There’s No “Right” Kind of Hospitality

“I’m going to give an afternoon tea for my niece and I’m simply wretched over it. My teaspoons aren’t the right size and I haven’t any sugar tongs, and I’m afraid I shant have enough of the tea napkins, and may have to fill in with the larger ones. I’d give the whole thing up if I could, but I don’t want to disappoint...” 

“It takes all the pleasure out of entertaining to be poor,” I heard a woman say the other day. “Why?” I asked. “Because you never can have things just as they ought to be. I’m going to give an afternoon tea for my niece and I’m simply wretched over it. My teaspoons aren’t the right size and I haven’t any sugar tongs, and I’m afraid I shant have enough of the tea napkins, and may have to fill in with the larger ones. I’d give the whole thing up if I could, but I don’t want to disappoint Margaret.” What a spirit to plan an entertainment in! What a travesty on hospitality! 

What do we invite our friends to our homes for, anyway? To enjoy their company and to give them a pleasant time? Or to show them our household possessions and prove that we know the rules of etiquette for each occasion and have all the required impedimenta. Real hospitality is a beautiful thing. The travesty into which we pervert it by trying to follow certain set forms and do everything just as “they” prescribe, is a very unbeautiful thing.

It is perfectly possible to entertain one’s friends, and entertain them acceptably, no matter how poor one is. Only you must go about the matter in a dignified and self-respecting spirit. Give the best you can; believe that that is sufficient; act as if it were sufficient, and it will be sufficient. Put good taste and careful planning into your preparations, select congenial people: don’t get so tired that you cannot greet them with warm cordiality; put the spirit of real hospitality into the occasion, and it cannot fail to be a success. What factor makes you have a good time when you go anywhere? Because all the appointments are just as Mrs. Grundy dictates, and the food and entertainment are expensive? Or because you are received with sincere cordiality and meet congenial people? 

Of course there may be a few people who will not care for your friendship if you cannot measure up to all Mrs. Grundy’s standards, but do you care for their friendship? They may be all right in their way, but aren't there enough people who are cultured, refined and worth knowing, and yet not so exacting, from whom you can more wisely and happily choose your friends? A great many of the pleasures of life are spoiled by the attempt to compete with people who have more money than we. Let’s not permit the joy of hospitality, the pleasure of entertaining one’s friends, be among this number. – Ruth Cameron’s Chit Chat, 1914

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette for Boarders

Are there any folks with boarding house manners? As a an unpleasant type, let me present the lady who is afraid of Mrs. Grundy. 

Sometimes I think there aren't any, judging by the way in which men and women— and especially women, I grieve to say — conduct themselves as soon as they become "paying guests," the manual of etiquette for the boarding house must be still unwritten.

There is the young person— she deserves the scornful epithet— who considers the house and all it contains simply the happy hunting ground in which she may support herself. She flirts with all the men, eligible or otherwise, sometimes under the eyes of their mothers or their wives; she monopolizes the conversation at the table, interspersing her vacuous remarks with affected giggles and long-drawn-out snickers; she demands always all the attention, all the care, all the favoritism, that are to be had.

Often she travels in pairs, and she makes the night hideous with her attempts at piano-playing end her too uproarious gayety. Then there is the fussy woman, who lives to find fault, and whose idea of entertaining the assembled company is to complain of the way the eggs were cooked that morning and the wretched bed that kept her from sleeping the night before. She it is who must always have her food cooked a special way, who insists on spring water to drink and a particular window to sit by.

Moreover, she is the lady who strolls out into the kitchen to cook her own steak just right, and who dries her hair over the stove and usurps the parlor whenever she has company. Finally, she is the obnoxious creature, who criticises everybody and everything in the place, and whose gossip drives all self-respecting persons away from her vicinity.

As a third unpleasant type, let me present the lady who is afraid of Mrs. Grundy. Not that I am urging lack of proper dignity and care— far from it. But this person— usually a girl from the country— is so afraid of doing something improper that she will do nothing at all; never speaks, never joins in any general plea of amusement, never has been known to laugh and turns a deaf and stony ear to all advances, however well meant.

Of all these types, she is the only one deserving of pity; often she is very lonely and afraid to trust the dwellers in even the best recommended of boarding houses. When, however, she acts in her own peculiar manner simply because she considers herself better than her neighbors, then she merits nothing but scorn, and one cannot help getting impatient.

In any case with the girl who will not I even say “Good morning,” who addresses her landlady in monosyllables and passes one on the stairs with a glassy stare. She does not realize that her passion for propriety is leading her into absolute rudeness; or she does realize it, which is worse.

There are many others, including the “butter-in” on other persons' business; the selfish woman who takes the first and best of everything, and the girl who has no regard in her actions or speech for the good reputation of the house.

And there are men too, who have never learned boarding-house manners — “fresh” men; disgustingly rude men, who bolt their food and knock women off their feet in their brusque rush by them; men who belong to all the types condemned already in women boarders. But, as I said, women are, for some reason, in the majority as bad boarders, and many landladies will not have them at all, through sad experience.

There are hundreds of well-kept, happy, homelike boarding houses in this city; but rest assured, they are not the ones in which the unpleasant boarder finds an abiding place. — San Francisco Call, 1910

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette Teacher of 1900

Me? Pretensions? Why, I never! Shrewd, maybe. But pretentious? Ha!~ “A woman of cultivation and social opportunities has been earning money in a community where her pretensions were celebrated, says a writer in the Philadelphia Press”

Teaching Manners...Shrewd Device of a Woman of Society for Making Money!

Children learning table setting etiquette in the late 1800s

A woman of cultivation and social opportunities has been earning money in a community where her pretensions were celebrated, says a writer in the Philadelphia Press.

She first published an explanatory card in the local press, setting forth what she intended to do. She proposed giving a course of familiar drawing -room talks on manners; the etiquette of the street, of church, of letter writing, of paying visits, of various social functions and of every-day life at home and at school.

Those were to be primarily for children and for young people, simply because, although this was not stated, she was sure that the parents would be too proud to confess their own need of them.

This part was managed by each ticket admitting not only a juvenile, but one adult friend. The lecturer knew that these elders would be glad to receive instruction that was not apparently aimed at them. She did not reckon without her host. Mothers were quite ready to send their little ones and to accompany them.
                                            
The course of procedure was according to the following program: A question box was placed on the hall table, in which slips of paper were thrust bearing inquiries on any point of etiquette or fashion on which the anonymous guest desired enlightenment. 

These were read and answered at the next weekly meeting. Then the elegant, though very quietly dressed, and queenly looking speaker, began her simple dissertation on current blunders and the proper performance of the subject in hand.

She touched upon trifles that even the best books on social usages do not make clear, and gave new ideas of many of the season's caprices in style. With these were what might be called "standards" of conduct, painstakingly outlined for both boys and girls, so that each might clearly understand what Mrs. Grundy would have a right to expect under most circumstances that could occur.

For example, some of the heads touched upon under manners in church were the position In the pew, ungainly attitudes, listening to the sermon, kneeling, whispering and laughing, attention to strangers, staring at late comers, turning the head, etc...

Special to boys: Assistance with wraps, carrying prayer books, etc... These lectures were rendered sprightly by the manner of delivery, and were interspersed with illustrations and amusing stories. – The Philadelphia Press, 1900

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia