formerly. It is no longer thought in good taste to emulate the heavy
feasts of the ancient Romans. Many people now hesitate to eat raw
oysters, since they sometimes convey typhoid-fever germs. Canapés may
replace them as a first course, or Little Neck clams, grape-fruit, or
other fruit in its season may be used. If oysters are served, five or
six are arranged in each plate, with a piece of lemon in the center. It
is now thought best to bring these in fresh from the ice-chest, after
the company have sat down to table. The oyster-plate is set on the
place-plate—_i.e._, on the one already in place—when the guests sit down
at table. The latter is not taken away at the conclusion of the course,
but remains as a basis for the soup-plate. Tureens are no longer used,
the soup being served from the pantry. The plates should be only partly
filled. A careful servant can manage one in each hand, but it is thought
more elegant to have them brought to the table one at a time. After the
removal of the soup the place-plates remain, and are used for the _hors
d’œuvres_. These sometimes precede the soup course. The fish comes next,
hot plates being used for this as for all the hot courses. Since fish is
rather tasteless, it is often accompanied by a sauce or by cucumbers or
tomatoes with French dressing. Potatoes also are served with fish. An
entrée now follows, and is succeeded by the _pièce de résistance_, or
principal meat course. With the lightening of the bill of fare, filet of
beef is less used for this than formerly, saddle of mutton, spring lamb,
or turkey being favorite dishes. According to modern custom, only one or
at the utmost two vegetables are served with one course.
Roman punch is now reserved for public dinners. The game course with
salad comes next; but here again we see a change, since lettuce, celery,
or other vegetable salad may now be served with cheese and crackers or
bread-and-butter, the game being omitted. After the salad the table is
cleared off, the salt-cellars and pepper-pots being removed on a tray
covered with a napkin. The crumbs are brushed off with a folded napkin,
or on less formal occasions with a silver crumb-scraper.
The dessert now follows, for which the handsomest plates are reserved.
These are protected by pretty ornamental doilies, on which are placed
finger-bowls partly filled with lukewarm water. A flower or a fragrant
leaf or two may float on its surface. A glass plate is often set under
the finger-bowl. The latter should be promptly removed and set on one
side in order not to delay the service. Some authorities say that the
silver knife, fork, and spoon should not be placed on the dessert-plate
when the servant hands this, but should be laid on the table at either
side of it. If they are put on the plate each person removes them at the
same time as the finger-bowl. The ices are then passed, the molds being
sufficiently cut through beforehand to enable the guest to help himself
readily. If the individual form is used, one is set before each person.
Cake accompanies the ice-cream, which is eaten from the glass plate. The
latter is then removed by the servant, while the guest takes off the
doilies, leaving the china plate in readiness for the fruit course. Few
persons take any of this at a long dinner, unless it be three or four
grapes. Bonbons also are handed at this time.
The lady at the right hand of the host must now be on the lookout for
the signal to rise, which the hostess will convey to her by a look or
slight nod. At a formal dinner the gentlemen sometimes escort the ladies
back to the drawing-room, the couples going arm-in-arm. After seeing
their partners comfortably seated, the men excuse themselves by a bow
and return to the dining-room or repair to the smoking-room, where
coffee, cigars, and liqueurs are served. Sometimes the men simply rise
from the table when the ladies do, and remain standing until the latter
have passed out. A servant opens the door or holds back the portière,
or, if none is in the room at the moment, the gentleman nearest the
entrance performs this duty.
Tiny cups of strong black coffee accompanied by sugar, and sometimes by
cream, are handed on a tray to the ladies in the drawing-room. Sometimes
the servant takes in the silver coffee-pot and asks each person if she
will have a cup, filling it for her if she desires. One or two kinds of
cordial are offered, the servant asking the ladies in turn which kind
they prefer, and then pouring it into tiny liqueur-glasses. Cigarettes
are offered to the women at some houses, although the custom is by no
means general. Many American hostesses dislike very much to see members
of their own sex use tobacco, considering this in bad taste.
