The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners with sketches of western life |
A CHAPTER ON HOSPITALITY. |
 | The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners |  |
A CHAPTER ON HOSPITALITY.
Few of the good and pleasant things of this world will bear
analyzing. We must take them as they are, or we lose them
altogether. Even our own most fondly-cherished benevolences—the
things whereby in our secret souls, we hope to cover at least a part
of the multitude of sins—change color when we apply the severe
tests with which we are wont to try the good deeds of our neighbors.
It is not well to sift everything for the sake of detecting
earthiness; yet the world is so full of adulterations that something
is necessary in self-defence. We may inquire a little into some fair-seeming
shows, at least to draw lessons for our own practice.
No quality or habit is more popular, or more naturally popular,
than hospitality. It appeals so directly to the universal part of us—
the poor wants of poor human nature, in the first place, and that
other want no less urgent, that what contributes to the refreshment
of the body should be seasoned with love or kindness, or some show
of them. We love even the pretence so dearly that we praise an
inn—that abode of the mercenary demons—in proportion as there
is the outward semblance of this, though we know it will all be
`put down in the bill.' This may be one reason why some persons
who have sacrificed life's best blessing—spontaneous, disinterested
find their only pleasure in advancing age, in places where the
appearance, at least, of `honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,'
may be purchased with money—the only means left these unfortunates.
Being popular, hospitality is, of course, a virtue which most people
wish to practise in some shape, and which many people try to
practise at the smallest possible expense. We do not mean expense
of money—though this is sometimes spared rather unnecessarily—
but of some other things not so cheap as money. Sad blunders are
made—blunders of various kinds; some which cover us with shame
upon reflection; some which cover us with ridicule while we are
happily unconscious; some which make enemies where we hoped to
have secured friends; some through means of which our pride
appears, while we flatter ourselves that we are conferring a highly
appreciated honor upon our guests. In primitive conditions of life,
where the daily wants become especially prominent, from the degree
of uncertainty which exists as to whether they will be satisfied and
how,—hospitality is often impulsive and sincere. Sympathy is necessarily
strong in such cases. It is in highly civilized and artificial
life that hospitality becomes an art, to be studied like other fine arts,
or neglected and contemned through pride and inveterate self-indulgence.
Poole—Paul Pry Poole—has an amusing sketch, `A
Christmas Visit to Dribble Hall,' an extract from which, in the
`Living Age,' gave rlse to this homily, by calling up to remembrance
certain amusing passages in our own experience, which set
us upon theorizing a little in the matter. `Squire Dribble' is a
person who chooses to invite people to his house, and when they are
there and fairly in his power, takes particular care to avoid perceiving
their wants, and especially cannot be made to understand that
arrive at his country-house too late for dinner; he regrets that
they did not come sooner, but promises to hurry supper by half an
hour. On their hinting pretty broadly that so considerable a delay
will be inconvenient after a long drive, he offers a slice of `something
cold' with tea. In the morning he insists upon their rising at
his hour, and allows them to dress in the bitter cold without fire,
and so come down blue and shivering to the breakfast-table, where
the eggs are counted out and the newspaper clutched by the squire,
who declares he would not give a farthing for the paper unless he
sees the first of it.
This is no fancy sketch—we are convinced of it. We have seen
American Dribbles who occasionally tried to be hospitable just in
the squire's manner. In houses where all below stairs was costly
and luxurious, we have seen the guest-chamber unfurnished even
with the requisite amount of chairs and tables; no attendance of a
servant offered, and no notice given of the time for rising, until the
bell rang for the early breakfast which was then on the table. We
have seen a lady who had visits and shopping on her hands, suffered
to sit still, when her time was very limited, because the walking was
too bad for her to venture out on foot, and delicacy prevented her
sending for a carriage while there was one quite at liberty,
though not offered. In this matter of carriages particularly, a
`Dribble' hospitality is but too common; for again and again have
we seen young ladies who were visiting where a coach was kept,
obliged to walk home after evening parties—attended by a servant
or by some woful beau—a mile or two in the cold, because, although
no carriage was sent, it was well understood that the family pride
forbade any inmate from using a hired one.
To be `treated like one of the family' is sometimes very agreeable,
candid as to protest against this mark of affection. She declared
that when she visited, it made part of her pleasure to be treated
like company. Guests differ so much on this point that one must
have unusual tact if, in entertaining much, an occasional error be
not committed. Some are so painfully anxious to avoid giving
trouble that an additional dish makes them miserable, quite forgetting
that with many a good, kind-hearted entertainer, this very
trouble is a pleasure. Some again find their own habits so imperious
that they play `Dribble' in other people's houses, putting
everybody out as to time, place and circumstance, without a misgiving.
A noted lady traveling in this country some years ago,
required her bottle of Champagne every night on going to bed, and
that in the soberest of eastern families. This, too, was only an
item in the list of her rather onerous inamissibles. We have heard
more than one anecdote of popular clergymen, who, during occasional
visits to their greatest admirers, have construed the guest-right
so rigorously as to cause the entire household to heave a simultaneous
sigh of relief at their departure.
Conscientious people, whose habits are very strict, and who sincerely
believe certain practices and certain articles of diet to be
highly deleterious, are sometimes cruelly divided between the desire
to make their guests' time pass agreeably and to entertain them
with the best the house affords, and the fear of contributing to evil
habits or offering what is injurious to health. Since the temperance
reformation, many persons have learned to think every form of spirituous
liquors so injurious that they dare not set anything of the kind
before their friends; while, on the other hand, the old ideas of generous
conviviality and hearty welcome attached to this form of refreshment
are so potent, that they feel a species of regret—perhaps, also,
extremely difficult. Others, on the contrary, after all that
has been said and written on the subject, seem still to fancy that
they show their hospitality by pressing the guest to drink whether
he will or not; and even in a case where it was well known that the
person so pressed had been saved on the brink of ruin only by the
resolution not to touch even a single glass, we have seen a lady
tempt and urge the unfortunate visitor, until she looked to us like
some fell Mœnad luring a hapless mortal to destruction.
Even in the matter of tea and coffee, some people have a conscience,
and offer with reluctance to their friends what seems to them
premature old age, depression of spirits, paralysis and early death.
Others again are so over-kind that they must make your coffee
strong enough to be sour and your tea to be bitter, reminding one
of the story of the good old Jersey lady who entertained General
Washington during the time of the war, when molasses was the
usual sweetener.
`Not quite so sweet, ma'am, if you please,' said the courteous
great man, when he handed his tea-cup to be filled a second time.
`Oh, dear!' said the hospitable dame, putting in rather an extra
share of the precious article, `if it was all molasses it wouldn't be
too good for General Washington!'
Pinching hospitality is bad enough, but ostentatious hospitality,
if possible, worse. To see in all your host's pompous offers, in all
his sedulous attentions and all his unwearied display of resources,
himself and not you the real object; to feel that, while you are géné
with his oppressive civilities, he considers himself laying you under
the greatest obligations; to find ceremonious observance taking the
place of welcome, and formality rendering ease impossible—this is
but too common in this country as well as elsewhere among those
enjoy. A visit under such circumstances is so odious that a guest
would need to be presented with a good part of the fine things he
sees—according to the practice of the worthy host in the Persian
Tales—to induce him to make a second attempt.
Sincerity is sometimes severely tried in cases where hospitality
appears to demand one course, while truth and nature cry out for its
opposite. To seem glad to see a visitor when, from whatever circumstance,
you wish he had chosen to stop anywhere else; to be
obliged to press him to stay when your affairs imperatively require
that you should be left alone; to feel constrained to be `in spirits'
with a heavy heart; to wear a hilarious aspect when mirth is `as
vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes;' that we should ever
do or even attempt such things, shows how deeply we feel the claims
of hospitality. They are done or attempted every day, not through
self-interest or any such unworthy motive, but simply from the
instinctive dread of seeming deficient in what mankind in all ages
have agreed to consider a sacred duty. Those who, through moroseness,
pride, or parsimony, decline these and kindred sacrifices, are
universally denounced as selfish churls or haughty egotists, and voted
inhuman by the general voice.
Like many other virtues, hospitality is practised in its perfection
by the poor. If the rich did their share, how would the woes of
this world be lightened! how would the diffusive blessing irradiate
a wider and a wider circle, until the vast confines of society would
bask in the reviving ray! If every forlorn widow whose heart bleeds
over the recollection of past happiness made bitter by contrast with
present poverty and sorrow, found a comfortable home in the ample
establishment of her rich kinsman; if every young man struggling
for a foothold on the slippery soil of life, were cheered and aided by
the power to confer happiness; if the lovely girls, shrinking and
delicate, whom we see every day toiling timidly for a mere pittance
to sustain frail life and guard the sacred remnant of gentility, were
taken by the hand, invited and encouraged, by ladies who pass them
by with a cold nod—but where shall we stop in enumerating the
cases in which true, genial hospitality, practised by the rich ungrudgingly,
without a selfish drawback—in short, practised as the poor
practise it—would prove a fountain of blessedness, almost an antidote
to half the keener miseries under which society groans!
