The Letter Opener

The Letter Opener

In earlier days, hotel rooms always came equipped with a letter opener, usually with the hotel’s name stamped on the handle—The Hotel Lucerne, Hotel Monteleone, Place d’Arms. Usually found in the drawer of the spindly desk, along with a few hotel-logo envelopes and some sheets of stationery. And sometimes a postcard of the exterior of the hotel taken from its most flattering side. The pens used to be imitation fountain pens, the ones with no cap. But now the letter openers are gone, along with the fake pens. Cheap ballpoint pens, logo included, now are on every flat surface of a hotel room. But no letter opener.

What were they for, anyway? In my whole life, I’ve gotten maybe two letters while I was at a hotel, both from people staying in the same hotel and attending the same conference. And I don’t recall needing a letter opener to tear into them either. Instead of a letter opener, now the hotel bathroom is filled with amenities—shampoo and conditioner, bath gel and soap, shower cap and sewing kit. Like buggy whips and typewriter carbon paper and ditto fluid and ash trays in restaurants, the hotel letter openers have passed on into history.

And to think I was present for the demise.