TEA VISITERS.
When you have invited a friend to take tea with you, endeavour to render
her visit as agreeable as you can; and try by all means _to make her
comfortable_. See that your lamps are lighted at an early hour,
particularly those of the entry and staircase, those parts of the house
always becoming dark as soon as the sun is down; and to persons coming
in directly from the light of the open air, they always seem darker than
they really are. Have the parlours lighted rather earlier than usual,
that your guest, on her entrance, may be in no danger of running against
the tables, or stumbling over chairs. In rooms heated by a furnace, or
by any other invisible fire, it is still more necessary to have the
lamps lighted early.
If there is a coal-grate, see that the fire is burning clear and
brightly, that the bottom has been well-raked of cinders and ashes, and
the hearth swept clean. A dull fire, half-choked with dead cinders, and
an ashy hearth, give a slovenly and dreary aspect to the most elegantly
furnished parlour. A sufficiently large grate, (if the fire is well made
up, and plenty of fresh coal put on about six o’clock,) will generally
require no further replenishing during the evening, unless the weather
is unusually cold; and then more fuel should be added at eight or nine
o’clock, so as to make the room comfortable.
In summer evenings, let the window-sashes be kept up, or the slats of
the venitian blinds turned open, so that your guest may find the
atmosphere of the rooms cool and pleasant. There should always be fans
(feather or palm-leaf) on the centre-tables.
The domestic that attends the door should be instructed to show the
guest up-stairs, as soon as she arrives; conducting her to an unoccupied
apartment, where she may take off her bonnet, and arrange her hair, or
any part of her dress that may require change or improvement. The lady
should then be left to herself. Nothing is polite that can possibly
incommode or embarrass—therefore, it is a mistaken civility for the
hostess, or some female member of the family to follow the visiter
up-stairs, and remain with her all the time she is preparing for her
appearance in the parlour. We have seen an inquisitive little girl
permitted by her mother to accompany a guest to the dressing-table, and
watch her all the while she was at the glass; even following her to the
corner in which she changed her shoes; the child talking, and asking
questions incessantly. This should not be. Let both mothers and children
understand that, on all occasions, over-officiousness is not politeness,
and that nothing troublesome and inconvenient is ever agreeable.
The toilet-table should be always furnished with a clean hair-brush, and
a nice comb. We recommend those hair-brushes that have a mirror on the
back, so as to afford the lady a glimpse of the back of her head and
neck. Better still, as an appendage to a dressing-table, is a regular
hand-mirror, of sufficient size to allow a really _satisfactory_ view.
These hand-mirrors are very convenient, to be used in conjunction with
the large dressing-glass. Their cost is but trifling. The
toilet-pincushion should always have pins in it. A small work-box
properly furnished with needles, scissors, thimble, and cotton spools,
ought also to find a place on the dressing-table, in case the visiter
may have occasion to repair any accident that may have happened to her
dress.
For want of proper attention to such things, in an ill-ordered, though
perhaps a very showy establishment, we have known an _expected_ visiter
ushered first into a dark entry, then shown into a dark parlour with an
ashy hearth, and the fire nearly out: then, after groping her way to a
seat, obliged to wait till a small hand-lamp could be procured to light
her dimly up a steep, sharp-turning staircase; and then, by the same
lamp, finding on the neglected dressing-table a broken comb, an old
brush, and an empty pincushion,—or (quite as probably) nothing at
all—not to mention two or three children coming to watch and stare at
her. On returning to the parlour, the visiter would probably find the
fire just then making up, and the lamp still unlighted, because it had
first to be trimmed. Meanwhile, the guest commences her visit with an
uncomfortable feeling of self-reproach for coming too early; all things
denoting that she was not expected so soon. In such houses everybody
comes too early. However late, there will be nothing in readiness.
The hostess should be in the parlour, prepared to receive her visiter,
and to give her at once a seat in the corner of a sofa, or in a
fauteuil, or large comfortable chair; if a rocking-chair, a footstool is
an indispensable appendage. By-the-bye, the dizzy and ungraceful
practice of rocking in a rocking-chair is now discontinued by all
genteel people, except when entirely alone. A lady should never be seen
to rock in a chair, and the rocking of a gentleman looks silly. Rocking
is only fit for a nurse putting a baby to sleep. When children get into
a large rocking-chair, they usually rock it over backward, and fall out.
