LIFE IN PARIS

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3215, 11 August 1932, Page 6

LIFE IN PARIS

A GLANCE AT HOTEL BILLS.

If anything were needed to complete widespread depression among French wine growers, they have certainly got it in the news that Russia is about to start a five-year plan for vine growing. The Soviets have about half a million acres devoted to grapes; by 1937 they intend to have over two million acres planted and producing standardised harvests. The French, after centuries of labour, have about three million acres producing famous wines. It is true the Soviets intend to aim more particularly at producing vast quantities of grapes, dried and fresh, for their markets. Still, the prevailing absence of buyers for the delicate and subtle produce of the Champagne, Burgundy, and Bordeaux wine growers will not he cured by the appearance in the markets of standardised wines made on the intensive system of forced labour adopted in the Soviet Republic. Already in France there is distress in the wine districts. Only last June the most recent vintage of great wines, like Meursault and Monrachet, fetched no more than a shilling a bottle, and it was no consolation to the producers of Burgundy to reflect that the same wine would be sold to consumers in restaurants at four, if not five,-.times that figure. In fact, they contend that it is just this discrepancy between prices that is ruining the trade; the producer gets too little, and the consumer is charged too much.

The same thing is happening in the charming cider country. Little or big, the hotels in the Channel resorts of Normandy have no wine on their list under 3s 6d a bottle, while cider figures.at Is 6d. Both prices are absurd. Anyone can put down a cask

-of wine, straight from the growers, at a cost of about 8d a bottle, and any hotel could make a good profit by sup-

plying it at 3s, at which figure there ■would be a bottle on every table. Instead, this season, mineral waters are ousting wine in restaurants. As for cider, only a few years ago a pitcher, drawn from the barrel, was put on the tables in every hotel of Brittany or Normandy, and did not figure at all on the bill. An hotel-keeper whose establishment stands in an apple orchard of about five acres said recently that he had supplied his clients with a thousand bottles of his own cider last summer, at Is 6d a bottle, and of this is 3d was probably all profit.

Is ail these resorts, set in such picturesque country, and blessed with so ! agreeable a climate, the season is opening badly- Day after day, * the Channel steamers plying between Newhaven and Dieppe bring in an average of 30 visitors per day, instead of the 300 of former years. And instead of -facilitating matters by bringing down their prices—as the Riviera hotels have done, and as those of Paris are doing—these little seaside places are asking lis a day for ■what you can get in a far more lux- • Virions form for 6s on the Mediterranean shore. Consequently, they are empty, and the owners are lamenting their unhappy fate. Yet-Normandy isithe land of abunand though the British visitors •who make the fortune of the hotelkeepers, are now obliged to look closely alt price lists, the nationals still feast generously on occasion. Thus when the Dieppe baker's wife had her baby christened, she sent out 35 invitations to a joyous dinner/given in lan hotel dining-room, but the hostess supplying cook, service, food and wines, herself. Forty people sat 1 down to dinner. There were eight courses of dainties, with an allowance of three bottles of good ■ wines per head, besides brandy cider )and liquers. It must have eost the .hostess 30s per head at least. Ob- ■ piously, family feasts have not gone out of fashion in the neighbourhood of the little port of Dieppe. Compared with a Norman banquet, our carefully restricted menus look pallid -enough! CANVASSERS ON THE DOOR MAT. 1 ~ Anew kind of pest has descended on Paris since the economic depression o^ih,Ttalanie "the .form of house to fipuge canvassing by charming young pebplejibf the principles and traditions of a Pms house porter to allow a strangle*; to "mount her staircases unless the nanle ;of; a tenant can be given as the pretext of the visit: and yet how, all ihicWcbf wares' are brought to tenants' -doors—dust aspirators, wireless i setsKsilk stockings, brushes, read?- ; made dresses; 'there is ho end to the '%: objects thus offered to the greatly A woman trying to sell wireless sets Hin this way met her jniatch in.an irate ■:.';._ house porter, who "caught her as she was coming down the stairs. The t ' concierge a light curtain rod in her hand at the moment, and she • branished this as she rated the intrud- ; 'er on the stairs. : Taken by surprise and alarmed at Me attack, the canvasser missed her footing and fell' fteadlong. Now,. having recovered from theaceident,.she is attacking the who has been summoned to

appear before the justice of the peace of the quarter. From the woman, or from the landlord whose paid employee she is, the canvasser claims an indemnity.

The question interests every holder in the capital; We should'all like to hear that on private stair cases is an'illegal' act. The concierge's counsel is going to plead that the concierge has the right to refuse permission to canjiissers to enter the house, and itJfKindeeoV. the chief of her functions to preserve*-the privacy of the building in her charge.