But if only they could be found now I would infinitely prefer the old English inns, with their plain roast and boiled, chops and steaks and simple vegetables. Even now may be found in some of them, daily, alas! growing fewer, the same high quality of meat and vegetables, and the same almost reverent care in their simple preparation, a preparation that did not depend upon some mysterious sauce to give flavour to the meat, but brought out all the delicious qualities that the unsophisticated food itself possessed. Unfortunately, even a wayside inn will now give you a menu written in amazing French, and dishes more amazing still, concocted by people who doubtless would have been good at plain boiled or roast, but who make an awful mess of a ragout, an entrée, or a fricassee. Still, as they would very justly retort, these unholy mix-ups are asked for and expected by their patrons, who having eaten heartily of them, go away and growl that it is only in France that you can get food decently cooked.
But I am reminded that tastes differ. I only wish that folks would practise toleration in food matters as well as religion. To the latter we are all coming—even the Catholics will, I understand, allow you to do and believe anything you like, so long as you say you are a Catholic, go to your duty once in a while and pay up—sure that’s all easy. Then why shouldn’t men admit that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and let it go at that? They don’t, though. One of the most frequent remarks made to me during my lecturing days by hostesses was:
“Now, Mr. Bullen, tell me just what you would like before you lecture and what afterwards. I only want to know, because I am aware how necessary it is that a lecturer should have just what food agrees with him and at the time he needs it.”
My invariable reply that whatever the family were taking for dinner would suit me admirably, and that I wanted nothing after a lecture, was always received with polite astonishment—I will not say incredulity, but certainly there was conveyed to me an idea that I could not be sincere, or, if so, that I must be a totally different subject from the majority of lecturers and other public men. As far as lecturers go, I hasten to say that I do not think that any with whom I am acquainted are difficult to please or at all tête montée. Still, you never know. But public men! Ah, there you have me. They may be a fearful sort of wild-fowl to entertain, especially if they have only recently arrived.
Alas, I am wandering far away from my chapter heading, which is hotels. And no hotel in which I ever stayed was at all concerned about anything but what I chose to order and pay for. And if that was served as I wanted it, well, glory! all was as happy as could be. But of all the infernal places on earth to stay at, defend me from a hotel whose iron-bound rules forbid any guest to have anything in the nature of food or drink except at certain stipulated hours. These dens, I can call them nothing else, flourish in the United States, where the democracy submit to more tyranny than any place outside of Turkey. Shall I ever forget an occasion when I lay groaning with acute indigestion in a hotel in Chatauqua Lake summer resort? I was parched with thirst, knotted up with pain, empty as a drum, but knew I dared not eat. At last (it was Sunday morning about ten o’clock), at something like the thirteenth ring, a youth came and slammed my door open.
“Waal!” he said. “Waat ye want?”
I looked, at him with glazed eyes, and said faintly:
“A little milk and soda, please, as soon as you can.”
“Ye cain’t have nothin’ till dinner-time!” with an air of finality perfectly Rhadamantine.
That did me good. I sat up in bed, the excruciating pain temporarily forgotten, and enquired: