One would think that modern luxury had reached its ultimatum in the
delicate refinements of dinner-giving, but each dinner-table reveals
the fact that this is an inexhaustible subject. The floral world is
capable of an infinity of surprises, and the last one is a cameo of
flowers on a door, shaped like a four-leaved clover. The guests are
thus assured of good-luck. The horseshoe having been so much used
that it is now almost obsolete, except in jewelry, the clover-leaf
has come in. A very beautiful dinner far up Fifth Avenue had this
winter an entirely new idea, inasmuch as the flowers were put
overhead. The delicate vine, resembling green asparagus in its
fragility, was suspended from the chandelier to the four corners of
the room, and on it were hung delicate roses, lilies-of-the-valley,
pinks, and fragrant jasmine, which sent down their odors, and
occasionally dropped themselves into a lady's lap. This is an
exquisite bit of luxury.
Then the arrival, two months before Easter, of the fragrant,
beautiful Easter lilies has added a magnificent and stately effect
to the central bouquets. It has been found that the island of
Bermuda is a great reservoir of these bulbs, which are sent up, like
their unfragrant rivals the onions, by the barrelful. Even a piece
of a bulb will produce from three to five lilies, so that these fine
flowers are more cheap and plenty in January than usually in April.
A dining-room, square in shape, hung with richly-embroidered, old-
gold tapestry, with a round table set for twenty, with silver and
glass and a great bunch of lilies and green ferns in the middle, and
a "crazy quilt" of flowers over one's head, may well reproduce the
sense of dreamland which modern luxury is trying to follow.
Truly we live in the days of Aladdin. Six weeks after the ground was
broken in Secretary Whitney's garden in Washington for his ballroom,
the company assembled in a magnificent apartment with fluted gold-
ceiling and crimson brocade hangings, bronzes, statues, and Dresden
candlesticks, and a large wood fire at one end, in which logs six
feet long were burning--all looking as if it were part of an old
baronial castle of the Middle Ages.
The florists will furnish you red clovers in January if you give
your order in October. Great bunches of flowers, of a pure scarlet
unmixed with any other color, are very fashionable, and the effect
in a softly-lighted room is most startling and beautiful.
The lighting of rooms by means of lamps and candles is giving
hostesses great annoyance. There is scarcely a dinner-party but the
candles set fire to their fringed shades, and a conflagration
ensues. Then the new lamps, which give such a resplendent light,
have been known to melt the metal about the wick, and the
consequences have been disastrous. The next move will probably be
the dipping of the paper in some asbestos or other anti-inflammable
substance, so that there will be no danger of fire at the dinner-
table. The screens put over the candles should not have this paper-
fringe; it is very dangerous. But if a candle screen takes fire,
have the coolness to let it burn itself up without touching it, as
thus it will be entirely innocuous, although rather appalling to
look at. Move a plate under it to catch the flying fragments, and no
harm will be done; but a well-intentioned effort to blow it out or
to remove it generally results in a very much more wide-spread
conflagration.
China and glass go on improving; and there are jewelled goblets and
centre-pieces of yellow glass covered with gold and what looks like
jewels. Knives and forks are now to be had with crystal handles set
in silver, very ornamental and clean-looking; these come from
Bohemia. The endless succession of beautiful plates are more and
more Japanese in tone.
Satsuma vases and jugs are often sent to a lady, full of beautiful
roses, thus making a lasting souvenir of what would be a perishable
gift. These Satsuma jugs are excellent things in which to plant
hyacinths, and they look well in the centre of the dinner-table with
these flowers growing in them.
Faded flowers can be entirely restored to freshness by clipping the
stems and putting them in very hot water; then set them away from
the gas and furnace heat, and they come on the dinner-table fresh
for several days after their disappearance in disgrace as faded or
jaded bouquets. Flowers thus restored have been put in a cold
library, where the water, once hot, has frozen stiff, and yet have
borne these two extremes of temperature without loss of beauty--in
fact, have lasted presentably from Monday morning to Saturday night.
What flowers cannot stand is the air we all live in--at what cost to
our freshness we find out in the spring--the overheated furnace and
gas-laden air of the modern dining-room. The secret of the hot-water
treatment is said to be this: the sap is sent up into the flower
instead of lingering in the stems. Roses respond to this treatment
wonderfully.
The fashion of wearing low-necked dresses at dinner has become so
pronounced that the moralists begin to issue weekly essays against
this revival as if it had never been done before. Our virtuous
grandmothers would be astonished to hear that their ball-dresses
(never cut high) were so immoral and indecent. The fact remains that
a sleeveless gown, cut in a Pompadour form, is far more of a
revelation of figure than a low-necked dinner-dress properly made.
