If the great world of society were a university which issued degrees to those whom it trains to its usages, the magna cum laude honors would be awarded without question, not to the hostess who may have given the most marvelous ball of the decade, but to her who knows best every component detail of preparation and service, no less than every inexorable rule of etiquette, in formal dinner-giving.
To give a perfect dinner of ceremony is the supreme accomplishment of a hostess! It means not alone perfection of furnishing, of service, of culinary skill, but also of personal charm, of tact. The only other occasion when a hostess must have equal—and possibly even greater ability—is the large and somewhat formal week-end party, which includes a dinner or two as by no means its least formidable features.
There are so many aspects to be considered in dinner giving that it is difficult to know whether to begin up-stairs or down, or with furnishing, or service, or people, or manners! One thing is certain, no novice should ever begin her social career by attempting a formal dinner, any more than a pupil swimmer, upon being able to take three strokes alone, should attempt to swim three miles out to sea. The former will as surely drown as the latter.
How A Dinner Is Given In A Great House
When Mrs. Worldly gives a dinner, it means no effort on her part whatsoever beyond deciding upon the date and the principal guests who are to form the nucleus; every further detail is left to her subordinates—even to the completion of her list of guests. For instance, she decides that she will have an "older" dinner, and finding that the tenth is available for herself, she tells her secretary to send out invitations for that date. She does not have especial cards engraved but uses the dinner blank described in the chapter on Invitations. She then looks through her "dinner list" and orders her secretary to invite the Oldworlds, the Eminents, the Learneds, the Wellborns, the Highbrows, and the Onceweres. She also picks out three or four additional names to be substituted for those who regret. Then turning to the "younger married" list she searches for a few suitable but "amusing" or good-looking ones to give life to her dinner which might otherwise be heavy. But her favorites do not seem appropriate. It will not do to ask the Bobo Gildings, not because of the difference in age but because Lucy Gilding smokes like a furnace and is miserable unless she can play bridge for high stakes, and, just as soon as she can bolt through dinner, sit at a card table; while Mrs. Highbrow and Mrs. Oncewere quite possibly disapprove of women's smoking and are surely horrified at "gambling." The Smartlings won't do either, for the same reason, nor the Gaylies. She can't ask the Newell Riches either, because Mrs. Oldworld and Mrs. Wellborn both dislike vulgarity too much to find compensation in qualities which are merely amusing. So she ends by adding her own friends the Kindharts and the Normans, who "go" with everyone, and a few somewhat younger people, and approves her secretary's suggestions as to additional names if those first invited should "regret."
The list being settled, Mrs. Worldly's own work is done. She sends word to her cook that there will be twenty-four on the tenth; the menu will be submitted to her later, which she will probably merely glance at and send back. She never sees or thinks about her table, which is in the butler's province.
On the morning of the dinner her secretary brings her the place cards, (the name of each person expected, written on a separate card) and she puts them in the order in which they are to be placed on the table, very much as though playing solitaire. Starting with her own card at one end and her husband's at the other, she first places the lady of honor on his right, the second in importance on his left. Then on either side of herself, she puts the two most important gentlemen. The others she fits in between, trying to seat side by side those congenial to each other.
"Detail of place set at a formal dinner table of a great house." [Page [179].]