LAYING to your conduct the line and plummet of the Golden Rule, never
pay a visit (I use the word in contradistinction to “call”) without
notifying your hostess-elect of your intention thus to favor her.
Perhaps once in ten thousand times, your friend—be she mother,
sister, or intimate acquaintance—may be enraptured at your unexpected
appearance, travelling-satchel in hand, at her door, to pass a day,
a night, or a month; or may be pleasantly surprised when you take
the baby, and run in to tea in a social way. But the chances are so
greatly in favor of the probability that you will upset her household
arrangements, abrade her temper, or put her to undue trouble or
embarrassment, by this evidence of your wish to have her feel quite
easy with you, to treat you as one of the family, that it is hardly
worth your while to risk so much in order to gain so little.
Mrs. Partington has said more silly things than any other woman of her
age in this country; but she spoke wisely in declaring her preference
for those surprise-parties “when people sent word they were coming.”
Do not be ashamed to say to your nearest kin, or the confidante of
your school-days—“Always let me know when to look for you, that
I may so order my time and engagements as to secure the greatest
possible pleasure from your visit.” If you are the woman I take you to
be—methodical, industrious, and ruling your household according to just
and firm laws of order and punctuality, you need this notice. If you
are likewise social and hospitable, your rules are made with reference
to possible and desirable interruptions of this nature. It only
requires a little closer packing of certain duties, an easy exchange
of times and seasons, and leisure is obtained for the right enjoyment
of your friend’s society. The additional place is set at table; your
spare bed, which yesterday was tossed into a heap that both mattresses
might be aired, and covered lightly with a thin spread, is made up with
fresh sheets that have not gathered damp and must from lying packed
beneath blankets and coverlets for may be a month, for fear somebody
might happen in to pass the night, and catch you with the bed in
disorder. Towels and water are ready; the room is bright and dustless;
the dainty dish so far prepared for dinner or tea as to be like Mrs.
Bagnet’s greens, “off your mind;” John knows whom he is to see at his
home-coming; the children are clean, and on the _qui vive_—children’s
instincts are always hospitable. The guest’s welcome is half given in
the air of the house and the family group before you have time to utter
a word. It may have appeared to her a useless formality to despatch the
note or telegram you insisted upon. She knows you love her, and she
would be wounded by the thought that she could ever “come amiss” to
your home. Perhaps, as she lays aside her travelling-dress, she smiles
at your “ceremonious, old-maidish ways,” and marvels that so good a
manager should deem such forms necessary with an old friend.
If she had driven to your house at nightfall, to discover that you
had gone with husband and children to pass several days with John’s
mother, in a town fifty miles away, and that the servants were out
“a-pleasuring” in the mistress’ absence; if she had found you at home,
nursing three children through the measles, she having brought her
youngest with her; if you were yourself the invalid, bound hand and
foot to a Procrustean couch, and utterly unable even to see her—John,
meanwhile, being incapacitated from playing the part of agreeable
host by worry and anxiety; if, on the day before her arrival, your
chambermaid had gone off in a “tiff,” leaving you to do her work and
to nurse your cook, sick in the third story; if earlier comers than
herself had filled every spare mattress in the house;—if any one of
these, or a dozen other ills to which housekeepers are heirs, had
impressed upon her the idea that her visit was inopportune, she might
think better of your “punctilio.”
But since unlooked-for visitors will occasionally drop in upon the best
regulated families, make it your study to receive them gracefully and
cordially. If they care enough for you to turn aside from their regular
route to tarry a day, or night, or week with you, it would be churlish
not to show appreciation of the favor in which you are held. Make them
welcome to the best you can offer at so short a notice, and let no
preoccupied air or troubled smile bear token to your perturbation—if
you are perturbed. If you respect yourself and your husband, the
appointments of your table will never put you to the blush. John, who
buys the silver, glass, china, and napery, is entitled to the every-day
use of the best. You may have—I hope this is so—a holiday set of each,
put away beyond the reach of hourly accidents; but if this is fit
for the use of a lord, do not make John eat three hundred and sixty
days in the year from such ware as would suit a ditcher’s cottage. If
your children never see bright silver unless when “there is company,”
you cannot wonder, although you will be mortified, at their making
looking-glasses of the bowls of the spoons, and handling the forks
awkwardly. Early impress upon them that what is nice enough for Papa,
is nice enough for the President. I have noticed that where there is
a wide difference between family and company table furniture, there
usually exists a corresponding disparity between every-day and company
manners.
Especially, let your welcome be ready and hearty when your husband
brings home an unexpected guest. Take care he understands clearly
that this is his prerogative: that the rules by which you would
govern the visits of your own sex are not applicable to his. Men
rarely set seasons for their visits. They snatch an hour or two with
an old chum or new friend out of the hurry of business life, as one
stoops to pluck a stray violet from a dusty roadside. John must take
his chances when he can get them. If he can walk home, arm in arm,
with the school-fellow he has not seen before in ten years, not only
fearlessly, but gladly, anticipatory of your pleasure at the sight
of his; if, when the stranger is presented to you, you receive him as
your friend because he is your husband’s, and seat him to a family
dinner, plain, but nicely served, and eaten in cheerfulness of heart;
if the children are well-behaved, and your attire that of a lady who
has not lost the desire to look her best in her husband’s eyes—you have
added to the links of steel that knit your husband’s heart to you;
increased his affectionate admiration for the best little woman in the
world. Many a man has been driven to entertain his friends at hotels
and club-rooms, because he dared not take them home without permission
from the presiding officer of his household. The majority of healthy
men have good appetites and are not disposed to be critical of an
unpretending bill of fare. The chance guest of this sex is generally
an agreeable addition to the family group, instead of _de trop_—always
supposing him to be John’s friend.
