Etiquette rigidly prescribed the entire Jour procedure, it deckled who was to sit on the fauteuils and who was not to sit at all, who was to curtsy, who might say Du and who Sie, what should be served and how much could politely be eaten. It specified that young ladies kissed older ladies' hands and gentlemen kissed all ladies' hands, which they did with varying degrees of warmth, admiration, and indifference.
No young, unmarried people entered the inner circle. They were fringe guests, and gravitated to an outer group as automatically as their elders went straight to the heart of the Jour. The salons were furnished with well-defined little islands of chairs and settees, arranged around gilt-and-marble tables, with seas of empty parquet floor separating them. The hostess always presided at a central group with her most honored guest on her right. If an even more august personage arrived, the hostess had to move a chair to the left in order to make a place on her right. This game of musical chairs usually resulted in the establishment of a chain of dignified and increasingly important elderly ladies and gentlemen who stayed until they had eaten some of everything and absorbed all the gossip they could possibly overhear.
No one risked transporting a cream-filled pastry or a sugar-drenched cake from table to mouth. The guests held their plates up under their thins, well over their ornate poitrines or fancy waistcoats. They draped their lace serviettes over the hands that held the plates or secured them to brooches and vest buttons, thus minimizing danger of spots. Although there was a constant undulating ride of raised cups and saucers and lowered plates, conversation was unbroken and no one came away from a Jour without being well up on the latest social news and well stuffed with the latest combinations of sugar, butter, and ingenuity.
Many of the Ladies were heavy smokers. They preferred Turkish cigarettes, which they inserted into holders of varying lengths and design. When imported cigarettes were no longer available, they resignedly smoked a dark and acrid mixture which they charmingly called their Wiener Wald, or Vienna Wood.
Gradually the Jours had to adapt themselves to changing times, to hardships, shortages, and even to rationing. Between World Wars, when most of the footmen disappeared, the Ladies jointly employed one asthmatic old footman. Jour-Litdwig wore the perennial white cotton gloves of his profession and a livery composed of remnants of finery gleaned from his prewar employment.
He went out by the day and wheezed his way through Jours that could boast only Karotten-Saccharine-Toric and Ersatz-Kaffee instead of the miraculous confections he had once served. A really popular Jour follower could meet Ludwig several times a week. With freshly laundered gloves and his inscrutable manner he succeeded in looking like the perfect old family servant, although everyone knew that he left the Jour immediately after the last guest and turned up just before the first guest at the next day's rival Jour, Messenger boys, most of them over seventy years of age, delivered the Jour cards, and the guests may have been a little threadbare and shiny, but the charm and congeniality remained and a Jour card still meant an invitation to a continuous party. The Jour still exists in Vienna, although, natiirlich, it has done the inevitable; it has become the Cocktailjour.
The Cocktailjour still begins with tea to satisfy the traditions, but it is only a step from rum-laced tea to an iced Daiquiri and no distance at all from a Daiquiri to a really sweet Viennese Martini or Manhattan. The spirit of the old Jours has not changed. The Gemiltliebkeit and leisure linger on, their leitmotiv of sweetness now borne along by sugared cocktails and grenadined drinks. A treasured Viennese cocktail recipe of today is for a Martini at four to one—four parts sweet vermouth to one part gin, with a dash of Curaçao. Another secret formula for a Martini calls for one dash of Angostura bitters, one dash of Curaçao, two jiggers of gin, and a maraschino cherry. A special Manhattan consists of a lump of sugar soaked in Angostura bitters, a dash of Curaçao, half a jigger of whiskey, two jiggers of Cinzano, and a slice of lemon. Then there is a special Jourcocktail: a jigger of Cognac, half a jigger of crème de cacao, a dash of vanilla, and a dash of cherry brandy, featuring a coffee spoon of heavy cream.
When the Jour began to include cocktails, the host had to be promoted from his relatively obscure position as greeter and hoverer to the exalted position of bartender. Instructive little books entitled liar des Hausherrn or Bargetranke or simply Die Bar were published, and recipes for delectable mixed drinks were made available. Present-day hosts work as hard at perfecting these concoctions as their mothers worked over their tea blends. As with the Martini and Manhattan recipes, mysterious alterations took place. A recipe could not become truly Viennese without the addition of several remarkable ingredients. A Champagne cocktail, Viennese style, was made with two coffee spoons of spun sugar, a dash of Angostura bitters, a jigger of Curaçao, sweet Champagne, and a slice of lemon. Champagne Cobblers were mixed with sweet Champagne, spun sugar, a dash of maraschino, and half a jigger of green Chartreuse. These were served with a sour cherry. Another very popular drink consisted of a glass of Malaga wine, a jigger of Curaçao, a dash of cherry brandy, a dash of Cognac, and all the fruits of the season. A highly recommended Flip contained an egg yolk, powdered sugar, a glass of Malaga, a jigger of crème de cacao, and a grating of nutmeg. A Daisy was made with a jigger of any available liqueur and the juice of half an orange. This was placed in a tall glass which was then filled with soda water. When the only available liqueur was kummel, crème de menthe, or anisette, the resulting Daisy was likely to be very unusual.
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