A Butler's Guide to Table Manners E-Book

Nicholas Clayton

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 92

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Who better to ensure the nation's table manners come up to scratch than an English butler with over 10 years' experience? With the revival in good manners, etiquette, spelling and grammar, this is a timely book on table manners and dining etiquette to ensure grace at the table at all times. Covers all aspects of eating etiquette from napkin folding, cutlery, glasses, bread rolls (never use a knife!) and silver service to how to eat soup, spaghetti, escargots and artichokes and open a bottle of champagne. With diagrams for those tricky table placements and eating actions and a range of tips and hints, the book is the last word on how to eat. It will ensure that you and your family never let the side down whatever the company you keep while dining.

Leseprobe

A Butler’s Guide toTable Manners

A Butler’s Guide toTable Manners

Nicholas Clayton

For J D

CONTENTS

BASIC TRAINING

MANNERS MAKETH MAN (AND WOMAN)

WINING AND DINING

AT THE TABLE

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

DRESS CODE

THE STORY OF CUTLERY

THE LAST PAGE

INDEX

BASIC TRAINING

‘He’s a gentleman,’ wrote George Bernard Shaw about Henry Higgins in his preface to Pygmalion, ‘Just look at his boots.’

A part from the borderline psychotic behaviour of one or two of the Masters at the Preparatory School for Boys that I attended in Hertfordshire in the early 1960s, most of the sentence I served remains a blur.

Impossible to forget is the emphasis that was put on manners. It was made abundantly clear to us, the inmates, that as well as having to be able to conjugate perfectly what we, at the time, considered utterly useless Latin, do algebra and spell words that we only understood the meaning of years later, we had to know how to behave in public and especially how to behave at the table; failure to do this led inevitably to Saturday mornings in detention.

Lunchtimes were more often than not a fiasco of semi-cooked food, some of which made excellent missiles. Matron had a severe nasal disorder so was never quite sure when to remove things from the oven; presumably she couldn’t smell if the food was cooked or not. Once our lunch was plonked on our tables, anyone seen eating Matron’s experiments in an inappropriate way was rapped over the knuckles with a length of timber by the duty officer, branded the dreadful name of guttersnipe, and ‘invited’ to a Saturday morning meeting.

Good manners were so high on the agenda that Mr B, our Burberry-clad headmaster, had signs made in six-inch lettering which he nailed up over the chalkboards with the heel of a riding boot. The signs read, ‘Manners Maketh Man’. You couldn’t miss them and they were quite useful to rest the eyes on during long periods of certain Masters’ wild chalk scrawling, having abandoned all hope of deciphering anything, and in an attempt to avoid the onset of an afternoon nap.

Although my Latin is still weak and algebra a total mystery, I am very grateful for everything that I learned on Saturday mornings; the lessons have stood me in good stead over the years and have been a lot more use to me than algebra.

Mr B’s signs over the chalkboards would not be considered ‘politically correct’ these days; however they were a constant reminder to us, and the adage still holds true today. ‘How to behave’ training ought to be part of The National Curriculum – after all, good manners cost nothing but are worth millions! Furthermore, learning to behave well did us no harm whatsoever, which is more than can be said for Matron’s cooking!

Nicholas Clayton

MANNERS MAKETH MAN (AND WOMAN)

A comment in a leading national newspaper recently proclaimed: ‘People who worry about what they look like when they are eating are the type of people who worry about what they look like when they are having sex.’

My response to this is very simple: eat like a pig and you won’t make it to the ‘Fancy coming in for a coffee?’ stage, never mind make it to the bedroom. It is, of course, true that some things can be eaten in a very messy and seductive way, in which case you probably won’t make it to pudding!

Eating is as fundamental to us as breathing. It is very important, however, to learn good manners, as they help to smooth our way in the company of others. A society devoid of manners would be a jagged and jarring society of clumsiness and unfriendly behaviour, a world without ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

The way we eat gives away a great deal about us: this very public exhibition is impossible to hide and says more about us in one mouthful than our entire CV. One faux pas too far and all could be lost and, believe me, it’s amazing what a knife and fork will betray!

In the same way as there are set and understood rules for driving a car and behaving on the highway, so there are rules governing the way we should eat – a sort of ‘dining way code’ if you like.

Table manners have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years, and throughout history, eating together has been an important and pleasant social event. The words ‘company’ and ‘companion’ come from the Latin com meaning ‘with’ and the Latin panis meaning ‘bread’ (see, I was concentrating in those Latin lessons!). A companion is therefore someone we eat with.

