MODERN PARTIES.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17610, 15 January 1929, Page 5

MODERN PARTIES.

AND BRILLIANT HOSTESSES. “Modern parties, if they do not happen to possess a brilliant hostess, can become depressing and gloom-ridden functions,” said Miss Margerry Lawrence, author of "Bohemian Glass.” A good hostess ought to be a welding force. We guests do so very little for ourselves. Think of a Victorian party. Congregated in the drawing room—which we may rightly condemn as itself being a rather gloomy apartment—were guests who could play the piano and warble their little arias for one another’s delectation. That made things easier for the hostess. To-day, brought up on gramophones and wireless, we are unable to contribute to the evening’s entertainment except by talking. Myself, i like nothing better than a party where there is good talk. I should like to see a revival of the eighteenth century salon. But such parties depend, perhaps, more than others (for a good band can make a good dance) on the personality of the women who give them. “I went readily to a party to which many interesting people, with plenty of ideas and the gift of discussing them, had been invited. But this, like several others, split up into desultory', ill-assorted groups, and somehow managed to stay there. The hostess seemed to lack the personality to pull the whole thing together to make the guests talk. “Not that a hostess should, as the older novelists used to say, ‘move graciously from group to group.’ The party need not be a formal reception. Another function flopped because the hostess, far from being lazy like the first, rushed busily round like a little brown hen and ‘fussed’ her guests into stagnation. “No good hostess obviously ‘organises’ her party. The fun should all be apparently spontaneous. An example how not to run a party was afforded recently by a host at a large and distinguished dinner which lasted from Bto 12. When conversation flagged he would say, ‘Now, Mr So-and-So, do tell some of your famous yarns.’ Naturally, guests thus addressed will relapse into an embarrassed silence, instead of scintillating as they ought.

“In the invitations a certain casualness is to be recommended. Enormous and formal cards have a chilling effect on prospective guests. The most successful parties I have been to recently were informal, after-the-theatre gatherings, to which I was invited usually by telephone. “The vogue for conversational parties has,, of course, certain difficulties. A sustained conversation is, unless one has the gift of talk, something of a strain on the intellect. “Women guests, w'hile they are often the life and soul of a party, betray this strain more than the men. Dull men have the sense to sit still and emit a remark at intervals, so that they give a cryptic impression of profound depths. A dull woman, on the contrary, will flounder about in a conversational morass rather than remain silent and obscure.

“But there will be little tear of dullness where people have the courage to be what they are. Simplicity is far more successful than the most complex posing. Why don’t women realise it?"