Selling comfort

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Dinner at a fixed price

   1. 10 minutes: Read On restaurants, Paris, 1825 (Brillat-Savarin), passages 138–139.8. Students list what was hard about eating well in Paris around 1770 and the four advantages he says restaurants offer.
   2. Discuss what he means when he says restaurants destroyed one of the great privileges of the rich (139.6–139.8), and who still could not reach the finest food.
   3. 20 minutes: Each group takes one table from the dining room scene (140.2–140.8), such as the lone diners, the traveling family, the married couple, the lovers, the regulars or the English. The group writes the bill that table might receive, underlining the clue behind each item, and reads it aloud while the class guesses the table.
   4. 5 minutes: Discuss which portraits seem drawn from life and which seem to be stock jokes, and what worries Brillat-Savarin about eating alone (141.2).

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   The great sale

   1. 10 minutes: Read the encyclopedia article on department stores, linked from the unit page. Then read the History tab of Opening day of the great sale (Zola): this is a novel, based on Zola's own visits to real Paris stores in 1882.
   2. 10 minutes: Read passages 1–5. Students mark every word of war and victory, such as "sun of victory" and "under arms", and discuss what it suggests about how Baudu and the small shopkeepers see the store.
   3. 15 minutes: Read the carpet room (5–5.4). Students list the place names and the words Zola uses for the carpets, such as "barbaric art" and "plundered". Discuss why Mouret sells rare carpets for almost what he paid, and whose view of these places the display sells.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss what this passage can tell a historian about stores, and what it cannot, since it is fiction.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Comfort for sale

   1. 10 minutes: Read the preface of A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise (Thackeray), passages preface-1 to preface-5. Students turn the last paragraph into a one-page newspaper advertisement, using only claims Thackeray makes.
   2. 10 minutes: Mark each claim in two colors, one for claims a buyer could check and one for claims that rest on Thackeray's word. Discuss whether a reader should treat the preface as a travel account or an advertisement, given that he was the company's guest.
   3. 10 minutes: Each group reads one of The Rooms of the Tremont House (Eliot), The Program of the Grand Pleasure Excursion (Twain) or Taking the waters at Bath (Fiennes), the last two early versions, and lists what the owner, organizer or town offers a paying guest.
   4. 15 minutes: Each student answers the unit question, How did inns, hotels, restaurants, cruises and stores sell comfort and pleasure?, in a paragraph that uses evidence from at least two of the businesses and says which writer they trust most and why.

Sources for this unit

Choose two or three for the class, or give groups different ones. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   Taking the waters at Bath

   Fiennes, 1702. Moderate.Early version

   Long sentences split into shorter ones, with old words for clothes and rooms explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   guides

   men and women employed at the baths to help bathers, especially the weak and lame; they lived largely on tips

   palsy

   paralysis or uncontrolled shaking of the body or a limb

   slips

   small changing rooms at the edge of a bath, with steps down into the water

   sedan chair

   a closed seat carried on two poles by two men

   baize

   a coarse woolen cloth

   purge

   to empty the stomach or bowels on purpose, as a treatment

   taking the waters

   drinking hot spa water, as well as bathing in it, as part of a cure

   1. Comprehension What did ladies and gentlemen wear in the baths, and why does Fiennes say the yellow canvas was the best choice?
   2. Analysis Fiennes names many people who served the bathers. Which of them does she say were paid or rewarded, and how? What does this suggest about Bath as a place of business?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Fiennes wrote for her family, years after some of her journeys, as a lady of fashion visiting a place built for people like her. How might her position shape what she noticed? What does she say about the poorer bathers, and what does she leave out?
   4. Connection In The Program of the Grand Pleasure Excursion, the organizer promises a doctor on board and comfort and sympathy for any passenger who falls sick. Compare this with what Bath offered its visitors. How does each combine health and pleasure, and who seems to provide the care?

   Activity Using the paragraph on leaving the bath, students draw a numbered comic strip of each step, from the door in the water to sweating in bed at the lodging. Under each panel they write who helps the bather at that step. Groups then count the helpers and discuss what the strip shows about comfort, privacy, and cost at Bath.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   On restaurants, Paris, 1825

   Brillat-Savarin, 1825. Moderate.

   Witty and often ironic, with French food words explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   restaurateur

   the keeper of a restaurant; Brillat-Savarin also uses the word for the place itself

   carte

   French for the menu, the list of dishes with their prices

   table d'hôte

   the "host's table," one shared meal at an inn, served at a set hour and price, with no choice of dishes

   traiteurs

   caterers, cooks whose guild gave them the right to sell cooked dishes such as ragouts

   gastronomy

   the knowledge of eating well, which Brillat-Savarin treats as a science

   gourmet

   a person who knows a great deal about good food and enjoys it

   league

   an old measure of distance, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles)

   1. Comprehension According to Brillat-Savarin, what was hard about eating well in Paris around 1770, and what four advantages do restaurants offer?
   2. Analysis Brillat-Savarin says restaurants destroyed one of the great privileges of the rich and powerful. What does he mean? Using his own details, who could and could not reach the finest food?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Brillat-Savarin had eaten in Paris restaurants for many years, but he wrote his story of the first restaurateur some fifty years after the date he gives. Which parts of this text work best as evidence of what he saw, and which need more care? Why?
   4. Connection In Opening day of the great sale, Émile Zola's store owner sells rare carpets for almost what he paid and puts cheap rugs in a corner, from fifteen francs. Compare this store with Brillat-Savarin's restaurants. Who is each business trying to attract, and what does each writer seem to think of it?

   Activity Each group takes one table from the dining room scene, such as the lone diners, the traveling family, the married couple, the lovers, the regulars, or the English. The group writes the bill (the carte à payer) that table might receive, inventing items that fit the clues in the text and underlining the clue behind each item, and reads it aloud while the class guesses which table it belongs to. The class then discusses which of the portraits seem drawn from life and which seem to be stock jokes.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   The Rooms of the Tremont House

   Eliot, 1829–1830. Moderate.

   Building terms explained in the notes, and many exact sizes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   rotunda

   a round hall or room, often with a domed ceiling

   counting room

   an office where a business keeps its accounts and handles its money

   porter

   a worker who keeps the door of a building and carries visitors' baggage

   piazza

   a covered walk or porch along a building, supported by columns

   pilaster

   a flat column set into a wall, used for decoration in classical-style buildings

   Ionic columns

   columns in one of the Greek styles, with scroll-shaped tops

   patent

   a government grant that gives an inventor the sole right to make and sell an invention for a set time

   1. Comprehension How did a guest call for service from a room, and how did the office know which room was calling?
   2. Analysis Eliot says the dining room was thought to deserve the richest decoration, and then defends that choice. Why does he feel he must defend it? What does his answer suggest about what the hotel was offering its guests?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Eliot was one of the hotel's owners and published this book, without his name, the year after it opened. Which of his statements would you trust, and where should a reader be careful? What does he leave out?
   4. Connection In Receive every guest as Christ, Benedict gives the guests and the abbot a kitchen of their own. Compare the way Benedict arranges his monastery to receive guests with the way Eliot describes the Tremont House. What problems is each arrangement meant to solve, and for whom?

   Activity Students use Eliot's measurements to mark out the dining room, seventy-three feet by thirty-one, on a playground or gym floor with tape or string, and the dining space inside it, sixty feet by twenty. Standing inside, they estimate how many diners could fit and discuss why the owners wanted so large and richly decorated a room. They finish by writing one sentence an 1830 advertisement might use to describe the room.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

4. 4

   A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise

   Thackeray, 1845–1846. Moderate.

   Playful, with long sentences and a mock-solemn voice in the preface.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   berth

   a sleeping place on a ship; to be given a berth was to be given a place on the voyage

   excursion

   a trip made for pleasure, often by a group, returning to where it started

   claret

   the English name for red wine from Bordeaux, in France

   Russia ducks

   clothes made of Russia duck, a strong linen cloth once used for summer wear

   memoir

   a written account of a person's life; Thackeray jokingly writes about himself as if he were someone else's biographer

   dogwatch

   one of the two short watches, or work shifts, on a ship in the late afternoon and early evening; most watches last four hours

   the Service

   the Sunday morning service of the Church of England, here read by the ship's captain

   1. Comprehension What objections did Mr. Titmarsh raise before agreeing to go, and what finally ended them?
   2. Analysis In the first chapter, Thackeray moves from the moans of seasick passengers to the stars, the Sunday service, and champagne at dinner. How does this order shape the reader's picture of the voyage?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Thackeray was the company's guest, and his preface thanks its directors and recommends the trip. His preface also gives dates that differ from those a study of his letters gives. How far should a reader trust his picture of the cruise, and why?
   4. Connection Read The Program of the Grand Pleasure Excursion. Compare what Thackeray's preface promises with what Charles C. Duncan's program promises. How might each writer's position, a guest of the steamship company or the man who chartered the ship and managed the excursion, shape what he promises?

   Activity Students turn the last paragraph of the preface into a one-page newspaper advertisement for the excursion, using only claims Thackeray makes. They then mark each claim in two colors, one for claims a buyer could check and one for claims that rest on Thackeray's word. The class discusses whether a reader should treat the preface as a travel account or an advertisement.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

5. 5

   The Program of the Grand Pleasure Excursion

   Twain, 1867–1869. Moderate.Early version

   The first paragraph is one long, excited list, but the program itself is plain.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   excursion

   a trip made for pleasure, often by a group, returning to where it started

   Holy Land

   the lands of the Bible, then part of the Ottoman Empire

   currency

   here, US paper money, which in 1867 was worth less than gold

   boating

   taking passengers between ship and shore in small boats, in ports where the ship anchored offshore

   stateroom

   a private cabin on a ship

   chartered

   hired, as a whole ship is hired for one voyage

   make love

   in the 1860s, to court or flirt

   1. Comprehension What did the program offer passengers for their fare, and what had to happen before a ticket was issued?
   2. Analysis At the end of the passage, Twain repeats the program's promises back in a breathless list. Why might he do this, writing after the voyage was over? Look closely at the words he chooses.
   3. Analysis (reliability) Charles C. Duncan wrote the program before anyone sailed, Twain wrote the chapter afterward, and we have the program only as Twain printed it. How should each of these facts affect the way we use this page as evidence?
   4. Connection In Opening day of the great sale, Émile Zola's store flies flags, sends out delivery wagons with its name painted on the sides, and fills its entrance hall with carpets. Compare how the store and the excursion draw attention. What does each use to make people want to come, and whom is each trying to attract?

   Activity Students sort every promise in the program into four groups, comfort, safety, money, and company, on a large chart. They then compare the chart with Twain's list in the last paragraph and mark which promises he repeats, which he leaves out, and which he makes sound bigger. The program's route paragraphs, cut here, named most of the places on the way (though not England or Scotland) and said that people in Europe had asked to join. Each student writes two sentences on what the comparison shows about how Twain wanted readers to see the trip.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

6. 6

   Opening day of the great sale

   Zola, 1882–1883. Moderate.

   Rich, crowded description, with many carpet place names explained in a note.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   plate glass

   large, flat sheets of clear glass, used for shop windows

   livery

   a uniform worn by the servants or staff of one house or business

   frock coat

   a man's formal coat reaching to the knees

   Levant

   the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, then mostly ruled by the Ottoman Empire

   prayer rugs

   small rugs used in Muslim prayer; the design has a pointed arch, which the person praying turns toward Mecca

   pasha

   a high Ottoman title, given to governors and generals

   Orient

   an old European name for the lands of Asia, from Turkey and Arabia to India; the word carries European ideas about those lands

   1. Comprehension Who came into the store early that morning, and who gathered outside instead?
   2. Analysis Zola describes the store opening with words of war and victory, such as "under arms." Why might he describe a sale this way? What does it suggest about how Baudu and the other small shopkeepers see the store?
   3. Analysis (reliability) This is a novel. The headnote explains when Zola studied real Paris department stores and when he set this scene. What can this passage tell a historian about stores, and what can it not?
   4. Connection In A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise, Thackeray's tour promises visits to Smyrna, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Cairo. Zola's store brings carpets from Smyrna and other eastern places to Paris. Compare how each text presents these places to customers in Western Europe. What does each customer get, and what words make it appealing?

   Activity Students list every place name in the carpet room and match each to its modern name (from the note where given), then mark it on a map of western and southern Asia, using an atlas. Beside the map they copy the words Zola uses for the carpets and the room, such as "barbaric art" and "plundered." The class discusses whose view of these places the display sells, and what the map shows that the display does not.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: How did inns, hotels, restaurants, cruises and stores sell comfort and pleasure? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students separate checkable claims from promises in owners' and guests' accounts, use Eliot's measurements, and ask what a novel can tell a historian.

Go further

Other units

Being a guest

Encyclopedia

Department stores · Inns before hotels · The first grand hotels

Play

Space Hotel Ltd

Collection

Every source in Checking In