Table manners are older than tables themselves. Some 9,000 years ago people would cook soups in large pots and then dip their bone or wooden spoons into the pot to eat. The higher up the social scale you were determined when you had your turn at dipping. Some Arctic Inuit families still cook and eat from a common pot, with the men dipping first, then the women and then the children, sometimes with their fingers.

When the Roman Empire fell in AD 476, with it went the practice of lying down to eat, propped up on one arm and eating with the fingers of the free hand. Eating with the fingers has never fully disappeared. In Northern India, some diners use only the fingertips of the right hand, while in the South of the continent they use both hands. In fact, worldwide, more people eat with their fingers or chopsticks than use knives and forks but all cultures have rules about eating politely.

During the Crusades, knights learned not to lick their fingers but instead to wipe them on the tablecloth, and also not to smack their lips or snort while eating. They learned court-esy – how to behave at court.

Around 1669, King Louis XIV of France became the first person in Europe to offer his guests a place setting with knives, forks and spoons; he ordered that the knives should have rounded ends to prevent injury should things turn ugly.

Nowadays, if you exhibit bad table manners you might just as well have a flashing sign around your neck that says, ‘Look at me, I am drawing attention to myself; I don’t know how to behave, and I am socially inept.’ Better, surely, to give out a signal that says, ‘I am confident, I know what to do.’ Those with the flashing signs are seldom invited back. And one thing is for sure, no one will correct you (actually, it is bad manners to do so) but they will certainly judge you!

There is nothing more off-putting than sitting at the same dining table with someone with appalling table manners – you know the sort of thing: eating with the mouth open (doing an impression of a cement mixer); making dog-like slurping noises; talking and gesticulating while eating; gulping at drinks and burping; constantly scraping knife over fork to remove an abnormal amount of food build-up; resting elbows on the table with knife and fork stuck up like oars; holding the knife poised as if ready to sign a cheque; elbows stuck so far out as to resemble a black London taxi with both doors open; hunching over the plate, guarding it from some unseen predator, and shovelling in huge mouthfuls as if the food is just about to be taken away. Not a pretty picture, is it?

This guide is designed to help ensure you’re not one of these dreaded dining companions; it’s not an attack or a criticism or, for that matter, a disguised patronising swipe at the uninitiated. If you follow the ways set out and illustrated in this book, you will be able to sit at any dining table with total confidence, safe in the knowledge that you know what to do.

HAND TO MOUTH

Hey, diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed to see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Learning table manners starts from an early age. A small spoon is one of the first objects baby zooms in on, mainly because it is carrying dinner. Most new parents slip liquefied nourishment into baby with a small spoon, usually plastic in some jolly colour or another, and sometimes featuring on the handle a recognisable cartoon character, obviously meaningful only to the parents and of no interest whatsoever to the liquefied-food recipient.

Traditionally, it was only the offspring of the seriously wealthy that were fed from silverware – hence the expression ‘born with a silver spoon in the mouth’.

As the child progresses, spoon training starts in earnest and it isn’t long before the little one tries to wrest the spoon from the feeder, maybe to load dinner faster (or it could, of course, be a territorial thing; however, it’s not really for me to speculate, and such theories are perhaps a little too deep for these pages – I am, after all, no Benjamin Spock). Anyway, training starts and Junior is encouraged to hold a spoon and pusher: this combination of utensils is still available to this day in department and mother-and-baby stores, and is often given to baby as a christening present. These tools are sometimes fashioned from sterling silver but more often than not are made of 18/8 stainless steel (see here). The spoon is the well-known traditional shape, while the pusher is shaped like a miniature garden rake with a solid pushing face replacing the divided ‘teeth’ – ideal for pushing cut-up solids onto the spoon. With guidance, both of these training tools can be held neatly and correctly by even the tiniest of hands, and it is right here that the ground rules can begin to be burnt onto the ‘table manners’ CD.

After a while, set number two – known as a Progress Set – is introduced, which consists of a half adult-sized knife, fork and spoon, also available at good department stores.

WINING AND DINING

TAKE A SEAT

When arriving at a restaurant table, it is considered polite for the gents to offer ladies seats facing into the restaurant so that they get a more interesting view; I would try to avoid my guests facing a back wall – it’s always worth booking ahead to guarantee a good table. A little forward planning never goes amiss.