The Art of Entertaining

by M. E. W. Sherwood

Our puddings are like our Western scenery, heavy but magnificent. Our ices have reached, under our foreign imported artists, the greatest perfection. Our fruit is abundant and highly flavoured. We have not yet perhaps known how to draw the line as to desserts. The great too much prevails.

Do we not make our dinners too long and too heavy? How great an artist would he be who should so graduate a dinner that there would be no to-morrow in it! We eat more like Heliogabalus than like that gourmet who took the beccafico out of the olive which had been hidden in the pigeon, which had in its turn been warmed in the chicken, which was cooked in the ox, which was roasted whole for the birthday of a king. The gourmet discarded the rest, but ate the beccafico.

The first duty of a guest who is asked to one of these dinners is to be punctual. Who wishes to sit next to Mr. Many-Courses, when he has been kept waiting for his dinner? Imagine the feelings of an amiable host and hostess who, after taking the trouble to get up an excellent dinner, feel that it is being spoiled by the tardiness of one guest! They are nervously watching Mr. Many-Courses, for hungry animals are frequently snappish, and sometimes dangerous.

The hostess who knows how to invite her guests and to seat them afterwards is a power in the State. She helps to refine, elevate, and purify our great American conglomerate. She has not the Englishman's Bible, "The Peerage," to help her seat her guests; she must trust to her own intelligence to do that. Our great American conglomerate repels all idea of rank, or the precedence idea, which is so well understood in England.

Hereditary distinction we have not, for although there are some families which can claim a grandfather, they are few. A grandfather is of little importance to the men who make themselves. Aristocracy in America is one of talent or money.

Even those more choice intelligences, which in older countries are put on glass pedestals, are not so elevated here as to excite jealousy. We all adore the good diner-out, but somebody would be jealous if he had always the best seat. Therefore the hostess has to contend with much that is puzzling in the seating of her guests; but if she says to herself, "I will place those people near each other who are sympathetic," she will govern her festive board with the intelligence of Elizabeth, and the generosity of Queen Margharita.

She must avoid too many highly scented flowers. People are sometimes weary of the "rapture of roses." Horace says: "Avoid, at an agreeable entertainment, discordant music, and muddy perfume, and poppies mixed with Sardinian honey; they give offence." Which is only another way of saying that some music may be too heavy, and the perfume of flowers too strong.

Remember, young hostess, or old hostess, that your dinner is to be made up of people who have to sit two hours chatting with each other, and that this is of itself a severe ordeal of patience.

Good breeding is said to be the apotheosis of self-restraint, and so is good feeding. Good breeding puts nature under restraint, controls the temper, and refines the speech. Good feeding, unless it is as well governed as it should be, inflames the nose and the temper, and enlarges the girth most unbecomingly. Good breeding is the guardian angel of a woman. Good feeding, that is, conscientious dining, must be the patron saint of a man! A truly well bred and well fed man is quiet in dress, does not talk slang, is not prosy, is never unbecomingly silent, nor is he too garrulous. He is always respectful to everybody, kind to the weak, helpful to the feeble. He may not be an especially lofty character, but good feeding inducts him into the character and duties of a gentleman. He simulates a virtue if he has it not, especially after dinner. Noblesse oblige is his motto, and he feels what is due to himself.

Can we be a thorough-bred, or a thorough-fed, all by ourselves? It is easy enough to learn when and where to leave a card, how to behave at a dinner, how to use a fork, how to receive and how to drop an acquaintance; but what a varied education is that which leads up to good feeding, to becoming a conscientious diner. It is not given to every one, this lofty grace.