CHAPTER III.
ACCIDENTS, ROOMS, DOGS.
Next morning, as we were arranging whither we would wend our way, I proposed taking a bus. My wife remarked positively that she wished that I would not use that vulgar word. I returned:
“Humph! Did you ever hear the story about Lord Campbell and the omnibus?”
“What was it?” she asked.
“A lawyer while arguing before him continually spoke of a certain kind of carriage as ‘a brougham,’ (pronouncing both syllables) whereupon his lordship, with that pomposity for which he was rather noted, remarked that ‘broom’ was the more usual, and not incorrect, pronunciation; that such pronunciation was open to no grave objection, and had the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering an extra syllable. Shortly afterward Campbell spoke of an ‘omnibus.’ The counsel whom he had shortly before corrected, jumped up with such promptitude that the judge was startled into silence, exclaiming: ‘Pardon me, my Lord, the carriage to which you draw attention is usually called ‘a bus’: that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering two extra syllables.’ You can easily draw the moral from that little tale, my dear.”
Into a bus we got, and out of it we got, in course of time. We went up and down and in and out and roundabout, seeing the sights and doing the town like many another couple had done before us, and will do again during that most awkward of seasons, the honeymoon.
While my spouse gazed in at some lovely silks, sweet feathers, and ducks of bonnets, unmindful of the troubles that Moses underwent in obtaining the latter part of the Decalogue, I took the opportunity of instilling some legal doctrines and decisions into her head.
“Remember,” I said, “the solemn words of the poet:
‘Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.’”
“I fear that a woman like myself will have to wait very long before she gets her little wants supplied,” she saucily interjected.
“I was about to remark,” I sternly continued, “that if you are very extravagant in your wardrobe and tastes, I will not be liable to pay all your little bills. Once upon a time an English judge decided that a milliner could not make a husband pay £5,287 for bonnets, laces, feathers and ribbons supplied to his dear little wife during a few months.”[62]
“No power on earth could make you pay that sum, or anything like it; so don’t worry yourself, my darling,” coolly and somewhat sarcastically remarked Mrs. Lawyer.
“Please do not interrupt. In another case it was held that the price of a sea-side suit, some £67, could not be collected from a husband—a poor barrister—who had forbidden his wife to go to the watering place.”[63]
“He must have been a very poor lawyer if he never had a suit that cost more to some unfortunate client.”
“Again, the Rev. Mr. Butcher”——
“I like that name for a parson,” again interposed my wife. “It suggests, you know, a slender frame, a pale face, taper fingers.”
I paid no heed, but went on:
---- “Was excused payment of some £900 for birds—loreèes, avadavats, lovebirds, quakers, cutthroats—furnished his wife during the short space of ten months.”[64]
“But I will not be as extravagant as any of those misguided ladies were,” remarked my wife, most sensibly.
“Well, then, there will be no trouble. Everything necessary I will of course pay for willingly, as I could be made to pay for them, if unwilling. Even a piano, perhaps, I will stand;[65] or false teeth;[66] but, mind you, not quack medicines,[67] though you are a duck.”
“I am glad to hear ‘that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food’; please begin now with the last named necessary article, for I am hungry.” Mrs. Lawyer was a practical woman.
“I presume it is time for lunch,” I replied. “Ah me! I wish lawyers in this nineteenth century could get their dinners as cheaply as they could in days gone by, when the client paid therefor, as appears in many an ancient register. The clerk of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, entered on his books that he paid to Robert Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 6d. for his dinner. Tempora mutantur. There’s a restaurant. Let us enter.”
We entered accordingly, and a very good luncheon we had, except for one slight contretemps. While engaged upon my macaroni soup, a long, reddish thread—as I surmised—revealed itself to my vision. Calling the waiter, I demanded how it came there.
“Ah!” said the man, quite cheerfully, “I can tell you where that came from. Our cook’s in love, sir, and is constantly opening a locket containing a lock of his sweetheart’s hair. Of course, some of it occasionally falls into the dishes.”
“Disgusting!” said my wife.
“Beastly!” said I.
The waiter calmly continued: “Beg pardon, sir, but would you mind giving me the hair? You see, the cook is so fond of her that he is quite pleased when I bring him back a stray hair or two.”
Of course, I knew that accidents will, etc.; and everything else was very good. My wife, however, wasted a good deal of time in listening in wondering amazement to the calculations made at an adjoining table.
“I don’t see how a waiter can remember such a long list of things, and tell what they all come to so rapidly; or how any two men could eat as much as those two did,” she remarked to me.
