Social season

“ In the summer, you see her giving herself greater freedoms, and quitting her care for above two hours together; but, in winter, when the rigour of the season would chill the principles of life, and destroy the young one, she grows more assiduous in her attendance, and stays away but half the time. ”

“ But these seasons are subject to variations with different men, as with different years. The summer of one man is all bright and calm--a lapse of tranquil sunshine, and soft airs, and gentle dews. With another, the same season passes in the thunder-storm of passion--the tempests of war or ambition--and often, the gloomy days of autumn or of winter overshadowed the rich land, and spoiled the promised harvest.
It was an autumn-like period during the next three or four months of the family of Sir Philip Hastings. ”

“ As usual, everything shews in this month that our season will soon be past its perihelion: soirées, whether scientific, exquisite, or political, take place almost too frequently for the comfort and wellbeing of the invited; and loungers and legislators are alike beginning to dream of leafy woods and babbling brooks. ”

“ In the morning this sparkling light was of a divine clearness and radiance; in the evening amber, orange, scarlet stained the serene sky, and in between these were precious, lovely hours on the silver dunes, on that long bare parade, in the crooked streets with the closed shops, where the one little café tea place so gallantly defied the end of the season. ”

“ At each home they eat and drink, and on the seventh day an exhausted pair of lovers return home, dirty and forlorn, with their clothes—and their nerves—in tatters.
Every change of season has its corresponding duties to nature, and each one is made the occasion of a festival by the simple folk in all lands. Let the foreigner who wanders into peasant France in the autumn beware of letting himself loose among the grape gatherers. ”

“ We are now in the beginning of June, the fresh outburst of summer, when every day in the country is a delight to eye and ear, and we say, ‘The season for hot rooms is beginning.’ We alone of civilized races spend our summer in a capital, and cling to the country when the trees are leafless and the brooks frozen. ”

“ I doubt, indeed, if the spring is exactly what it used to be, or if, as we get on in years [no one ever speaks of “getting on in years” till she is virtually settled in life] , its promises and suggestions do not seem empty in comparison with the sympathies and responses of human friendship, and the stimulation of society. Sometimes nothing is so tiresome as a perfect day in a perfect season. ”

“ There is something in the first approach of spring—in the budding of the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the sun—as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed, that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph. ”

“ Therefore the funerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, when leisure comes after the August harvest, they make the occasion for important social gatherings. Much of the influence of winter lies in its power to isolate. ”

“ Few are those among us whose outings cover a lifetime; and when the happy days of freedom come to us, let books be kept behind, and with untrammeled eyes and ears let us drink in the knowledge that comes to us at no other time. Summer is all too short a season for other occupation than enthusiastic sight-seeing and sound-hearing. ”

“ The things of Nature grow sophisticated as the season advances. In the early springtime they are frank and confiding, and willingly tell the secrets of their growth to him who asks They have time, in these first beginnings of things, for friendly sociability: to show their tiny roots and bulbs, and let us study the delicate, gracious unfoldings of leaf and bud and blossom. In a few weeks they will all be too busy, keeping up with the season’s swift march, to stop and visit with the lovingest of human friends. ”

“ Society has become so complex that it takes more than one Englishman to make a season. Were it the business of the chronicler to study the evolution of this lovely watering-place from its simple, unconventional, animated days of natural hospitality and enjoyment, to its present splendid and palatial isolation of a society—during the season—which finds its chief satisfaction in the rivalry of costly luxury and in an atmosphere of what is deemed aristocratic exclusiveness, he would have a theme attractive to the sociologist. ”

“ In short, all the tables are by and by occupied by guests continually succeeding each other, of all classes and of all professions, from the imperial family, down to the most humble artisan; all gay, amiable, condescending on the one side; happy, respectful, and free from restraint on the other. Thus the season passes in that delicious climate, which is rendered a thousand times more delicious by the harmony and good-feeling reigning throughout all these mingled classes of society. ”

“ Now, in this spring season, while you sportively dance through the gardens of the wealthy, or hover among the beautiful alleys of cherry-trees in blossom, you say to yourself: ‘Nobody in the world has such pleasure as I, or such excellent friends. ”

“ In such a well-fitted but unelastic establishment the dinner-hour, the carriage horses, hot water, bedtime, candles, the post, the wash-day, and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one’s comfort, become the stern arbiters of one’s fate. Spring cleaning—which is something like what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to “do it at home”—takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates ”

“ Since we are to be out of the season at all, we are glad we are in advance of it. This is the youth of the summer, not its old age. People are looking forward; events are approaching, instead of receding; the coming months seem big with indefinite promise of benefit and pleasure. ”

“ In winter time one gains distraction by visiting friends, attending society meetings, concerts, theatres, etc. In every season of the year it would be well to spend Sundays in the country. It is necessary, likewise, to follow the general rules of hygiene. ”

“ I now understood why our religion has made sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night of St John, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. A general communion of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic possesses those who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights. ”

“ So, by degrees, autumn faded imperceptibly into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer. Each season in its turn found people dwelling peaceably in their urban habitations, entertaining and being entertained; and so "the Season" lost its sharp edges. The meeting of Parliament brought [72] no perceptible change in the aspect of the town. "High Midsummer Pomps" were no longer so "high" as in former years, but, per contra, there was much more gaiety in the autumn and winter and early spring. ”

