Etiquette, Emily Post [read people like a book txt] 📗

Guests. People who are congenial to one another. This is of first importance.

Food. A suitable menu perfectly prepared and dished. (Hot food to be hot, and cold, cold.)

Table furnishing. Faultlessly laundered linen, brilliantly polished silver, and all other table accessories suitable to the occasion and surroundings.

Service. Expert dining-room servants and enough of them.

Drawing-room. Adequate in size to number of guests and inviting in arrangement.

A cordial and hospitable host.

A hostess of charm. Charm says everything—tact, sympathy, poise and perfect manners—always.

And though for all dinners these requisites are much the same, the necessity for perfection increases in proportion to the formality of the occasion.

Taste In Selection Of People

The proper selection of guests is the first essential in all entertaining, and the hostess who has a talent for assembling the right people has a great asset. Taste in house furnishings or in clothes or in selecting a cook, is as nothing compared to taste in people! Some people have this "sense"—others haven't. The first are the great hosts and hostesses; the others are the mediocre or the failures.

It is usually a mistake to invite great talkers together. Brilliant men and women who love to talk want hearers, not rivals. Very silent people should be sandwiched between good talkers, or at least voluble talkers. Silly people should never be put anywhere near learned ones, nor the dull near the clever, unless the dull one is a young and pretty woman with a talent for listening, and the clever, a man with an admiration for beauty, and a love for talking.

Most people think two brilliant people should be put together. Often they should, but with discretion. If both are voluble or nervous or "temperamental," you may create a situation like putting two operatic sopranos in the same part and expecting them to sing together.

The endeavor of a hostess, when seating her table, is to put those together who are likely to be interesting to each other. Professor Bugge might bore you to tears, but Mrs. Entomoid would probably delight in him; just as Mr. Stocksan Bonds and Mrs. Rich would probably have interests in common. Making a dinner list is a little like making a Christmas list. You put down what they will (you hope) like, not what you like. Those who are placed between congenial neighbors remember your dinner as delightful—even though both food and service were mediocre; but ask people out of their own groups and seat them next to their pet aversions, and wild horses could not drag them to your house again!

How A Dinner List Is Kept

Nearly every hostess keeps a dinner list—apart from her general visiting list—of people with whom she is accustomed to dine, or to invite to dinner or other small entertainments. But the prominent hostess, if she has grown daughters and continually gives parties of all sorts and sizes and ages, usually keeps her list in a more complete and "ready reference" order.

Mrs. Gilding, for instance, has guest lists separately indexed. Under the general heading "Dinners," she has older married, younger married, girls, men. Her luncheon list is taken from her dinner list. "Bridge" includes especially good players of all ages; "dances," young married people, young girls, and dancing men. Then she has a cross-index list of "Important Persons," meaning those of real distinction who are always the foundation of all good society; "Amusing," usually people of talent—invaluable for house parties; and "New People," including many varieties and unassorted. Mrs. Gilding exchanges invitations with a number of these because they are interesting or amusing, or because their parties are diverting and dazzling. And Mrs. Gilding herself, being typical of New York's Cavalier element rather than its Puritan strain, personally prefers diversion to edification. Needless to say, "Boston's Best," being ninety-eight per cent. Puritan, has no "new" list. Besides her list of "New People," she has a short "frivolous" list of other Cavaliers like herself, and a "Neutral" list, which is the most valuable of all because it comprises those who "go" with everyone. Besides her own lists she has a "Pantry" list, a list that is actually made out for the benefit of the butler, so that on occasions he can invite guests to "fill in." The "Pantry" list comprises only intimate friends who belong on the "Neutral" list and fit in everywhere; young girls and young and older single men.

Allowing the butler to invite guests at his own discretion is not quite as casual as it sounds. It is very often an unavoidable expedient. For instance, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Blank telephones that he cannot come to dinner that same evening. Mrs. Gilding is out; to wait until she returns will make it too late to fill the place. Her butler who has been with her for years knows quite as well as Mrs. Gilding herself exactly which people belong in the same group. The dinner cards being already in his possession, he can see not only who is expected for dinner but the two ladies between whom Mr. Blank has been placed, and he thereupon selects some one on the "Pantry" list who is suitable for Mr. Blank's place at the table, and telephones the invitation. Perhaps he calls up a dozen before he finds one disengaged. When Mrs. Gilding returns he says, "Mr. Blank telephoned he would not be able to come for dinner as he was called to Washington. Mr. Bachelor will be happy to come in his place." Married people are seldom on this list, because the butler need not undertake to fill any but an odd place—that of a gentleman particularly. Otherwise two ladies would be seated together.

