As to the arrangements for one of these evening garden-parties. It is usual to have tea and coffee, and light refreshments during the whole of the evening, from arrival to departure, and to give a light supper a little before twelve o'clock. The gardens and grounds are illuminated with coloured lamps and lanterns, extensively or moderately, as the case may be. A band is considered indispensable, but a good one does not seem to be equally imperative, to judge from the indifferent performances of various bands heard on these summer evenings. However, country audiences are not too critical, knowing that to engage a good band from a distance entails considerable expense, and that evening garden-parties would be singularly few if superior music was insisted upon. Thus the local band is encouraged to do its best, and to allow long intervals to elapse between each selection.
In the case of an evening turning out decidedly wet, guests invited from a distance seldom put in an appearance, while the nearer neighbours do so, and the evening garden-party becomes an evening reception within doors, shorn of its numbers, it is true, but a pleasant gathering, nevertheless, especially with those who know how to make the best of a contretemps caused by unpropitious weather.
CHAPTER XXVI
LUNCHEONS
Invitations to Luncheon are very much the order of the day in fashionable society. Those who look back some few years remark the importance now accorded to this midday meal, and contrast it with the past. The lateness of the dinner-hour in a measure accounts for the position now taken by luncheon in the day's programme, joined to the fact that it offers another opportunity for social gatherings; and as the prevailing idea seems to be to crowd into one day as much amusement and variety and change as possible, invitations to luncheon have become one of the features of social life.
Invitations to Public Luncheons are not now confined to the celebration of local and civic events, but take a far wider range, and are given on every available opportunity when the occasion can be made to serve for assembling a large party of ladies and gentlemen. Luncheon is by some considered to be rather a lady's meal than not, although in reality invitations are given as frequently to the one sex as to the other. Yet the predominance of ladies at luncheon is due to the fact that the majority of gentlemen are too much occupied at this hour to be at liberty to accept invitations to luncheon, while others, more idle, breakfast at so late an hour that to them a two o'clock luncheon is a farce as far as eating is concerned. Outside of those who are busy men and those who are idle men, and consequently late risers, there is another semi-occupied class of men who are always amenable to an invitation to luncheon.
This institution of luncheon is invaluable to people who have many friends, acquaintances, and relations to entertain, as invitations to this meal are given for every day in the week, with or without ceremony, with long notice or short notice, or on the spur of the moment.
Ladies enjoy the society of their hostess at luncheon far more than at a dinner-party. At the former meal she makes general conversation with her guests on both sides of the table; at the latter she is monopolised by her immediate neighbours, by the gentleman who takes her down to dinner, and by the one who sits at her right hand, while she leaves her guests to be entertained by the gentlemen who take them in to dinner. At luncheon things are different; there is no going in to luncheon, conventionally speaking, save on official and public occasions.