CHAPTER IX.
DUTIES OF A BOARDING-HOUSE KEEPER.
Suns had risen and set; moons had waxed and waned, and Mrs. Lawyer and myself were now settled in a boarding-house. I will not say comfortably, for, although never in my youth did I own a little hatchet, still I have read in my younger days the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
My powers of description are exceedingly limited, so I will not attempt to sketch, for the benefit of my readers, either the house itself, its furnishings, its occupants, or the entertainment provided as a quid pro their dollars. Of the furniture, I will only say that the carpet on the parlor floor “was bedizened like a Ricaree Indian—all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock’s feathers.” Of our fellow boarders, ’tis sufficient to remark that some, on one or two occasions, had, perhaps, worn kid gloves; most of the men were “self-made, whittled into shape with their own jack-knives”; the ladies—but de feminis nil nisi bonum.
Of the food provided for the inner man, need more be said than that the poultry, which appeared on the second day of our sojourn, would have seemed to Mr. Bagnet’s fastidious eye, suitable for Mrs. B.’s birthday dinner? If there be any truth in adages, they certainly were not caught by chaff. Every kind of finer tendon and ligament that it is in the nature of poultry to possess, was developed in these specimens in the singular form of guitar strings. Their limbs appeared to have struck roots into their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their legs were so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian exercises and the walking of matches. No one could have cleaned the drumsticks without being of ostrich descent.
Ab uno disce omnes. Ex pede Herculem. From these three hints let each one, for himself, erect images of our boarding-house, our fellow-boarders, and our meals, as a Cuvier would reconstruct a megatherium from a tooth, or an Agassiz draw a picture of an unknown fish from a single scale. But I must not dip my pen in vinegar, nor tip it with wormwood, when I write of boarding-houses and their industrious and unfortunate keepers. These providers of food and lodging seem to be the descendants of Ishmael, their hand being against every one to eke out their little profits, and every one’s hand being against them. Let me be an honorable exception to the general rule, and act like the Good Samaritan, although, by the way, that worthy patronized a cheap hotel, not a boarding-house.
* * * * * *
It has ever been a hobby of mine that a door—hall or otherwise—is intended to be shut (if not, a hole in the wall would answer every purpose and be cheaper). Well, one great source of trouble with me at Madame Dee’s private boarding-house was that the domestic-of-all-work was in the constant habit of leaving the hall door ajar whenever she made her exit on to the street in her hunt for butter, eggs, or milk. A fellow-boarder, seeing my anxiety on this point, asked me if I was afraid of some one stealing Mrs. Lawyer.
“No,” I replied, “I am more afraid of my overcoat. Although not very new, it is still serviceable.”
“Well, sir,” said a youthful reader of Blackstone and Story, “if any one feloniously and wickedly takes away your bad habit could you not deduct the value of it on your next week’s settlement with Mrs. Dee? An innkeeper would be liable in such a case.”
“My dear young friend,” I replied, “you have as yet acquired only the A B C of professional knowledge. The liability of a boarding-house keeper for the goods of a boarder is by no means the same as that of an innkeeper.”
Here I paused, but the first speaker asked me to proceed and explain the difference, so I spake somewhat as follows:
“Once upon a time Catherine Dansey went to the boarding-house of Elizabeth F. Richardson with her luggage, and was duly received within the mansion. One day some of Mrs. Dansey’s goods, chattels, or knick-knacks were stolen, and when the matter was investigated it appeared that the thief had entered through the front door—which had been left open by the servant—and that Mrs. Richardson knew that her Biddy was in the constant habit of neglecting to shut the door. Mrs. R. would not settle the affair amicably, so Mrs. D. had the law of her.[390] At the trial the judge told the jury that a boarding-house keeper was bound to take due and reasonable care about the safe-keeping of a guest’s goods; and then, it having struck his lordship that perhaps his twelve enlightened countrymen, who sat before him in the box, did not know too well what due care might be, he proceeded to explain to them that it was such care as a prudent housekeeper would take in the management of his own house for the protection of his own goods. The judge went on to say that Mrs. Richardson’s servant leaving the door open might be a want of such care, but the mistress was not answerable for such negligence, unless she herself had been guilty of some neglect (as in keeping such a servant with a knowledge of her habits). The jury, as in duty bound, took the law from his lordship and said that Dame R. was not liable.”
