The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

soy.
     This was a diet that even the fuhrer himself might have enjoyed.
    Needless to say, things were even worse by the end of the war. In 1946, civilians in occupied Germany were on starvation rations
     that could be as low as one thousand calories per day; by the next year, the official ration in the French sector was down
     to four hundred and fifty calories per day, half that of the Belsen concentration camp. Meat, it is to be assumed, was not
     a part of the ration.
    Hitler had managed to turn Germany into a nation of vegetarians after all. The vegetarianism that he had been unwilling to
     enforce in his role as the host of the Berghof was now the national practice. And, as Janet Barkas points out, it was roughly
     compatible with kosher dietary restrictions.

CHAPTER II
    TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC
    But your passion is a lie . . . It isn't passion at all, it is your will. It's your bullying will. You want to clutch things and have them in your power. You want to have things in your power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark sensual body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to know.
    D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love
    Once we have put our guests at their ease, another basic element essential to successful hospitality, at once apparently simple
     and treacherously subtle, is the ability to make them feel special. Each and every invitee should be made to feel that he
     or she has been included for reasons that are unique and particular and sought out for the singular contribution that he or
     she is able to make to the gathering. This is true even if we have only invited our inner circle of intimate friends; their
     egos, too, need petting and will not be satisfied to imagine that the requirement of their presence is based on pure sentiment,
     since being liked for the wrong reasons can be as enervating as being disliked. Let them suffer the torments of hell when
     they are alone with their insecurities and free-floating anxieties; at our house, they are members of a charmed circle, a
     privileged fellowship of exalted individuals.
    The problem is, few of us know enough exalted individuals to make up the guest list of even one dinner party, let alone an
     entire season's worth. And even if we did, a roomful of exalted individuals can be tiresome, loud, and competitive, like an
     orchestra made up exclusively of trumpets. Those who are more exalted, or consider themselves to be more exalted, may make
     those who are less exalted, or fear themselves to be less exalted, feel inadequate; the less exalted will be quick - and rightly
     so - to blame the host for their unfortunate condition. And a dinner attended by a hive of angry, more or less exalted individuals
     is not likely to prove a success.
    And so, as always, the host is called on to be manipulative, sly, and duplicitous - in other words, creative. After all, the
     party does not put itself together. Everything, including and especially a guest's sense of his own worth, is the host's responsibility.
     If two guests fail to see eye to eye, or a visitor's hypersensitive back goes into spasm after a night on the sofa bed, that,
     too, is nobody's fault but the host's. The trick, as always, is to ensure that the balance of power remains firmly tilted
     to the host's side. What every host would do well to keep in mind is that people are generally only too happy to find a dominant
     force to surrender to. When a host is fully in control of every aspect of her hospitality, and when she exerts that control
     with skill, tact, and sensitivity, she can be confident that her guests will deliver themselves willingly, gratefully, into
     her serene authority.
    My five-year-old daughter, Cora, displays an instinctive grasp of this challenge every time she holds a tea party for her
     dolls and teddy bears. She has a great many dolls and teddy bears, but only a select few are invited to any given