“Do you mean to say that if an individual makes himself so extremely disagreeable to all other guests, the proprietor has no right to ask him to leave?” queried Mrs. L.
“Well, my dear, it was held in Pennsylvania that the host might request such an one to depart; and that if he did not, the hotel-keeper might lay his hands gently upon him and lead him out, and if resistance was made might use sufficient force to accomplish the desired end.”[51]
“Then please tell that waiter to take that man out,” broke in my wife.
“Not so fast, my dear; that decision was reversed afterward, and it was said to be assault and battery so to eject a guest.[52] I have known $600 damages given to a guest for an assault on him by his landlord.[53] I remember, too, a case where a man rejoicing in the trisyllabic name of Prendergast was coming from Madras to London round the Cape of Storms, having paid his fare as a cabin passenger. His habit was to reach across others at table to help himself, and to take potatoes and broiled bones in his fingers, devouring them as was the fashion in the days when Adam delved and Eve span, if they had such things then. The captain, offended at this ungentlemanly conduct, refused to treat Master P. as a first-class passenger, excluded him from the cabin, and would not allow him to walk on the weather side of the ship. On reaching England, Prendergast sued the captain for the breach of his agreement to carry him as a cuddy passenger; the officer pleaded that the conduct of the man had been vulgar, offensive, indecorous and unbecoming, but the son of Neptune was mulcted in damages to the tune of £25, Chief Justice Tindal observing that it would be difficult to say what degree of want of polish would, in point of law, warrant a captain in excluding one from the cuddy. Conduct unbecoming a gentleman in the strict sense of the word might possibly justify him, but in this case there was no imputation of the want of gentlemanly principles.[54] But here, at last, comes our dinner; let us show our neighbors how to handle knife and fork aright.”
And a very good dinner it was, too, although dished by a cook who had not the talents of the ancient knights of the kitchen who could dexterously serve up a sucking-pig boiled on one side and roasted on the other, or make so true a fish out of turnips as to deceive sight, taste, and smell. These antique masters of the gastronomic art knew how to suit each dish to the need and necessity of each guest. They held to the doctrine that the more the nourishment of the body is subtilized and alembicated, the more will the qualities of the mind be rarefied and quintessenced, too. For a young man destined to live in the atmosphere of a royal court, whipped cream and calves’ trotters were supplied by them; for a sprig of fashion, linnets’ heads, essence of May beetles, butterfly broth, and other light trifles; for a lawyer destined to the chicanery of his profession and for the glories of the bar, sauces of mustard and vinegar and other condiments of a bitter and pungent nature would be carefully provided.[55] As Lord Guloseton says, “The ancients seem to have been more mental, more imaginative, than we in their dishes; they fed their bodies, as well as their minds, upon delusion: for instance, they esteemed beyond all price the tongues of nightingales, because they tasted the very music of the birds in the organ of their utterance. That is the poetry of gastronomy.”
I noticed at a table near by a merry party. I afterward learned that it was composed of a number of fast young men from the city, who had come in to have a good dinner, and exhibit themselves, their garments, and their graces before the assembled guests; and that, when the hour of reckoning came, the needful wherewith to liquidate the little bill was not forthcoming. The landlord insisted that each one was liable for the whole, as there was no special agreement, (and this would generally be the case[56]) and that one who was solvent should pay the reckoning for all; but, unfortunately for Boniface, his clerk had been told beforehand that that moneyed man was the guest of the others, who were all as poor as Job’s peahens; so that the poor man had no recourse against the deadheads, in this direction, at all events,[57] and even the moneyed gent got a free dinner. The worthies swaggered out, singing in an undertone the words of an Ethiopian minstrel appropriate to the occasion.
* * * * * *
As my wife was returning to her room after dinner, she met a poor woman, whose daily walk in life was from the wash-tub to the clothes-line, looking in vain for some miserable sinner who had departed leaving his laundry bill unpaid. After endeavoring in vain to console the woman, Mrs. Lawyer, (who had a Quixotic way of interfering in other people’s troubles) came running back to me to ask if the hotel-keeper was not bound to pay for the washing. I told her of course not, unless he had been in the habit of paying the laundry bills of guests who had left; then an undertaking to that effect might be inferred, and it might be considered as evidence of an antecedent promise.[58] With this small crumb of comfort, my wife returned to the user of soap and destroyer of buttons.
While sitting, à la Mr. Briggs, in the smoking-room, “with my waistcoat unbuttoned, to give that just and rational liberty to the subordinate parts of the human commonwealth which the increase of their consequence after the hour of dinner naturally demands,” and gently, (as good Bishop Hall puts it) “whiffing myself away in nicotian incense to the idol of my intemperance,” a fellow-puffer spoke to me about the excessive charges of the house.
I told him that in the good old days of yore, and perchance even yet, an innkeeper who charged exorbitant prices might be indicted, and that our ancestors were wont to have the rates fixed by public proclamation.[59]