The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners Part 2

Even if it is your rule to have the entry-lamp extinguished at a certain hour, let your servants understand that this rule must be dispensed with, as long as an evening-visiter remains in the house. Also, do not have the linen covers put on the furniture, and the house audibly shut up for the night, before she has gone. To do this is rude, because she cannot but receive it as a hint that she has staid too long.

If your visiter is obliged to go home with no other escort than your servant-man, apprize him, in time, that this duty will be expected of him; desiring that he takes care to be at hand before ten o'clock.

A lady that has no escort whose services she can command, ought not to make unexpected tea-visits. In many cases these visits produce more inconvenience than pleasure. If you wish to "take tea sociably" with a friend, inform her previously of your intention. She will then let you know if she is disengaged on that evening, or if it is in any way inconvenient to receive you; and she will herself appoint another time.

Generally, it is best not to volunteer a tea-visit, but to wait till invited.

If you are engaged to take tea with an intimate friend, who a.s.sures you that you will see none but the family; and you afterward receive an invitation to join a party to a place of public amus.e.m.e.nt, which you have long been desirous of visiting, you may retract your first engagement, provided you send an apology in due time, telling the exact truth, and telling it in polite terms. Your intimate friend will then take no offence, considering it perfectly natural that you should prefer the concert, the play, or the exhibition, to a quiet evening pa.s.sed at her house with no other guests. But take care to let her know as early as possible.[2] And be careful not to disappoint her again in a similar manner.

If you are accustomed to taking coffee in the evening, and have an insuperable dislike to tea, it is best not to make an _unexpected_ visit--or at least, if you go at all, go early--so as to allow ample time for the making of coffee--a much slower process than that of tea; particularly as there may chance to be no roasted coffee in the house.

Much inconvenience has been caused by the "sociable visiting" of determined coffee-drinkers. It is very easy to make green or black tea at a short notice--but not coffee.

In inviting "a few friends," which means a small select company, endeavour to a.s.sort them suitably, so as not to bring together people who have no community of tastes, feelings, and ideas. If you mix the dull and stupid with the bright and animated, the cold and formal with the frank and lively, the professedly serious with the gay and cheerful, the light with the heavy, and above all, those who pride themselves on high birth (high birth in America?) with those who boast of "belonging to the people," none of these "few friends" will enjoy each other's society; the evening will _not_ go off agreeably, and you and the other members of your family will have the worst of it. The pleasantest people in the room will naturally congregate together, and the task of entertaining the unentertainable will devolve on yourself and your own people.

Still, it is difficult always to a.s.sort your company to your satisfaction and theirs. A very charming lady may have very dull or very silly sisters. An intelligent and refined daughter may be unfortunate in a coa.r.s.e, ignorant mother, or a prosing, tiresome, purse-proud father.

Some of the most delighted persons you may wish to invite, may be enc.u.mbered with relations totally incapable of adding any thing to the pleasure of the evening;--for instance, the numerous automatons, whom we must charitably believe are speechless merely from diffidence, and of whom we are told, that "if we only knew them," we should discover them, on intimate acquaintance, to be "quite intelligent people." Perhaps so.

But we cannot help thinking that when a head is full of ideas, some of them will involuntarily ooze out and be manifest. Diffidence is very becoming to young people, and to those who are new to the world. But it is hardly credible that it should produce a painful taciturnity in persons who have pa.s.sed from youth into maturity; and who have enjoyed the advantages of education and of living in good society. Still those who, as the French say, have "a great talent for silence," may redeem themselves from suspicion of stupidity, by listening attentively and understandingly. A good talker is never displeased with a good hearer.

We have often met with young ladies from whom it was scarcely possible for one of their own s.e.x to extract more than a few monosyllables at long intervals; those intervals being pa.s.sed in dozing, rather than in hearing. And yet, if any thing in the shape of a beau presented itself, the tongues of these "dumb belles" were immediately loosened, and the wells of their minds commenced running as glibly as possible. To be sure, the talk amounted to nothing definite; but still they _did_ talk, and often became quite lively in a few minutes. Great is the power of beaux!

