Raffles

The Noble Price winners Rudyard Kipling Kipling (‚Jungle Books‘) arrived in the first year of our Grand Old Lady’s history. His records led eventually to one of the most famous ‚Raffles quotes‘: „Providence,“ wrote the 23-year old, „conducted me along a beach in full view of five miles of shipping - five solid miles of masts and funnels - to a place called Raffles Hotel, where the food is excellent and the rooms are bad. Let the traveller take note. Feed at Raffles and sleep at the Hotel de ˇ l’Europe.“ This remark was not necessarily the best advertisement the hotel could ask for. So Tigran Sarkies, who managed Raffles at this time, quoted Kipling cleverly in a very condensed version: „Feed at Raffles where the food is excellent!“ Hermann Hesse at the Grand Marble Dining Saloon (in an impression by Peter Baldinger) Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse (‚Glassbead‘, ‚The Steppenwolf‘) came to Singapore in 1911 and stayed twelve nights at Raffles. He confided to his diary, „We stay expensively but very well at Raffles Hotel. The food is as bad as everywhere.“ Hesse recorded his stay „at this large and noisy hotel“ in every detail in his book ‚Journey to the East‘. William Golding This Nobel Prize winner (‚Lord of the Flies‘) visited Raffles in 1988. „I am a storyteller!“ he declared in his modest style. When the attending journalists started their friendly barrage of questions, he noted, „People always expect me to have the answers when all I have are the questions.“
Somerset Maugham „Raffles stands for all the fables of the exotic East!“, remarked Maugham in the hotel’s imaginary album. “May we use this for our PR campaignes, Mr Maugham?” Franz Schutzmann, Raffles Manager at this time, asked the fabled writer. “Of course, you may old chap!” Maugham replied and ever since this saying can be found whereever the logo Raffles appears. Maugham felt in love with the Grand Old Lady when he arrived for the first time in March 1921. He used to sit under the Frangipani tree in the left hand corner of the Palmcourt. There he worked every morning until lunch. Here and in Suite 78 (today the spacious Somerset Maugham Suite) he corrected the galleys of his short story collection ‚The Trembling of a Leaf‘. He also worked on a play called ‚East of Suez‘ at Raffles. When he returned to the hotel in 1925, he was writing some stories for ‚The Casuarina Tree‘, a rare compilation of indiscretions which helped multiply the anger against him that already escalated in the colonies. Everybody had the impression that he just walked around collecting local scandals in order to publish them. True, he wrote about the society’s gossip. He denounced people in his stories, as some would have it. But he stressed several times the characters he wrote about were peculiar and outstanding in a way. And Raffles supplied him with rich pickings. Over thirty years later, in 1959, Maugham returned to Singapore. Raffles and her patrons bade him a gushing welcome. Nobody was angry any more, everything seemed to be forgotten. But Maugham quickly supplied new material to annoy the expatriate community. Franz Schutzmann invited Maugham one day to the prestigious Tanglin Club. There he got his share of the writers biting directness, „Observing these people I am no longer surprised that we have such a scarcity of domestic servants back home in England“, Maugham remarked. Much to the dismay of the embarrassed Schutzmann who lost his membership at the club while Maugham was never invited again. Ho Wee How, Barcaptain at Raffles „Writers Bar” before her renovations and then Maugham´s room boy, thinks back: „He wore only a pair of shorts when he had his breakfast every morning in the garden. Then he worked. He once asked me if I had read any of his books and I explained to him that I couldn´t read.“ Ho, who since acquired this ability, admits that he still has not read a Maugham book. „I liked him very much!“ remembers former porter Pasu J. Pathy. „He was very nice to us all. Other guests always asked him to autograph his books. So, in order to organize the whole thing a little bit, I brought him a pile of books once a day. He loved to sit in the big cane chair where he signed them. And one day, he even signed one of his photographs for me!