THE VISITOR
AN invitation to visit a friend in her home must always be answered
promptly. The invited person should think seriously before accepting
such an invitation, and, unfortunately, one of the things she has to
consider is her wardrobe. If the hostess has a superb house, and the
guest is to be one of many, all wealthy except herself, all handsomely
gowned except herself, and if she will feel like an English sparrow
in a flock of birds of paradise, she would better acknowledge the
invitation, with gratitude, and stay at home. If she does go, let her
determine to make no apologies for her appearance, but to accommodate
herself to the ways of the household she visits.
One woman, visiting in a handsome home, was distressed to the point of
weeping by the fact that, on her arrival, her hostess’ maid came to
the guest’s room and unpacked her trunk for her, putting the contents
in bureau-drawers and wardrobe. It would have been better form if the
visitor had taken what seemed to her an innovation as a matter of
course, and expressed neither chagrin nor distress at the kindly-meant
and customary attention.
If, then, our invited person, after taking all things into
consideration, decides to accept the invitation sent her, let her
state just when she is coming, and go at that time. Of course she will
make her plans agree with those of her future hostess. The exact train
should be named, and the schedule set must not be deviated from.
* * * * *
It may be said right here that no one should make a visit uninvited.
Few persons would do this,—but some few have been guilty of this
breach of etiquette. One need not always wait for an invitation from
an intimate friend, nor member of one’s family with whom one can never
be de trop, but, even then, one should, by telegram or telephone, give
notice of one’s coming. If I could, I would make a rule that no one
should pay an unexpected visit of several days’ duration. If one must
go uninvited, one should give the prospective hosts ample notice of the
intended visit, begging, at the same time, that one may be notified if
the suggested plan be inconvenient.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: BE PROMPT AND DEFINITE]
When a letter of invitation is accepted, the acceptance must not only
be prompt, but must clearly state how long one intends to stay. It
is embarrassing to a hostess not to know whether her guest means to
remain a few days or many. As will be seen in the chapter on “The
Visited,” the hostess can do much to obviate this uncertainty by asking
a friend for a visit of a specified length. But, in accepting, the
guest must also say how long she will remain.
An invitation should be received gratefully. In few things does
breeding show more than in the manner of acknowledging an invitation to
a friend’s house. She who asks another to be a member of her household
for even a short time is paying the person asked the greatest honor
it is in her power to confer, and it should be appreciated by the
recipient. He who does not appreciate the honor implied in such an
invitation is unmannerly.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ALWAYS ARRIVE ON TIME]
An invitation once accepted, nothing but such a serious contingency as
illness must prevent one’s fulfilling the engagement. One must never
arrive ahead of time. Once in the home of a friend the guest makes
herself as much a member of the household as possible. The hours of
meals must be ascertained, and promptness in everything be the rule. To
lie in bed after one is called, and to appear at the breakfast table
at one’s own sweet will, is often an inconvenience to the hostess, and
the cause of vexation and discontent on the part of the servants,
for which discontent the hostess—not the guest—pays the penalty.
Unless, then, the latter is told expressly that the hour at which she
descends to the first meal of the day is truly of no consequence in the
household, she must come into the breakfast-room at the hour named by
the mistress of the house.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE DUTIES OF A GUEST]
On the other hand, one should not come down a half-hour before
breakfast and sit in the drawing-room or library, thus keeping the
maid or hostess from dusting these rooms and setting them to rights.
The considerate guest will stay in her own room until breakfast is
announced, then descend immediately. If the weather is fair, she may,
of course, walk in the grounds close to the house.
If amusements have been planned for the guest, she will do her best
to enjoy them, or, at all events, to show gratitude for the kind
intentions in her behalf. She must resolve to evince an interest in all
that is done, and, if she can not join in the amusement, give evidence
of an appreciation of the efforts that have been made to entertain. The
guest must remember that the hosts are doing their best to please her,
and that out of ordinary humanity, if not civility, gratitude should be
shown and expressed for these endeavors.
* * * * *
If the hostess be a busy housewife, who has many duties about the
house which she must perform herself, the visitor may occasionally
try to “lend a hand” by dusting her own room or making her own bed.
If, however, she is discovered at these tasks, and observes that
the hostess looks worried, or objects to the guest thus exerting
herself, it is the truest courtesy not to repeat the efforts to be
of assistance. It disturbs some housewives to know that a visitor is
performing any household tasks.
