COUNTRY-HOUSE VISITS
September is actually the commencement of the country visiting season,
the few visits that are paid in August are but a prelude to the
programme that is to follow during the succeeding five months.
=The visitors received in August= are principally relatives. The
exceptions to the August family parties are the August cricket parties
in the counties where cricket is made a great feature during that month,
where the cricket weeks and consequent large country-house parties are
of annual recurrence, and where balls and private theatricals form part
of the week's amusement. It often follows that people visit at the same
houses year after year, they arrange their tour of visits with regard to
those invitations which they annually receive; new acquaintances and new
houses whereat to visit are added to the list from time to time and take
the place of those which, as a matter of course, drop out of it.
Sometimes the invitations fit into each other admirably, like the pieces
of a puzzle; at others there is an awkward interval of a day, or two or
three days, to be filled up between leaving one house and arriving at
another. If the hostess is, in either case, a relation or an intimate
friend, this difficulty is easily surmounted by staying on at one house
until the day fixed for arrival at another, or _vice versa_; but if a
guest is on ceremony with her hostess, or if, as is often the case, new
arrivals are expected for the following week, the alternative is to
spend a few days in town, as although the house where the next visit to
be paid might be within twenty or thirty miles of the house the visitor
is about to leave, it would be unusual to spend the interval at an hotel
in the adjacent town, as to do so might reflect upon the hospitality of
the hostess. On the other hand, invitations are sometimes given
independently of dates, but this friendly style of invitation is not
given when a large party is invited, and it is understood to mean that
the hostess may be quite alone, or may have guests staying with her, as
the case may be. This form of invitation is frequently given to people
visiting in Scotland, on account of the great distance from town.
It is a very general custom to give shooting parties the third week in
September, harvest permitting. If the harvest is late on account of
unfavourable weather the shooting parties are postponed until the first
week in the ensuing month. The guests, or at least the crack guns, are
usually invited for partridge driving, which is what partridge shooting
now actually amounts to.
There are large shooting parties and small shooting parties, shooting
parties to which royalty is invited and shooting parties restricted to
intimate friends or relations, but in either case the period is the
same, three days' shooting.
=If a party is limited to five guns=, seven ladies is the average number
invited, the hostess relying upon a neighbour or a neighbour's son to
equalise the balance at the dinner-table. The success of house-parties
mainly depends upon people knowing each other, or fraternising when they
are introduced or have made each other's acquaintance. The ladies of a
country-house party are expected, as a rule, to amuse themselves, more
or less, during the day. After luncheon there is usually a drive to a
neighbouring town, a little shopping to be done there, or a call to be
paid in the neighbourhood by some of the party, notably the married
ladies, the young ladies being left to their own resources.
At the close of a visit game is offered to those of the shooters to whom
it is known that it will be acceptable.
The head gamekeeper is usually instructed to put up a couple of brace of
pheasants and a hare. But in some houses even this custom is not
followed, and the whole of the game killed, with the exception of what
is required for the house, finds its way into the market, both the local
market and the London market.
* * * * *
Shooting parties as a rule give a hostess little anxiety on the score of
finding amusement for the ladies of the party, as so many aids out of
doors are at her command at this season of the year. This is a great
advantage, as although some few ladies possessing great strength of
nerve have taken up shooting as an amusement and pastime and acquit
themselves surprisingly well in this manly sport, yet ladies in general
are not inclined for so dangerous a game, and even those intrepid ladies
who have learnt how to use their little gun would never be permitted to
make one or two of a big shooting party, even were they so inclined.
The hostess and the ladies of the party invariably join the shooters at
luncheon, and some of the ladies go out with the shooters in the morning
to watch their prowess in the field; but this entails a great deal of
walking where partridge shooting is concerned, which is quite another
thing to covert shooting in November and December.
=A good hostess has great opportunities= for distinguishing herself when
entertaining a country-house party, from the arrival of the first
motor-car to the departure of the last. Her consideration and tact are
so successfully exerted that somehow her guests always find themselves
doing exactly what they like best and in company with those who are
most congenial to them, to say nothing of the comfort of the general
domestic arrangements, which seem to have been arranged exclusively for
their convenience. If they wish to drive, there is a carriage or
motor-car at their disposal; if they prefer a constitutional, there is
some one very agreeable desirous of walking with them. The daily papers
are always to be found, the post-bag goes out at a most convenient hour
by the hand of a special messenger, the dinner is of the best, and the
evening is of the cheeriest. Bridge as a rule is played in most houses,
and several tables are arranged in the drawing-room to accommodate the
would-be players.
Occasionally, when the birds are wild and sport is slack, a sort of
picnic luncheon is held in the vicinity of a keeper's lodge, under the
shade of some wide-spreading trees, when the ladies join the party; but
in September keen sportsmen rather despise this playing at shooting, and
resent the interruption caused by the company of ladies at luncheon, and
prefer to take it in the rough and smoke the while. Every day of the
week is not thus given up to shooting, and there are few owners of
manors who would care to provide five days' consecutive sport for their
guests, and two days' hard shooting is probably followed by what is
called an idle day. On these off days in September the hostess often
gives a garden-party, or takes her guests to one given by a neighbour at
some few miles distant; or she holds a stall at a bazaar and persuades
her guests to assist her in disposing of her stock; or she induces her
party to accompany her to some flower-show in which she takes a local
interest; or the host and one or two of the best shots start early after
breakfast to shoot with a neighbour, and the remainder of the guests
drive over to a picturesque ruin, where they picnic, and return home in
time for the eight-o'clock dinner. If the owner of a mansion has a coach
the whole party is conveyed on it, otherwise the motor-cars are brought
into requisition, while saddle horses are provided for those who care
to ride. A country-house party occasionally resolves itself into two or
more cliques, as far as the ladies are concerned; gentlemen, as a rule,
are not much given to this sort of thing. On the first evening, as soon
as the ladies have left the dining-room for the drawing-room, these
little cliques are tacitly formed, and continue unbroken until the close
of the visit. There are many reasons which call these cliques into
existence--old intimacies revived, new acquaintanceships to be
strengthened, unwelcome acquaintanceships to be avoided, and so on.
These cliques are by no means agreeable to the hostess, indeed, quite
the contrary--but she is powerless to prevent their being formed, and
she is herself sometimes drawn into one or other of them, and sometimes
altogether excluded from them. Any one who is at all conversant with
country-house visiting is aware how thoroughly the influence of the
clique pervades the atmosphere of the drawing-room; and yet, perhaps, at
country-house parties more friendships are formed and intimacies
cemented than at any other gatherings.
=The evening amusements= at country-house parties vary very much
according to the proclivities of the hostess or those of her daughters.
At some houses dancing is the order of things for a couple of hours or
so after dinner, but this mode of spending the evening does not always
commend itself to the gentlemen, who, after a long day's walking through
wet turnips and over heavy ploughed land, or a hard day's riding over
stiff fences, rather incline towards the _dolce far niente_ of a
luxurious armchair than to the pleasures of the mazy valse, and are
proportionately grateful to a hostess who does not call upon them to
undergo any further exercise than what they have already gone through
for their own pleasure.
In most country-house parties bridge forms the chief if not the only
amusement, and is played not only after dinner but in the afternoon
also. Amateur theatricals and _tableaux vivants_, impromptu charades,
thought reading, conjuring, etc., are fashionable amusements and easy of
accomplishment: the first-named of these demands considerable study and
plenty of time for rehearsal, therefore theatricals are generally
engaged in when the party is composed of relatives rather than of
acquaintances, and when the visit would be perhaps prolonged to ten days
or a fortnight.
Some hostesses prefer keeping late hours to early hours, and do not
retire until after twelve; this does not commend itself to the
gentlemen, as they are not supposed to adjourn to the smoking-room until
the ladies have left the drawing-room, and gentlemen like to spend a
couple of hours in the smoking-room after dinner.
=In hunting counties= the breakfast is usually an early one, varying
from nine o'clock to half-past nine, according to whether the ride to
covert is likely to be a long or a short one; but, as a rule, the
nominal breakfast hour is 9.30 o'clock. A certain amount of latitude is
allowed to guests as regards coming down to breakfast; they do not
assemble in the morning-room, but all make their way to the
breakfast-room, and seat themselves at once at table, while many ladies
breakfast in their own rooms.
=In Scotland, an invitation to shoot= often means a visit of three
weeks. The accommodation of the shooting-box or lodge may be limited or
primitive, and it is very often both of these; but it matters very
little to the sportsman what sort of bed he sleeps on, or how he is made
to rough it, providing the grouse are plentiful. On some of the moors
there are but cottages and farmhouses for the occupation of the
sportsmen, but on others the houses are excellent, and let with the
moors, as many take a moor season after season and invite their friends
to shoot between the 12th of August and October. The grand shooting
parties that are annually given in Scotland by owners of large estates
and fine shootings extends throughout the whole of the shooting season,
and guests come and go without intermission; as one leaves another
arrives. Certain houses or castles are much gayer than others; to some
very few ladies are asked, the majority of the guests being
gentlemen--probably the hostess and two ladies and eight men--in others,
the numbers are more equal; in others, again, the party sometimes
consists entirely of men with a host and no hostess. Ladies generally
ask their most intimate friends to Scotland rather than acquaintances,
as they are left to themselves the whole of the day, dinner being often
postponed until nine o'clock, on account of the late return of the
sportsmen.
=South of the Tweed, September invitations= are usually given for three
or four days, from Tuesday till Saturday; married couples, young ladies,
and young men, are all asked, and the ladies find amusement in
lawn-tennis, or in attending or assisting at some neighbouring bazaar or
fancy fair, as in this month county bazaars are very popular, and the
visitors at one house lend their services in conjunction with the
visitors at another, to hold stalls at a bazaar got up by a third
influential lady; and thus the stalls are well stocked, and the
fashionable stall-holders give an impetus to the whole affair.
Ladies see very little of the gentlemen between breakfast and dinner.
The shooters start about eleven, and seldom return much before seven.
When it is dark at four, those who prefer ladies' society and tea to the
smoking-room and billiards, make themselves presentable and join the
ladies.
=As regards the Etiquette of Visiting at Bachelors' Houses.=--It is
thoroughly understood that ladies should be accompanied by their
husbands, and young ladies by their father and mother, or by a married
couple with whom they are on terms of great intimacy, in which case the
married lady acts as chaperon to the young ladies. Young ladies cannot
stay at the house of a bachelor unless chaperoned by a married lady, or
by a female relative of their host. A widow and her daughter could of
course join a party of ladies staying at a bachelor's house, or stay on
a visit to him were he alone, or entertaining bachelor friends.
When a bachelor gives a country-house party, and nominally does the
honours himself, occasionally one of the married ladies of the party
tacitly takes the lead.
The position of a young widower is similar to that of a bachelor as
regards society. Later in life, the contrary is the case; a widower with
grown-up daughters gives entertainments for them, and the eldest
daughter does the honours, thus reducing the position again to that of
host and hostess.