Etiquette - Emily Post (english novels for students TXT) 📗

other communities it is the custom to go down to the dining-room for a heavy American (or English) meal. In communities where the latter is the custom and where people are used to assembling at a set hour, it is simple enough to provide a breakfast typical of the section of the country; corn bread and kidney stew and hominy in the South; doughnuts and codfish balls "way down East"; kippered herring, liver and bacon and griddle cakes elsewhere. But downstairs breakfast as a continuous performance is, from a housekeeper's point of view, a trial to say the least.

However, in big houses, where men refuse to eat in their rooms and equally refuse to get up until they feel like it, a dining-room breakfast is managed as follows:

Continuous Breakfast Downstairs

The table is set with a place for all who said they were "coming down." At one end is a coffee urn kept hot over a spirit lamp, milk is kept hot under a "tea cosy" or in a double pitcher, made like a double boiler. On the sideboard or on the table are two or three "hot water" dishes (with or without spirit lamps underneath). In one is a cereal, in the other "hash" or "creamed beef," sausage, or codfish cakes, or whatever the housekeeper thinks of, that can stand for hours and still be edible! Fruit is on the table and bread and butter and marmalade, and the cook is supposed to make fresh tea and eggs and toast for each guest as he appears.

Preparing Breakfast Tray

The advantage of having one's guests choose breakfast up-stairs, is that unless there is a separate breakfast room, a long delayed breakfast prevents the dining-room from being put in order or the lunch table set. Trays, on the other hand, stand "all set" in the pantry and interfere much less with the dining-room work. The trays are either of the plain white pantry variety or regular breakfast ones with folding legs. On each is put a tray cloth. It may be plain linen hemstitched or scalloped, or it may be much embroidered and have mosaic or filet lace.

Every bedroom has a set of breakfast china to match it. But it is far better to send a complete set of blue china to a rose-colored room than a rose set that has pieces missing. Nothing looks worse than odd crockery. It is like unmatched paper and envelopes, or odd shoes, or a woman's skirt and waist that do not meet in the back.

There is nothing unusual in a tray set, every china and department store carries them, but only in "open" stock patterns can one buy extra dishes or replace broken ones; a fact it is well to remember. There is a tall coffee pot, hot milk pitcher, a cream pitcher and sugar bowl, a cup and saucer, two plates, an egg cup and a covered dish. A cereal is usually put in the covered dish, toast in a napkin on a plate, or eggs and bacon in place of cereal. This with fruit is the most elaborate "tray" breakfast ever provided. Most people who breakfast "in bed" take only coffee or tea, an egg, toast and possibly fruit.

The Courteous Host

Of those elaborate ceremonials between host and guest familiar to all readers of the Bible and all travelers in the East, only a few faint traces remain in our country and generation. It is still unforgivable to eat a man's bread and remain his enemy. It is unforgivable to criticize your host, or in his presence to criticize his friends. It is unforgivable to be rude to any one under your own roof or under the roof of a friend. If you must quarrel with your enemy, seek public or neutral ground, since quarrels and hospitality must never be mingled.

The Spaniard says to his guest: "All I have is yours." It is supposed to be merely a pretty speech—but in a measure it is true of every host's attitude toward his house guest. If you take some one under your roof, he becomes part of, and sharer in, your life and possessions. Your horse, your fireside, your armchair, your servants, your time, your customs, all are his; your food is his food, your roof his shelter. You give him the best "spare" room, you set before him the best refreshments you can offer, and your "best" china and glass. His bed is made up with your best "company" linen and blankets. You receive your guest with a smile, no matter how inconvenient or troublesome or straining to your resources his visit may be, and on no account do you let him suspect any of this.

Keeping One's Guests Occupied

In popular houses where visitors like to go again and again, there is always a happy combination of some attention on the part of the host and hostess, and the perfect freedom of the guests to occupy their time as they choose.

The host and the men staying in the house arrange among themselves to rest or play games or fish or ride or shoot clay pigeons or swim, etc. The hostess, unless at the seashore where people go bathing in the morning, generally leaves her guests to their own devices until lunch time, though they are always offered whatever diversions the place or neighborhood afford. They are told there is bathing, fishing, golf; and if they want to do any of these things, it is arranged for them. But unless something special, such as driving to a picnic or clambake, has been planned, or there is a tennis tournament or golf match of importance, the hostess makes her first appearance just before luncheon.