* * * * *
It is safe to say that a guest should go home at the time set unless
the hostess urges her to do otherwise, or has some excellent reason for
wishing her to change her plans. To remain beyond the time expected is
a great mistake, unless one knows that it will be a genuine convenience
to the hosts to have one stay. The old saying that a guest should
not make a host twice glad has sound common sense as its basis. If
a visitor is persuaded to extend her visit, it must be only for a
short time, and she must herself set the limit of this stay, at which
time nothing must in any way be allowed to deter her from taking her
departure.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE NECESSITY FOR TACT]
The visitor in a family must exercise tact in many ways. Above all she
must avoid any participation in little discussions between persons in
the family. If the father takes one side of an argument, the mother
the other, the wise guest will keep silent, unless one or the other
appeal to her for confirmation of his or her assertions,—in which case
she should smilingly say that she would rather not express an opinion,
or laugh the matter off in such a way as to change the current of the
conversation.
Another thing that a guest must avoid is reproving the children of
the house in even the mildest, gentlest way. She must also resist the
impulse to make an audible excuse for a child when he is reprimanded in
her presence. To do either of these things is a breach of etiquette.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE WEEK-END PARTY]
If she be so fortunate as to be invited to a house-party or a week-end
party, she should accept or decline at once, that the hostess may know
for how many people to provide rooms. For such an affair one should
take handsome gowns, as a good deal of festivity and dress is customary
among the jolly group thus brought together. A dinner or evening
gown is essential, and if, as is customary, the house-party be given
at a country-home, the visitor must have a short walking-skirt and
walking-boots, as well as a carriage costume.
Once a member of a house-party, the rule is simple enough. Do as the
others do, and enter with a will on all the entertainment provided by
the host and hostess for the party.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE QUESTION OF TIPS]
If you make a visit of any length you must not fail, if you are
conventional, to leave a little money for each servant who has, by
her services in any capacity, contributed to your comfort. This will,
of course, include the maid who has cared for the bedroom, and the
waitress. By one of these servants send something to the cook, and a
message of thanks for the good things which she has made and you have
enjoyed. The laundress need not be inevitably remembered, unless she
has done a little washing for you; still, when one considers the extra
bed and table linen to be washed, it is as well to leave a half dollar
for her also. The amount of such fees must be determined by the length
of one’s purse; and must never be so large as to appear lavish and
unnecessary. A dollar, if you can afford it and have made a visit of
any length, will be sufficient for each maid. The coachman who drives
you to the train must receive the same amount.
There is, one is glad to say, an occasional household in which the idea
of tips is regarded as contrary to the spirit of true hospitality. In
such homes the mistress herself sees that the servants receive extra
pay for the extra work entailed by guests, and the hotel atmosphere
suggested by tipping is fortunately done away with.
[Sidenote: THE BREAD-AND-BUTTER NOTE]
After the guest has returned to her own home, her duties toward her
recent hosts are not at an end until she has written what is slangily
known as “the bread-and-butter letter.” This is simply a note, telling
of one’s safe arrival at one’s destination, and thanking the hostess
for the pleasant visit one has had. A few lines are all that etiquette
demands, but it requires these, and decrees that they be despatched at
once. To neglect to write the letter demanded by those twin sisters,
Conventionality and Courtesy, is a grave breach of the etiquette of the
visitor.
* * * * *
Hospitality as a duty has been written up from the beginning of human
life. The obligations of those who, in quaint old English phrase,
“guesten” with neighbors, or strangers, have had so little attention it
is no wonder they are lightly considered, in comparison.
We hear much of men who play the host royally, and of the perfect
hostess. If hospitality be reckoned among the fine arts and moral
virtues, to “guesten” aright is a saving social grace. Where ten
excellent hosts are found we are fortunate if we meet one guest who
knows his business and does it.
The consciousness of this neglected fact prompts us to write in
connection with our cardinal virtue of giving, of what we must perforce
coin a word to define as “Guestly Etiquette.” We have said elsewhere
that the first, and oftentimes a humiliating step, in the acquisition
of all knowledge, from making a pudding to governing an empire, is to
learn how not to do it. Two-thirds of the people who “guesten” with us
never get beyond the initiatory step.
[Sidenote: GUESTS ARE NOT BOARDERS]
The writer of this page could give from memory a list that would cover
pages of foolscap, of people who called themselves well-bred and
who were in the main well-meaning, who have deported themselves in
hospitable homes as if they were registered boarders in a hotel.
Settle within your own mind, in entering your friend’s doors, that what
you receive is not to be paid for in dollars and cents. The thought
will deprive you at once of the right to complain or to criticize.
This should be a self-evident law. It is so far, however, from being
self-evident that it is violated every day and in scores of homes where
refinement is supposed to regulate social usages.