These chairs are now seldom seen in a parlour. Handsome, stuffed easy
chairs, that are moved on castors, are substituted—and of these, half a
dozen of various forms are not considered too many.
Give your visiter a fan to cool herself, if the room is warm, or to
shade her eyes from the glare of the fire or the light—for the latter
purpose, a broad hand-screen is generally used, but a palm-leaf fan will
do for both. In buying these fans, choose those whose handle is the firm
natural stem, left remaining on the leaf. They are far better than those
with handles of bamboo, which in a short time become loose and rickety.
There are many persons who, professing never to use a fan themselves,
seem to think that nobody can by any chance require one; and therefore
they selfishly keep nothing of the sort in their rooms.
If, in consequence of dining very late, you are in the custom of also
taking tea at a late hour—or making but slight preparations for that
repast—waive this custom when you expect a friend whom you know to be in
the practice of dining early, and who, perhaps, has walked far enough to
feel fatigued, and to acquire an appetite. For her accommodation, order
the tea earlier than usual, and let it be what is called “a _good_ tea.”
If there is ample room at table, do not have the tea carried
round,—particularly if you have but one servant to hand the whole. It is
tedious, inconvenient, and unsatisfactory. There is no comfortable way
of eating bread and butter, toast, or buttered cakes, except when seated
at table. When handed round, there is always a risk of their greasing
the dresses of the ladies—the greasing of fingers is inevitable—though
that is of less consequence, now that the absurd practice of eating in
gloves is wisely abolished among genteel people.
Still, if the company is too numerous for all to be commodiously seated
at the usual family table, and if the table cannot be enlarged—it is
better to have tea carried round by _two_ servants, even if an extra one
is hired for the occasion, than to crowd your guests uncomfortably. One
person too many will cause inconvenience to all the rest, however the
hostess may try to pass it off, by assuring the company that there is
quite room enough, and that she has seen a still larger number seated
round that very table. Every body knows that “what’s impossible a’n’t
true.”
In setting a tea-table, see that there is not only enough, but _more
than enough_ of cups and saucers, plates, knives and forks, spoons,
napkins, &c. Let the _extra_ articles be placed near the lady of the
house,—to be distributed, if wanted. We have known families who had the
means and the inclination to be hospitable, that never sat down to table
without several spare _covers_, as the French call them, ready for
accidental guests.
Unless you have domestics on whom you can implicitly rely, it is well to
go into the eating-room about ten minutes before the announcement of
tea, and to see that all is right; that the tea is strong and properly
made, and the pot (which should be scalded twice) is not filled nearly
to overflowing with a superabundance of water. The practice of drowning
away all the flavour of the tea is strangely prevalent with servants;
who are also very apt to neglect scalding the tea-pot; and who do not,
or will not, remember that the kettle should be boiling hard at the
moment the water is poured on the tea—otherwise the infusion will be
insipid and tasteless, no matter how liberally the Chinese plant has
been afforded.
If your cook is not _habitually_ a good coffee-maker, the coffee will
most probably be sent in cold, thick, and weak—for want of some previous
supervision. Let it have that supervision.
We have heard of tea-tables (even in splendid establishments) being left
entirely to the _mis_management of incompetent or negligent servants; so
that when the company sat down, there was found a deficiency in some of
the indispensable appendages; such as spoons, and even forks, and
napkins—butter-knives forgotten, and (worse than all) _cooking-butter_
served in mistake for the better sort. By-the-bye, the use of
cooking-butter should be abolished in all genteel houses. If the butter
is not good enough to eat on the surface of cold bread or on warm cakes,
it is not good enough to eat in the inside of sweet cakes, or in pastry,
or in any thing else; and is totally unfit to be mixed with vegetables
or sauces. The use of butter is to make things taste well; if it makes
them taste ill, let it be entirely omitted: for bad butter is not only
unpalatable, but unwholesome. There are houses in which the money wasted
on one useless bauble for the drawing-room would furnish the family with
excellent fresh butter for a whole year—enough for all purposes.
