XXIX. TABLE MANNERS.

In traveling a good deal by land and sea, in my own country and countries mine by adoption, I have noticed with some curiosity the different ways in which people eat, and the traits of character that employment calls forth.

Eating in public is a terrible ordeal to many people, and it is certain one can judge more of a person’s social training at a first interview by observing him at table than in any other way. A rather eccentric friend of mine, wishing to engage a private secretary, invited each candidate to dinner before deciding his claims.

One of the most admirable bits of vanity of Louis XIV., grandest and smallest of monarchs, was his passion for eating in public; it was always possible for any decent person to gain admittance to the gallery overlooking the king’s breakfast room, and nothing pleased him more than to see a crowd gazing in respectful admiration through the gilded screen to observe the dexterity with which he struck off the head of his egg, and the nicety with which he absorbed its contents. He had no fork, unfortunate man, because they were just struggling into existence, and even a century later poor Louis XVI. preferred to take the chicken joints in his fingers and tear off the meat with his teeth, while Marie Antoinette looked scornfully on and wondered how a man whose head was tottering could still care for his stomach.

But men do. You don’t see them lose their appetites or looking with languid indifference upon delicate meats because their hearts are sore; if it is the liver, or the stomach, or an overnight headache, I grant you the masculine appetite may fall, but not for sentimental troubles.

Well, the grand monarque ate in public to show how delicately, how scientifically, how gracefully he ate, with what care and skill he conducted himself even while attending to the merely animal wants of his feelings. The sovereign people of these United States also eat in public; more so, perhaps, than any other nation in the world, for the English carry their national reserve along with them when they travel, and if a private dinner room can be obtained they secure it, or a lunch is served in the sacred privacy of a first-class railway carriage, or in the private coach on deck. The French partake of light refreshments in public a good deal, but the pension with them is not so popular as the boarding house with us, and one does not see whole families, as in our country, settle down permanently to a course of public life, where not only meals, but domestic difficulties, courtships, quarrels, and most other incidents of life are kindly offered to public inspection and amusements. The Germans are an essentially domestic people, and although when one does watch their public processes of eating it is rather an alarming sight, it is not one often obtruded upon our sensibilities. No, it is the American people that, each man a monarch in his own opinion, exercises its sovereign right of calling the public to assist at its feeding, and not always, I grieve to say, to admire either its dexterity or elegance. We travel incessantly; we do not care for private dining rooms unless we entertain a private party; we do not take our own carriages, if we have them, nor do we adopt upon our railways coaches small enough to be secured for one party, unless, indeed, we are magnates and travel in our own “Pullman,” as I most tenderly remember having done when I visited California some years since.

Yes, while upon our travels we eat in public naturally, when in foreign countries choosing the table d’hôte, almost as a matter of course, and returning to what we call home, we generally make it in a hotel or boarding house, where, according to our means and our locality, we may enjoy the very perfection of good living, as I am fortunate enough to do, or we may be obliged to put up with the disagreeables of a third-rate boarding house, as I have had to do.

But at either of these extremes and all the way between, we eat in public, and all the world may, if it take the trouble to notice, see just how and what we eat, so that as traveling generally deprives me of an appetite not very robust at the best, and as life has trained me to quick observance, I have allowed myself to notice a good deal, and let me confess it a little shamefacedly, I am always rather pleased when I am placed at a big table filled with traveling companions, rather than at a little one with only my own party, who are generally more pleasing than amusing. Let me remember, by way of instance, a journey made some time since, when for a week or two I sat at a public table with only one companion to divert my attention.

At my other side was a dear good lady arrived at that period of life when one cares a good deal about dinner, and has outgrown any affectation upon the subject. This lady always secured the first reading of the menu, or as she called it in her plethoric voice the “billerfare,” and rapidly ordered nearly all the list, comprising two kinds of soup or of fish, and a portion of each of the roasts, all the vegetables, salads and entrées, and invariably two or three kinds of pastry and pudding. As for dessert, she hardly seated herself before she drew the fruit dish toward her, and with great naïvete picked over the whole contents, selecting the best specimens, which she piled around her soup plate, complacently eying them from time to time as she progressed through her meal; of course she did not eat all that she ordered—the laws of mechanics would not have allowed the larger bulk to be enclosed in the less—but she had it all, and she spoiled it all. At the end of the dinner she would give a heavy sigh of satisfaction, and with the skill of long practice load herself with the varied forms of plunder she desired to convey to her room, and sail away like some noble galleon deep with the spoils of foreign seas.

Just opposite me sat a family consisting of father, mother, and son of about ten years old, a pallid, unhealthy boy, who needed a chance to run off some of his flesh. The mother, poor little woman, was a nervous dyspeptic, and ate very little, and that of the most harmless description. Her husband, on the other hand, was a big man in brutal health and of a surly disposition. He meant to have his rights, he did, even though, like some other people, he did not know what to do with them when he got them. He would not take the trouble to order from the bill of fare, but generally growled at the waiter: “Bring me what there is, and be quick about it!” and, as it was one of his rights to be waited upon without feeing the waiter, he was very poorly served as a general thing. After a while, however, his plate would be surrounded with a heterogeneous crowd of little dishes containing fish, fowl, flesh, vegetables, salad and sauces, from all of which he partook freely and with a noble indiscrimination, eating his roast before his fish, or his wild fowl along with his vegetables, or making a hodge-podge in his plate of everything together, with tomato sauce poured over the whole. He ordered his coffee at the beginning of dinner, and had it in a large cup, with plenty of milk and sugar, and he drank it in a loud and pugnacious manner, glaring over the edge of the cup with eyes that said, “Who’s a better right?”

The peevish little boy was coming on to copy his father, as boys will, and one morning, having ordered steak, chicken and chop, was clamoring for omelet and scrod, when his mother checked him, saying quietly, “Eat some of these things before you ask for any more.”

“Let him alone, Lucy,” growled the husband. “I shall have to pay just the same if he only eats one thing. Let him get the money’s worth, can’t you?”

The poor woman looked ashamed, and I did not wonder.

Another person who once gave me a good deal of amusement was a very fastidious and dainty lady, apparently of the maiden persuasion and of mature years. She was very elegant, indeed, in her ways, and always curled her little finger high in the air when she raised her teacup to her lips. She always ordered “a very, very little” of this or that dish, and gave most of her attention to the entrées, which she ate as a sort of dressing or sauce to the more solid dishes, consuming apple fritters and fried bananas, or rice with jelly, in alternate mouthfuls with roast beef, and using macaroni and cheese as an accompaniment to her sherbet.

Perhaps she liked it better so, and it certainly is a free country, but yet the question arises, ought people not to learn the correct method of using luxuries before they claim them, and is it well to adopt foreign modes of serving food unless we also adopt foreign abstemiousness and delicacy of eating?

The dinners in large hotels and boarding houses are nowadays served in the French fashion, with French names for the different courses, but a Frenchman never expects to do more than taste each dish as it comes before him in due order. He “opens his appetite,” as the Spaniard says, with an olive, a shrimp, or a raw oyster, with lemon and ice. He takes a spoonful or two of soup, and perhaps a square inch of fish. He partakes sparingly of an entrée, coming, as its name implies, between the courses. He has a small slice of the roast, but does not heap his plate with every vegetable under the sun, to eat with it. The salad and bird make rather the point of his dinner, but a very little suffices him. He uses the sherbet to revive and freshen his palate after the heavy course, and prepare it to appreciate the more delicate flavors to come. He generally does not care for sweets, puddings and pastries, but likes some cool and juicy fruit, and a little cup of strong, black coffee to finish with, and rises from the table fully fed and satisfied, but not gorged. Everything has been done decently and in order, and the process of eating has been, as far as possible, redeemed from its animal and humiliating characteristics.

Now I am not saying that it is obligatory upon Americans to eat just as French people do. We are (speaking impersonally) a more robust race than they, we have more money and spend it more freely, we live in a more exacting climate, and must live more rapidly in every way; consequently, we perhaps need, certainly demand, more and heavier food. For many of us, perhaps, the old English system of mighty joints, roasted or boiled with their due complement of vegetables, and a “good, sensible pudding,” as an Englishman I knew used to say, would be more satisfactory and more easily understood. It is not my own taste, but it is an honest and harmless one, and any one possessing it had better, if he is to dine at a public table, make friends with his waiter, and, calmly ignoring the opening courses, have a double portion of the beef or the mutton set before him with appropriate vegetables, and if this does not suffice, order it directly over again. Then some pudding or pie, also duplicated if desired, with an apple or pear at the end, will make out a plain, solid, hearty dinner, just such as our fathers and mothers or perhaps grandparents ate in their day, before French “kickshaws” (as they artlessly pronounced quelque chose) came in fashion. It is not necessary, my good, plain, unpretending friend, to order everything upon the bill of fare, or to try to satisfy your healthy appetite with made dishes, whose names and whose composition are both foreign to you, nor need you fancy that people will laugh at you for following out your own simple tastes; they will be far more likely to laugh at you for pretending tastes which you have not and need not.

To those who do wish to adopt foreign modes of eating, I would say that self-control and abstemiousness at table are two of the most marked traits of French table manners, and might well be imitated among us. I do not mean refrain from eating what you honestly desire, for a small appetite is no virtue, and its affectation is very absurd, but eat what you want with self-control and quietly, not trying to absorb with your eyes what you cannot consume with your mouth. However hungry you may be, do not forget the courtesies of the table toward others, do not forget to finish your sentence, or to reply to your neighbor’s remark, because some appetizing dish makes its appearance. Don’t, above all, gloat over your food, like Dicken’s fat boy. I have once or twice seen a glance come into eyes which had been looking tender things into my own—a look which convinced me that, however sensitive that man’s heart might be, his stomach was a good deal more so, and when he had resumed the tender demonstrations at a later hour I have longed to inquire:

“Do you love me as well as you do cock’s combs with truffles?”

Then, if you wish to eat a dinner after the French fashion, respect the courses. The gastronomic ideas of the great cooks and great eaters of the world are worth consideration. Certain viands are suitable to eat before and certain others after, the principal dish, and to invert their order, or to mix them all in a sort of promiscuous confusion is, to say the least, a bad taste. If you wish to adopt the new fashions of feeding, adopt their spirits and their propriety. If you don’t care for so much ceremony and thought, eat some simple dish, and let the sequence of the courses alone. In honest, if somewhat rude, phrase, don’t allow yourself to be a gourmand and a glutton.