Manners and Social Usages Part 17

Wheelbarrows of tiny size for flowers are a favorite conceit. They are made of straw-work, entirely gilded, or painted black or brown, and picked out with gold; or perhaps pale green, with a bordering of brown. A very pretty one may be made of old cigarbox wood; on one side a monogram painted in red and gold, on the other a spray of autumn leaves. Carved-wood barrows fitted with tin inside may hold a growing plant--stephanotis, hyacinths, ferns, ivy, or any other hardy plant--and are very pleasing souvenirs.

The designs for reticules and _ch?telaines_ are endless. At a very expensive luncheon, to which twenty-four ladies sat down, a silk reticule a foot square, filled with Maillard's confections and decorated with an exquisitely painted landscape effect, was presented to each guest. These lovely reticules may be any shape, and composed of almost any material. A very handsome style is an eight-sided, melon-shaped bag of black satin, with a decoration of bunches of scarlet flowers painted or embroidered. Silk braided with gold, brocade, and plush combined, and Turkish towelling with an _applique?_ of brilliant color, are all suitable and effective.

In the winter a shaded satin m.u.f.f, in which was hidden a _bonbonniere_, was the present that made glad the hearts of twenty- eight ladies. These are easily made in the house, and a plush m.u.f.f with a bird's head is a favorite "favor."

A pair of bellows is a pretty and inexpensive _bonbonniere_. They can be bought at the confectioner's, and are more satisfactory than when made at home; but if one is ingenious, it is possible, with a little pasteboard, gilt paper, silk, and glue, to turn out a very pretty little knickknack of this kind. However, the French do these things so much better than we do that a lady giving a lunch-party had better buy all her favors at some wholesale place. There is a real economy in buying such articles at the wholesale stores, for the retail dealers double the price.

Bronze, iron, and gla.s.s are all pressed into the service, and occasionally we have at a lunch a whole military armament of cannon, muskets, swords, bronze helmets, whole suits of armor, tazza for jewellery, miniature cases, inkstands, and powder-boxes, all to hold a few sugar-plums.

At a christening party all the favors savor of the nursery--splendid cradles of flowers, a ba.s.sinet of brilliante trimmed with ribbons for a _bonbonniere_, powder-boxes, puffs, little socks filled with sugar instead of little feet, an infant's cloak standing on end (really over pasteboard), an infant's hood, and even the flannel s.h.i.+rt has been copied. Of course the baptismal dish and silver cup are easily imitated.

Perfumery is introduced in little cut-gla.s.s bottles, in leaden tubes like paint tubes, in perfumed artificial flowers, in _sachets_ of powder, and in the handles of fans.

Boxes of satinwood, small wood covers for music and blotting cases, painted by hand, are rather pretty favors. The plain boxes and book covers can be bought and ornamented by the young artists of the family. Nothing is prettier than an owl sitting on an ivy vine for one of these. The owl, indeed, plays a very conspicuous part at the modern dinner-table and luncheon. His power of looking wise and being foolish at the same time fits him for modern society. He enters it as a pepper-caster, a feathered _bonbonniere_, a pickle- holder (in china), and is drawn, painted, and photographed in every style. A pun is made on his name: "Should owled acquaintance be forgot?" etc. He is a favorite in jewellery, and is often carved in jade. Indeed, the owl is having his day, having had the night always to himself.

The squirrel, the dog, "the frog that would a-wooing go," the white duck, the pig, and the mouse, are all represented in china, and in the various silks and gauzes of French taste, or in their native skins, or in any of the disguises that people may fancy. Bears with ragged staffs stand guard over a plate of modern faience, as they do over the gates of Warwick Castle. Cats mewing, catching mice, playing on the Jews-harp, elephants full of choicest confectionery, lions and tigers with chocolate insides, and even the marked face and long hair of Oscar Wilde, the last holding within its ample cranium caraway-seeds instead of brains, played their part as favors.

The green enamelled dragon-fly, gra.s.shoppers and beetles, flies and wasps, moths and b.u.t.terflies, bright-tinted mandarin ducks, peac.o.c.ks, and ostriches, tortoises cut in pebbles or made of pasteboard, shrimps and crabs, do all coldly furnish forth the lunch-table as favors and _bonbonnieres_. Then come plaster or pasteboard gondolas, skiffs, wherries, steams.h.i.+ps, and ferry-boats, all made with wondrous skill and freighted with caramels. Imitation rackets, battledoor and shuttlec.o.c.k, hoops and sticks, castanets, cup and ball, tambourines, guitars, violins, hand-organs, banjos, and drums, all have their little day as fas.h.i.+onable favors.

