COUNTRY HOUSES
A country house is an establishment maintained by people of wealth and position who have banished from their home circle the old ideas of family life: the hearth-side, the romping little ones, and the studious evenings under the red lamp.
There is so much that is pleasurable in a house party at such an establishment that it is difficult to say which part of it is the most delightful. It is thrilling to receive the invitation; the journey there is full of an expectant pleasure; the sport is invigorating; the meals are usually palatable; the society agreeable. On the whole, however, perhapsthe most welcome part of it all is the moment of departure.
At a week-end party, when the servant calls you in the morning and informs you that your bath is running, it is modish to sink off to sleep and allow the bath to overflow. As soon as you are wide awake make certain to turn off the electric light and demand from the servant a brandy and soda. After this bracer you may light a cigarette and send the footman for breakfast and a cigar. It is also a wise precaution to ask forallthe morning papers—otherwise the other guests may secure some of them.
It is usual for the bachelors to dawdle about in their riding things until lunch is announced. They can then go to their rooms,take their baths, and change. This puts off the agony of the lunch—which is always a tiresome meal.
Go up early to dress for dinner, or the other guests will have drawn off all the hot water for their own baths.
After a week-end visit it is customary to write your hostess a “bread-and-butter letter,” or “pleaser.” The following note will be found a safe guide for such an occasion.
My dear Mrs. Weekende:How kind you were to open the gates of Heaven and give me that little glimpse of Paradise. Would you be good enough to ask the valet to send me my cap? Perhaps, too, the footman could forward my golf clubs, which Ientirely overlooked in the hurry of departure. If not too much trouble, perhaps you will ask the maid to express me my sponge bag, listerine, and razor strop.With renewed thanks, I am, dear Mrs. Weekende,Yours sincerely,Percy Vanderfort.P. S.—I am returning to you, by express, the woodland violet bath salt, the photograph frame, the bedroom clock, the silver brushes, the hot-water bag, and the two sachet cases which your servant mistook for my property.
My dear Mrs. Weekende:
How kind you were to open the gates of Heaven and give me that little glimpse of Paradise. Would you be good enough to ask the valet to send me my cap? Perhaps, too, the footman could forward my golf clubs, which Ientirely overlooked in the hurry of departure. If not too much trouble, perhaps you will ask the maid to express me my sponge bag, listerine, and razor strop.
With renewed thanks, I am, dear Mrs. Weekende,
Yours sincerely,
Percy Vanderfort.
P. S.—I am returning to you, by express, the woodland violet bath salt, the photograph frame, the bedroom clock, the silver brushes, the hot-water bag, and the two sachet cases which your servant mistook for my property.
When you are visiting in the country and your hostess maintains a very small establishment, the servant may ask you, on awaking you, what you desire for breakfast.Out of consideration for your hostess you should ask for a very small and very simple breakfast. Try to confine yourself to grape fruit, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, corn bread, chicken mince, marmalade, coffee, honey, hot biscuits, and orange juice.
Parlor tricks are great assets in a week-ender. The most popular are moving the scalp and ears, cracking the knuckles, disjointing the thumbs, standing on the head, tearing a pack of cards, and dancing a cake walk.
When the host offers, after breakfast, to show you over the farm, gasp, and mention your rheumatism. Almost any lie is permissible to prevent so terrible a catastrophe.
Young girls, when visiting at a house party, should be quiet and gentle, well behaved and agreeable; but when at home there is no reason why they should not be perfectly natural.
The horrors of the guest room are too well-known to need enumeration, and can seldom be ameliorated. They are, roughly, as follows: The embroidered pillow slips, the egg-finished sheets, the drawer of the bureau that is warped and will not open, the rusty pins in the stony pincushion, the empty cut-glass cologne bottles, the blinds that bang in the night, the absence of hooks on which to hang your razor strop, the pictures of the “Huguenot Lovers” and Landseer’s “Sanctuary” over the headboard of the bed, the tendency of the maid to hide the matches, the dear little children in the nursery aboveyou, the dead fly in the dried-up ink well, and the hidden radiator under the sofa.
When you spend Sunday in the country, the proper schedule of tips for the servants is as follows:
Should you, however, have but $30 with you, you have but to take a very early train,in which case the butler will not have appeared, and there will be no necessity to tip him. The resourceful bachelor may also decide to compensate the maid, if she be pretty, by a few pleasant words of appreciation as to her beauty and by chucking her under the chin, as is invariably done on the stage in comic opera.
If your visit has been for a week, the above table of tips should be disregarded. At the end of such a visit you had best hand the housekeeper a letter of introduction to your lawyer, together with a list of your securities, and allow her to sue your estate for the gratuities.
(If you are from Pittsburg, care should be taken to double the above table of tips.)
The dressing gong is sometimes meant to convey the impression that dinner will shortlybe served in the banqueting hall. Usually, however, it is the signal for everybody to begin a new rubber.
Try to go early to the stables and select a good riding horse for the rest of your visit. There are seldom more than two good ones. The rest are usually roarers or crocks.
The hostess at a large country house is naturally expected to provide all the week-end essentials—i. e., liquors, cigars, food, carriages—and motors in condition. Besides these, however, she should never neglect to offer her guests certain little added comforts without which they would, very naturally, be miserable. Every guest should be supplied, therefore, with the following articles: a bottle of listerine, a cloth cap, a tennis bat, ahot-water bag, a pair of motor goggles, a bag of golf clubs, a sweater, six tennis balls, a bathroom, with needle shower (exclusive), a bathrobe, a pair of slippers, a pair of tennis shoes, a bathing suit, a box of cigarettes (fifty in a box), a set of diabolo sticks, a riding and driving horse, a fur overcoat, an umbrella, a bottle of eau de cologne, and a box of postage stamps.
Guests are always invited from Friday night to Monday morning. It is wiser for the hostess to mention the Monday trains, or one of the guests may decide to stop longer. This is seldom a wise plan. Hostesses should clear the house of all guests before the three-day limit. Remember the Spanish proverb, “El huesped y el pece à tres dias hiede,” which, being translated, means, “Any guest, like any fish, is bound to be objectionable on the third day.”
In certain country houses the architect has neglected to supply bathrooms for each of the guests. In some extreme cases as many as three bachelors are expected to share one bath. This is bad.
The best way to maneuver under such circumstances is to send your servant early to the bathroom and let him lock himself in. This will foil the invaders. When he hears your special knock on the door, he can open to you, and you can then bathe, take a nap in the bath, shave, smoke a cigarette, and read the papers in quiet.
At a house party every lady of prominence is sure to bring at least one Pomeranian dog. Many think it wiser to bring a black and a brown, so that, no matter what gown they may wear, one of the darlings is sure not to clash with it. These pets are, of course,extremely expensive. A smart week-end on the Hudson will usually average about six thousand dollars’ worth of Poms.
In nearly all guest rooms the hostess is sure to provide white enamel writing desks, chiffoniers, and tables. By leaving lighted cigarettes on such articles of furniture you are almost certain to secure a very curious and amusing stain, or burn. Sometimes, if your visit is long enough, you can etch, in this way, a complete pattern around a fair-sized table. The Greek fret and egg-and-dart designs are neat and extremely popular.
The passage through a country house of the framed photograph of a friend is often an instructive spectacle to witness. Such a trophy usually begins its career in the drawing-room.It is then moved to the library, and subsequently to the smoking room. After that it begins a heavenly flight into one of the guest rooms, from which place it ascends on its last earthly pilgrimage to the attic.
The English have rather a clever way of “chucking” a week-end engagement in the country. They merely telegraph as follows:
“Impossible to come to-day: lie follows by mail.”
An unprotected lady should be careful not to employ convivial or tippling butlers. We are acquainted with a widow who was recently petrified with horror when her drunken butler entered her sleeping apartment in the dead of the night and proceeded to lay the table for six—upon her bed.
Sunday morning in the country is usually rainy. This is invariably the fault of the hostess. When you descend in the morning, look at her reproachfully; mention the rain; remark on the fact that it has always rained when you have visited her before; sink hopelessly on a sofa, and sigh.
Hostesses very often have a distressing way of asking you how you slept. Under such circumstances it is permissible to speak the truth and to mention, quite frankly, the mosquitoes and the topographical whimsicalities of your bed.
In a country house, if you find, on going up to your room to dress for dinner, that no studs have been put into your evening shirt, complain at once to the stud groom.
Beware of inviting fashionable bachelors for the week-end unless you maintain an adequateménage. The recent and distressing case of a lady (with but one spare room and a very small establishment) may serve as a terrible example.
Her visitor arrived rather late on a rainy night. His belongings looked like those of a traveling theatrical company, and included one forty horse power Mercedes car, a Swiss valet, a violin case, one trunk, two hat boxes, five pounds of bonbons, a fur overcoat, a photographic camera, a bag of golf clubs, a talking machine, two boxes of health cocoa, an Austrian chauffeur, an oxygen jar, two polo ponies, an air cushion, a wire-haired fox terrier, and a box of one hundred clay pigeons.