Hotel Splendide

by Ludwig Bemelmans

In this uproariously funny memoir, Ludwig Bemelmans uncovers the fabulous world of the Hotel Splendide, the luxury New York hotel where he worked as a waiter. With equal parts affection and barbed wit, he records the everyday chaos that reigns behind the smooth facades of the gilded dining room and banquet halls.

In hilarious detail, Bemelmans sketches the hierarchy of hotel life and its strange and fascinating from the ruthlessly authoritarian maître d’hôtel Monsieur Victor to the kindly waiter Mespoulets to Frizl the homesick busboy. Illustrated with his own charming line drawings, Bemelmans’ tales of a bygone era of extravagance are as charming as they are riotously entertaining.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Short Stories, New York, Food, Classics, Biography Memoir

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Ludwig Bemelmans, Austrian-American illustrator, wrote books, such as Madeline in 1939, for children, and his experiences in the restaurant business based Hotel Splendide , adult fiction in 1940.

People internationally knew Ludwig Bemelmans, an author and a gourmand. People today most note his six publications to 1961. After his death, people discovered and posthumously published a seventh in 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_...

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a book blurb says something is “uproariously funny” they often don’t do anyone any favors. I liked the book, thought it was funny, but “uproarious”—no. It’s a much quieter funny. Often when something was published, say in the early 1940s like this book, people’s idea of funny was different. Also it is very New York City. Bemelmans’ book is funny but strongly reflects the time it’s describing—the 1920s.

Hotel Splendide is a behind-the-scenes look at a grand NYC hotel (Ritz Carleton) in Bemelmans’ early days in the United States. He worked there in the 1920s. The book’s narrator is the author who starts as a busboy to a miserably bad waiter. The busboy spends a lot of time hiding behind palms and screens sketching. Our busboy rises in the hotel and has stories about employees as well as patrons.

There are many amusing characters but I especially enjoyed the magician who does his thing in the banquet hall. He becomes stressed and involved with Freudian psychoanalysis, revealing his exhausting reoccurring dream involving a ballerina and a fat bottomed horse. That one was close to “uproarious.”

I recommend the book but don’t expect Fawlty Towers with the frustrated hotel owner beating his car with branches when it’s not operating correctly.

Bemelmans’ art work can still be seen on the walls of the bar of the Hotel Carlyle in NYC. He is also famous for the children’s series Madeline, writing and art work.

[Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to Pushkin Press and Edelweiss for a review copy of this book.

First published in 1941, Hotel Splendide is a slightly fictionalized memoir of the time author and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans spent working at the Ritz in New York, which in the book becomes the Hotel Splendide. Written in the form of short but connected episodes or sketches, these take us into hotel life as it was at the time, from the eccentrics in the staff and amongst the guests, to the hotel’s inner workings and guests’ extravagances. Keenly observed, much of the time humorous but also with a touch of pathos, these anecdotes and portraits are also illustrated by Bemelmans with pen and ink drawings, one of the initial stories telling one how he got interested in and acquired this skill (and soon after, the first customers for his cartoons). Bemelmans is of course best known for his Madeline books but has written a number of other volumes including autobiographical stories like this one.

Born in Austria, Bemelmans was for a time apprenticed to his uncle at a hotel there before emigrating to the United States where he eventually worked at the Ritz Carlton, progressing along the hotel hierarchy. As the book opens, we see him on the lowest rung, not only working at busboy but to a waiter Mespoulets, in charge of the worst tables in the restaurant, ‘in a noisy draughty corner of the balcony’, ‘a kind of penal colony’ where only undesirable guests are seated, and only those staff who are being punished for mistakes (like out author who ‘fell down the stairs into the main part of the dining room with eight pheasants à la Souvaroff’) or like Mespoulets, simply ‘the worst waiter in the world’. Bemelmans works his way up, to commis, then waiter and eventually assistant manager of banquets, along the way acquiring a Hispano Suiza in an interesting, though somewhat unsettling episode.

The hotel is peopled by some rather interesting characters, from Mespoulets who manages to bungle any job assigned him (serving guests food they hadn’t ordered and often cold, and then handing them someone else’s check; giving guests wrong directions and passing cigars to ladies instead of the gentlemen, and such), loves animals, but shows himself to have rather questionable morals as well; to the maître d’hôtel, M Victor, ruling his staff with an iron hand, yet not safe when one of them decides to take revenge; Fritzl, the busboy from Regensburg, Bemelmans’ hometown, who dreams of impressing his family by coming back to town in an exquisite suit, to Professor Gorylscu, the magician–medium who acquires a fun little dog, Confetti to assist him in his performances, and is also a ladies man perpetually out of funds, to among the guests Mr Tannenbaum who lives on a strange diet and is rather idiosyncratic to the Drespools, the ‘terror of maîtres d’hôtel all over the world’.