Little statuettes of Kate Greenaway's quaint children now appear as favors, and are very charming. Nor is that "flexible curtain," the fan, left out. Those of paper, pretty but not expensive, are very common favors. But the opulent offer pretty satin fans painted with the recipient's monogram, or else a fan which will match flowers and dress. Fans of lace, and of tortoise-sh.e.l.l and carved ivory and sandal-wood, are sometimes presented, but they are too ostentatious.

Let us say to the givers of feasts, be not too magnificent, but if you give a fan, give one that is good for something, not a thing which breaks with the "first fall."

A very pretty set of favors, called "fairies," are little groups of children painted on muslin, with a background of ribbon. The muslin is so thin that the children seem floating on air. The lady's name is also painted on the ribbon.

We find that favors for gentlemen, such as sunflowers, pin-cus.h.i.+ons, small purses, scarf-pins, and sleeve-b.u.t.tons, are more useful than those bestowed upon ladies, but not so ornamental.

Very pretty baskets, called _huits_ (the baskets used by the vine- growers to carry earth for the roots of the vines), are made of straw ornamented with artificial flowers and gra.s.ses, and filled with bonbons.

Little Leghorn hats trimmed with pompons of muslin, blue, pink, or white, are filled with natural flowers and hung on the arm. These are a lovely variation.

Fruits--the apple, pear, orange, and plum, delightfully realistic-- are made of composition, and open to disclose most unexpected seeds.

At trowel, a knife, fork, and spoon, of artistically painted wood, and a pair of oars, all claim a pa.s.sing notice as artistic novelties.

Bags of plush, and silk embroidered with daisies, are very handsome and expensive favors; heavily trimmed with lace, they cost four dollars apiece, but are sold a little cheaper by the dozen. Blue sashes, with flowers painted on paper (and attached to the sash a paper on which may be written the menu), cost eighteen dollars a dozen. A dish of snails, fearfully realistic, can be bought for one dollar a plate, fruits for eighteen dollars a dozen, and fans anywhere from twelve up to a hundred dollars a dozen.

A thousand dollars is not an unusual price for a luncheon, including flowers and favors, for eighteen to twenty-four guests. Indeed, a luncheon was given last winter for which the hostess offered a prize for copies in miniature of the musical instruments used in "Patience." They were furnished to her for three hundred dollars.

The names of these now almost obsolete instruments were rappaka, tibia, archlute, tambour, kiffar, quinteme, rebel, tuckin, archviola, lyre, serpentine, chluy, viola da gamba, balalaika, gong, ravanastron, monochord, shopkar. The "archlute" is the mandolin.

They represented all countries, and were delicate specimens of toy handiwork.

We have not entered into the vast field of gla.s.s, china, porcelain, _cloisonn?_, Dresden, faience jugs, boxes, plates, bottles, and vases, which are all used as favors. Indeed, it would be impossible to describe half of the fancies which minister to modern extravagance. The _bonbonniere_ can cost anything, from five to five hundred dollars; fifty dollars for a satin box filled with candy is not an uncommon price. Sometimes, when the box is of oxidized silver--a quaint copy of the antique from Benvenuto Cellini--this price is not too much; but when it is a thing which tarnishes in a month, it seems ridiculously extravagant.

We have seen very pretty and artistic cheap favors. Reticules made of bright cotton, or silk handkerchiefs with borders; cards painted by the artists of the family; palm-leaf fans covered with real flowers, or painted with imitation ones; sunflowers made of pasteboard, with portfolios behind them; pretty little parasols of flowers; Little Red Riding-hood, officiating as a receptacle for stray pennies; j.a.panese teapots, with the "cozy" made at home; little doyleys wrought with delightful designs from "Pretty Peggy,"

and numberless other graceful and charming trifles.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII. DINNER-TABLE NOVELTIES.

One would think that modern luxury had reached its ultimatum in the delicate refinements of dinner-giving, but each dinner-table reveals the fact that this is an inexhaustible subject. The floral world is capable of an infinity of surprises, and the last one is a cameo of flowers on a door, shaped like a four-leaved clover. The guests are thus a.s.sured of good-luck. The horseshoe having been so much used that it is now almost obsolete, except in jewelry, the clover-leaf has come in. A very beautiful dinner far up Fifth Avenue had this winter an entirely new idea, inasmuch as the flowers were put overhead. The delicate vine, resembling green asparagus in its fragility, was suspended from the chandelier to the four corners of the room, and on it were hung delicate roses, lilies-of-the-valley, pinks, and fragrant jasmine, which sent down their odors, and occasionally dropped themselves into a lady's lap. This is an exquisite bit of luxury.

Then the arrival, two months before Easter, of the fragrant, beautiful Easter lilies has added a magnificent and stately effect to the central bouquets. It has been found that the island of Bermuda is a great reservoir of these bulbs, which are sent up, like their unfragrant rivals the onions, by the barrelful. Even a piece of a bulb will produce from three to five lilies, so that these fine flowers are more cheap and plenty in January than usually in April.

A dining-room, square in shape, hung with richly-embroidered, old- gold tapestry, with a round table set for twenty, with silver and gla.s.s and a great bunch of lilies and green ferns in the middle, and a "crazy quilt" of flowers over one's head, may well reproduce the sense of dreamland which modern luxury is trying to follow.

Truly we live in the days of Aladdin. Six weeks after the ground was broken in Secretary Whitney's garden in Was.h.i.+ngton for his ballroom, the company a.s.sembled in a magnificent apartment with fluted gold- ceiling and crimson brocade hangings, bronzes, statues, and Dresden candlesticks, and a large wood fire at one end, in which logs six feet long were burning--all looking as if it were part of an old baronial castle of the Middle Ages.

The florists will furnish you red clovers in January if you give your order in October. Great bunches of flowers, of a pure scarlet unmixed with any other color, are very fas.h.i.+onable, and the effect in a softly-lighted room is most startling and beautiful.

The lighting of rooms by means of lamps and candles is giving hostesses great annoyance. There is scarcely a dinner-party but the candles set fire to their fringed shades, and a conflagration ensues. Then the new lamps, which give such a resplendent light, have been known to melt the metal about the wick, and the consequences have been disastrous. The next move will probably be the dipping of the paper in some asbestos or other anti-inflammable substance, so that there will be no danger of fire at the dinner- table. The screens put over the candles should not have this paper- fringe; it is very dangerous. But if a candle screen takes fire, have the coolness to let it burn itself up without touching it, as thus it will be entirely innocuous, although rather appalling to look at. Move a plate under it to catch the flying fragments, and no harm will be done; but a well-intentioned effort to blow it out or to remove it generally results in a very much more wide-spread conflagration.

China and gla.s.s go on improving; and there are jewelled goblets and centre-pieces of yellow gla.s.s covered with gold and what looks like jewels. Knives and forks are now to be had with crystal handles set in silver, very ornamental and clean-looking; these come from Bohemia. The endless succession of beautiful plates are more and more j.a.panese in tone.

Satsuma vases and jugs are often sent to a lady, full of beautiful roses, thus making a lasting souvenir of what would be a perishable gift. These Satsuma jugs are excellent things in which to plant hyacinths, and they look well in the centre of the dinner-table with these flowers growing in them.

Faded flowers can be entirely restored to freshness by clipping the stems and putting them in very hot water; then set them away from the gas and furnace heat, and they come on the dinner-table fresh for several days after their disappearance in disgrace as faded or jaded bouquets. Flowers thus restored have been put in a cold library, where the water, once hot, has frozen stiff, and yet have borne these two extremes of temperature without loss of beauty--in fact, have lasted presentably from Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day night.

What flowers cannot stand is the air we all live in--at what cost to our freshness we find out in the spring--the overheated furnace and gas-laden air of the modern dining-room. The secret of the hot-water treatment is said to be this: the sap is sent up into the flower instead of lingering in the stems. Roses respond to this treatment wonderfully.

The fas.h.i.+on of wearing low-necked dresses at dinner has become so p.r.o.nounced that the moralists begin to issue weekly essays against this revival as if it had never been done before. Our virtuous grandmothers would be astonished to hear that their ball-dresses (never cut high) were so immoral and indecent. The fact remains that a sleeveless gown, cut in a Pompadour form, is far more of a revelation of figure than a low-necked dinner-dress properly made.

There is no line of the figure so dear to the artist as that one revealed from the nape of the neck to the shoulder. A beautiful back is the delight of the sculptor. No lady who understands the fine-art of dress would ever have her gown cut too low: it is ugly, besides being immodest. The persons who bring discredit on fas.h.i.+on are those who misinterpret it. The truly artistic modiste cuts a low-necked dress to reveal the fine lines of the back, but it is never in France cut too low in front. The excessive heat of an American dining-room makes this dress very much more comfortable than the high dresses which were brought in several years ago, because a princess had a goitre which she wished to disguise:

No fulminations against fas.h.i.+on have ever effected reforms. We must take fas.h.i.+on as we find it, and strive to mould dress to our own style, not slavishly adhering to, but respectfully following, the reigning mode, remembering that all writings and edicts against this sub-ruler of the world are like sunbeams falling on a stone wall.

The sunbeams vanish, but the stone wall remains.

The modern married belle at a dinner is apt to be dressed in white, with much crystal tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, with feathers in her hair, and with diamonds on her neck and arms, and a pair of long, brown Swedish gloves drawn up to her shoulders; a feather fan of ostrich feathers hangs at her side by a ribbon or a chain of diamonds and pearls. The long, brown Swedish gloves are an anomaly; they do not suit the rest of this exquisite dress, but fas.h.i.+on decrees that they shall be worn, and therefore they are worn.

The fine, stately fas.h.i.+on of wearing feathers in the hair has returned, and it is becoming to middle-aged women. It gives them a queenly air. Young girls look better for the simplest head-gear; they wear their hair high or low as they consider becoming.

Monstrous and inconvenient bouquets are again the fas.h.i.+on, and a very ugly fas.h.i.+on it is. A lady does not know what to do with her two or three bouquets at a musicale or a dinner, so they are laid away on a table. The only thing that can be done is to sit after dinner with them in her lap, and the _prima donna_ at a musicale lays hers on the grand piano.

More and more is it becoming the fas.h.i.+on to have music at the end of a dinner in the drawing-room, instead of having it played during dinner. Elocutionists are asked in to amuse the guests, who, having been fed on terrapin and canvas-back ducks, are not supposed to be in a talking mood. This may be overdone. Many people like to talk after dinner with the people who are thus accidentally brought together; for in our large cities the company a.s.sembled about a dinner-table are very often fresh acquaintances who like to improve that opportunity to know each other better.

We have spoken of the dress of ladies, which, if we were to pursue, would lead us into all the details of velvet, satin, and brocade, and would be a departure from our subject; let us therefore glance at the gentlemen at a modern, most modern, dinner. The vests are cut very low, and exhibit a piqu? embroidered s.h.i.+rt front held by one stud, generally a cat's-eye; however, three studs are permissible.

White plain-pleated linen, with enamel studs resembling linen, is also very fas.h.i.+onable. A few young men, sometimes called dudes--no one knows why--wear pink coral studs or pearls, generally black pearls. Elderly gentlemen content themselves with plain-pleated s.h.i.+rt-fronts and white ties, indulging even in wearing their watches in the old way, as fas.h.i.+on has reintroduced the short vest-chain so long banished.

It is pleasant to see the old-fas.h.i.+oned gold chain for the neck reappearing. It always had a pretty effect, and is now much worn to support the locket, cross, or medallion portrait which ladies wear after the Louis Quinze fas.h.i.+on. Gold is more becoming to dark complexions than pearls, and many ladies hail this return to gold necklaces with much delight.

Gentlemen now wear pearl-colored gloves embroidered in black to dinners, and do not remove them until they sit down to table. Seal rings for the third finger are replacing the sunken jewels in dead gold which have been so fas.h.i.+onable for several years for gentlemen.

All the ornamentation of the dinner-table is high this winter--high candlesticks, high vases, high gla.s.ses for the flowers, and tall gla.s.s compotiers. Salt-cellars are looking up; and a favorite device is a silver vase, about two inches high, with a sh.e.l.l for salt.

Silver and silver-gilt dishes, having been banished for five years, are now rea.s.serting their pre-eminent fitness for the modern dinner- table. People grew tired of silver, and banished it to the plate- chest. Now all the old pieces are being burnished up and reappearing; and happy the hostess who has some real old Queen Anne.

As the silver dollar loses caste, the silver soup tureen, or, as the French say, the _soupiere_ (and it is a good word), rises in fas.h.i.+on, and the teapot of our grandmothers resumes its honored place.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. SUMMER DINNERS.

There is a season when the lingerers in town accept with pleasure an invitation to the neighboring country house, where the lucky suburban cit likes to entertain his friends. It is to be doubted, however, whether hospitality is an unmixed pleasure to those who extend it. With each blessing of prosperity comes an attendant evil, and a lady who has a country house has always to face the fact that her servants are apt to decamp in a body on Sat.u.r.day night, and leave her to take care of her guests as best she may. The nearer to town the greater the necessity for running a servant's omnibus, which shall take the departing offender to the train, and speed the arrival of her successor.

No lady should attempt to entertain in the country who has not a good cook and a very competent waiter or waitress. The latter, if well trained, is in every respect as good as a man, and in some respects more desirable; women-servants are usually quiet, neater than men-servants, as a rule, and require less waiting upon. Both men and women should be required to wear shoes that do not creak, and to be immaculately neat in their attire. Maid-servants should always wear caps and white ap.r.o.ns, and men dress-coats, white cravats, and perfectly fresh linen.

As the dinners of the opulent, who have butler, waiters, French cook, etc., are quite able to take care of themselves, we prefer to answer the inquiries of those of our correspondents who live in a simple manner, with two or three servants, and who wish to entertain with hospitality and without great expense.