To return to the tea-table.--Unless you are positively sure, when you have a visiter, that she drinks the same tea that is used in your own family, you should have both black and green on the table. Either sort is often extremely disagreeable to persons who take the other. Drinkers of green tea, for instance, have generally an unconquerable aversion to black, as tasting like hay, herbs, &c., and they find in it no refreshing or exhilarating property. In some, it produces nausea. Few, on the other hand, dislike the taste of _good_ green tea, but they a.s.sign as a reason for not drinking it, that it is supposed from its enlivening qualities to affect the nerves. Judge Bushrod Washington, who always drank green, and avoided black, said that, "he took tea as a beverage, not as a medicine." And there are a vast number of sensible people in the same category. If your guest is a votary of green tea, have it made for her, in time for the essence of the leaves to be well drawn forth. It is no compliment to give her green tea that is weak and washy. And do not, at your own table, be so rude as to lecture her upon the superior wholesomeness of black tea. For more than a century, green tea was universally drunk in every house, and there was then less talk of nervous diseases than during the reign of Souchong,--which, by-the-bye, is nearly exploded in the best European society.

In pouring out, do not fill the cups to the brim. Always send the cream and sugar round, that each person may use those articles according to their own taste. Also, send round a small pot of hot water, that those who like their tea weak may conveniently dilute it. If tea is handed, a servant should, at the last, carry round a water-pitcher and gla.s.ses.

Whether at dinner or tea, if yourself and family are in the habit of eating fast, (which, by the way, is a very bad and unwholesome one, and justly cited against us by our English cousins,) and you see that your visiter takes her food deliberately, endeavour (for that time at least) to check the rapidity of your own mastication, so as not to finish before she has done, and thus compel her to hurry herself uncomfortably, or be left alone while every one round her is sitting unoccupied and impatient. Or rather, let the family eat a little more than usual, or seem to do so, out of politeness to their guest.

When refreshments are brought in after tea, let them be placed on the centre-table, and handed round from thence by the gentlemen to the ladies. If there are only four or five persons present, it may be more convenient for all to sit round the table--which should not be cleared till after all the visiters have gone, that the things may again be offered before the departure of the guests.

If a friend makes an afternoon call, and you wish her to stay and take tea, invite her to do so at once, as soon as she has sat down; and do not wait till she has risen to depart. If she consents to stay, there will then be ample time to make any additional preparation for tea that may be expedient; and she will also know, at once, that you have no engagement for the evening, and that she is not intruding on your time, or preventing you from going out. If you are intimate friends, and your guest is disposed to have a long chat, she will do well to ask you, at the beginning, if you are disengaged, or design going out that afternoon.

We knew a very sensible and agreeable lady in Philadelphia, who liking better to have company at home than to go out herself, made a rule of inviting every day, half a dozen friends (not more) to take tea with her--just as many as could sit round the table, "with ample room and verge enough." These friends she a.s.sorted judiciously. And therefore she never asked a whole family at once; those who were left out understanding that they would be invited another time. For instance, she would send a note for the father and mother only--to meet another father and mother or two. A few weeks after, a billet would come for the young people only. But if there were _several_ young people, some were delayed--thus--"I wish James and Eliza to take tea with me this evening, to meet so-and-so. Another time I promise myself the pleasure of Edward's company, and Mary's."

This distribution of invitations never gave offence.

Those who were honoured with the acquaintance of such a lady were not likely to be displeased at so sensible a mode of receiving them. These little tea-drinkings were always pleasant, and often delightful. The hostess was well qualified to make them so.

Though the refreshments were of the best kind, and in sufficient abundance, and the fires, lights, &c. all as they should be, there was no ostentatious display, and the ladies were dressed no more than if they were spending a quiet evening at home--party-finery being interdicted--also, such needle-work as required constant attention to every st.i.tch.

If you have a friend who is in somewhat precarious health, and who is afraid of being out in the night air, or who lives in a distant part of the town, invite her to dinner, or to pa.s.s the day, rather than to tea.

She will then be able to get home before twilight.

There is in Boston a very fashionable and very distinguished lady, who, since her return from Europe, has relinquished the custom of giving large parties; and now entertains her friends by, almost every day, having two or three to dine with her,--by invitation. These dinners are charming. The hour is according to the season--earlier in winter, later in summer--the guests departing before dark, and the lady always having the evening to herself.

We know a gentleman in Philadelphia, who every Monday has a family-dinner at his house, for all his children and grandchildren, who there meet and enjoy themselves before the eyes of the father and mother--a friend or two being also invited. Nothing can be more pleasant than to see them all there together, none staying away,--for parents, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, are all at peace, and all meeting in friendship--unhappily, a rare case, where there is a large connection, and considerable wealth.

We wish that social intercourse was more frequently conducted on the plan of the few examples above cited.

Should chance-visiters come in before the family have gone to tea, let them at once be invited to partake of that repast; which they will of course decline, if they have had tea already. In a well-provided house, there can be no difficulty in adding something to the family tea-table, which, in genteel life, should never be discreditably parsimonious.

It is a very mean practice, for the members of the family to slip out of the parlour, one by one at a time, and steal away into the eating-room, to avoid inviting their visiter to accompany them. The truth is always suspected by these separate exits, and the length of absence from the parlour--and is frequently betrayed by the rattle of china, and the pervading fumes of hot cakes. How much better to meet the inconvenience (and it cannot be a great one) by decently conducting your accidental guest to the table, unless he says he has already taken tea, and will amuse himself with a book while the family are at theirs.

Casual evening visiters should avoid staying too late. Ten o'clock, in our country, is the usual time to depart, or at least to begin departing. If the visit is unduly prolonged, there may be evident signs of irrepressible drowsiness in the heads of the family, which, when perceived, will annoy the guest, who must then feel that he has stayed too long--and without being able to excuse himself with any approach to the elegance of William Spencer's apology to the charming Lady Anne Hamilton.

Too late I stay'd--forgive the crime; Unheeded flew the hours, For noiseless falls the foot of Time That only treads on flowers.

Ah! who with clear account remarks The ebbing of the gla.s.s, When all its sands are diamond sparks, That dazzle as they pa.s.s!

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Where the city-post is to be depended on, a note can always be sent in that way.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ENTReE.

A lady is said to have the _entree_ of her friend's room, when she is allowed or a.s.sumes the privilege of entering it familiarly at all times, and without any previous intimation--a privilege too often abused. In many cases, the visited person has never really granted this privilege, (and after growing wise by experience, she rarely will;) but the visiter, a.s.suming that she herself must, under all circ.u.mstances, be welcome, carries her sociability so far as to become troublesome and inconvenient. Consequently, their friendship begins to abate in its warmth. No one likes to be annoyed, or be intruded on at all hours. So the visited begins to think of the adage, "My room is my castle," and the visiter finds that seeing a friend under all circ.u.mstances somewhat diminishes respect, and that "familiarity brings contempt."

There are few occasions on which it is well, on entering a house, to run directly to the chamber of your friend, and to bolt into her room without knocking; or the very instant _after_ knocking, before she has time to desire you to enter, or to make the slightest arrangement for your reception. You may find her washing, or dressing, or in bed, or even engaged in repairing clothes,--or the room may be in great disorder, or the chambermaid in the act of cleaning it. No one likes unseasonable interruptions, even from a very dear friend. That friend would be dearer still, if she had sufficient tact and consideration to refrain from causing these annoyances. Also, friendships are not always lasting--particularly those that become inordinately violent, and where both parties, by their excessive intimacy, put themselves too much into each other's power. Very mortifying disclosures are sometimes made after a quarrel, between two Hermias and Helenas, when recrimination begins to come, and mutual enmity takes the place of mutual kindness.

A familiar visit will always begin more pleasantly, if the visiter enquires of the servant at the door if the lady she wishes to see is at home, and then goes into the parlour, and stays there till she has sent her name, and ascertained that she can be received up-stairs.[3] Then (and not till then) let her go to her friend's room, and still remember to knock at the door before she enters. Let her have patience till her friend bids her come in, or has time to rise, cross the room, and come to open the door, if it is fastened.

It is extremely rude, on being admitted to a private apartment, to look curiously about, as if taking an inventory of all that is to be seen. We have known ladies whose eyes were all the time gazing round, and even slily peering under tables, sofas, &c.; turning their heads to look after every person who chanced to be moving about the room, and giving particular attention to whatever seemed to be in disorder or out of place. Nay, we have known one who prided herself upon the gentility of her forefathers and foremothers, rise from her seat when her hostess opened a bureau-drawer, or a closet-door, and cross the room, to stand by and inspect the contents of said bureau or closet, while open--a practice very common with ill-taught _children_, but which certainly should be rebuked out of them long before they are grown up.

