Etiquette by Emily Post (top novels to read .txt) 📖

Next comes the setting of the places. (If it is an extension table, leaves have, of course, been put in; or if it is stationary, guests have been invited according to its size.) The distance between places at the table must never be so short that guests have no elbow room, and that the servants can not pass the dishes properly; when the dining-room chairs are very high backed and are placed so close as to be almost touching, it is impossible for them not to risk spilling something over some one. On the other hand, to place people a yard or more apart so that conversation has to be shouted into the din made by everyone else's shouting, is equally trying. About two feet from plate center to plate center is ideal. If the chairs have narrow and low backs, people can sit much closer together, especially at a small round table, the curve of which leaves a spreading wedge of space between the chairs at the back even if the seats touch at the front corners. But on the long straight sides of a rectangular table in a very large—and impressive—dining-room there should be at least a foot of space between the chairs.

Setting The Places

The necessary number of plates, with the pattern or initials right side up, are first put around the table at equal distances (spaced with a tape measure if the butler or waitress has not an accurate eye). Then on the left of each plate, handle towards the edge of the table, and prongs up, is put the salad fork, the meat fork is put next, and then the fish fork. The salad fork, which will usually be the third used, is thus laid nearest to the plate. If there is an entrée, the fork for this course is placed between the fish fork and that for the roast and the salad fork is left to be brought in later. On the right of the plate, and nearest to it, is put the steel meat knife, then the silver fish knife, the edge of each toward the plate. Then the soup spoon and then the oyster fork or grape fruit spoon. Additional forks and knives are put on the table during dinner.

In putting on the glasses, the water goblet is at the top and to the right of the knives, and the wine glasses are either grouped to the right of the goblet, or in a straight line slanting down from the goblet obliquely towards the right. (Butter plates are never put on a dinner table.) A dinner napkin folded square and flat is laid on each "place" plate; very fancy foldings are not in good taste, but if the napkin is very large, the sides are folded in so as to make a flattened roll a third the width of its height. (Bread should not be put in the napkin—not nowadays.) The place cards are usually put above the plate on the tablecloth, but some people put them on top of the napkin because they are more easily read.

When the places have been set, four silver dishes (or more on a very big table), either bowl or basket or paten shaped, are put at the four corners, between the candlesticks (or candelabra) and the centerpiece; or wherever there are four equally spaced vacancies on the table. These dishes, or compotiers, hold candy or fruit, chosen less for taste than for decorative appearance.

On a very large table the four compotiers are filled with candy, and two or four larger silver dishes or baskets are filled with fruit and put on alternately with the candy dishes. Flowers are also often put in two or four smaller vases, in addition to a larger and dominating one in the center.

Peppers and salts should be put at every other place. For a dinner of twelve there should be six salt cellars at least, if not six pepper pots.

Olives and radishes are served from the side table, but salted nuts are often put on the dinner table either in two big silver dishes, or in small individual ones.

Have Silver That Shines Or None

Lots of people who would not dream of using a wrinkled tablecloth or chipped glass or china, seem perfectly blind to dirty silver—silver that is washed clean of food of course, but so dull that it looks like jaundiced pewter.

Don't put any silver on your table if you can't have it cleaned. Infinitely rather have every ornament of glass or china—and if knives and forks have crevices in the design of their handles that are hard to clean, buy plain plated ones, or use tin! Anything is better than yellow-faced dirty-finger-nailed silver. The first thing to ask in engaging a waitress is, "Can you clean silver?" If she can't, she would better be something else.

Of course no waitress and no single-handed butler can keep silver the way it is kept in such houses as the Worldlys', nor is such perfection expected. The silver polishing of perfection in huge houses is done by such an expert that no one can tell whether a fork has that moment been sent from the silversmiths or not. It is not merely polished until it is bright, but burnished so that it is new! Every piece of silver in certain of the great establishments, or in smaller ones that are run like a great one, is never picked up by a servant except with a rouged chamois. No piece of silver is ever allowed by the slightest chance to touch another piece. Every piece is washed separately. The footman who gathers two or three forks in a bunch will never do it a second time, and keep his place. If the ring of a guest should happen to scratch a knife handle or a fork, the silver-polisher may have to spend an entire day using his thumb or a silver buffer, and rub and rub until no vestige of a scratch remains. Perfection such as this is attainable only in a great house where servants are specialists of super-efficiency; but in every perfectly run house, where service is not too limited, every piece of silver that is put on the table, at every meal, is handled with a rouged chamois and given a quick wipe-off as it is laid on the dining table. No silver should ever be picked up in the fingers as that always leaves a mark.

