View From Your Table

By Rod Dreher • December 26, 2012, 4:25 PM

St. Francisville, Louisiana

That’s my daughter Nora, holding Cecile and Marie-Grace, her two American Girl dolls. Cecile joined our household this Christmas. Nora’s cousin May May sewed Marie-Grace, who came to live with us last Christmas, a special monogrammed nightgown, and sewed Nora one for herself to match. This afternoon, Nora asked me if I would like to join her and the girls for a tea party. How could I possibly refuse? We had chai and ginger snaps, and Nora insisted that we use the porcelain cups from Mariage Frères. Very la-tee-da.

Clifford, to the left, was not invited.

Posted in View From Your Table. Tagged Louisiana, St. Francisville.

5 Responses to View From Your Table

39Joshua says:

December 26, 2012 at 5:26 pm

Your daughter could teach the average contemporary American woman a thing or two. Women like your daughter, with their traditional and bourgeois behaviors, are – as Peguy would put it – the true revolutionaries of the 21st century.
Peter H says:

December 26, 2012 at 6:13 pm

Clifford can’t be trusted with porcelain.
John Mark Ockerbloom says:

December 26, 2012 at 8:01 pm

Very nice!

Some years back we visited family friends of ours in upstate New York, and went with them (and their four-year-old daughter) to Rochester’s La-Tea-Da!. It’s in a house with elaborate (over-the-top, in some rooms) Victorian decor, and a large selection of hats and costumes you can put on yourself or your doll (or one of their dolls, if you didn’t bring one yourself) to have tea. The servers are also in costume. The older boy in our party opted out of the costumery, unlike the rest of us, but still enjoyed the food and drink.

Quite fun. I don’t know if there are tea places like this elsewhere in the US, but tea party fans in the Rochester area may well want to stop by.
cecelia says:

December 26, 2012 at 10:24 pm

some of my favorite memories involve tea parties – My mother was given a family heirloom as a child – a child’s tea set that had belonged to her grandmother and had been brought to the US from her Irish home when she came here in the 1800′s. Mom my sisters and our dolls had many a happy day having very careful tea parties with the set, then I repeated the tradition with my nieces and my kids. I just became a great aunt – my niece gave birth to a baby girl on Christmas eve. My sister (the new grandma) and I were just today fantasizing about the tea parties we shall have with the new addition.

There is something so delighful, even comforting and certainly civilized about having a formal tea – especially if one includes dolls. I m quite impressed with the grand dress and hat Cecile is wearing.
Ed says:

December 28, 2012 at 4:19 pm

Treasure these moments.