Our "at homes" are on a radically wrong principle. We crowd our rooms, we insist on late hours and fullest dress, and our pleasure in consequence becomes a toil.
But how agreeable is the easy evening gathering in a cheerful and early lighted drawing-room, where few or many welcome guests drop in, knowing it to be our "at home" day. Where we talk and sip tea, play and sing, or amuse ourselves, if clever, with paper games—capital promoters of laughter and whetstones to the wits—and go away as early as we please. All to be over by half-past ten, at any rate, in order not to interfere with early rising next morning. I have found nothing, not even guinea lessons from eminent masters, more conducive to family improvement in music than this way of enjoying society, since one is obliged to have a few new things always at one's fingers' ends ready to perform; and in homely little parties like these, young girls "not yet out" may pass many pleasant evenings under their mother's wing, with real advantage to themselves.
The simpler the dress worn by the ladies who are "at home," the better the taste shown. Here again we may learn much from the French, who perfectly understand the art of demi-toilette.
Our theatres and concert-rooms are filled night after night by people who pay to be entertained. They never take food in their pockets, and the passing to and fro of sellers of refreshment is felt to be a nuisance. Why should people who have dined late be supposed to want supper, unless they have been dancing, or are sitting up later than is good for them? And the proof that they do not want it is in the very little they take of it, except some stout elderly ladies who prepared for it before they came, and who consequently have felt too low all the evening to be moderately cheerful.
People who dine early always make a solid tea about six o'clock. It is only the bourgeois class who love their hot suppers, and the taste stamps them.
How can we use hospitality one towards another without grudging, when, instead of being able to rejoice that a friend is sharing our daily pursuits and repasts, we must spend a fortune in jellies, pastry, and unwholesome sweets, whenever we invite our friends inside our doors; when we are compelled to import from the confectioner piles of plates, dishes, and hired cutlery, turn our houses into scenes of confusion for a week, and feed our children upon what have been aptly called "brass knockers," the remains of the feast? No wonder most of us dread giving a party! No; I would have special banquets on special occasions—Christmas, comings of age, marriages, silver, and above all golden, weddings, welcomes from abroad, and other joyful days. But our enjoyment of society need not be limited to such observances as these, but rather the crop of friendship increased by attentive cultivation.
"Has friendship increased?" asks wise Sir Arthur Helps. "Anxious as I am to show the uniformity of human life, I should say that this, one of the greatest soothers of human misery, has decreased."
Lady Morgan, an experienced leader of society, used to tell me, "My dear, give them plenty of wax-candles and people will enjoy themselves;" to which I add, manage the music well, and teach your daughters to help you, and cultivate musical young men, keeping, however, the law in your own hands.
Almost the only art we have not spoiled by machinery is music—for we do not consider the barrel-organ in the light of music.
Perhaps it is because in this art we had scope for invention, not finding a good thing ready made to our hands by the Greeks, which we might imitate mechanically, and become slaves of its tradition. Possibly it is a blessing in disguise that the music of the ancients is lost to us, for having no models we have no fetters.