Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗

even the flannel

shirt has been copied. Of course the baptismal dish and silver cup

are easily imitated.

 

Perfumery is introduced in little cut-glass bottles, in leaden tubes

like paint tubes, in perfumed artificial flowers, in sachets of

powder, and in the handles of fans.

 

Boxes of satinwood, small wood covers for music and blotting cases,

painted by hand, are rather pretty favors. The plain boxes and book

covers can be bought and ornamented by the young artists of the

family. Nothing is prettier than an owl sitting on an ivy vine for

one of these. The owl, indeed, plays a very conspicuous part at the

modern dinner-table and luncheon. His power of looking wise and

being foolish at the same time fits him for modern society. He

enters it as a pepper-caster, a feathered bonbonniere, a pickle-holder (in china), and is drawn, painted, and photographed in every

style. A pun is made on his name: “Should owled acquaintance be

forgot?” etc. He is a favorite in jewellery, and is often carved in

jade. Indeed, the owl is having his day, having had the night always

to himself.

 

The squirrel, the dog, “the frog that would a-wooing go,” the white

duck, the pig, and the mouse, are all represented in china, and in

the various silks and gauzes of French taste, or in their native

skins, or in any of the disguises that people may fancy. Bears with

ragged staffs stand guard over a plate of modern faience, as they do

over the gates of Warwick Castle. Cats mewing, catching mice,

playing on the Jews-harp, elephants full of choicest confectionery,

lions and tigers with chocolate insides, and even the marked face

and long hair of Oscar Wilde, the last holding within its ample

cranium caraway-seeds instead of brains, played their part as

favors.

 

The green enamelled dragon-fly, grasshoppers and beetles, flies and

wasps, moths and butterflies, bright-tinted mandarin ducks,

peacocks, and ostriches, tortoises cut in pebbles or made of

pasteboard, shrimps and crabs, do all coldly furnish forth the

lunch-table as favors and bonbonnieres. Then come plaster or

pasteboard gondolas, skiffs, wherries, steamships, and ferry-boats,

all made with wondrous skill and freighted with caramels. Imitation

rackets, battledoor and shuttlecock, hoops and sticks, castanets,

cup and ball, tambourines, guitars, violins, hand-organs, banjos,

and drums, all have their little day as fashionable favors.

 

Little statuettes of Kate Greenaway’s quaint children now appear as

favors, and are very charming. Nor is that “flexible curtain,” the

fan, left out. Those of paper, pretty but not expensive, are very

common favors. But the opulent offer pretty satin fans painted with

the recipient’s monogram, or else a fan which will match flowers and

dress. Fans of lace, and of tortoise-shell and carved ivory and

sandal-wood, are sometimes presented, but they are too ostentatious.

Let us say to the givers of feasts, be not too magnificent, but if

you give a fan, give one that is good for something, not a thing

which breaks with the “first fall.”

 

A very pretty set of favors, called “fairies,” are little groups of

children painted on muslin, with a background of ribbon. The muslin

is so thin that the children seem floating on air. The lady’s name

is also painted on the ribbon.

 

We find that favors for gentlemen, such as sunflowers, pin-cushions,

small purses, scarf-pins, and sleeve-buttons, are more useful than

those bestowed upon ladies, but not so ornamental.

 

Very pretty baskets, called huits (the baskets used by the vine-growers to carry earth for the roots of the vines), are made of

straw ornamented with artificial flowers and grasses, and filled

with bonbons.

 

Little Leghorn hats trimmed with pompons of muslin, blue, pink, or

white, are filled with natural flowers and hung on the arm. These

are a lovely variation.

 

Fruits—the apple, pear, orange, and plum, delightfully realistic—

are made of composition, and open to disclose most unexpected seeds.

 

At trowel, a knife, fork, and spoon, of artistically painted wood,

and a pair of oars, all claim a passing notice as artistic

novelties.

 

Bags of plush, and silk embroidered with daisies, are very handsome

and expensive favors; heavily trimmed with lace, they cost four

dollars apiece, but are sold a little cheaper by the dozen. Blue

sashes, with flowers painted on paper (and attached to the sash a

paper on which may be written the menu), cost eighteen dollars a

dozen. A dish of snails, fearfully realistic, can be bought for one

dollar a plate, fruits for eighteen dollars a dozen, and fans

anywhere from twelve up to a hundred dollars a dozen.

 

A thousand dollars is not an unusual price for a luncheon, including

flowers and favors, for eighteen to twenty-four guests. Indeed, a

luncheon was given last winter for which the hostess offered a prize

for copies in miniature of the musical instruments used in

“Patience.” They were furnished to her for three hundred dollars.

The names of these now almost obsolete instruments were rappaka,

tibia, archlute, tambour, kiffar, quinteme, rebel, tuckin,

archviola, lyre, serpentine, chluy, viola da gamba, balalaika, gong,

ravanastron, monochord, shopkar. The “archlute” is the mandolin.

They represented all countries, and were delicate specimens of toy

handiwork.

 

We have not entered into the vast field of glass, china, porcelain,

cloisonn�, Dresden, faience jugs, boxes, plates, bottles, and

vases, which are all used as favors. Indeed, it would be impossible

to describe half of the fancies which minister to modern

extravagance. The bonbonniere can cost anything, from five to five

hundred dollars; fifty dollars for a satin box filled with candy is

not an uncommon price. Sometimes, when the box is of oxidized

silver—a quaint copy of the antique from Benvenuto Cellini—this

price is not too much; but when it is a thing which tarnishes in a

month, it seems ridiculously extravagant.

