The Little Hotel by Christina Stead

When Mrs. Trollope found that the bed was not for her, she went crying to her friend Madam Blaise. They were on good terms at that moment; and the next thing I knew was that Madame Blaise had moved her chaise lounge into Mrs. Trollope's room. I flew into a temper at that, and scolded them both. I was really furious. It's simple. To keep order in a hotel, everything must stay in the same place; and then there's the logic of equality. If one guest has new linen curtains, the other must have the best of the older curtains; if one guest has a plush new armchair, the other must have a cane lounge; if one has an extra table to write on, the other must have a footstool. I sometimes let Charlie fetch things from the attic or even from my own room to be sure of this equality; but I cannot allow others to make changes; I have a plan of it all in my mind.

Christina Stead's The Little Hotel is narrated by Madame Bonnard, the proprietor of an inexpensive hotel in the Swiss Alps. Her charges are more residents than guests, long term visitors who live the life of exiles. They are eccentrics, like the beautiful but dying Miss Chillard, or the wildly bigoted American Mrs. Powell. One madman claims to be the mayor of a city in Belgium; he sends Madame Bonnard and the other residents cryptic messages that are numbered as official documents for recordkeeping--Document 126 says that the coffee was particularly good this morning, etc., etc. I was a little sad to see the Mayor whisked out of the pages early on, to be replaced with characters whose eccentricities are a little more mtued.

Though narrated by Madame Bonnard, the true protagonist of The Little Hotel is Madame Trollope, an aging woman who is traveling with her "cousin," Mister Wilkins. In reality, the pair are longtime lovers, living more or less as husband and wife; though free of their former marriages, Mister Wilkins refuses to marry Madame Trollope or live openly as partners. He prefers the wink-wink artifice of it all, even though everyone at the hotel knows the deal. He also prefers to sponge off of the wealthier Madame Trollope, who, at the hotel, begins to lurch toward a breaking point. Is it possible for her to shake off Mister Wilkins, who really is a smug little creep, when she knows that the alternative is likely lifelong loneliness? What is the cost, The Little Hotel asks, of love?

The Little Hotel really has its charms. At times it approaches the heights of absurd misbehavior that make Stead's best novels so good, as when Madame Blaise complains about how her doctor husband pesters her with photos of diseased children--by producing a stack of the very same photos at dinner. Such is the world of The Little Hotel, where the residents revenge their own petty hurts and slights upon each other. There's something here about the nature of Europe after World War II; though they are nominally all supposed to get along--especially here in always-neutral Switzerland--the enmities of the American, British, and French residents toward Germans and Italians--form a powerful undercurrent. But the enmity that once sharpened the wits and feelings of Europeans no longer does; in fact, it seems to be an image of Europe slipping into a kind of bored senility, where resentments no longer have any national shape, but turn inward, toward the bedroom and the spirit. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. More than anything else it seemed like a pleasant look into one of those communities where people are a little too close, and everybody would benefit from a nap or a nice walk.