Hospitality...

Based on all the buzz about Christopher Nolan's new film of The Odyssey, I decided that I should go see it.  Based on all the buzz about its being filmed completely with IMAX cameras, I further decided that I should go see it in an IMAX theater.

One of the driving concepts of Homer's epic and consequently of Nolan's film is xenia, the ancient Greek word for Zeus's sacred law of hospitality.  The law demands that hosts welcome strangers with food, drink, and shelter without knowing or asking who they are.  The ancient Greeks honored this law out of fear of the stranger turning out to be a god in disguise who was testing their hospitality.

Learning about the ancient Greek concept of xenia made me think about a discussion that we Friends of Topsmead docents had about Edith Morton Chase and her guests.  While Miss Edith cherished her privacy and didn't welcome unannounced guests, her Topsmead house did have a lovely guest room and ensuite bath that occupied the full south end of the second floor, but only female guests could stay there.   True to the mores of her time, no male guests were allowed upstairs; however, they could be accommodated at her father's summer house minutes away on Litchfield's North Street.

It wasn't until about 5 years after her Topsmead house was finished that Miss Edith decided to build a simple, separate one bedroom/one bathroom guest house for when her male nephew visited.  In keeping with her love of all things English and her life of privilege, she had the two-floor guest house designed to look like a dovecote, which in 16th and 17th century England and France was a badge of the social elite.
Although Miss Edith's hospitality was restricted to friends and family and expected guests, I want to believe that if Odysseus had washed up battered and hungry on the shores of Topsmead, she would have welcomed him (albeit not warmly at first), offered him a meal and a cocktail on her veranda, and sheltered him in her dovecote guest house for the night.

Margaret Hunt
Blogmistress

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