MATINES AND SOIRES.
A matine in America means an afternoon performance at the theatre
of a play or opera. In Europe it has a wider significance, any
social gathering before dinner in France being called a _matine_,
as any party after dinner is called a _soire_.
The improper application of another foreign word was strikingly
manifested in the old fashion of calling the President's evening
receptions _levees_. The term "levee," as originally used, meant
literally a king's getting up. When he arose, and while he was
dressing, such of his courtiers as were privileged to approach him
at this hour gathered in an anteroom-waiting to assist at his
toilet, to wish him good morning, or perhaps prefer a request. In
time this morning gathering grew to be an important court
ceremonial, and some one ignorant of the meaning of the word named
President Jackson's evening receptions "the President's levees."
So with the word _matine_. First used to indicate a day reception
at court, it has now grown to mean a day performance at a theatre.
Sometimes a lady, bolder than her neighbors, issues an invitation
for "a _matine dansante_," or "a _matine musicale_," but this
descriptive style is not common.
There are many advantages in a morning party. It affords to ladies
who do not go to evening receptions the pleasure of meeting
informally, and is also a well-chosen occasion for introducing a
new pianist or singer.
For a busy woman of fashion nothing can be more conveniently timed
than a _matine_, which begins at two and ends at four or half
past. It does not interfere with a five-o'clock tea or a drive in
the park, nor unfit her for a dinner or an evening entertainment.
Two o'clock is also a very good hour for a large and informal
general lunch, if a lady wishes to avoid the expense, formality,
and trouble of a "sit-down" lunch.
While the busy ladies can go to a _matine_, the busy gentleman
cannot; and as men of leisure in America are few, a morning
entertainment at a theatre or in society is almost always an
assemblage of women. To avoid this inequality of sex, many ladies
have their _matine_s on some one of the national
holidays--Washington's Birthday, Thanksgiving, or Decoration-day.
On these occasions a _matine_, even in busy New York, is well
attended by gentlemen.
When, as sometimes happens, a prince, a duke, an archbishop, an
author of celebrity, a Tom Hughes, a Lord Houghton, a Dean
Stanley, or some descendant of our French allies at Yorktown,
comes on a visit to our country, one of the most satisfactory
forms of entertainment that we can offer to him is a morning
reception. At an informal _matine_ we may bring to meet him such
authors, artists, clergymen, lawyers, editors, statesmen, rich and
public-spirited citizens, and beautiful and cultivated women of
society, as we may be fortunate enough to know.
The primary business of society is to bring together the various
elements of which it is made up--its strongest motive should be to
lighten up the momentous business of life by an easy and friendly
intercourse and interchange of ideas.
But if we hope to bring about us men of mind and distinction, our
object must be not only to be amused but to amuse.
To persuade those elderly men who are maintaining the great
American name at its present high place in the Pantheon of nations
to spend a couple of hours at a _matine_, we must offer some
tempting bait as an equivalent. A lady who entertained Dean
Stanley said that she particularly enjoyed her own _matine_ given
for him, because through his name she for the first time induced
the distinguished clergy of New York to come to her house.
Such men are not tempted by the frivolities of a fashionable
social life that lives by its vanity, its excitement, its rivalry
and flirtation. Not that all fashionable society is open to such
reproach, but its tendency is to lightness and emptiness; and we
rarely find really valuable men who seek it. Therefore a lady who
would make her house attractive to the best society must offer it
something higher than that to which we may give the generic title
fashion. Dress, music, dancing, supper, are delightful
accessories-they are ornaments and stimulants, not requisites. For
a good society we need men and women who are "good company," as
they say in England--men and women who can talk. Nor is the
advantage all on one side. The free play of brain, taste, and
feeling is a most important refreshment to a man who works hard,
whether in the pulpit or in Wall Street, in the editorial chair or
at the dull grind of authorship. The painter should wash his
brushes and strive for some intercourse of abiding value with
those whose lives differ from his own. The woman who works should
also look upon the _divertissements_ of society as needed
recreation, fruitful, may be, of the best culture.
On the other hand, no society is perfect without the elements of
beauty, grace, taste, refinement, and luxury. We must bring all
these varied potentialities together if we would have a real and
living social life. For that brilliant thing that we call society
is a finely-woven fabric of threads of different sizes and colors
of contrasting shades. It is not intrigue, or the display of
wealth, or morbid excitement that must bind together this social
fabric, but sympathy, that pleasant thing which refines and
refreshes, and "knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," and leaves
us strong for the battle of life.
And in no modern form of entertainment can we better produce this
finer atmosphere, this desirable sympathy between the world of
fashion and that of thought, than by _matines_, when given under
favorable circumstances. To be sure, if we gave one every day it
would be necessary, as we have said, to dispense with a large
number of gentlemen; but the occasional _matinee_ is apt to catch
some very good specimens of the _genus homo_, and sometimes the
best specimens. It is proper to offer a very substantial _buffet,
as people rarely lunch before two o'clock, and will be glad of a
bit of bird, a cup of bouillon, or a leaf of salad. It is much
better to offer such an entertainment earlier than the
five-o'clock tea; at which hour people are saving their appetites
for dinner.
