[C] Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First Marquess of Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence. By Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1875.
[D] Brigadier-general Mostyn.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
SOCIETY IN PARIS.
If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance. Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our grand entertainments two great rushes take place—the one toward the dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and a snare.
In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments on a larger scale, such as soirées musicales, evening receptions, etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed entirely of cold dishes—chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a Parisian open his eyes—ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia banquet.
It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great encouragement to the givers of soirées in general. With us, to entertain as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week, when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she organizes a little soirée twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited. The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford to give her friends pâté de foie gras and hothouse strawberries, and they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.
The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses, which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to pass the remainder of the evening—a practice which proves that in Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in" after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not, after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on the face of the earth in all respects. That pleasant willingness to accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of American society would do well to study after the example set by their Parisian brethren.