<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br/> <small>THE VISITOR</small></h2>
<p class="drop-cap">AN invitation to visit a friend in her home must
always be answered promptly. The invited
person should think seriously before accepting such
an invitation, and, unfortunately, one of the things
she has to consider is her wardrobe. If the hostess
has a superb house, and the guest is to be one of
many, all wealthy except herself, all handsomely
gowned except herself, and if she will feel like an
English sparrow in a flock of birds of paradise,
she would better acknowledge the invitation, with
gratitude, and stay at home. If she does go, let
her determine to make no apologies for her appearance,
but to accommodate herself to the ways of
the household she visits.</p>
<p>One woman, visiting in a handsome home, was
distressed to the point of weeping by the fact that,
on her arrival, her hostess’ maid came to the guest’s
room and unpacked her trunk for her, putting the
contents in bureau-drawers and wardrobe. It would
have been better form if the visitor had taken what
seemed to her an innovation as a matter of course,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</SPAN></span>
and expressed neither chagrin nor distress at the
kindly-meant and customary attention.</p>
<p>If, then, our invited person, after taking all things
into consideration, decides to accept the invitation
sent her, let her state just when she is coming, and
go at that time. Of course she will make her plans
agree with those of her future hostess. The exact
train should be named, and the schedule set must
not be deviated from.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>It may be said right here that no one should make
a visit uninvited. Few persons would do this,—but
some few have been guilty of this breach of etiquette.
One need not always wait for an invitation
from an intimate friend, nor member of one’s family
with whom one can never be de trop, but, even then,
one should, by telegram or telephone, give notice of
one’s coming. If I could, I would make a rule that
no one should pay an unexpected visit of several
days’ duration. If one must go uninvited, one
should give the prospective hosts ample notice of
the intended visit, begging, at the same time, that
one may be notified if the suggested plan be inconvenient.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">BE PROMPT AND DEFINITE</div>
<p>When a letter of invitation is accepted, the acceptance
must not only be prompt, but must clearly
state how long one intends to stay. It is embarrassing<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</SPAN></span>
to a hostess not to know whether her guest
means to remain a few days or many. As will be
seen in the chapter on “The Visited,” the hostess
can do much to obviate this uncertainty by asking
a friend for a visit of a specified length. But, in
accepting, the guest must also say how long she will
remain.</p>
<p>An invitation should be received gratefully. In
few things does breeding show more than in the
manner of acknowledging an invitation to a friend’s
house. She who asks another to be a member of
her household for even a short time is paying the
person asked the greatest honor it is in her power
to confer, and it should be appreciated by the recipient.
He who does not appreciate the honor implied
in such an invitation is unmannerly.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">ALWAYS ARRIVE ON TIME</div>
<p>An invitation once accepted, nothing but such a
serious contingency as illness must prevent one’s fulfilling
the engagement. One must never arrive
ahead of time. Once in the home of a friend the
guest makes herself as much a member of the household
as possible. The hours of meals must be ascertained,
and promptness in everything be the rule.
To lie in bed after one is called, and to appear at
the breakfast table at one’s own sweet will, is often
an inconvenience to the hostess, and the cause of
vexation and discontent on the part of the servants,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</SPAN></span>
for which discontent the hostess—not the guest—pays
the penalty. Unless, then, the latter is told
expressly that the hour at which she descends to the
first meal of the day is truly of no consequence in
the household, she must come into the breakfast-room
at the hour named by the mistress of the
house.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE DUTIES OF A GUEST</div>
<p>On the other hand, one should not come down a
half-hour before breakfast and sit in the drawing-room
or library, thus keeping the maid or hostess
from dusting these rooms and setting them to rights.
The considerate guest will stay in her own room until
breakfast is announced, then descend immediately.
If the weather is fair, she may, of course, walk in
the grounds close to the house.</p>
<p>If amusements have been planned for the guest,
she will do her best to enjoy them, or, at all events,
to show gratitude for the kind intentions in her behalf.
She must resolve to evince an interest in all
that is done, and, if she can not join in the amusement,
give evidence of an appreciation of the efforts
that have been made to entertain. The guest must
remember that the hosts are doing their best to
please her, and that out of ordinary humanity, if
not civility, gratitude should be shown and expressed
for these endeavors.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>If the hostess be a busy housewife, who has many<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</SPAN></span>
duties about the house which she must perform herself,
the visitor may occasionally try to “lend a
hand” by dusting her own room or making her own
bed. If, however, she is discovered at these tasks,
and observes that the hostess looks worried, or objects
to the guest thus exerting herself, it is the
truest courtesy not to repeat the efforts to be of assistance.
