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

to copy them)—this would indeed be a “rustic

masquerade,” which might amuse and “draw” for a charity. Many of our

country towns on the borders of lakes, many of the places near New

York in their own fine grounds, would offer a terrestrial paradise

for such a garden party.

 

To drive out to Jerome Park to breakfast, to get the early

strawberry and the delicious cream—this is a spring entertainment

which many of our business men indulge in, coming back to their work

in New York refreshed and invigorated. The men of pleasure of this

period have, as they have always had, an ample provision of

amusement—not always the most useful, it is true—yet we are glad

to see that the out-of-door excitements begin to distance the

excitements of the gaming-table. Betting on the turf is not carried

to the ruinous extent here that it is in England, while the polo,

the base-ball, the boating, and the “riding to hounds “—open to

ridicule as it is, in some ways of looking at it—are all healthful.

The spring season has its little dinners, lunches, and weddings, but

very few evening entertainments.

 

After a young girl has ransacked the fashionable world all winter,

and been at all the f�tes and balls, concerts, operas, and suppers,

she does not care for parties in May. Such infatuated ardor for

amusement would make sad havoc of her charms if she did. It is quite

enough if she finishes her exciting winter with a fancy dance or

private theatricals at some charitable entertainment.

 

A high tea is served in courses like a dinner, excepting with less

formality. The lady sits at one end of the table with the silver

tea-tray before her, while the gentleman has before him cold

chicken, or even, perhaps, a hot dish like roast partridges, to

carve. Frequently scalloped oysters are passed, and always salads,

so that those who are in the habit of dining at that hour have a

solid meal. There are hot cakes and biscuits and sweetmeats on the

table, so that it is really the old-fashioned tea of our

grandmothers re-enforced by some solid dishes. It is intended to

save the servants trouble on Sunday evening, but it is really more

trouble to them as now served, as it gives the waiter additional

dishes to wash, and quite as much service. It saves the cook,

however.

 

CHAPTER XLII. FLORAL TRIBUTES AND DECORATIONS.

 

When every steamer leaving these shores goes out laden with people

who are weighed down with flowers, it cannot but be a severe tax on

the ingenuity of the florist to devise novel and appropriate forms

for the typical basket that shall say bon voyage in a thousand new

ways. Floral ships, anchors, stars, crosses, mottoes, monograms, and

even the national flag, have been used for these steamer

decorations.

 

But the language of flowers, so thoroughly understood among the

Persians that a single flower expresses a complete declaration of

love, an offer of marriage, and, presumably, a hint at the

settlement, is, with our more practical visionaries and enthusiasts

of the nineteenth century, rather an echo of the stock market than a

poetical fancy. We fear that no prima donna looks at her flowers

without a thought of how much they have cost, and that the belle

estimates her bouquet according to the commercial value of a lily-of-the-valley as compared with that of a Jacqueminot rose, rather

than as flowers simply. It is a pity that the overwhelming luxury of

an extravagant period involves in its all-powerful grasp even the

flowers of the field, those generous gifts of sunshine and of rain.

 

But so it is. It is a well-known fact that the lady who will give

her order three months in advance for the flowers needed for her

daughter’s wedding, or for any other grand ceremonial, can, by

offering a sufficiently large amount of money, command any flower

she wishes. Even daisies and buttercups, red clover and white, the

delicate forget-me-not of the garden, nasturtiums and marigolds, the

shy and tender anemone, the dandelion and lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley, may be forced into unnatural bloom in January. It is a

favorite caprice to put the field-flowers of June on a lunch-table

in January.

 

This particular table is the greatest of all the consumers of

flowers, therefore we may begin by describing some of the new

fancies developed by that extraordinarily luxurious meal. A lady’s

lunch must show not only baskets of magnificent flowers up and down

the table; but it must also bear a basket or a bouquet for each

lady.

 

One of the most regal lunches, given to twenty-eight ladies, set the

fashion for using little gilt baskets, with covers opening on either

side of the handle—the kind of basket, of a larger size, in which,

in New England and in Old England, Dame Trot carried her

multifarious parcels home from market. These pretty and useful

baskets had on each side a bunch of flowers peeping out through the

open cover, and on the gilt handle was tied a ribbon corresponding

in color to the flowers. One of them, having soft pink rosebuds of

exceeding size and loveliness on one side and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley on the other, with a bow of pink satin ribbon on the

handle, was as pretty a picture as ever Kate Greenaway devised.

Another, showing the strong contrast of purple pansies and yellow

daffodils, and tied with a lovely purple satin ribbon, was a dream

of rich color.

 

The stiff, formal, flat bouquets of yellow daffodils and bunches of

violets, tied with purple ribbon, make a very fine effect laid in

regular order at each plate. Repetition of a favorite idea in

flowers is not ugly, although it seems at first very far from the

primeval and delicious confusion in which nature throws her bouquets

down upon upland and meadow.

