Food
Michele Roberts was taught table manners young
Published 01 September 2003
Being the beloved patriarch, Grandpere was allowed to slurp his soup
Table manners are just a matter of common sense, aren't they? As we've provided ourselves with knives and forks, we might as well use them properly. Spear with the fork. Cut with the knife. Wield these with elbows tidily tucked in, and keep them pointing downwards, your fingers curled neatly around the handles. Rest them on the plate when not in use, rather than waving them in the air like conductors' batons and showering your neighbours with bits of fried egg. Similarly, as all manners are based on courtesy towards others, it's best not to chew disgustingly, not to eat with your mouth open, not to talk with your mouth full. Thus you demonstrate your awareness of the communality of eating with a group and bond with your neighbours. Simple.
Class comes into it, though. Those people who grip their implements like pencils and flail as though they're doing funny knitting might be perceived by the snobs among us as falsely genteel. Ditto those who cock their little fingers while drinking tea. Do you remember Miss Matty in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford? Desperate to eat her delicious peas, but having been given a two-pronged fork, she abandoned gentility and shovelled them up on the blade of her knife. Many modern children, used to fast food, to solitary eating, can't use knives and forks at all - they simply stab and tear.
Growing up with both working-class and bourgeois grandparents, I was taught two sorts of table manners and could tell the difference. Nana and Grandpa, the sweetest and most affectionate of people, ate neatly but, being strong and eccentric individuals, did not disdain to show their enjoyment. Grandpa embraced the loaf in one arm, buttered it, shaved off wafer-thin slices that he handed to us on the flat of the knife. He tipped his tea into his saucer and blew on it to cool it before drinking it. No mugs in those days. Nana served her celery in sticks in a glass jug, rather than thinly sliced in vinaigrette. She cut oranges in half, packed in sugar lumps, sucked them vigorously.
The French family was altogether more formal. Brigitte trained us to eat green salad using only the right hand, twirling vast leaves around our forks; you could fold but never cut. Soup had to be drunk from the side of the spoon. Grandpere was allowed to slurp because he was the beloved, moustachioed patriarch. When the priest came to Sunday lunch, Brigitte had us working as waiters. Stand behind the guest after the end of each course, remove the dirty plate with the left hand and put down the clean one with the right. We thought it a lark, a sort of ballet.
Manners also meant children staying quiet. French children are often praised by foreigners for their good table manners, but I've seen them be hit as part of this training, though we never were. I think we were anthropologists, observing the rituals of the inhabitants. Grapes had to be cut in sprigs from the main bunch with special scissors. Butter was only allowed with hors d'oeuvres. And so on. There were knife-rests, crouched spotted leopards in Limoges porcelain, which I coveted as toys. I expect nowadays knife rests are a bit naff. Like fish knives and forks at home. Un peu beauf (my new slang term I have just learnt: beauf is short for brother-in-law). One of Grandpere's favourite stories concerned the speed at which the American soldiers at the Liberation of Normandy, when invited in for celebratory Benedictine, tossed down their tots before holding out their glasses for more. We were taught to sip our wine. I am afraid I soon grew out of that.
If you see older people treating each other kindly, then you learn to be kind yourself. It's the same with table manners. I remember watching Yvette feed her little grandchild. No nonsense about strapping her into a chair, shoving in the goo, as though the child were a machine. Yvette held baby Sophie in the crook of her arm, talked to her as she offered the heaped spoon and walked about the farm kitchen supervising the boiling pots. Oh, my little rabbit, my little cabbage, my little poison, my little darling. They smiled and babbled and laughed at each other and lucky Sophie gobbled mashed artichoke heart.
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