Parsham: Hotel in The Reivers (Location)

The hotel at Parsham is a "big rambling multigalleried multistoried steamboat-gothic" place (163). Miss Reba, fresh from Memphis, calls it a "dump" (204), but it is elegant enough to include a "ladies parlor," as all good hotels did in what Lucius calls "those days" (189). During the winter, when hunters and dog-fanciers descend on Parsham for "the quail season and the Grand National Trials," the "vast rambling hotel" is "booming," full "staffed and elegant" (190). During the events of the novel, however, it is empty, its lobby furniture "half-shrouded" in "holland bags," its staff reduced to a "single temporary clerk," a "single temporary waiter," and a cook (190, 191).