TRIPPERS AND TIPPERS

Evening Star, Issue 19791, 15 February 1928, Page 3

TRIPPERS AND TIPPERS

ITALY'S EXPERIMENT CUSTOMS OF THE PAST Travellers in Italy next year from all parts of the world, and notably from the United States and Great Britain, will watch with a truly genuine interest the outcome of a declaration from Milan that, as a consequence of a general agreement recently reached by all the Italian hotels, “tipping” therein is to be definitely abolished (writes _ Sir Alfred Boffins, in the ‘Christian Science Monitor ’). A shade of suspicion, perchance, is aroused when it is added that the “ new national pact among hotelkeeper; will be enforced from January 1, 1928,” as this sounds ominously reminiscent of the complaint of the heroine of ‘Alice in Wonderland, ’ that it is always jam yesterday and jam to-mor-row, but never jam to-day. It may also be remembered that the Italian hotellerists—the word now beginning to be’favored in this relation — came to a like resolve sometime since, and that the idea has never been .seriously enforced. Those of each individual city—sometimes on their own account, sometimes by agreement of their local syndicate-construed the resolution after their own way. In the case of Florence it was accepted with exactness. The Associazione Italiana Albergatorc Fiercnza directed notices to be placed in a handy position in all parts of the hotel where such were most likely to be seen, declaring in four languages that “Tips are strictly forbidden,” “assolutamente,” emphasising this on the Italian visitor, “ absolument ” on the Fiench, and the longfamiffar “ verboten ” on the German.

Not content even with this, an alternative notice put the matter bluntly, with the intimation, “ All tips are abolished.” And travellers who accepted this literally found no cause to complain. The trouble was that the rule was not observed everywhere. While a hotel in one city would charge a certain percentage for “service,” varying from 10 per cent, in the smaller places to 15 per cent, in those of greater importance, it was not completely embracing in some cases, while in others it was plainly hinted by notice that, though “service” would be charged on a percentage basis, it was left to the visitor to tip individually if he felt so impelled. Consequently he knew that more was expected, and that, if he did not give his “forced benevolence,” as our ancestors were accustomed euphemistically to term taxes, ho would probably be entirely forgotten. A middle way has been thought out bv the Swiss Hotel Proprietors’ Association, which has its headquarters at Basel. Its authorised notice reads: “The remuneration■ to the hotel sta,ff for personal service is not included in the bill. In the ©vent that guests do not wish to distribute the amount themselves the hotel office will be glad to act for them.” This looks fair enough; but, in one Swiss hotel displaying the notice, I found on my bill, after I had given individual tips all round, the customary 10 per cent, for “service.” Naturally, on bland explanation, this was not insisted on. Not only does remembrance of these points arouse a doubt as to tbe precise outcome of the new Italian even though it he backed by certain new “ sanctions,” the slang equivalent for “ penalties ” which now has passed from international diplomacy to cosmopolitan hotelkeeping—but on© recollects how deeply rooted is the who!© system. The Normans, with their scattering of largesse—a word still used, and in the same connection, in a few parts of England—may he thought to have begun it,; and the plan was developed in the Middle Ages into a regular custom of giving gratuities to a servant or attendant, Irnown as “ vails,” a word now entirely obsolete, though its underlying idea is disagreeably alive. By the time the Stuarts came to the Throne, the term was so firmly rooted that a servant could grumble in ‘The London Prodigal,’ one of the earliest Jacobean farces, that “Our year’s wages and our vailes will scarcely pay for broken swords and bucklers.” The austere Milton once haughtily asked, “Why should he, like a Servant, seek Vails over and above his Wages?” But Swift, in his cynically, whimsical way, indirectly answered this in his ‘Directions to Servants,’ by writing; “I advise you of the servants, who expect vails, always to stand in rank and file w'hen a stranger is taking hia leav©.” The nuisance thus caused grew to such a height' that, in the country of exile of the, original “Gloomy Dean,” there was, in mid-eighteenth century, “ an agreement entered into among the gentlemen of several counties in Ireland, not to give vails to servants.” It was this which may have provoked

the issue in London in 1760, just three years later, of “ The sentiments and advice of Thomas Trueman, a footman, setting forth the custom of vales-giv-ing in England.” And that custom survived under the same name so long that the severely Puritanical Adam Clarke, Congregationalist divine and Biblical commentator, felt impelled in 1823 to denounce “Vailes to servants, that sovereign disgrace to their masters,” and even the milder Samuel Smiles was tempted forty years later, in his still famous though little heeded ‘Self Help,’ to exclaim against “vails giving” as among “ the minor social evils.” As the vogue of the vail—as a name, but not as a thing—waned, that of the tip, having a like grim significance lor the traveller in a hotel or the visitor to a friend, came into use. One of the somewhat sorry heroes in Farquhar’s ‘ Beaux Stratagem,’ _ told in Queen Anne’s time how in Lichfield Cathedral “ I tips me the Verger with half a crown,” the identical coin employed for the same purpose and with the same name thirty years later by Swift. When in ‘ The Beggar’s Opera ’ one of his various lovers had aided the illustrious Captain Macbeath to escape from Newgate, she is asked by the gaoler, her father: “ Did he tip handsomely? ’ And Fielding, an even more illustrious early Georgian than Gay, “advised his friend ” —this through the medium of “ Amelia “ to begin with tipping (as it is called) the great man’s servant.’’ But the difficulty was that no tariff existed by which one who wished to do this could know just what was expected. Servants’ appetites for tips grew with the eating; and their voracity for vails increased to such a degree that, even while George 11. was still on the throne, tho declaration by an aggrieved coun-try-house guest was given wide circulation: “1 assure you I have laid out every farthing in tips to his servants.” Sometimes, but very seldom, the visitor plucked up courage to make a stand. “I never take silver,” haughtily remarked a pampered servitor, when seeing three half-crowns tendered as a tip. “ Thanks, I never give gold,” was the frigidly effective reply, as the coins were returned to the would-be donor’s pockets. But courage of this kind is rare.

Much, it would seem, will bo , accomplished if some success is attained in connection with the attempt to put tipping on a systematised basis. Some hotelkeepers reply that such a thing simply cannot bo done, but I have experienced the contrary within the past two years, not only in SwitcrJancl and Italy, but in the South of France, and in places in this last as different in every respect as Avignon and Monte Carlo, not to mention Paris. Sometimes there was added 10 per cent., sometimes 15; but, whatever it was, it covered everything. Not feeling quite sure at the outset whether this really reached the hotel staff, I inquired privately of two members of it. one in a leading, the other in a subordinate position, and each replied that the plan werked satisfactorily all round. The, staff appointed a committee to deal with the management on this matter. The total of the added percentages were ascertained by joint examination, and then was divided among the’hotel employees in an agreed proportion for each—those who did the work behind the scenes, as well as those standing in the limelight. Such a division is understood to b© that adopted in the chief London hotels and restaurants in regard to the caisse formed from the tips given by the visitors, though there obviously is no such precise check on the staff receiving the whole as in the French mode.

But, if the nominally voluntary system of tip-giving is to continue in England or any other country, why, at least, should it not be mitigated by the display in one’s room of a tariff or schedule of tips? The common answer to such a suggestion is that the matter is simple enough if one mentally adds 10 or 15 per cent, to the amount of his bill, and shares out accordingly. In practice, however, this is extremely unsatisfactory; and a tip tariff, in the absence of a regular agreement, would prove a ready mode for making things much pleasanter for the traveller. “Le raauvais quart d’heure ” of Rabelais was between eating the dinner and paying the reckoning. To the average hotel visitor, it is between paying the reckoning and quitting the establishment.