Make no remark upon the work in which you find your friend engaged. If she lays it aside, desire her not to quit it because of your presence; but propound no questions concerning it. Do not look over her books, and ask to borrow them. In short, meddle with nothing.

Some ladies never enter the room of an intimate friend without immediately exclaiming against its heat or its cold--seldom the latter, but very frequently the former, as it is rather fashionable to be always too warm; perhaps because it makes them seem younger. If they really are uncomfortably warm on a very cold day, we think it can only be from the glow produced by the exercise of walking. This glow must naturally subside in a few minutes, if they would sit down and wait with a little patience, or else avail themselves of the fan which ought to be at hand in every room. We have known ladies of this warm temperament, who had sufficient consideration always to carry a pocket-fan in winter as well as summer. This is far better than to break out instantly with a complaint of the heat of the room, or to run and throw up a window-sash, or fling open the door, at the risk of giving cold to others. No intimacy can authorize these freedoms in a cold day, unless permission has first been asked, and sincerely granted.

If you are perfectly certain that you have really the entree of your friend's room, and even if she has the same of yours, you have no right ever to extend that privilege to any other person who may chance to be with you when you go to see her. It is taking an unjustifiable liberty to intrude a stranger upon the privacy of her chamber. If another lady is with you, waive your privilege of entree for that time, take your companion into the parlour, and send up the names of both, and do not say, "Oh! come up, come up--I am on no ceremony with her, and I am sure she will not _mind you_." And how can you be sure? Perhaps in reality, she _will_ mind her very much, and be greatly discomfited, though too polite to appear so.

There are certain unoccupied females so over-friendly as to take the entree of the whole house. These are, generally, ultra-neighbourly neighbours, who run in at all hours of the day and evening; ferret out the ladies of the family, wherever they may be--up-stairs or down; watch all their proceedings when engaged, like good housewives, in inspecting the attics, the store-rooms, the cellars, or the kitchens. Never for a moment do they seem to suppose that their hourly visits may perhaps be inconvenient or unseasonable; or too selfish to abate their frequency, even when they suspect them to be so, these inveterate sociablists make their incursions at all avenues. If they find that the front-door is kept locked, they glide down the area-steps, and get in through the bas.e.m.e.nt. Or else, they discover some back-entrance, by which they can slip in at "the postern-gate"--that is, alley-wise:--sociablists are not proud. At first, the sociablist will say, on making her third or fourth appearance for the day, "Who comes to see you oftener than I?" But after awhile even this faint shadow of an apology is omitted--or changed to "n.o.body minds _me_." She is quite domesticated in your house--an absolute _habitue_. She sees all, hears all, knows all your concerns. Of course she does. Her talk _to_ you is chiefly gossip, and therefore her talk _about_ you is chiefly the same. She is _au-fait_ of every thing concerning your table, for after she has had her dinner at her own home, she comes bolting into your dining-room and "sits by," and sees you eat yours. It is well if she does not begin with "a look in" upon you before breakfast. She finds out everybody that comes to your house; knows all your plans for going to this place or that; is well acquainted with every article that you wear; is present at the visits of all your friends, and hears all their conversation. Her own is usually "an infinite deal of nothing."

A sociablist is commonly what is called good-natured, or else you would not endure her at all--and you believe, for a time, that she really has an extraordinary liking for you. After awhile, you are undeceived. A coolness ensues, if not a quarrel, and you are glad to find that she carries her sociability to another market, and that a new friend is now suffering all that you have experienced. To avoid the danger of being overwhelmed by the sociability of an idle neighbour, discourage the first indications of undue intimacy, by making your own visits rather few, and rather far between. A young lady of good sense, and of proper self-respect, will never be too lavish of her society; and if she has pleasant neighbours, will visit them always in moderation. And their friendship will last the longer.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] If the visiter has been properly announced, a well-trained servant will, in all probability, run up before her, and open the room-door.

CHAPTER V.

INTRODUCTIONS.

Fashion, in its various unmeaning freaks, sometimes decrees that it is not "stylish to introduce strangers." But this is a whim that, whenever attempted, has neither become general nor lasted long. It has seldom been adopted by persons of good sense and good manners--and very rarely by that fortunate cla.s.s whose elevated standing in society enables them to act as they please, in throwing aside the fetters of absurd conventionalities, and who can afford to do so.