The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-11-20
ON LIVING IN PARIS
From Henry watterson.s Paris rette

From Henry watterson's Paris Letter to
the Louisville Courter-Journal
IN ARTS differs from London in ev-
~ erything. The London lodging
house Is not a boarding house at
all as the boarding house is understood
in America. The pension" of Paris
is an American boarding house, pure
and simple. The cheap hotels spring
ing up all over London are little else.
In the old days to rent an apartment
and eat in the restaurants was favorfte
scheme of visitors having few weeks to
pass In Paris. One could get along upon
a surprisingly small amount of money. l
recall with affection a little entre-sol in
the Rue D'Antin, which consisted of a sit
ting room, a bed room and dressing
room with sitz bath in the latter which
cost Ave francs q day. The coffee of a
morning (and such coffeeD and the bread
and butter {bless you, 1t was goodD came
to one franc more for the two OF u.s.
There was a students lamp and pot
bellied porcelain stove and sometimes we
grilled a chop with a fork across the little
brass fender and sometimes roasted po-
tato in tho wood ashes. That beat hard
tack and bacon and the wet earth of a
Georgia hillside hollow But things have
swooped down upon Paris. and, the other
day when I made a sentimental pilgrim
age to the still loved spot and asked the
rent Of the sefsame entre-sol, they told
me 500 francs y10O a month; by the
day perhaps IS.
The hotels of Paris have been steadily
increasing in number, ambition and costli-
ness The International Hotel associa-
ton has reduced the business in Europe
to a Free Masonry. They know precisely
in Prague and Budapest what prices
rule in Milan and Copenhagen along the
Arno. Inter den Linden and in the Rue
de Rivoli. and everywhere the rates are
fixed to reach the full limit of what the
traffic will bear, or can be made to
yield.
These rates are not always unreason-
able. difference is made between tran
sients and sojourners; that Is to say,
among the more comfortable and we'll
conducted houses. There are, however
others. The professional swell places play
upon the vanity OF the nouveaux riches
of their readiness for the trade marks
sake to pay exorbitant charges. The
women go to them to display their clothes
and exploN their social position.
One Of the most ambitious and indeed
splendid of the hotels of Paris, which
has done losing business for five or six
years, is about to close its doors in order
that it may get rid of a kind of patron
age that infested It and. under changed
administration begin life over again. 1t
had become a veritable place of assigna-
ton. OF an afternoon no lady could
safely 20 alone to the tea room. In the
same neighborhood the magnificent Hotel
Majestic, and the equally respondent
Hotels Astor and Carlton, are doing a
land-office business with the best custom,
which seems to be we'll content with what
1t gets for it's money.
The Hotel Continental has had its ups
and downs-at one time it looked as II
It was going to be downs-to emerge I'M
aar new MANAGEMENT into period of
extraordinary popularity and prosperity.
The Ualdorf-A storia, since George Boldt
onened it, has set the standard to my ap-
prehenSl0n OF WiiAe d ho'eN
The Continental more resembles the OLD
Fifth Avenue hotel. That means that IL
is clean, homelike. thoroughly com1ort-
able: an all-around rallying point ana
rendezvous Mr.. Lotti the manager un-
der whom so much has been achieved, is
Florentine, as Mr. Boldt Is Swede
The foreigners, that is those that are
foreign to the Anglo-saxons in England
and America, have developed genius
for the hotel business precisely as Gods
people have developed a genius Tor the
show business. On this point there has
been quite newspaper discussion over