Later in the evening Apollinaris or other sparkling waters may be
brought in. The men rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room after a short
interval of time. Music, recitations, or other form of entertainment may
be given for the amusement of the company. Dancing is now popular at all
hours, and people who are fond of cards finish the evening with bridge
or some other game. If the hosts have not arranged any after-dinner
programme, the guests take their leave about half an hour after the men
have returned to the drawing-room. There is no absolute rule about this,
as much depends on the lateness of the hour. If some of those present
are “going on” to a dance or a reception, they will excuse themselves as
soon as they can without appearing brusque or discourteous to their
hosts. According to modern rule, a dinner should not last more than an
hour and a half. If the guests sit down to table at a quarter-past eight
and arise from it at a quarter before ten o’clock, the hour for
departure would be somewhere between half-past ten and eleven o’clock.
The custom of waiting until the lady who is the guest of honor has taken
her leave is growing in favor. This makes it incumbent on her not to
linger too long, lest she should inadvertently detain others who desire
to go.
One of the most important duties of the diner-out is to talk and to
listen to his next-door neighbors. At a small dinner the conversation
may become general, but where a great many guests are seated at a large
table, this is hardly possible. Some charming talker to whom it would be
delightful to listen may sit opposite to you, or two or three places
away. If you should yield to the temptation and neglect your
dinner-partner, or, still worse, if you should talk across her to the
more interesting guest, you would be committing a breach of good
manners. At a large and formal dinner, the hostess talks first to the
man on her right hand and later to the one on her left. The guests
follow her example, turning to speak to the other neighbor soon after
she does. This is called “The turning of the table.”
If one has received an invitation to dinner, it is necessary to call in
person within one or two weeks after the event. This rule applies to
other invitations also, but it is construed with special strictness in
the case of a dinner. In New York, with its immense distances, a busy
man may be unable to make the “visit of digestion” within a fortnight.
In this case he should send his card by mail and call when he can
command the time. Men now pay visits in the late afternoon, at five or
six o’clock, formal evening calls having gone out of fashion in the
large cities.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
BRIDESMAIDS’ LUNCHEONS, BACHELOR DINNERS, AND WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES
Guests to be Invited—Etiquette and Dress for Bridesmaids’
Luncheons—Etiquette and Dress for Bachelor Dinners—Things to be Done and
Things to be Avoided—Wedding Anniversaries—The Right and the Wrong Way
to Celebrate Them—Form of Invitation.
“HOW many bridesmaids shall I have at my wedding?” Many a young girl
asks herself this question, to which it is not easy to give a
categorical answer. We will, however, say to her: choose your attendants
for this beautiful day in your life from among those you love and who
love you. If you have several sisters and dear friends, the selection
may be a little difficult, but doubtless there are some who are nearer
to you than others. If you have no sisters, or if they are all married,
you perhaps have one or more cousins to represent the family, and you
will want to include a sister or other near relative of your fiancé for
his sake. Let the number of your bridesmaids be decided by that of the
young women you would like to have around you at your wedding, provided
always this is not so large as to appear ostentatious. You should also
consider the question of expense, since it is now the custom for the
bride to make a gift to each of her attendants. If the ceremony takes
place at church, her family also pay for the carriages for the
bridesmaids. A large church wedding is a very costly affair, and a young
girl should be considerate in the demands upon her father’s purse. The
expenditure for a wedding should be in proportion to the means of the
bride’s family, since etiquette demands that they and not the groom
should meet it. If the function is unduly elaborate, unfavorable
criticism is almost sure to result.
If you decide to be married at home, you will not have more than one or
two bridesmaids; at church, four or six is a good number. More than
eight seem ostentatious, unless under exceptional circumstances. You may
like in addition to have your sister or dearest friend act as maid of
honor. A young married woman sometimes acts as matron of honor; but this
is in contravention of the good old custom of surrounding the bride with
a group of maidens. Be sure to make your selection, and to ask your
friends to officiate as bridesmaids, in good season. It is your
privilege to choose the costumes they are to wear. In doing this we hope
you will not be carried away by the charms of the fashion-book models,
but will bear in mind the complexion and figure of your friends as they
actually exist in real life. You will certainly want them to look their
best, for your sake as well as their own. The bride is always the great
center of attraction, but if she has good taste she will desire to have
the wedding cortège form a harmonious whole. For this purpose the
costumes of the bridesmaids may be all alike, or there may be a
diversity of coloring. The two that walk together should be dressed
alike.
Pray be careful also not to make the toilettes so expensive as to be a
strain upon the means of your young friends. You may, of course, if your
means or those of your family permit, pay for their whole outfit or for
certain portions, such as hats or gloves. But this is not customary,
although it is occasionally done by a bride rich in this world’s gear.
Should a young woman give a luncheon or a dinner to her bridesmaids? The
idea of thus gathering her mates around her for the last time before she
enters upon a new, joyous, and yet serious phase of her life is a very
happy one, provided always that the occasion does not furnish the
proverbial last straw of the camel’s load. The preparations for a modern
church wedding are so many and so extensive that a bride may go to the
altar utterly worn out and looking not her best, but her worst. Her
mother should certainly guard a daughter very carefully against
over-fatigue; but in many cases she obviously does not. To the
bridegroom the parade and show are usually extremely distasteful, and he
only submits to them because he cannot help himself. He goes through the
trying ordeal in the spirit of the good knights of old, that he may win
his “dear ladye” for his own. We cannot, therefore, advise our bride to
give a bridesmaids’ luncheon if she is already wearied by many tasks. In
this case we should advise the substitution of an afternoon tea, to
which she may, if she pleases, invite the groom, best man, and ushers.
Perhaps, however, she is so fortunate as to have relatives and friends
who will take the brunt of the fatigue, or, if she is rich, clever and
experienced women can be hired to assist her.
If she decides to give a luncheon, she should select a day near enough
that of the wedding to give a certain thrill to the occasion, and yet
not so near as to make these great events seem to crowd one upon the
other. Should the bridesmaids live at a distance, and come to the
home-town of their friend on purpose to attend the wedding, it may be
necessary to have the lunch take place only two or three days in
advance. A week is a better interval, however. Should there be some
young friend who is unable to serve as a bridesmaid—on account of family
mourning, lameness, or some similar drawback—the bride may like to
include her in the invitations. The bridesmaids do not appear in any
special costume, but wear the same sort of dress as at any lunch,
retaining their hats unless the bride asks them to remove them. The
latter wears a pretty house dress suitable for the afternoon. The
luncheon may be a handsome affair or simple and inexpensive, as the
young hostess finds convenient. She or a friend may like to paint the
place-cards, which should have devices appropriate to the occasion.
True-lovers’ knots, Cupids, hearts and darts are always in order. Pink
is a favorite color for the decorations, green and white also having a
pretty effect.
The traditional ring, coin, and thimble are often placed in the cake,
each girl carefully scrutinizing her piece to see what her future lot is
to be. The gifts to the bridesmaids are usually awarded at this
luncheon, and should be all alike. Some small article of jewelry to be
worn at the wedding is usually chosen. _L’Art Nouveau_ suggests many
pretty things that are not necessarily expensive, the theory being that
jewelry should please by color and design rather than by costliness.
Brooches, pendants, bracelets, hat-pins, or fans are among the suitable
gifts. They may be set one at each place as souvenirs.
Since the bridesmaids’ luncheon is intended to be a gay and merry rather
than a somber and melancholy affair, it is well to ask one or two of the
guests to arrange some amusing feature for the day. Thus, if the bride
has many admirers, a dance of the rejected suitors would be appropriate.
These could be represented by two of the company. They should be
furnished with large bandana handkerchiefs on which to weep copiously.
After treading a slow and melancholy measure, each should break a stick
over his knee in accordance with the old tradition.