 

In the arrangement of roses the most varied and whimsical fancies

may be displayed, although the most gorgeous effect is produced,

perhaps, by massing a single color or group. A basket of the pink

Gloire de Paris, however, with its redundant green foliage,

alternated with deep-red Jacqueminots, is a very splendid fancy, and

will fill a room with fragrance. In February these roses cost two

dollars apiece, and it was no rare sight to see four or six baskets,

each containing forty roses, on one table during the winter of 1884.

 

We advise all ladies going into the country to purchase some of the

little “Dame Trot” baskets, as they will be lovely when filled with

wild-flowers during the summer. Indeed, the gilt basket, fitted with

a tin pan to hold earth or water, is such a cheap and pretty

receptacle for either growing or cut flowers that it ought to be a

belonging of every dinner-table.

 

From the lunch-table, with its baskets and floral fancies, we come

to the dinner-table. Here the space is so valuable that the floral

bag, an ingenious plan by which roses may be hung at the side of the

wearer, has been invented. This is a novel and very pretty way of

wearing flowers. The roses or other flowers are tied together with

wires, in the shape of a reticule, and a ribbon and pin provided, so

that the lady may fasten her floral trophy at her side. The baskets

of flowers and the adornments of the �pergne for a dinner are very

apt to be all of one flower. If mixed, they are of two sorts, as

yellow roses and red ones, or white and pink, or, may be, half of

lilacs and half of roses, or purple pansies and bright yellow

flowers. Some tables are set with scarlet carnations alone, and the

effect is very fine.

 

For wedding decorations, houses are now filled with palm-trees in

pots and orange-trees in full bearing. An entire suite of rooms is

made into a bower of large-leaved plants. Mirrors are covered with

vines, wreaths, and climbing roses, trained across a trellis of

wire. The bride stands under a floral umbrella, which juts out into

the room. The monograms of bride and bridegroom are put in floral

shields against the wall, like the cartouche on which the names

and the titles of an Egyptian king are emblazoned in the solitude of

the Pyramids. The bouquets carried by brides and bridesmaids are now

extraordinarily large, measuring a foot or more across the top.

 

Tulips have always been favorite ornaments for the dinner-table.

These flowers, so fine in drawing and so splendid in color, produce

an extremely brilliant effect in large masses. As Easter approaches,

lilies come in for especial notice, and the deep Japan cup-lily,

grouped with the stately callas, and the garden-lily, with its long

yellow stamens and rich perfume, worthily fill the �pergnes.

 

Hyacinths are lovely harbingers of spring, and are beautiful in

color; but there is a strong objection to this flower as a

decoration, its heavy perfume being unpleasant to some people.

 

A fish-basket filled with bunches of lilies, mignonette, deep pink

moss-roses shaded to the pale tints of the rose known as the

Baroness de Rothschild, with a glowing centre of warm red

Jacqueminots and a fringe of purple pansies and Mar�chal Niels, was

one of many beautiful floral ornaments on a magnificent dinner-table.

 

In spite of the attempt to prevent the extravagant use of flowers at

funerals, we still see on those sad occasions some new and rather

poetic ideas expressed by floral emblems. One of these, called the

“Gates Ajar,” was very beautiful: the “gates” panelled with lilies,

and surmounted by doves holding sprays of passion-vines in their

beaks.

 

Palms crossed, and clasped by roses and ribbons, an oblique cross of

roses lying on a bed of ivy, a basket made of ivy and autumn leaves,

holding a sheaf of grain and a sickle of violets, an ivy pillow with

a cross of flowers on one side, a bunch of pansies held by a knot of

ribbon at one corner, a cross made of ivy alone, a “harvest-field”

made of ears of wheat, are some of the many new funereal designs

which break the monotony of the dreadful white crosses, crowns, and

anchors, hearts and wreaths, of the past.

 

It is no longer necessary to exclude color from these tributes to

the dead. Indeed, some of the most beautiful designs noticed at

recent funerals have been composed of colored flowers.

 

For a christening, a floral cradle or swinging hammock, a bowl, a

silver cup full of the tiniest flowers, are all favorite designs. A

large table of flowers, with the baby’s initials in the centre, was

sent to one happy young mother on a recent auspicious occasion; and

far more lovely was a manger of flowers, with the “Star of the East”

hanging above it, all made of that pretty white flower the Star of

Bethlehem.

 

Strange contrasts of flowers have been made: purple lilacs and the

blue forget-me-nots were a favorite combination—“stylish, not

pretty,” was the whispered criticism.

 

The yellow marigold, a sort of small sunflower, has been the

favorite “caprice” for bouquets de corsage. This is as near to an

actual sunflower as the aesthetes have ventured to approach. With

us, perhaps, there is no more splendid yellow than this marigold,

and it admirably sets off a black or sage green dress.

 

An extravagant lady, at a ball, wore around her white dress skirt a

fringe of real violets. Although less effective than the artificial

ones, they had a pretty appearance until they drooped and faded.

This adornment cost one hundred and fifty dollars.

 

A rainbow has been attempted in flowers, but with poor success. It

will look like a ribbon—a very handsome ribbon, no doubt; but the

arc-en-ciel evades reproduction, even in the transcendent

prismatic