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A Hello Party
HE invitations to this party read as THE follows:
Hello! hello! bello!
A party's on the wire; And you must surely go Or else arouse my ire!
Friday evening Eight o'clock The affair was planned by one girl to announce the engagement of a chum, and of course the object of the party was not revealed in the invitations. All kinds of jolly games were played to pass the evening, and one pleasant feature was "A Telephonic Conversation" by Mark Twain rendered by a good reader.
The telephone was the keynote of the evening and played a prominent part in the table [114] decorations. A big blue paper bell such as one sees in front of telephone booths hung over the center of the table. Beneath it was a low bowl of forget-me-nots of which the guests did not see the significance till later.
The candles were white with blue bellshaped shades, and at each person's plate as a favor stood one of the tiny glass telephones seen in candy stores, full of candies.
The place-cards each bore a mock telephone number, such as Sing 1236, Circle 6320, Joke 5156, Shiver 9315, Groan 231.
The menu was mostly white and served on blue dishes. It consisted of chicken patties, hot rolls, cream cheese and white grape salad, and vanilla ice-cream in blue frilled paper cases.
Toward the end of the ice-cream course the hostess asked the guests to announce their telephone numbers, in turn. Whereupon, each person was requested to rise from the table and act out his number. This was comparatively simple and made everyone quite hilarious. [115] When it came the turn of the hostess, she said that her number was Springit 42. The two (2), she said, were Elizabeth and John, and this was the time she had chosen to spring the announcement of their engagement.
Another way in which the announcement could be made is to prepare telephone messages of the news and tie them to the ends of blue ribbons hanging from the tongue of the bell.
The hostess may announce that the "bell tolled" when the guests are allowed to open and read their messages. [116] A
A telephone party, invented to let one girl announce a friend’s engagement. Nothing in it needs cooking; what it needs is a piece of lost technology explained.
- The numbers are the jokeSing 1236, Circle 6320, Springit 42. A telephone number of this period was an exchange name followed by digits, and you said the whole thing aloud to an operator. The party’s central game depends on that, and it stopped working the moment numbers became digits dialled in silence.
- Springit 42The hostess’s number is the announcement: Springit, and the two are Elizabeth and John. The pun has to be spoken to land, which is exactly how numbers were used, and it is the only element of the party that is not decoration.
- Forget-me-nots were the clueThe bowl of forget-me-nots sits under the bell from the start, and the text says the guests did not see the significance until later. The flower’s name is the whole hint, planted in the room an hour before anyone was told why.
- The blue bellThe decoration copies the sign that hung outside a telephone booth. A theme party of this kind took its imagery from street furniture and advertising, and the hostess was expected to recognise it on sight and reproduce it in paper.
- A reading was entertainmentA good reader performing Mark Twain’s A Telephonic Conversation is listed among the amusements as a pleasant feature. Reading a published piece aloud to a room was ordinary party entertainment, and the choice is matched to the theme like everything else on the table.
- Favours from the candy storeThe tiny glass telephones full of sweets were bought, and the text says so: they are the ones seen in candy stores. Novelty glass containers sold filled with candy were a shop staple, so the hostess shopped the theme as well as making it.
The party exists for one purpose: to let a young woman tell her friends she is engaged, at a moment and in a manner of her own choosing, in somebody else’s house. The invitation deliberately conceals the reason, so the guests arrive not knowing why they are there. Everything else — the bell, the place-cards, the acting out of numbers round the table — is an elaborate delay engineered so that the reveal lands at the right point of the evening, during the ice-cream. The book then offers a second mechanism in case the first does not suit the hostess: written messages tied to ribbons hanging from the bell’s tongue, opened on a signal. That is the real subject of Entertaining Made Easy. Not food, and barely decoration, but stage management, written for young women with no money for caterers and a great deal of time, paper and ingenuity.