With reference to waiters, deans, and other public servants.
The waiter at public dinners is a very considerate person. He assists you in every possible way he can. With every dish he practically jogs your memory; and, as an accompaniment to the dessert, he informs you that he “must now leave”; is there “anything else he can do for you?” If you are of a reflective nature you may, in a moment of abstraction, rise from your seat and shake hands with him; but if, as a right-minded citizen, you have constantly in view the universal claim upon your purse, you will thank your friendly and condescending attendant, and pay him for the services he has rendered to his employer. You may in your thoughtlessness and abstraction have jeopardised the success of the waiter’s arrangements for carrying off a certain bottle of wine which he had planted for convenient removal. How much you should give him is considered to depend upon the quality of the wine which you have been fully charged for with your ticket; and this question of cuisine and wine still further complicates the difficult adjustment of the rightful claims of the attendant and what is due to your own honour, not to mention your reputation as a gourmet. An irreverent American, after a first experience, I conclude, of English travel, said that you are safe in tipping any Britisher below the dignity of a bishop; but a fellow-countryman, guided by this opinion, felt very unhappy when, after being shown over a famous cathedral by the dean, he slipped half-a-sovereign into his very reverend guide’s hand, and received, in return, an intimation that the poor’s box was in the porch. I remember on one occasion, when I was investigating a question that called for special courtesy on the part of a public official, I was disturbed during my work with the question whether I might tip him, and, if so, to what extent. The subject almost “got on my nerves” before the inquiry, which lasted an hour or two, came to an end; at last I determined that it was a case for a tip. I gave him ten shillings. For a moment I thought I had offended him, and, remembering the dean and the poor box, was about to say, “Give it to a charity,” when the official plaintively inquired if I couldn’t “make it a sovereign?”
He discourses concerning the ethics of tipping.
Give up the idea that tipping will succumb to any agitation. So long as commodities have to be paid for in cash, and not in fine words and sweet smiles, tipping will exist. The moralist may rave against it, but ask him in what way his gratitude manifests itself when a railway porter politely relieves him of half-a-dozen bags, and deposits them in a snug corner, whilst he has barely time to take his ticket at the booking-office. It is surely impossible to abuse the same porter if, out of a feeling of recognition for favours previously received, he leaves the belated passenger to manage the best way he can under a cartload of shawls, rugs, hat and bonnet-boxes, to attend again to your comforts. You hardly sympathise with your fellow-traveller, although he may be using very strong language against the identical porter, in whose favour, for the second time, you part with a few coppers. It is the desire to secure the comforts and commodities provided by the activity of others that will perpetuate tipping. After all, this is not limited to menials. It is given, and unscrupulously accepted by all grades of society, and by all conditions of men. I have known a company director give to a titled nobody a berth promised to someone else, because he had been familiarly addressed by His Lordship in a public place, and had been “honoured” by a few minutes’ conversation. That was not, of course, a tip in the ordinary sense of the word, but it amounted, however, to the same thing. It secured a good berth to his “Excellency.” And what say you of the whiskies and waters, brandies and sodas, the champagne, oysters, luncheons, and dinners to which our good city men generously ask a would-be customer? That, I suppose, is called “paving the way to a good business.” I have not unfrequently heard people regret that they were unable to refuse a favour in return for a civility. That civility was most likely a dinner, or even something less. Kisses distributed by ladies in hotly-contested constituencies, the promise of a Government post, an invitation to a party, a mere familiar recognition, a penny, are all varieties which make the thing so general.
He believes the custom will die out with human nature.
Wedding presents are not given without an arrière pensée, and at Christmas our object is mostly to please the parents. Our indignation, however, is not roused by this, because we are in the habit, I suppose, of distributing and receiving such acknowledgments ourselves. We want to suppress small tips; in fact, such as are most wanted by the recipient, whose only source of revenue they constitute in many cases. We fail to realise that, were servants well paid, “tipping” would not take the form of an imposition. Employers, especially at hotels and restaurants, either give ridiculously low wages, or suppress these altogether, and in many establishments hire the tables to the waiters at so much a day or week for the privilege of serving. At present this custom has become so deeply rooted that it has given growth to a most perfect secret code of signs and marks by which each class of servants is informed how much he has to expect from the liberality of the inexperienced and unwary stranger. This applies especially to hotel servants, and has become the crying abuse against which we try to react. This code is not local, but has acquired an internationality which professors of Volapuk would be proud to claim for their language. I remember once an irascible old gentleman complaining bitterly against the incivility of the hotel servants, who never helped him with his traps. He found no exception to the rule except when his wanderings took him to some remote part of Scotland, where, he assured me, the “braying of the socialist pedants had not yet been heard.” I suspected that my friend was not over-generous, and timidly sounded him on the point. His reply confirmed my suspicion. I thereupon showed him the cause of the servants’ inattention, amounting sometimes even to rudeness—a little chalk mark on each bag. I advised him to carefully wipe that off after leaving the hotels. The effect was most satisfactory—my friend has had no reason to complain since, at least when he got into a hotel. The position of hotel labels also serves to indicate if anything can be expected from the traveller. Of course, this is not countenanced by “mine host,” who dismisses the user of such messages, but as that man is generally a wide-awake and useful rogue, there is little doubt but that he is reinstated in his functions shortly after the traveller is gone. Beggars and tramps have a similar system of conveying to their confrères information as to the likely reception they may expect from the occupants of the different residences on the road. They never fail to warn them against dogs and other disagreeable surprise or dangers, should they by some unaccountable absent-mindedness forget that there is such a thing as the eighth commandment. In conclusion, pourboire, buona mancia, backshish, tipping or bribery, was born with man, and will only die out with him.