“Then Mrs. Dansey had to perform to the tune of a nice little bill of costs, and grin and bear it,” remarked the embryo Coke.
“She was rather stubborn about it, and applied for a new trial.”
“Did she get it?” asked Coke in futuro.
“No. The whole four judges gave it as their opinion that a boarding-house keeper is not bound to keep a guest’s baggage safely to the same extent as an innkeeper, but that the law implies an undertaking on his part to take due and proper care of the boarder’s belongings, although nothing was said about it; and that neglecting to take due care of an outer door might be a breach of such duty.”
“But did they say what due and proper care amounted to?” was queried.
“Yes; but, as doctors often do, they disagreed on the point. Judge Wightman could not see that a boarding-house keeper is a bailee of the goods of his guest at all, or that he is bound to take more care of them (when they are no further given into his care than by being in his house) than he as a prudent man would take of his own. If he were guilty of negligence in the selection of his servants, or in keeping such as he might well distrust, his lordship said that he could hardly be considered as taking the care of a prudent owner, and so might be liable for a loss occasioned by a servant’s neglect. Erle, J., said that as there was no delivery of the goods by Mrs. D. to Mrs. R., no contract to keep them with care and deliver them again, and nothing paid in respect of the goods, there was no duty of keeping them placed upon Richardson. Judge Coleridge and Lord Campbell looked at the case through spectacles of another color—the former said that a guest at such a house is entitled to due and reasonable care absolutely; he comes to the house and pays his money for certain things to be rendered in return; he stipulates directly with the master, having no control himself over the servants, and having nothing to do with the master’s judiciousness or care or good fortune in selecting them; and the master undertakes to the guest not merely to be careful in the choice of his servants, but absolutely to take due and reasonable care of his goods. Lord Campbell said that he could not go so far as to say that in no case can a boarding-house keeper be liable for the loss of goods through the negligence of a servant, although he himself was guiltless of any negligence in hiring or keeping the domestic. If one employs servants to keep the outer door shut when there is danger of thieves, while they are performing that duty they are acting within the scope of their employment, and he is answerable for their negligence. He is not answerable for the consequences of a felony, or even a willful trespass committed by them; but the general rule is, that the master is responsible for the negligence of his servants while engaged in offices which he employs them to do—and his lordship (for I have been quoting his sentiments) said that he was not aware how the keeper of a boarding-house could be an exception to the general rule.”
I stopped here, and was rather chagrined to catch one of those present saying to another—
“Do you remember what old Coates said about his wife?”
“No—what?”
“‘M-Mrs. C-Coates is a f-funny old watch. She b-broke her chain a g-good while ago, and has been r-running down ever since; she must have a mainspring a mile long.’ This is apropos of our friend here when he gets started on a legal point.”
“And he is always starting some such shoppy subject; like Adelaide Proctor’s young man—
‘He cracks no egg without a legal sigh,
Nor eats of beef but thinking on the law,’”
was the response wafted into the recesses of my auricular appendages—so chilling it was that I incontinently sneezed thrice.
“There seems,” said the student, “to have been a decided diversity of opinion among the learned judges in that case.”
“Yes, indeed,” I replied. “But the point has been made clear in a more recent case, in which all the judges took the same view of the extent of the liability.”[391]
“What was that decision, sir?”
