M.—that is, 690 miles in twenty–nine hours, or at the rate of 24 miles per hour; and for long journeys like this in France, first–class tickets must be taken. Express trains are not, however, always to be had, and one is doomed frequently to long and tiresome journeys. To go from Nismes to Toulouse, our train took ten hours, stopping at thirty different stations by the way between Cette and Toulouse, with twenty minutes to dine at Narbonne, the previous part of the journey between Nismes and Cette, a short distance, having been express. The distance is only 298 kilometres, or about 186 miles for the whole journey, the rate of speed between Cette and Toulouse being thus only between 14 and 15 miles per hour. In like manner eight hours were consumed in the journey between Pau and Toulouse, which is about 130 miles, or rather more than 16 miles per hour. Not only is the speed slow, but at any station at which the trains stop, there is a detention for an apparently useless length of time. Occasionally long stoppages occur also where the lines are single only. In one short journey of 37 miles between St. Sebastian in Spain and Biarritz, two hours were lost from this cause by waiting at two stations for trains from the other end to pass. More powerful locomotives were promised upon the line between Paris and Marseilles, by which it was expected the journey of 536 miles might be accomplished in twelve hours; but they do not yet appear to have been placed upon it.

If, however, the speed be less, the security is greater. We seldom hear of accidents on the Continental lines.

There are peculiarities about the French trains which render it necessary to study the _Indicateur_ very carefully, as some trains take only first–class passengers, and others have no first class; and although the first train going may be taken, it does not follow that it will be the first to arrive at the destination. A still further and annoying peculiarity is, that the railway company by first–class express trains will not always book to every station on the line at which they stop. Thus a friend left Mentone for Heidelberg. On arrival at Marseilles, he found himself compelled to book to Paris to get on. Thence he went to Strasbourg. Nor would it be possible to leave the line at Lyons, because the luggage would be registered to Paris.

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The arrangements of the railways in regard to stations correspond in some degree with our own; but they have their specialties, into which I need not enter. The system of _salles–d’attente_ and of registration of luggage necessitate stations being built on a much larger scale than our own. Sometimes tickets are collected before arriving at the _gare_, but more frequently are inconveniently taken at the narrow _sortie_ or _uscita_ from the passengers encumbered with luggage. Outside the station a host of porters and _commissionaires_ of hotels is immediately encountered, and beyond this crowd, often largely swelled by mere idle onlookers, and perhaps by an occasional pickpocket, a long line of omnibuses and cabs. It is the practice in many, perhaps most places, for every hotel to keep an omnibus which goes to the station for every train. Probably there is some jealousy lest cab–drivers or general omnibus conductors might beguile or be bribed to beguile the visitors to certain hotels; but whether it be from this cause or from ostentation, the consequence is that there is waiting for employment a number of conveyances altogether out of proportion to the number of passengers requiring conveyance. I have counted at Mentone, waiting arrival of a train, twenty omnibuses, inclusive of a general one, with their respective drivers and conductors, and nearly as many cabs; while the number of passengers leaving the train would not exceed twenty in all, of whom probably not three would require conveyance. The maintenance of these omnibuses must be attended with heavy expense to the hotelkeepers; and although it can by no means pay for the expense, the charge against the visitor is heavy. The general omnibus, with a few specially–adapted cabs, would suffice in most places for all the traffic. It is melancholy to see the almost hourly procession of empty ‘buses, relieved only occasionally by one of them exhibiting in triumph a solitary occupant, and perhaps bearing five or six large boxes on its top. In Paris and Toulouse, and some other places, there are little district or family omnibuses holding four or six persons, unconnected with any hotel—a far better arrangement.

The charge for a seat in the omnibus is usually, in a town or general omnibus, without luggage, either 30 or 50 centimes; with luggage, 1 franc. The hotel omnibuses never charge less than 1 franc per person; and with luggage it is usually 1½ francs. If a party consist of four, it has thus to pay 6 francs or 5s. for the drive to the hotel, which is expensive; and it is much cheaper, if there be not heavy luggage, for which the cabs are seldom adapted, to take a cab. This cannot easily be done at leaving the hotel, as the guests are expected to employ the hotel omnibus, which is charged as matter of course in the bill.

We experienced at Rome a curious species of imposition. Not finding a carriage which would have taken our luggage, we entered the general omnibus, for which the fare for three persons was, the conductor told us, 3 francs, and drove to the house where we expected to obtain quarters. It turned out to be full, and I left the omnibus, crossed the street on foot and inquired at two hotels, at the second of which I found accommodation, and the omnibus brought across the luggage. The conductor demanded 10 francs for what he called the several courses, and I was glad, with the assistance of the landlord of the hotel, to arrange for 6 francs; but we were afterwards informed that this conductor was notorious for such practices.

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It is sometimes desired to send luggage or boxes by goods trains _petite vitesse_. I had occasion to do so from Lyons to Mentone. A declaration was, by aid of the landlord of our hotel, filled up, containing, among other particulars, the general contents of the boxes which he sent to the goods office, and they were duly forwarded to their destination. The time taken in the transit varies and depends on circumstances—it may be weeks. It is therefore never safe to send off by goods train luggage which may be immediately wanted. The cost of carriage is so much per 50 kilogrammes; all below the 50 is charged the same as 50. For this weight between Lyons and Mentone, I paid 5½ francs. Between Paris and Mentone it would have been 7 to 8 francs; between Marseilles and Mentone, 3 francs. These figures will give an approximate idea of the cost. On leaving Mentone, the second season, I sent a box (under 50 kilogrammes weight) to Glasgow, to care of Messrs. J. and P. Cameron, railway agents, to go by _petite vitesse_ to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Glasgow, where Messrs. Cameron passed it through the customs and despatched it to Edinburgh. The total cost was 6s. 10d. A box I sent from Naples to the care of a mercantile friend in Liverpool, by whom it was passed and forwarded to Edinburgh, cost for carriage, Naples to Edinburgh, £1, 2s. 6d. This amount embraced shipping agents’ charges, and was sent as freight. Had I sent the box simply as a parcel, it would have cost 5s. 6d. less, but the shipper would not for the lesser charge undertake responsibility beyond 40s.; and looking to the thievish character of the Neapolitans, I thought it safer to pay the additional charge. The difficulty one feels about sending off things to pass a frontier, is the examination by the _douaniers_; but I believe that some of the _expediteurs_, to be found in all towns, undertake for a small fee to get this managed. I presume they procure the passing through upon the footing of known or credited respectability of the party sending. I sent to Glasgow and Liverpool an exact list of the contents of the boxes, for exhibition, if need were, to the authorities. Some of the bankers—as, for example, Messrs. Macquay, Hooker, and Co., Florence—undertake to despatch goods and works of art to any place in Europe.

II.

_CONTINENTAL HOTEL AND PENSION LIFE._

‘THE inn looked so much like a gentleman’s house that we could hardly believe it was an inn,’ is the observation made by Miss Wordsworth in her _Recollections of a Tour in Scotland in 1803_, upon arriving at one which differed signally from others, where they could hardly obtain even sleeping room, and that of the roughest kind. Books of travels do indeed afford glimpses into the state of accommodation provided for travellers in those ‘good old times,’ but they are only glimpses. People, in recounting their wanderings in their own country, seldom notice such matters, unless they find them either rather better or rather worse than the prevailing condition of things to which the force of habit has reconciled them. In truth, the inns of Great Britain in the beginning of this century were what would now be reckoned of a very humble class, and were frequently planted and to be discovered in localities which would now be considered most undesirable, and which were doubtless chosen from proximity either to markets or to the stations of stage–coach departure and arrival, if they did not themselves create them, and in positions where stabling and a stable–yard might advantageously and fitly be placed.

The introduction and development of the railway system have effected such an extraordinary increase in the amount of travelling as to have, in respect of such public accommodation, produced, or rather necessitated, a revolutionary change. The old little inn, with its rubicund jovial hail–fellow–well–met landlord and its horsey adjuncts, has in the larger towns all but disappeared, or, if left for the benefit of the antiquary as a relic and specimen of a past age, receives its chief patronage on market days from the farmers, who find it convenient to stall their animals in its stables, and enjoy a homely dinner at its moderate table. Instead of it, whole streets of hotels, in the best situations, and possessed of all the comforts with which modern civilisation can furnish them, are built and occupied, and in busy times are sometimes full to overflowing. The very nomenclature indicates a superior tone. The house ceases to be an ‘inn,’ and becomes a ‘hotel.’ The Saracen Heads, the White Harts, and the Georges give way to national or big swelling names. We are become imperial in the very appellations we bestow even on houses in which we tarry only for a night.

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A similar or even greater reform has been attained in the Continental towns. The discomforts of the old houses there were no doubt much greater than they were with ourselves; and, indeed, even now, if we abandon the tourists’ highway, or run away from the larger towns, a primitive and perhaps far from agreeable state of matters is discovered, the fact being that much of the improvement which has taken place is due to studying the requirements of _les Anglais_. But in the leading improvements the foreigners have led the van, and we may be said to follow at a respectful distance.

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The tendency abroad is, as it is at home, towards building large establishments in which the rooms are reckoned by the hundred, one of the hotels in Paris, the Grand (most new hotels abroad now have ‘Grand’ prefixed to some other and more distinctive designation, but this is ‘The Grand’ _par excellence_), advertising as many as 800 rooms; another (the Louvre), 700,—figures which are beyond anything, I suppose, in England, unless it be (though perhaps not even there) in the Midland Railway Hotel, St. Pancras. There is at all times a greater likelihood of finding accommodation, and such accommodation as may be desired, in houses of such formidable dimensions; but the visitor’s importance suffers a shock: he becomes nothing but a number, and as such is termed by the _employés_ of the hotel, and shouted up and down the speaking tubes.

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But a more important result follows from the immense augmentation in travelling, because the intercourse thus brought about between the inhabitants of countries originally differing very widely in their manners and customs has a direct tendency to assimilate not merely their manners and customs, but their modes of living. Hence the peculiarities of each gradually, if good, are adopted—if bad, are lost. We borrow from the foreigners, they borrow from us. Odd ways and angular corners get rubbed off, and Cæsar and Pompey settle down in time ‘very much ‘like,’ specially Pompey. Yet, when one leaves the home country, he happily discerns there are still remaining considerable differences between life abroad and life in Britain. Hotels on the Continent are conducted on somewhat different principles from those which at least formerly were customary in Great Britain; and until the dead level of uniformity be reached, it may not be uninteresting to recall some of the differences, and to mention circumstances attendant upon hotel life abroad, which, to those not very familiar with the subject, may be noteworthy.

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In general construction, the more recently erected hotels at home and abroad do not materially differ. Tardily we are beginning to adopt the foreign system of numerous and spacious public rooms, and especially public drawing–rooms, to which ladies can freely resort. But in one important element of comfort to the weak or weary visitor, the foreigners are behind ourselves, inasmuch as lifts (_ascenseurs_) do not seem to be very common; and really in these many–floored hotels they are needed. The only places where we have seen them have been in the hotels of Paris and Marseilles, and they were not always in working order. In addition to the long stairs to be ascended, there are often in these large hotels lengthy corridors to traverse, so that it is a journey from the outer door to the bedroom, in some cases requiring a study of the _locale_, so as to avoid being lost in the labyrinth.

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Next to comfort, the matter of charges is one of primary consideration to most travellers, and can scarcely be overlooked in treating of hotel life. Generally it may be observed, that notwithstanding there has been abroad, as there has been at home, a very considerable rise in charges from former scales, the cost of living at hotels abroad is, as it used to be, still under, or on an average considerably under, the cost for similar comforts and accommodation at home.

The cost of rooms is regulated primarily by the floor or _étage_ on which they are situated; and if the visitor desire to be economical, he ought to ask for rooms upon the higher floors, say the third, or even, where it exists, the fourth _étage_. First–floor rooms are always charged high, sometimes exorbitantly so. At Milan we were shown into bedrooms on the first floor, which, had we taken, would have cost us about 20 to 25 francs per night per room. In Nice as much as 75 francs, or £3 per day, have been asked for two rooms on the first floor of a leading hotel, being equal to a rent per annum of £1095. A friend who spent the winter at Cannes told me he paid 75 francs per day for the rooms he had in one of the principal hotels, but probably he had three or four rooms. In Mentone the highest I have known paid by friends has been, for a large saloon and a bedroom, both princely rooms, 50 francs, or about £2 per day, equal to a rent per annum, were they let all the year round, of £730. These, however, are season places, and such rooms would remain vacant a considerable portion of the year, and even, a consequence of the high charge, for great part of the season, as the hotelkeepers will not lower their price even for a short period.

In Italy it is always desirable, where there is an ability to mount long stairs, to take rooms as high up as possible, so as to get as far away as may be from the odours of the street; but the same rule as regards the charges for rooms prevails. Perhaps in nothing do foreign hotel charges differ more than in the charges for rooms. They differ according to the place—that is, whether it be a large or a small town; according to the hotel, whether it be first class or inferior; and according to the rooms themselves, their position, size, and furnishing, and also according as they are single or double bedded. Abroad, nearly every bedroom large enough is so constructed as to fit it for use also as a sitting–room or _salon_, in which friends may be received. Sometimes the beds are placed in a recess or back part of the room, which may be shut off at will by drawing a curtain. The rooms abound with mirrors; but unless in houses frequented by the English, there are for the most part no carpets on the floors, saving a rug at the bedside, thus and otherwise involving an odd mixture of splendour and discomfort. However, carpets are beginning to be more frequently introduced. To those accustomed to the warmth of carpets, getting out of bed in the morning is, when they are wanting, a chilly operation, more especially when the floors are constructed, as they sometimes are, I presume for protection against vermin, of composition.

