“Away with your shy people,” said the gentleman. “Persons who are self-conscious, thinking of an involuntary redness or paleness, an unbecoming movement of the countenance, more than the subject of which they are talking, should not go into society at all. But, because women are so much more liable to this nervous weakness than men, the preponderance of people in a salon should always be on the side of the men.”
I do not think I gained more hints as to the lost art from my French friends. Let us see if my own experience in England can furnish any more ideas.
First, let us take the preparations to be made before our house, our room, or our lodgings can be made to receive society. Of course I am not meaning the preparations needed for dancing or musical evenings. I am taking those parties which have pleasant conversation and happy social intercourse for their affirmed intention. They may be dinners, suppers, tea -- I don’t care what they are called, provided their end is defined. If your friends have not dined, and it suits you to give them a dinner, in the name of Lucullus, let them dine; but take care that there shall be something besides the mere food and wine to make their fattening agreeable at the time and pleasant to remember, otherwise you had better pack up for each his portions of the dainty dish, and send it separately, in hot-water trays, so that he can eat comfortably behind a door, like Sancho Panza, and have done with it. And yet I don’t see why we should be like ascetics; I fancy there is a grace of preparation, a sort of festive trumpet-call, that is right and proper to distinguish the day on which we receive our friends from common days, unmarked by such white stones. The thought and care we take for them to set before them of our best, may imply some self-denial on our less fortunate days. I have been in houses where all, from the scullion-maid upward, worked double tides gladly, because “Master’s friends” were coming; and everything must be nice, and good, and all the rooms must look bright, and clean, and pretty. And, as “a merry heart goes all the way,” preparations made in this welcoming, hospitable spirit, never seem to tire any one half so much as where servants instinctively feel that it has been said in the parlour, “We must have so-and-so,” or “Oh, dear! we have never had the so-and-so’s.” Yes, I like a little pomp, and luxury, and stateliness, to mark our happy days of receiving friends as a festival; but I do not think I would throw my power of procuring luxuries solely into the eating and drinking line.
My friends would probably be surprised (Some wear caps, and some wigs) if I provided them with garlands of flowers, after the manner of the ancient Greeks; but, put flowers on the table (none of your shams, wax or otherwise; I prefer an honest wayside root of primroses, in a common vase of white ware, to the grandest bunch of stiff-rustling artificial rarities in a silver épergne). A flower or two by the side of each person’s plate would not be out of the way, as to expense, and would be a very agreeable, pretty piece of mute welcome. Cooks and scullion-maids, acting in the sympathetic spirit I have described, would do their very best, from boiling the potatoes well, to sending in all the dishes in the best possible order. I think I would have every imaginary dinner sent up on the “Original” Mr. Walker’s plan; each dish separately, hot and hot. I have an idea that, when I go to live in Utopia (not before next Christmas), I will have a kind of hot-water sideboard, such as I think I have seen in great houses, and that nothing shall appear on the table but what is pleasant to the eye. However simple the food, I would do it and my friends (and may I not add the Giver?) the respect of presenting it at table as well-cooked, as eatable, as wholesome as my poor means allowed; and to this end, rather than to a variety of dishes, would I direct my care. We have no associations with beef and mutton; geese may remind us of the Capitol, and peacocks of Juno; a pigeon-pie, of “the simplicity of Venus’ doves,” but who thinks of the leafy covert which has been her home in life, when he sees a roasted hare? Now, flowers as an ornament do lead our thoughts away from their present beauty and fragrance. I am almost sure Madame de Sablé had flowers in her salon; and, as she was fond of dainties herself, I can fancy her smooth benevolence of character, taking delight in some personal preparations made in the morning for the anticipated friends of the evening. I can fancy her stewing sweetbreads in a silver saucepan, or dressing salad with her delicate, plump, white hands -- not that I ever saw a silver saucepan. I was formerly ignorant enough to think that they were only used in the Sleeping Beauty’s kitchen, or in the preparations for the marriage of Riquet-with-the-Tuft; but I have been assured that there are such things, and that they impart a most delicate flavour, or no flavour to the victuals cooked therein; so I assert again, Madame de Sablé cooked sweetbreads for her friends in a silver saucepan; but never to fatigue herself with those previous labours. She knew the true taste of her friends too well; they cared for her, firstly, as an element in their agreeable evening -- the silver saucepan in which they were all to meet; the oil in which their several ingredients were to be softened of what was harsh or discordant -- very secondary would be their interest in her sweetbreads.
