MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
CIRCUMSTANCES have obliged me during the last three weeks to spend my nights in a suburban hotel. There, upon the hills which form the southern rim of London's saucer, stands a large Victorian building which is striving gallantly to adapt itself to a changed world. There was a time, perhaps a hundred years ago, when the residents of London would find it agreeable to drive but to this suburban eminence, to gaze across the fields and woods of Surrey, and to feel that they were exchanging the fog-laden air of the metropolis for the soft breezes of the southern counties. Even so did Dr. Johnson visit almost the same spot in order to enjoy the comforts of Streatham and the adulatory but stimulating company of Mrs, Thrale. In the evenings Mr. Thrale would drive out from his brewery at Blackfriars and the Doctor would treat him with that cordial respect which a man of letters accords to a successful man of business, especially when that man is hospitable, lavish and possessed of a vivacious wife. I have heard it rumoured even that the hotel in which during this period I have resided enjoyed a transitory gaiety during the Edwardian epoch and that its corridors once echoed to the laughter of young and wealthy guests. Even today, upon the walls of the entrance lobby hangs a framed eulogy of the hotel, extracted from Black's Guide of 1879. " This unique establishment," runs the commentary,. " stands unrivalled for the exquisite picturesqueness and beauty . of its situation ; its commanding and central position ; and the com- modiousness and completeness of its general arrangements. Delicate persons, to whom a light bracing air, charming scenes, close vicinity to the Crystal Palace and its amusements, will be an invaluable boon, will find in this establishment their wishes fully realised." So inspired is Black's Guide by such a description .that it adds that this establishment suggests " a private Royal Residence."
It is not disagreeable, in our modern luxury age, to return for a space of time to the more solid comforts of the nineteenth century. True it is that the blazing sea-coal fires of our ancestors have now been replaced by a gas-stove which is apt, unless constantly revived by shillings in the slot, suddenly to lose heart. True it is that the central heating, which in the ice and snow of late February would have added a Continental or American touch to our austerity, is confined to the entrance hall, where it furnishes a convenient support against which the day porter and the night porter can rest and warm their backs. But these are slight inconveniences compared to the pleasure of returning after all these twentieth-century years to the memories of a simpler childhood. I find ,it agreeable to see again the old-fashioned washing-stand, to hear again the flop of a full basin being emptied into the slop-pail, and to smell the for- gotten smell of a tin can full of hot water. It pleases me to hear the boards creak in the corridor as slow feet pass and repass along the Turkey carpet ; or when I wake in the morning to catch the crunch of footsteps above me as the housemaids wake and rise. How delightful it is, again, to recapture the courtesy of our old- fashioned hostelries and to be roused from morning contemplation by the friendly voice of an old-fashioned housemaid bringing in the steaming can. How strange it is that, with the advent of central heating and of running water, the whole procedure of hotel service should have also become mechanised and inhuman. The charm of these hotel housemaids, their bright interest in one's private and public affairs, is different indeed from the sullen servitude which one meets with in the more mechanised establishments of modern days. One is no longer just a number on a door or on a key-ring ; one becomes a human being with a personality of one's own. * *
To manage such a hotel in modern conditions must be a dis- spiriting task. It becomes essential, in view of the shortage of man- power, to impose upon the guests the utmost regularity of meals. It is not possible, it would even be unkind, to demand extra service outside the prescribed time-table ; and when the hours for meals are over, the dining-room is locked and silence reigns. The guests who
inhabit these hotels are for the most part lonely and old. The difficulty experienced by the solitary widow, or aging bachelor, in obtaining any domestic, help or coping with ration queues, has driven many such people to seek a room and refuge in one or other of these somewhat derelict hotels. Each has his own table in the dining-room, furnished with personal rations of butter, cheese, marmalade and powdered sugar in a jam-pot. Every Monday regularly these rations, which have thinned rapidly towards the end of the week, are renewed. Those who possess outside friends or relatives, or can dispose of a larger income, will still further decorate their tables with a jar of pickles or a bottle of Worcester sauce. Morning after morning they descend to the dining-room, and eat their haddock and their porridge in silence. Only occasionally is that silence broken by a querulous protest: " I would rather die of hunger," a frail voice complained on Tuesday, "than eat grilled haddock." Such complaints are received with kindly solicitude by the Irish waitress. Silence descends again and the old gentleman in the corner, having glanced up for a moment, returns to his cross- word puzzle with pencil poised. In the evening at 7 p.m. sharp the guests gather for their evening meal. They have vegetable soup, some haricot mutton, and a choice of steamed fruit sponge and custard, or raspberry mould. And when they leave the dining-room the old gentlemen will bow to the old ladies with old-world courtesy.
* * *
Many an evening, when preparing to embark upon a series of vivacious meetings, have I envied the quietude of these old people with their rugs and shawls. At 7.45 precisely they will go up to the lounge and sit in arm-chairs around the fire, exchanging slight but balanced conversation, reading the evening papers and waiting for the nine o'clock news. By then I myself have already disappeared into the angry night, but the memory of those gentle people remains with me and I know that at 9.25 the lights will go out in the lounge and that one by one they will retire to the privacy of their bedrooms. I have caught, sometimes, when a door is opened, a glimpse of those interiors. One or two library books, I have noticed, upon. the chest of drawers among the framed photographs of great nephews and nieces. Sometimes there will be vases upon the mantelpiece or even a water-colour on the walls. Their placid lives appear to stretch out endlessly before them, in a succession of similar even- ings, similar courtesies, similar meals. A certain sadness might assail me at the spectacle of such eventless lives, were it not that I know that no lives are really eventless even if played in a minor key. It must be exciting, when one becomes tuned to it, to antici- pate whether thee will be- a fried egg for breakfast on Monday, whether Miss Harriman will manage (scuttling along in her pink quilted dressing-gown) once again to seize the bathroom while the water is still hot, whether the mould this evening will be raspberry or vanilla. It must be exciting to notice whether Major Hornby finishes his crossword before he rises stiffly and bows to the adjoin- ing table, whether the crocuses in the ghastly garden have been pushed sideways by the snow. I am grateful to these old ladies and gentlemen for an example of patient acquiescence ; for a certain style of manner which they bring to the monotony of their lives.
* * * It may be, of course, that I am misunderstanding the whole situa- tion. For all I know, when I leave them in the mornings, they spend uproarious days visiting the Natural History Museum in South Kensington or writing highly successful novels in their rooms. But I find it an interesting problem in space and time to reflect that when I have left them and returned to the variety of private life, they will still troop slowly down to breakfast and will still eye with apprehension the rapidly diminishing level of their powdered sugar and their marmalade. I send a greeting to these quiet gentle people ; and if they ever read this page, I hope they will allow me to thank' them for their discretion towards me personally, and for an example of quiet dignity in times that are sparse and rough. I trust they will live to see the day when the bath-water will be always hot and there will be muffins for tea.
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