There is Something You Might Call 'The Art of Invitation.' My Wife is Very Good at It, I'm Glad to Say.

But not everyone is. From Thomas Hardy's "The Woodlanders."

Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other friends, that the room might not appear empty. In his mind's eye, before the event, they had been the mere background or padding of the scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent personages there.