 

We have seen very pretty and artistic cheap favors. Reticules made

of bright cotton, or silk handkerchiefs with borders; cards painted

by the artists of the family; palm-leaf fans covered with real

flowers, or painted with imitation ones; sunflowers made of

pasteboard, with portfolios behind them; pretty little parasols of

flowers; Little Red Riding-hood, officiating as a receptacle for

stray pennies; Japanese teapots, with the “cozy” made at home;

little doyleys wrought with delightful designs from “Pretty Peggy,”

and numberless other graceful and charming trifles.

 

CHAPTER XXXIII. DINNER-TABLE NOVELTIES.

 

One would think that modern luxury had reached its ultimatum in the

delicate refinements of dinner-giving, but each dinner-table reveals

the fact that this is an inexhaustible subject. The floral world is

capable of an infinity of surprises, and the last one is a cameo of

flowers on a door, shaped like a four-leaved clover. The guests are

thus assured of good-luck. The horseshoe having been so much used

that it is now almost obsolete, except in jewelry, the clover-leaf

has come in. A very beautiful dinner far up Fifth Avenue had this

winter an entirely new idea, inasmuch as the flowers were put

overhead. The delicate vine, resembling green asparagus in its

fragility, was suspended from the chandelier to the four corners of

the room, and on it were hung delicate roses, lilies-of-the-valley,

pinks, and fragrant jasmine, which sent down their odors, and

occasionally dropped themselves into a lady’s lap. This is an

exquisite bit of luxury.

 

Then the arrival, two months before Easter, of the fragrant,

beautiful Easter lilies has added a magnificent and stately effect

to the central bouquets. It has been found that the island of

Bermuda is a great reservoir of these bulbs, which are sent up, like

their unfragrant rivals the onions, by the barrelful. Even a piece

of a bulb will produce from three to five lilies, so that these fine

flowers are more cheap and plenty in January than usually in April.

A dining-room, square in shape, hung with richly-embroidered, old-gold tapestry, with a round table set for twenty, with silver and

glass and a great bunch of lilies and green ferns in the middle, and

a “crazy quilt” of flowers over one’s head, may well reproduce the

sense of dreamland which modern luxury is trying to follow.

 

Truly we live in the days of Aladdin. Six weeks after the ground was

broken in Secretary Whitney’s garden in Washington for his ballroom,

the company assembled in a magnificent apartment with fluted gold-ceiling and crimson brocade hangings, bronzes, statues, and Dresden

candlesticks, and a large wood fire at one end, in which logs six

feet long were burning—all looking as if it were part of an old

baronial castle of the Middle Ages.

 

The florists will furnish you red clovers in January if you give

your order in October. Great bunches of flowers, of a pure scarlet

unmixed with any other color, are very fashionable, and the effect

in a softly-lighted room is most startling and beautiful.

 

The lighting of rooms by means of lamps and candles is giving

hostesses great annoyance. There is scarcely a dinner-party but the

candles set fire to their fringed shades, and a conflagration

ensues. Then the new lamps, which give such a resplendent light,

have been known to melt the metal about the wick, and the

consequences have been disastrous. The next move will probably be

the dipping of the paper in some asbestos or other anti-inflammable

substance, so that there will be no danger of fire at the dinner-table. The screens put over the candles should not have this paper-fringe; it is very dangerous. But if a candle screen takes fire,

have the coolness to let it burn itself up without touching it, as

thus it will be entirely innocuous, although rather appalling to

look at. Move a plate under it to catch the flying fragments, and no

harm will be done; but a well-intentioned effort to blow it out or

to remove it generally results in a very much more wide-spread

conflagration.

 

China and glass go on improving; and there are jewelled goblets and

centre-pieces of yellow glass covered with gold and what looks like

jewels. Knives and forks are now to be had with crystal handles set

in silver, very ornamental and clean-looking; these come from

Bohemia. The endless succession of beautiful plates are more and

more Japanese in tone.

 

Satsuma vases and jugs are often sent to a lady, full of beautiful

roses, thus making a lasting souvenir of what would be a perishable

gift. These Satsuma jugs are excellent things in which to plant

hyacinths, and they look well in the centre of the dinner-table with

these flowers growing in them.

 

Faded flowers can be entirely restored to freshness by clipping the

stems and putting them in very hot water; then set them away from

the gas and furnace heat, and they come on the dinner-table fresh

for several days after their disappearance in disgrace as faded or

jaded bouquets. Flowers thus restored have been put in a cold

library, where the water, once hot, has frozen stiff, and yet have

borne these two extremes of temperature without loss of beauty—in

fact, have lasted presentably from Monday morning to Saturday night.

What flowers cannot stand is the air we all live in—at what cost to

our freshness we find out in the spring—the overheated furnace and

gas-laden air of the modern dining-room. The secret of the hot-water

treatment is said to be this: the sap is sent up into the flower

instead of lingering in the stems. Roses respond to this treatment

wonderfully.

 

The fashion of wearing low-necked dresses at dinner has become so

pronounced that the moralists begin to issue weekly essays against

this revival as if it had never been done before. Our virtuous

grandmothers would be astonished to hear that their ball-dresses

(never cut high) were so immoral and indecent. The fact remains that

a sleeveless gown, cut in a Pompadour