This is the same as any informal family meal. If there are thirty guests it makes no difference. Sometimes there are place cards—especially if other people have been invited in—sometimes people find places for themselves.

After luncheon something is usually arranged; perhaps those who play golf go out for their game, and others who do not play go to the country club at the hour the players are supposed to be coming in, so that they can all have tea together. Those who like motoring perhaps go for a drive, or to a neighbor's house for bridge, or neighbors come in for tea. There is always bridge, sometimes there is dancing. In very big houses musicians are often brought in after dinner, and dancing and bridge alternate till bedtime.

A houseful of young people very easily look after their own amusement. As said before, a big house is run very much like a country club, and guests are supposed to look after themselves.

Making an especial effort to entertain a guest who is to stay for a week or longer has gone out of custom in the fashionable world, except for an important personage. A visit from the President of the United States for instance, would necessitate the most punctiliously formal etiquette, no matter how close a friend of the family he may always have been. For such a visitor a hostess would either arrange a series of entertainments or none, according to her visitor's inclination.

A Guest Can Look After His Own Comfort

The most trying thing to people of very set habits is an unusual breakfast hour. When you have the unfortunate habit of waking with the dawn, and the household you are visiting has the custom of sleeping on Sunday morning, the long wait for your coffee can quite actually upset your whole day. On the other hand, to be aroused at seven on the only day when you do not have to hurry to business, in order to yawn through an early breakfast, and then sit around and kill time, is quite as trying. The guest with the "early" habit can in a measure prevent discomfort. He can carry in a small case (locked if necessary) a very small solidified alcohol outfit and either a small package of tea or powdered coffee, sugar, powdered milk, and a few crackers. He can then start his day all by himself in the barnyard hours without disturbing any one, and in comfort to himself. Few people care enough to "fuss," but if they do, this equipment of an habitual visitor with incurably early waking hours is given as a suggestion.

Or perhaps the entire guest situation may be put in one sentence. If you are an inflexible person, very set in your ways, don't visit! At least don't visit without carefully looking the situation over from every angle to be sure that the habits of the house you are going to are in accord with your own.

A solitary guest is naturally much more dependent on his host (or her hostess), but on the other hand, he or she is practically always a very intimate friend who merely adapts himself or herself like a chameleon to the customs and hours and diversions of the household.

Dont's For Hostess

When a guest asks to be called half an hour before breakfast, don't have him called an hour and a half before because it takes you that long to dress, nor allow him a scant ten minutes because the shorter time is seemingly sufficient. Too often the summons on the door wakes him out of sound sleep; he tumbles exhausted out of bed, into clothes, and down stairs, to wait perhaps an hour for breakfast.

If a guest prefers to sit on the veranda and read, don't interrupt him every half page to ask if he really does not want to do something else. If, on the other hand, a guest wants to exercise, don't do everything in your power to obstruct his starting off by saying that it will surely rain, or that it is too hot, or that you think it is senseless to spend days that should be a rest to him in utterly exhausting himself.

Don't, when you know that a young man cares little for feminine society, fine-tooth-comb the neighborhood for the dullest or silliest young woman to be found.

Don't, on the other hand, when you have an especially attractive young woman staying with you, ask a stolid middle-aged couple and an octogenarian professor for dinner, because the charm and beauty of the former is sure to appeal to the latter.

Don't, because you personally happen to like a certain young girl who is utterly old-fashioned in outlook and type from ultra modern others who are staying with you, try to "bring them together." Never try to make any two people like each other. If they do, they do; if they don't, they don't, and that is all there is to it; but it is of vital importance to your own success as hostess to find out which is the case and collect or separate them accordingly.

The Casual Hostess

The most casual hostess in the world is the fashionable leader in Newport, she who should by the rules of good society be the most punctilious, since no place in America, or Europe, is more conspicuously representative of luxury and fashion. Nowhere are there more "guests" or half so many hostesses, and yet hospitality as it is understood everywhere else, is practically unknown. No one ever goes to stay in a Newport house excepting "on his own" as it were. It is not an exaggerated story, but quite true, that in many houses of ultra fashion a guest on arriving is told at which meals he is expected to appear, that is at dinners or luncheons given by his hostess. At all others he is free to go out or stay in by himself. No effort is assumed for his amusement, or responsibility for his well-being. It is small wonder that only those who have plenty of friends care to go there—or in fact, are ever invited! Those who like to go to visit the most perfectly appointed, but utterly impersonal house, find no other visiting to compare with its unhampering delightfulness.