DOI issue:
September 13, 1884
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17757#0132
September 13, 1884.]
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
125
doctored, for you’ve got complaints enough,” I retaliate, speaking
in defence of the beauties of Nature, and doing it as pleasantly as
possible in the circumstances. My chirpiness, however, is_ only
feeble just now, for hunger and heat and fatigue are beginning to
tell on my naturally fine constitution ; and Cray Elis’s complaints,—
I mean his persistent grumblings,—are really infectious. 1 am posi-
tively beginning to disbelieve in La Bourboule. Where is it F Up
in the mountains ? I don’t see it. There are no snow-mountains,
too, as there are at Aix-les-Bains, and I am yielding to a strong
feeling of disappointment. I was told that one of the advantages
possessed by La Bourboule over any other sulphurous and arsenical
watering-place was, that it was high up and bracing. Well, I don’t
see any town on a hill, except something on our left, which we are
leaving behind us, and the Puy-de-Dome, kindly pointed out to us
by a fellow-traveller, in the distance. La Bourboule at last!
“ And a nice unfriendly sort of place it looks,” says Culvers, in a
hopelessly dissatisfied tone, as we descend a steep incline, and enter
the village—or hamlet—or whatever it is, but certainly not a town.
On we go,—the horses pull themselves together, taking us with
them, and canter down-hill, with reins anyhow, bells ringing, whip
cracking, and driver shouting! Well may the driver be triumphant!
Well may he be proud of his gallant team, which looks like a “for-
lorn hope ” of horses, whose arrival here at all is little less than a
miracle. Hotel after hotel we pass,—all, apparently, of a very
second-rate character, and each one, as it appears at this swift glance,
styling itself “ Grand Hotel.” We are for stopping, but the Coach-
man and his wild horses won’t hear of it. They are all for urging
on their wild career, and we can only puzzle ourselves as to which
is the hotel we ought to have alighted at, and how we shall select
our particular Grand Hotel from all the other Grand Hotels.
“ I felt certain,” says Culvers, sarcastically, “that your Grand
Hotel was only a fifth-rate auberge. All right! Goon! Wish to
goodness I hadn’t come to the infernal hole ! And who’s to unpack
for me ?—who’s to-- By the way,” he suddenly exclaims,
“ where is our luggage ? ”
I tell him that at Laqueuille I saw a fourgon being laden with
luggage, and among it ours. That it would reach this place some
time after us, was, I say to him, a “fourgon conclusion.” But
Chivers has no taste now for a specimen of what the Calenxbour
International Cie. (Limited) can do, and the Oriental Despot, whose
name was Easy, can only unavailingly anathematise his own want of
forethought, which has caused him so frequently to bewail “the
man he left behind him.” (Good notion for a song this. To be
suggested to Chivers, and even sung to him, in happier moments.)
“ What’s all this crowd ? ” he asks.
He may well ask. From every hotel, inn, and pension in the
place,—and, apparently, it is a perfect rabbit-warren of hotels,
inns, and pensions,—has trooped out a crowd of bare-headed gar-
cons in white aprons, commissionnaires with labelled caps, chamber-
maids in costume, gamins of no occupation, touts, and porters. They
are running after the omnibus like the gipsies on a Derby-Day after
a drag, all chattering and shouting at once, and directly we stop,
they form a cordon round the vehicle, so as not to let one of the
voyageurs escape, if they can help it. A gendarme in uniform
stands by,—very much “posed” apparently, as he evidently has
only come there by the merest accident, and as far as keeping order,
or offering any assistance to the unlucky objects of this mobbing, he
is perfectly helpless.
We elbow our way through the crowd, the Eastern Despot carry-
ing (much against his will) a heavy bag and an umbrella, with the
air of a man who, if he liked, could suddenly pull out a warrant signed
by all the Crowned Heads of Europe, and order off every one who
dared to get in his way to instant execution. His autocratic manner
is a little robbed of its impressiveness by his having to stop suddenly,
put down the bag, and swear that he never will come out again
without a servant; at the same time regarding me reproachfully,
to whom he attributes all his present misery, as much as to say
that, as in his opinion I have brought him to this pass, I really ought
to come forward and voluntarily relieve him of this intolerable
burden. But my hands are full with a light waterproof, and a
simple hand-bag that I can hang on one finger. My feeling is that
Britons never should be slaves, unless somebody makes it very well
worth their while.
“Where is your confounded Hotel?” asks the Easy One, queru-
lously. I assure him that I don’t know any more than he does, but
I have the name of the proprietor in writing. I pronounce it aloud,
and, as if by magic, a reply comes at once, “ (lest moi, Messieurs ! ”
from a respectably dressed, good-looking man, with a bronzed face,
and a dark moustache, who is lifting his brown straw hat in the
air by way of salutation. “Yes, perfectly—he has rooms for us
in the Annexe. He will show them to us at once. Will we follow
him ?” We do.
“ Come, this isn’t so bad, eh ? ” I sav to Chivers. who has assumed
an air of gloomy power, quite out of sympathy with the anxious,
hospitable, and cheery manner of our host.
“ Voild ! ” cries the patron, with some little distrust of our pro-
bable appreciation expressed in his countenance, as if he had
expected persons of quite a different type to what we had turned
out to be, and it had suddenly flashed across him that a couple of
dark rooms in a back street, without any chance of a view, were not
exactly the sort of thing we should have chosen for ourselves. We
do not like them. Dudley Chivers won’t give another look at them:
in his character of Oriental Despot he refuses to listen to any expla-
nation. “ Aliens done ! ” he says, shortly and emphatically—“ (Ja
ne nous convient pas ! C'est tnste, sombre, mal aeree ! faites-nous
en voir encore d'autres. Allez ! ”
Our host looks appealingly at me, but 1 endorse The Despot’s
verdict, and, finding that any attempt at compromise, in the way of a
suggestion for temporarily rearranging the furniture, is only a waste
of time, the landlord, rather disconcerted, takes us back to the hotel,
and shows us a couple of rooms on the ground-floor, the only rooms
at his disposition and ours. But they won’t do; Chivers refuses them
flatly; and,'dreading a scene, for our landlord is evidently a very
excitable person, and the blood is already rushing to his face, I try
to soften matters, and to make the best of a bad bargain. Per-
sonally, for the sake of peace and quietness, I should yield; but
the Easy One, appearing alternately as the stern, dogged English
official, and then, as the Unspeakable Oriental Despot, is too much
for the landlord, who is staggered into silence before his mysterious
and impenetrable guest. Chivers condemns the apartments as if
the entire wing of the hotel ought to be pulled down forthwith.
“ They’re not healthy,” he says, severely; “ and, if you have nothing
better than this, we ’ll go elsewhere.”
I thought the attack on the sanitary state of the apartments would
have aroused their proprietor, but it didn’t; he only protests, more
in sorrow than in anger, and informs us that he has nothing else
to offer, but that if we will instal ourselves here, provisoirement,
he will take care that we have the best apartments in a couple of
days. No ; The Despot is not to be cajoled. 1, meanly I admit,
follow his lead. No! I am not to be cajoled either. Seeing the
innkeeper giving in, and that all chance of a difficulty, with perhaps
a case in the local County Court, has blown over, I adopt Chivers’s
tone, and second all his resolutions with the utmost heartiness.
All this time I have been, as it were, playing Jacques Strop to
Chivers’s Robert Macaire. The landlord suddenly rouses himself,
and makes an allusion to his loss. Chivers is down on him at once.
“ We can’t take rooms that won’t suit us,” he replies, severely. The
chance of a legal difficulty (with Gendarmes, Avocats, and Juges
de Paix to follow) having again arisen, I go over, as it were, to the
enemy, adopt the politest and most diplomatic (Chivers subse-
quently stigmatises it as “cringing”) tone, and describe myself
(omitting Chivers) as “ desole,” adding, “ c’est dommage, mats
c'est une perte enorme pour nous, comme j'ai entendu parler tant
de bonnes choses de votre admirable cuisine."
This sentence, being rather a long one, takes me some time to
arrange and produce ; but when the landlord has once grasped my
meaning, he is #
disarmed. He
bows, and he ad-
dresses me per-
sonally hence-
forth. “Your
friend,” he says,
“is all very well
—I do not care
for him; but to
lose you, un Mon-
sieur si distingue,
as a client, that
is what distresses
me so terribly.”
I am touched,
and we are nearly
weeping in each
other’s arms,
when The Des-
pot, at some paces The First Example that catches my Eye of the Habitues
off, and with a who drink the Waters of La Bourboule.
