How to Make a Great Show

By economy and good management, by a sparing use of ready money, and by paying scarcely anybody, people can manage, for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means.

Vanity Fair, THACKERAY

In spite of the present flurry of interest in gastronomical and household economy, brought on by the first realization of war here at home, not even the most excited magazine advises quite such a philosophy as was practiced by Thackeray’s Becky. Her attitude was cynical, and probably too empty of that slight touch of sentiment that almost every woman enjoys in her relations with the world. For without sentiment, how else could you explain some of the incredible suggestions for economy offered in the backs of cookbooks for the last hundred years, even unto 1925?