When I open my linen drawer and see immaculate napkins, something like an endorphin rush occurs. Something about running my hands over the cool crispness of starched linens transports me to another world, lifts me out of the messiness of the day-to-day, and leads me straight to the heart of the feminine mysteries.
When I lived on a large cattle ranch, I often had to cook at the drop of a manure-spattered cowboy hat. Living and working at least a half hour from a few substandard fast-food joints and barely passable restaurants, a willingness to provide hospitality is a tangible asset. In this world of registered cowboys and bulls, the feminine arts are thrown in high relief.
Not that true hospitality may be reduced to stiff napkins or any of the mechanics of opening your home to others – cleaning, arranging, planning, and cooking. But the publishing industry produces a plethora of lifestyle books, magazines, and Web sites of perfectly arranged china, floral extravaganzas, and the correct placement of wine glasses to great economic effect. The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down: An Informal History of Hospitality, by Jesse Browner, is one such book. Surprisingly, Browner' writes of manipulating his guests. They luxuriate after a fine meal he has served, relaxed and unprepared for the fact that his hospitality is a Trojan horse – a trick to weaken his guests so he can manipulate them for his own personal and utilitarian designs. The famous hosts throughout history, about whom he writes, did the same. Hitler is one such host he describes in detail.
Thank goodness the regal women I can think of, who were so attentive to making sure everyone had enough to eat that they would not sit down, had no such designs. If they did, we'd all be more messed up than we are.
But the title of that book, before I read its Benthamite thesis, caught my imagination. Who wouldn't be enchanted by a woman of aristocratic bearing who would not sit down because she was eager to serve her guests? It defies our notions of what it means to be well-born. Can you imagine a tiara-wearing soul-mate of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin? In the late 18th century, he wrote, "To entertain a guest is to make yourself responsible for his happiness so long as he is beneath your roof." It is touching to think of someone who presumably has legions of housemaids to cook and clean and serve, yet wants to serve her guests with her very own hands.
To be receptive to the hopes and fears and desires of guests is at the heart of true hospitality. This is authentic femininity. Starched napkins don't put my guests at ease. But they remind me to act with the full dignity of a duchess. They remind me to act like royalty, like a daughter of the King.
