In recent years it has become permissible for the woman who wishes to give a large entertainment to do it at a club-house or in a hotel ballroom hired for the occasion. Frequently the room is made more attractive by the addition of rugs and other furnishings from the home of the hostess. While the hired hall is a convenience, and to the woman living in an apartment a necessity for receptions and dances, it can never take in elegance and the spirit of true hospitality the place of entertaining under one’s roof. When one sees women of wealth and leisure resort to it—“Because it saves bother, you know”—one feels that these women must regard the events of social life as disagreeable duties rather than delightful opportunities.
With us “Bonnets before six but not after” is the rule, and this is also the custom in England. But at formal receptions in the evening in France the hat is retained. The combination of picture-hat and low-cut gown is particularly attractive and one wishes that American women would occasionally, at least, copy it.
HAVE PLENTY OF CHAIRS
If you give a musicale be sure you provide plenty of chairs. To do this one must, unfortunately, rent folding chairs and these always have a slight funereal aspect. But that is better than compelling people to stand. One wonders why women of large means, who entertain on a corresponding scale, do not buy several dozen of these chairs and stain them dark. A woman who spoke of a certain house as hospitable in appearance, being asked what she meant, answered, “There are so many places in it to sit.”
A woman who is not willing to take the trouble to be a hostess should not ask people to her house. In order to make even a simple entertainment a success it is necessary that there should be a directing though quiet influence. Some women are too strenuous as hostesses, others are merely guests at their own parties. Here as elsewhere there is a medium course that is most to be desired.
THE IDEAL SOCIETY
The spirit of an ideal society has been well expressed by Amiel in his famous Journal: “In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosia and concerned themselves with nothing but the loftiest interests. Anxiety, need, passion, have no existence. All realism is suppressed as brutal. In a word, what we call ‘society’ proceeds for the moment on the flattering illusory assumption that it is moving in an ethereal atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. All vehemence, all natural expression, all real suffering, all careless familiarity, or any frank sign of passion, are startling and distasteful in this delicate milieu; they at once destroy the common work, the cloud palace, the magical architectural whole, which has been raised by the general consent and effort. It is like the sharp cock-crow which breaks the spell of all enchantments, and puts the fairies to flight. These select gatherings produce, without knowing it, a sort of concert for eyes and ears, an improvised work of art. By the instinctive collaboration of everybody concerned, intellect and taste hold festival, and the associations of reality are exchanged for the associations of imagination. So understood, society is a form of poetry; the cultivated classes deliberately recompose the idyll of the past and the buried world of Astrea. Paradox or no, I believe that these fugitive attempts to reconstruct a dream whose only end is beauty represent confused reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human heart, or rather aspirations toward a harmony of things which every-day reality denies to us, and of which art alone gives us a glimpse.”
A PERFECT SOCIAL GROUP
Speaking of a certain soirée, the same writer emphasizes the fact that the most beautiful social groups are not confined to any one age or sex. “About thirty people representing our best society were there, a happy mixture of sexes and ages. There were gray heads, young girls, bright faces—the whole framed in some Aubusson tapestries which made a charming background, and gave a soft air of distances to the brilliantly-dressed groups.”