It is a ricket, ruined, tumble-down, wooden house, into which at first one absolutely dreads to enter, lest the steps should fail and let one through into unutterable abysses below. All the houses in Georgetown are made of wood, and therefore require a good deal of repair and paint. And all the houses seem to receive this care except the hotel. Ah, Mrs. Lenny, Mrs. Lenny! before long you and your guests will fall prostrate, and be found buried beneath a pile of dust and a colony of cockroaches!
And yet it goes against my heart to abuse the inn, for the people were so very civil. I shall never forget that big black chambermaid; how she used to curtsy to me when she came into my room in the morning with a huge tub of water on her head! That such a weight should be put on her poor black skull—a weight which I could not lift—used to rend my heart with anguish. But that, so weighted, she should think that manners demanded a curtsy! Poor, courteous, overburdened maiden!
"Don't, Sally; don't. Don't curtsy," I would cry. "Yes, massa," she would reply, and curtsy again, oh, so painfully! The tub of water was of such vast proportions! It was big enough—big enough for me to wash in!
This house, as I have said, was all in ruins, and among other ruined things was my bedroom-door lock. The door could not be closed within, except by the use of a bolt; and without the bolt would swing wide open to the winds, exposing my arrangements to the public, and disturbing the neighbourhood by its jarring. In spite of the inconvenient difficulty of ingress I was forced to bolt it.
At six every morning came Sally with the tub, knocking gently at the door—knocking gently at the door with that ponderous tub upon her skull! What could a man do when so appealed to but rush quickly from beneath his musquito curtains to her rescue? So it was always with me. But having loosed the bolt, time did not suffice to enable me to take my position again beneath the curtain. A jump into bed I might have managed—but then, the musquito curtain! So, under those circumstances, finding myself at the door in my deshabille, I could only open it, and then stand sheltered behind it, as behind a bulwark, while Sally deposited her burden.
But, no. She curtsied, first at the bed; and seeing that I was not there, turned her head and tub slowly round the room, till she perceived my whereabouts. Then gently, but firmly, drawing away the door till I stood before her plainly discovered in my night-dress, she curtsied again. She knew better than to enter a room without due salutation to the guest—even with a tub of water on her head. Poor Sally! Was I not dressed from my chin downwards, and was not that enough for her? "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
After that, how can I say ought against the hotel? And when I complained loudly of the holes in the curtain, the musquitoes having driven me to very madness, did not they set to work, Sunday as it was, and make me a new curtain? Certainly without avail—for they so hung it that the musquitoes entered worse than ever. But the intention was no less good.
And that waiter, David; was he not for good-nature the pink of waiters? "David, this house will tumble down! I know it will—before I leave it. The stairs shook terribly as I came up." "Oh no, massa," and David laughed benignly. "It no tumble down last week, and derefore it no tumble down next." It did last my time, and therefore I will say no more.
Georgetown to my eyes is a prepossessing city, flat as the country round it is, and deficient as it is—as are all the West Indies—in anything like architectural pretension. The streets are wide and airy. The houses, all built of wood, stand separately, each a little off the road; and though much has not been done in the way of their gardens—for till the great coming influx of Coolies all labour is engaged in making sugar—yet there is generally something green attached to each of them. Down the centre of every street runs a wide dyke. Of these dykes I must say something further when I come to speak again of the sugar doings; for their importance in these provinces cannot well be overrated.
The houses themselves are generally without a hall. By that I mean that you walk directly into some sitting-room. This, indeed, is general through the West Indies; and now that I bethink me of the fact, I may mention that a friend of mine in Jamaica has no door whatsoever to his house. All ingress and egress is by the windows. My bedroom had no door, only a window that opened. The sitting-rooms in Georgetown open through to each other, so that the wind, let it come which way it will, may blow through the whole house. For though it is never absolutely hot in Guiana—as I have before mentioned—nevertheless, a current of air is comfortable. One soon learns to know the difference of windward and leeward when living in British Guiana.