The Pittsburgh Press (December 8, 1941)
I DARE SAY —
Fine living
By Florence Fisher Parry
Oh dear me, here I go again taking issue with our First Lady! Which is, I must say, most unbecoming of me, an American citizen committed to the much-tooted policy of national unity.
But the disturbing question does pop up occasionally, of just now far one’s support of our President should go. Should it, perforce, extend to his esteemed spouse? If this is to be my portion, then indeed will I have to cultivate a more magnanimous soul.
Or, these is one other recourse left me, and that is simply to eschew “My Day,” a habit which I would be loath to abandon, as it affords my choicest recreation.
Protest
In Friday’s “My Day,” Mrs. Roosevelt celebrates the passing of the dinner napkin. It seems that Mrs. Roosevelt, in a sudden and quite uncharacteristic burst of domesticity, went rummaging. She found – to her chagrin – that she possessed a chest of handsome old Irish linens, among which numbered some dozens of damask napkins large enough to covert the ironical expanse of the most devoted gourmand! Mrs. Roosevelt confessed herself as really not knowing what to so with all this handsome linen, assuming (all too placidly, I thought) that her heirs shared her devotion to the picnic paper napkin variety.
Now this is quite understandable to one whose predilections lie in the direction of hot dogs and pop, even when confronted with the entertainment of royalty. Far be it from me to run down wieners and cokes, which everybody knows is one of the major American institutions. And besides, that they should also make the White House menu is documentary evidence that our new system of democracy is working.
But speaking quite frankly I would feel some disappointment if, myself a guest on the White House lawn or at Hyde Park, I would be served a frankfurter upon a paper napkin. For quite aside from my gastronomical limitations, I would feel cheated thus to be treated, in the executive mansion of the greatest nation on earth, and the guest of the greatest Lady.
I would want to feel that I had to rise to the occasion. And nothing makes one riser to an occasion so much as a large damask napkin beautifully and carefully laundered, its initial bulging like a royal crest upon a noble escutcheon.
Compared with our First Lady I have very little. My linen chest is pretty bare, for there are a lot of us who’ve been dipping down into our treasure chests for some time now, HAVING to use the genuine because we can’t afford to buy the substitutes.
But what I’ve left I’m proud of and always will be, And I hope my children will be too after me. This yellowing linen sheet, these limp linen napkins with their maiden initials, these crocheted pillow cases, take me back to a day I don’t want to lost the touchstones of; take me back to a grace and dignity – yes, to a FINE LIVING – I don’t want to see entirely slip away.
It seems to me there ought to be some surer way to preserve it against the destructive forces of our “progress.” It seems to me there ought to be some effort to at least go through the motions of it, from time to time, like a ritual – the way a toast is given for some long-departed guest…
Tradition
A girl showed me a bracelet the other day. It was made from an old-napkin-ring that was dug up in Charleston, SC. It was beautifully wrought in exquisite filigree. It seemed an old colored slave had buried it for his mistress, before Sherman’s march to the sea. But the hiding place had been lost, the family had been wiped out or died out long ago; but when the treasure was found not long ago, everyone in Charleston identified the silver. They knew whose family it “came from.”
The marks of gentility were upon it. And in their fashion had imprinted the same marks upon their possessors. Fine living, like a pure diamond, attracts – and merits – a fine setting.
…As I looked at the bracelet, I imagined the kind of linen napkins it must have held. Wrought by gentlewomen in a fairer and more gracious day than ours. Heirloom linen… heirloom silver… heirloom breeding, to be handed down.
No, Mrs. Roosevelt, I do not hold with you. I think that the linen you “happened” upon merits more than a paper-napkin glance. It is the testimonial of something which rates survival – dignity in living. I cannot bear to see it swept aside.
There are those who must be satisfied with paper-napkin substitutes for fine living. There must be those who will never know the feel of linen, the glow of candle in a crystal chandelier; the graciousness of fine living will be denied them, ever. But the aspiration for it burns bright within them, so bright that they take a certain vicarious joy in feeling it afar. They would be the last to see it discarded; indeed, they look to its exemplars to provide, to maintain and to preserve it, an occasion for them to rise to, a way of life for them, later perhaps, to attain!
Where could they look for better example of the fine traditions, than in their own national White House, where should reside, if anywhere, custodians of fine living in its highest sense?