58 
House & G a r den 
GAY SCENIC PAPER FOR DINING 
Dinner Parties Are Apt to be More Successful if One Has 
Something Colorful and Interesting to Look at as Jf r ell as Eat 
nancy McClelland 
rooms 
W HAT makes the suc¬ 
cess of a dinner party? 
Is it what is on the 
table? Or who is on the 
chairs? Or what is on the 
walls of the room? 
Had you asked this ques¬ 
tion of an illustrious hostess 
of three generations ago, you 
would undoubtedly have been 
answered: “The secret of a 
successful dinner party, sir, 
lies in what is on the table”. 
A very simple, very solid, 
very satisfactory reply. If 
lacking in subtlety, there is 
at least a refreshing plump¬ 
ness and directness about it 
that must have been encour¬ 
aging to guests of that day, 
who knew that they would be 
at table three and four hours 
at a time. 
I fancy that such a hostess 
must have looked with scorn 
at those who followed her 
and took for their slogan, 
“Not what’s on the table, but 
who’s on the chairs”. Despite 
such disapproval, however, 
M. E. Hewitt 
The paper in the New York dining room of Mrs. Frank 
L. Crocker tells the charming story of Renaud and 
Armide in color as fresh as when they were printed in 1830 
dinners grew shorter; courses 
were fewer and the milieu 
meant more than the menu. 
And now it is possible 
that a new era will be in¬ 
augurated, for there are 
hostesses who have just dis¬ 
covered that some of the suc¬ 
cess of their dinners depends 
on something not thought of 
b e f o r e—the surroundings. 
They have learned that a de¬ 
pressing room contributed tc 
dull dinners and now give 
quite as much attention to the 
decoration of the room in 
which the dinner is to be 
served as to the ordering of 
the dinner itself. 
If you have read Pere 
Goriot, you must recall Bal¬ 
zac's description of the din¬ 
ing room in the Pension Yau- 
quier, where the young ladies 
who ate their miserable soup 
amidst the odor of the pen¬ 
sion were regaled and tanta¬ 
lized by the scenes of feast¬ 
ing that were spread upon the 
walls before their eves. The 
