Mrs. Somerville
Requests the pleasure of
Mrs. Montgomery's
Company at lunch on Thursday, 15th,
at 1 o'clock.
R. S. V. P.
This should be answered at once, and the whole engagement treated with the gravity of a dinner engagement.
These lunch-parties are very convenient for ladies who, from illness or indisposition to society, cannot go out in the evening. It is also very convenient if the lady of the house has a husband who does not like society and who finds a dinner-party a bore.
The usual custom is for ladies to dress in dark street dresses, and their very best. That with an American lady means much, for an American husband stops at no expense. Worth says that American women are the best customers he has,—far better than queens. The latter ask the price, and occasionally haggle; American women may ask the price, but the order is, the very best you can do.
Luncheons are very fashionable in England, especially on Sunday. These lunches, although luxurious, are by no means the costly spreads which American women indulge in. They are attended by gentlemen as well as ladies, for in a land where a man does not go to the House of Commons until five in the afternoon he may well lunch with his family. What time did our forefathers lunch? In the reign of Francis the First the polite French rose at five, dined at nine, supped at five, and went to bed at nine. Froissart speaks of "waiting upon the Duke of Lancaster at five in the afternoon after he had supped." If our ancestors dined at nine, when did they lunch?
After some centuries the dinner hour grew to be ten in the morning, by which time they had besieged a town and burned up a dozen heretics, probably to give them a good appetite, a sort of avant goût. The later hours now in vogue did not prevail until after the Restoration.
Lunch has remained fastened at one o'clock, for a number of years at least. In England, curiously enough, they give you no napkins at this meal, which certainly requires them.
A hunt breakfast in America is, of course, a hearty meal, to which the men and women are asked who have an idea of riding to hounds. It is usually served at little tables, and the meal begins with hot bouillon. It is a heartier meal than a lady's lunch, and as luxurious as the hostess pleases; but it does not wind up with ices and fruits, although it may begin with an orange. Much more wine is drunk than at a lady's lunch, and yet some hunters prefer to begin the day with tea only. Everything should be offered, and what is not liked can be refused.
"What is hit, is History,