“Of sweetbreads they’ll get mony an ane,
Of Sablé ne’er anither.”
But part of my care beforehand should go to the homely article of waiting. I should not mind having none at all; a dumb waiter, pepper, salt, bread, and condiments within the reach or by the side of all. Little kindly attentions from one guest to another tend to take off the selfish character of the mere act of eating; and, besides, the guests would (or should) be too well educated, too delicate of tact, to interrupt a burst of wit, or feeling, or eloquence, as a mere footman often does with the perpetual “Sherry, or Madeira?” or with the names of those mysterious entremets that always remind me of a white kid glove that I once ate with Béchamel sauce, and found very tender and good, under the name of Oreilles de Veau à-la-something, but which experiment I never wish to repeat. There is something graceful and kindly in the little attention by which one guest silently puts by his neighbour all that he may require. I consider it a better opening to ultimate friendship, if my unknown neighbour mutely passes me the salt, or silently understands that I like sugar to my soup, than if he had been introduced by his full name and title, and labelled with the one distinguishing action or book of his life, after the manner of some who are rather showmen than hosts.
But, to return to the subject of waiting. I have always believed that the charm of those little suppers, famous from time immemorial as the delightful P.S. to operas, was that there was no formal waiting, or over-careful arrangement of the table; a certain sweet neglect pervaded all, very compatible with true elegance. The perfection of waiting is named in the story of the White Cat, where, if you remember, the hero prince is waited upon by hands without bodies, as he sits at table with the White Cat, and is served with that delicate fricassee of mice. By hands without bodies I am very far from meaning hands without heads. Some people prefer female waiters; foot-women, as it were. I have weighed both sides of the subject well in my mind, before sitting down to write this paper, and my verdict goes in favour of men; for, all other things being equal, their superior strength gives them the power of doing things without effort, and consequently with less noise than any woman. The quiet ease and solemn soundless movement of some men-servants is wonderful to watch. Last summer I was staying in a house served by such list-shod, soft-spoken, velvet-handed domestics. One day, the butler touched a spoon with a fork -- the master of the house looked at him as Jupiter may have looked at Hebe, when she made that clumsy step. “No noise, sir, if you please”; and we, as well as the servant, were hushed into the solemn stillness of the room, and were graced and genteel, if not merry and sociable. Still, bursts and clashes, and clatters at the side-table, do disturb conversation; and I maintain that for avoiding these, men-servants are better than women. Women have to add an effort to the natural exercise of what strength they possess before they can lift heavy things -- sirloins of beef, saddles of mutton, and the like; and they cannot calculate the additional force of such an effort, so down comes the dish and the mutton a
nd all, with a sound and a splash that surprises us even more than the Phillis, who is neat-handed only when she has to do with things that require delicacy and lightness of touch, not struggle of arm.
And, now I think of it, Madame de Sablé must have taken the White Cat for her model; there must evidently have been the same noiseless ease and grace about the movements of both; the same purring, happy, inarticulate moments of satisfaction, when surrounded by pleasant circumstances, must have been uttered by both. My own mouth has watered before now at the account of that fricassee of mice prepared especially for the White Cat; and M. Cousin alludes more than once to Madame de Sable’s love for “friandises.” Madame de Sablé avoided the society of literary women, and so, I am sure, did the White Cat. Both had an instinctive sense of what was comfortable; both loved home with tenacious affection; and yet I am mistaken if each had not their own little private love of adventure -- touches of the gipsy.