And the way "moderate" households, which are nevertheless perfectly run for their size and type, have burnished silver, is by using not more than they can have cleaned.

In view of the present high cost of living (including wages) and the consequent difficulty, with a reduced number of servants, of keeping a great quantity of silver brilliant, even the most fashionable people are more and more using only what is essential, and in occasional instances, are taking to china! People who are lucky enough to have well-stored attics these days are bringing treasures out of them.

But services of Swansea or Lowestoft or Spode, while easily cleaned, are equally easily broken, so that genuine Eighteenth Century pieces are more apt to see a cabinet than a dinner table.

But the modern manufacturers are making enchanting "sets" that are replicas of the old. These tea sets with cups and saucers to match and with a silver kettle and tray, are seen almost as often as silver services in simple houses in the country, as well as in the small apartment in town.

Don'ts In Table Setting!

Don't put ribbon trimmings on your table. Satin bands and bows have no more place on a lady's table than have chop-house appurtenances. Pickle jars, catsup bottles, toothpicks and crackers are not private-house table ornaments. Crackers are passed with oyster stew and with salad, and any one who wants "relishes" can have them in his own house (though they insult the cook!). At all events, pickles and tomato sauces and other cold meat condiments are never presented at table in a bottle, but are put in glass dishes with small serving spoons. Nothing is ever served from the jar or bottle it comes in except certain kinds of cheese, Bar-le-Duc preserves (only sometimes) and wines. Pickles, jellies, jams, olives, are all put into small glass dishes.

Saucers for vegetables are contrary to all etiquette. The only extra plates ever permitted are the bread and butter plates which are put on at breakfast and lunch and supper above and to the left of the forks, but never at dinner. The crescent-shaped salad plate, made to fit at the side of the place plate, is seen rarely in fashionable houses. When two plates are made necessary by the serving of game or broiled chicken or squab, for which the plate should be very hot, at the same time as the salad which is cold, the crescent-shaped plate is convenient in that it takes little room.

A correct and very good serving dish for a family of two, is the vegetable dish that has a partition dividing it into two or even three divisions, so that a small quantity of two or three vegetables can be passed at the same time.

Napkin rings are unknown in fashionable houses outside of the nursery. But in large families where it is impossible to manage such a wash as three clean napkins a day entail, napkin rings are probably necessary. In most moderately run houses, a napkin that is unrumpled and spotless after a meal, is put aside and used again for breakfast; but to be given a napkin that is not perfectly clean is a horrid thought. Perhaps though, the necessity for napkin rings results in the achievement of the immaculate napkin—which is quite a nice thought.

Correct Service Of Dinner

Whether there are two at table or two hundred, plates are changed and courses presented in precisely the same manner.

For faultless service, if there are many "accompanied" dishes, two servants are necessary to wait on as few as two persons. But two can also efficiently serve eight; or with unaccompanied dishes an expert servant can manage eight alone, and with one assistant, he can perfectly manage twelve.

In old-fashioned times people apparently did not mind waiting tranquilly through courses and between courses, even though meat grew cold long before the last of many vegetables was passed, and they waited endlessly while a slow talker and eater finished his topic and his food. But people of to-day do not like to wait an unnecessary second. The moment fish is passed them, they expect the cucumbers or sauce, or whatever should go with the fish, to follow immediately. And when the first servant hands the meat course, they consider that they should not be expected to wait a moment for a second servant to hand the gravy or jelly or whatever goes with the meat. No service is good in this day unless swift—and, of course, soundless.

A late leader of Newport society who had a world-wide reputation for the brilliancy of her entertainments, had an equally well-known reputation for rapidly served dinners. "Twenty minutes is quite long enough to sit at table—ever!" is what she used to say, and what her household had to live up to. She had a footman to about every two guests and any one dining with her had to cling to the edge of his plate or it would be whisked away! One who looked aside or "let go" for a second found his plate gone! That was extreme; but, even so, better than a snail-paced dinner!

The Dinner Hour

In America the dinner hour is not a fixture, since it varies in various sections of the country. The ordinary New York hour when "giving a dinner" is eight o'clock, half past eight in Newport. In New York, when dining and going to the opera, one is usually asked for seven-fifteen, and for seven-thirty before going to a play. Otherwise only "quiet"