We know, _by experience_, that it is possible to make very fine butter
even in the State of New York, and to have it fresh in winter as in
summer, though not so rich and yellow. Let the cows be well fed, well
sheltered, and _kept fat_ and clean—the dairy utensils always in perfect
order—churning done twice or thrice every week—all the milk worked well
out—and the butter will surely be good.
If cakes for tea have been made at home, and they have turned out
failures, (as is often the case with home-made cakes, where there is not
much practice in baking them,) do not have them brought to table at all,
but send to a shop and get others. It is rude to set before your guests
what you know is unfit for them to eat. And heavy, tough, ill-baked
things are discreditable to any house where the means of obtaining
better are practicable.
In sending for cakes to a confectioner, do not _a second time_ allow him
to put you off with stale ones. This many confectioners are in the
practice of doing, if it is passed over without notice. Stale cakes
should at once be sent back, (with a proper reproof,) and fresh ones
required. Let the confectioner with whom you deal, understand that he is
_not_ to palm off his stale cakes upon _you_, and that you will not keep
them when sent. You will then find that fresh ones will generally be
forthcoming. It is always well to send for cakes in the early part of
the afternoon.
Have a pitcher of ice-water on the side-table, and a tumbler beside
every plate—as most persons like to finish with a glass of water.
Do not, on sitting down to table, inform your guest that “you make no
stranger of her,” or that you fear she will not be able to “make out” at
your plain table. These apologies are ungenteel and foolish. If your
circumstances will not allow you _on any consideration_ to make a little
improvement in your usual family-fare, your friend is, in all
probability, aware of the fact, and will not wish or expect you to incur
any inconvenient expense on her account. But if you are known to possess
the means of living well, you ought to do so; and to consider a good,
though not an extravagantly luxurious table, as a necessary part of your
expenditure. There is a vast difference between laudable economy and
mean economy. The latter (whether it shows itself in bad food, bad
fires, bad lights, bad servants) is never excused in persons who dress
extravagantly, and live surrounded by costly furniture, and who are
universally known to be wealthy, and fully able to afford comfort, as
well as show.
If you invite a friend to tea, in whose own family there is no
gentlemen, or no man-servant, it is your duty previously to ascertain
that you can provide her on that evening with an escort home; and in
giving the invitation, you should tell her so, that she may know on what
to depend. If you keep a carriage, it will be most kind to send her home
in it.
Even if it is your rule to have the entry-lamp extinguished at a certain
hour, let your servants understand that this rule must be dispensed
with, as long as an evening-visiter remains in the house. Also, do not
have the linen covers put on the furniture, and the house audibly shut
up for the night, before she has gone. To do this is rude, because she
cannot but receive it as a hint that she has staid too long.
If your visiter is obliged to go home with no other escort than your
servant-man, apprize him, in time, that this duty will be expected of
him; desiring that he takes care to be at hand before ten o’clock.
A lady that has no escort whose services she can command, ought not to
make unexpected tea-visits. In many cases these visits produce more
inconvenience than pleasure. If you wish to “take tea sociably” with a
friend, inform her previously of your intention. She will then let you
know if she is disengaged on that evening, or if it is in any way
inconvenient to receive you; and she will herself appoint another time.
Generally, it is best not to volunteer a tea-visit, but to wait till
invited.
If you are engaged to take tea with an intimate friend, who assures you
that you will see none but the family; and you afterward receive an
invitation to join a party to a place of public amusement, which you
have long been desirous of visiting, you may retract your first
engagement, provided you send an apology in due time, telling the exact
truth, and telling it in polite terms. Your intimate friend will then
take no offence, considering it perfectly natural that you should prefer
the concert, the play, or the exhibition, to a quiet evening passed at
her house with no other guests. But take care to let her know as early
as possible.[2] And be careful not to disappoint her again in a similar
manner.
If you are accustomed to taking coffee in the evening, and have an
insuperable dislike to tea, it is best not to make an _unexpected_
visit—or at least, if you go at all, go early—so as to allow ample time
for the making of coffee—a much slower process than that of tea;
particularly as there may chance to be no roasted coffee in the house.
Much inconvenience has been caused by the “sociable visiting” of
determined coffee-drinkers. It is very easy to make green or black tea
at a short notice—but not coffee.
