Chapter 43
Hospitality: the welcome and entertainment of guests and strangers; the duties of host and guest; the sanctity, abuse or refusal of hospitality.
757 passages · 338 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Hospitality, as these books understand it, is the welcome a household or a people gives to someone not its own. It includes the receiving of guests and strangers, the reciprocal duties of host and guest, and the many ways in which a welcome can be held sacred, abused or withheld. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because it runs through nearly every kind of writing in them. It appears in epic, scripture and tragedy, in travel narrative, political economy and devotional allegory. It also persists across the whole span of the collection. Homer’s swineherd feeding a beggar, Darwin’s Gaucho refusing payment and Bunyan’s Gaius laying supper for pilgrims are all answering the same question: what is owed to the one who comes to the door?
The oldest answer grounds the duty in the gods. Nausicaa tells her maidens that all strangers and beggars come from Zeus and must therefore be fed and bathed1. Eumaeus repeats the principle when he rescues the disguised Odysseus from the dogs2. He even admits that he honours the stranger from fear of Zeus and from pity, not because he believes his tales3. The suitors themselves half suspect that gods walk the earth disguised as strangers and watch how men behave4. Aeschylus names respect for the guest among the elementary demands of justice5. He makes Zeus, guardian of hearth and board, the avenger who sent the Atreidae against Paris6,7. Aristophanes places whoever wronged a stranger among the damned in filth8. Dido invokes Jove as the god of hospitality to hallow her bond with the Trojans9. The same sanction reappears in the scriptures. The Koran counts the stranger and the “son of the road” among those owed kindness10. A sheykh in the Thousand and One Nights welcomes strangers by citing the Prophet’s injunction11. In Luke, the disciples are sent out to depend wholly on the houses that will receive them12.
From this sanction it follows that hospitality becomes the measure of a people. Odysseus, waking on an unknown shore, asks whether its inhabitants are wild and unjust or hospitable and god-fearing, as though the two pairs were one13,14. He goes to the Cyclopes precisely to test them on this point15. Tacitus records that the Germans think it wicked to refuse any man a roof16. A note to Dante tells how the families of Brettinoro competed to entertain arriving strangers17. The moderns keep the test but change its character. Bacon reads courtesy to strangers as a sign of a heart joined to other lands rather than an island18. Darwin finds no instance of inhospitality among the Gauchos19. Emerson gratefully describes the frank, serviceable welcome he received across England20. Hugo observes that settled nations kept from their nomadic past only this respect for the traveller21. Schiller sees the hospitable hearth, where murder once awaited the stranger, as a sign of refinement softening violence22. For Homer the test separates the god-fearing from the lawless. For the moderns it marks the gentler side of civilization.
The ritual of welcome is most fully drawn in the Odyssey. Telemachus is ashamed that a stranger should wait at the gate23. Menelaus rebukes the servant who hesitates to admit guests, recalling the welcome he himself once received24. The order of the rite is fixed. Horses are stabled, and the guests are bathed, anointed, clothed and fed. Only then are they asked their names25,26. The deferred question is the courtesy at the heart of the rite: the stranger is honoured before he is known. The pattern recurs in the Arabian tales, where castaways are fed before they are questioned27. Darwin finds a similar etiquette on South American estancias, though the guest is questioned differently from place to place28. Other societies place the challenge first. The coast-guard in Beowulf questions the seafarers before guiding them to the hall29, and arms are left at the door30. Bacon’s Bensalemites make strangers swear they are Christians and no pirates before allowing them to land31.
What the host owes after admission, the texts describe generously. Job protests that the sojourner never lodged in the street, for he opened his doors to the traveller32. Da Derga’s hostel is never shut and its caldron always boils33. Chaucer’s Franklin keeps his table set all day34. Goldsmith sets the boor who shuts out the houseless stranger against the home where every stranger finds a ready chair35. Menelaus states the rule of parting: neither detain nor rush a guest, but feed him and send him off with gifts36. Alcinous declares that no one who comes to his house waits long for help on his way37. Above all the host must protect the guest. Eumaeus will not dishonour a stranger’s cheer before Zeus38. Pompey refuses to murder the guests aboard his galley because he will not break his word39. Schiller’s Furst must answer for the safety of the man under his roof40.
Whether hospitality may be paid for is a question these authors answer warmly but not unanimously. Bacon’s host refuses money, saying he would be “twice paid”41. Bunyan’s Gaius says his charity is repaid by the Good Samaritan42. Manzoni’s tailor would deem payment an insult43. Darwin, however, contrasts Argentine hosts who refuse payment with Chilean houses that receive the traveller and expect money in the morning44. Franklin offers a characteristically modern note. He welcomes Whitefield for friendship’s sake, not for any heavenly reward45.
The question of sincerity runs alongside all this. Pliny condemns a host who serves different wines by rank46. Caesar rebukes guests who mocked their host’s clumsy dish47. Lady Macbeth insists that a feast without welcome is bare48, though her own welcome masks murder. Penn holds hospitality good only when its bounty reaches the poor49. Emerson presses the point hardest. He calls for checking “lying hospitality”50. He asks for a real host who meets the guest in person, not a house used as a screen51. True hospitality, he argues, is for service, not for an ostentatious table52.
The guest has duties as well. Odysseus calls it witless to challenge a host who has received one kindly53. The Koran bids guests enter only when invited and not linger after eating54. In the Baghdad tale, Ja’far argues that guests are bound by their covenant not to pry55. Reciprocity binds the two roles together. Laertes says the kindness is owed back to the one who began it56. Burns laments that gratitude is too weak to repay his reception at Oughtertyre57. Comedy exposes the strains between host and guest. Swift finds pressing food on equals rude, though a farmer must be pressed58. Goldsmith’s Marlow, mistaking a house for an inn, wearies of his host’s attentions and then demands his bill59,60.
Hospitality reaches its greatest moral weight in the reception of the poor and the hunted. Eumaeus feeds the beggar from his meagre means, set against the suitors’ wasteful devouring61. The Samaritan pays an innkeeper to care for the wounded stranger62. The Maltese islanders kindle a fire for shipwrecked men63. Goldsmith’s preacher shelters the beggar and the broken soldier alike64. Rousseau’s vicar shares his slender means with a destitute youth65. Shelter given at personal risk tests the bond severely. Nicogenes hides Themistocles despite the price on his head66. Flaccus shelters the exiled Cicero against the law67. Schiller poses the hardest case, in which a suppliant has himself done wrong. Tell at first refuses the regicide who claims the rights of hospitality, and then relents from pity68. Manzoni’s Unnamed, converted, opens his castle to a multitude of refugees and greets each one personally69,70. As law takes over the duty, its tone changes. Bacon’s Bensalem joins restriction of entry to the relief of distressed strangers71. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties requires that persecuted refugees be succoured and shipwrecked men, friend or enemy, be harboured72. Emerson praises England’s laws as hospitable73, yet finds its statutory welcome courteous but cold74.
As a social institution hospitality becomes a matter of class and economics. Harrison describes noble tables arranged by rank, with leftovers given to the poor at the gate75. He judges that the Protestant clergy feed the poor more often than the old bishops did76. Bacon credits great retinues with martial strength77. Burke defends church estates as trusts for a temperate hospitality78. Adam Smith gives the most balanced account. Rustic feudal hospitality was seldom ruinous79, and spending on guests is more generous than buying trinkets, though it does less to accumulate capital80. The burden on the host is real. Cicero, after entertaining Caesar’s staff, writes that once is enough81. Abbotsford is overrun by tourists whom Scott bears with good temper82,83. The commercial inn turns welcome into a contract. Chaucer’s Host is still genial84, but Cervantes builds comedy on disputed reckonings85. Manzoni’s innkeeper professes a code of not prying, while in fact attending chiefly to knaves86,87.
Refusal is the dark counterpart of these duties. Antinous strikes the suppliant and is shamed for withholding a grain of salt88. Oedipus decrees that the polluted man be denied every roof and then falls under his own curse89,90. Lear chooses the storm over a grudging, conditional welcome91. Woolman records an inverted refusal: a Mennonist sleeps in the woods rather than accept a slaveholder’s hospitality92. In plague-stricken Milan, strangers are seized as suspected poisoners93, and even the domestic board comes to be dreaded94.
Violations by the host are the gravest of all. Odysseus condemns the Cyclops for eating his guests within his gates95, and the Cyclops mockingly calls his promise to eat Odysseus last a guest-gift96. Atreus feasts his brother on his children97. Clytemnestra’s bath of welcome becomes a death-trap98. Macbeth knows that as host he should bar the door against his guest’s murderer, not bear the knife himself99. Atli’s “Welcome hither” opens a battle100. Shelley’s Cenci menaces guests who try to leave his gloating banquet101. Guests betray hosts as well. Paris repays the welcome of Atreus’ house with abduction102, and Herodotus’ Proteus rebukes him yet spares him as a storm-driven stranger103. Heracles murders Iphitus after sharing his table104. Gloucester protests that his guests bind and torture him under his own roof105. Ali Baba’s robber guest refuses salt because he means to kill his host106. Dido’s charge of ungrateful guest against Aeneas107 widens the idea of breach: departure itself can feel like betrayal of a kindness given.
Finally, the religious writers turn hospitality into a figure of the soul’s relation to God. Thomas à Kempis has the communicant anxiously prepare to receive Christ as Guest108. Herbert reverses the roles, so that Love is the host who overcomes the unworthy guest’s shame and bids him sit and eat109. A carol sets the honour paid to an earthly king against Christ lodged in a manger110. Pascal cites the promise that strangers who join the Lord shall have a place in his house111. Bunyan builds his allegory on houses made for pilgrims. House Beautiful was built to entertain them112. The Shepherds feed the weak because the Prince watches how the least are treated113. The pilgrims are finally received at the celestial gate with ten thousand welcomes114. Milton’s Eve, “on hospitable thoughts intent,” spreads a feast for the angel Raphael115, so that human hospitality is shown at its most innocent.
Several questions remain open across this long conversation. One is whether the duty rests on the gods, on pity, on reciprocity or on friendship alone. Another is whether law can carry the duty without, in Emerson’s word, chilling it. A third is whether payment dissolves the grace of a welcome, and how far a host must shelter a guest who has done wrong. The authors agree only on the premise that the stranger at the door makes a claim, and that how it is answered reveals the character of a household and of a people.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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