1936 On the Continent

is surrounded by a large number of cheap and expensive hotels without any distinctive character. This type of hotel caters mainly for travellers who come to London for a short stay.
    The hotel district centring in Russell Square, and extending from Kingsway, along Southampton Row, and down to Euston Station, contains hundreds of hotels to suit all pockets, but the dominant characteristic is what is usually described as “middle-class.” To mention only a few of these hotels, there is the big
Imperial Hotel
, which is in great favour with parties on a conducted tour; the
Russell Hotel
, which is only slightly smaller;
Bonnington’s Temperance Hotel
(where no alcoholic drink is served); the
Royal
, already referred to; and countless others.
The Personal Note
    No matter how many London hotels one enumerates, one discovers again and again that it is impossible to offer more than a very incomplete idea of the available accommodation, and the writer repeatedly remembers other hotels which for one reason or another must not be omitted. There is, for instance, the
Royal Palace Hotel
in Kensington High Street. It adjoins a street running along Kensington Gardens which is still known—and still aptly—as the Street of Millionaires. This street has imparted some of its dignified exclusiveness and opulence to the hotel, whose English cuisine is world famous, and where many prominent English families accommodate their guests. The
Royal Palace Hotel
is also frequently the scene of brilliant receptions at weddings and similar events.
    Two hotels that are much favoured by foreign, as well as by English visitors, are the
Rubens
and the
Rembrandt
, both of which are favourably situated. The
Rubens
isright opposite the Royal Palace, while the
Rembrandt
occupies a corner site opposite Brompton Oratory. Rooms at these hotels may be had from 12s. 6d. per day, and they are eminently suitable for a longer stay. Another hotel of a similar type is
Goring’s Hotel
, between Buckingham Palace and Victoria station—a very good address, so good that many foreign diplomats make use of this hotel, particularly if they wish to be economical.
Family Hotels
    These few hints bring us to the vast group of the most typical growth in London’s jungle of hotels, namely, the family and residential hotels. Whereas London’s luxury hotels offer practically the same, with certain insignificant variations, as similar hotels in any other part of the world, these family hotels are so characteristically English that one is tempted to advise visitors desiring to gain a real knowledge of England to make use of one of these establishments. Of course the visitor must be prepared to make certain sacrifices in return for this insight into the English mentality, including his sense of personal freedom, and in the majority of cases he must also make concessions in the matter of personal comfort.
    The English are far, far less interested in the private lives of their fellow men than other peoples—they are not communicative, and do not welcome personal confidences. This is one of the unwritten laws of the family hotel, where the Victorian mode of life continues unchanged, and those who infringe these laws become painfully conspicuous and, in fact, “impossible.”
    Visitors staying at a family hotel must adapt themselves to the mode of life and standard of conduct of the retired army officers and Colonial civil servants, and the amazingly numerous host of old ladies who inhabit these establishments.
Small and Family Hotels
    These small hotels are not made for gay adventures, nor even for loud conversation, and the visitor must be content of an evening to sit quietly and decorously in front of the fireplace or to take part in a game of bridge, or perhaps—where the other inmates are even more conservative—in a game of whist.
    Further, the visitor must be satisfied with a very average and not particularly attractive English cuisine, and must not have any special requirements in this respect.
    Here and there, as a concession to modernity, a family hotel has central heating, and running hot and cold water is taken for granted everywhere; but the rooms in most cases are furnished in such an old-fashioned style that the modern traveller is bound to find them uncomfortable, though they accord with the inmates’ ideal of comfort.
    Naturally these remarks are not meant to apply to all family hotels, without exception. Indeed there is a large number of family hotels