As to party and dinner-giving, your safest rule is to obey the usage of
the community in which you live in minor points, letting common sense
and your means guide you in essentials. Be chary of undertaking what
you cannot carry through successfully. Pretension is the ruin of more
entertainments than ignorance or lack of money. If you know how to
give a large evening party (and think it a pleasant and remunerative
investment of time and several hundred dollars)—if you understand the
machinery of a handsome dinner-party, and can afford these luxuries,
go forward bravely to success. But creep before you walk. Study
established customs in the best managed houses you visit; take counsel
with experienced friends; now and then make modest essays on your own
responsibility, and, insensibly, these crumbs of wisdom will form
into a comely loaf. There is no surer de-appetizer—to coin a word—to
guests than a heated, over-fatigued, anxious hostess, who betrays her
inexperience by nervous glances, abstraction in conversation, and,
worst of all, by apologies.
A few general observations are all I purpose to offer as hints of a
foundation upon which to build your plans for “company-giving.” Have
an abundance of clean plates, silver, knives, &c., laid in order in a
convenient place,—such as an ante-room, or dining-room pantry,—those
designed for each course, if your entertainment is a dinner, upon
a shelf or stand by themselves, and make your waiters understand
distinctly in advance in what order these are to be brought on.
Soup should be sent up accompanied only by bread, and such sauce as may
be fashionable or suitable. Before dinner is served, however, snatch
a moment, if possible, to inspect the table in person, or instruct a
trustworthy factotum to see that everything is in place, the water
in the goblets, a slice of bread laid upon a folded napkin at each
plate, &c. Unless you have trained, professional waiters, this is a
wise precaution. If it is a gentleman’s dinner, you can see to it for
yourself, since you will not be obliged to appear in the parlor until a
few minutes before they are summoned to the dining-room. If there are
ladies in the company, you must not leave them.
To return, then, to our soup: It is not customary to offer a second
plateful to a guest. When the table is cleared, the fish should come
in, with potatoes—no other vegetable, unless it be stewed tomatoes.
After a thorough change of plates, &c., come the substantials. If
possible, the carving of game and other meats is done before they are
brought in. One or more vegetables are passed with each meat course.
Salad is a course of itself, unless when it accompanies chicken or
pigeon. If wine be used, it is introduced after the fish. Pastry is
the first relay of dessert, and puddings may be served from the other
end of the table. Next appear creams, jellies, charlotte-russes, cakes,
and the like; then fruit and nuts; lastly, coffee, often accompanied
with crackers and cheese. Wine, of course, goes around during the
dessert—if it flows at all.
Evening parties are less troublesome to a housekeeper, because less
ceremonious than dinners. If you can afford it, the easiest way to
give a large one is to put the whole business into the hands of the
profession, by intrusting your order, not only for supper, but waiters
and china, to a competent confectioner. But a social standing supper
of oysters, chicken-salad, sandwiches, coffee, ice-cream, jellies,
and cake, is not a formidable undertaking when you have had a little
practice, especially if your own, or John’s mother, or the nice,
neighborly matron over the way will assist you by her advice and
presence. The “Ladies’ Lunch” and afternoon “Kettle-Drum” are social
and graceful “modern improvements.”
We make this matter of company too hard a business in America; are
too apt to treat our friends as the Strasburgers do their geese; shut
them up in overheated quarters, and stuff them to repletion. Our rooms
would be better for more air, our guests happier had they more liberty,
and our hostess would be prettier and more sprightly were she not
overworked before the arrivals begin, and full of trepidation after
they come,—a woman cumbered with many thoughts of serving, while she
is supposed to be enjoying the society of her chosen associates. It is
so well understood that company is weariness, that inquiries as to how
the principal agent in bringing about an assembly has “borne it,” have
passed into a custom. The tender sympathies manifested in such queries,
the martyr-like air with which they are answered, cannot fail to bring
to the satirical mind the Chinaman’s comment upon the British officers’
dancing on shipboard in warm weather.
“Why you no make your servants do so hard work, and you look at dem?”
We pervert the very name and meaning of hospitality when we pinch our
families, wear away our patience, and waste our nervous forces with
our husbands’ money in getting up to order expensive entertainments
for comparative strangers, whose utmost acknowledgment of our efforts
in their behalf will consist in an invitation, a year hence it may be,
to a party constructed on the same plan, managed a little better or a
little worse than ours. This is not hospitality without grudging, but
a vulgar system of barter and gluttony more worthy of Abyssinians than
Christian gentlefolk.