A _soire_ is a far more difficult affair, and calls for more
subtle treatment. It should be, not a ball, but what was formerly
called an "evening party." It need not exclude dancing, but
dancing is not its excuse for being. It means a very bright
_conversazione_, or a reading, or a _musicale_, with pretty
evening dress (not necessarily ball dress), a supper, and early
hours. Such, at least, was its early significance abroad.
It has this advantage in New York, that it does attract gentlemen.
They like very much the easy-going, early-houred _soire_. We
mean, of course, those gentlemen who no longer care for balls, and
if aristocracy is to be desired, "the rule of the best," at
American entertainments, all aspirants for social distinction
should try to propitiate those men who are being driven from the
ballroom by the insolence and pretension of the lower elements of
fashionable society. In Europe, the very qualities which make a
man great in the senate, the field, or the chamber of commerce,
give him a corresponding eminence in the social world. Many a
gray-mustached veteran in Paris leads the german. A senator of
France aspires to appear well in the boudoir. With these men
social dexterity is a requisite to success, and is cultivated as a
duty. It is not so here, for the two great factors of success in
America, wealth and learning, do not always fit a man for society,
and still less does society adapt itself to them.
The _soire_, if properly conducted, is an entertainment to which
can be brought the best elements of our society: elderly,
thoughtful, and educated men. A lady should not, however, in the
matter of dress, confound a _soire_ with a concert or reception.
It is the height of impropriety to wear a bonnet to the former, as
has been done in New York, to the everlasting disgust of the
hostess.
When a hostess takes the pains to issue an invitation to a
_soire_ a week or a fortnight before it is to occur, she should
be repaid by the careful dressing and early arrival of her guests.
It may be proper to go to an evening reception in a bonnet, but
never to a _soire_ or an evening party.
There is no doubt that wealth has become a power in American
society, and that we are in danger of feeling that, if we have not
wealth, we can give neither _matines_ nor _soires_; but this is
a mistake. Of course the possession of wealth is most desirable.
Money is power, and when it is well earned it is a noble power;
but it does not command all those advantages which are the very
essence of social intercourse. It may pamper the appetite, but it
does not always feed the mind. There is still a corner left for
those that have but little money. A lady can give a _matinee_ or a
_soiree_ in a small house with very little expenditure of money;
and if she has the inspiration of the model entertainer, every one
whom she honors with an invitation will flock to her small and
unpretending _menage_. There are numbers of people in our large
cities who can give great balls, dazzle the eye, confuse and
delight the senses, drown us in a sensuous luxury; but how few
there are who, in a back street and in a humble house, light that
lamp by which the Misses Berry summoned to their little parlor the
cleverest and best people!
The elegant, the unpretentious, the quiet _soire_ to which the
woman of fashion shall welcome the _littrateur_ and the artist,
the aristocrat who is at the top of the social tree and the
millionaire who reached his culmination yesterday, would seem to
be that _Ultima Thule_ for which all people have been sighing ever
since society was first thought of. There are some Americans who
are so foolish as to affect the pride of the hereditary
aristocracies, and who have some fancied traditional standard by
which they think to keep their blue blood pure. A good old
grandfather who had talent, or patriotism, or broad views of
statesmanship, "who did the state some service," is a relation to
be proud of, but his descendants should take care to show, by some
more personal excellence than that of a social exclusiveness,
their appreciation of his honesty and ability. What our
grandfathers were, a thousand new-comers now are. They made their
way--the early American men--untrammelled by class restraints;
they arrived at wealth and distinction and social eminence by
their own merits; they toiled for the money which buys for their
grandsons purple and fine linen. And could they see the pure and
perfect snob who now sometimes bears the name which they left so
unsullied, they would be exasperated and ashamed, Of course, a
certain exclusiveness must mark all our _matines_ and _soires_;
they would fail of the chief element of diversion if we invited
everybody. Let us, therefore, make sure of the aesthetic and
intellectual, the sympathetic and the genial, and sift out the
pretentious and the impure. The rogues, the pretenders, the
adventurers who push into the penetralia of our social circles are
many, and it is to the exclusion of such that a hostess should
devote herself.
It is said that all women are born aristocrats, and it is
sometimes said in the same tone with which the speaker afterwards
adds that all women are born fools. A woman, from her finer sense,
enjoys luxury, fine clothing, gorgeous houses, and all the
refinements that money can buy; but even the most idle and
luxurious and foolish woman desires that higher luxury which art
and intelligence and delicate appreciation can alone bring; the
two are necessary to each other. To a hostess the difficulty of
entertaining in such a manner as to unite in a perfect whole the
financiers, the philosophers, the cultivated foreigners, the
people of fashion, the sympathetic and the artistic is very great;
but a hostess may bring about the most genial democracy at the
modern _matine_ or _soire_ if she manages properly.