Linen is the least demanding of the good materials and the least forgiving. It asks for almost nothing and reveals everything: how it was washed, how it was folded, whether it was put away in a hurry. The keeping of a place shows first in its linen, long before it shows anywhere else.
We buy it undyed and in quantity, and we keep it far longer than is sensible. The best pieces are the oldest. They have been through enough summers to lose their stiffness and enough winters to earn their creases, and they drape the way new linen only pretends to.
There is a temptation, with a plain thing, to improve it. We have found it better to leave it alone and simply keep it well. Standards, in the end, are mostly a matter of what one is willing to repeat. Linen repays the effort more honestly than most.