On an average, I would say that a bedroom on a third floor, with one bed for a single person, costs from 3 to 5 francs per night; a double–bedded room, from 5 to 8 francs. On the second floor the price is advanced a little; but the first floor is always high, varying according to circumstances. In some fashionable places, such as Nice and Biarritz, during the season the charge for rooms is, in first–class hotels, as what I have already said shows, extravagantly high. The season at Nice is not, like many places, for two or three months only, but lasts the whole winter—half of the year. It ought not therefore, one would think, to be so expensive.

But lights have to be paid for separately, and are usually charged at hotels at the rate of 1 franc per _bougie_ or candle, although I have seen only 75 centimes charged, and in some out–of–the–way places as little as half a franc, or even, as at Chateau d’Œx, 30 centimes, upon which no doubt there was a profit. I was told of the case of a visitor at an expensive hotel in Nice who was, a good many years ago, charged 16 francs for _bougies_ for a single night. But this mode of plundering is now so far abandoned, and one has only to be careful that more candles than he desires be not lighted. The charge for _bougies_, if remaining only single nights at hotels, becomes heavy; but if several nights be spent in the house, the candles remain till burned down. It is said that foreigners carry off their unburnt _bougies_ with them, and use them at next stoppage, as they carry off also, it is alleged, the sugar which they have not used, but for which they consider they have paid. These, however, are petty habits, to which English people have not yet got accustomed.

The charge for service is almost invariably 1 franc per night per person. As lights are not charged in England, the united charge for _bougies_ and service comes, for short periods, to be very much the same as the charge in England for service alone.

Universally, abroad, the beds are constructed only to hold one person. This may be, though it is not always, because of the summer’s heat. In some rare cases the beds are found to be broad enough for two; but it does not necessarily follow that the charge is in this case as for one occupant. I have seen charge made for a broad bed as much as if the room had contained two beds. In parts where mosquitoes exist, the beds are draped with mosquito curtains.

Each room has its key and corresponding number, and the visitor is expected, upon leaving his chamber, to lock his door, and hang the key upon the key–board which is under charge of the _concierge_ at the entrance to the hotel. In very large hotels, there is a key–board for each floor, in charge of an attendant. So contrary is this system of locking doors to the habits of the English, that it is often neglected by them; so much so, that in hotels exclusively frequented by natives of our isle, such a thing as locking doors and bringing down keys would be looked upon as extraordinary. At one of these hotels, I asked a servant, upon leaving my room after arrival, where the key should be put, as I had seen no key–board. ‘Oh, just leave it in the door,’ was her reply. Foreigners always lock their doors, whatever may be the establishment in which they are; and in many places, especially in the large hotels of Paris, where nobody knows who may be his next neighbour, it is highly proper and safe to do so. In this connection I may just observe that somehow or other there are in most places hotels which are only patronized by the English, and a foreigner is a _rara avis_. Correspondingly, there are other hotels which they never visit. There must be some species of intuitive freemasonry which underlies and conduces to this result.

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All hotels have a public _salle à manger_, to which both ladies and gentlemen are expected to go, and nearly all have drawing–rooms or reading–rooms, or both (_salons_ and _salons–de–lecture_). A lady travelling by herself can freely go to all these rooms, and one constantly meets such _dames seules_. No necessity is imposed upon them to engage a _salon_ or sitting–room. But if desirous of taking them out of the public rooms, the meals will be sent to the bedrooms, for which luxury and extra trouble, however, there is a charge made, sometimes as high, at least for dinner, as 2 francs or 3 francs per person per meal, though usually only ½ franc.

In addition to placing in the reading–rooms newspapers, which generally comprise one or more of the leading London journals (received in many places within twenty–four hours of their publication), there usually and most properly is in hotels, where visitors come for lengthened periods, a small collection of books sufficient to beguile an hour or a wet day.

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The three chief meals of the day are breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

In what I shall call the English hotels, almost everybody maintains the good old English custom of coming down to the _salle–à–manger_ to breakfast; but foreigners, consistently with their home practice, take their meagre breakfast or cup of coffee, scarcely to be designated breakfast, in their bedroom. English people cannot get reconciled to the idea of taking meals in a room in which they sleep. It is an uncomfortable and unsocial custom, essentially bad—keeps the bedrooms long from being attended to, and imposes much additional labour on the servants, who are kept flying up and down stairs at all hours of the morning with breakfast equipage.

The usual charge at all hotels, at least as against Englishmen, for breakfast proper (tea, coffee, or chocolate, with bread and butter) is 1½ francs. Occasionally, though very rarely, I have found it only charged 1 franc, and once, viz. at Toulouse, 2 francs. Eggs are universally charged 25 centimes (2½d.) each; meats and fish, according to _carte_, and generally expensive.

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