Sunday December 7, 2008
Tale of glamour and glitz
Review by NEIL KHOR
THE E&O HOTEL Pearl of Penang
By Ilsa Sharp
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 173 pages
ISBN: 978-9812614827
THE E&O Hotel is full of memories. Tiffin lunches with the ladies from the Women’s Institute, drinks at the Farquhar Bar with visiting friends, birthday parties and weddings in the Grand Ballroom.
Penangites have been drawn to this hotel since 1885 when the Armenian Sarkies brothers decided to create the indisputably best hotel East of the Suez Canal. Those familiar with the E&O’s history will know that the hotel once comprised the Eastern and the Oriental hotels that the Sarkies expanded and developed into a single luxurious affair.
Now in its 123rd year, the hotel celebrated George Town’s recent Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) world heritage listing by commissioning a lavish coffee table book aptly entitled E&O: Pearl of Penang. The book was launched on Thursday on the hotel’s premises.
The E&O Hotel: Pearl of Penang offers not only interesting text but also wonderful photos, like this one, above, of the hotel’s grand facade today. – Photo from The E&O Hotel: Pearl of Penang Author Ilsa Sharp, whose association with this book project spans over two decades, has surpassed her famed Raffles classic (There is Only One Raffles, Souvenir Press Ltd, ISBN: 978-0285623835). The Raffles Hotel in Singapore, was, of course, also developed by the Sarkies brothers.
Sharp, a seasoned researcher and writer, has produced a book of special significance. The book embeds the history of the hotel within the development of Penang, opening with a description of early Penang and explaining how this trading outpost transformed itself into a regional hub that could sustain a hotel as lavish as the E&O.
The 1880s was a time of remarkable economic growth that saw the beginnings of what Cambridge historian Sir Christopher Bayly describes as “imperial port culture”. This was an urban way of life that was cosmopolitan, forward-looking, and confident about the future. It sprung up based upon free trade, English-education, and British law.
As Sharp illustrates in her book, the same adventurous “can do” attitude that arose in port cities from Alexandria to Singapore were the same values that motivated the Sarkies to build their great hotels, which included the Raffles in Singapore, and The Strand in Rangoon. After all, the British Empire, unlike any other before it, was a commercial empire, and it was businessmen with vision – more so than soldiers and politicians – who helped build it.
An image contributed to the book by the Penang State Museum, is the hotel’s entrance as it looked in 1885. – Photo from The E&O Hotel: Pearl of Penang What the reader will find particularly rewarding about this book is Sharp’s understanding and clear explanations of how this hotel operated within ethnic divisions and in class conscious colonial society.
The key to the success of the E&O Hotel in the frolicking rubber boom years at the turn of the 20th century – when technological developments brought hot water on tap and electric lights to its guests – was its promise of great comfort, and its internationalism.
To get onto the social register and attract the right sort of attention, the hotel’s owners gave lavish balls and furnished rooms to meet the needs and standards of wealthy planters. The “echo dome” – the hotel’s marvellous domed lobby with its echo spot – was built during this period.
The greatest stories that people remember about the Sarkies from this time, recounted in the book, are about their unfailing generosity to the down and out.
But the hotel’s fortunes were now tied to imperial trade, and particularly to Penang’s regional centrality, which exposed it to great risks. By the middle of the last century, the game might have been pretty much all played out – but champagne still flowed, as the E&O was determined to give the departing colonial crowd one last good memory of the East.
The ups and downs of the hotel told through the fortunes of its owners and its guests give the hotel its unique personality. The book makes this clear through photographs, tales from the guests themselves, and, more importantly, from what those who served remember.
In this narration of the hotel’s history, the E&O’s reputation for excellence rests on the efforts of its managers, the small army of cooks, its housekeeping staff and security officers. They still, to this day, make a night at the hotel totally unforgettable.
Of course, it is more unforgettable if one bumped into celebrities. If in the last century the E&O hosted the likes of writers Rudyard Kipling and Noel Coward, and actors Charlie Chaplin and Burt Lancester, just to name a few, it recently hosted our own Datuk Michelle Yeoh.
E&O: Pearl of Penang explains how today’s E&O is like a phoenix risen from its ashes. For over 30 years, the hotel had been in decline. Transferred from one owner to the next, there was a very real danger that no new memories would take root here.
The book’s last chapter explains how, in the late 1990s, property investors and developers Eastern & Oriental Bhd (now the E&O Group) bought the E&O and began a meticulous refurbishment that has now positioned the hotel as George Town’s heritage ambassador.
Apart from the glamour and glitz that we have come to expect of this grand dame, this beautifully restored hotel is particularly meaningful to Penangites.
In Sharp’s book we have on record the beginnings of the hospitality industry in Penang, now one of the biggest tourist ringgit earners for the State.
More importantly, the book points to a new direction where the future lies in a higher tourism offer that the E&O represents.
Undoubtedly, a lot went into the production of this coffee table book. Sharp has more than captured the glamorous in her book. She has succeeded in describing a special element of Penang, one associated with internationalism and a culture of excellence.
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