350 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



answered : ' I never send out formal invitations, and I 

 never ask anyone who is not more or less a personal 

 friend of my own, or someone brought at the request of 

 one of these friends, this last being a distinct element of 

 success.' If two people are really happy in a room, it 

 sheds a glow of brightness all around them. This, to my 

 mind, applies to all private and unofficial entertaining 

 which is done for pleasure one's own and that of others 

 rather than duty. All entertaining, to be good, should 

 be a collection of people who meet because they either 

 really know each other or would like to do so. The 

 moment people are brought together for any reason 

 connected with duty, the party, unless it is very large, is 

 sure to go badly and to be dull. The dinners we all dread 

 are those where the host and hostess ask people to meet 

 each other because they have duties of various kinds to 

 pay off. The deadly dulness of all garden parties in the 

 country is a marked example of the extraordinary flatness 

 that results from turning society into a social duty, and 

 having to ask a whole neighbourhood at once, which is in 

 no sense true hospitality. Duty and charity are excellent 

 things, but they cannot be turned into agreeable social 

 gatherings. 



I think it often surprises people, and especially men, 

 that middle-aged women, even those who have no 

 daughters, are so energetic and indefatigable in their 

 efforts to go into society in a way they rather avoided 

 than courted when they were younger. Society is always 

 only too glad to shunt the middle-aged, and the middle- 

 aged themselves so often feel it to be only a treadmill. I 

 am sure the secret is to be found, consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, in the love of power. It gives people the 

 opportunities to help, not only their own children, if they 

 have any, but other people in whom they may happen to 

 be interested, who are often benefited by an opportune 