In inviting “a few friends,” which means a small select company,
endeavour to assort them suitably, so as not to bring together people
who have no community of tastes, feelings, and ideas. If you mix the
dull and stupid with the bright and animated, the cold and formal with
the frank and lively, the professedly serious with the gay and cheerful,
the light with the heavy, and above all, those who pride themselves on
high birth (high-birth in America?) with those who boast of “belonging
to the people,” none of these “few friends” will enjoy each other’s
society; the evening will _not_ go off agreeably, and you and the other
members of your family will have the worst of it. The pleasantest people
in the room will naturally congregate together, and the task of
entertaining the unentertainable will devolve on yourself and your own
people.
Still, it is difficult always to assort your company to your
satisfaction and theirs. A very charming lady may have very dull or very
silly sisters. An intelligent and refined daughter may be unfortunate in
a coarse, ignorant mother, or a prosing, tiresome, purse-proud father.
Some of the most delightful persons you may wish to invite, may be
encumbered with relations totally incapable of adding any thing to the
pleasure of the evening;—for instance, the numerous automatons, whom we
must charitably believe are speechless merely from diffidence, and of
whom we are told, that “if we only knew them,” we should discover them,
on intimate acquaintance, to be “quite intelligent people.” Perhaps so.
But we cannot help thinking that when a head is full of ideas, some of
them will involuntarily ooze out and be manifest. Diffidence is very
becoming to young people, and to those who are new to the world. But it
is hardly credible that it should produce a painful taciturnity in
persons who have passed from youth into maturity; and who have enjoyed
the advantages of education and of living in good society. Still those
who, as the French say, have “a great talent for silence,” may redeem
themselves from suspicion of stupidity, by listening attentively and
understandingly. A good talker is never displeased with a good hearer.
We have often met with young ladies from whom it was scarcely possible
for one of their own sex to extract more than a few monosyllables at
long intervals; those intervals being passed in dozing, rather than in
hearing. And yet, if any thing in the shape of a beau presented itself,
the tongues of these “dumb belles” were immediately loosened, and the
wheels of their minds commenced running as glibly as possible. To be
sure, the talk amounted to nothing definite; but still they _did_ talk,
and often became quite lively in a few minutes. Great is the power of
beaux!
To return to the tea-table.—Unless you are positively sure, when you
have a visiter, that she drinks the same tea that is used in your own
family, you should have both black and green on the table. Either sort
is often extremely disagreeable to persons who take the other. Drinkers
of green tea, for instance, have generally an unconquerable aversion to
black, as tasting like hay, herbs, &c. and they find in it no refreshing
or exhilarating property. In some, it produces nausea. Few, on the other
hand, dislike the taste of _good_ green tea, but they assign as a reason
for not drinking it, that it is supposed from its enlivening qualities
to affect the nerves. Judge Bushrod Washington, who always drank green,
and avoided black, said that “he took tea as a beverage, not as a
medicine.” And there are a vast number of sensible people in the same
category. If your guest is a votary of green tea, have it made for her,
in time for the essence of the leaves to be well drawn forth. It is no
compliment to give her green tea that is weak and washy. And do not, at
your own table, be so rude as to lecture her upon the superior
wholesomeness of black tea. For more than a century, green tea was
universally drunk in every house, and there was then less talk of
nervous diseases than during the reign of Souchong,—which, by-the-bye,
is nearly exploded in the best European society.
In pouring out, do not fill the cups to the brim. Always send the cream
and sugar round, that each person may use those articles according to
their own taste. Also, send round a small pot of hot water, that those
who like their tea weak may conveniently dilute it. If tea is handed, a
servant should, at the last, carry round a water-pitcher and glasses.
Whether at dinner or tea, if yourself and family are in the habit of
eating fast, (which, by the way, is a very bad and unwholesome one, and
justly cited against us by our English cousins,) and you see that your
visiter takes her food deliberately, endeavour, (for that time at
least,) to check the rapidity of your own mastication, so as not to
finish before she has done, and thus compel her to hurry herself
uncomfortably, or be left alone while every one round her is sitting
unoccupied and impatient. Or rather, let the family eat a little more
than usual, or seem to do so, out of politeness to their guest.
When refreshments are brought in after tea, let them be placed on the
centre-table, and handed round from thence by the gentlemen to the
ladies. If there are only four or five persons present, it may be more
convenient for all to sit round the table—which should not be cleared
till after all the visiters have gone, that the things may again be
offered before the departure of the guests.
If a friend makes an afternoon call, and you wish her to stay and take
tea, invite her to do so at once, as soon as she has sat down; and do
not wait till she has risen to depart. If she consents to stay, there
will then be ample time to make any additional preparation for tea that
may be expedient; and she will also know, at once, that you have no
engagement for the evening, and that she is not intruding on your time,
or preventing you from going out. If you are intimate friends, and your
guest is disposed to have a long chat, she will do well to ask you, at
the beginning, if you are disengaged, or design going out that
afternoon.
We knew a very sensible and agreeable lady in Philadelphia, who liking
better to have company at home than to go out herself, made a rule of
inviting every day, half a dozen friends (not more) to take tea with
her—just as many as could sit round the table, “with ample room and
verge enough.” These friends she assorted judiciously. And therefore she
never asked a whole family at once; those who were left out
understanding that they would be invited another time. For instance, she
would send a note for the father and mother only—to meet another father
and mother or two. A few weeks after, a billet would come for the young
people only. But if there were _several_ young people, some were
delayed—thus—“I wish James and Eliza to take tea with me this evening,
to meet so-and-so. Another time I promise myself the pleasure of
Edward’s company, and Mary’s.”
This distribution of invitations never gave offence.
Those who were honoured with the acquaintance of such a lady were not
likely to be displeased at so sensible a mode of receiving them. These
little tea-drinkings were always pleasant, and often delightful. The
hostess was well qualified to make them so.
Though the refreshments were of the best kind, and in sufficient
abundance, and the fires, lights, &c. all as they should be, there was
no ostentatious display, and the ladies were dressed no more than if
they were spending a quiet evening at home—party-finery being
interdicted—also, such needle-work as required constant attention to
every stitch.
If you have a friend who is in somewhat precarious health, and who is
afraid of being out in the night air, or who lives in a distant part of
the town, invite her to dinner, or to pass the day, rather than to tea.
She will then be able to get home before twilight.
There is in Boston a very fashionable and very distinguished lady, who,
since her return from Europe, has relinquished the custom of giving
large parties; and now entertains her friends by, almost every day,
having two or three to dine with her,—by invitation. These dinners are
charming. The hour is according to the season—earlier in winter, later
in summer—the guests departing before dark, and the lady always having
the evening to herself.
We know a gentleman in Philadelphia, who every Monday has a
family-dinner at his house, for all his children and grandchildren, who
there meet and enjoy themselves before the eyes of the father and
mother,—a friend or two being also invited. Nothing can be more
pleasant than to see them all there together, none staying
away—for parents, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law,
sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, are all at peace, and all meeting in
friendship—unhappily, a rare case, where there is a large connection,
and considerable wealth.
We wish that social intercourse was more frequently conducted on the
plan of the few examples above cited.
Should chance-visiters come in before the family have gone to tea, let
them at once be invited to partake of that repast; which they will of
course decline, if they have had tea already. In a well-provided house,
there can be no difficulty in adding something to the family tea-table,
which, in genteel life, should never be discreditably parsimonious.
It is a very mean practice, for the members of the family to slip out of
the parlour, one by one at a time, and steal away into the eating-room,
to avoid inviting their visiter to accompany them. The truth is always
suspected by these separate exits, and the length of absence from the
parlour—and is frequently betrayed by the rattle of china, and the
pervading fumes of hot cakes. How much better to meet the inconvenience
(and it cannot be a great one) by decently conducting your accidental
guest to the table, unless he says he has already taken tea, and will
amuse himself with a book while the family are at theirs.
Casual evening visiters should avoid staying too late. Ten o’clock, in
our country, is the usual time to depart, or at least to begin
departing. If the visit is unduly prolonged, there may be evident signs
of irrepressible drowsiness in the heads of the family, which, when
perceived, will annoy the guest, who must then feel that he has stayed
too long—and without being able to excuse himself with any approach to
the elegance of William Spencer’s apology to the charming Lady Anne
Hamilton.
Too late I stay’d—forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours,
For noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers.
Ah! who with clear account remarks
The ebbing of the glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass!