VISITORS

Evening Star, Issue 21748, 16 June 1934, Page 2

VISITORS

[Written by A] ary Scott, for the 1 livening Star.’] Holiday time is visitor time. Lest some Jaded house wile may consider this an absurd contradicitiou in terms, let me hasten to say that it is the visitors’ holiday—not yours. Pope, following Shakespeare, adjures us to “ welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.” Excellent advice, particularly the latter part, as every hostess knows who has stood first upon one aching toot, then upon the other, while the visitors linger, and still linger. But Pope did not intend the processes to be simultaneous. He did not mean the coming guest absolutely to jostle the departing one upon the door-step. There should be a decent interval, a breathing spare between, if only thoroughly to discuss the departed, to correct one family’s lapses during the last visitation, extract a promise of better behaviour during the next, and to wash sheets and towels. Lately 1 have had a procession of guests with no blessed hiatus between. The result is that my washhouse is filled with dirty sheets, my larder with “ odds and ends,” which 1 dare not present to visitors and which will inevitably grow mouldy while waiting for a purely family meal, and my mind with a turmoil of tit-bits which I had meant to confide to my husband in the night watches, and which now, alas, threaten to join tho limbo of untold gossip, unlaughed-at jests, unlamonted tragedies. Also, my letters are unanswered, my family unreproved, and my garden a wilderness; Nevertheless, there are some dear guests for whom we would gladly see our household disorganised, our duties neglected. With genuine regret we wave a last reluctant farewell, with a sense of blankness, spiritual rather than physical, we return to our disordered room and take up the dull threads of daily routine again. Yet; in spite of the blank they leave, there remain behind a reflection of brightness, a wistful and glamourous memory. Such gupsts, however, are few and far between. We read a great deal about ideal hosts; much time and thought is expended upon learning to entertain properly; not nearly enough upon being unruffled and charming whether you are being entertained or not. It is a great pity that the average young person is not taught much more carefully how to become the perfect guest. Far more friendships are strained through selfish and inconsiderate guests than through inadequate or even careless hosts. Of course the curriculum would differ in each Country. Your colonial .guest must be a person of versatility and resource, for in the course of one short week she maystay in one house where she should offer to wash up and make afternoon tea, and in another where any encroachment upon the kitchen would be considered a social breach.

There are, however, certain types of guests whom .we are all- more ready to speed upon their way than to welcome to our doors. In the average colonial house, where the hostess does her own work or struggles along with one independent and touchy maid, the visitor who is fanciful over food or addicted to a diet is a cross hardly borne. Particularly is' she a curse in the country where dainties cannot be hurriedly' procured, and where the diet, though lavish, is apt to be monotonous.. Country hostesses all know the type of visitor who gets so tired of mutton, despite the stern necessity of eating your way through'an entire sheep, who pines for fish sixty miles inland, and who must start the day with oranges or grapefruit despite the distance from a fruiterer’s shop. Then there is the unloved stranger within our gates who empties the hot water cistern just as the master of the house comes home from the shearing shed for a bath, or just as the children have be put to bod. There is also the terrible guest who is ruthlessly conversational, whose flow of anecdote pursues a busy hostess up and down the house, who holds her victim with a glittering eye while the milk boils over or the cake burns in the kitchen.

Last but not loveliest ranks the guest who has to be ceaselessly entertained, who rises happy and refreshed from bed about, midday and asks a jaded hostess brightly: “ And now what are we going to do to-day? What, bread to set? Oh, you should manage better than that. I never work in the afternoons. It’s such a mistake to stick m the house, especially in the country.” And when at last the long day’s entertainment is over she sits down determinedly to a game of bridge and rallies her host, who rose at dawn and has worked all day, upon his frequent mistakes and uncontrollable yawns. “ You must try to keep yourself up to the mark, John, even if you do live in the country. Don’t let yourself rust.”

In the town your trials as a hostess are not so severe, for there you can find organised entertainment and can drive your guest forth to bridge one night, pictures another, a dance on the third. Also your friends rally nobly round you and “ give little parties for your guest,” knowing full well that their sandwiches, cream cakes, and savouries will not be blindly cast upon the water,, but will be returned to them when they themselves are suffering from a plethora of visitors. We grumble and complain about our hard work and our constant visitors, but in our hearts we enjoy it. And so it goes on, the good old British custom of hospitality. Yet, curiously enough, we who have neither the conveniences nor the help of our sisters in England have improved upon the family model. We are much more lavish and casual in our invitations. Whereas in England it is still the custom to mention, casually but unequivocally, the date of arrival and departure in issuing an invitation, here “ a day or two ” is apt to become “ a week or so.” Presently we find ourselves casting wistful thoughts back to older, sterner convention—or listening hopefully behind the pantry door while our youngest and rudest child asks brightly, “ And which day are you going away, auntie?”