Asking Someone To Fill A Place

Since no one but a fairly intimate friend is ever asked to fill a place, this invitation is always telephoned. A very young man is asked by the butler if he will dine with Mrs. Gilding that evening, and very likely no explanation is made; but if the person to be invited is a lady or an older gentleman (except on such occasions as noted above), the hostess herself telephones:

"Can you do me a great favor and fill a place at dinner to-night?" The one who receives this invitation is rather bound by the rules of good manners to accept if possible.

Importance Of Dinner Engagements

Dinner invitations must be answered immediately; engraved or written ones by return post, or those which were telephoned, by telephone and at once! Also, nothing but serious illness or death or an utterly unavoidable accident can excuse the breaking of a dinner engagement.

To accept a dinner at Mrs. Nobody's and then break the obligation upon being invited to dine with the Worldlys, proclaims anyone capable of such rudeness an unmitigated snob, whom Mrs. Worldly would be the first to cut from her visiting list if she knew of it. The rule is: "Don't accept an invitation if you don't care about it." Having declined the Nobody invitation in the first place, you are then free to accept Mrs. Worldly's, or to stay at home. There are times, however, when engagements between very close friends or members of the family may perhaps be broken, but only if made with the special stipulation: "Come to dinner with us alone Thursday if nothing better turns up!" And the other answers, "I'd love to—and you let me know too, if you want to do anything else." Meanwhile if one of them is invited to something unusually tempting, there is no rudeness in telephoning her friend, "Lucy has asked us to hear Galli-Curci on Thursday!" and the other says, "Go, by all means! We can dine Tuesday next week if you like, or come Sunday for supper." This privilege of intimacy can, however, be abused. An engagement, even with a member of one's family, ought never to be broken twice within a brief period, or it becomes apparent that the other's presence is more a fill-in of idle time than a longed-for pleasure.

The Menu

It may be due to the war period, which accustomed everyone to going with very little meat and to marked reduction in all food, or it may be, of course, merely vanity that is causing even grandparents to aspire to svelte figures, but whatever the cause, people are putting much less food on their tables than formerly. The very rich, living in the biggest houses with the most imposing array of servants, sit down to three, or at most four, courses when alone, or when intimate friends who are known to have moderate appetites, are dining with them.

Under no circumstances would a private dinner, no matter how formal, consist of more than:

The menu for an informal dinner would leave out the entrée, and possibly either the hors d'oeuvre or the soup.

As a matter of fact, the marked shortening of the menu is in informal dinners and at the home table of the well-to-do. Formal dinners have been as short as the above schedule for twenty-five years. A dinner interlarded with a row of extra entrées, Roman punch, and hot dessert is unknown except at a public dinner, or in the dining-room of a parvenu. About thirty-five years ago such dinners are said to have been in fashion!

The Balanced Menu

One should always try to choose well-balanced dishes; an especially rich dish balanced by a simple one. Timbale with a very rich sauce of cream and pâté de foie gras might perhaps be followed by French chops, broiled chicken or some other light, plain meat. An entrée of about four broiled mushrooms on a small round of toast should be followed by boned capon or saddle of mutton or spring lamb. It is equally bad to give your guests very peculiar food unless as an extra dish. Some people love highly flavored Spanish or Indian dishes, but they are not appropriate for a formal dinner. At an informal dinner an Indian curry or Spanish enchillada for one dish is delicious for those who like it, and if you have another substantial dish such as a plain roast which practically everyone is able to eat, those who don't like Indian food can make their dinner of the other course.

It is the same way with the Italian dishes. One hating garlic and onions would be very wretched if onions were put in each and every course, and liberally. With Indian curry, a fatally bad selection would be a very peppery soup, such as croute au pot filled with pepper, and fish with green peppers, and then the curry, and then something casserole filled again with peppers and onions and other throat-searing ingredients, finishing with an endive salad. Yet more than one hostess has done exactly this. Or equally bad is a dinner of flavorless white sauces from beginning to end; a creamed soup, boiled fish with white sauce, then vol au vent of creamed sweetbreads, followed by breast of chicken and mashed potatoes and cauliflower, palm root salad, vanilla ice cream and lady-cake. Each thing is good in itself but dreadful in the monotony of its combination.

Another thing: although a dinner should not be long, neither should it consist of samples, especially if set before men who are hungry!

The following menu might seem at first glance a good dinner, but it is one from which the average man would go home and forage ravenously in the ice box: