At a ball or evening-party a hostess should receive her guests at the head of the staircase, and should remain there until the majority, if not all, of the guests have arrived.
As the names of the guests are announced the hostess should shake hands with each, addressing some courteous observation the while, not with a view of inducing them to linger on the staircase, but rather of inviting them to enter the ball-room to make way for other guests.
At a ball given at a country house the hostess should stand at the door of the ball-room and receive her guests. When the guests have duly arrived, a hostess at a country-house ball or country-house theatricals should exert herself to see that all her guests are amused. If she sees that the young ladies are not dancing she should endeavour to find them partners. In town she is not required to do this. If the chaperons have apparently no one to talk to she should introduce one of her own relatives, if she cannot give much of her own attention to them, and she should arrange that all her guests are taken in to supper.
At large afternoon "at homes" the hostess receives her guests at the open door of the drawing-room, and has little more time to bestow upon each than at a ball or an "at home." At small afternoon "at homes" she should receive them in the drawing-room, and should rise and shake hands with each arrival.
A hostess should receive her dinner guests in the drawing-room, and should shake hands with each in the order of arrival. She occasionally finds it a trying ordeal to sustain conversation between the arrival of dinner guests and the dinner being served; sometimes this is prolonged for three-quarters of an hour through the non-appearance of a guest who must be waited for. A hostess should, although she knows that her dinner is spoilt by being thus kept back, endeavour to make the time pass as pleasantly as possible, by rendering the conversation general and by making the guests acquainted with each other. The hostess who can tide over these awkward occurrences so that the postponement of dinner from half to three-quarters of an hour is hardly perceived, proves herself to be entitled to be considered a good hostess.
CHAPTER XLI
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LADY PATRONESSES OF PUBLIC BALLS
Ladies are frequently solicited to allow their names to be placed on the lists of lady patronesses of charity balls. A ball committee is desirous of obtaining a list of influential names to lend éclat and prestige to the ball, and a charity ball often numbers amongst its lady patronesses the names of many of the leading members of the nobility, followed by those of the wives of the leading county gentry, or by the principal residents of a watering-place or county town; but it is understood, as a rule, that the duty of giving vouchers or tickets for a charity ball is undertaken by those ladies who are more directly interested in it, whose husbands are on the committee, who make a point of annually attending it, and thus are principally concerned in keeping it select; and although in many counties and in many towns lady patronesses, members of the nobility, do attend, yet it not unfrequently happens that out of a long list of great ladies only three or four are present at a ball.