There is no line of the figure so dear to the artist as that one
revealed from the nape of the neck to the shoulder. A beautiful back
is the delight of the sculptor. No lady who understands the fine-art
of dress would ever have her gown cut too low: it is ugly, besides
being immodest. The persons who bring discredit on fashion are those
who misinterpret it. The truly artistic modiste cuts a low-necked
dress to reveal the fine lines of the back, but it is never in
France cut too low in front. The excessive heat of an American
dining-room makes this dress very much more comfortable than the
high dresses which were brought in several years ago, because a
princess had a goitre which she wished to disguise:
No fulminations against fashion have ever effected reforms. We must
take fashion as we find it, and strive to mould dress to our own
style, not slavishly adhering to, but respectfully following, the
reigning mode, remembering that all writings and edicts against this
sub-ruler of the world are like sunbeams falling on a stone wall.
The sunbeams vanish, but the stone wall remains.
The modern married belle at a dinner is apt to be dressed in white,
with much crystal trimming, with feathers in her hair, and with
diamonds on her neck and arms, and a pair of long, brown Swedish
gloves drawn up to her shoulders; a feather fan of ostrich feathers
hangs at her side by a ribbon or a chain of diamonds and pearls. The
long, brown Swedish gloves are an anomaly; they do not suit the rest
of this exquisite dress, but fashion decrees that they shall be
worn, and therefore they are worn.
The fine, stately fashion of wearing feathers in the hair has
returned, and it is becoming to middle-aged women. It gives them a
queenly air. Young girls look better for the simplest head-gear;
they wear their hair high or low as they consider becoming.
Monstrous and inconvenient bouquets are again the fashion, and a
very ugly fashion it is. A lady does not know what to do with her
two or three bouquets at a musicale or a dinner, so they are laid
away on a table. The only thing that can be done is to sit after
dinner with them in her lap, and the _prima donna_ at a musicale
lays hers on the grand piano.
More and more is it becoming the fashion to have music at the end of
a dinner in the drawing-room, instead of having it played during
dinner. Elocutionists are asked in to amuse the guests, who, having
been fed on terrapin and canvas-back ducks, are not supposed to be
in a talking mood. This may be overdone. Many people like to talk
after dinner with the people who are thus accidentally brought
together; for in our large cities the company assembled about a
dinner-table are very often fresh acquaintances who like to improve
that opportunity to know each other better.
We have spoken of the dress of ladies, which, if we were to pursue,
would lead us into all the details of velvet, satin, and brocade,
and would be a departure from our subject; let us therefore glance
at the gentlemen at a modern, most modern, dinner. The vests are cut
very low, and exhibit a piqu embroidered shirt front held by one
stud, generally a cat's-eye; however, three studs are permissible.
White plain-pleated linen, with enamel studs resembling linen, is
also very fashionable. A few young men, sometimes called dudes--no
one knows why--wear pink coral studs or pearls, generally black
pearls. Elderly gentlemen content themselves with plain-pleated
shirt-fronts and white ties, indulging even in wearing their watches
in the old way, as fashion has reintroduced the short vest-chain so
long banished.
It is pleasant to see the old-fashioned gold chain for the neck
reappearing. It always had a pretty effect, and is now much worn to
support the locket, cross, or medallion portrait which ladies wear
after the Louis Quinze fashion. Gold is more becoming to dark
complexions than pearls, and many ladies hail this return to gold
necklaces with much delight.
Gentlemen now wear pearl-colored gloves embroidered in black to
dinners, and do not remove them until they sit down to table. Seal
rings for the third finger are replacing the sunken jewels in dead
gold which have been so fashionable for several years for gentlemen.
All the ornamentation of the dinner-table is high this winter--high
candlesticks, high vases, high glasses for the flowers, and tall
glass compotiers. Salt-cellars are looking up; and a favorite device
is a silver vase, about two inches high, with a shell for salt.
Silver and silver-gilt dishes, having been banished for five years,
are now reasserting their pre-eminent fitness for the modern dinner-
table. People grew tired of silver, and banished it to the plate-
chest. Now all the old pieces are being burnished up and
reappearing; and happy the hostess who has some real old Queen Anne.
As the silver dollar loses caste, the silver soup tureen, or, as the
French say, the _soupiere_ (and it is a good word), rises in
fashion, and the teapot of our grandmothers resumes its honored
place.