man to carry his
bag, shouts out, brusquely, “ Here ! come on! Let’s go and see the
Doctor, and ask him what’s the best hotel to go to,”—this is rather
hard on the distressed proprietor, and I only hope he doesn’t understand
English,-—“ or else we shall lose a whole day, and shan’t begin our
traitement till to-morrow. We ’ve got to have breakfast, too. Come
on! ”
I obey. Having nothing further to say, I explain, in pantomime,
to the landlord, that I am not my own master, and that I am torn
away from his agreeable society, much against my will. I follow
Chivers hurriedly, and am aware of the compassionate, almost con-
temptuous air of the worthy hotel-keeper, as he shrugs his shoulders,
and turns to attend to his other customers, who are now thronging
the door-step.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
125
doctored, for you’ve got complaints enough,” I retaliate, speaking
in defence of the beauties of Nature, and doing it as pleasantly as
possible in the circumstances. My chirpiness, however, is_ only
feeble just now, for hunger and heat and fatigue are beginning to
tell on my naturally fine constitution ; and Cray Elis’s complaints,—
I mean his persistent grumblings,—are really infectious. 1 am posi-
tively beginning to disbelieve in La Bourboule. Where is it F Up
in the mountains ? I don’t see it. There are no snow-mountains,
too, as there are at Aix-les-Bains, and I am yielding to a strong
feeling of disappointment. I was told that one of the advantages
possessed by La Bourboule over any other sulphurous and arsenical
watering-place was, that it was high up and bracing. Well, I don’t
see any town on a hill, except something on our left, which we are
leaving behind us, and the Puy-de-Dome, kindly pointed out to us
by a fellow-traveller, in the distance. La Bourboule at last!
“ And a nice unfriendly sort of place it looks,” says Culvers, in a
hopelessly dissatisfied tone, as we descend a steep incline, and enter
the village—or hamlet—or whatever it is, but certainly not a town.
On we go,—the horses pull themselves together, taking us with
them, and canter down-hill, with reins anyhow, bells ringing, whip
cracking, and driver shouting! Well may the driver be triumphant!
Well may he be proud of his gallant team, which looks like a “for-
lorn hope ” of horses, whose arrival here at all is little less than a
miracle. Hotel after hotel we pass,—all, apparently, of a very
second-rate character, and each one, as it appears at this swift glance,
styling itself “ Grand Hotel.” We are for stopping, but the Coach-
man and his wild horses won’t hear of it. They are all for urging
on their wild career, and we can only puzzle ourselves as to which
is the hotel we ought to have alighted at, and how we shall select
our particular Grand Hotel from all the other Grand Hotels.
“ I felt certain,” says Culvers, sarcastically, “that your Grand
Hotel was only a fifth-rate auberge. All right! Goon! Wish to
goodness I hadn’t come to the infernal hole ! And who’s to unpack
for me ?—who’s to-- By the way,” he suddenly exclaims,
“ where is our luggage ? ”
I tell him that at Laqueuille I saw a fourgon being laden with
luggage, and among it ours. That it would reach this place some
time after us, was, I say to him, a “fourgon conclusion.” But
Chivers has no taste now for a specimen of what the Calenxbour
International Cie. (Limited) can do, and the Oriental Despot, whose
name was Easy, can only unavailingly anathematise his own want of
forethought, which has caused him so frequently to bewail “the
man he left behind him.” (Good notion for a song this. To be
suggested to Chivers, and even sung to him, in happier moments.)
“ What’s all this crowd ? ” he asks.
He may well ask. From every hotel, inn, and pension in the
place,—and, apparently, it is a perfect rabbit-warren of hotels,
inns, and pensions,—has trooped out a crowd of bare-headed gar-
cons in white aprons, commissionnaires with labelled caps, chamber-
maids in costume, gamins of no occupation, touts, and porters. They
are running after the omnibus like the gipsies on a Derby-Day after
a drag, all chattering and shouting at once, and directly we stop,
they form a cordon round the vehicle, so as not to let one of the
voyageurs escape, if they can help it. A gendarme in uniform
stands by,—very much “posed” apparently, as he evidently has
only come there by the merest accident, and as far as keeping order,
or offering any assistance to the unlucky objects of this mobbing, he
is perfectly helpless.
We elbow our way through the crowd, the Eastern Despot carry-
ing (much against his will) a heavy bag and an umbrella, with the
air of a man who, if he liked, could suddenly pull out a warrant signed
by all the Crowned Heads of Europe, and order off every one who
dared to get in his way to instant execution. His autocratic manner
is a little robbed of its impressiveness by his having to stop suddenly,
put down the bag, and swear that he never will come out again
without a servant; at the same time regarding me reproachfully,
to whom he attributes all his present misery, as much as to say
that, as in his opinion I have brought him to this pass, I really ought
to come forward and voluntarily relieve him of this intolerable
burden. But my hands are full with a light waterproof, and a
simple hand-bag that I can hang on one finger. My feeling is that
Britons never should be slaves, unless somebody makes it very well
worth their while.
“Where is your confounded Hotel?” asks the Easy One, queru-
lously. I assure him that I don’t know any more than he does, but
I have the name of the proprietor in writing. I pronounce it aloud,
and, as if by magic, a reply comes at once, “ (lest moi, Messieurs ! ”
from a respectably dressed, good-looking man, with a bronzed face,
and a dark moustache, who is lifting his brown straw hat in the
air by way of salutation. “Yes, perfectly—he has rooms for us
in the Annexe. He will show them to us at once. Will we follow
him ?” We do.
“ Come, this isn’t so bad, eh ? ” I sav to Chivers. who has assumed
an air of gloomy power, quite out of sympathy with the anxious,
hospitable, and cheery manner of our host.
“ Voild ! ” cries the patron, with some little distrust of our pro-
bable appreciation expressed in his countenance, as if he had
expected persons of quite a different type to what we had turned
out to be, and it had suddenly flashed across him that a couple of
dark rooms in a back street, without any chance of a view, were not
exactly the sort of thing we should have chosen for ourselves. We
do not like them. Dudley Chivers won’t give another look at them:
in his character of Oriental Despot he refuses to listen to any expla-
nation. “ Aliens done ! ” he says, shortly and emphatically—“ (Ja
ne nous convient pas ! C'est tnste, sombre, mal aeree ! faites-nous
en voir encore d'autres. Allez ! ”
Our host looks appealingly at me, but 1 endorse The Despot’s
verdict, and, finding that any attempt at compromise, in the way of a
suggestion for temporarily rearranging the furniture, is only a waste
of time, the landlord, rather disconcerted, takes us back to the hotel,
and shows us a couple of rooms on the ground-floor, the only rooms
at his disposition and ours. But they won’t do; Chivers refuses them
flatly; and,'dreading a scene, for our landlord is evidently a very
excitable person, and the blood is already rushing to his face, I try
to soften matters, and to make the best of a bad bargain. Per-
sonally, for the sake of peace and quietness, I should yield; but
the Easy One, appearing alternately as the stern, dogged English
official, and then, as the Unspeakable Oriental Despot, is too much
for the landlord, who is staggered into silence before his mysterious
and impenetrable guest. Chivers condemns the apartments as if
the entire wing of the hotel ought to be pulled down forthwith.
“ They’re not healthy,” he says, severely; “ and, if you have nothing
better than this, we ’ll go elsewhere.”
I thought the attack on the sanitary state of the apartments would
have aroused their proprietor, but it didn’t; he only protests, more
in sorrow than in anger, and informs us that he has nothing else
to offer, but that if we will instal ourselves here, provisoirement,
he will take care that we have the best apartments in a couple of
days. No ; The Despot is not to be cajoled. 1, meanly I admit,
follow his lead. No! I am not to be cajoled either. Seeing the
innkeeper giving in, and that all chance of a difficulty, with perhaps
a case in the local County Court, has blown over, I adopt Chivers’s
tone, and second all his resolutions with the utmost heartiness.
All this time I have been, as it were, playing Jacques Strop to
Chivers’s Robert Macaire. The landlord suddenly rouses himself,
and makes an allusion to his loss. Chivers is down on him at once.
“ We can’t take rooms that won’t suit us,” he replies, severely. The
chance of a legal difficulty (with Gendarmes, Avocats, and Juges
de Paix to follow) having again arisen, I go over, as it were, to the
enemy, adopt the politest and most diplomatic (Chivers subse-
quently stigmatises it as “cringing”) tone, and describe myself
(omitting Chivers) as “ desole,” adding, “ c’est dommage, mats
c'est une perte enorme pour nous, comme j'ai entendu parler tant
de bonnes choses de votre admirable cuisine."
This sentence, being rather a long one, takes me some time to
arrange and produce ; but when the landlord has once grasped my
meaning, he is #
disarmed. He
bows, and he ad-
dresses me per-
sonally hence-
forth. “Your
friend,” he says,
“is all very well
—I do not care
for him; but to
lose you, un Mon-
sieur si distingue,
as a client, that
is what distresses
me so terribly.”
I am touched,
and we are nearly
weeping in each
other’s arms,
when The Des-
pot, at some paces The First Example that catches my Eye of the Habitues
off, and with a who drink the Waters of La Bourboule.
man to carry his
bag, shouts out, brusquely, “ Here ! come on! Let’s go and see the
Doctor, and ask him what’s the best hotel to go to,”—this is rather
hard on the distressed proprietor, and I only hope he doesn’t understand
English,-—“ or else we shall lose a whole day, and shan’t begin our
traitement till to-morrow. We ’ve got to have breakfast, too. Come
on! ”
I obey. Having nothing further to say, I explain, in pantomime,
to the landlord, that I am not my own master, and that I am torn
away from his agreeable society, much against my will. I follow
Chivers hurriedly, and am aware of the compassionate, almost con-
temptuous air of the worthy hotel-keeper, as he shrugs his shoulders,
and turns to attend to his other customers, who are now thronging
the door-step.