Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (great book club books TXT) 📖

>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 matin�es, 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 soir�e 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 soir�e. 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 soir�e, 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 soir�e 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

soir�e 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 soir�e 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 matin�es nor soir�es; 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 soir�e to which the

woman of fashion shall welcome the litt�rateur 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 newcomers 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 matin�es and soir�es;

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 matin�e or soir�e if she manages properly.

 

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AFTERNOON TEA.

 

The five-o’clock tea began in England, and is continued there, as

a needed refreshment after a day’s hunting, driving, or

out-of-door exercise, before dressing for dinner—that very late

dinner of English fashion. It is believed that the Princess of

Wales set the fashion by receiving in her boudoir at some

countryhouse in a very becoming “tea gown,” which every lady knows

to be the most luxurious change from the tight riding-habit or

carriage-dress. Her friends came in, by her gracious invitation,

to her sanctum, between five and seven, to take a cup of tea with

her. The London belles were glad to have an excuse for a new

entertainment, and gradually it grew to be a fashion, at which

people talked so fast and so loud as to suggest the noise of a

drum—a kettledrum, the most rattling of all drums. Then it was

remembered that an old-fashioned entertainment was called a drum,

and the tea suggested kettle, and the name fitted the

circumstances. In England, where economy is so much the fashion,

it was finally pronounced an excellent excuse for the suppression

of expense, and it came over to New York during a calamitous

period, just after “Black Friday.” Ladies were glad to assemble

their friends at an hour convenient for their servants, and with

an entertainment inexpensive to their husbands. So a kettledrum

became the most fashionable of entertainments. People after a

while forgot its origin, and gave a splendid ball by daylight,

with every luxury of the season, and called it tea at five

o’clock, or else paid off all their social obligations by one

sweeping “tea,” which cost them nothing but the lighting of the

gas and the hiring of an additional waiter. They became so popular

that they defeated themselves, and ladies had to encompass five,

six, sometimes nine teas of an afternoon, and the whole of a cold

Saturday—the favorite day for teas—was spent in a carriage

trying to accomplish the impossible.

 

The only “afternoon tea” that should prevail in a large city like

New York is that given by one or two ladies who are usually “at

home” at five o’clock every afternoon. If there is a well-known

house where the hostess has the firmness and the hospitality to be

always seated in front of her blazing urn at that hour, she is

sure of a crowd of gentlemen visitors, who come from down-town

glad of a cup of tea and a chat and rest between work and dinner.

The sight of a pretty girl making tea is always dear to the

masculine heart. Many of our young lawyers, brokers, and gay men

of the hunt like a cup of hot tea at five o’clock. The mistake was

in the perversion of the idea, the making it the occasion for the

official presentation of a daughter, or the excuse for other and

more elaborate entertainments. So, although many a house is opened

this winter at the same convenient hour, and with perhaps only the

bouillon and teakettle and bit of cake or sandwich (for really no

one wants more refreshment than this before dinner and after

luncheon), the name of these afternoon entertainments has been by

mutual consent dropped, and we no longer see the word “kettledrum”

or “afternoon tea” on a card, but simply the date and the hour.

 

There is a great deal to be said in this matter on both sides. The

primal idea was a good one. To have a gathering of people without

the universal oyster was at first a great relief. The people who

had not money for grand “spreads” were enabled to show to their

more opulent neighbors that they too had the spirit of

hospitality. All who have spent a winter in Rome remember the

frugal entertainment offered, so that an artist with no plentiful

purse could still ask a prince to visit him. It became the

reproach of Americans that they alone were ashamed to be poor, and

that, unless they could offer an expensive supper, dinner, or

luncheon, they could not ask their friends to come to see them.

Then, again, the doctors, it was urged, had discovered that tea

was the best stimulant for the athlete and for the brain-worker.

English “breakfast tea” kept nobody awake, and was the most

delightful of appetizers. The cup of tea and a sandwich taken at

five o’clock spoiled no one’s dinner. The ladies of the house

began these entertainments, modestly receiving in plain but pretty

dresses;