The reason why I think Madame de Sablé had this touch in her, is because she knew how tenir un salon. You do not see the connection between gipsyism and the art of being a good hostess -- of receiving pleasantly. I do, but I am not sure if I can explain it. In the first place, gipsies must be people of quick impulse and ready wit; entering into fresh ideas and new modes of life with joyous ardour and energy, and fertile in expedients for extricating themselves from the various difficulties into which their wandering life leads them. They must have a lofty disregard for “convenances,” and yet a power of graceful adaptation. They evidently have a vivid sense of the picturesque, and a love of adventure, which, if it does not show itself in action, must show itself in sympathy with other’s doings. Now, which of these qualities would be out of place in Madame de Sablé? From what we read of the life of her contemporary, Madame de Sevigné, we see that impromptu expedients were necessary in those times, when the thought of the morning made the pleasure of the evening, and when people snatched their enjoyments from hand to
“The upper air bursts into life,”
more especially if some unusual expedient had to be resorted to, giving the whole the flavour and zest of a picnic. Toasting bread in a drawing-room, coaxing up a half-extinguished fire by dint of brown sugar, newspapers, and pretty good-for-nothing bellows, turning a packing-case upside down for a seat, and covering in with a stray piece of velvet; these are, I am afraid, the only things that can call upon us for unexpected exertion, now that all is arranged and re-arranged for every party a month beforehand. But I have lived in other times and other places; I have been in the very heart and depth of Wales, within three miles of the house of the high sheriff of the county, who was giving a state dinner on a certain day, to which the gentleman with whom I was staying was invited. He was on the point of leaving his house in his little Norwegian carriole, and we were on the point of sitting down to dinner, when a man rode up in hot haste -- a servant from the high sheriff’s came to beg for our joint off the spit. Fish, game, poultry -- they had all the delicacies of their own land; but the butcher from the nearest market-town had failed them, and at the last moment they had to send off a groom a-begging to their neighbours. My relation departed ignorant of our dinnerless state; but he came back in great delight with his party. After the soup and fish had been removed, there had been a long pause (the joint had got cold on its ride, and had to be re-warmed); a message was brought to the host, who had immediately confided his perplexity to his guests, and put it to the vote whether they would wait for the joint, or have the order of the courses changed, and eat the third before the second. Every one had enjoyed the merry dilemma; the ice was broken, and all went on pleasantly and easily in a party where there was rather a heterogeneous mixture of politics and opinions. Dinner-parties in those days and in that part of Wales were somewhat regulated by the arrival of the little sailing vessels, which, having discharged their cargo at Bristol or Liverpool, brought back commissioned purchases for the different families. A chest of oranges for Mr. Williams or Mr. Wynn was a sure signal that before many days were over, Mr. Williams or Mr. Wynn would give a dinner-party; strike while the iron was hot; eat while the oranges were fresh. A man rode round to all the different houses when any farmer planned such a mighty event as killing a cow, to ask what part each family would take. Visiting acquaintances lived ten or twelve miles from each other, separated by bad and hilly roads; the moon had always to be consulted before issuing invitations; and then the mode of proceeding was usually something like this: The invited friends came to dinner at half-past five or six; these were always those from the greatest distance -- the nearer neighbours came later on in the evening. After the gentlemen had left the dining-room, it was cleared for dancing. The fragments of the dinner, prepared by ready cooks, served for supper; tea was ready some time towards one or two, and the dancers went merrily on till a seven or eight o’clock breakfast, after which they rode or drove home by broad daylight. I was never at one of these meetings, although staying in a house from which many went; I was considered too young; but, from what I heard, they were really excessively pleasant, sociable gatherings, although not quite entitled to be classed with Madame de Sablé’s salons.
To return to the fact that a slightly gipsy and impromptu character, either in the hostess, or in the arrangements, or in the amusements adds a piquancy to the charm: let any one remember the agreeable private teas, that go on in many houses about five o’clock. I remember those in one house particularly as remarkably illustrating what I am trying to prove. These teas were held in a large dismantled schoolroom and a superannuated schoolroom is usually the most doleful chamber imaginable. I never saw this by full daylight; I only know that it was lofty and large, that we went to it through a long gallery library, through which we never passed at any other time, the schoolroom having been accessible to the children in former days by a private staircase -- that great branches of trees swept against the windows with a long plaintive moan, as if tortured by the wind -- that below in the stable-yard two Irish staghounds set up their musical bays to mingle with the outlandish Spanish which a parrot in the room continually talked out of the darkness in which its perch was placed -- that the walls of the room seemed to recede as in a dream, and, instead of them, the flickering firelight painted tropical forests or Norwegian fiords, according to the will of our talkers. I know this tea was nominally private to the ladies, but that all the gentlemen strayed in most punctually by accident -- that the fire was always in that state when somebody had to poke with the hard blows of despair, and somebody else to fetch in logs of wood from the basket outside and somebody else to unload his pockets of fir bobs, which last were always efficacious, and threw beautiful dancing lights far and wide. And then there was a black kettle, long ago too old for kitchen use, that leaked and ran, and sputtered against the blue and sulphur-coloured flames, and did everything that was improper, but the water out of which made the best tea in the world, which we drank out of unmatched cups, the relics of several schoolroom sets. We ate thick bread-and-butter in the darkness with a vigour of appetite which had quite disappeared at the well-lighted eight o’clock dinner. Who ate it I don’t know, for we stole from our places round the fireside to the tea-table, in comparative darkness, in the twilight, near the window, and helped ourselves, and came back on tiptoe to hear one of the party tell of wild enchanted spicy islands in the Eastern Archipelago, or buried cities in farthest Mexico; he used to look into the fire and draw and paint with words in a manner perfectly marvellous, and with an art which he had quite lost at the formal dinner-time. Our host was scientific; a name of high repute; he, too, told us of wonderful discoveries, strange surmises, glimpses into something far away and utterly dream-like. His son had been in Norway, fishing; then, when he sat all splashed with hunting, he too, could tell of adventures in a natural, racy way. The girls, busy with their heavy kettle, and with their tea-making, put in a joyous word now and then. At dinner the host talked of nothing more intelligible than French mathematics; the heir drawled out an infinite deal of nothing a
bout the “Shakespeare and musical glasses” of the day; the traveller gave us latitudes and longitudes, and rates of population, exports and imports, with the greatest precision; and the girls were as pretty, helpless, inane fine ladies as you would wish to see.
Speaking of wood fires reminds me of Madame de Sable’s fires. Of course they were of wood, being in Paris; but I believe that, even if she had lived in a coal country, she would have burned wood by instinctive preference, as a lady I once knew, always ordered a lump of cannel coal to be brought up if ever her friends seemed silent and dull. A wood fire has a kind of spiritual, dancing, glancing life about it. It is an elfish companion, crackling, hissing, bubbling: throwing out beautiful jets of vivid, many-coloured flame, The best wood fires I know are those at Keswick. Making lead pencils is the business of the place; and the cedar chips for scent, and the thinnings of the larch and fir plantations thereabouts for warm and brilliant light, make such a fire as Madame de Sablé would have delighted in.
Depend upon it, too, every seat in her salon was easy and comfortable of its kind. They might not be made of any rare kind of wood, nor covered very magnificently, but the bodies of her friends could rest and repose in them in easy unconstrained attitudes. No one can be agreeable, perched on a chair which does not afford space for proper support. I defy the most accomplished professional wit to go on uttering “mots” in a chair with a stiff hard, upright back, or with his legs miserably dangling. No! Madame de Sable’s seats were commodious, and probably varied to suit all tastes; nor was there anything in the shape of a large and cumbrous article of furniture placed right in the middle of her room, so as to prevent her visitors from changing their places, or drawing near to each other, or to the fire, if they so willed it. I imagine, likewise, that she had that placid, kindly manner, which would never show any loss of self-possession. I fancy that there was a welcome ready for all, even though some came a little earlier than they were expected.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 412