‘It was a Sunday evening in October and in common with so many other young women in her class, Katherine Hilbery was pouring out tea.’ So begins Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘Night and Day.’ Ms. Woolf’s suicide doesn’t speak much to the habits of this society. However warm the tea, the strict rules were often chilling, but I’ve been longing for this convention all year. Women in Henry James novels and Oscar Wilde plays also have evenings when they are ‘at home.’ For centuries every woman worth her taffeta had calling hours, and she served tea and cookies, looked charming and said many worthless things about costly people. There was no contention as to how to call on everyone; these hours would never overlap each other. If a man had you in his sights, he would certainly drop by.
This is not simple with your cell phone. With your cell phone you are always at home. With a cell phone you can be courted without ever seeing the face behind the flying thumbs. With a cell phone it is hard to be graceful. I find myself nostalgic for this habit of visitation I never knew. I try to pick up my cell for friends scattered all over the country at all hours, and sometimes I just want to receive first a card on a platter and then the person in question in my drawing room ‘- with tea.
Coffee dates are difficult. You shout about them impotently at classmates on the street. By now the phrase is an entirely empty promise. ‘Let’s get coffee’ means ‘Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.’ Text messages and missed calls present the problem of a call back. There is the understanding among people of our generation that we are always reachable by phone. Sometimes, however, we are not. If only we had calling hours, literally or figuratively. Wouldn’t it be easier if your grandmother, mother, sister and friend across the country all dialed in the same evening?
On second thought, probably not. As a shockingly independent young woman I do some things during the week that I would tell my friends and not my grandmother. I could never really have them all together to tea. Even taking calls one after another would be tiresome and I might start telling my grandmother about weekend nights instead of mid-week days.
Today’s alienation has its perks. Calling hours were often full of repetitive and tame conversation, and while you could do all your visiting in one afternoon, it was stupidly boring. Not quite so convenient after all. In retrospect, Henry James was a critic of such gatherings and the women Wilde called on put him in jail ‘- but is romance easier to slip into teacups than Facebook chats? The answer might be no. Like so many things in the past I think I want, such as absinthe and lead pipes, this might be something that drives me mad before it flat out kills me, if Ms. Woolf is any example at all. Then again, I have three new voicemails.