BEAUTIFULLY vague
though the English language is, with its meanings merging into one another as
softly as the facts of landscape in the moist English climate, and much
addicted though we always have been to ways of compromise, and averse from
sharp hard logical outlines, we do not call a host a guest, nor a guest a host.
The ancient Romans did so. They, with a language that was as lucid as their
climate and was a perfect expression of the sharp hard logical outlook fostered
by that climate, had but one word for those two things. Nor have their equally
acute descendants done what might have been expected of them in this matter. Hôte
and ospite and huesped are as mysteriously equivocal as hospes. By weight of
all this authority I find myself being dragged to the conclusion that a host
and a guest must be the same thing, after all. Yet in a dim and muzzy way, deep
down in my breast, I feel sure that they are different. Compromise, you see, as
usual. I take it that strictly the two things are one, but that our division of
them is yet another instance of that sterling common sense by which, etc., etc.
I would go even so far
as to say that the difference is more than merely circumstantial and
particular. I seem to discern also a temperamental and general difference. You
ask me to dine with you in a restaurant, I say I shall be delighted, you order
the meal, I praise it, you pay for it, I have the pleasant sensation of not
paying for it; and it is well that each of us should have a label according to
the part he plays in this transaction. But the two labels are applicable in a
larger and more philosophic way. In every human being one or the other of these
two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer
hospitality, the negative or passive, instinct to accept it. And either of
these instincts is so significant of character that one might well say that
mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
I have already (see
third sentence of foregoing paragraph) somewhat prepared you for the shock of a
confession which candor now forces from me. I am one of the guests. You are,
however, so shocked that you will read no more of me? Bravo! Your refusal indicates
that you have not a guestish soul. Here am I trying to entertain you, and you
will not be entertained. You stand shouting that it is more blessed to give
than to receive. Very well. For my part, I would rather read than write, any
day. You shall write this essay for me. Be it never so humble, I shall give it
my best attention and manage to say something nice about it. I am sorry to see
you calming suddenly down. Nothing but a sense of duty to myself, and to guests
in general, makes me resume my pen. I believe guests to be as numerous, really,
as hosts. It may be that even you, if you examine yourself dispassionately,
will find that you are one of them. In which case, you may yet thank me for
some comfort. I think there are good qualities to be found in guests, and some
bad ones in even the best hosts.
Our deepest instincts,
bad or good, are those which we share with the rest of the animal creation. To
offer hospitality, or to accept it, is but an instinct which man has acquired
in the long course of his self-development. Lions do not ask one another to
their lairs, nor do birds keep open nest. Certain wolves and tigers, it is
true, have been so seduced by man from their natural state that they will deign
to accept man's hospitality. But when you give a bone to your dog, does he run
out and invite another dog to share it with him? -- and does your cat insist on
having a circle of other cats around her saucer of milk? Quite the contrary. A
deep sense of personal property is common to all these creatures. Thousands of
years hence they may have acquired some willingness to share things with their
friends. Or, rather, dogs may; cats, I think, not. Meanwhile, let us not be
censorious. Though certain monkeys assuredly were of finer and more malleable
stuff than any wolves or tigers, it was a very long time indeed before even we
began to be hospitable. The cavemen did not entertain. It may be that now and
again -- say, toward the end of the Stone Age -- one or another among the more
enlightened of them said to his wife, while she plucked an eagle that he had
snared the day before, "That red-haired man who lives in the next valley
seems to be a decent, harmless sort of man. And sometimes I fancy he is rather
lonely. I think I will ask him to dine with us to-night," and presently,
going out, met the red-haired man and said to him: "Are you doing anything
to-night? If not, won't you dine with us? It would be a great pleasure to my
wife. Only ourselves. Come just as you are." "That is most good of
you, but," stammered the red-haired man, "as ill-luck will have it, I
am engaged to-night. A long-standing, formal invitation. I wish I could get out
of it, but I simply can't. I have a morbid conscientiousness about such
things." Thus we see that the will to offer hospitality was an earlier
growth than the will to accept it. But we must beware of thinking these two
things identical with the mere will to give and the mere will to receive. It is
unlikely that the red-haired man would have refused a slice of eagle if it had
been offered to him where he stood. And it is still more unlikely that his
friend would have handed it to him. Such is not the way of hosts. The
hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed
up with it, as I shall show.
Meanwhile, why did the
red-haired man babble those excuses? It was because he scented danger. He was
not by nature suspicious, but -- what possible motive, except murder, could
this man have for enticing him to that cave? Acquaintance in the open valley
was all very well and pleasant, but a strange den after dark -- no, no! You
despise him for his fears. Yet these were not really so absurd as they may
seem. As man progressed in civilization, and grew to be definitely gregarious,
hospitality became more a matter of course. But even then it was not above
suspicion. It was not hedged around with those unwritten laws which make it the
safe and eligible thing we know to-day. In the annals of hospitality there are
many pages that make painful reading; many a great dark blot is there which the
Recording Angel may wish, but will not be able, to wipe out with a tear.
If I were a host, I
should ignore those tomes. Being a guest, I sometimes glance into them, but
with more of horror, I assure you, than of malicious amusement. I carefully
avoid those which treat of hospitality among barbarous races. Things done in
the best periods of the most enlightened peoples are quite bad enough. The
Israelites were the salt of the earth. But can you imagine a deed of
colder-blooded treachery than Jael's? You would think it must have been held
accursed by even the basest minds. Yet thus sang Deborah and Barak,
"Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be; blessed
shall she be among women in the tent." And Barak, remember, was a gallant
soldier, and Deborah was a prophetess who "judged Israel at that
time." So much for ideals of hospitality among the children of Israel.
Of the Homeric Greeks
it may be said that they, too, were the salt of the earth; and it may be added
that in their pungent and antiseptic quality there was mingled a measure of
sweetness, not to be found in the children of Israel. I do not say outright
that Odysseus ought not to have slain the suitors. That is a debatable point.
It is true that they were guests under his roof. But he had not invited them.
Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. I am thinking of another episode in
his life. By what Circe did, and by his disregard of what she had done, a
searching light is cast on the laxity of Homeric Greek notions as to what was
due to guests. Odysseus was a clever, but not a bad man, and his standard of
general conduct was high enough. Yet, having foiled Circe in her purpose to
turn him into a swine, and having forced her to restore his comrades to human shape,
he did not let pass the barrier of his teeth any such winged words as "Now
will I bide no more under thy roof, Circe, but fare across the sea with my dear
comrades, even unto mine own home, for that which thou didst was an evil thing,
and one not meet to be done unto strangers by the daughter of a god." He
seems to have said nothing in particular, to have accepted with alacrity the
invitation that he and his dear comrades should prolong their visit, and to
have prolonged it with them for a whole year, in the course of which Circe bore
him a son, named Telegonus. As Matthew Arnold would have said, "What a
set!"
My eye roves, for
relief, to those shelves where the later annals are. I take down a tome at
random. Rome in the fifteenth century: civilization never was more brilliant
than there and then. I imagine; and yet -- no, I replace that tome. I saw
enough in it to remind me the Borgias selected and laid down rare poisons in
their cellars with as much thought as they gave to their vintage wines. Extraordinary!
-- but the Romans do not seem to have thought so. An invitation to dine at
Palazzo Borghese was accounted the highest social honor. I am aware that in
recent books of Italian history there has been a tendency to whiten the
Borgias' characters. But I myself hold to the old romantic black way of looking
at the Borgias. I maintain that though you would often in the fifteenth century
have heard the snobbish Roman say, in a would-be offhand tone, "I am
dining with the Borgias to-night," no Roman ever was able to say, "I
dined last night with the Borgias."
To mankind in general
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and
hostess should not be. Hence the marked coolness of Scotsmen toward
Shakespeare, hence the untiring efforts of that proud and sensitive race to set
up Burns in his stead. It is a risky thing to offer sympathy to the proud and
sensitive, yet I must say that I think the Scots have a real grievance. The two
actual, historic Macbeths were no worse than innumerable other couples in other
lands that had not yet fully struggled out of barbarism. It is hard that
Shakespeare happened on the story of that particular pair, and so made it
immortal. But he meant no harm, and, let Scotsmen believe me, did positive good.
Scotch hospitality is proverbial. As much in Scotland as in America does the
English visitor blush when he thinks how perfunctory and niggard, in
comparison, English hospitality is. It was Scotland that first formalized
hospitality, made of it an exacting code of honor, with the basic principle
that the guest must in all circumstances be respected and at all costs
protected. Jacobite history bristles with examples of the heroic sacrifices
made by hosts for their guests, sacrifices of their own safety, and even of
their own political convictions, for fear of infringing, however slightly, that
sacred code of theirs. And what was the origin of all this noble pedantry?
Shakespeare's "Macbeth."
Perhaps if England were
a bleak and rugged country, like Scotland, or a new country, like America, the
foreign visitor would be more overwhelmed with kindness here than he is. The
landscapes of our countryside are so charming, London abounds in public
monuments so redolent of history, so romantic and engrossing, that we are
perhaps too apt to think the foreign visitor would have neither time nor
inclination to sit dawdling in private dining-rooms. Assuredly there is no lack
of hospitable impulse among the English. In what may be called mutual
hospitality they touch a high level. The French entertain one another far less
frequently. So do the Italians. In England the native guest has a very good
time indeed -- though of course he pays for it, in some measure, by acting as
host, too, from time to time.
In practice, no, there
cannot be any absolute division of mankind into my two categories, hosts and
guests. But psychologically a guest does not cease to be a guest when he gives
a dinner, nor is a host not a host when he accepts one. The amount of
entertaining that a guest need do is a matter wholly for his own conscience. He
will soon find that he does not receive less hospitality for offering little;
and he would not receive less if he offered none. The amount received by him
depends wholly on the degree of his agreeableness. Pride makes an occasional
host of him; but he does not shine in that capacity. Nor do hosts want him to
assay it. If they accept an invitation from him, they do so only because they
wish not to hurt his feelings. As guests they are fish out of water.
Circumstances do, of
course, react on character. It is conventional for the rich to give, and for
the poor to receive. Riches do tent to foster in you the instincts of a host,
and poverty does create an atmosphere favorable to the growth of guestish instincts.
But strong bents make their own way. Not all guests are to be found among the
needy, nor all hosts among the affluent. For sixteen years, after my education
was, by courtesy, finished -- from the age, that is, of twenty-two to the age
of thirty-eight -- I lived in London, seeing all sorts of people all the while;
and I came across many a rich man who, like the master of the shepherd Corin,
was "of churlish disposition" and little recked "to find the way
to heaven by doing deeds of hospitality." On the other hand, I knew quite
poor men who were incorrigibly hospitable.
To such men, all honor.
The most I dare claim for myself is that if I had been rich I should have been
better than Corin's master. Even as it was, I did my best. But I had no
authentic joy in doing it. Without the spur of pride I might conceivably have
not done it at all. There recurs to me from among memories of my boyhood an
episode that is rather significant. In my school, as in most others, we
received now and again "hampers" from home. At the midday dinner, in
every house, we all ate together; but at breakfast and supper we ate in four or
five separate "messes." It was customary for the receiver of a hamper
to share the contents with his messmates. On one occasion I received, instead
of the usual variegated hamper, a box containing twelve sausage-rolls. It
happened that when this box arrived and was opened by me there was no one
around. Of sausage-rolls I was particularly fond. I am sorry to say that I
carried the box up to my cubicle, and, having eaten two of the sausage-rolls,
said nothing to my friends that day about the other ten, nor anything about
them when, three days later, I had eaten them all alone.
Thirty years have
elapsed, my school-fellows are scattered far and wide, the chance that this
page may meet the eyes of some of them does not much dismay me; but I am glad
there was no collective and contemporary judgment by them on my strange
exploit. What defense could I have offered? Suppose I had said, "You see,
I am so essentially a guest," the plea would have carried little weight.
And yet it would not have been a worthless plea. On receipt of a hamper, a boy
did rise, always, in the esteem of his mess-mates. His sardines, his marmalade,
his potted meat, at any rate while they lasted, did make us think that his
parents "must be awfully decent," and that he was a not unworthy son.
He had become our central figure, we expected him to lead the conversation, we
liked listening to him, his jokes were good. With those twelve sausage-rolls I
could have dominated my fellows for a while. But I had not a dominant nature.
Leading abashed me, I was happiest in the comity of the crowd. Having received
a hamper, I should have passed muster. I suppose I was always glad when it was
finished, glad to fall back into the ranks.
Boys (as will have been
surmised from my record of the effect of hampers) are all of them potential
guests. It is only as they grow up that some of them harden into hosts. It is
likely enough that if I, when I grew up, had been rich, my natural bent to
guestship would have been diverted, and I, too, have become a (sort of) host.
