The List Is Incredibly And Most Unnecessarily Long.
Then
it is that you will see care written on the face of the American
hotel liver, as he studies the programme of the coming performance.
With men this passes off unnoticed, but with young girls the
appearance of the thing is not attractive.
The anxious study, the
elaborate reading of the daily book, and then the choice proclaimed
with clear articulation: "Boiled mutton and caper sauce, roast duck,
hashed venison, mashed potatoes, poached eggs and spinach, stewed
tomatoes. Yes - and, waiter, some squash!" There is no false
delicacy in the voice by which this order is given, no desire for a
gentle whisper. The dinner is ordered with the firm determination
of an American heroine; and in some five minutes' time all the
little dishes appear at once, and the lady is surrounded by her
banquet.
How I did learn to hate those little dishes and their greasy
contents! At a London eating-house things are often not very nice,
but your meat is put on a plate and comes before you in an edible
shape. At these hotels it is brought to you in horrid little oval
dishes, and swims in grease; gravy is not an institution in American
hotels, but grease has taken its place. It is palpable, undisguised
grease, floating in rivers - not grease caused by accidental bad
cookery, but grease on purpose. A beef-steak is not a beef-steak
unless a quarter of a pound of butter be added to it. Those horrid
little dishes! If one thinks of it, how could they have been made
to contain Christian food? Every article in that long list is
liable to the call of any number of guests for four hours. Under
such circumstances how can food be made eatable? Your roast mutton
is brought to you raw; if you object to that, you are supplied with
meat that has been four times brought before the public. At hotels
on the Continent of Europe different dinners are cooked at different
hours; but here the same dinner is kept always going. The house
breakfast is maintained on a similar footing. Huge boilers of tea
and coffee are stewed down and kept hot. To me those meals were
odious. It is of course open to any one to have separate dinners
and separate breakfasts in his own rooms; but by this little is
gained and much is lost. He or she who is so exclusive pays twice
over for such meals - as they are charged as extras on the bill - and,
after all, receives the advantage of no exclusive cooking.
Particles from the public dinners are brought to the private room,
and the same odious little dishes make their appearance.
But the most striking peculiarity of the American hotels is in their
public rooms. Of the ladies' drawing-room I have spoken. There are
two, and sometimes three, in one hotel, and they are generally
furnished at any rate expensively.
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