This permitted sufficient time for the guests to bow out in case of an emergency–though the acceptance of the invitation was socially binding. When issuing invitations to a large dinner party, it was customary for the hostess to give three weeks’ notice, though, by the 1910s, the notice was extended to four to six weeks in advance. In the greater scheme of the inner workings of society, a dinner party was both a test of the hostess’s position and the direct road to obtaining a recognized place in society. Since dinner giving was the most important of all social observances, gentlemen and their wives held them much more frequently than balls or other social occasions a dinner was considered more intimate, and invitations were sent to those one was intimate with or with those the host and hostess hoped to become intimé. A dinner of tepid or cold food, of dull guests, and of seating arrangements that did not take the rank and form of each guest into account could doom a lady’s social aspirations in one evening. From matters of food and drink, table service, the guest list, and matters of precedence, every detail was of the utmost importance.
Nothing preoccupied the mind of an Edwardian hostess so much as the planning of a dinner party.
0 kommentar(er)
