The British do it. Perhaps we should, too: keep a guest book in our homes to record visits of family and friends for later reminiscing.
Author/photographer Mary Randolph Carter thinks it`s a good idea, so she produced ”The Welcome Book” (Viking Studio Books, $14.95). It`s an American version of a guest book, which has been a popular custom in England for some time.
Originally, these social ledgers were used for recording the names of those attending specific occasions, such as baptisms, weddings or funerals. Carter adapts the traditional guest book by combining function and fun to create a shared diary of remembrance and celebration.
Filled with beautiful photographs that illustrate American country life, this book can be kept on the coffee table for easy browsing. There are photos of children dressed up like Halloween ghosts, beds neatly made with old linens and lace, dolls at a tea party, and scenes of the seashore.
Blank lines on facing pages are for guests and hosts to pen names, thoughts, anecdotes or sketches. Special holiday pages are provided so photographs of Halloween costumes or Thanksgiving recipes may be included.
Carter organized her book by season and suggests in the foreword: ”In springtime, a garden page will keep in mind the seeds you planted and how they bloomed-and who the weeders were.”
With a red satin ribbon to mark special pages, ”The Welcome Book” would be a charming gift for new home owners, or young people moving into their first apartment.
Warm welcomes
Mary Randolph Carter, the oldest of nine children, grew up in Virginia
”in a funny old wooden farmhouse weathered by time (more than 200 years), salty breezes off the nearby Rappahannock River, and the celebrations of many, many people.” She gleaned lots of ideas for welcoming guests, including these:
– For festive evenings, outline the entrance walk to your doorway with flickering candles stuck into sand-filled, brown paper sandwich bags. This is an old custom in Mexico and the southwestern United States, where the candles- in-a-bag are called luminarias.
– A welcome mat`s message often gets muddied by time and feet, so a better idea is a different kind of welcome tied to your front door. In the summer it could be an old straw hat decorated with wildflowers, or a wreath fashioned from any kind of vine.
”We once hung an old fishing creel on ours, and left a pad and pencil inside, so friends we missed might leave us a message or find one from us.”
– ”In the front hall of my parents` home,” Carter recalled, ”there is always a large container of something fragrant-bayberry from along the entrance road or a fresh bouquet of herbs from the kitchen garden. After things have stopped blooming, it`s replaced by a large ironstone platter serving up the smells of our homemade potpourri.”
– ”Before evening guests arrive in our apartment, we turn down the lights and turn up the candle-power with votive candles sprinkled everywhere. We nestle them in assorted butter dishes and a few doll-size dinner plates.” – Impersonal apartment building hallways and doors should not be an obstacle to warm welcomes. Where allowed, a traditional welcome mat meant for the outdoors, a wreath at the holidays, ”even a child`s hand-made welcome drawing taped to a peephole go a long way in starting visits off with a smile,” Carter said.
A hospitable history
Hospitality is a cornerstone of American life. In the early years of the 17th Century, company frequently was unexpected and often extended over days, if not weeks.
Early records of such visits are found mostly in private diaries and home journals. Entered in styles from chatty to terse, they reflected dates of arrival, visitors` names and their relationships, activities engaged in, gifts and gossip exchanged, and, in some cases, listings of recipes.
Early American innkeepers, though few and far between, probably were the first to have guests formally register their names and addresses in a ledger. Of course, their reasons had more to do with business than hospitality.
By the 19th Century, this habit evolved into a form of the guest book found at fancy balls and weddings hosted mostly by the upper classes. A Vanderbilt family`s visitors book for 1893, kept on board the yacht Valiant, reads like a social register of the day, filled with the signatures of guests who watched America`s Cup races at Newport, R.I., danced and dined in Bar Harbor, Maine, or sailed to the exotic ports of Nice, Bombay and Naples.
Another custom of the 19th Century was leaving a calling card. A prerequisite to every visit, the tradition flourished in proper Victorian households until it began to sink under the weight of the formal rigmarole it engendered. Now these often elaborate cards are prized as collectibles.
