Myriads of people have no ear for music and derive but little
pleasure from sweet sounds. Strange as it may appear, many
gifted and sensitive mortals have been unable to distinguish one
note from another, Apollo’s harmonious art remaining for
them, as for the elder Dumas, only an “expensive
noise.”
Another large class find it impossible to discriminate between
colors. Men afflicted in this way have even become painters
of reputation. I knew one of the latter, who, when a friend
complimented him on having caught the exact shade of a pink
toilet in one of his portraits, answered, “Does that dress
look pink to you? I thought it was green!” and yet he
had copied what he saw correctly.
Both these classes are to be pitied, but are not the cause of
much suffering to others. It is annoying, I grant you, to
be torn asunder in a collision, because red and green lights on
the switches combined into a pleasing harmony before the
brakeman’s eyes. The tone-deaf gentleman who insists
on whistling a popular melody is almost as trying as the lady
suffering from the same weakness, who shouts, “Ninon,
Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie!” until you feel impelled to
cry, ”Que faites-vous, madame, with the key?”
Examinations now keep daltonic gentlemen out of locomotives,
and ladies who have lost their “keys” are apt to find
their friends’ pianos closed. What we cannot guard
against is a variety of the genus homo which suffers from
“social color-blindness.” These well-meaning
mortals form one of the hardest trials that society is heir to;
for the disease is incurable, and as it is almost impossible to
escape from them, they continue to spread dismay and confusion
along their path to the bitter end.
This malady, which, as far as I know, has not been diagnosed,
invades all circles, and is, curiously enough, rampant among
well-born and apparently well-bred people.
Why is it that the entertainments at certain houses are always
dull failures, while across the way one enjoys such agreeable
evenings? Both hosts are gentlemen, enjoying about the same
amount of “unearned increment,” yet the atmosphere of
their houses is radically different. This contrast cannot
be traced to the dulness or brilliancy of the entertainer and his
wife. Neither can it be laid at the door of inexperience,
for the worst offenders are often old hands at the game.
The only explanation possible is that the owners of houses
where one is bored are socially color-blind, as cheerfully
unconscious of their weakness as the keyless lady and the
whistling abomination.
Since increasing wealth has made entertaining general and
lavish, this malady has become more and more apparent, until one
is tempted to parody Mme. Roland’s dying exclamation and
cry, “Hospitality! hospitility! what crimes are committed
in thy name!”
Entertaining is for many people but an excuse for
ostentation. For others it is a means to an end; while a
third variety apparently keep a debit and credit account with
their acquaintances—in books of double entry, so that no
errors may occur—and issue invitations like receipts, only
in return for value received.
We can rarely tell what is passing in the minds of people
about us. Some of those mentioned above may feel a vague
pleasure when their rooms are filled with a chattering crowd of
more or less well-assorted guests; if that is denied them, can
find consolation for the outlay in an indefinite sensation of
having performed a duty,—what duty, or to whom, they would,
however, find it difficult to define.
Let the novice flee from the allurements of such a host.
Old hands know him and have got him on their list, escaping when
escape is possible; for he will mate the green youth with the red
frump, or like a premature millennium force the lion and the lamb
to lie down together, and imagine he has given unmixed pleasure
to both.
One would expect that great worldly lights might learn by
experience how fatal bungled entertainments can be, but such is
not the case. Many well-intentioned people continue
sacrificing their friends on the altar of hospitality year after
year with never a qualm of conscience or a sensation of pity for
their victims. One practical lady of my acquaintance asks
her guests alphabetically, commencing the season and the first
leaf of her visiting list simultaneously and working steadily on
through both to “finis.” If you are an A, you
will meet only A’s at her table, with perhaps one or two
B’s thrown in to fill up; you may sit next to your
mother-in-law for all the hostess cares. She has probably
never heard that the number of guests at table should not exceed
that of the muses; or if by any chance she has heard it, does not
care, and considers such a rule old-fashioned and not appropriate
to our improved modern methods of entertaining.
One wonders what possible satisfaction a host can derive from
providing fifty people with unwholesome food and drink at a fixed
date. It is a physical impossibility for him to have more
than a passing word with his guests, and ten to one the
unaccustomed number has upset the internal arrangements of his
household, so that the dinner will, in consequence, be poor and
the service defective.
A side-light on this question came to me recently when an
exceedingly frank husband confided to a circle of his friends at
the club the scheme his wife, who, though on pleasure bent, was
of a frugal mind, had adopted to balance her social ledger.
“As we dine out constantly through the year,”
remarked Benedict, “some return is necessary. So we
wait until the height of the winter season, when everybody is
engaged two weeks in advance, then send out our invitations at
rather short notice for two or three consecutive dinners.
You’d be surprised,” he remarked, with a beaming
smile, “what a number refuse; last winter we cancelled all
our obligations with two dinners, the flowers and entrées
being as fresh on the second evening as the first!
It’s wonderful!” he remarked in conclusion,
“how simple entertaining becomes when one knows
how!” Which reminded me of an ingenious youth I once
heard telling some friends how easy he had found it to write the
book he had just published. After his departure we agreed
that if he found it so easy it would not be worth our while to
read his volume.
Tender-hearted people generally make bad hosts. They
have a way of collecting the morally lame, halt, and blind into
their drawing-rooms that gives those apartments the air of a
convalescent home. The moment a couple have placed
themselves beyond the social pale, these purblind hosts conceive
an affection for and lavish hospitality upon them. If such
a host has been fortunate enough to get together a circle of
healthy people, you may feel confident that at the last moment a
leper will be introduced. This class of entertainers fail
to see that society cannot he run on a philanthropic basis, and
so insist on turning their salons into hospitals.
It would take too long to enumerate the thousand
idiosyncrasies of the color-blind; few, however, are more amusing
than those of the impulsive gentlemen who invite people to their
homes indiscriminately, because they happen to feel in a good
humor or chance to be seated next them at another
house,—invitations which the host regrets half an hour
later, and would willingly recall. “I can’t
think why I asked the So-and-sos!” he will confide to
you. “I can’t abide them; they are as dull as
the dropsy!” Many years ago in Paris, we used to call
a certain hospitable lady’s invitations “soup
tickets,” so little individuality did they possess.
The subtle laws of moral precedence are difficult reading for
the most intelligent, and therefore remain sealed books to the
afflicted mortals mentioned here. The delicate tact that,
with no apparent effort, combines congenial elements into a
delightful whole is lacking in their composition. The nice
discrimination that presides over some households is replaced by
a jovial indifference to other persons’ feelings and
prejudices.
The idea of placing pretty Miss Débutante next young
Strongboys instead of giving her over into the clutches of old
Mr. Boremore will never enter these obtuse entertainers’
heads, any more than that of trying to keep poor, defenceless
Mrs. Mouse out of young Tom Cat’s claws.
It is useless to enumerate instances; people have suffered too
severely at the hands of careless and incompetent hosts not to
know pretty well what the title of this paper means. So
many of us have come away from fruitless evenings, grinding our
teeth, and vowing never to enter those doors again while life
lasts, that the time seems ripe for a protest.
If the color-blind would only refrain from painting, and the
tone-deaf not insist on inviting one to their concerts, the world
would be a much more agreeable place. If people would only
learn what they can and what they can’t do, and leave the
latter feats alone, a vast amount of unnecessary annoyance would
be avoided and the tiresome old grindstone turn to a more
cheerful tune.
