MANNERS AT TABLE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2605, 12 August 1882, Page 4

MANNERS AT TABLE.

[From the “ Queen.]

Is there a hard and fast line of good man- " • sere at table P—a code of proper conduct connected with one's knife and fork, one’s spoon and glare and plate, which, on the one aide is righteousness and orthodoxy, on the other immorality and heterodoxy P If so, it would be a fine thing for the weaker brethren were it made publio and parent, so that all the world should be as positive about the correct thing at table as it is now about marrying plural nouns to plural verbs, and the avoidance of SaLrey Gamp’s favorite phrases of “ which it were,” and “ wuioh it am.” Is it the right thing to hold your plate br the two sides, as if it would run away unless it were tightly secured ?—to play with your bread and crumble it all over the place when yon are not eating it as if for dear life all through the pauses between the various dishes P —to hold up your knife and fork in mid-air, suspending operalions while you talk to your neighbor, dancing - food on tho point of the prongs till you ' Have freed your mouth from its flax of words? you do not do this, then industriously endeavoring to do two things at once, eating while yon talk, talking while you eat, to the imminent danger of accidents better imagined than described P Yet many worthy souls and well dressed bodies commit these afcomib ziatoms with light hearts and a clear con. H science ; and you cannot call them absolutely ■ vulgar or undeniably out in the cold of civif lisation as represented by the Superior PerI sons of our present day. Also many worthy I souls drink with their months fall, cs well as I shovel in supplies on supplies before they I have disposed of the first or half-masticated i the second—all of which are sins against I the morality of the dinner table, so far as Che best lawgivers have as yet gone on the subject. To refrain from picking bones with one’s fingers and not to eat with one’s knife are cf the very elements of good breeding in England ; and the first lesson taught in every well conditioned nursery is that these are table sins which nothing can excuse. But foreigners obey a different code of morals in tfaeoe matters, and an ill-bred lady living in (be lands that lie across the Channel does not disdain to hold her ohioken-bone or cutlet* shank between her dainty finger and thumb while she gnaw* off the meat with her pearly teeth ae neatly as would Fido, her lap dog. iiomß, indeed, will take small fish, such as

sardine* and the like, between that same finger and thumb, then deftly strip the flesh from the vertebue as they draw the whole between their teeth, leaving a nicely-cleaned skeleton with the head for a handle and the tail for an ornament. Then they will suck their fingers one after the other, and wipe tho residue on their napkins, smiling and glorious, conscious that they have deserved well of their company, having made no mess, left no waste, and enjoyed to the last fibre the good things provided for them. But to go back to the debatable lands of on; own compatriots, and the odd things which some do, and the undecided cases which still give rise to controversy. There is that battlefield of tho fork and the spoon, and whether the former ought to be used for all sweets whatsoever, with the exception of custard and gooseberry fool which answer the question for themselves, or whether it is not better to use a spoon where slipperiness is an element, and 11 the solution of continuity ” a condition. Some people hunt their ioe, for example, with a fork, which lets the melting margin drop through the prongs j and some stick their small trident into jolly, at the risk of seeing the whole thing slip off Hike an amorphous, translucent, gold-colored ncake. The same with such compounds as custard pudding, oreme renverso and the like, where it is a feat of skill to skewer the separate morsels deftly, and where a small sea of unutilised juice is left on the plate. This monotonous use of the fork and craven fear of the vulgarity lying In the spoon seems to us simple table snobbery. It is a well-known English axiom that the fork is to be used in preference to the spoon when possible and convenient. But the people who use it always—when scarcely possible and decidedly inconvenient —are people so desperately afraid of not doing the right thing, that they do tho wrong out of very flunkeydom and fear of Mrs Grundy in the corner. It is the same with the law of ea'ing all soft meats with tho fork only, objuring the knife. On the one hand yon will see people courageously hewing with their knives at sweetbread, supreme de volatile , and tho like—on the other, the snobbish fin© work themselves into a fever with their forks against a cutlet, and would not for tho lives of them use a knife to cut with ease that which by main force and at great discomfort they can tear asunder with a fork. But these same devotees to the fork and fork only will tilt their soup-plates against their laps, and perhaps lake the soup itself from the point of tho spoon, after having dabbed that implement np and down like the tongues of a lapping cat, instead of sweeping it through the liquid away from themselves and taking ic from the side as if it were a small onp or bowl. There is also an odd custom cherished by some people of putting little piles of salt on the table cloth, into which they dip their bread piece by piece as they eat it. This seems to us, from such observations as we have made, to be a northern custom rather than one found generally in England. Scotch aid north country people do it, but not tho midland or the south country folk. Anyhow, it is an inadmissible habit where strict good manners are concerned, and goes with putting the elbows on the table; stretching across your neighbor to help yourself to salt or water or what not ; jumping np from table to change your plate ; and turning over all the pieces on the dish before your fastidious fancy accepts one as fitting food for your dainty palate. Among raw English girls there is sometimes the most objectionable manner of showing courtesy to the waiters by looking up into their faces as they hand the dishen. To be courteous to waiters as to every other human creature—yes, certainly, that is only duty, only good breeding and good feeling ; but girls ought to beware of all that savours of familiarity, of personal contact, of intimate communion; and this habit of looking np when saying “ No, thank you,” or when helping herself, is a thing to be avoided by every girl who cares for appearances and does not like to be laughed at by others. It may argue a kind heart and a confiding nature, but it proves uncommonly bad breeding; and at a table d’hote it is breeding which tells, breeding which is required, and not the softer emotions of universal charity and pleasant tempered philanthrophy.

There is one continental custom which the true-born Briton holds in holy horror—that is, the use of those convenient little lengths of wood, which to every foreigner are as necessary to his oomfort as a napkin for his mouth or water for his fingers. We English regard the use of the toothpick as a bar-, barism, a horro-, an indecency, and wonldnot take one of those clean wooden spills between our lips for all the world. Nevertheless, a great many of us, who would shudder at the iniquity of a toothpick, thrust our fingers into our mouths and free our back teeth with these natural “oure-dents which gives a singularly wolfish and awful appearance to the operator, and makes the onlooker regret the insular prejudice which will not rather use the universal continental toothpick, wherein, at least, if properly and delicately done, is no kind of indecency or disgust. On the whole, then, we come round to oar starting point. Is there a hard and fast line of good breeding ? an absolute code of table morality ? a law of perfection which can ba laid down in black and white, and prove itself right ? How about that matter of the fork with ice and jelly, blancmange and custard pudding ? How about cherry tart, and asparagus, and peaohes and strawberries P How about grape stones and skins, and the best way ol eating figs, and the unrighteousness lying in ungainly methods of despatching oranges, and the vagrant flake? 9f rich cuff paste, which elude f— an d y o ur piece "f crust a vanishing quantity oa your plate P These are weighty matters, needing authoritative solution, for on them some of the most learned doctors of table manners disagree among themselves, and if this be so who shall decide ?