Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1873-07-19
Modern Hospitality.

We are supposed to have civilized
the forms and perfected the art of socie-
ty. We look back on the rude feasts of
our forefathers with disdain and wonder
at theirgross gluttony and coarse lavish
ness. But, at least, they fed the poor
in those days Of ruder living; and q
feast, if wanting in gastrohonnic art,
was bountiful in hospitality. AS it Ia,
hospitality is a name; no more. There
is none of it in the sense of sharing your
goods with others, in our modern enter
tainments. A dinner or a soiree is a
social obligation discharged perforce;
or an occasion for display; or both COM
bined. To prefer those who need is as
far removed from Che calculations of
the host as the "ire party" imagined
by Punch. No one who gives party,
as it is called, thinks of the real pleasure
or good which it will be 10 the guests;
only whether it is "well done" accord
ing to The conventional standard-that
is, rejecting hoffor on the river. The
arrangements of society ore in them
selves utterly barbarous, while affecting
to be specially civilized. One could
imagine simple, generous, and most
delightful banquet, with music and
flowers, and plenty of space and free
dom of action--a banquet that did not
include three long hours of cramp and
surfeit with an indigestion TO follow, Or
a crowded crush in sitting room where
conversation is impossible, and the
music not worth listening to. One could
imagine arrangements more artistically
lovely than now, yet more costlyj a well
come more hearty, and with less parade.
But our civilization dooms us to q table
where one side freezes and the other
burns; where draughts chill the naked
shoulders at one end, and the heated
air loaded with unwholesome vapors,
threatens apoplexy at the other; to
rooms where delicate women turn sick
and faint for want of oxygen in fetid
atmosphere used up by two or three
hundred pairs of lungs; it dooms us to
accept invitations given by people we
NllollhO IllN W cav UllIISo ulldb WILL ulD"
agree with us, just as it dooms us to an
artificial manner. an 1nsincere smile,
false speech; it dooms ts to open our
own house to hundreds of our fellow
creatures, not half dozen of whom we
care ever to see again, just as it dooms
us to the suppression of all emotion, of
all earnest thought, of all honest words;
and when we have made ourselves the
most like animated dolls in manner, and
put ourselves to most inconvenience for
things we detest and people we despise
IN fact, then we are considered of the
best breeding and the most perfected
civilization. Half the entertainments,
too, given by the middle classes, are
only possible through screwing and
pinching in things more essential to the
true dignity of life than the giving of
dinner badly cooked and worse arrang-
ed, which no one who eats really enjoys. |
Yet, if the food is questionable, kid
gloves are de rigueur; and you cut your
stale fish with electroplated knives and
forks OF the covenanted pattern. Honor
to those who dare to offer simple pleas
lres within their means of money. and
service, and who invite to their house
hose whom it will both delight and
benefit, not only those whom they say
hey "must" by the queer law of social
in boredom and pretence!