We who love the country salute you who love the town. I praise
the rivulets, the rocks overgrown with moss, and the groves of
the delightful country. And do you ask why? I live and reign
as soon as I have quitted those things which you extol to the
skies with joyful applause, and like a priest's fugitive-slave
I reject luscious wafers; I desire plain bread, which is more
agreeable than honied cakes.--HORACE, _Ode_ X.
Poets have been in the habit of praising a country life since the days
of Homer, but Americans have not as a people appreciated its joys. As
soon as a countryman was able to do it, he moved to the largest city
near him, presumably New York, or perhaps Paris. The condition of
opulence, much desired by those who had been bred in poverty,
suggested at once the greater convenience of a town life, and the busy
work-a-day world, to which most Americans are born, necessitates the
nearness to Wall Street, to banks, to people, and to the town.
City people were content formerly to give their children six weeks of
country air, and old New Yorkers did not move out of the then small
city, even in the hot months. The idea of going to the country to live
for pleasure, to find in it a place in which to spend one's money and
to entertain, has been, to the average American mind, a thing of
recent growth. Perhaps our climate has much to do with this. People
bred in the country feared to meet that long cold winter of the
North, which even to the well-to-do was filled with suffering. Who
does not remember the ice in the pitcher of a morning, which must be
broken before even faces were washed?
Therefore the furnace-heated city house, the companionship, the
bustle, the stir, and convenience of a city has been, naturally
enough, preferred to the loneliness of the country. As Hawthorne once
said, Americans were not yet sufficiently civilized to live in the
country. When he went to England, and saw a different order of things,
he understood why.
England, a small place with two thousand years of civilization, with
admirable roads, with landed estates, with a mild winter, with a taste
for sport, with dogs, horses, and well-trained servants, was a very
different place.
It may be years before we make our country life as agreeable as it is
in England. We have to conquer climate first. But the love of country
life is growing in America. Those so fortunate as to be able to live
in a climate like that of southern California can certainly quote
Horace with sympathy. Those who live so near to a great city as to
command at once city conveniences and country air and freedom, are
amongst the fortunate of the earth. And to hundreds, thousands of
such, in our delightfully prosperous new country, the art of
entertaining in a country house assumes a new interest.
No better model for a hostess can be found than an Englishwoman. There
is, when she receives her guests, a quiet cordiality, a sense of
pleasurable expectancy, an inbred ease, grace, suavity, composure, and
respect for her visitors, which seems to come naturally to a
well-bred Englishwoman; that is to say, to the best types of the
highest class. To be sure they have had vast experience in the art of
entertaining; they have learned this useful accomplishment from a long
line of well-trained predecessors. They have no domestic cares to
worry them. At the head of her own house, an Englishwoman is as near
perfection as a human being can be.
There is the great advantage of the English climate, to begin with. It
is less exciting than ours. Nervous women are there almost unknown.
Their ability to take exercise, the moist and soft air they breathe,
their good appetite and healthy digestion give English women a
physical condition almost always denied to an American.
Our climate drives us on by invisible whips; we breathe oxygen more
intoxicating than champagne. The great servant question bothers us
from the cradle to the grave; it has never entered into an English
woman's scheme of annoyance, so that in an English hostess there is a
total absence of fussiness.
English women spend the greater part of the year in travelling, or at
home in the country. Town life is with them a matter of six weeks or
three months at the most. They are fond of nature, of walking, of
riding; they share with the men a more vigorous physique than is given
to any other race. A French or Italian woman dreads a long walk, the
companionship of a dozen dogs, the yachting and the race course, the
hunting-field and the lawn tennis pursued with indefatigable
vigilance; but the fair English girl, with her blushing cheeks, her
dog, her pony, and her hands full of wild flowers, is a character
worth crossing the ocean to see. She is the product of the highest
civilization, and as such is still near the divine model which nature
furnishes. She has the underlying charm of simplicity, she is the
very rose of perfect womanhood. She may seem shy, awkward, and
reserved, but what the world calls pride or coldness may turn out to
be hidden virtue, or reserve, or modesty.
English home education is a seminary of infinite importance; a girl
learns to control her speech, to be always calm and well-bred. She has
been toned down from her youth. She has been carefully taught to
respect the duties of her high position; she has this advantage to
counterbalance the disadvantage which we freeborn citizens think may
come with an overpride of birth,--she has learned the motto _noblesse
oblige_. The English fireside is a beacon light forever to the soldier
in the Crimea, to the colonist in Australia, to the grave official in
India, to the missionary in the South Seas, to the English boy
wherever he may be. It sustains and ennobles the English woman at home
and abroad.
As a hostess, the English woman is sure to mould her house to look
like home. She has soft low couches for those who like them,
high-backed tall chairs for the tall, low chairs for the lowly. She
has her bookcases and pretty china scattered everywhere, she has
work-baskets and writing-tables and flowers, particularly wild ones,
which look as if she had tossed them in the vases herself. Her house
looks cheerful and cultivated.
I use the word advisedly, for all taste must be cultivated. A state
apartment in an old English house can be inexpressibly dreary. High
ceilings, stiff old girandoles, pictures of ancestors, miles of
mirrors, and the Laocoön or other specimens of Grecian art, which no
one cares for except in the Vatican, and the ceramic and historical
horrors of some old collector, who had no taste,--are enough to
frighten a visitor. But when a young or an experienced English
hostess has smiled on such a house, there will be some delightful
lumber strewn around, no end of pretty brackets and baskets and
curtains and screens, and couches piled high with cushions; and then
the quaint carvings, the rather affected niches, the mantelpiece
nearly up to the ceiling, as in Hogarth's picture,--all these become
humanized by her touch. The spirit of a hostess should aim at the
combination of use and beauty. Some finer spirits command both, as
Brunelleschi hung the dome at Florence high in air, and made a thing
of beauty, which is a joy forever, but did not forget to build under
it a convenient church as well. As for the bedrooms in an English
country house, they transcend description, they are the very
apotheosis of comfort.
The dinners are excellent, the breakfast and lunch comfortable,
informal, and easy, the horses are at your disposal, the lawn and
garden are yours for a stroll, the chapel lies near at hand, where you
can study architecture and ancient brass. There are pleasant people in
the house, you are let alone, you are not being entertained. That most
dreadful of sensations, that somebody has you on his mind, and must
show you photographs and lift off your _ennui_ is absent; you seem to
be in Paradise.
English people will tell you that house parties are dull,--not that
all are, but some are. No doubt the jaded senses lose the power of
being pleased. A visit to an English house, to an American who brings
with her a fresh sense of enjoyment, and who remembers the limitations
of a new country, one who loves antiquity, history, old pictures, and
all that time can do, one who is hungry for Old World refinements, to
such an one a visit to an English country house is delightful. To a
worn-out English set whose business it has been for a quarter of a
century to go from one house to another, no doubt it is dull. Some
unusual distraction is craved.
"To relieve the monotony and silence and the dull, depressing cloud
which sometimes settles on the most admirably arranged English
dinner-party, even an American savage would be welcomed," says a
modern novel-writer. How much more welcome then is a pretty young
woman who, with a true enthusiasm and a wild liberty, has found her
opportunity and uses it, plays the banjo, tells fortunes by the hand,
has no fear of rank, is in her set a glacier of freshness with a heart
of fire, like Roman punch.
How much more gladly is a young American woman welcomed, in such a
house, and how soon her head is turned. She is popular until she
carries off the eldest son, and then she is severely criticised, and
by her spoiled caprices becomes a heroine for Ouida to rejoice in, and
the _fond_ of a society novel.
But the glory is departing from many a stately English country house.
Fortune is failing them; they are, many of them, to rent. Rich
Americans are buying their old pictures. The Gainsboroughs, the Joshua
Reynoldses, the Rembrandts, which have been the pride of English
country houses, are coming down, charmed by the silver music of the
almighty dollar; the old fairy tale is coming true,--even the
furniture dances.
We have the money and we have the vivacity, according to even our
severest critics; we have now to cultivate the repose of an English
hostess, if we would make our country houses as agreeable as she does.
We cannot improvise the antiquity, or the old chapel, or the brasses;
we cannot make our roads as fine as those which enable an English
house party to drive sixteen miles to a dinner; in fact we must admit
that they have been nine hundred years making a lawn even. But we must
try to do things our own way, and use our own advantages so that we
can make our guests comfortable.
The American autumn is the most glorious of seasons for entertaining
in a country house. Nature hangs our hillsides then with a tapestry
that has no equal even at Windsor. The weather, that article which in
America is so apt to be good that if it is bad we apologize for it, is
more than apt to be good in October, and makes the duties of a hostess
easy then, for Nature helps to entertain.
It is to be feared that we have not yet learned to be guests. Trusting
to that boundless American hospitality which has been apt to say,
"Come when you please and stay as long as you can," we decline an
invitation for the 6th, saying we can come on the 9th. This cannot be
done when people begin to give house-parties. We must go on the 6th or
not at all.
We should also define the limits of a visit, as in England; one is
asked on Wednesday to arrive at five, to leave at eleven on Saturday.
Then one does not overstay one's welcome. Host and hostess and guest
must thoroughly understand one another on this point, and then
punctuality is the only thing to be considered.
The opulent, who have butler, footman, and French cooks, need read no
further in this chapter, the remainder of which will be directed to
that larger class who have neither, and who have to help themselves.
No lady should attempt to entertain in the country who has not a good
cook, and one or two attendant maids who can wait well and perform
other duties about the house. With these three and with a good deal of
knowledge herself, a hostess can make a country house attractive.
The dining-room should be the most agreeable room in the house, shaded
in the morning and cool in the afternoon,--a large room with a
hard-wood floor and mats, if possible, as these are clean and cool.
Carving should be done by one of the servants at a side table. There
is nothing more depressing on a warm evening than a smoking joint
before one's plate. A light soup only should be served, leaving the
more substantial varieties for cold weather.
Nowadays the china and glass are so very pretty, and so very cheap,
that they can be bought and used and left in the house all winter
without much risk. If people are living in the country all winter a
different style of furnishing, and a different style of entertaining
is no doubt in order.
It is well to have very easy laws about breakfast, and allow a guest
to descend when he wishes. If possible give your guest an opportunity
to breakfast in his room. So many people nowadays want simply a cup of
tea, and to wait until noon before eating a heavy meal; so many desire
to eat steaks, chops, toast, eggs, hot cakes, and coffee at nine
o'clock, that it is difficult for a hostess to know what to do. Her
best plan, perhaps, is to have an elastic hour, and let her people
come down when they feel like it. In England the maid enters the
bedroom with tea, excellent black tea, a toasted muffin, and two
boiled eggs at eight o'clock, a pitcher of hot water for the
wash-stand, and a bath. No one is obliged to appear until luncheon,
nor even then if indisposed so to do. Dinner at whatever hour is a
formal meal, and every one should come freshly dressed and in good
form, as the English say.
The Arab law of hospitality should be printed over every lintel in a
country house: "Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest;" "He who
tastes my salt is sacred; neither I nor my household shall attack him,
nor shall one word be said against him. Bring corn, wine, and fruit
for the passing stranger. Give the one who departs from thy tents the
swiftest horse. Let him who would go from thee take the fleet
dromedary, reserve the lame one for thyself." If these momentous hints
were carried out in America, and if these children of the desert, with
their grave faces, composed manners, and noble creed, could be
literally obeyed, we fear country-house visiting would become almost
too popular.
But if we cannot give them the fleet dromedary, we can drive them to
the fast train, which is much better than any dromedary. We can make
them comfortable, and enable them to do as they like. Unless we can do
that, we should not invite any one.
Unless a guest has been rude, it is the worst taste to criticise him.
He has come at your request. He has entered your house as an altar of
safety, an ark of refuge. He has laid his armour down. Your kind
welcome has unlocked his reserve. He has spoken freely, and felt that
he was in the presence of friends. If in this careless hour you have
discovered his weak spot, be careful how you attack it. The intimate
unreserve of a guest should be respected.
And upon the guest an equal, nay, a superior conscientiousness should
rest, as to any revelation of the secrets he may have found out while
he was a visitor. No person should go from house to house bearing
tales. We do not go to our friend's house to find the skeleton in the
closet. No criticisms of the weaknesses or eccentricities of any
member of the family should ever be heard from the lips of a guest.
"Whose bread I have eaten, he is henceforth my brother," is another
Arab proverb.
Speak well always of your entertainers, but speak little of their
domestic arrangements. Do not violate the sanctity of the fireside, or
wrong the shelter of the roof-tree which has lent you its protection
for even a night.
The decorations for a country ballroom, in a rural neighbourhood, have
called forth many an unknown genius in that art which has become the
well-known profession of interior decoration. The favourite place in
Lenox, and at many a summer resort, has been the large floor of a new
barn. Before the equine tenants begin to champ their oats, the youths
and maids assume the right to trip the light fantastic toe on the
well-laid hard floor. The ornamentations at such a ball at Lenox were
candles put in pine shields, with tin holders, and decorations of corn
and wheat sheaves, tied with scarlet ribbons, surrounding pumpkins
which were laid in improvised brackets, hastily cut out of pine, with
hatchets, by the young men. Magnificent autumn leaves were arranged
with ferns as garlands, and many were the devices for putting candles
and kerosene lamps behind these so as to give almost the effect of
stained glass, without causing a general conflagration.
The effect of a pumpkin surrounded by autumn leaves recalls the
Gardens of the Hesperides. No apple like those golden apples which we
call pumpkins was ever seen there. To be sure they are rather large to
throw to a goddess, and might bowl her down, but they look very
handsome when tranquilly reposing.
A sort of Druidical procession might be improvised to help along this
ball, and the hostess would amuse her company for a week with the
preparations.
First, get a negro fiddler to head it, dressed like Browning's Pied
Piper in gay colours, and playing his fiddle. Then have a procession
of children, dressed in gay costumes; following them, "two milk-white
oxen garlanded" with wreaths of flowers and ribbons, driven by a boy
in Swiss costume; then a goat-cart with the baby driving two goats,
also garlanded; next a lovely Alderney cow, also decorated,
accompanied by a milkmaid, carrying a milking-stool; then another long
line of children, followed by the youths and maids, bearing the
decorations for the ballroom. Let all these parade the village street
and wind up at the ballroom, where the cow can be milked, and a
surprise of ice cream and cake given to the children. This is a
Sunday-school picnic and a ball decoration, all in one, and the
country lady who can give it will have earned the gratitude of
neighbours and friends. It has been done.
In the spring the decorations of a ballroom might be early wild
flowers and the delicate ground-pine, far more beautiful than smilax,
and also ferns, the treasures of the nearest wood.
Wild flowers, ferns, and grasses, the ground-pine, the checkerberry,
and the partridge berry make the most exquisite garlands, and it is
only of late--when a few great geniuses have discovered that the field
daisy is the prettiest of flowers, that the best beauty is that which
is at our hands wherever we are, that the greatest rarity is the grass
in the meadow--that we have reached the true meaning of interior
decoration.
Helen Hunt, in one of her prettiest papers, describes the beauty of
kinnikinick, a lovely vine which grows all over Colorado. Although we
have not that, we can even in winter find the hemlock boughs, the
mistletoe, the holly, for our decorations. Of course, hot-house
flowers and smilax, if they can be obtained, are very beautiful and
desirable, but they are not within the reach of every purse, or of
every country house.
Sheaves of wheat, tied with fine ribbons and placed at intervals
around a room, can be made to have the beauty of an armorial bearing.
These, alternating with banners and hemlock boughs, are very
effective. All these forms which Nature gives us have suggested the
Corinthian capital, the Ionic pillar, the most graceful of Greek
carvings. The acanthus leaf was the inspiration of the architect who
built the Acropolis.
Vine leaves, especially after they begin to turn, are capable of
infinite suggestion, and we all remember the recent worship of the
sunflower. Hop vines and clematis, especially after the last has gone
to seed, remain long as ornaments.
As for the refreshments to be served,--the oyster stew, the ice cream,
the good home-made cake, coffee, and tea are within the reach of every
country housekeeper, and are in their way unrivalled. Of course, if
she wishes she can add chicken salad, boned turkey, _pâté de foie
gras_, and punch, hot or cold.
If it is in winter, the coachmen outside must not be forgotten. Some
hot coffee and oysters should be sent to these patient sufferers, for
our coachmen are not dressed as are the Russians, in fur from head to
foot. If possible, there should be a good fire in the kitchen, to
which these attendants on our pleasure could be admitted to thaw out.