1939-08-31 — Page 48

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MINE HOSTE OF TROUBLES

(By IVOR BROWN)

The conventional Boniface was as good as his name. He was robust, he was rubicund, his smile was as broad as it was long; his hot meats never grew cold, and his daily cold table was as large and lavish as a bridal feast. He was the eternal pet of Victorian art. To see the aggressively serene and salubrious specimen of Mine Hoste welcoming his visitors in the "Jolly Old Coach- ing Days" was a most popular study in scarlet. His cheeks were as opulently pink as his hams and sirloins. He suggested fires ablaze and hearts aglow, and all without fuss endured or trouble taken. He had no Labour Question. His staff was composed entirely of chamber- maids too pretty to be safe and of ostlers too cheerful to be true. Some people put the blame for this tire- some legend of the Perfect Publican, ripe and russet as an autumn apple, and prospering in a perfect world, on Charles Dickens. But that is not fair. Dickens described plenty of inns which were among the

· bleakest of Bleak Houses.

Those, no doubt, were the days. Peace then was blessedly divisible: if two scoundrels kicked each other in a drinkers' brawl in some unpro- nounceable village half ́ ́a world away it was not necessary for the universe to tremble lest an inter- national war be the issue. Danzig was mainly known for મ Duchess beloved in light opéra. The joys of Collective Insecurity were still un- known. It was possible to do busin- ess on the assumption that August would actually arrive and not be engulfed and annihilated in some flood of fire. Boniface could order his beef with the fair certainty that no speech by a crazy European dic-'- tator would effect his customers and leave him with a load of uneaten victuals and a gloomy list of can- celled bookings. The life of man, at least beside an English high road, grew larger and fatter and even, in pre-motoring days, safer. Boni- face had only to expand his premises to expand his trade.

But those who cater for present holiday travel have recently been the especial victims of the "war of nervés."

They can hardly blame

THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

Mr. G. Goodban, of the Scout Council, and Mrs. Booker, Assistant Commissioner of Wolf Cube, in- specting the Scoute camp at Kowloon Tong.

Some of the Boy Scouts who were in camp on Lion Rock Road, Kowloon Tong, at the week-end, pose for our photographer.

their clients for uncertainty and hesitation in making holiday plans this year and for failure to adhere to those made. It is just everyone's

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bad luck. Unfortunately, it is the first and small man who suffers suffers most, in this as in other forms of business. Just as a week or two of poor receipts, caused by some social accident, cuts short the life of an otherwise promising play, because the overhead expenses are constant while takings "decline, so one bad holiday month

may ruin the year of an hotel, whose, fortunes are determined by the profits made during an inevitably short season. The old Boniface waited by the road- side for the coaches to come clat- tering in; his successor crouches over the wireless and wonders how many cancellations to-night's bad news will involve.

In any case, the conduct of an* inn, which many regard as a nice soft job for their declining years, must be hazardous enough for those who have locked up all their capital in the venture, while the direction

needs of a fair-sized hotel

every quality of vigilance, patience, and tact, as well as of domestic economy: Indeed, it would be hard to think of any profession in which more varied types of knowledge are re quired. The modern Boniface must be an economist and a psy-. chologist, a lawyer and a doctor, a plumber and an electrician, a light- ning calculator and a first-rate judge of food, both before and after-cook- ing. He will also be expected to provide encyclopaedic advice on facilities for fishing and shooting, riding, golf, and all the rest of it. There is no conceivable form of in- formation which somebody will not demand and no conceivable form of stupidity, in staff or client, which he will not have to endure. It is small wonder that the average inn- keeper has fallen sadly away from the Victorian model of beaming cor- pulence beside, a groaning table to 'the modern business man's image

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of wan fatigue beside a never-silent telephone.

By the impatient playboy, cheat- ed of his game, the hotel-keeper is harshly frowned upon when the skies are frowning. Boniface is responsible for sun and moon; he is chargeable with the dismal vågar- jes of Atlantic depressions and those climatic disasters which habitually occur just south of Iceland. Hav- ing assured the clamorous and plain- tive that it is sure to be fine to- morrow, he must face them on the watery morning when the gloomy heavens and the misty hills belle his promises, The very anticyclones come to mock him. He must see.

his premises half-empty in May and June, when we get our fine weather, and then, should he have the luck to do good business in July and August, spend consoling his clients tinual downpour now

those holiday months,

weary hours for the con-

so usual in

Is it the profession's 'reward to "see a lot of life," as they say? Un- deniably the innkeeper, however much office work he does, is not confined to those drab walls and the company of his office staff. He sees the human comedy pass by; he is, by compulsion, a practitioner of mass observation; were he inclined to fol- low the arts he would have abundant matter as well as little time. · The stuff of a dozen short stories, of a play and a novel or two is latent in any well-filled hotel most days of the week. The theme may be there, but the leisure is not. It is a rare day for the hotel-keeper when no element of his machine breaks down. We live in the period which create so much labour for those who do repairs—at least when they are there to do them. One of the chief functions of lifts, for exam- ple, is to wear a placard called "Out (Continued an Page 8)