The usual mode of calling the servants at table was by dropping a tumbler on the marble floor, which, breaking in pieces, had the effect of drawing the attention of the proprietor of the arms surmounted with a fluttering cockatoo, who immediately made his appearance to look after his motto—“Dieu et mon droit.”
In this first-rate hotel, with its brass band and flaming advertisements in the local papers, I have seen people, on returning to the hotel after spending the evening at some family party, obliged to find the way to their room by means of a candle stuck in a black bottle, which had been lighted by a match supplied by the driver of the coach which brought them to the door of the hotel—every servant remaining in the house being insensibly drunk.
After recovering from our short attack of illness, we removed to an adjoining hotel just opened, where we could procure decent apartments, but nothing to eat. We had therefore to make arrangements with another hotel for our meals—but they would not undertake to send the meals, as the servants were so bad they could not depend on them bringing the things as required. On the other hand, they had no rooms vacant. I was therefore obliged to hire a Madras coolie, named “Sammy,” to act as “butler,” as he styled it.
On arriving at the second hotel, one of the servants lifted out of the carriage a bird-cage, and carried it up to my room, for which he demanded payment.
Tired, ill, and worried, in the hope of getting rid of his importunity, I put my hand into my pocket and reached him a shilling, not having any smaller change about me at the time. Looking very hard at the shilling, which was lying on the palm of his hand, he backed to what he considered a safe distance, and then the “poor black” asked me if “I called myself a gentleman in offering him a shilling?” Without waiting for my answer, he slapped his leg to make the money in his pocket jingle, and then putting his hand into his pocket he pulled out a shilling, which, adding to the one I had given to him, he threw at my feet, and exclaiming, “There, you poor devil!” he walked off.
Sammy, after the first day, acted fool—and he did it admirably—but the only way was to keep one’s temper, and patience generally conquered.
My wife’s appetite and my own were exceedingly small, but still we found what the hotel sent us for dinner was less than we could fairly manage. I asked our host to add another dish, but yet there seemed to be a small supply.
One day I observed Sammy enter the hotel with our dinner on his head, and thinking he took a very long time coming from the hall door to my room, I went in search of my “butler.” I found him in an adjoining room with the dinner spread out on the floor, and in deep consultation with another “poor black,” as to how much more they ought to remove from the dishes before “butler” laid dinner before his master. I had the dinner restored to the dishes, and on that occasion I found that the hotel-keeper furnished much more than was necessary.
These anecdotes are necessary to show what I really saw, and how much the “poor blacks” have the upper hand at Mauritius.