GUESTS.
IT is a pleasant sensation to wake up in the morning and feel that one is a guest. Strange wall-papers and strange furni- ture surround one's bed, and there is a strange view out of the window. All the jostling demons of worry, anxiety, and responsibility, whether domestic or professional, who stand ready to crowd upon our consciousness vanish in the un- familiar environment. We have got away out of the claws of the usual, and lie blissfully waiting for a knock at the door which shall have an unfamiliar sound. Downstairs we find new faces, new pictures, strange books, a fresh standpoint. Life has a new savour. We taste it everywhere : in the atmo- sphere and in the conversation, even in the bread and the salt. Our first sensation is that everything depends upon some- body else. It is nothing to do with us, whatever happens. But presently the old truism of our childhood—that every situation in life has its duties—comes back to our mind, and though with our waking thoughts we cast off those of the home-dweller, we must immediately prepare to take on those of a guest,—at least if we are constitutionally conscientious, which, alas ! all guests are not. They may, indeed, be divided by this conscience test into visit- ing sheep and visiting goats. The motto of the conscien- tious guest is Madame Mold's well-known saying, "It is a shame to eat, another man's bread and give him nothing in return!" Such a one should be a joy to his hostess; but in the holiday world of hosts and guests, as in workaday life, good intentions do not always ensure success,—the conscien- tious sometimes fail where the unconscientious succeed.
To take the goats first. There is an unscrupulous guest who has a great charm. He does not come prepared to do his duty, neither does he come prepared to enjoy himself. Per- haps he might say that he never prepares for the improbable, but that he comes on the chance of finding pleasure, and if he
had thought there was no chance he would not have come at all. If he is hexed he is insufferable Haut at least his hcattees knows when he is pleased, for he is wholly innocent of that last refinement of unselfishness, the power to feign contentment. If he likes he can talk charmingly,—that is, if he finds some one who can talk his way ; and that some one is usually flattered, not the less so that he or she observes the restricted circle of his appreciation. As to trying to be civil to dull or shy people, he thinks it is altogether a mistake,—a mere philanthropic interference with the natural market wherein sooner or later all talents finll their true value, and all the stupid or defective go to the wall. Nature's plan is the best plan, he is certain. The survival of the fittest must come about in the social as in the physical world. Perhaps this is the best kind of uncon- scientious guest. Certainly he is better than either the "un- employed" or the " over-employed " kind. The former beg all day for a hearing, the latter are preoccupied by the constant longing to be " do i ng." The unemployed have no business of their own which ever takes them off the hands of their hosts, —no letters to write, no books to read. Unless they are being actively entertained they are being bored. Unlike the fas- tidious man, they are not diffioult to please, only some one must always be at it. A listener is sufficient to keep them amused, but that at least they will have, and they hang about in gangways to catch the unwary. Now and then they are possessed of a trivial gift of humorous narration, which is a great help to them in the capture of their. prey. The over-busy guest is a rarer and a much more agreeable character. Very often he "goes out" from Saturday to Monday with a heap of undone work, from the weight of which he can- not divest his mind. He grudges the inevitable few minutes that are wasted before meals and in waiting for a carriage. He comes into a room with a face full of business, and is startled when he is first addressed. Probably he is the most conscientious man in the world in every department of life but that of being a guest.
But what about the guests who do their best 17' After all, these are the vast majority,—they are the good, respectable visitors who keep visiting society to- gether. A really fine specimen of this class has a spirit which cannot be broken by weather or weariness. .He can manage to talk to. any one, even if he should discover with a shock that . he is sitting next to his worst enemy. He knows how to come into any discussion and how to keep out of it. He does not seek hie own amuse- ment, yet he never fails to show that he is amused. He is tolerant of every opinion, and though he may have many con- victions of his own, and may state them so as to do them justice, he never tries to proselytise. His visit is not a mission, and he never for a moment fancies himself on the hustings, in a debating society, a pulpit, or a Court of Justice. Above all, he has a good opinion of him- self. Good wine needs no bush. He has no desire to boast, but he is certain that he will not be slighted. If his hostess assigns to him a dull job, he is sure it is because she thought he could do it well ; and if he feels it to be really below his powers, he takes her mistake into account, not while he is under her roof, but when he next receives her kind invitation. He is not plagued by that craving of the over-sensitive to be like their company, nor does he belong to that race of born dissenters who would always rather be different. Bat, alas ! conscience and talent do not always go together. There are some high-principled guests who are terrible bores. In their solicitude to he agree- able, 'they never stop talking, but pursue their garruloes ideal like a dog following a carriage. To every interruption they give immediate but momentary attention, and run breathless on.
Again, there are some well-intentioned men and women who seek out with determined zeal any retiring fellow-guest who they take it into their heads is being neglected. They con- tinually break into conversations, in which, they would be welcome enough by themselves, in order to drag with them an unwilling, and often ungrateful, victim. The sound of their fruitless efforts distresses the rest of the company, and makes the dulness of one of its members, which might have passed unnoticed, unduly prominent. Occasionally conscientious guests are painfully energetic. They suggest expeditions, and have cravings to go out- and. watch thunder-storms or see stormy sunsets when those they invite to accompany them, and whom they imagine they are entertaining, would rather sit by the fire. Sometimes they are naturalists, and take some one who cares nothing for the subject a long walk to hear a mythical nightingale, or through all sorts of bogs to find a particular fern. Every time the conversation threatens to become interesting they interrupt it with shouts of delight over a botanical treasure, or demand silence in the midst of their interlooutor's best sentence in order that they may listen to a distant chirping.
Before the days of railway trains the art of being a guest must have been a very different art. People stayed so long that all conscious effort at entertainment must necessarily have flagged on the part of both hosts and guests. Visiting was less general, and the visitor took his place as one of the family. Miss Austen's heroines go out to stay for many weeks in one house, and that sometimes with those with whom they have no intimate previous acquaintance. Take the case of Catherine Moreland, who did not think it necessary to allude to the end of her stay at Northanger Abbey until she came to the middle of the fourth week. Miss Austen's heroines, however, were so charming that they could hardly have seemed to remain too long. But in real life speech was rougher then than now, and the first visit must often have resulted in a lifelong dislike on both sides. Suppose for a. moment that Dr. Johnson's celebrated visit to Auchinleck had been of what was then considered ordinary length instead of extraordinary briefness. As it happened, Dr. Johnson was taking a tour, and could remain but five or six nights ; but Boswell's father might have invited his son's friend from London, and then it would have been considered hardly polite to suggest less than a month as the term of his visit. Could one house have held Dr. Johnson and Alexander Boswell for that length of time ? It seems hardly possible. As it was, civility could not be maintained for a week. Dr. Johnson arrived on a Tuesday, and at first all went well, the Doctor having been primed to avoid three subjects, " Whiggism, Pres- -byteriauism, and Sir John Pringle." It rained so they could not get out. Johnson amused himself by looking at books. Next day it rained again. Some visitors arrived, and one of them asked Dr. Johnson how he liked the Highlands, to which he replied : "How, Sir, can you ask me what obliges me to speak unfavourably of a country where I have been hospitably entertained ? Who can like the Highlands ? I like the inhabitants very well." The gentleman, we are told, asked no more questions. Thursday was uneventful On Friday Dr. Johnson went to dine with the Presbyterian minister, and compared his ignorance—to his face—with that of a "Hottentot," a remark which Boswell felt sorry that the good man should have "brought upon himself." On Satur- day an altercation took place between host and guest, concerning which Boswell will not tell his readers all that took place because he thinks it would ill become him to "exhibit my respected friend and my honoured father as intellectual gladiators," though he assures us that if he put down all he could remember the account would make one of the best scenes in the book. Early on Monday Dr. Johnson took his departure, and his host was so forgiving as to "attend him to his postchaise." Boswell explains at the end of the chapter that "they are now in a higher state of existence," where he "trusts they met in happiness," believing as he does "that there is no room there for Whiggism." Decidedly Dr. Johnson was not a conscientious guest'; but if he returned to a lower sphere, is there any one who would have a greater number of staying Invitations or a heartier welcome ?
Previous page
