The Art of Entertaining

by M. E. W. Sherwood

In this respect for the best part of us, our brains, the London dinner-giver has shown his thousand years of civilization; he is playing the harp like a master.

To return for a moment to the criticism of Justin McCarthy. He says in it, that while he admired the American taste in dress, he could not admire a certain confusion of mind, by which an otherwise kindly and well-informed American woman misjudged a person who preferred to go plain, or shabby, if you will. In fact, he stood up for the right which every English woman will claim as her own, "to be dowdy," if she will. The Queen has taught her this. While the Princess of Wales, the younger daughters of the Queen, and much of the fashion of London dresses itself in Paris, and is consequently very smart, there is still a class who look down on clothes and consider them a small matter. Perhaps that is the reason why such stringent regulations are laid down for the court dress.

Magnificent, stately, and well-ordered, are the dinners of London,—a countess at the head of the table, a footman behind each chair, in great houses a very fine dinner, and splendid pieces of plate, some old china, pictures on the wall from the pencils of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua. Sweet, low-voiced, and well-bred are the women, with beautiful necks, and shoulders, and fine heads. The men are they who are doing the work of the world in the House of Lords, the House of Commons, in India, in Egypt, in the Soudan; there is a multiplicity of topics of conversation. No English stiffness exists at the dinner, and there is always present some literary man or woman, some famous artist as the pièce de resistance; such are the dinners of London.

The luncheons are simpler, and here one is sure to meet men advanced in thought, and women of ideas, and there is no question as to the rent-roll. Wealth has absolutely nothing to do with society success in London.

We might mention many a literary and artistic salon, over which charming and fascinating, young and fashionable women preside with the mingled grace, which adds a beauty and a meaning to Emerson's famous mot that "fashion is funded politeness." We might mention many a literary or artistic man or woman of London, who is the favoured friend of these great ladies, who would, if an American, never be asked to a luncheon at Newport, or admitted to a ball at Delmonico's, because he was not fashionable. It would not occur to the gay entertainers to think that such a person would be desirable.

Paris, as the land of the mot and the epigram, has always had a great attraction for literary people. Carlyle said of England that it was composed of sixty millions of people, mostly fools. His own experience as a favoured guest at Lady Ashburton's, and other great houses, ought to have modified his decision. In America, the Carlyles would have been called "queer," and probably left out. In England, it is a recommendation to be "queer," original, thoughtful. In that bubble which rises to the top, to which Mr. McAllister has given the name "the four hundred," it is not a recommendation to be queer, original, or thoughtful.

That some men and women of genius have commanded success in society only proves the rule; that some people of fashion have become writers, and painters, and poets, and have still kept their foothold, is only the exception.

Charles Astor Bristed, born to fortune and fashion, declared that what he gained in prestige in England by becoming an author, he lost in America. What woman of fashion goes out of her way to find the man of letters who writes the striking editorials in a morning paper in New York? In London, a dozen coroneted notes await such a lucky fellow. Perhaps the most curious instance of the awkward handling of that rare and valuable instrument, which we call the art of entertaining in America, is the deliberate ignoring of the best element of a dinner party,—the hitherto unknown, or the well-known man of brains. This distinguishes our entertaining from that of foreigners.

The best society we have in America is that at Washington; the President's house is the palace. He and his ministers, and the judges of the Supreme Court, the officers of the army and navy, are our aristocracy,—a simple, unpretending one, but as real in its social laws and organization as any in the world. And there intellect reigns. The dinners at Washington, having a kind of precedence, reinforced by intelligence, independent of wealth, and regardless of the arbitrary rules of a self-elected leadership, are the most agreeable in this country, if not in the world. We have said there are many sorts of Paris, and so there are many sorts of America. It must not be supposed that clever people do not get together, and that there are not dinners of the brightest and the best. Outside the "four hundred" there is a group of fifty thousand or more, who have travelled, thought, and read, experienced, and learned how to give a good dinner,—a witty dinner.

I use the term "four hundred" as a convenient alias for that for which Americans have no other name; that is, the particular reigning set in every city, every small village. In Paris, republic as it is, there is still a very decided aristocracy. There is the Duchesse Rochefaucauld Bisaccia, and the eccentric Duchesse d'Uzes, and so on, who are decidedly the four hundred. There are the very wealthy Jews, like the Rothschilds, who are much to be commended for their recognition of the supremacy of art and letters. They have become the protectors of these classes commercially, and their intelligent wives have made their salons delightful, by bringing in men of culture and talent. On Sundays the Comtesse Potocka, who wears the best pearls in Paris, tries to revive the traditions of the Hotel Rambouillet, in her beautiful hôtel in the Avenue Friedland. Her guests are De Maupassant, Ratisbonne, Coquelin, the painter Bérand, and other men of wit. The Baroness de Poilly has a tendency to refine Bohemianism and is an indefatigable pleasure seeker. The only people she will not receive are the financiers and the heavy-witted. The Comtesse de Beaumont says that the key to her house is "wit and intellect without regard to party, caste, or school." Carolus Duran, Alphonse Daudet, the painters, whoever is at the head of music, literature, or the dramatic art, is welcomed there.