HOSPITALITY AS A DUTY
IF ours were a perfect state of society, constructed on the Golden
Rule, animated and guided throughout by unselfish love for friend and
neighbor, and charity for the needy, there would be no propriety in
writing this chapter. Home, domestic comfort and happiness being our
best earthly possessions, we would be eagerly willing to share them
with others.
As society is constructed under a state of artificial civilization, and
as our homes are kept and our households are run, the element of duty
must interfere, or hospitality would become a lost art. Even where the
spirit of this—one of the most venerable of virtues—is not wanting,
conscience is called in to regulate the manner and the seasons in which
it should be exercised.
As a corner-stone, assume, once for all, that a binding obligation
rests on you to visit, and to receive visits, and to entertain friends,
acquaintances and strangers in a style consistent with your means, at
such times as may be consistent with more serious engagements. Having
once issued an invitation, you are sacredly bound on the day named to
give yourself completely to your guests. To invite people to dinner and
then ask them to leave early in order that one may accept an invitation
that one has received in the meantime, would seem impossible to a woman
of right instincts—but it has been done, at least by women of social
prominence.
[Sidenote: RETURNING COURTESIES]
It may sound harsh to assert that you have no right to accept
hospitality for which you can never make any return in kind. The
principle is, nevertheless, sound to the core.
Those who read the newspapers forty years ago will recall a
characteristic incident in the early life of Colonel Ellsworth, the
brilliant young lawyer who was one of the first notable victims of the
Civil War. His struggles to gain a foothold in his profession were
attended by many hardships and humiliating privations. Once, finding
the man he was looking for on a matter of business, in a restaurant, he
was invited to partake of the luncheon to which his acquaintance was
just sitting down. Ellsworth was ravenously hungry, almost starving, in
fact, but he declined courteously but firmly, asking permission to talk
over the business that had brought him thither, while the other went on
with the meal.
The brave young fellow, in telling the story in after years, confessed
that he suffered positive agony at the sight and smell of the tempting
food.
[Sidenote: A RECIPROCATING SPIRIT]
“I could not, in honor, accept hospitality I could not reciprocate,”
was his simple explanation of his refusal. “I might starve, I could not
sponge!”
Sponging—to put it plainly—is pauperism. The one who eats of your bread
and salt becomes, in his own eyes—not in yours—your debtor. For the
very genius of hospitality is to give, not expecting to receive again.
(This by the way!)
I do not mean if your wealthy acquaintance invites you to a
fifteen-course dinner, the cost of which equals your monthly income,
that you are in honor or duty bound to bid her to an entertainment as
elaborate, or that you suffer in her estimation, or by the loss of
your self-respect. But by the acceptance of the invitation you bind
yourself to reciprocation of some sort. If you can do nothing more,
ask your hostess to afternoon tea in your own house or flat, and have
a few congenial spirits to meet her there. It is the spirit in such a
case that makes alive and keeps alive the genial glow of good will and
cordial friendliness. The letter of commercial obligation, like for
like, in degree, and not in kind, would kill true hospitality.
* * * * *
Your friend’s friend, introduced by him and calling on you, has a
proved claim on your social offices. If you can not make a special
entertainment for him, ask him to a family dinner, explaining that it
is such, and make up in kindly welcome for the lack of lordly cheer.
If it be a woman, invite her to luncheon with you and a friend or two,
or to a drive, winding up with afternoon tea in some of the quietly
elegant tea-rooms that seem to have been devised for the express use of
people of generous impulses and slender purses. It is not the cost in
coin of the realm that tells with the stranger, but the temper in which
the tribute is offered.
[Sidenote: ENTERTAINING THE STRANGER]
“I do not ‘entertain’ in the sense in which the word is generally
used,” wrote a distinguished woman to me once, hearing that I was to
be in her neighborhood. “But I can not let you pass me by. Come on
Thursday, and lunch with me, _en tête-à-tête_.”
I accepted gladly, and the memory of that meal, elegant in simplicity,
shared with one whom my soul delights to honor, is as an apple of gold
set in a picture of silver.
* * * * *
The stranger, as such, has a Scriptural claim on you, when
circumstances make him your neighbor. In thousands of homes since the
day when Abraham ran from his tent-door to constrain the thirsting and
hungering travelers to accept such rest and refreshment as he could
offer them during the heat of the day, angels have been entertained
unawares in the guise of strangerhood.
[Sidenote: POETIC JUSTICE]
“Did you know the B——’s before they came to our town?” asked an
inquisitive New Englander of one of her near neighbors.
“No.”
“Then—you won’t mind my asking you?—why did you invite them to dinner
on Thanksgiving Day? It’s made a deal of talk.”
Abraham’s disciple smiled.
“Because they were strangers, and seemed to be lonely. They are
respectable, and they live on my street.”
Poetical justice requires me to add that the B——’s, who became the
lifelong friends of their first hostess in the strange land, proved to
be people of distinction whom the best citizens of the exclusive little
town soon vied with one another in “cultivating.” In ignorance of their
antecedents the imitator of the tent-holder of Mamre did her duty from
the purest of motives.
Not one individual or one family has a moral or a social right to
neglect the practise of hospitality. Unless one is confined to the
house or bed by illness, one should visit and invite visits in return.
We are human beings, not hermit crabs.