“Pshaw!” I replied, “that is nothing to Mr. Smallweed’s arithmetical powers, or to the gastronomic achievements of himself and his friends.”
“And pray what did Mr. S. do?” asked my wife.
“Why, when their little luncheon was over, and he was asked by the pretty waitress what they had had, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Four veals and hams is 3 and 4 potatoes is 3 and 4 and one summer cabbage is 3 and 6 and 3 marrows is 4 and 6 and 6 breads is 5 and 3 Cheshires is 5 and 3 and 4 pints of half-and-half is 6 and 3 and 4 small rums is 8 and 3 and 3 Pollys is 8 and 6 and 8 and 6 in half a sovereign, Polly, and 18 pence out.’”
When we rose to leave the room, we found that some one had left before us with Mrs. Lawyer’s new umbrella. Silently I quitted the place, for I knew that it had been decided that a restaurant is not an inn, so as to charge the proprietor with the liabilities of an innkeeper toward transient persons who take their meals there; (and the same rule applies even though he does in fact keep in the same building an hotel, to which the eating-house is attached;[68]) and therefore it would be useless to expect the proprietor to make good the loss. Nor is a refreshment bar (where persons casually passing by receive the good things of this life at a counter) an inn, although it is connected with an hotel, and kept under the same license, but entered by a separate door from the street.[69] Where, however, a servant once asked permission to leave a parcel at a tavern, and the landlady refused to receive it; the man, being a thirsty soul, called for something to drink, putting the parcel on the floor behind him while imbibing, and while thus the spirit was descending more rapidly than it ever did in the most sensitive thermometer, the package disappeared, and never was seen again by the owner; yet the innkeeper was held responsible for the loss.[70]
An umbrella was bought and money expended for divers little odds and ends before we went back to the hotel for dinner. On our return, Mr. Deadhead and his wife entered the hotel just before us. They were country cousins of the proprietor’s, and had been asked to dinner, or had come without an invitation. As he was opening an inside door a large pane of glass fell out of it, and, slightly grazing his hand, shivered into a thousand pieces on the marble floor. I told him to rejoice that he had been fortunate enough to escape with the loss of but a drop or two of his vital fluid; for I remembered distinctly a similar accident happening to my father’s old friend, Southcote, in England, years ago; and although he sued the proprietor of the house, alleging that he (the landlord) was possessed of an hotel, into which he had invited S. as a visitor, and in which there was a glass door which it was necessary for him (S.) to open for the purpose of leaving, and which he, by the permission of the owner, and with his knowledge, and without any warning from him, lawfully opened, for the purpose aforesaid, as a door which was in a proper condition to be opened, yet, by and through the carelessness, negligence, and default of defendant, the door was then in an insecure and dangerous condition, and unfit to be opened; and, by reason of said door being in such insecure and dangerous condition, and of the then carelessness, negligence, default, and improper conduct of the defendant in that behalf, a large piece of glass fell from the door, and wounded Southcote—yet, although he said all this, the Court of Exchequer, with Pollock, C. B, at its head, decided that no cause of action against the proprietor was disclosed.[71] It was considered that a visitor in a house was in the same position as any other member of the establishment, so far as regards the negligence of the master or his servants, and must take his chance of accidents with the rest.[72] Baron Bramwell, however, well said that where a person is in the house of another, either on business or for any other lawful purpose, he has a right to expect that the owner will take reasonable care to protect him from injury, and will not leave trap-doors open down which he might fall, or take him into a garden among spring-guns and man-traps.[73]
At dinner—to which, in addition to the various condiments provided by mine host, we ourselves brought that best of sauces, hunger—there was seated at a neighboring table Mrs. Deadhead, a friend of the proprietor’s, as I have said, a lady of considerable amplitude of person, and extensively bedecked with the diamonds of Golconda, the gold of Australia, the lace of Lyons, the feathers of South Africa, the millinery of New York, and attired in a silk dress of most fashionable shape, color, and make. As a waiter was helping this very conspicuous member of society to a plate of soup, he caught his foot in the extensive train, stumbled, and placed the soup in her ladyship’s lap—minus the plate. Great was the commotion, loud the reproaches, abject the apologies.
My wife thereupon whispered to me that the upset would not have mattered much if the soup was any like hers.
“Why not?” I queried, in some surprise, and anxious to learn as speedily as possible the chemical peculiarities of a lady’s toilet.
“Because then the dress would have been turned into a watered silk,” was the only answer I got.
It was some time before I saw the point, and then I smiled a dreary, weary smile, and remarked that I hoped the lady was able to re-dress herself, for I thought that she could get no redress from the proprietor—at least, that legal luminary, Pollock, C. B., so insinuated on one occasion.[74]
My wife grew fidgety because the waiters were somewhat tardy in filling her orders.
“Look,” she said, “at those lazy fellows! Half a dozen of them doing nothing, while we are kept waiting, still waiting.”
“Doubtless,” I replied, “they have been deeply impressed with the truth of that grand old Miltonic line:
‘They also serve who only stand to wait.’”
* * * * * *
While taking my post-prandial smoke, my interrogator of the previous evening again approached me, and asked, in a grumbling voice, if the landlord had a right to turn him out of one room, and put him into another.
“Oh, yes,” I replied; “he has the sole right of selecting the apartment for each guest, and, if he finds it expedient, may change the room and assign his patron another. There is no implied contract that one to whom a particular room has been given shall retain it so long as he chooses to pay for it.[75] You pay your money, but you don’t take your choice.”
“But I liked the room so much,” said Mr. Complaining Grumbler.
“It matters not. The proprietor is not bound to comply with your caprices.[76] When you go to an hotel you have only a mere easement of sleeping in one room, and eating and drinking in another, as Judge Maule once remarked.”[77]
“Can he turn me out of the house altogether?”
“Certainly not, if you behave yourself; unless, indeed, you neglect or refuse to pay your bill upon reasonable demand.”[78]
“I am going away by the night train,” said Mr. C. G., “and I did not wish to go to bed; so he insisted upon taking my room, and told me I might stay in the parlor until I left.”
“And quite right, too. Although he cannot make you go to bed, or turn you out of doors because you do not choose to sleep, still you cannot insist upon having a bed-room in which to sit up all night, if you are furnished with another room proper for that purpose.”[79]
“I intend returning in the afternoon; can he refuse to take care of my traps while I am absent?”
“I fancy not, for a temporary absence does not affect the rights of a guest.[80] Long since, it was laid down as law that if one comes to an inn with a hamper, in which he has goods, and goes away, leaving it with the host, and in a few days comes back, but in the meantime his goods are stolen, he has no action against the host, for at the time of stealing he was not his guest, and by keeping the hamper the innkeeper had no benefit, and therefore is not chargeable with the loss of it. But it would be otherwise if the man is absent but from morn to dewy eve;[81] and where, in New York State, a guest, after spending a few days at an hotel, gave up his room, left his valise—taking a check for it—and was gone eight days, without paying his bill; on returning, he registered his name, took a room, and called for his bag, when another appeared in its place, having the duplicate check attached: the Court of Common Pleas held that, whether the case was considered as an ordinary bailment, or as property in an inn keepers’ hands, on which he had a lien, he was bound to exercise due care and diligence, and that he must account for the loss, the changing of the check being evidence of negligence.”[82]
I rose to leave the room, for I was growing weary of this catechetical performance; but my questioner’s budget was not yet exhausted, and, as I made my exit, I heard him say:
“Pardon me—one inquiry more: I was at the St. Nicholas last week when it was burnt down, and I lost some of my clothes. Is the owner liable to make good the damage sustained?”[83]
I heeded not, and went to seek my wife. After some search through the magnificent drawing-rooms of our sumptuous hotel, I at length found her in an elegant parlor, seated at a piano, and gently playing some sweet melodies. As I approached, she motioned me to be cautious. When I reached her, I saw that a large spider was stationed at the edge of the piano cover, apparently drinking in the harmony of sweet sounds to the utmost extent of his arachnidian nature. My advent broke the spell, and away the little hairy darkey rushed, hand over hand, up his tiny cable of four thousand twisted strands, till he was safe in the cornice of the ceiling. My wife was charmed at her novel listener, and exclaimed: “Did you ever see such a thing?”
“No, but I have read of it,” I replied. “Michelet, in his charming book on ‘The Insect,’ tells that a little musical prodigy, who at eight astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin, was forced to practice long weary hours in solitude. There was a spider, however, in the room, which, entranced by the melodious strains, grew more and more familiar, until at length it would climb upon the mobile arm that held the bow. Little Berthome needed no other listener to kindle his enthusiasm. But a cruel step-mother appeared on the scene suddenly one day, and with a single blow of her slipper annihilated the octopedal audience. The child fell to the ground in a deathlike faint, and in three months was a corpse—dead from a broken heart.”
“How sad!” said Mrs. Lawyer, in husky tones, as she blew her nose in a suspicious manner.
“Then there was also the musical spider of Pellison”—— A little snarleyow of a dog here rushed in and barked so vigorously and furiously that my wife never heard more of that spider. I tried to turn the wretched creature out, but a puppy following—the owner—requested me to leave it alone. I must say that I heartily concur with Mr. Justice Manisty (and I sincerely trust that my concurrence will afford encouragement to the learned gentleman in his arduous office) in holding that a guest cannot, under any circumstances, insist upon bringing a dog into any room in a hotel where other guests are. On the same occasion on which Judge Manisty expressed his views, Kelly, C. B., remarked that he would not lay down the rule positively that under no circumstances would a guest have a right to bring a dog into an inn; there might possibly, he observed, be circumstances in which, if a person came to an inn with a dog, and the innkeeper refused to put up the animal in any stable or outbuilding, and there was nothing that could make the canine a cause of alarm or an annoyance to others, its owner might be justified in bringing it into the house. His lordship, however, considered that a landlord had a right to refuse to provide for the wants of a visitor who insisted upon coming with two very large St. Bernard mastiffs, one a fierce creature, that had to be muzzled, the other a dog of a gentler nature, but somewhat given to that bad habit referred to in those Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out, and by the apostle St. Peter in his second epistle.[84]
* * * * * *
The next day there was a gentle ripple of excitement pervading the house. Two cases of larceny came to light, and made the guests communicative and talkative.
In one case a Mr. Blank, his wife, and amiable and accomplished daughter, (I can vouch for the correctness of these adjectives; for I had a very pleasant chat—to call it by a mild name—with her one day, while Mrs. Lawyer was lying down after dinner) had a sitting-room and bedroom en suite, so arranged that when the sitting-room door was open one could see the entrances into both bedrooms. Mrs. B., being in her room, laid upon the bed her reticule, in which was a by no means despicable sum of money. She then rejoined her spouse and daughter in the sitting-room, leaving the door between the two apartments open. Some five minutes after, she sent Miss Blank—who was not too proud to run a short errand for her kind mamma—for the bag; but lo! it was gone, and was never again found by a member of the Blank family; for
“In vain they searched each cranny of the house,
Each gaping chink impervious to a mouse.”
The other robbery was of the goods of a young Englishman, who, the previous evening, had been boastfully exhibiting some sovereigns in the smoking-room. When he went to bed he had placed his watch and money on a table in his room, left his door open, and, on morning dawning, was surprised to find his time-piece and cash vanished with the early dew. Other people would have been surprised if they had remained.
I fell into conversation on the subject of these depredations with a gentleman whom I afterward discovered to be a member of Lincoln’s Inn, a place which bears very little resemblance to our American hotels.
“’Tis very strange,” said Mr. Learned Inthelaw, “how history repeats itself, even in insignificant matters.”
I bowed, and remarked: “A very sensible man once observed that there was nothing new under the sun.”
“He did not live, however, in this our nineteenth century,” was the reply. “But what I was going to say was that there are two cases reported in our English law-books exactly similar to the two occurrences of to-day.”
“That is singular. What were the decisions?”
“In the reticule case,[85] the hotel-keeper was held responsible for the loss; in the other,[86] it was considered that the guest had been guilty of negligence so as to absolve the host. You know that with us it was decided, about the time that Columbus was discovering America, that an innkeeper is liable for the goods of his guests if damaged or stolen while under his care as an innkeeper;[87] and in such cases he is not freed from his grave responsibility by showing that neither himself nor his servants are to blame, but in every event he is liable unless the loss or injury is caused by the act of God, or the queen’s enemies, or the fault, direct or implied, of the guest[88]—and that even though the poor man has not only not been negligent, but has even been diligent in his efforts to save the property of his guest.”[89]
“The rule is the same with us,”[90] I replied, “and it extends to all personal property the guest brings with him, whatever may be the value or the kind.[91] And if the proprietor happens to be absent he is still liable for the conduct of those he has left in charge.[92] Innkeepers, as well as common carriers, are regarded as insurers of the property committed to their care. The law rests on the same principles of policy here as in England and other countries, and is wise and reasonable.”[93]
“But it seems very severe upon innkeepers,” remarked a by-stander.
“Rigorous as the law may seem, my dear sir,” replied my friend of Lincoln’s Inn, “and hard as it may actually be in one or two particular instances, yet it is founded on the great principle of public utility to which all private considerations ought to yield; for travelers, who must be numerous in a rich and commercial country, are obliged to rely almost implicitly on the good faith of innkeepers, whose education and morals are often none of the best, and who might have frequent opportunities for associating with ruffians and pilferers; while the injured guest could seldom or never obtain legal proof of such combinations, or even of their negligence, if no actual fraud had been committed by them.”[94]
“What did the old Roman law say on the subject?” inquired old Dr. Dryasdust, who considered that nothing done or said on the hither side of the Middle Ages was worthy of consideration.
“They, sir, were equally anxious to protect the public against dishonest publicans, and by their edicts gave an action against them if the goods of travelers were lost or hurt by any means except damno fatali, or by inevitable accident; and even then Ulpian intimates that innkeepers were not altogether restrained from knavish practices or suspicious neglect.”[95]
“Still,” said the by-stander aforesaid, “I do not see how the reticule can be considered to have been under our landlord’s care.”
“To render him liable it is not necessary that the goods be placed in his special keeping, or brought to his special notice. If they be in the inn, brought there in an ordinary and reasonable way by a guest, it is sufficient to charge the proprietor.”[96]
“Yes,” I chimed in, “and it does not matter in what part of the hotel the goods are kept, whether ‘up-stairs, or down-stairs, or in the lady’s chamber’: while they are anywhere within it, they are under the care of Boniface, and he is responsible for their safe custody. He is equally liable, whether baggage is put in a bedroom, a horse handed over to the care of the hostler,[97] or goods placed in an outhouse belonging to the establishment and used for that sort of articles.[98] My friend Epps, on one occasion, went to an inn down in Mississippi, and had his trunk taken to his bedroom, and it being broken into at night and the money purloined, the innkeeper was held liable.”[99]
“A friend of mine,” said the English gent, “who was in the employ of a sweet fellow of the name of Candy, on arriving at an inn gave his luggage to Boots, who placed one package in the hall; afterwards the servant wished to carry it into the commercial room, but the owner requested him to leave it where it was; the parcel mysteriously disappeared, and the innkeeper had the pleasure of paying for it.”[100]
“In fact, I believe an innkeeper cannot make his guest take care of his own goods;[101] nor is a traveler bound to deposit his valuables in the hotel safe, even though he may know that there is one kept for the reception of such articles, and there is a regulation of the house requiring articles of value to be so deposited,”[102] I remarked.
“Are you not stating that rather broadly?” questioned my legal confrere.
“No Vatican Council has proclaimed me infallible. I know full well that when the poet said ‘to err is human,’ he spoke truth. Of course, I am speaking only of the rule in States in which there is no special law or statute on the point, limiting the liability of publicans,” I replied.
“I think, however,” said Mr. Inthelaw, the Englishman, “that it has been held that the innkeeper may refuse to be responsible for the safe custody of the guest’s goods unless they are put in a certain place, and if the guest objects to this, the host will be exonerated in case of loss.[103] And a guest who has actual notice of a regulation of the inn as to the deposit of valuables, and has not complied with it, takes the risk of loss happening from any cause, except, of course, the actual sins of emission and commission of the landlord or his servants.”[104]
“And very reasonably,” remarked a by-stander.
“But clear and unmistakable notice of these regulations restricting the publican’s liability must certainly be given,”[105] I asserted. “And,” I continued, “I believe a distinction has been taken, and it appears to rest upon good reason, between those effects of a traveler not immediately requisite to his comfort, and those essential to his personal convenience, and which it is necessary that he should have constantly about him; so that, though personally notified, he is not bound to deposit the latter with the innkeeper. And, perhaps, this distinction will explain the apparently contradictory decisions.”[106]
“Doubtless the notice must be clear. Even a printed notification is not sufficient. It must be brought home to the mind of the guest, or at least to his knowledge, before he enters and takes possession of his room, so that, if he does not like the regulations, he may go elsewhere.[107] In one case, the register was headed with the notice, ‘Money and valuables, it is agreed, shall be placed in the safe in the office; otherwise, the proprietor will not be liable for loss’; and Mr. Bernstein duly entered his name in the book; still he was not held bound by the notice, as there was no proof that it was seen or assented to by him.”[108]
By-stander here remarked: “My father kept an inn in New York State, and once told a man of the name of Purvis, when he arrived at the house, that there was a safe for valuables, and that he would not be responsible for his unless they were placed in it. Purvis, however, neglected the caution, and left $2,000 in gold in a trunk in his bed-room, locked the door, and gave the key to my father. Some thief broke through and stole, and Purvis tried to make the old gentleman responsible for the theft; but the court did not agree with him, and considered that he alone must bear the loss.”[109]