Every-Day Table Manners by Christine Terhune Herrick

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 19, 1911

Every-Day Table Manners

By Christine Terhune Herrick

Table manners in their simplest form are so taken for granted by well-bred people that at the first impulse it seems almost unnecessary to give instructions concerning details of behavior. But the offenses against convention we all see at times prove that every one does not know exactly what constitutes good conduct at meals.

Is it needful at this stage of civilization to say that one should not eat with his knife? It ought not to be, but I am afraid it is. In no circumstances is eating with the knife anything but an offense against good manners. The knife is to cut with, the fork to be used in eating.

Quiet eating might, it would seem, be taken for granted. Yet I know a family of charming girls who all eat noisily, apparently never thinking, or never having been taught, that one of the first essentials of table manners is to keep the lips closed while chewing.

Good table manners never come from occasional experience. You can almost always tell, from the manners of a man or a woman, whether the conduct displayed is the result of habit, or of a desire to appear well in the presence of strangers. The behavior which is taught at home, and, if necessary, enforced there, is the only kind that will stand.

Hurried Eating Destroys Table Decorum

Among other good table manners I would like to lay stress upon the desirability of deliberation. The demon of haste does more to destroy table decorum than any other one cause. The curse of the quick-lunch counter has made its way into the home, and in many cases taken up its abode there. From the head of the house, who swallows his breakfast with one eye on the morning paper and the other on the clock, down to the smallest schoolchild in the family, who allows himself just time to swallow his food before he must leave the house, the one idea seems to be to eat in the quickest time and get it over.

Do not encourage nor permit your family to eat hurriedly. Demand that one shall not begin to eat until the others are served. This applies in a family meal more than it does at a large dinner, where there may be a number of servants, so that the second course is ready to be passed by the time the first is eaten. Even then I confess I am sufficiently old-fashioned to dislike to see any one begin to eat his food as soon as helped. To my mind it is better form to wait a little, and give some one else a chance to be served. At the home table it smacks of absolute greediness to attack your food the moment it is placed before you.

The knife is best left untouched whenever this is possible. When food must be cut up, the knife is, of course, to be used; but when it does not actually require the services of a knife, it is better to leave it lying beside the plate than to use it at all. Never should it be employed as a means of loading the fork. You can take enough on your fork to make a mouthful. Don't shovel food on the knife-blade and scrape it off with the fork. I know that many people do this, but it is not good manners.

The Fork and the Spoon

A word concerning the fork will not be amiss. It hardly seems possible to misuse so simple an implement, and yet this is done every day. For one thing, the fork is often held wrong. It is not to be grasped in the fist; it is not to be held as one might hold a dagger, in a back-handed clutch; it is not to be manipulated by a grip close down to the tines. Rather, it is to be held lightly between the fingers, and to serve to convey food in small portions to the mouth. Never should it be loaded to its full capacity, as if the chief thing in eating was to pack nourishment in by allopathic doses. Use your fork in cutting, rather than your knife, when the food is tender enough to be divided by the fork.

The spoon has lost prestige of late years, the fork having superseded it in eating desserts, from ice-cream down. Strawberries are eaten with a fork by those who do not care for cream with them, although the spoon still has its place when raspberries and the like are served.

Strawberries served unhulled without cream are among the foods which may be eaten with the finger. There are a number of these,—nuts, olives, celery, French artichokes, etc. Asparagus is still eaten with the fingers only when one is in the privacy of one's own home. Salad, too, must be eaten with the fork—a knife should never touch it. Cake, also, should be eaten with a fork, except in the case of such small sweets as fancy cakes, macaroons, and the like.

Anything which looks like a display of greediness should be shunned. To heap the plate, to gobble the food, to drain your glass or your cup, to tip your soup-plate, that none of the precious drops may escape you, to swab the gravy from the plate with a bit of bread, to demand a second helping before others at the table have fairly begun on their first supply,—all these are such flagrant manifestations of a lack of breeding that it would seem almost superfluous to utter a caution against them were they not so frequently seen.

The Napkin

The man of good breeding leaves his napkin half folded, and lays it across his knees. The woman spreads hers over her lap. Neither folds the napkin when leaving the table if a guest in the house, but lays it loosely at the side of the plate.

A few general precepts about table manners are not out of place. First of all I would urge every one to take as a motto the principle not to do anything which may give discomfort to any one else at the table. As is easily seen, this would at once lay an embargo upon greediness, noisy eating, careless handling of knife and fork, and all other common disregard of conventions. It would also preclude that unpleasant trick sometimes practised of heaping the plate with food not eaten,—an action which very greatly annoys the economical housekeeper, who is delighted to see food eaten, but is distressed to see it wasted.

At the ceremonious meal, as at home, the smaller niceties of manners are practised. The mother's rules, “Keep your elbows off the table. Don't play with the table furniture. Keep your hands under the table when you are not eating. Eat quietly. Don't talk with your mouth full,” are as helpful here as at home.

Be sure of this, that no amount of knowledge and wealth and good clothes can compensate to you or to any one else for the lack of the simple table manners which you should have learned in your childhood, and should, if you have children of your own, teach to the youngsters while they are too small to have learned anything else.—Christine Terhune Herrick, in Woman's Home Companion.