But since unlooked-for visitors will occasionally drop in upon the best regulated families, make it your study to receive them gracefully and cordially. If they care enough for you to turn aside from their regular route to tarry a day, or night, or week with you, it would be churlish not to show appreciation of the favor in which you are held. Make them welcome to the best you can offer at so short a notice, and let no preoccupied air or troubled smile bear token to your perturbation—if you are perturbed. If you respect yourself and your husband, the appointments of your table will never put you to the blush. John, who buys the silver, glass, china, and napery, is entitled to the every-day use of the best. You may have—I hope this is so—a holiday set of each, put away beyond the reach of hourly accidents; but if this is fit for the use of a lord, do not make John eat three hundred and sixty days in the year from such ware as would suit a ditcher’s cottage. If your children never see bright silver unless when “there is company,” you cannot wonder, although you will be mortified, at their making looking-glasses of the bowls of the spoons, and handling the forks awkwardly. Early impress upon them that what is nice enough for Papa, is nice enough for the President. I have noticed that where there is a wide difference between family and company table furniture, there usually exists a corresponding disparity between every-day and company manners.
Especially, let your welcome be ready and hearty when your husband brings home an unexpected guest. Take care he understands clearly that this is his prerogative: that the rules by which you would govern the visits of your own sex are not applicable to his. Men rarely set seasons for their visits. They snatch an hour or two with an old chum or new friend out of the hurry of business life, as one stoops to pluck a stray violet from a dusty roadside. John must take his chances when he can get them. If he can walk home, arm in arm, with the school-fellow he has not seen before in ten years, not only fearlessly, but gladly, anticipatory of your pleasure at the sight of his; if, when the stranger is presented to you, you receive him as your friend because he is your husband’s, and seat him to a family dinner, plain, but nicely served, and eaten in cheerfulness of heart; if the children are well-behaved, and your attire that of a lady who has not lost the desire to look her best in her husband’s eyes—you have added to the links of steel that knit your husband’s heart to you; increased his affectionate admiration for the best little woman in the world. Many a man has been driven to entertain his friends at hotels and club-rooms, because he dared not take them home without permission from the presiding officer of his household. The majority of healthy men have good appetites and are not disposed to be critical of an unpretending bill of fare. The chance guest of this sex is generally an agreeable addition to the family group, instead of de trop—always supposing him to be John’s friend.
As to party and dinner-giving, your safest rule is to obey the usage of the community in which you live in minor points, letting common sense and your means guide you in essentials. Be chary of undertaking what you cannot carry through successfully. Pretension is the ruin of more entertainments than ignorance or lack of money. If you know how to give a large evening party (and think it a pleasant and remunerative investment of time and several hundred dollars)—if you understand the machinery of a handsome dinner-party, and can afford these luxuries, go forward bravely to success. But creep before you walk. Study established customs in the best managed houses you visit; take counsel with experienced friends; now and then make modest essays on your own responsibility, and, insensibly, these crumbs of wisdom will form into a comely loaf. There is no surer de-appetizer—to coin a word—to guests than a heated, over-fatigued, anxious hostess, who betrays her inexperience by nervous glances, abstraction in conversation, and, worst of all, by apologies.
A few general observations are all I purpose to offer as hints of a foundation upon which to build your plans for “company-giving.” Have an abundance of clean plates, silver, knives, &c., laid in order in a convenient place,—such as an ante-room, or dining-room pantry,—those designed for each course, if your entertainment is a dinner, upon a shelf or stand by themselves, and make your waiters understand distinctly in advance in what order these are to be brought on.
Soup should be sent up accompanied only by bread, and such sauce as may be fashionable or suitable. Before dinner is served, however, snatch a moment, if possible, to inspect the table in person, or instruct a trustworthy factotum to see that everything is in place, the water in the goblets, a slice of bread laid upon a folded napkin at each plate, &c. Unless you have trained, professional waiters, this is a wise precaution. If it is a gentleman’s dinner, you can see to it for yourself, since you will not be obliged to appear in the parlor until a few minutes before they are summoned to the dining-room. If there are ladies in the company, you must not leave them.
To return, then, to our soup: It is not customary to offer a second plateful to a guest. When the table is cleared, the fish should come in, with potatoes—no other vegetable, unless it be stewed tomatoes. After a thorough change of plates, &c., come the substantials. If possible, the carving of game and other meats is done before they are brought in. One or more vegetables are passed with each meat course. Salad is a course of itself, unless when it accompanies chicken or pigeon. If wine be used, it is introduced after the fish. Pastry is the first relay of dessert, and puddings may be served from the other end of the table. Next appear creams, jellies, charlotte-russes, cakes, and the like; then fruit and nuts; lastly, coffee, often accompanied with crackers and cheese. Wine, of course, goes around during the dessert—if it flows at all.
Evening parties are less troublesome to a housekeeper, because less ceremonious than dinners. If you can afford it, the easiest way to give a large one is to put the whole business into the hands of the profession, by intrusting your order, not only for supper, but waiters and china, to a competent confectioner. But a social standing supper of oysters, chicken-salad, sandwiches, coffee, ice-cream, jellies, and cake, is not a formidable undertaking when you have had a little practice, especially if your own, or John’s mother, or the nice, neighborly matron over the way will assist you by her advice and presence. The “Ladies’ Lunch” and afternoon “Kettle-Drum” are social and graceful “modern improvements.”
We make this matter of company too hard a business in America; are too apt to treat our friends as the Strasburgers do their geese; shut them up in overheated quarters, and stuff them to repletion. Our rooms would be better for more air, our guests happier had they more liberty, and our hostess would be prettier and more sprightly were she not overworked before the arrivals begin, and full of trepidation after they come,—a woman cumbered with many thoughts of serving, while she is supposed to be enjoying the society of her chosen associates. It is so well understood that company is weariness, that inquiries as to how the principal agent in bringing about an assembly has “borne it,” have passed into a custom. The tender sympathies manifested in such queries, the martyr-like air with which they are answered, cannot fail to bring to the satirical mind the Chinaman’s comment upon the British officers’ dancing on shipboard in warm weather.
“Why you no make your servants do so hard work, and you look at dem?”
We pervert the very name and meaning of hospitality when we pinch our families, wear away our patience, and waste our nervous forces with our husbands’ money in getting up to order expensive entertainments for comparative strangers, whose utmost acknowledgment of our efforts in their behalf will consist in an invitation, a year hence it may be, to a party constructed on the same plan, managed a little better or a little worse than ours. This is not hospitality without grudging, but a vulgar system of barter and gluttony more worthy of Abyssinians than Christian gentlefolk.