Another Book Title Tea

Afternoon Dresses for Tea, 

Fashion Plate from 'Art Gout 

Beaute' Magazine, 1924

Maybe you’ll find this book title tea less tricky than the previous — and more fun. 

A Book Title Tea. 2.

This is an original entertainment for a few friends. Have amusing pen and ink sketches handed around together with a small note book and pencil for each guest. Explain that each sketch is supposed to represent some well-known book and each guest is given an opportunity to put on his or her thinking cap and name the volume in his note book and pass the sketch on. This novel game affords no end of mirth and enjoyment and at a given time the hostess looks over the books and corrects them.

The House of Seven Gables is very simple and easy to guess, it being simply a rough sketch of a house with seven gables.

An Old-Fashioned Girl is represented by a girl of ye olden time in simple and quaint costume with a school bag on her arm.

A small snow covered house is enough to suggest "Snow Bound" to many of the guests. (A favorite of mine)

The Lady and the Tiger ought not to puzzle anyone, it is a simple sketch of a lady's head in one corner and a tiger in the other. (“The Lady, or theTiger”, most probably)

On one card appears 15th of March, which seems more baffling than all the others. It proves to be "Middlemarch."

A large letter A in vivid red of course represents "A Scarlet Letter." (I think it should be “The Scarlet Letter”)

"Helen's Babies" is a sketch of two chubby boys in night robes.

"Heavenly Twins" is represented by twin stars in the heavens.

"Darkest Africa" needs nothing but the face of a darkey boy with mouth stretched from ear to ear.

One of the sketches is a moonlight scene with ships going in opposite directions and is easily guessed to represent "Ships that Pass in the Night."

Anyone with originality can devise many other amusing and more difficult sketches. Prizes might be given to the one who guesses the largest number correctly.

A Book-Title Tea

Tea Dresses

One of my latest finds is “Breakfasts and Teas, Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions", by Paul Pierce from 1907. There are two more books by the same author: “Dinners and Luncheons, Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions" and "Suppers, Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions". None of them includes recipes, they are “Respectfully dedicated to the overworked, perturbed American hostess in the sincere hope that the suggestions herein may lighten her perplexities and transform her work of entertaining from a task of dread to one of delight.”

Even if you entertain as seldom as I do, which is never, you might find it as amusing as I do, to read about it. 

A "Book-Title" Tea. 1.

The latest novelty in afternoon entertainments in England is what is called a "book-title" tea. Of course, this would be just as amusing in the evening, and any refreshments may be served that the hostess prefers.
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The guests are all expected to devise and wear some particular badge or ornament which indicates, more or less clearly, the title of some book, preferably works which are well known.

The "badges" worn may be very clever and most tastefully executed. "Dodo" may be impersonated by showing a bar of music containing the two representative notes of the tonic sol-fa method. "Little Men" is represented by a badge bearing the names of little great men, such as Napoleon, Lord Roberts, etc.

A lady may wear around her neck fragments of china tied by a ribbon. This represents "The Break-Up of China," Lord Charles Beresford's book. Another lady, whose name is Alice, may wear a necklace of little mirrors, and this represents "Alice Through A Looking Glass." An ingenious design consists of a nickel coin, a photo of a donkey, another nickel coin, and a little bee, meaning "Nickolas Nickleby." A daisy stuck into a tiny miller's hat stands for "Daisy Miller," and the letters of the word olive twisted on a wire for "Oliver Twist."

Two little gates, made of paste board and a jar, represents "Gates Ajar," and a string of little dolls dressed as men, "All Sorts and Conditions of Men." There are many other interesting and ingenious designs.

March

Month which the warring ancients strangely styled
 The month of war, — as if in their fierce ways
 Were any month of peace! — in thy rough days
 I find no war in Nature, though the wild
 Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled
 At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise
 Their heads without affright, without amaze,
 And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child.
 And he who watches well may well discern
 Sweet expectation in each living thing.
 Like pregnant mother the sweet earth doth yearn;
 In secret joy makes ready for the spring;
 And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear
 Annunciation lilies for the year.
 From "A Calendar of Sonnets" by Helen Hunt Jackson (1891)