Manners and Social Usages

by M. E. W. Sherwood

A matine in America means an afternoon performance at the theatre of a play or opera. In Europe it has a wider significance, any social gathering before dinner in France being called a matine, as any party after dinner is called a soire.

The improper application of another foreign word was strikingly manifested in the old fashion of calling the President's evening receptions levees. The term "levee," as originally used, meant literally a king's getting up. When he arose, and while he was dressing, such of his courtiers as were privileged to approach him at this hour gathered in an anteroom-waiting to assist at his toilet, to wish him good morning, or perhaps prefer a request. In time this morning gathering grew to be an important court ceremonial, and some one ignorant of the meaning of the word named President Jackson's evening receptions "the President's levees." So with the word matine. First used to indicate a day reception at court, it has now grown to mean a day performance at a theatre. Sometimes a lady, bolder than her neighbors, issues an invitation for "a matine dansante," or "a matine musicale," but this descriptive style is not common.

There are many advantages in a morning party. It affords to ladies who do not go to evening receptions the pleasure of meeting informally, and is also a well-chosen occasion for introducing a new pianist or singer.

For a busy woman of fashion nothing can be more conveniently timed than a matine, which begins at two and ends at four or half past. It does not interfere with a five-o'clock tea or a drive in the park, nor unfit her for a dinner or an evening entertainment. Two o'clock is also a very good hour for a large and informal general lunch, if a lady wishes to avoid the expense, formality, and trouble of a "sit-down" lunch.

While the busy ladies can go to a matine, the busy gentleman cannot; and as men of leisure in America are few, a morning entertainment at a theatre or in society is almost always an assemblage of women. To avoid this inequality of sex, many ladies have their _matine_s on some one of the national holidays—Washington's Birthday, Thanksgiving, or Decoration-day. On these occasions a matine, even in busy New York, is well attended by gentlemen.

When, as sometimes happens, a prince, a duke, an archbishop, an author of celebrity, a Tom Hughes, a Lord Houghton, a Dean Stanley, or some descendant of our French allies at Yorktown, comes on a visit to our country, one of the most satisfactory forms of entertainment that we can offer to him is a morning reception. At an informal matine we may bring to meet him such authors, artists, clergymen, lawyers, editors, statesmen, rich and public-spirited citizens, and beautiful and cultivated women of society, as we may be fortunate enough to know.

The primary business of society is to bring together the various elements of which it is made up—its strongest motive should be to lighten up the momentous business of life by an easy and friendly intercourse and interchange of ideas.

But if we hope to bring about us men of mind and distinction, our object must be not only to be amused but to amuse.

To persuade those elderly men who are maintaining the great American name at its present high place in the Pantheon of nations to spend a couple of hours at a matine, we must offer some tempting bait as an equivalent. A lady who entertained Dean Stanley said that she particularly enjoyed her own matine given for him, because through his name she for the first time induced the distinguished clergy of New York to come to her house.

Such men are not tempted by the frivolities of a fashionable social life that lives by its vanity, its excitement, its rivalry and flirtation. Not that all fashionable society is open to such reproach, but its tendency is to lightness and emptiness; and we rarely find really valuable men who seek it. Therefore a lady who would make her house attractive to the best society must offer it something higher than that to which we may give the generic title fashion. Dress, music, dancing, supper, are delightful accessories-they are ornaments and stimulants, not requisites. For a good society we need men and women who are "good company," as they say in England—men and women who can talk. Nor is the advantage all on one side. The free play of brain, taste, and feeling is a most important refreshment to a man who works hard, whether in the pulpit or in Wall Street, in the editorial chair or at the dull grind of authorship. The painter should wash his brushes and strive for some intercourse of abiding value with those whose lives differ from his own. The woman who works should also look upon the divertissements of society as needed recreation, fruitful, may be, of the best culture.