A dinner is sometimes given instead of a luncheon, and to this the
groom, best man, and ushers are occasionally asked. A novel way to give
a bridesmaids’ luncheon would be to ask each girl to prepare beforehand
one article of the bill of fare. The bride also should contribute
something of her own manufacture to the menu. A judge, duly appareled in
wig and gown, should be appointed to award the prize to the maker of the
most toothsome article, or a feminine jury of three might be impaneled.
The prize-winner should have a blue ribbon declaring her to be the most
promising candidate for matrimony. At the bride’s place should be a
small souvenir album with white cover, containing the receipts used for
the different articles of the bill of fare, and mentioning the school or
cooking-class where each girl had acquired her culinary skill. It would
be quite in order to invent imaginary colleges and degrees, phrased in
home-made Latin, as, for instance, _Cookia Superba Prattii
Institutionis_.
Sometimes a bridesmaids’ lunch is followed by a rehearsal of the wedding
procession at the church, the ushers and young girls returning to the
bride’s home for afternoon tea. It is pleasant to have the members of
the wedding-party meet beforehand in order to make one another’s
acquaintance. Thus a dinner or a theater party for the bridesmaids and
ushers is sometimes given two or three days before the marriage takes
place.
Should the bridegroom give a bachelor dinner to his ushers and best man?
This is a question which each young man must decide for himself, always
taking into consideration the tastes and tendencies of those who would
compose the party. It should be frankly said that at certain occasions
of this sort in the past, too much wine has been consumed with sad
results. Therefore if the groom himself or any of his intimate friends
finds temperance difficult, it certainly is unwise to arrange a bachelor
dinner and thus fly in the face of Providence, as old-fashioned people
would say.
If the dinner is to take place, it should be within a fortnight or a
week before the wedding. It is well to have an interval of several days
elapse between the two events. The guests invited are the best man,
ushers, and sometimes other intimate friends of the groom and the
brothers of the bride. Black-cloth dinner-jacket, with trousers and
low-cut waistcoat to match, dress-shirt, and black tie compose the
proper costume. The dinner is given at the groom’s club or home or in a
private dining-room at some good restaurant. The groom being the host,
he sits at the head of the table; the best man may be opposite to him or
at his right hand. In the latter case the head usher or the bride’s
brother may take the foot.
The provision of wine should be a judicious one. When the dinner is
quite advanced the best man proposes the bride’s health. All arise and
drink this toast standing. According to the old custom, each man snaps
the stem of his wine-glass between his fingers, then throws it away. The
souvenirs presented by the groom to his best man and ushers are laid at
each place. These are usually scarf-pins, although cuff-links are
sometimes given. Beside each plate may also be a box done up with white
ribbon, containing the gloves and tie to be worn at the wedding. The
best man usually orders these, taking care to select gloves of the right
size, but the bridegroom pays the bill. A convenient method is to give a
list of the ushers with their addresses to a haberdasher of established
reputation. He then sends an engraved or printed card to each man,
saying that Mr. So-and-So has ordered gloves and tie for him and asking
the size of his hand. Should other guests besides the best man and
ushers be at the dinner, it would be better not to present the
souvenirs, ties, etc., but to send them to each person’s residence or
club.
WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES
The wedding anniversaries usually celebrated are the fifth, wooden; the
tenth, tin; the twenty-fifth, silver; and the fiftieth, golden. Few
couples live to observe the latter, and still fewer the seventy-fifth,
the diamond wedding. The fifth and tenth anniversaries are occasions of
fun and frolic. The invitations may be given over the telephone or in
any way preferred. For a wooden wedding a novel method would be to
divide the thin end of a shingle into several portions about the size of
a postal card, writing or painting the invitations on these. The easiest
way is to use the joint visiting-card of host and hostess, writing on
it:
_Will be at Home
on Thursday evening, October twelfth_
adding in the corner “_1910-1915_.”
The guests invited are usually familiar friends. They tax their
ingenuity to procure gifts of appropriate material that will amuse the
company, or send articles that will be useful. Wooden spoons of all
sorts and sizes, mammoth pencils, knife-trays, watchmen’s rattles, boxes
large and small, towel-racks, chairs, small tables—all are appropriate
gifts. It is easy to purchase at a toy store wooden animals of absurd
shapes, picture puzzles, jumping-jacks, etc. Two of the guests might
represent a couple from Noah’s ark, Mr. and Mrs. Shem or Mr. and Mrs.
Ham. They should be dressed in the traditional costume, and should move
in a stiff and wooden way. Another pair could appear as jointed dolls or
other figures. The decorations could consist of shavings or of
pussy-willow or other boughs.
For the tenth anniversary the tinware shop furnishes ample material for
gifts. It is usually possible to get a tinsmith to make, for a small
charge, articles of some special shape. The bride may be adorned with a
tin tiara and other ornaments, the groom wearing a large tin flower in
his buttonhole. A suit of armor of the same material, accompanied by
spear and shield, might be presented to him with due ceremony. One guest
should be the spokesman for the company and explain that, owing to the
dangers of the public roads, it was thought well to bestow upon their
friend some means of defense against the ubiquitous automobile, the
spear being intended to lift arrogant chauffeurs from the perch of
vantage.
To a silver-wedding celebration a few intimate friends of the family may
be asked, or the affair may take the form of a reception. The
invitations may be engraved in silver letters and may read:
_1889_ _1914_
_Mr. and Mrs. John Thompson
request the pleasure of
. . . . . . . . company
on Thursday, November the eighth,
at half-past eight o’clock_
Or the “At Home” form may be used. It is best not to say
“silver-wedding,” as this might be thought an intimation that gifts
would be acceptable. Indeed, some people are so anxious to avoid any
appearance of soliciting presents that they give no intimation on the
card of the nature of the occasion. Others add, “It is kindly requested
that no gifts be sent.” Near relations and intimate friends usually feel
privileged to send some suitable remembrance of the day, an article of
silver for the writing-table or toilette-table perhaps, or any piece of
silverware that they think will be acceptable. It is always proper to
send flowers. If the reception is in the evening, the silver-wedding
bride wears evening dress of any color that is becoming to her. Gray,
lavender, or purple is appropriate. While white alone is not
permissible, black-and-white may be worn; the bridal veil—if it be of
lace—may be draped over the skirt or worn as a scarf. The gown may be
partially cut down at the neck or full décolleté, the material being
silk, brocade, velvet, or other stuff as preferred. The groom wears
regulation evening dress with white or light kid gloves (see Chapter
VI).
He and the bride stand together to receive the guests until all have
arrived, when they move about the room talking with their friends. The
tone of the occasion must not be too stiff and formal, but cordial yet
dignified. According to some authorities, the decorations should be
white, green, and silver. There may be few flowers or an abundance of
them. If they are all white the result will be rather trying to matronly
faces, and the effect a little incongruous. In celebrating an
anniversary it is not wise to try to reproduce exactly the original
occasion. This would tend to mark in a painful way the passage of time.
Just as the bride of twenty-five years wears a matronly costume rather
than a girlish dress that would bring into evidence the wrinkles and
crow’s-feet, so the decorations and ceremonies of the silver-wedding
must reflect the flight of the quarter of a century. The flowers of
midsummer are more appropriate than those associated especially with
early spring. Purple and white lilacs produce an excellent effect, as do
roses not too pale in color, or orchids. Something will, of course,
depend upon the season of the year.
It adds interest to the occasion if the clergyman who performed the
marriage ceremony, the ushers, and bridesmaids can be present. The
latter may stand near the host and hostess and assist them in receiving
the company. The name “silver wedding” is something of a misnomer,
because the celebration is concerned only with the events following the
marriage. Thus, while the anniversary may reproduce in some degree the
original reception or breakfast, to attempt to repeat any part of the
ceremony would be in the worst possible taste, to say the least.