“Are you the lady who has the famous tablecloth?”
I own I am, and try to forget the fact that I ever wrote a book.
And—yes, that is the point—they have all been signed at my own table and I have embroidered them myself.
How did a “worker” manage to continue to give little dinners, may be asked by other workers who find hospitality a difficult task rather than a pleasure. Well, with a little forethought and care it can be done.
During all those thirteen years I don’t suppose I bought a first-class ticket in Britain thirteen times. That was one of my many economies, enabling me to save a few pounds here and there, just as bus fares saved cab fares, and with these little savings I could enjoy the privilege of having friends to tea or dinner. We appreciate most what has caused us a little self-sacrifice, and I certainly appreciate my friends far more than any personal inconvenience, besides I had a home well filled with linen, glass, china, and silver.
It is snobbish to offer what we can’t afford, and honest to give what we can. Anyone can open a restaurant, and always have it filled with diners, but it requires a little personality to make and keep a home. When a woman is poor and friends rally round, she has the intense joy of knowing it is for herself they come and not for what she can lavish on her guests. The man or woman who only comes to one’s house to be fed is no friend, merely a sponger on foolish good-nature.
How hateful it is of people to be late. What a lot of temper and time is wasted. Surely unpunctuality is a crime. People with nothing to do seem to make a cult of being behind time, just as busy persons consider punctuality a god. The folk, who sail into a dinner-party twenty minutes after they were invited, ought to find their hosts at the first entrée. One of the most beautiful and charming women who ever came to London, the wife of a diplomat, took the town by storm; she was invited everywhere, but by the end of the season her reign had ceased, and why?
“Because,” explained a man well known for hospitality, “she has spoilt more dinners in London during the last three months than anyone I know. Personally, I shall never ask her inside my door again.”
The punctuality of kings is proverbial. So is their punctilious way of answering invitations, making calls, and keeping up la politesse of Society. ’Tis vulgar to be late, bourgeois not to answer invitations by return of post, and casual to omit to leave a card when there is not time for a visit.
Some people seem too busy to think and too indifferent to care. Marcus Aurelius maintained that life was not theory, but action. What a pity we don’t have a little more action in the realms of politeness and consideration.