Hunting Lodgings

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Title:     Hunting Lodgings
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

Some people say that it is the most awful trial.

But it isn't so at all.

One of the most entertaining things that can be done in the world, so full of interesting things, is to go hunting lodgings. Also, it is one of the most enlightening things that can be done, for, pursued with intelligence and energy, it gives one an excellent view of humankind; that is, of a particularly human kind of humankind. It is a confoundly Christian thing to do--hunting lodgings--because it opens the heart to the queer ways, and speech, and customs of the world.

Now, I myself hunt lodgings as some men hunt wild game.

Nothing is better when one is out of sorts, somewhat run down, and peevish with the world generally than to go out one fine afternoon and hunt lodgings In some remote part of town.

When in a foreign city, especially, the first thing I myself do, as soon as I am comfortably settled somewhere--and after, of course, having looked up the celebrated sights of the place, the Abbey, the Louvre, Grant's Tomb---is to put in a day or so hunting lodgings.

Even to read in the papers of lodgings to let is refreshing and educational. All lodgings are "sunny"--in the papers. They are let mainly by "refined" persons, and are wonderfully "quiet." I remember last summer in London there was "a small sitting to let to a young lady." Lodgings, by the way, are usually "apartments" in England, as you know. Though, indeed, it is true that when a gentleman rents over there what we call a "furnished room" he is commonly said to "go into lodgings." A fine phrase, that; it is like to that fine old expression "commencing author." And that reminds me: the most fascinating lodgings to hunt, perhaps, anywhere, are called "chambers." These which I mean are in the old Inns of Court in London. And the most charming of these remaining is Staple Inn, off Holborn. I used frequently to hunt chambers in "the fayrest Inne of Chancerie." There are no "modern conveniences" there. You draw your own water at a pump in the venerable quadrangle, and you "find" your own light. But to return:

There was also last summer an apartment to let to a "respectable man" or, the announcement said, it "might do for friends." One of the reasons why many people are bored by hunting lodgings is that they are not humble in spirit. They seek proud lodgings.

As to apartment houses, which are a very different matter: the newspapers publish at various seasons of the year copious Apartment-House Directories, with innumerable half-tone illustrations of these more or less sumptious places. And these directories are competent commentaries on their subject. George Moore remarked, "With business I have nothing to do--my concern is with art." Except that I live in one, with apartment houses I have nothing to do--my concern is with lodgings.

There is only one philosophical observation to be made upon apartment houses. And that is this: How can all these people afford to live in them? When you go to look at apartments you are shown a place that you don't like particularly. You don't think, Oh, how I'd just love to live here if I could only afford it! But you ask the rental as a matter of form. And you learn that this apartment rents for a sum greater (in all likelihood) than your entire salary. And yet, there are miles and miles of apartment houses even better than that. And goodness knows how many thousand people live in them! People whose names you never see in the newspapers as ones important in business, in society, art, literature, or anything else. Obscure people! Very ordinary people! Now where do they get all that money? But about lodgings:

I one time went to look at lodgings in Patchin Place. I had heard that Patchin Place was America's Latin Quarter. I thought it would be well to examine it. Patchin Place is a cul-de-sac behind Jefferson Market. A bizarre female person admitted me to the house there. It was not unreasonable to suppose that she had a certain failing. She slip-slod before me along a remarkably dark, rough-floored and dusty hall, and up a rickety stair. The lodging which she had to let was interesting but not attractive. The tenant, it seemed, who had just moved away had many faults trying to his landlady. He was very delinquent, for one thing, in the payment of his rent. And he was somewhat addicted to drink. This unfortunate propensity led him to keep very late hours, and caused him habitually to fall upstairs.

Well, I told her, by way of making talk, that I believed I was held to be a reasonably honest person, and that I was frequently sober.

"Oh," she said, "I can see that you are a gentleman--in your way," she added, in a murmur.

So, you see, in hunting lodgings you not only see how others live, but how you seem to others.

It is certainly curious, the places in which to dwell which one is shown in hunting lodgings. Once I was given to view a room in which was a strange table-like affair constructed of metal. "You wouldn't mind, I suppose," said the lady of the lodging, "if this remained in the room?"

"Oh, not at all," I replied. "But what is it?"

"Why, it's an operating table," she explained. "Of course, you know," she added, "that I'm a physician. And," she continued, "of course I should want to make use of it now and then, but not regularly, not every day."

To a lady with a patch over her eye with lodgings to let in Broome Street I one time stated, by way of being communicative, that I was often in my room a good deal doing some work there. Ah! With many ogles and grimaces, she whispered hoarsely, with an effort at a sly effect, that "that was all right here. She understood," she said. Perfectly "safe place for that," it was. "The gentlemen who had the room before were something of the same kind."

As you know, "references" frequently are demanded of one hunting lodgings. To get into a really nice place one must really be a very nice person. "You know, I have a daughter," sighs the really nice landlady.

To obtain lodgings in Kensington one must be very well-to-do, particularly if one would be on the "drawing room floor." "I like these rooms very much," I said to a prim person there, and I hesitated.

"But I suppose they are too dear for you," she said.

How careful one must be hunting lodgings in England about "extras." Lodgings made in the U.S.A. are all ready to live in, when you have paid your rent. But over on the other side, you recall, the rent, so amazingly cheap, is merely an item. Light, "coals," linen, and "attendance" are all "extra."

I met an interesting person letting lodgings in Whitechapel. She was not attractive physically. Her chief drapery was an apron. This, indeed, was fairly adequate before. But--I think she was like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand.

My sister-in-law, a highly intelligent woman------ There are, by the way, people who will think anything. Some may say that I am ending this article rather abruptly.

My sister-in-law, a highly intelligent woman, used to say, in compositions at school when stumped by material too much for her, that she had in her eye, so to say, things "too numerous to mention."

Anybody who would chronicle his adventures in hunting lodgings is confronted by incidents, humorous, wild, bizarre, queer, strange, peculiar, sentimental, touching, tragic, weird, and so on and so forth, "too numerous to mention."

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Hunting Lodgings

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