Max O’Rell on American Hotels
M. Paul Blouet (Max O’Rell) is a brilliant writer and a clever, entertaining talker, but in his article in the North American Review for January, 1891, entitled “Reminiscences of American Hotels,” he shows that he lacks fairness as a critic, and that he writes without the necessary knowledge of his subject. His remarks concerning the American methods of conducting hotels may be amusing, but when he makes comparisons between English and American hotels and their systems, it is evident that as a critic he is open to criticism. In his opening page he says:
“When you enter a hotel not a salute, not a word, not a smile of welcome. The negro takes your bag and makes a sign that your case is settled. You follow him. For the time being you lose your personality and become No. 375, as you would in jail.”
The facts are just the contrary. The clerks, porters and waiters in American hotels are only too glad if they can learn your name. They will pronounce it and announce you on the smallest possible provocation. Max O’Rell’s remarks on this point would exactly fit if he were writing about some large hotels in London patronized by Americans. At those houses, the Langham excepted, you do not enter your name in a register, and you are known only by the number of the room you occupy. If a friend calls, his card will be carried about on a silver salver by a little page whose duty it is, in going through the halls and public rooms in search of you, to bawl out at the top of his voice not your name, but the number of the apartment you occupy; and to this you are expected to respond.
But people are not so apt to know the hotel customs which obtain in cities where they live, and that may account for M. Blouet’s ignorance.
This French-English humorist tries to make it appear that in every American hotel the fire-escape consists of “twenty yards of coiled rope.” I believe that the New York State Legislature expects all hotels in that State to make such provision, but if it is done in New York it is certainly not the case in other States, as I know, for I have lived at hotels in many States of the Union during the past few months, westward as far as California, and as far south as New Orleans.
Mr. O’Rell feels very much injured because order and method reign in the dining-room. He says:
“When you enter the dining-room you must not believe you can go and sit where you like. The chief waiter assigns you a seat and you must take it. I have constantly seen Americans stop on the threshold of the dining-room and wait until the chief waiter had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch them in their turn. I never saw them venture alone and take an empty seat without the sanction of the waiter.”
Chaos would reign indeed if the regular guests of a hotel had no regular seats, and if every newcomer were allowed to sit where he pleased. Of course the head waiter assigns seats. This good custom obtains in England and France as it does elsewhere; without it there would be confusion for all concerned.
It would be strange if such a close and keen observer, as Max O’Rell certainly is, did not make some good points in such a labored article. He makes one when he objects to the solemn, almost funereal air which pervades an American dining-room. People can be well mannered and yet be and appear to be, in good spirits, whereas we seem to make a business, a sad business of eating—it cannot be called “dining.” You seldom or never hear such a thing as a laugh in our hotel dining-rooms, and yet everybody knows that laughter is the best aid to digestion. There is a time for everything, and when should there be good cheer if not at dinner time?
O’Rell shows that he is unfair and uninformed when he is discussing some of the important features of our hotels, but he scores another good point when he talks of the shameful waste of food in American hotels. I quote in full his remarks on that head. They cannot be too often repeated:
“The thing which, perhaps, strikes me most disagreeably in the American hotel dining-room is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on at every meal. No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this; but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not better, there is a perfect horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the wanton manner in which some Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several fellow creatures.”
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