* * * * *
Taking at random illustrations that crowd in on memories of my own
experiences,—let me draw into line the distinguished clergyman who
always brought his own bread to the table, informing me that my hot
muffins were “rank poison to any rightly-appointed stomach”; another
man, equally distinguished in another profession, who summoned a
chambermaid at eleven o’clock at night to drag his bed across the room
that he might lie due east and west; an author who never went to bed
until two o’clock in the morning, and complained sourly at breakfast
time that “your servants, madam, banked up the furnace fire so early
that the house got cold by midnight”; the popular musician who informed
me “your piano is horribly out of tune”; the man and wife who “couldn’t
sleep a wink because there was a mosquito in the room”; the eminent
jurist who sat out an evening in the library of my country-house with
his hat on because “the room was drafty”;—ah! my fellow housemothers
can match every instance of the lack of the guestly conscience by
stories from their own repositories.
[Sidenote: ANNOYING FAMILIARITIES]
The guest who is told to consider himself as one of the family knows
the invitation to be a figure of polite speech as well as he who says
it knows it to be an empty form. One man I wot of sings and whistles in
the halls and upon the stairs of his host’s house to show how joyfully
he is at home. Another stretches himself at length upon the library
sofa, and smokes the cigar of peace (to himself) at all hours, an
ash-cup upon the floor within easy distance. A third helps himself to
his host’s cigars whenever he likes without saying “by your leave.”
Each may fancy that he is following out the hospitable intentions of
his entertainers when, in fact, he is selfishly oblivious of guestly
duty and propriety.
One who has given the subject more than a passing thought might
suppose it unnecessary to lay down to well-bred readers “Laws for
Table Manners While Visiting.” Yet, when I saw a man of excellent
lineage, and a university graduate, thump his empty tumbler on the
table to attract the attention of the waitress, and heard him a few
minutes later call out to her “Butter—please!” I wished that the study
of such a manual had been included as a regular course in the college
curriculum.
A true anecdote recurs to me here that may soothe national pride with
the knowledge that the solecisms I have described and others that have
not added to the traveled American’s reputation for breeding, are not
confined to our side of the ocean.
[Sidenote: ENGLISH FRANKNESS]
Lord and Lady B——, names familiar some years back to the students of
the “high-life” columns of our papers, were at a dinner party in New
York with an acquaintance of mine who painted the scene for me. Lady
B——, tasting her soup as soon as it was set down in front of her, calls
to her husband at the other end of the table: “B——, my dear! Don’t eat
this soup! It is _quite filthy_! There are tomatoes in it!”
We Americans are less brutally frank than our English cousins. Yet
I thought of Lady B—— last week when my vis-à-vis,—a slim, pretty,
accomplished matron of thirty, or thereabouts—at an admirably-appointed
family dinner, accepted a plate of soup, tasted it, laid down her
spoon and did not touch it again, repeating the action with an entrée,
and with the dessert of peaches and cream. She did not grimace her
distaste of any one of the three articles of food, it is true, being,
thus far, better-mannered than our titled vulgarian. In effect, she
implied the same thing by tasting of each portion and declining to eat
more than the tentative mouthful.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SELF-DISCIPLINE]
To sum up our table of rules: Bethink yourself, from your entrance to
your exit from your host’s house, of the sure way of adding to the
comfort and pleasure of those who have honored you by inviting you
to sojourn under their roof-tree. If possessed of the true spirit of
hospitality, they will find that pleasure in promoting yours. Learn
from them and be not one whit behind them in the good work. If they
propose any especial form of amusement, fall in with their plans
readily and cordially. You may not enjoy a stately drive through dusty
roads behind fat family horses, or a tramp over briery fields with the
hostess who is addicted to berrying and botanizing—but go as if that
were the exact bent of taste and desire. A dinner party, made up of
men who talk business and nothing else, and their over-dressed wives,
who revel in the discussion of what Mrs. Sherwood calls “The Three
Dreadful D’s”—Disease, Dress and Domestics—may typify to you the acme
of boredom. Comport yourself as if you were in your native element and
happy there. The self-discipline will be a means of grace in more ways
than one.
[Sidenote: NEVER SHOW BOREDOM]
On Sunday accompany your hosts to their place of worship with the same
cheerful readiness to like what they like. You may be a high church
Episcopalian and they belong to the broadest wing of Unitarians or the
straitest sect of Evangelicals. Put prejudice and personal preference
behind you and find consolation in the serene conviction of guestly
duty done—and done in a truly Christian spirit.