Etiquette · Emily Post
If a visitor brings no maid of her own, the personal maid of the hostess (if she has one--otherwise the housemaid) always unpacks the bags or trunks, lays toilet articles out on the dressing-table and in the bathroom, puts folded things in the drawers and hangs dresses on hangers in the closet. If when she unpacks she sees that something of importance has been forgotten, she tells her mistress, or, in the case of a servant who has been long employed, she knows what selection to make herself, and supplies the guest without asking with such articles as comb and brush or clothes brush, or bathing suit and bath-robe.
The valet of the host performs the same service for men. In small establishments where there is no lady's maid or valet, the housemaid is always taught to unpack guests' belongings and to press and hook up ladies' dresses, and gentlemen's clothes are sent to a tailor to be pressed after each wearing.
In big houses, breakfast trays for women guests are usually carried to the bedroom floor by the butler (some butlers delegate this service to a footman) and are handed to the lady's maid who takes the tray into the room. In small houses they are carried up by the waitress.
Trays for men visitors are rare, but when ordered are carried up and into the room by the valet, or butler. If there are no men servants the waitress has to carry up the tray.
When a guest rings for breakfast, the housemaid or the valet goes into the room, opens the blinds, and in cold weather lights the fire, if there is an open one in the room. Asking whether a hot, cool or cold bath is preferred, he goes into the bathroom, spreads a bath mat on the floor, a big bath towel over a chair, with the help of a thermometer draws the bath, and sometimes lays out the visitor's clothes. As few people care for more than one bath a day and many people prefer their bath before dinner instead of before breakfast, this office is often performed at dinner dressing time instead of in the morning.
The "tip-roll" in a big house seems to us rather appalling, but compared with the amounts given in a big English house, ours are mere pittances. Pleasant to think that something is less expensive in our country than in Europe!
Fortunately in this country, when you dine in a friend's house you do not "tip" the butler, nor do you tip a footman or parlor-maid who takes your card to the mistress of the house, nor when you leave a country house do you have to give more than five dollars to any one whatsoever. A lady for a week-end stay gives two or three dollars to the lady's maid, if she went without her own, and one or two dollars to every one who waited on her. Intimate friends in a small house send tips to all the servants--perhaps only a dollar apiece, but no one is forgotten. In a very big house this is never done and only those are tipped who have served you. If you had your maid with you, you always give her a tip (about two dollars) to give the cook (often the second one) who prepared her meals and one dollar for the kitchen maid who set her table.
A gentleman scarcely ever "remembers" any of the women servants (to their chagrin) except a waitress, and tips only the butler and the valet, and sometimes the chauffeur. The least he can offer any of the men-servants is two dollars and the most ever is five. No woman gets as much as that, for such short service.
In a few houses the tipping system is abolished, and in every guest room, in a conspicuous place on the dressing-table or over the bath tub where you are sure to read it, is a sign, saying:
"Please do not offer tips to my servants. Their contract is with this special understanding, and proper arrangements have been made to meet it; you will not only create 'a situation,' but cause the immediate dismissal of any one who may be persuaded by you to break this rule of the house."
The notice is signed by the host. The "arrangement" referred to is one whereby every guest means a bonus added to their wages of so much per person per day for all employees. This system is much preferred by servants for two reasons. First, self-respecting ones dislike the demeaning effect of a tip (an occasional few won't take them). Secondly, they can absolutely count that so many visitors will bring them precisely such an amount.
[Illustration: "IN SMALL HOUSES BREAKFAST TRAYS FOR WOMEN GUESTS ARE CARRIED UP BY THE WAITRESS." [Page 426]]
Breakfast customs are as varied in this country as the topography of the land! Communities of people who have lived or traveled much abroad, have nearly all adopted the Continental breakfast habit of a tray in their room, especially on Sunday mornings. In 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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. The hostess simply says on his (or her) arrival:
"Oh, howdo Freddie (or Constance)! They've put you in the Chinese room, I think. Ring for tea when you want it. Struthers telephoned he'd be over around five. Mrs. Toplofty asked you to dinner to-night and I accepted for you--hope that was all right. If not, you'll have to telephone and get out of it yourself. I want you to dinner to-morrow night and for lunch on Sunday. Sorry to leave you, but I'm late for bridge now. Good-by." And she is off.
The Newport hostess is, of course, an extreme type that is seldom met away from that one small watering place in Rhode Island.