Yes: the poor—and children—understand hospitality after the
pure model of Christ and his apostles. We can cite two instances,
both true.
In the western woods, a few years since, lived a very indigent
Irish family. Their log-cabin scarcely protected them from the weather,
and the potato field made but poor provision for the numerous
rosy cheeks that shone through the unstopped chinks when a stranger
was passing by. Yet when another Irish family, poorer still,
and way-worn and travel-soiled, stopped at their door—children,
household goods and all—they not only received and entertained
them for the night, but kept them many days, sharing with this
family, as numerous as their own, the one room and loft which made
up their poor dwelling, and treating them in all respects as if they
had been invited guests. And the mother of the same family, on
hearing of the death of a widowed sister who had lived in New York,
immediately set on foot an inquiry as to the residence of the children,
with a view to coming all the way to the city to take the
orphans home to her own house and bring them up with her own
children. We never heard whether the search was successful, for
the circumstance occurred about the time we were leaving that part
carried into effect if possible, there was no shadow of doubt.
As to children and their sincere, generous little hearts, we were
going to say, that one asked his mother, in all seriousness, `Mamma,
why don't you ask the poor people when you have a party? Doesn't
it say so in the Bible?' A keen reproof, and unanswerable.
The nearest we recollect to have observed to this literal construction
of the sacred injunction, among those who may be called the
rich—in contradistinction to those whom we usually call the poor,
though our kind friends were far from being what the world considers
rich—was in the case of a city family, who lived well, and who
always on Christmas day, Thanksgiving, or other festival time, when
a dinner more generous than ordinary smoked upon the board, took
care to invite their homeless friends who lived somewhat poorly or
uncomfortably—the widow from her low-priced boarding house; the
young clerk, perhaps, far from his father's comfortable fireside; the
daily teacher, whose only deficiency lay in the purse—these were
the guests cheered at this truly hospitable board; and cheered
heartily—not with cold, half-reluctant civility, but with the warmest
welcome, and the pleasant appendix of the long, merry evening
with music and games, and the frolic dance after the piano. We
would not be understood to give this as a solitary instance, but we
wish we knew of many such.
The forms of society are in a high degree inimical to true hospitality.
Pride has crushed genuine social feeling out of too many
hearts, and the consequence is a cold sterility of intercourse, a soul-stifling
ceremoniousness, a sleepless vigilance for self, totally incompatible
with that free, flowing, genial intercourse with humanity, so
nourishing to all the better feelings. The sacred love of home—
that panacea for many of life's ills—suffers with the rest. Few
with its table covered with the implements of real occupation
and real amusement; mamma on the sofa, with her needle; grand-mamma
in her great chair, knitting; pussy winking at the fire
between them, is gone. In its place we have two gorgeous rooms,
arranged for company but empty of human life; tables covered
with gaudy, ostentatious and useless articles—a very mockery of
anything like rational pastime—the light of heaven as cautiously
excluded as the delicious music of free, childish voices; every member
of the family wandering in forlorn loneliness, or huddled in
some `back room' or `basement,' in which are collected the only
means of comfort left them under this miserable arrangement.
This is the substitute which hundreds of people accept in place of
home! Shall we look in such places for hospitality? As
soon expect figs from thistles. Invitations there will be occasionally,
doubtless, for `society' expects it; but let a country cousin present
himself, and see whether he will be put into the state apartments.
Let no infirm and indigent relative expect a place under such roof.
Let not even the humble individual who placed the stepping-stone
which led to that fortune, ask a share in the abundance which
would never have had a beginning but for his timely aid. `We
have changed all that!'
But setting aside the hospitality which has any reference to duty
or obligation, it is to be feared that the other kind—that which is
exercised for the sake of the pleasure it brings—is becoming more
and more rare among us. The deadly strife of emulation, the mad
pursuit of wealth, the suspicion engendered by rivalry, leave little
chance for the spontaneity, the abandon, the hearty sympathy which
give the charm to social meetings and make the exercise of hospitality
one of the highest pleasures. We have attempted to dignify
Old World; but the incongruity between these forms and the true
spirit of our institutions is such, that all we gain is a bald emptiness,
gilded over with vulgar show. Real dignity, such as that of
John Adams when he lived among his country neighbors as if he
had never seen a court, we are learning to despise. We persist in
making ourselves the laughing-stock of really refined people, by forsaking
our true ground and attempting to stand upon that which
shows our deficiences to the greatest disadvantage. When shall we
learn that the `spare feast—a radish and an egg,' if partaken by the
good and the cultivated, has a charm which no expense can purchase?
When shall we look at the spirit rather than the semblance
of things—when give up the shadow for the substance?
| The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners | |