THE DRAWING-ROOM.
Social pressure — Agreeable evening parties — Troubles of party-giving — Musical parties — Flowers on a balcony — Window-gardening — Crowded drawing-rooms — The library or study — Gas, candles, and candlesticks — Original outlay on furniture — Different styles of furniture — Raffaelesque decorations — Carpets, curtains, and chair coverings — Portières — Window blinds — Rugs — Care required in buying furniture — Ornaments — Dusting — Chiffoniers useless — Portfolio stand — Mirrors.
This section of our subject involves our relations with society; and here not even our vanity can make us believe that modern customs are really improvements.
What chance has any lady of our time of emulating the graceful manner in which Madame Récamier held her salon, although she may have as much learning as Madame de Staël?
We are too heavily weighted, our social intercourse is too complicated, too much clogged with ceremony, to move easily; and where our highest faculties should be allowed full play, we find so much hard work and consequent fatigue, that we look upon every dinner and evening party in the light of an uphill road with a difficult team to drive.
We all know and applaud the French manner of visiting. Receiving friends on a stated day of the week, simply enjoying their society, and exerting the intellectual faculties instead of merely opening the purse for their entertainment.
Why have we so seldom the courage to follow this example?
It is because we fear to show less well to the eyes of our acquaintance if our own habits seem less expensive than theirs. A low purse-pride is at the bottom of it all. Our dress must be costly and perpetually changing, our servants and establishment must be displayed, if we are ourselves smothered beneath their weight.
So we give up our precious daylight to morning calls, as we ridiculously call those visits of ceremony which are paid in the afternoon. These afford us no pleasure, while they are an infliction to the people called upon. Do not most of us know the feeling of relief that we have after paying a round of visits, when, on finding, as the day was fine, the greater number of our friends from home, we return with an empty card-case, and say, with the complacency of self-satisfied persons who have done their duty, "There, that is done and need not be done again for a month." Whereas we are sorry when even our slight acquaintances "regret they cannot accept" our invitations to an evening party, when we might enjoy their company, and they the society of each other, at the same time, and at a reasonable hour for enjoyment.