“That the law imposes no obligation on a lodging-house keeper to take care of the goods of his boarder. A lodger who was just about to change his quarters, was out of his room, and the landlord allowed a stranger to enter to look at it; the latter carried off some of the boarder’s property, and when the owner sued the landlord the court gave him to understand that he must himself bear the loss. Earle, C. J., said that the judges had decided that even if the things had been stolen by a member of the household the proprietor would not be liable. He went on to remark that he was most particularly averse to affirming, for the first time, that a lodging-house keeper has the duty cast upon him of taking care of his guest’s goods; he saw great difficulties in so holding, and thought it would be casting upon him an undefined responsibility which would be most inconvenient; considering that lodgers consist of all classes—from the highest to the lowest—one could hardly exaggerate the mischief that would ensue from holding the proprietor liable. It would be impossible, his lordship continued, to lay down any definite test of liability; each case must be left to the discretion or caprice of a jury; the liability of the keeper of the house must vary according to the situation of the premises and a variety of circumstances too numerous to mention. If, on the other hand, the law is that the lodger must take care of his own goods, it only imposes upon him the same care which he is bound to take when he walks the streets; he may always secure his valuables by carrying them about with him, or by placing them specially in the custody of the keeper of the house.”
“But it appears rather hard to compel a man to carry his goods about with him wherever he goes, or else hand them over to the boarding-house keeper who might be down in the kitchen cooking dinner or washing cups and saucers; besides, she or he might refuse to take care of them,” captiously remarked one of the company.
“Notwithstanding all that, I have told you the law correctly, and Byles, J., remarked once that a contrary decision would cast upon the proprietor ‘a frightful amount of liability,’” I replied.
“Did the judges in the case you just referred to say anything about the open door case?” questioned the earnest inquirer after knowledge.
“Yes, and held that the whole tenor of the judgment in it was that a boarding-house keeper is not bound to take such reasonable degree of care of the goods of his guest as a prudent man may reasonably be expected to take of his own.”
“It seems strange,” urged the youth—by the way, a careless, heedless young fellow was he—“that such people should in no way be liable to look after the property of their boarders.”
“I did not say exactly that. They are of course liable where a loss of a lodger’s goods has resulted from gross negligence on their part, or they themselves have been guilty of some misdeed.”[392]
“Those two cases, I think,” said one who had been a silent listener hitherto, “were both decided in England; but what say our American judges on the point?”
“So far as they have spoken,” I replied, “they have, as a rule, corroborated and agreed with the sentiments of their ermined and bewigged fellows across the ocean. The Supreme Court of Tennessee decided that an innkeeper was not liable for the clothing of a boarder stolen from his room, without the former’s fault, although he would be for that of a guest;[393] and the judge gave as his reason for making the distinction that a passenger or wayfaring man may be an entire stranger in the place, and must put up and lodge at the inn to which his day’s journey may bring him, and so it is important that he should be protected by the most stringent rules of law enforcing the liability of hotel-keepers; but as a boarder does not need such protection the law does not afford it, and it is sufficient to give him a remedy when he proves the innkeeper guilty of culpable neglect. And in Kentucky, where a regular boarder at an hotel deposited gold with the proprietor, who put it in his safe, into which thieves broke and stole, the court held that the hotel-keeper was not liable as an innkeeper, but only as a depositary without reward, and as no gross negligence was shown the poor boarder failed in his attempt to recover his lost cash in that way.[394] I had better tell you, however, that in New York it has very recently been held that a boarding-house keeper is liable for the loss of a boarder’s property by theft, committed by a stranger allowed to enter the boarder’s room by a servant of the house,[395] and that it is his duty to exercise such care over a boarder’s goods as a prudent man would over his own.”
“Well, will you please tell me what is the difference between a boarding-house and an inn?” asked one of the other boarders.
“It would afford me great pleasure to answer your question at another time, but at the present I am sorry to say that duty calls me and I must go.”
Leaving my listeners to digest the law lecture I had delivered to them, I repaired to the best parlor, and there found Mrs. Lawyer and another lady in a state of white heat over the performances of a boarder who occupied the next room—one of the genus referred to by Coleridge when he said,
“Swans sing before they die; ’twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing”—
who was constantly carolling or trilling with a voice of the most rasping kind, or playing upon a most atrocious accordeon, to the discomfiture and annoyance of the other guests.
“Can that man not be made to keep quiet?” asked my wife.
“Doubtless, my dear, if you would go and talk to him sweetly, he would cease his songs and lay aside his wind instrument,” I gallantly replied.
“Don’t tease me,” she said. “Here we both have got splitting headaches through that horrid noise.”
“I thought from your manner you seemed a little cracked, my love; what can I do?” I queried.
“You ought to know—you are a lawyer; can’t you make him stop?”
“Well, really I don’t know. I remember that in England a man had the constant ringing of a chime of bells in a neighboring chapel stopped on account of the annoyance and discomfort it caused him.”[396]
“I am sure that the noise of bells is as heavenly music compared to the infernal discords produced by that man,” remarked the other lady, who, like Talmage’s friend, Miss Stinger, was sharp as a hornet, prided herself on saying things that cut, could not bear the sight of a pair of pants, loathed a shaving apparatus, and thought Eve would have shown a better capacity for housekeeping if she had—the first time she used her broom—swept Adam out of Paradise.
“Yes, dear madam, the noise of belles is often most delightful; and the happiest day of my life was the one on which I was engaged in ringing a sweet village belle, who shall be nameless,” I replied, knowing that the lady hated everything like gallantry, and I politely waved my hand towards Mrs. L., who exclaimed:
“You stupid, you! Tell me directly what we can do!”
“In the English case I mentioned, the man got an injunction from the Court of Chancery to restrain the noise; but in another case in North Carolina,[397] where a most pious member of a Methodist church was indicted for disturbing divine service by singing in such a way that one part of the congregation laughed, and the other part got mad—the irreligious and frivolous enjoyed it as fun, while the serious and devout were indignant—although the jury found the man guilty, the court reversed the verdict, as the brother did not desire to disturb the worship but was religiously doing his best. So here our poor neighbor is doing what he can to produce a ‘concord of sweet sounds.’ On another occasion, the judges in the same State held that the noise of a drum or fife in a procession was not a nuisance.[398] But then the wearers of the ermine in that State seem almost indifferent to sounds of any kind; for about the same time, they decided that profane swearing was not a nuisance, unless it was loud and long continued.”[399]
“What had we better do?” persisted Mrs. Lawyer. “Either he must leave, or we must bid goodbye to these premises.”
“Get the landlady to give him notice to quit; then if he won’t go peaceably, she can bundle him out neck and crop.”[400]
“She will promise to do so, and that will be the end of it,” said the acidulous lady.
“In Massachusetts, where a lodger was disturbed by the lodger in the room below singing hymns by no means of the Moody & Sankey style, and the landlord promised to get the musician out, but failed to do so, the Supreme Court held that the aggrieved boarder could not insist upon a diminution of his weekly bills on account of the disagreeable singing.[401] But, my dear, will you come and take a walk with me?”
Off we started countrywards, and —— walked. When we were returning, it was dark and late. “The night air was soft and balmy; the night odors sweet and soul-entrancing; there were no listeners save the grasshoppers and the night-moths with folded wings among the flower-beds of the cottages, and no on-lookers save the silent stars and jeweled-eyed frogs upon the path staring at us” with all their might and main. So we gossiped until we entered the city once again, and then the odors changed; listeners and lookers-on became numerous; the stars were eclipsed by flaming gas; the frogs gave place to gaping gamins.
* * * * * *
As it has to be mentioned, and there is no reason why it should not be mentioned just here, I may state (as a hint to those who keep boarders) that Judge Coleridge once remarked that if a boarding-house keeper neglected to give a boarder a dry bed or wholesome food, and in consequence thereof the latter became sick, it could not be doubted but that the landlord might be compelled to make compensation in damages to the sufferer. His lordship also went on to say, in effect, that if the White Hart Inn, High-street, Borough, had been a boarding-house, and Sam Weller had given the wooden leg of number six to thirteen, and the pair of Hessians of thirteen to number six; or the two pairs of halves of the commercial to the snuggery inside the bar, and the painted tops of the snuggery to the commercial, so that any of those worthies had been damnified, then the bustling old landlady of that establishment would have had to comfort her guests in a more substantial manner than she did when she titillated the nose of the spinster aunt.[402]