Being a Hostess

“I simply can't be bothered having people to the house, you know, it is such an effort to entertain them.” This struck me as being rather remarkable, when I heard it the other day. The speaker was a very vivacious, attractive young wife, and I secretly marvelled at her “difficulty” in being at all amusing to her guests.

Entertaining should not be an effort, but a pleasure, and the less one thinks about it the greater will be the success. To be a successful hostess you must not be tired, worried, over-anxious; and if you feel so your attitude will at once be reflected among your friends. Every woman is at heart a hostess, and from earliest times she has gathered to her home friends and relatives to taste her culinary treasures and exchange gossip round her hearth. You will see the unborn love of “having people to tea” when your little girl is “playing mothers. How faithfully she copies your mannerisms, how carefully she pours out, how sweetly she talks of things domestic.

Present day society demands an increasing amount of entertainment, but of a more informal type. Invitations are dispeinsed with, people drift in and out at any time of the day; there is a free and easy “camaraderie” about it all. The formal art of entertaining is dying fast, and with it the problems of the shy young hostess.

Be pleased to see people—don't bother too much about running your party, your afternoon tea or bridge; you can rely on them to run themselves. All you have to do is to move; to keep drifting about among the guests; to provide food and space for people to indulge in one of their most powerful instincts. So you need not worry about being a hostess, you naturally are one.

It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests which makes the feast.—Clarendon.

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