Duty Binds You - Up To A Point

Dear Miss Manners: My sister-in-law and mother-in-law think nothing of inviting themselves to family holiday dinners at my home and always at the very last minute, after I have my menu, seating and every preparation made for a certain number of guests.

Along they come with some excuse for why they have nowhere else to go and do I have enough room for them?

I would never mind their coming, but when originally asked, they replied that they had other plans. It seems that if those other plans don’t pan out, they just invite themselves to my dinners.

So far, I have gritted my teeth, but how would you tactfully handle this? After all, these are my husband’s mother and sister.

Gentle Reader: After all, they are. And they are putting forth the poignant claim of having been deserted on a holiday - probably for good reason, considering their manners, but never mind that.

Miss Manners is afraid that decency requires you to take in even ungracious relatives.

When they decline your original invitations, you might gently ask them if there is any chance of their changing their minds. Even if they say no, you might learn from experience and lay in some extra supplies.

But you also might trade on the same sort of family privilege they invoke by claiming their help.

“Oh, I’m so glad to have you,” you might say, “but as you’d told me you wouldn’t be here, I’m caught a bit short. I wonder if you would be a darling and pick up a few things for me.”

Dear Miss Manners: We just moved to a new town, and my wife, who has an art degree, hung several of her large, non-representational paintings in the den and living room of the house we just finished decorating.

Personally, I love these paintings. To me, they make dramatic statements about color and texture, and seem to make the house come to life. I wouldn’t want to take them down for anything and neither would my wife.

But in the past two months, we have entertained three different couples, all of whom have frequently and directly told us that if we really wanted to make more friends in the community, it would be advisable for us to remove my wife’s paintings and replace them with more traditional and “less insulting” imagery.

A visitor asking us to join her church has merely made the comment that the paintings are rather upsetting, but has kept quiet after that remark.

Are we violating any standards of manners that we don’t know about? I thought it was OK to have your own paintings, no matter what they were, hanging in your own house. My wife’s work is really no more harmful or upsetting than Robert Rauschenberg’s work back in the ‘70s.

It’s not that we expect anyone to become an art major. It’s that we wonder whether we should keep our home the way we want it or, as in the days when we were children, conform to other people’s rules about the house. Or are there rules we are not aware of?

Gentle Reader: Where did you move? There must be legions of artists whose ambition it is to shock people, but who find it difficult to get a rise out of anyone any more and utterly impossible with non-representational art.

They might want to move next door, which would at least solve your problem.

There are people in this situation who seem to be unaware of rules of etiquette, but the people are your visitors and the rules of which they are unaware are “Mind your own business” and “Do not insult your hosts” (on two counts - their talents and their decor).

Miss Manners cannot believe there is an entire community of such rude people. Perhaps you should express your regret that they do not approve of your taste and your wife’s talents, and look around for polite companionship.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate