Edwardian Criterion of Table Manners

Above, “knife swallowing” as a parlor trick– Of course, the person who “swallows” his knife may at once be set down as hopeless. But the common consent that condemns him to the outside of the pale, emphasizes the importance of table etiquette in its less essential details. It is about as bad to abuse the fork, as it is to eat with the knife. In fact, the fork seems to be the real problem in table manners. The number of wrong ways of holding it make one marvel that more people do not hold it right by accident or habit, especially as the right way is by all odds, the most convenient as well as the most graceful.

“I have learned that the best way to study people is to watch them eat,” said a New York woman last week after asking to be directed to a middle class Kansas City cafe. This woman is writing about the West, and her point of view is exceedingly well taken. There is no other single text of average culture and refinement, or the lack of these qualities, so safe as the manners. of men and women in popular price cafes or hotels. You can find execrable manners in the highest priced places and faultless manners in cheap restaurants, but the place to get a representative average is in the middle-class place, where many of all classes assemble. It is far better than a formal occasion, for it shows the natural, off-guard deportment of men and women.

Aside from matters of morality, about the most serious mistake that can be made by a person pretending or seeking to be somebody, is to assume that the rules of etiquette are affectations to be ignored. They are absolutely essential to the good opinion of those whose good opinion is most to be valued. And the most vulnerable point of all is table manners. It is so remarkable as to be almost inexplicable that many people who show reasonable consideration and good taste in dress, manifest proper regard for the ordinary promptings of courtesy in the common walks of life, and otherwise reveal an innate or acquired respect for right deportment, “fall down” when they get to the table.

Of course, the person who “swallows” his knife may at once be set down as hopeless. But the common consent that condemns him to the outside of the pale, emphasizes the importance of table etiquette in its less essential details. It is about as bad to abuse the fork, as it is to eat with the knife. In fact, the fork seems to be the real problem in table manners. The number of wrong ways of holding it make one marvel that more people do not hold it right by accident or habit, especially as the right way is by all odds, the most convenient as well as the most graceful.

Hasty eating, noisy eating, stuffing the mouth with large particles of food, vulgar zest in the handling or mastication of food, tucking the napkin under the collar, taking tea or coffee from the saucer, utter disregard for dietary proprieties, the use of toothpicks in the presence of others, “sucking” the teeth and other violations of the common decencies of the table, all reveal the poor, the person without culture, even if that person be fashionably dressed. Make no mistake about the importance of table manners. The judgment based on them is severe. If it is sometimes unjust, it is also inexorable. – The Chico Record, 1907

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia