Angus Mackay

Angus Mackay, Proprietor, Victoria Hotel, 15-23, West George Street, and George Hotel, George Street, Edinburgh.—

    A favourite temporary home for commercial gentlemen is that controlled by Mr. Angus Mackay, proprietor of the Victoria Hotel, 15-23, West George Street. The hotel has been established sixty years, and has been in Mr. Mackay’s occupation for eight years. It is a very large building, capable of accommodating over 100 guests, and contains proportionate dining, drawing-room, and parlour accommodation, besides spacious stock-rooms to accommodate the many commercial travellers who, in these days of quick business-doing, show their commodities in bulk instead of the samples invariable in the age of the bagman, and most usual in the intermediate period, when the riding-horse and its saddle-bags were discarded for the stage-coach, or the four-wheeled dog-cart heavily freighted with pattern-cases.

    Mr. Mackay caters chiefly for commercial gentlemen, and the Victoria is reckoned the best hotel of its order in Glasgow. The greater a man’s experience of any particular thing, the better judge he must be of its qualities, and the commercial traveller, who practically spends his life in hotels, must understand, better than anyone else can, where he is best dealt with.

    There are many details in hotel-keeping which are every one of them essentials to its success. The bedrooms must present the acme of comfort and cleanliness ; the accommodation for meals, correspondence and stock-keeping must be complete and in every way properly fitted and furnished ; the larder must be well and luxuriously stored, and the cooking unimpeachable ; the liquors must be high-class, for they are partaken of by men who understand brands and vintages better than many aristocratic habitues of palatial clubs, or lordly owners of rarely-stocked cellars ; the servants must be quick in their movements, polite, obliging, and reliable as to information which it is their province to give, and the presiding genius must have the manners and bearing of a gentleman. All these conditions Mr. Mackay fulfils, and hence the problem of his great success is at once solved.

    The accommodation he has at disposal is always taken up, and the demand is on occasions in excess of the regular supply, but he is equal to every emergency, and can do surprising things in the way of meeting the wishes of an unexpected mustering of guests, who find themselves in every particular nobly and luxuriously provided for.

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