Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

entertainments. Numbers of small tables should be brought with the

camp-stools, and placed at convenient intervals, where the guests

can deposit their plates.

A lady should not use her handsome glass or china at these _al

fresco_ entertainments. It is sure to be broken. It is better to

hire all the necessary glass, silver, and china from the caterer, as

it saves a world of counting and trouble.

No doubt the garden-party is a troublesome affair, particularly if

the refreshments are out-of-doors, but it is very beautiful and very

amusing, and worth all the trouble. It is just as pleasant, however,

if the table is in-doors.

CHAPTER XL. SILVER WEDDINGS AND OTHER WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES.

A very sensible reform is now being attempted in the matter of

silver weddings. It was once a demand on the purse of at least fifty

dollars to receive an invitation to a silver wedding, because every

one was expected to send a piece of silver. Some very rich houses in

New York are stocked with silver with the elaborate inscription,

“Silver Wedding.” To the cards of to-day is appended, “No presents

received,” which is a relief to the impecunious.

These cards are on plain white or silver-gray paper, engraved in

silver letters, with the name of the lady as she was known before

marriage appended below that of her husband; the date of the

marriage is also added below the names.

The entertainment for a silver wedding, to be perfect, should occur

at exactly the hour at which the marriage took place; but as that

has been found to be inconvenient, the marriage hour is ignored, and

the party takes place in the evening generally, and with all the

characteristics of a modern party. The “bridal pair” stand together,

of course, to receive, and as many of the original party of the

groomsmen and bridesmaids as can be got together should be induced

to form a part of the group. There can be no objection to the

sending of flowers, and particular friends who wish can, of course,

send other gifts, but there should be no obligation. We may say

here that the custom of giving bridal gifts has become an outrageous

abuse of a good idea. From being a pretty custom which had its basis

in the excellent system of our Dutch ancestors, who combined to help

the young couple by presents of bed and table linen and necessary

table furniture and silver, it has now sometimes degenerated into a

form of ostentation, and is a great tax on the friends of the bride.

People in certain relations to the family are even expected to send

certain gifts. It has been known to be the case that the bride

allowed some officious friend to suggest that she should have

silver, or pearls, or diamonds; and a rich old bachelor uncle is

sure to be told what is expected from him. But when a couple have

reached their silver wedding, and are able and willing to celebrate

it, it may be supposed that they are beyond the necessity of

appealing to the generosity of their friends; therefore it is a good

custom to have this phrase added to the silver-wedding invitation,

“No presents received.”

The question has been asked if the ceremony should be performed over

again. We should say decidedly not, for great danger has accrued to

thoughtless persons in thus tampering with the wedding ceremony. Any

one who has read Mrs. Oliphant’s beautiful story of “Madonna Mary”

will be struck at once with this danger. It is not safe, even in the

most playful manner, to imitate that legal form on which all

society, property, legitimacy, and the safety of home hang.

Now as to the dress of the bride of twenty-five years, we should

say, “Any color but black.” There is an old superstition against

connecting black with weddings. A silver gray, trimmed with steel

and lace, has lately been used with much success as a second bridal

dress. Still less should the dress be white; that has become so

canonized as the wedding dress of a virgin bride that it is not even

proper for a widow to wear it on her second marriage. The shades of

rose-color, crimson, or those beautiful modern combinations of

velvet and brocade which suit so many matronly women, are all

appropriate silver-wedding dresses.

Ladies should not wear jewelry in the morning, particularly at their

own houses; so if the wedding is celebrated in the morning, the

hostess should take care not to be too splendid.

Evening weddings are, in these anniversaries, far more agreeable,

and can be celebrated with more elaborate dressing. It is now so

much the fashion to wear low-necked dresses (sleeveless dresses were

worn by bridesmaids at an evening wedding recently) that the bride

of twenty-five years can appear, if she chooses, in a low-cut short-sleeved dinner dress and diamonds in the evening. As for the groom,

he should be in full evening dress, immaculate white tie, and pearl-colored kid gloves. He plays, as he does at the wedding, but a

secondary part. Indeed, it has been jocosely said that he sometimes

poses as a victim. In savage communities and among the birds it is

the male who wears the fine clothes; in Christian society it is the

male who dresses in black, putting the fine feathers on his wife. It

is to her that all the honors are paid, he playing for the time but

a secondary part. In savage communities she would dig the earth,

wait upon her lord, and stand behind him while he eats; in the

modern silver wedding he helps her to fried oysters and champagne,

and stands while she sits.

Now as to who shall be invited. A correspondent writes asking if a

silver wedding celebrated in a new home would not be a good

opportunity for making the “first onset of hospitality,” inviting

those neighbors who were not known before, or at least who were not

visiting acquaintances. We should think it a very happy idea. It is

a compliment to ask one’s friends and neighbors to any ceremony or

anniversary in which our own deep feelings are concerned, such as a

christening, a child’s wedding, and the celebration of a birthday.

Why not still more when a married pair have weathered the storms of

twenty-five years? People fully aware of their own respectability

should never be afraid to bow first, speak first, or call first.

Courtesy is the most cosmopolitan of good qualities, and politeness

is one of the seven capital virtues. No people giving such an

invitation need be hurt if it is received coldly. They only thus

find out which of their new neighbors are the most worth

cultivating. This sort of courtesy is as far as possible from the

dreadful word “pushing.” As dress was made to dignify the human

body, so a generous courtesy clothes the mind. Let no one be afraid

of draping the spirit with this purple and gold.

And in all fresh neighborhoods the newcomers should try to

cultivate society. There is something in its attrition which

stimulates the mind. Society brightens up the wits, and causes the

dullest mind to bring its treasures to the surface.

The wedding anniversaries seem to begin with the fifth one—the

wooden wedding. Here unique and appropriate presents seem to be very

cheap. Cedar tubs and bowls and pails, wooden baskets filled with

flowers, Shaker rocking-chairs and seats for the veranda, carved

tables, cabinets of oak, wall brackets, paintings on wood, water-colors framed in wood-carvings in bog oak, and even a load of

kindling wood, have been acceptably offered. The bride can dress as

gayly as she pleases at this early anniversary. Then comes the tin

wedding, which now is very much welcomed for the pretty tin

candlesticks that it brings, fresh from London furnishers.

We hear of gorgeous silver weddings in California, that land of gold

and silver, where the display of toilettes each represented a large

fortune. But, after all, the sentiment is the thing,

“As when, amid the rites divine, I took thy troth, and plighted mine

To thee, sweet wife, my second ring A token and a pledge I bring.

This ring shall wed, till death us part, Thy riper virtues to my

heart—Those virtues which, before untried, The wife has added to

the bride.”

The golden wedding is a rare festivity—the great marriage bell made

of wheat fully ripe; sheaves of corn; roses of the pure gold-color

(the Marshal Niel is the golden-wedding flower par excellence). We

can well imagine the parlors beautifully decorated with autumn

leaves and evergreens, the children grouped about the aged pair,

perhaps even a great-grandchild as a child bridesmaid, a bridal

bouquet in the aged white hand. We can fancy nothing more poetical

and pathetic than this festivity.

Whether or not a ring should be given by the husband to the wife on

this occasion we must leave to the individual taste of the parties.

No doubt it is a pleasant occasion for the gift,

“If she, by merit since disclosed,

Proved twice the woman I supposed,”

there is no doubt that she deserves another ring. We have read

somewhere of a crown-diamond wedding; it is the sixty-fifth

anniversary. Iron weddings are, we believe, the fifteenth

anniversary. With silver, golden, and diamond weddings we are

tolerably familiar, but, so far as we know, a crown-diamond wedding

such as was celebrated a short time ago at Maebuell, in the island

of Alsen, is a ceremony altogether without precedent in matrimonial

annals. Having completed their sixty-fifth year of conjugal bliss,

Claus Jacobsen and his venerable spouse were solemnly blessed by the

parson of their parish, and went, for the fifth time in their long

wedded life, through the form of mutual troth-plighting before the

altar at which they had for the first time been united before the

battle of Waterloo was fought. The united age of this crown-diamantine couple amount to one hundred and seventy-eight years!

We doubt if this constant pair needed any ring to remind them of

their wedded duty. It is strange that the origin of the wedding ring

is lost in obscurity. The “fyancel,” or wedding ring, is doubtless

of Roman origin, and was originally given at the betrothal as a

pledge of the engagement. Juvenal says that at the commencement of

the Christian era a man placed a ring on the finger of the lady whom

he betrothed. In olden times the delivery of a signet-ring was a

sign of confidence. The ring is a symbol of eternity and constancy.

That it was placed on the woman’s left hand denotes her subjection,

and on the ring finger because it pressed a vein which communicates

directly with the heart. So universal is the custom of wearing the

wedding ring among Jews and Christians that no married woman is ever

seen without her plain gold circlet, and she regards the loss of it

as a sinister omen; and many women never remove it. This is,

however, foolish, and it should be taken off and put on several

times at first, so that any subsequent removal or loss need not jar

painfully on the feelings.

The bride-cake cut by the bride, with the wedding ring for some

fortunate future spouse, seems to be still potent. The twenty-five-year-old bride should cut a few pieces, then leave others to pass

it; it is a day on which she should be waited upon.

Some persons, in celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding day, also

repeat their wedding journey, and we know a very pleasant little

route in England called the “silver-wedding journey,” but this is,

of course, a matter so entirely personal that it cannot be

universally recommended.

The most graceful silver-wedding custom is for the bride