An Etiquette “Idiotorial” from 1919

“There are usually so many different kinds of knives, forks and spoons at the average dinner party that it might be a good idea to have the jeweler engrave its use on the handle… When the jewelers are marking forks they ought to move the tines closer together, so that the food won't sip through the cracks and fall on your chest and spoil your rented dress suit. With clothes the price they are, somebody ought to invent a spotless food.” ~ Above– Four forks which never became popular – An American-made, “left handed” fork and three, British-made forks. The three to the right were designed by Ellington in 1867 as “gravy forks or pea forks”. The tines are melded together all except for the ends in order to more conveniently scoop up one’s gravey, or one’s peas. Pease were a staple of British life in the 1800’s and many people in 1867 were still eating their peas from their knives.

Table Manners Not as Necessary As the Food to Practice Them On

There is a school in town which teaches table manner. This may be a good idea, but before we learn how to eat our food we ought to learn how to get it. If it wasn't for table manners, we could just have a set of knives and save ourselves the expense of a lot of silverware.

A lot of people claim that good table manners help them in getting invited out to dinner often. The bird who gets invited out is the one who doesn't cop too much of the table silver when he's visiting.

There are usually so many different kinds of knives, forks and spoons at the average dinner party that it might be a good idea to have the jeweler engrave its use on the handle.

Or it might be a good plan to make the handle longer and print on it everything that may be eaten with it. Take a spoon, for instance. It could have written on it “To be used for soup, coffee, ice cream, pudding, tea, jelly, prunes and mush.”

If you get some food which you never saw before, you could just look over the different silverware and find out which tool to eat with. If the name didn't happen to appear on any of the knives, forks or spoons, just tell your host or hostess that he doesn't care for any.

Grapefruit spoons should be equipped with a windshield or some other contrivance to keep the Juice ont of your neighbor's eye. Either this, or pass goggles to all of the diners.

When the jewelers are marking forks they ought to move the tines closer together, so that the food won't sip through the cracks and fall on your chest and spoil your rented dress suit. With clothes the price they are, somebody ought to invent a spotless food.

Can you imagine how nice it would he to have an egg which you could drop on your white shirt front without soiling it. Of course, it's hard enough to get any kind of an egg at all without going out and hunting for a non-spot.  

This table manners school ought to teach diners not to hit you in the stomach with their elbow every time they try to cut their meat. You can't tell whether they're eating or giving you a massage. 

People should stop using little squares of butter and eut them into balls so that you can roll them around the table instead of passing a heavy plate. An amateur would have to practice playing pool in order to be able to direct the balls. 

The same thing could be done with peas and olives. Instead of the maid passing the dish, she could just stand at one end of the able and roll five or six peas to each guest. After a little practice, a diner could soon get them to roll up his knife and into his mouth. This would save a lot of dishwashing. 

Still, this would confuse the diners. They wouldn't be able to tell whether they were eating or playing tennis. There’s only one suggestion we’d like to make. Tell us how to get the food and we’ll find a way to eat it. 

*On a side note: Amber is believed by the Turks to be an infallible guard against injurious effects of nicotine; hence its extensive use for mouthpieces of pipes.– From “Love, Laughter, Life: An “Idiotorial,” by humorist, John P. Medbury, 1919

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