We just spent a week at the Grand Hotel in Folkestone, England. In case this gives you an exaggerated idea of the financial rewards of public radio, I should explain that this particular Grand Hotel has come down in the world. A hundred years ago it was very grand indeed, but now it has fallen on hard times and is, as they say, "affordable." Retired colonels, writers, artists, radio commentators and other indigents come to the Grand Hotel to enjoy a touch of class without getting a classy bill at the end of it.

The Grand is one of a whole string of splendid Victorian hotels that were built along the south coast of England before British holidaymakers discovered Spain. It is a truly impressive building with four hundred rooms, including a Palm Court and a superb ballroom. It was originally designed as residential chambers - small but luxurious apartments for gentlemen who wanted to escape from the hubbub of London life, and perhaps from some of the restrictions of domestic life too. It attracted some distinguished residents. One of these was Edward VII, Prince of Wales, who came here with his intimate friend Alice Keppel. In honor of their famous liaison, the restaurant at the hotel is now called Keppel's. The Prince frequented the Palm Court with his male friends, and because so many of them were bearded in the fashion of the day, the Palm Court acquired the disrespectful nickname of The Monkey House. The term "Monkey Business" entered the language because these young aristocrats were staying in the Grand Hotel for reasons of which Queen Victoria could not possibly have approved.

In other words, the Grand Hotel had a racy reputation at the turn of the last century. Between the wars, Edward VIII stayed there, and Mrs. Simpson stayed close by. Robert Morley and Michael Caine made their stage debuts at Grand Hotel, and Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in this very building.

But it all went downhill after World War Two. The hotel had been damaged by enemy shelling, wealthy and idle young gentlemen were an endangered species, and more and more people took their vacations abroad, away from the rain and wind of the English coast. Ballrooms and Palm Courts were out of fashion. The Grand Hotel became a liability. There was talk of knocking it down and making a nice car park, or perhaps a supermarket.

Fortunately it was saved, and is enjoying a revival. People like us rent apartments by the week or month, so we can pretend to live like nineteenth century aristocrats, but at motel prices. Our apartment was slightly faded and in need of a coat of paint. The furniture was not exactly of the period but of every period from 1910 to 1954, with some very strange lamps and souvenir teapots, as if the whole place had been furnished in a hurry from one gigantic garage sale. But it was spacious and comfortable, with fine sea views, and we had the run of the hotel with its grand stairways and classy public rooms. Just being there made me feel like a veritable little prince. My mother, who stayed there with us, thought she had gone to heaven.

The original guests at the Grand Hotel would no doubt have been horrified by this decline from rakishness to respectability. To them, it would illustrate the worst excesses of democracy. But democracy has a way of catching up with history. Tens of thousands of tourists tramp over the Parthenon and through the Palace of Versailles every year. Some of the finest palaces in Asia are now hotels. Even in America, you can find overnight accommodation in some very fine old houses, whose owners would not even have spoken to you a hundred years ago. Today's monumental status symbol is tomorrow's bed and breakfast. I call it the trickle-down theory of architecture, and it's very reassuring. Right now we can't afford a gigantic house like the four thousand square foot "New Victorian" monsters that are being built all around us on Long Island. But all we have to do is wait.
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