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Invitations and How to Answer Them—Telephone Invitations—Hints for the Young Hostess—Dress for Men and for Women—Entering and Leaving the Dining-room—Etiquette of the Formal Dinner—When to Arrive and When to Leave—Dressing-rooms—Dinner-calls.
AN engraved card is now used for the invitations to a formal dinner, spaces being left blank for the day, hour, and name of guest, as for instance:
_Mr. and Mrs. George Hazleton request the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Allen’s company at dinner on Thursday, April the ninth, at eight o’clock Thirty-three Hamilton Place_
The invitations are given in the name of husband and wife. A widow living with a grown-up son would add his name, as a widower would that of a daughter in society.
Dinner invitations may be written in the third person, or for an informal occasion in the first. Small sheets of perfectly plain white note-paper of the best quality, with envelopes to match, are always good form. In a democratic country crests are in questionable taste, although some persons use them, embossed in white. The address is often engraved in small and simple lettering at the top of the page.
In the gay season in a large city, invitations to a formal dinner are sent out two weeks or more beforehand. In Washington the guests are sometimes invited a month in advance. For an informal occasion a week or less suffices. Invitations by telephone are now extremely popular, but they have some decided disadvantages. The person invited, being suddenly held up at the point of a gun, as it were, is likely to forget some other engagement for the same day and hour, or she may feel constrained to accept when she would prefer to decline. As she has no written record of the invitation, it may slip her memory. Hence hostesses who are very exact send a note, in addition to speaking to their friends over the telephone. It is, of course, extremely convenient to do this when engagements must be made at short notice. A hostess desiring to arrange a dinner or other occasion in honor of a certain guest, may ascertain over the telephone whether he can come on a certain evening, and then invite other friends to meet him.