Part 8

A frantic hostess recently telephoned us for advice on a nice point of social etiquette. She had arranged a dinner of twelve, and was confronted and confounded, at the last moment, by an “odd” bachelor whom she had originally invited and subsequently forgotten. She could not sit down thirteen at the table.

“What shall I do?” she asked.

We were glad to be able to come to the distressed lady’s assistance and telephoned her as follows:

“You should hand him a neatly folded dollar bill and ask him to slip out quietly and buy himself a good dinner at a corner restaurant. Your butler may also give him a cigar as he passes into the night.”

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If you are giving a supper after the play, it is de rigueur to order grape fruit, hot bouillon, champagne, birds, a salad, and a sweet. The sated guests will not touch any of the food, but it is comme il faut to put it all before them.

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Banting has almost done away with the ancient custom of eating, but thyroid tablets and lemon juice are, of course, permitted. At a ladies’ lunch the guests (whether ladies, millionairesses, or workingwomen) should be careful disdainfully to dismiss the dainty dishes until the repast is over, when they should look benignly at the hostess and murmur:

“Dear Mrs. Brown—might I have a cup of very hot water?”

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When a lady must pay back forty dinner obligations and her dining room will seat only twenty, it is obvious that she must have two dinners of twenty each. She should give the feasts on successive evenings, as the left-over flowers, bonbons, fruits, and pâtés will always do service at the second repast.

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A lady should be careful not to turn to the gentleman beside her and complain of the “fizz.” There is always a good chance that he is the wine agent.

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When, in New York, a married couple do not pull along together, and have definitely decided to divorce or separate, it is customary for them once or twice to dine, tête-à-tête, at Sherry’s: to flirt, laugh, and make merry with each other—in order to put the eager hounds off the scent.

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At dinners in the beau monde the footmen will invariably pounce upon your plate and run off with it before you have half finished the course. Be careful not to hold on to it like a despairing mother whose child is being torn from her arms, as such scenes at table are always deplorable and harassing.

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In purchasing almond bonbons for the dinner table the hostess should make sure to select the mauve species. No one ever eats them. A dishful of the white variety will sometimes vanish in a night, but the mauve go on forever.

DANCES

DANCES

In New York the word “ball” is intended to signify a hundred or so people who do not care particularly for dancing, who are prostrated by the prospect of arising early on the following morning, and who leave their cotillion favors untouched and disregarded upon the gilt chairs in the ballroom.

The chief characteristics of a ball may be summed up, briefly, as follows: Mothers, or “benchwomen,” wildly eying their offspring; the “leader,” battered and bruised like a half-back in a football game; the hostess, with her tiara aslant on her new false curls; fifty wilted linen collars; fifty ditto shirts; four red-faced gentlemen asleep in the smoking room; the host leaping from train to train with the agility of a brakeman; two hundred yards of chiffon ruffles and one pound of assorted hairpins decorating the floor of the ballroom; a deep crowd of so-called dancing men who effectually block the entrance door and stand in a dazed and awkward group, spellbound by the horrors of the scene.

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The valuable checks for cotillion seats are usually cornered by the cotillion leader and dealt out to the most prominent tiaras. The unhappy ladies who fail to receive one of these priceless tokens usually pass the remainder of the evening in the ultimate row of chairs wearing a granite smile and a paper cotillion favor.

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A wall flower is a young lady at a dance who has not been cursed with the fatal gift. She may usually be distinguished by her wild and beseeching glances. Chloroform is the only possible way of securing a partner for her.

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