The American Woman Abroad - a travel writer and illustrator from days gone by assesses French hostelries

By Mike K-H

A treasure worthy of any freebooter - Jeff Kelley's Kellscraft Studios publishes out-of-copyright classics on the Web. Browse, download or print them. They're free. Jeff sets out to:

"...bring to you hard to find, previously printed books now in the public domain. Our focus is on the Arts and Crafts period (1890's to 1920), and we concentrate on books known for their wonderful illustrations and philosophy of life. Some books at our site will have no illustrations, but are available here for their writing and importance in the Arts and Crafts period." 

If you are English, you will recognise Robert Louis Stevenson and John Ruskin among the authors featured on this site. I'll come back to them later. Today I want to show you an excerpt from an American travel writer and illustrator of exceptional talent and energy, Blanche McManus. 

Here are some snippets of text and an illustration from The American Woman Abroad. It would seem that the difference in price of lodging between England and France that we see today goes back a long way.

"Twelve shillings a day is about the price for meals and lodging in the inn of the average big town in England. 

This seems a trifle stiff for going to bed by a solitary candle and also being charged for it in the bill. It is not only inconvenient to go to bed by a candle, but galling in the extreme to be made to pay for the privilege, and this archaic custom for paying for "light and attendance" still holds good in most English hotels, the exceptions being certain of the newer ones in London. The charge varies in the country inn from a sixpence to a shilling and sixpence, according, as it would seem, to what the traffic will stand......

.....To get into the real spirit of the thing a guest at an English inn should have a cup of tea before rising. This the maid will bring up on call, and it will not be forgotten in the bill, figuring at from sixpence to a shilling, but in spite of this no English woman would think of beginning the day without this stimulant, and even the mere English man takes kindly to the custom.

The English inn has long overshadowed its counterpart on the Continent, but the small French country hotel is coming into its own, largely through the Touring Club de France, which has done great work in improving the French hotel of all grades. Especially has the small hotel of the countryside benefited under its tutelage in the past ten years, and even if it has not always risen to the height of installing the chambres hygiéniques, advocated by the beneficent T.C.F., the whole tone and aspect of things has been put on a more livable basis, while those cabalistic letters "W.C.," opposite the name of a hotel in the hotel guide of the T.C.F., indicate improved sanitary arrangements of a kind that scarcely existed a few years ago.

The country hotel or auberge of France (the word inn does not fit in for the nomenclature of a small French hostelry) has quite as much charm on intimate acquaintance as its counterpart in Britain, though its exterior is often plain, and, at first glance, unattractive. For all this the lone woman traveller may drop into any French countryside hotel, no matter how humble it may appear, with perfect confidence and propriety, and be assured of finding a good bed, good cooking, good food and reasonable prices.

However you may arrive at the French hotel, by the hotel 'bus from the station, by the omnibus of the ville, or in your own automobile, you will most frequently drive into the courtyard--sometimes a garden, but more often paved with cobblestones, with the stables lined up on one side. The expectant garçon rings the big bell that hangs beside the entrance and the patron comes to the door to welcome you; as likely he is the chef, too, in white apron and cap; the proprietor is usually the chef himself in the country hotel in France, in which case you may count upon it that the food will be good. The rooms may seem bare after the plethora of furniture of the English inn, but its warm, waxed floors, as in the north, or the glazed tiles of the south, are more hygienic than the carpets under foot that the English insist upon at home. The bedroom is as severe as a convent cell, and the bed resembles a sarcophagus, piled so high with many mattresses that it takes a gymnastic turn to get in. The sheets are of linen, sometimes old, hand-woven heirlooms of fascinating softness, sometimes unbleached and of a board-like thickness. The frugal French housekeeper counts on the life of a sheet being a quarter of a century and buys sturdy stuff..... "

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