Fifteen minutes before the dinner, go into the pantry, shut the door, and fill the sink with hot water, so that in case you need to rinse anything off during the dinner you can do it without noise. Remember that every sound can be heard in the dining-room, so be very careful not to make the slightest noise in handling the silver and china and to move the dumb waiter up and down very quietly and slowly. Be ready, when the waitress hands you the plates that have been used, to hand her back instantly the fresh plates for the next course till all are handed out, and to ring one bell to signal the cook the first time the waitress makes a sign to you to do it, and two bells the second time she gives you this sign. When you have handed all the plates out for a course, give out the main dish for that course at once, handing immediately afterwards the dishes that go with the course; as, for example, fresh hot plates first, then the roast, followed quickly with the two vegetables, always putting on each platter and in the vegetable dishes the necessary spoons, forks, or knives. Remember that hot dishes must have warm plates and cold dishes cold ones.
As soon as you receive from the waitresses the platters and dishes of any finished course, send them down to the kitchen and occupy any time that you have, while a course is going on in the dining-room, in piling plates out of the way in order not to have them litter up the pantry where you will need all the space you can get during the dinner. Don’t let this or anything else interfere with handing a course promptly. When the coffee comes up from the kitchen, fill all the cups on the two trays and hand them to the waitresses.[[4]]
[4]. It is best to have the soup sent from the kitchen to the pantry in a pitcher, as it keeps hotter and can be more quickly poured into plates.
I am afraid, Penelope, that you will think there is a great deal of detail in these dinner directions, but my own dislike of detail is just what leads me to write it out so fully for you, so that you can have it on paper, in your housekeeping book, instead of keeping it in your mind. My experience, too, is that you cannot be too explicit when instructing servants to whom you are not accustomed, and these very details, once written out and left for them to consult, will enable you to make all your preparations for other dinners with ease before the day and leave you on that day free to pay your visits and lead your normal life, only coming in toward the end of the afternoon to make a final inspection to see that everything is right. You can see how confident I am that your aunt, once having felt the pleasure of opening her house again, will want to do it frequently.
What a variety of subjects we have been over together in these letters! I can’t imagine what next you can ask me unless it be advice on the management of a young and attractive husband, and happily I shall escape that by flight! Don’t imagine, Penelope, dear, that I think I have smoothed out the whole domestic situation for you, for I cannot do much more than try to give you principles to work on, hoping that you and your bright young women friends will discuss it rationally together in order that you may meet the problem more wisely and broadly and in a more human spirit than our generation has done. The world moves and we must move along with it, but we can have no better rule to go by in facing any conditions than the one given us over nineteen hundred years ago, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.”
Au revoir, dear; think of my actually being able to go off on a pleasure trip! You can imagine how full of excitement I am over it, for I couldn’t have done this a year ago, and couldn’t now if it weren’t for my delightful relatives who are making everything so smooth and easy for me.
Au revoir, love to Tom and success to that exciting dinner. I shall hope to hear all about it when I come back.
Very affectionately yours,
Jane Prince.