"To invite a friend to dinner," says Brillat Savarin, "is to become responsible for his happiness so long as he is under your roof." Again:—"He who receives friends at his table, without having bestowed his personal supervision upon the repast placed before them, is unworthy to have friends."
A dinner, to be excellent, need not consist of a great variety of dishes; but everything should be of the best, and the cookery should be perfect. That which should be cool should be cool as ice; that which should be hot should be smoking; the attendance should be rapid and noiseless; the guests well assorted; the wines of the best quality; the host attentive and courteous; the room well lighted; and the time punctual.
Every dinner should begin with soup, be followed by fish, and include some kind of game. "The soup is to the dinner," we are told by Grisnod de la Regnière, "what the portico is to a building, or the overture to an opera."
To this aphorism we may be permitted to add that a chasse of cognac or curaçoa at the close of the dinner is like the epilogue at the end of a comedy.
One more quotation and we have done:—"To perform faultlessly the honours of the table is one of the most difficult things in society. It might indeed he asserted without much fear of contradiction, that no man has as yet ever reached exact propriety in his office as host, or has hit the mean between exerting himself too much and too little. His great business is to put every one entirely at his ease, to gratify all his desires, and make him, in a word, absolutely contented with men and things. To accomplish this, he must have the genius of tact to perceive, and the genius of finesse to execute; ease and frankness of manner; a knowledge of the world that nothing can surprise; a calmness of temper that nothing can disturb; and a kindness of disposition that can never be exhausted. When he receives others he must be content to forget himself; he must relinquish all desire to shine, and even all attempts to please his guests by conversation, and rather do all in his power to let them please one another. He behaves to them without agitation, without affectation; he pays attention without an air of protection; he encourages the timid, draws out the silent, and directs conversation without sustaining it himself. He who does not do all this is wanting in his duty as host—he who does, is more than mortal."
In conclusion, we may observe that to sit long in the dining-room after the ladies have retired is to pay a bad compliment to the hostess and her fair visitors; and that it is a still worse tribute to rejoin them with a flushed face and impaired powers of thought. A refined gentleman is always temperate.
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XI.—THE BALL-ROOM.
Invitations to a ball are issued at least ten days in advance; and this term is sometimes, in the height of the season, extended to three weeks, or even a month.
An invitation should be accepted or declined within a day or two of its reception.