The energetic hostess is the antithesis of the one above, and far more universally known. She is one who fusses and plans continually, who thinks her guests are not having a good time unless she rushes them, Cook's tourist fashion, from this engagement to that, and crowds with activity and diversion--never mind what so long as it is something to see or do--every moment of their stay.
She walks them through the garden to show them all the nooks and vistas. She dilates upon the flowers that bloomed here last month and are going to bloom next. She insists upon their climbing over rocks to a summerhouse to see the view; she insists on taking them in another direction to see an old mill; and, again, every one is trouped to the cupola of the house to see another view. She insists on every one's playing croquet before lunch, to which she gathers in a curiously mixed collection of neighbors. Immediately after lunch every one is driven to a country club to see some duffer golf--for some reason there is never "time" in all the prepared pleasures for any of her guests to play golf themselves. After twenty minutes at the golf club, they are all taken to a church fair. The guests are all introduced to the ladies at the booth and those who were foolish enough to bring their purses with them from now on carry around an odd assortment of fancy work. There is another entertainment that her guests must not miss! A flower pageant of the darlingest children fourteen miles away! Everyone is dashed to that. On some one's front lawn, daisies and lilies and roses trip and skip--it is all sweetly pretty but the sun is hot and the guests have been on the go for a great many hours. Soon, however, their hostess leaves. "Home at last!" think they. Not at all. They are going somewhere for tea and French recitations. But why go on? The portrait is fairly complete, though this account covers only a few hours and there is still all the evening and to-morrow to be filled in just as liberally.
The anxious hostess does not insist on your ceaseless activity, but she is no less persistent in filling your time. She is always asking you what you would like to do next. If you say you are quite content as you are, she nevertheless continues to shower suggestions. Shall she play the phonograph to you? Would you like her to telephone to a friend who sings too wonderfully? Would you like to look at a portfolio of pictures? If you are a moment silent, she is sure you are bored, and wonders what she can do to divert you!
The ideal hostess must have so many perfections of sense and character that were she described in full, no one seemingly but a combination of seer and angel could ever hope to qualify.
She must first of all consider the inclinations of her guests, she must not only make them as comfortable as the arrangements and limits of her establishment permit, but she must subordinate her own inclinations utterly. At the same time, she must not fuss and flutter and get agitated and seemingly make efforts in their behalf. Nothing makes a guest more uncomfortable than to feel his host or hostess is being put to a great deal of bother or effort on his account.
A perfect hostess like a perfect housekeeper has seemingly nothing whatever to do with household arrangements which apparently run in oiled grooves and of their own accord.
Certain rules are easy to observe once they are brought to attention. A hostess should never speak of annoyances of any kind--no matter what happens! Unless she is actually unable to stand up, she should not mention physical ills any more than mental ones. She has invited people to her house, and as long as they are under her roof, hospitality demands that their sojourn shall be made as pleasant as lies in her power.
If the cook leaves, then a picnic must be made of the situation as though a picnic were the most delightful thing that could happen. Should a guest be taken ill, she must assure him that he is not giving the slightest trouble; at the same time nothing that can be done for his comfort must be overlooked. Should she herself or some one in her family become suddenly ill, she should make as light of it as possible to her guests, even though she withdraw from them. In that event she must ask a relative or intimate friend to come in and take her place. Nor should the deputy hostess dwell to the guests on the illness, or whatever it is that has deprived them of their hostess.
The guest no one invites a second time is the one who runs a car to its detriment, and a horse to a lather; who leaves a borrowed tennis racquet out in the rain; who "dog ears" the books, leaves a cigarette on the edge of a table and burns a trench in its edge, who uses towels for boot rags, who stands a wet glass on polished wood, who tracks muddy shoes into the house, and leaves his room looking as though it had been through a cyclone. Nor are men the only offenders. Young women have been known to commit every one of these offenses and the additional one of bringing a pet dog that was not house trained.
Besides these actually destructive shortcomings, there are evidences of bad upbringing in many modern youths whose lack of consideration is scarcely less annoying. Those who are late for every meal; cheeky others who invite friends of their own to meals without the manners or the decency to ask their hostess' permission; who help themselves to a car and go off and don't come back for meals at all; and who write no letters afterwards, nor even take the trouble to go up and "speak" to a former hostess when they see her again.
On the other hand, a young person who is considerate is a delight immeasurable--such a delight as only a hostess of much experience can perhaps appreciate. A young girl who tells where she is going, first asking if it is all right, and who finds her hostess as soon as she is in the house at night to report that she is back, is one who very surely will be asked again and often.
A young man is, of course, much freer, but a similar deference to the plans of his hostess, and to the hours and customs of the house, will result in repeated invitations for him also.
The lack of these things is not only bad form but want of common civility and decency, and reflects not only on the girls and boys themselves but on their parents who failed to bring them up properly.
Courtesy demands that you, when you are a guest, shall show neither annoyance nor disappointment--no matter what happens. Before you can hope to become even a passable guest, let alone a perfect one, you must learn as it were not to notice if hot soup is poured down your back. If you neither understand nor care for dogs or children, and both insist on climbing all over you, you must seemingly like it; just as you must be amiable and polite to your fellow guests, even though they be of all the people on earth the most detestable to you. You must with the very best dissimulation at your command, appear to find the food delicious though they offer you all of the viands that are especially distasteful to your palate, or antagonistic to your digestion. You must disguise your hatred of red ants and scrambled food, if everyone else is bent on a picnic. You must pretend that six is a perfect dinner hour though you never dine before eight, or, on the contrary, you must wait until eight-thirty or nine with stoical fortitude, though your dinner hour is six and by seven your chest seems securely pinned to your spine.
If you go for a drive, and it pours, and there is no top to the carriage or car, and you are soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow so that your teeth chatter, your lips must smile and you must appear to enjoy the refreshing coolness.
If you go to stay in a small house in the country, and they give you a bed full of lumps, in a room of mosquitoes and flies, in a chamber over that of a crying baby, under the eaves with a temperature of over a hundred, you can the next morning walk to the village, and send yourself a telegram and leave! But though you feel starved, exhausted, wilted, and are mosquito bitten until you resemble a well-developed case of chickenpox or measles, by not so much as a facial muscle must you let the family know that your comfort lacked anything that your happiest imagination could picture--nor must you confide in any one afterwards (having broken bread in the house) how desperately wretched you were.
If you know anyone who is always in demand, not only for dinners, but for trips on private cars and yachts, and long visits in country houses, you may be very sure of one thing: the popular person is first of all unselfish or else extremely gifted; very often both.
The perfect guest not only tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put on an equally becoming mental attitude. No one is ever asked out very much who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with apparent sympathy to every one else's. Another attribute of the perfect guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for anything--or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and do nothing.
She never for one moment thinks of herself, but of the other people she is thrown with. She is a person of sympathy always, and instantaneous discernment. She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment for most occasions, but she is neither gushing nor fulsome. She has merely acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the glimmer of a silver lining.
She is as sympathetic to children as to older people; she cuts out wonderful paper dolls and soldier hats, always leisurely and easily as though it cost neither time nor effort. She knows a hundred stories or games, every baby and every dog goes to her on sight, not because she has any especial talent, except that one she has cultivated, the talent of interest in everyone and everything except herself. Few people know that there is such a talent or that it can be cultivated.
She has more than mere beauty; she has infinite charm, and she is so well born that she is charming to everyone. Her manner to a duke who happens to be staying in the house is not a bit more courteous than her manner to the kitchen-maid whom she chances to meet in the kitchen gardens whither she has gone with the children to see the new kittens; as though new kittens were the apex of all delectability!
She always calls the servants by name; always says "How do you do" when she arrives, "Good morning" while there, and "Good-by" when she leaves. And do they presume because of her "familiarity" when she remembers to ask after the parlor-maid's mother and the butler's baby? They wait on her as they wait on no one else who comes to the house--neither the Senator nor the Governor, nor his Grace of Overthere!
This ideal guest is an equally ideal hostess; the principle of both is the same. A ready smile, a quick sympathy, a happy outlook, consideration for others, tenderness toward everything that is young or helpless, and forgetfulness of self, which is not far from the ideal of womankind.
The sole difference between being a guest at a country house and a guest on a private car or a yacht, is that you put to a very severe test tour adaptability as a traveler. You live in very close quarters with your host and hostess and fellow guests, and must therefore be particularly on your guard against being selfish or out of humor. If you are on shore and don't feel well, you can stay home; but off on a cruise, if you are ill you have to make the best of it, and a sea-sick person's "best" is very bad indeed! Therefore let it be hoped you are a good sailor. If not, think very, very carefully before you embark!
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End of part 22 of 32
Continue readingChapter 26: The House Party in Camp
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