“ Nature's impulses, therefore, in the spring of the year are for the good of the race, and may then be more frequently indulged without prejudice to the individual. Summer is the season which agrees the least with the exercise of the generative functions. ”

“ Upon the whole, we conclude that, notwithstanding the necessity of rest and recreation, and the necessary attentions to personal conveniences which the seventh day affords, the season usually wears away rather heavily than otherwise, and Monday morning, with its cheerful employments, brings not an unwelcome change. ”

“ If those men whose hearts are not of stone would find out before the rush season begins what kinds of suits they wish, and would leave their orders early, some of the hurry of the height of the season might be avoided. ”

“ Over there the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open; work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained and rent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only a climatic increase of hardships. ”

“ Although a large portion of the noble families pass their summers in the country, they use the season as a period of physical and pecuniary recuperation from the dissipations of the past, and preparation for those of the coming winter. ”

“ There is something in the winter season that not only tests our physical endurance, but, especially in the city, tries our moral character. It is the winter months that ruin, morally, and forever, many of our young men. We sit in the house on a winter's night, and hear the storm raging on the outside, and imagine the helpless crafts driven on the coast ”

“ As summer is the season in which the industrious laborious husbandman lays up his supplies for the winter, so youth and manhood are the times of life which we should employ in laying in such a stock as may suffice for helpless old age ”

“ They have their value in marking the day as a festival; and it is better for the child to long for Sunday, for the sake of his 223 little new shoes, than that he should hate and dread it as a period of wearisome restraint. All the latitude should be given to children that can be, consistently with fixing in their minds the idea of a sacred season. ”

“ It was, indeed, the “sensation of the season” among the little boys and girls and the fisher-lads and hawkers of the population, who assembled in crowds, climbing up the railings from the outside, and occasionally shying well-directed pebbles right into the strawberries and cream which the guests were enjoying as well as they could in the circumstances. ”

“ It is very fit, too, that we should think of our Lord’s coming at this season of the year above all others; because it is the hardest season—the season of most want, and misery, and discontent, when wages are low, and work is scarce, and fuel is dear, and frosts are bitter, and farmers and tradesmen, and gentlemen, too, are at their wits’ end to square their accounts, and pay their way. ”

“ The purpose that the season clearly serves is annually gathering into the capital great numbers of the people best worth meeting from all parts of the world-wide English dominion, with many aliens of distinction, not counting Americans, who are held a kind of middle species by the natives. It is a time of perpetual breakfasts, lunches, teas, and dinners, receptions, concerts, and for those who can bear it, balls till the day of twenty-four hours' pleasure begins again, with the early rites of Rotten Row. ”

“ About three o'clock the tide is evidently on the ebb; business begins to slacken, and those who have their transactions brought to a close, meet their families and friends at the place of rendezvous—always a public house. It is now, indeed, when the heat and burden of the day have passed, and refreshment becomes both grateful and necessary, that the people fall into distinct groups for the purpose of social enjoyment. ”

“ The season was approaching when, in good old times, the heads of great families left the metropolis, and in the retirement of their country seats or villas devoted the precious hours of the solemn festival of Easter to reflection, apart from busy scenes of public life in the bosoms of their families—thus setting an example worthy of imitation: and overcoming, in some degree, the difficulty with which we know a rich man shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven. ”

“ Great private fêtes are usually reserved for the spring season, unless some special event calls them forth, but there is a merry-go-round of more or less formal entertaining, and the society woman needs an expert accountant to keep her engagement book, and the semainier which records the at-home days of her friends, in intelligible order. ”

“ Among our neighbours on the continent, the summer move is not so universal as with us. In Paris, for instance, everything is considered the country that is outside the barriers; and in the fine season, every bourgeois family is outside the barriers at least once a week—eating, drinking, dancing, and singing. ”

“ There were our glorious winter parties, where kindness, friendship, and love, ministered to our wishes; gleeful rides over the silvery snow, cozily muffled in furs, and almost buried in robes, our exuberant hilarity rising high above the jingling music of the bells; summer meetings beneath the shady branches of the willow, in the downy meadow; and moonlight strolls with cherished companions all around us, and loved ones leaning tenderly on our arms. ”

“ I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in her regret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company. Society needs a certain seclusion and the sense of security. Spring opens the doors and the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world are let in. Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summer brings longings innumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls. ”

“ A trip to the city was always a delightful break in the monotony of his life, and a short respite from severe toil. Sunday was usually the only social occasion in rural life. It was always welcome, and the boys, even though tired physically from work during the week, usually played ball, or went swimming, or engaged in other sports on Sunday afternoons. Living in isolation all the week and engaged in hard labor, they instinctively craved companionship and society. ”

“ Have such a party once a year if you can; one afternoon in the summer will never be missed by the dwellers in the square, while the memories of many a poor neighbour may be enriched by the thought of the bright gathering in the soft summer air. ”

“ A summer engagement at the sea-shore, among the mountains, or at the springs is often as eagerly sought as is the height of the season at Saratoga or among the Berkshires by persons whose opportunities for change are far less restricted. The occupations temporarily open at the time of the hop-picking season, or the fruit-canning season, offer the attraction of large numbers of fellow-workers in the company of whom “a good time” is expected. ”