And perhaps I should have passed muster, I suppose I did pass muster whenever,
in the course of my long residence in London, I did entertain friends. But the
memory of those occasions is not dear to me -- especially not the memory of
those that were in the more distinguished restaurants. Somewhere in the back of
my brain, while I tried to lead the conversation brightly, was always the
haunting fear that I had not brought enough money in my pocket. I never let
this fear master me. I never said to any one, "Will you have a
liqueur?" -- always, "What liqueur will you have?" But I
postponed as far as possible the evil moment of asking for the bill. When I
had, in the proper casual tone (I hope and believe), at length asked for it, I
wished always it were not brought to me folded on a plate, as though the amount
were so hideously high that I alone must be privy to it. So soon as it was laid
beside me, I wanted to know the worst at once. But I pretended to be so
engrossed in talk that I was unaware of the bill's presence, and I was careful
to be always in the middle of a sentence when I raised the upper fold and took
my not (I hope) frozen glance. In point of fact, the amount was always much
less than I had feared. Pessimism does win us great happy moments.
Meals in the
restaurants of Soho tested less severely the pauper guest masquerading as host.
But to them one could not ask rich persons -- nor even poor persons unless one
knew them very well. Soho is so uncertain that the fare is often not good
enough to be palmed off on even one's poorest and oldest friends. A very
magnetic host, with a great gift for bluffing, might, no doubt, even in Soho's
worst moments, diffuse among his guests a conviction that all was of the best.
But I never was good at bluffing. I had always to let food speak for itself.
"It's cheap" was the only pæan that in Soho's bad moments ever
occurred to me, and this of course I did not utter. And was it so cheap, after
all? Soho induces a certain optimism. A bill there was always larger than I had
thought it would be.
Every one, even the
richest and most munificent of men, pays much by check more light-heartedly
than he pays little in specie. In restaurants I should have liked always to
give checks. But in any restaurant I was so much more often seen as guest than
as host that I never felt sure the proprietor would trust me. Only in my club
did I know the luxury, or rather the painlessness, of entertaining by check. A
check -- especially a club check, supplied for the use of members, not a leaf
torn out of his own book -- makes so little mark on any man's imagination.
Offering hospitality in any club, I was inwardly calm. If my guest was by
nature a guest, I managed to forget somewhat that I myself was a guest by
nature. But if my guest was a true and habitual host, I did feel that we were
in an absurdly false relation; and it was not without difficulty that I could
restrain myself from saying to him, "This is all very well, you know, but
-- frankly: your place is at the head of your own table."
The host as guest is
far, far worse than the guest as host. He never even passes muster. The guest,
in virtue of a certain hability that is part of his natural equipment, can more
or less ape the ways of a host. But the host, with his more positive
temperament, does not even attempt the graces of a guest. By "graces"
I do not mean to imply anything artificial. The guest's manners are, rather, as
wild flowers springing from good rich soil -- the soil of genuine modesty and
gratitude. He honorably wishes to please in return for the pleasure he is
receiving. He wonders that people should be so kind to him, and, without
knowing it, is very kind to them. But the host, as I said earlier in this
essay, is a guest against his own will. That is the root of the mischief. He
feels that it is more blessed, etc., and that he is conferring rather than
accepting a favor. He does not adjust himself. He forgets his place. He leads
the conversation. He tries genially to draw you out. He never comments on the
goodness of the wine. He looks at his watch abruptly and says he must be off.
He doesn't say he has had a delightful time. In fact, his place is at the head
of his own table.
His own table, over his
own cellar, under his own roof -- it is only there that you see him at his
best. To a club or restaurant he may sometimes invite you, but not there, not
there, my child, do you get the full savor of his quality. In life or
literature there has been no better host than Old Wardle. Appalling though he
would have been as a guest in club or restaurant, it is hardly less painful to
think of him as a host there. At Dingley Dell, with an ample gesture, he made
you free of all that was his. He could not have given you a club or a
restaurant. Nor, when you come to think of it, did he give you Dingley Dell.
The place remained his. None knew better than Old Wardle that this was so.
Hospitality, as we have agreed, is not one of the most deep-rooted instincts in
man, whereas the sense of possession certainly is. Not even Old Wardle was a
communist. "This," you may be sure he said to himself, "is my
roof, these are my horses, that's a picture of my dear old grandfather."
And "This," he would say to us, "is my roof: sleep soundly under
it. These are my horses: ride them. That's a portrait of my dear old
grandfather: have a good look at it." But he did not ask us to walk off
with any of these things. Not even what he actually did give us would he regard
as having passed out of his possession. "That," he would muse, if we
were torpid after dinner, "is my roast beef," and "That,"
if we staggered on the way to bed, "is my cold milk punch." "But
surely," you interrupt me, "to give and then not feel that one has
given is the very best of all ways of giving." I agree. I hope you didn't
think I was trying to disparage Old Wardle. I was merely keeping my promise to
point out that from among the motives of even the best hosts pride and egoism
are not absent.
Every virtue, as we
were taught in youth, is a mean between two extremes; and I think any virtue is
the better understood by us if we glance at the vice on either side of it. I
take it that the virtue of hospitality stands midway between churlishness and
mere ostentation. Far to the left of the good host stands he who doesn't want
to see anything of any one; far to the right, he who wants a horde of people to
be always seeing something of him. I conjecture that the figure on the left,
just discernible through my field-glasses, is that of old Corin's master. His
name was never revealed to us, but Corin's brief account of his character
suffices. "Deeds of hospitality" is a dismal phrase that could have
occurred only to the servant of a very dismal master. Not less tell-tale is
Corin's idea that men who do these "deeds" do them only to save their
souls in the next world. It is a pity Shakespeare did not actually bring
Corin's master on to the stage. One would have liked to see the old man
genuinely touched by the charming eloquence of Rosalind's appeal for a crust of
bread, and conscious that he would probably go to heaven if he granted it, and
yet not quite able to grant it. Far away though he stands to the left of the
good host, he has yet something in common with that third person discernible on
the right -- that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that we
know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl of Arden. It
does not appear that he had a single friend, or that he wished for one. His
lavishness was indiscriminate except in that he entertained only the rich. One
would have liked to dine with him, but not even in the act of digestion could
one have felt that he had a heart. One would have acknowledged that in all the
material resources of his art he was a master, and also that he practised his
art for sheer love of it, wishing to be admired for nothing but his mastery,
and cocking no eye on any of those ulterior objects but for which some of the
most prominent hosts would not entertain at all. But the very fact that he was
an artist is repulsive. When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.
With this reflection I look away from Lucullus and, fixing my gaze on the
middle ground, am the better able to appreciate the excellence of the figure
that stands before me -- the figure of Old Wardle. Some pride and egoism in
that capacious breast, yes, but a great heart full of kindness, and ever a warm
spontaneous welcome to the stranger in need and to all old friends and young.
Hark! he is shouting something. He is asking us both down to Dingley Dell. And
you have shouted back that you will be delighted. Ah, did I not suspect from
the first that you, too, were perhaps a guest?
But -- I constrain you
in the act of rushing off to pack your things -- one moment: this essay has yet
to be finished. We have yet to glance at those two extremes between which the
mean is good guestship. Far to the right of the good guest, we descry the
parasite; far to the left, the churl again. Not the same churl, perhaps. We do
not know that Corin's master was ever sampled as a guest. I am inclined to call
yonder speck Dante -- Dante Alighieri, of whom we do know that he received
during his exile much hospitality from many hosts and repaid them by writing
how bitter was the bread in their houses, and how steep the stairs were. To
think of dour Dante as a guest is less dispiriting only than to think what he
would have been as a host had it ever occurred to him to entertain any one or
anything except a deep regard for Beatrice; and one turns with positive relief
to have a glimpse of the parasite -- Mr. Smurge, I presume, "whose
gratitude was as boundless as his appetite, and his presence as unsought as it
appeared to be inevitable." But now, how gracious and admirable is the
central figure -- radiating gratitude, but not too much of it; never intrusive,
ever within call; full of dignity, yet all amenable; quiet, yet lively; never
echoing, ever amplifying; never contradicting, but often lighting the way to
truth; an ornament, an inspiration, anywhere.
Such is he. But who is
he? It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality. I have told you
that when I lived in London I was nothing as a host; but I will not claim to
have been a perfect guest. Nor indeed was I. I was a good one, but, looking
back, I see myself not quite in the center -- slightly to the left, slightly to
the churlish side. I was rather too quiet, and I did sometimes contradict. And,
though I always liked to be invited anywhere, I very often preferred to stay at
home. If any one hereafter shall form a collection of the notes written by me
in reply to invitations, I am afraid he will gradually suppose me to have been
more in request than ever I really was, and to have been also a great invalid,
and a great traveler.