It disturbs some housewives to know that
a visitor is performing any household tasks.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>It is safe to say that a guest should go home at
the time set unless the hostess urges her to do otherwise,
or has some excellent reason for wishing her
to change her plans. To remain beyond the time
expected is a great mistake, unless one knows that
it will be a genuine convenience to the hosts to have
one stay. The old saying that a guest should not
make a host twice glad has sound common sense as
its basis. If a visitor is persuaded to extend her
visit, it must be only for a short time, and she must
herself set the limit of this stay, at which time nothing
must in any way be allowed to deter her from
taking her departure.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE NECESSITY FOR TACT</div>
<p>The visitor in a family must exercise tact in many
ways. Above all she must avoid any participation
in little discussions between persons in the family.
If the father takes one side of an argument, the
mother the other, the wise guest will keep silent, unless<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</SPAN></span>
one or the other appeal to her for confirmation
of his or her assertions,—in which case she should
smilingly say that she would rather not express an
opinion, or laugh the matter off in such a way as
to change the current of the conversation.</p>
<p>Another thing that a guest must avoid is reproving
the children of the house in even the mildest,
gentlest way. She must also resist the impulse to
make an audible excuse for a child when he is
reprimanded in her presence. To do either of these
things is a breach of etiquette.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE WEEK-END PARTY</div>
<p>If she be so fortunate as to be invited to a house-party
or a week-end party, she should accept or decline
at once, that the hostess may know for how
many people to provide rooms. For such an affair
one should take handsome gowns, as a good deal of
festivity and dress is customary among the jolly
group thus brought together. A dinner or evening
gown is essential, and if, as is customary, the house-party
be given at a country-home, the visitor must
have a short walking-skirt and walking-boots, as
well as a carriage costume.</p>
<p>Once a member of a house-party, the rule is simple
enough. Do as the others do, and enter with a will
on all the entertainment provided by the host and
hostess for the party.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">THE QUESTION OF TIPS</div>
<p>If you make a visit of any length you must not<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</SPAN></span>
fail, if you are conventional, to leave a little money
for each servant who has, by her services in any
capacity, contributed to your comfort. This will,
of course, include the maid who has cared for the
bedroom, and the waitress. By one of these servants
send something to the cook, and a message of
thanks for the good things which she has made and
you have enjoyed. The laundress need not be inevitably
remembered, unless she has done a little
washing for you; still, when one considers the extra
bed and table linen to be washed, it is as well to
leave a half dollar for her also. The amount of
such fees must be determined by the length of one’s
purse; and must never be so large as to appear lavish
and unnecessary. A dollar, if you can afford it and
have made a visit of any length, will be sufficient
for each maid. The coachman who drives you to
the train must receive the same amount.</p>
<p>There is, one is glad to say, an occasional household
in which the idea of tips is regarded as contrary
to the spirit of true hospitality. In such homes
the mistress herself sees that the servants receive
extra pay for the extra work entailed by guests, and
the hotel atmosphere suggested by tipping is fortunately
done away with.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE BREAD-AND-BUTTER NOTE</div>
<p>After the guest has returned to her own home,
her duties toward her recent hosts are not at an<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</SPAN></span>
end until she has written what is slangily known as
“the bread-and-butter letter.” This is simply a note,
telling of one’s safe arrival at one’s destination, and
thanking the hostess for the pleasant visit one has
had. A few lines are all that etiquette demands, but
it requires these, and decrees that they be despatched
at once. To neglect to write the letter demanded
by those twin sisters, Conventionality and Courtesy,
is a grave breach of the etiquette of the visitor.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Hospitality as a duty has been written up from
the beginning of human life. The obligations of
those who, in quaint old English phrase, “guesten”
with neighbors, or strangers, have had so little attention
it is no wonder they are lightly considered,
in comparison.</p>
<p>We hear much of men who play the host royally,
and of the perfect hostess. If hospitality be reckoned
among the fine arts and moral virtues, to
“guesten” aright is a saving social grace. Where
ten excellent hosts are found we are fortunate if we
meet one guest who knows his business and does it.</p>
<p>The consciousness of this neglected fact prompts
us to write in connection with our cardinal virtue
of giving, of what we must perforce coin a word to
define as “Guestly Etiquette.” We have said elsewhere
that the first, and oftentimes a humiliating
step, in the acquisition of all knowledge, from<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</SPAN></span>
making a pudding to governing an empire, is to learn
how not to do it. Two-thirds of the people who
“guesten” with us never get beyond the initiatory
step.</p>
<div class="sidenote">GUESTS ARE NOT BOARDERS</div>
<p>The writer of this page could give from memory
a list that would cover pages of foolscap, of people
who called themselves well-bred and who were in
the main well-meaning, who have deported themselves
in hospitable homes as if they were registered
boarders in a hotel.</p>
<p>Settle within your own mind, in entering your
friend’s doors, that what you receive is not to be
paid for in dollars and cents. The thought will deprive
you at once of the right to complain or to
criticize. This should be a self-evident law. It is
so far, however, from being self-evident that it is
violated every day and in scores of homes where
refinement is supposed to regulate social usages.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Taking at random illustrations that crowd in on
memories of my own experiences,—let me draw into
line the distinguished clergyman who always brought
his own bread to the table, informing me that my
hot muffins were “rank poison to any rightly-appointed
stomach”; another man, equally distinguished
in another profession, who summoned a
chambermaid at eleven o’clock at night to drag his
bed across the room that he might lie due east and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</SPAN></span>
west; an author who never went to bed until two
o’clock in the morning, and complained sourly at
breakfast time that “your servants, madam, banked
up the furnace fire so early that the house got cold
by midnight”; the popular musician who informed
me “your piano is horribly out of tune”; the man
and wife who “couldn’t sleep a wink because there
was a mosquito in the room”; the eminent jurist
who sat out an evening in the library of my country-house
with his hat on because “the room was
drafty”;—ah! my fellow housemothers can match
every instance of the lack of the guestly conscience
by stories from their own repositories.</p>
<div class="sidenote">ANNOYING FAMILIARITIES</div>
<p>The guest who is told to consider himself as one
of the family knows the invitation to be a figure of
polite speech as well as he who says it knows it to
be an empty form. One man I wot of sings and
whistles in the halls and upon the stairs of his host’s
house to show how joyfully he is at home. Another
stretches himself at length upon the library sofa,
and smokes the cigar of peace (to himself) at all
hours, an ash-cup upon the floor within easy distance.