We see the workings of the hotel, from the service of meals, and upkeep of staff uniforms (several of which are gone through every day), to the hosting of lavish banquets, and work that lasts endless hours but also the waiters and other staff getting tips from financiers who dine there and playing the markets for a little extra, picking up information they aren’t supposed to be privy to (sometimes surreptitiously) which becomes gossip (perhaps more), but also enjoying little treats and tips and also brief stays in some of the more lavish suites in the hotel.

Bemelmans’ portraits and stories are told with a great deal of humour; yet each is also tinged with pathos whether it is a look at M Victor recovering in his home after he suffers an accident a disgruntled employee led him to have, or Fritzl, the busboy, at first terribly lost and homesick, and then keen to get his revenge on the schoolmaster back home who did badly by him when he was a student; or even the bittersweet tale of Confetti making friends Mr Houlberg, their landlady’s husband.

The book takes us back to a time gone by, treated by Bemelmans with both fondness and fun while at the same time preserving its authenticity and reality with both his pictures of hotel life and the ups and downs that define everyday life.

A lovely read and which makes me certainly want to explore more of his writings. Pushkin Press luckily has another in the pipeline!

[Grace Convertino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ludwig Bemelmans was the author of the famous “Madeline” book series, but before he found fame, he worked as a waiter in the Ritz Hotel in 1920s New York City, which is barely camouflaged in the book as the “Hotel Splendide.” There he was an observer, and picked up on the affectations of the hotel eschelon, which included the characters of Monsieur Victor, the arrogant matre d’hotel, Mespoulet, the incompetent waiter, and Fritzl, the homesick busboy. As the narrator who climbs the ranks from busboy to assistant banquet manager, he uncovers the grand and famous Hotel to expose its inner workings. His observations also include in great detail a sardonic look at the Hotel restaurant’s wealthy, demanding clientele. Bemelmans has been compared to Anthony Bourdain for exposing the hotel industry’s inner workings, as Bourdain exposed the underbelly of restaurant life in “Kitchen Confidential.”

While Bourdain believed his exposé would be limited to those who worked in the restaurant industry, Bemelmans “Hotel Splendide” seems to have been intended for the average reader. It shows the flip side of the image one conjures when thinking of a grand hotel, showing not the opulence, but the people and images behind the scenes in all of their raw beauty and ugliness. I don’t believe Bourdain vs. Bemelmans is a fair author comparison, but I understand that the two men saw and wrote about some similar issues and situations of which the average restaurant or hotel client would otherwise be unaware. I found the book a little convoluted at times, and I was most disappointed at the abrupt ending, when the reader is led to believe a murderer has been stopped only to find out in the last sentence the killer is still at large. Additionally, I was deflated that I didn’t find the book as hilarious, engaging or “riotously entertaining” as promised.

I’d like to thank NetGalley, Ludwig Bemelmans (c), and Pushkin Press for the ability to read and review this ARC.

[Pooja Peravali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ludwig Bemelmans recalls his time as a waiter at a fabulous hotel in New York City, complete with lots of humor, tragedy, and a cast of colorful coworkers.

I picked up this book because I love behind-the-scenes stories, and because I was interested in learning about the fabulous excess of 1920s New York City from a working-class perspective. It was only after I started reading it that I realized that the Bemelmans also wrote the Madeline series, about the little girls who lived "In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines." The writing style is, of course, very different, but I do feel we get to see some of that same mischievous spirit here.

The book is comprised of a series of interconnected vignettes, introducing us to some of the many bizarre coworkers Bemelmans had while working at the Ritz and relating various incidents involving them and guests. There's a subtle and often dark humor threaded through the whole book, which sometimes made me laugh and sometimes left me disturbed. I most enjoyed the stories centered around Fritzl, the homesick busboy, and Kalakobé, the Black casserolier.

While I enjoyed the various stories, I felt that there wasn't enough of a narrative continuity to keep me properly interested, and the abrupt endings of some sections left me a little cold. Some of the people that Bemelmans hung out with were rather unpleasant too, which did not help matters. Overall there was a sense of something being left unfinished.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mildly amusing memoir by the writer/artist of the “Madeline” books about his time as a young man in the 1920s and 1930s working in the restaurant and banquet halls of a very high-end New York hotel, here called the Hotel Splendide but widely known to be the Ritz. In a series of essays, each introduced with a charming Bemelmans line drawing, the author casts his eye upon his bosses, co-workers and the monied classes who populate the hotel, which is revealed as a place of barely controlled chaos. About a hundred years have passed since the writing of the book, and I was struck not only by how some things seem to have changed for the better but by how very many things seem to have remained pretty much the same, especially by the service industry’s slavish attention to the desires of the crass and exploitative wealthy.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

There aren't many books where you think: this would be a great book for my friend who is a waiter/waitress. Mostly because most people who work in the hospitality industry hate their jobs, along with the rude slash annoying slash entitled slash disrespectful customers they serve. Well, good news, this is the perfect book for that friend, broken and embittered by a stint/career in the service industry. In many ways it reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Pat Hobby Stories. The anecdotal episodes read as if they had been serialized and were only later collected into a single volume. The book is billed as memoir, but I would take this claim with a grain of salt. It doesn't revolve around the author so much as the characters he's encountered. Ludwig Bemelmans is best known as the author of the delightful Madeline and its sequels, but this is one of the memoir(ish) books written for adults.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was an Austrian-American author-illustrator probably best known for the Madeline series of picture books, which I remember fondly from childhood. Prior to his literary and illustrative successes, Bemelman worked at the upscale Ritz-Carlton hotel and restaurant in New York City, which he satirizes and (lightly?) fictionalizes in this 1941 memoir, Hotel Splendide, which is decidedly not a children's book (though his penchant for constructing colorful characters like in the Madeline series is evident here). I listened the audiobook version, sadly missing out on Bemelmans' illustrations in the print version. The stories are definitely raucous and off-color (definitely by today's standards, and probably by 1940s standards as well). As far as service industry memoirs go, this is a lot more Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality than True Hospitality: Lessons Learned from Behind the Concierge Desk.

My statistics:
Book 279 for 2025
Book 2205 cumulatively

[Adelaide Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely charming and full of witty, intelligent observations, this book captures all the joy of an excellent narrator and well-captured workplace drama. A great read for my life in NYC!

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Austrian-born writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans is perhaps best known for the Madeline series, a much-loved collection of children’s picture books, mostly from the 1950s. But before he made his name as an artist and writer, Bemelmans spent several years in the New York hotel industry, working his way through the ranks from lowly bus boy to assistant manager of the private banqueting suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Hotel Splendide is an affectionate series of vignettes recounting Bemelmans time at the Ritz-Carlton during the decadent 1920s – an utterly charming book that reflects the author’s eye for an amusing anecdote or observation while still maintaining a genuine sense of humanity. It’s a delightful collection of sketches, perfectly capturing the rituals and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age, perfect for dipping into during the dark days of winter.

Hotels frequently have a culture all of their own, and Bemelmans captures the Splendide’s to a T. Inside the mirrored dining room and banqueting suites, the rich and powerful indulge in champagne and caviar, attended to by a vast array of staff who must satisfy their guests’ every desire. When Bemelmans joins as a busboy, he is assigned to the section managed by an eccentric waiter named Mespoulets, hidden away near the rear balcony. It’s the least desirable area of the dining room, a sort of outpost where the maître d’, Monsieur Victor, seats the lowest of the low, including those who have proved troublesome in the past.

Monsieur Victor used our tables as a kind of penal colony, to which he sent guests who were notorious cranks, people who had forgotten to tip him over a long period of time and needed a reminder, undesirables who looked out of place in better sections of the dining-room, and guests who were known to linger for hours over an order of hors d’œuvres and a glass of milk, while well-paying guests had to stand at the door waiting for a table. (pp. 11–12)

Mespoulets quickly reveals himself to be a candidate for ‘the worst waiter in the world’. While the best servers are alert, attentive and speedy, Mespoulets is the exact opposite, frequently delivering the wrong orders and spilling food on the guests. Only his calligraphy skills keep him in a job – invaluable for writing menus with an elegant flourish worthy of the Splendide’s standing. Nevertheless, Bemelmans soon learns the ropes by observing the inner workings of the hotel, progressing rapidly through the ranks to the upper echelons of private banqueting.

The book is punctuated by several pen portraits (and, in some instances, accompanying pen-and-ink illustrations!) of the hotel’s most eccentric and demanding clients. Nowhere is this more evident than within the walls of the private dining suite, where the rich and powerful quickly slide from dignity to drunkenness and debauchery.

Sometimes they fell on their faces and sang into the carpet. Leaders of the nation, savants, and unhappy millionaires suffered fits of laughter, babbled nonsense, and spilled ashes and wine down their shirt-fronts. Some of them became ill. Others swam in a happy haze and loved all the world. (p. 47)

To read the rest of my review, please visit:

https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2022...

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps best known for the eternally joyful Madeline, Hotel Splendide allows Ludwig Bemelmans to showcase another side of his personality. This strange, slender and occasionally deeply melancholic book is the story of his time at the Hotel Splendide in the 1920s. Bemelmans moves up the ranks of the hotel staff to become an assistant manager and, as he goes, chronicles the eccentric lives of the staff and guests. At its heart, this is Mitford type stuff where the social detail tells us so much about the people and the world he's in (I rather loved the episode where he spoke about the Hispano Suiza, a car I have only ever seen mentioned in the Chalet School books and full of a rather evocative imagery in its own right) but it's also a chronicle of big lives lived at the edge of excess. Characters have enormous, out of control banquets full of glitter and panache and then there's these counterpoints of the staff who make these moments happen, while living their own wildly eccentric and often deeply poignant lives right alongside them.

It's perhaps more productive to think of this as a short story collection rather than something sequential or as a pure piece of memoir. Not all of this feels true but then all of it might be, and that gossamer edge between fact and fiction is rather interesting to me. Even the stories that we're in, the stories that we know, can be given a thousand different interpretations depending on time, perspective, and speaker. Bemelmans gives us a sort of detached interest which tells us little about himself (but almost, conversely, everything...) Focus in particular on The New Suit but also The Magician Does A New Trick, absolute melancholic perfection both. I kept returning to that idea of melancholy throughout this. There's something deeply melancholic about all of this, a sort of longing and realisation that what Bemelmans is chronicling is so so specific to this time and place and moment, and even amidst the wit (and there is plenty of that), there is always, always this melancholic edge and that intrigues me so much.

One final thing to emphasise is this: this is not a children's book, so detach it from his other work. Certain terms and attitudes used have also dated.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting reading Hotel Splendide -- the style's dated, certainly, but it's not out-of-date as such. Bemelmans (who is better known as the author of the Madeline series of children's books) writes brief anecdote that sound a little like they were written by a fussier, more old-fashioned, early-20C David Sedaris or David Rakoff.

The collection is absolutely worth it for "The New Suit," which was surprisingly somber and lovely.

[Craig Mudie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit to being disappointed by this book. Described as ‘uproariously funny’ and ‘hilarious’ by the publisher, I’d suggest that “faintly amusing in parts, but mainly just quite odd” would be a more accurate description.

[Iva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was charming with lovely pen and ink illustrations. Nothing like the Madeleine books of course. Bemelmans did have the experience of working in a hotel and has brought to life the characters he had contact with--the patrons and the co-workers. And they were indeed characters! Each chapter was a complete story of both life in the hotel and the life of a waiter or busboy.

[Aron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t often write reviews for books I give five stars to, but I find most of the reviews of this book bordering on the bizarre. This book is not an “expose” of the lives of the rich and famous in upscale hotels. Nor is it a classic humor book written to evoke belly laughs. It is a beautiful and thoughtful book filled with gentle humor about the loneliness and struggles of ordinary working people. It is sad, moving and funny all at the same time, because that is how real life goes. Bemelmans was a wonderful visual artist best known for the Madeline children’s books. These very adult stories are word paintings about the quirks and foibles of ordinary humans. They are short and extraordinary little masterpieces. If you enjoy great writing, and you have a semblance of a heart, you will enjoy this book. When you finish, you will wish you knew the author and could call him “friend”. The cherry on the cake are the little doodles he created for each story.

[Anaplaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

“La tierna planta que es la moral jamás florece en un gran hotel, y es en la intimidad de sus habitaciones donde acaba de marchitarse del todo”.

“En el rostro se le dibujaban las expresiones más amargas de felicidad.”

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last chapter almost redeemed it for me but overall a tad boring and hard to get through. Just not my taste

[JPons Romero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me esperaba otro tipo de novela. Muy lento.

[Hana D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was excited to find this because I love a memoir and an nyc book. Wasn’t a bad book, just struggled to be invested in the narrative so it didn’t live up to the hype (that I gave it based on no information).

[Peter Baran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a "backstage memoir" if you will: behind the scenes at a grand, or not so grand New York Hotel where Bemelmans lead character is initially a busboy. Though the character graduates to other jobs through the collected short stories, there is always a sense of shifty piecemeal work, the camaraderie of those on their uppers trying to get by. So given this setting, and being set in New York in the Roaring '20s, it was surprising how the stories often ended up feeling rather tame and inconsequential.

What Bemelmans (author of Madeline if you want context), excels is in sketching his kitchen and service staff. The petty martinets who are formed by the smallest taste of hierarchy, who can order who about and therefore who can also pull one over on each other. But the minor scams and scrapes barely register, possibly the most interesting story here is the one of the inherited car, where our lead gets a car, and another staff member wants to be his chauffeur. The chauffeur doesn't know how to drive, but can wear the uniform, open the door etc. That has the right level of absurdity that I felt the stories were often reaching for. Perhaps the issue is with the crispness of tone, the New York service setting inevitably put me in mind of PG Wodehouse. And that's a comparison that is never going to do anyone any favours.

These probably work better as impressionistic sketches and probably worked better back in the day when there was a more significant line between guests and those behind the scenes. The revelation that in the kitchen of the grandest hotel (not that the Spendide makes that promise) are murderers and other shady miscreants is probably not so much of a revelation anymore. A fun, droll, quick read but it only really summoned up the odd smile here and there.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an odd little book! I wanted to read it because the author wrote the Madeleine picture books. This seems to have been a sort of memoir of the author's time as a waiter in the French restaurant of a very fancy New York hotel in the 1920s. I say a sort of memoir because I wasn't sure how much of it had really happened. Did the author wind up owning a fancy sports car where a rich man's girlfriend died in a bizarre traffic accident? The book is replete with ethnic stereotyping and dark humor. I read the whole thing because how often will I have the chance to do that? I had to request the book from a distant library, and it arrived looking old and bedraggled.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute memoir from the author of the Madeline books focusing on his time as a waiter at the (very thinly camouflaged) Ritz Carleton in New York City.

Some of the anecdotes are more charming than others and all of them feel a bit contrived and exaggerated to some degree, but the sentiment feels authentic and it makes for a charming, light read with a lovely sense of place.

Though it’s not on par in terms of overall quality, it reminds me of some of Peter Mayle’s essay collections, at least in spirit.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was halfway through this book when I realized it was a memoir, not a novel. The Hotel Splendide (actually, the Ritz) in the 1920's is among the top hotels in New York City, and the author is its assistant manager. His characters, which include guests and staff, are so eccentric, and the vignettes he shares are so outrageous, that I assumed it was a farce. I was not surprised, when I added this book to my Goodreads list, to see that he is also the author of the Madeleine series. An enjoyable read. That you to Net Galley and Pushkin Press for allowing me to read it.

[Helen Catherine Darby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bemelmans tells funny short stories from his time working in the glamorous Hotel Splendide in New York City. The humor, which revolves around caricature-like individuals who either work or stay in the hotel, is subtle, quick, and excellent. An enjoyable read; the perfect way to amuse myself for a few hours on the train.

[Maya Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not the book for me. The little vignettes both were stand alone and also sometimes led into one another but not consistently? Make up your mind! I would have liked either a more concrete short essay style or a narrative piece but the mix of the two was boring and confusing. The drawings are very sweet but that’s the most redeeming quality ://

[Megan Hawley Steinfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging glimpse into a place and time, this is a memoir of some of the truly farcical episodes during Bemelman's time working at the Hotel Splendide. My favorite tale was probably the one about how he ended up with a personal driver ... who couldn't drive (he'd ride shotgun, but in full uniform!), but several had me chuckling out loud. Very interesting as a primary source of the time, the class dynamics are particularly fascinating.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Christina F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now need a scrungly looking dog I can name Confetti

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing and quirky read. Illustrations are classics by Bemelmans and remind you of his Madeline books and the murals in the Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel in NYC.

[Corley Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun quick read detailing the outrageous stories of a waiter in an upscale NYC hotel in the 1920’s. I enjoyed it and can’t wait to have a martini at Bemelmans Bar as my reward

[bella sorensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh