Hosts and Guests

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Max Beerbohm

Hosts and Guests

Question # 1

            What is the difference between hosts and guests?

                Max Beerbohm was an eminent humourist, author, critic and cartoonist.  He was regarded as the best essayist and parodist of his age.  His satire was ruthless and creative due to his highly cultivated intelligence.” Hosts and Guests" is also a superb example of pleasant and light humour.

            Hospitality is an old tradition of humanity.  A man has to act as a host or a guest according to the situation.  This is an outward action but the base of this act depends mainly on the nature of a man.  Some people are host by nature and some are guests by nature.  Writer discusses this psychological feature of mankind in a very casual and lucid style.  He establishes his arguments logically and describes two major types of people.  Members of one type always remain at the giving end and are called the hosts.  Members of the second class are always at the receiving end and are known as guest.

            The hospitality is an ancient tradition.  There are many events in the history that confirm its importance.  Many great people have proved themselves as great hosts.  Similarly there have been some people who maliciously betrayed their guests.  Writer gives examples from the lives of some great kings and warriors.

            There are some people who are instinctively hosts.  They always bend on favoring others.  These favours may range from mere food to the sacrifice of the host’s life to honours the tradition of hospitality.  Similarly some people always remain guests.  They get advantages and accept invitations but they seldom give such offers themselves.  These people enjoy being a guest and they cannot adopt the role of a host even if they try.  Such people have some specific graces as being humble, complimentary and passive while the hosts have some other qualities as being active, leading and sometimes being proud.  The hosts love to give their things away to others.  This quality may have too many motives.  Some people become hosts for some of their own vested interests.  If instinctive hosts try to become guests, they badly fail because they have acquired the characteristics of leading others on dinner table as well as in conversation.  They soon expose their host-like nature.  Being a guest or host doesn’t depend even on the financial status of a man.  Neither all the guests are to be found among needy nor all the hosts among the affluent. 

            The ability to be a host or a guest is reserved only for the mankind.  Animals do not exhibit any tendency of this type.  Even man has acquired it after many centuries.  The earliest people like cavemen would have never been in the habit of giving and receiving hospitality.  The development of human civilization has brought this trend in action and that’s why civilized men have been divided into these two categories.  Writer has employed too many references from history to solidify his thesis about the hosts and the guest.

Q. No. 2:         What historical references Max Beerbohm has given in this essay?

            Max Beerbohm attempts to trace the course of the developments of hospitality as a tradition and as a part of human nature.  He gives many references from the primeval and medieval times.

     His first example is based on imagination.  He thinks about the way in which the first man may have acted as a host and invited someone to dinner.  The caveman and his wife may have invited a red-haired man to dinner who may have declined due to distrust and suspicion of treachery.  It shows that the instinct of being a host existed before the instinct of being a guest.

The first historical reference is given about an Israelite called Jael.  She was the wife of Heber, the king of Kenite.  She cold- bloodedly cheated her guest and killed him. Then the writer turns to Greece where Odysseus killed all his enemies when they were under his roof as guest.  Then Circe, a goddess has been mentioned as an example of a bad host.

Rome has been considered the most civilized region in the world.  The famous Borgia family of Rome used a mild poison in their drinks and meals and anyone who dined with them, was killed by that poison.  In this way they exterminated all their enemies. Then the writer turns to Scotland.  Shakespeare portrayed the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as the worst example of a host and hostess in his legendary dram "Macbeth".  They murdered King Duncan who was a guest in their home.

 There is another literary allusion to a character called old Wardle from the famous book, “The Pickwick Papers” by Charles Dickens.  Old Wardle was a superb host.  He invited people to his house called Dingley Dell and generously offered everything to his guests but he possessed a strong sense of pride and arrogance.  He did every thing to satisfy his ego and assert his importance.

            All these examples show good or bad hosts but the writer shocks us by giving the example of a bad guest.  Dante, the famous Italian poet and philosopher had been a guest to many people in the days of his exile.  He repaid their hospitality by criticizing their homes and food in his writings.

            This wide range of references shows the highly intellectual background and outlook of the writer.  The references are given from the Bible, mythology, history, art and literature.  He has masterfully used them to describe the history of hospitality with its good and bad examples.

Q. No. 3:         How does the writer judge himself?

            Max Beerbohm describes different aspects of the tradition of hospitality.  After an exhaustive discussion, he judges himself and says that he himself is a guest by nature.  He has always enjoyed receiving favours from others.  In the same way he proves himself as a very uneasy and clumsy host who can never entertain his guests properly.

            In this connection he cites an event from his school days.  Sometimes the boys living in the hostel received the food baskets sent by their parents.  They were ordered to share them with their mess fellows, once the writer too received a box containing twelve sausage rolls.  Fortunately, nobody knew about the arrival of this box, he ate up all the rolls himself and did not even mention about them to his hostel friends.  Now he analyses this act and says that he did it because he is not a host by nature and doesn’t want to get compliments and praise of other people.  The boys who received such food baskets suddenly achieved too much importance among other boys.  But the writer lacked the urge to be a leader or the centre of everyone’s praise.  It proves that the writer was a guest by nature.

            Then he describes about his days in London, where he sometimes acted as a host and was always uneasy in this capacity.  He used to be worried about the amount of bill and quality of food.  He was in fact a very confused and humble host.  In such situations he felt that he should have been seated at the place of a guest to be comfortable according to his nature.  In this way he dissects his own psychology and invites us to do the same to know the truth about ourselves; whether we are a guest or a host by nature.