A third helps himself to his host’s cigars whenever
he likes without saying “by your leave.” Each may
fancy that he is following out the hospitable intentions
of his entertainers when, in fact, he is selfishly
oblivious of guestly duty and propriety.</p>
<p>One who has given the subject more than a passing<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</SPAN></span>
thought might suppose it unnecessary to lay
down to well-bred readers “Laws for Table Manners
While Visiting.” Yet, when I saw a man of
excellent lineage, and a university graduate, thump
his empty tumbler on the table to attract the attention
of the waitress, and heard him a few minutes
later call out to her “Butter—please!” I wished
that the study of such a manual had been included
as a regular course in the college curriculum.</p>
<p>A true anecdote recurs to me here that may soothe
national pride with the knowledge that the solecisms
I have described and others that have not added to
the traveled American’s reputation for breeding,
are not confined to our side of the ocean.</p>
<div class="sidenote">ENGLISH FRANKNESS</div>
<p>Lord and Lady B——, names familiar some years
back to the students of the “high-life” columns of
our papers, were at a dinner party in New York
with an acquaintance of mine who painted the scene
for me. Lady B——, tasting her soup as soon as
it was set down in front of her, calls to her husband
at the other end of the table: “B——, my
dear! Don’t eat this soup! It is <i>quite filthy!</i> There
are tomatoes in it!”</p>
<p>We Americans are less brutally frank than our
English cousins. Yet I thought of Lady B—— last
week when my vis-à-vis,—a slim, pretty, accomplished
matron of thirty, or thereabouts—at an admirably-appointed
family dinner, accepted a plate of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</SPAN></span>
soup, tasted it, laid down her spoon and did not
touch it again, repeating the action with an entrée,
and with the dessert of peaches and cream. She did
not grimace her distaste of any one of the three
articles of food, it is true, being, thus far, better-mannered
than our titled vulgarian. In effect, she
implied the same thing by tasting of each portion
and declining to eat more than the tentative mouthful.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="sidenote">SELF-DISCIPLINE</div>
<p>To sum up our table of rules: Bethink yourself,
from your entrance to your exit from your host’s
house, of the sure way of adding to the comfort
and pleasure of those who have honored you by inviting
you to sojourn under their roof-tree. If possessed
of the true spirit of hospitality, they will find
that pleasure in promoting yours. Learn from them
and be not one whit behind them in the good work.
If they propose any especial form of amusement,
fall in with their plans readily and cordially. You
may not enjoy a stately drive through dusty roads
behind fat family horses, or a tramp over briery
fields with the hostess who is addicted to berrying
and botanizing—but go as if that were the exact
bent of taste and desire. A dinner party, made up
of men who talk business and nothing else, and their
over-dressed wives, who revel in the discussion of
what Mrs. Sherwood calls “The Three Dreadful<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</SPAN></span>
D’s”—Disease, Dress and Domestics—may typify to
you the acme of boredom. Comport yourself as if
you were in your native element and happy there.
The self-discipline will be a means of grace in more
ways than one.</p>
<div class="sidenote">NEVER SHOW BOREDOM</div>
<p>On Sunday accompany your hosts to their place
of worship with the same cheerful readiness to like
what they like. You may be a high church Episcopalian
and they belong to the broadest wing of
Unitarians or the straitest sect of Evangelicals. Put
prejudice and personal preference behind you and
find consolation in the serene conviction of guestly
duty done—and done in a truly Christian spirit.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.