CONVERSATION
The conversation at a club should be simple and conventional. It is vulgar to go into long or prolix discussions. Only a few remarks arecomme il faut, such as “Hello!” “Deuced cold!” “Have a drink?” “Who has a cigar?” “How about one rubber?”
Perhaps the safest and most refined remark for constant use is: “Waiter, take the orders.” Even this may be dispensed with—if you make certain to ring the bell.
It is not modish to speak kindly to the servants either in your own or in other people’s houses. In addressing them, simply say:“A napkin,” “The cigars,” “Where the devil are my boots?” Remember that they “get even” in the servants’ hall.
It is customary, in alluding to ladies in the ultra-fashionable set (provided they are not present) to speak of them by their pet names: “Birdie,” “Baby,” “Tessie,” “Posy”; but, when face to face with these ladies, the utmost formality had best be observed.
In criticising a play or a novel be careful to avoid long and discriminating criticisms. You should either “knock” or “boost.” Try to remember that there are only two kinds of plays or novels—they are either “bully” or “rotten.”
Conversation
If a few people in the smart set are entertaining a stranger at lunch, it isde rigueurfor them to converse with each other entirely in whispers and always on subjects with which he is absolutely unfamiliar.
In discussing literature at a lunch or dinner, try to remember that there are but a very few fashionable authors. They are as follows: Mrs. Wharton, Colonel Mann, Mrs. Glyn, Robert Hichens, F. Peter Dunne, John Fox, Jr., and Billy Baxter.
At a dinner a gentleman sitting beside a débutante should congratulate her upon her début, and, in a few well-chosen words, should discuss the usual débutante topics—i. e.,platonic love, banting, Ethel Barrymore, French dressmakers, John Drew, the relative merits of Harvard and Yale, love at first sight, the football match and the matter of her great personal beauty and charm.
Try always to remember that the chief and most interesting topics of conversation are herself and yourself.Serioustopics are very properly deemed out of place in society.
After dinner, over the cigars, it is bad form for men to discuss any subjects but stocks and motor cars.
Whenever, at a dinner, an anecdote is narrated in French, it is always a wise precaution to laugh heartily.
Women should not complain of their husbands in public. All married women have a great deal to contend with. Everybody knows that married men make very poor husbands.
At a dinner the safest conversational opening is as follows: “Is that your bread, or mine?”
When, at a dinner, you don’t know the lady next to you, show her your dinner card and say:
“I’m that; what are you?”
Chivalry demands that a lady’s name should never be mentioned in a gentleman’sclub. Occasionally, however, this hard-and-fast rule may be slightly infracted, and her intimate affairs discreetly talked over—provided that the group of gentlemen be a small one and absolute privacy assured.
N. B.—A “small group” is any group of less than twelve.