Kenneth Joseph Mortimer
Manners Maketh the Man by Kenneth Mortimer
Manners maketh the man, says the old adage. Table manners certainly
make the man and bad manners can make a very fat, unhealthy man.
But in an age of fast foods, lack of parental care and authority
and TV advertising that exploits the greed of youngsters, table
etiquette is sadly neglected.
In any culture polite manners when eating food are always a matter
of avoiding all appearance of greed by eating small or medium-sized
morsels slowly and delicately. In this way the taste buds in the
mouth are not immediately satiated and a moderate meal gives prolonged
gustatory pleasure. Every mouthful of every item on the plate
is distinctly savoured and one has no temptation to over-eat,
and what is more the digestive system is not over-burdened.
Families used to sit at a table which was their mother’s
pride. Children were taught the correct way to arrange the cutlery,
plates and glasses. They were instructed how to hold the knives,
forks and spoons(1) and
how to use them according to the particular food. A plate of soup,
for example, had to be tilted away from one, and the soup scooped
up in the same direction, then being sipped not from the point
but from the side of the spoon – in fact some better-off
families would use special round soup-spoons. If the presence
of meat obliged one to use both knife and fork, peas had to be
eaten from the back of the fork. To scoop them into the hollow
side would have caused eyebrows to be raised – something
which probably no longer has the chilling effect that it once
did. Incidentally, the increasing use of chopsticks is to be recommended.
Unfortunately, the present tendency is to give children money
to buy a sandwich, hamburger or pizza, often gulped down when
they are shouting and shoving one another in the school bus or
playground.
I did my military service in the years between 1945 and 1948,
in the RAF (Royal Air Force), not I may add as a dashing Spitfire
pilot but with an unromantic job in Middle East Headquarters keeping
lists of registration numbers of military vehicles. My companions
had been industrial workers or office clerks in civilian life.
Their table manners might not have been quite up to the standard
of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at London Guildhall, but they
were quite acceptable. Gross impropriety would certainly have
been frowned on.
As I remember, in those days it was rare to see a child or young
person who was fat or even merely plump. Half the boys one sees
nowadays would have been mercilessly tormented, labouring under
the nickname “Fatty”.
Polite table manners are important for their long-term effects.
Digestive troubles do not appear immediately; more usually they
come on slowly, the cumulative results of bad habits over many
years, such as eating quickly, swallowing before the mouthful
is well masticated, or not giving the food the mental attention
that encourages the production of the digestive juices, starting
with the saliva – no “watering at the mouth”!
Young people always tend to imagine that elderly people, with
their exasperating health problems, were born old. They forget
that they themselves are following the same road and will one
day, please God, themselves be old. In an English monastery of
the Solesmes Benedictine congregation there was a French monk,
only middle-aged but barely able to walk even with two sticks.
When young, he had been in the habit of not changing his clothes
after working in the rain. When taken to task he would say contemptuously:
“Vous les Anglais, vous êtes trop douillets, mais
nous les paysans de la Frrrance…!”(2)
But his being a tough French peasant did not prevent rheumatism
from catching up on him. The same is true of the consequences
of bad eating habits.(3)
Now the benefits of thousands of years of human progress are being
suddenly thrown to the winds. The very word education has been
downgraded to meaning little more than vocational training with
some theory added. It no longer means means refinement of mind
and character and good taste. The values of civilization so long
fought for are being neglected if not actually despised. A whole
atmosphere of culture and good breeding has been lost.
I was once told that the formation of good habits is now called
scientifically “behavioural modification”. This expression
sounds more appropriate to laboratory rats or white mice than
to civilized members of society. Unlike the traditional vocabulary,
it hardly presents a young person with the ideal of becoming a
well-brought-up young lady or gentleman.
Food now is often devoured in haste and the lack of real enjoyment
is compensated by increased quantity. Children eating on their
way to school cannot give attention to taste nor can the highly-strung
employee or businessman snatching at his sandwich as he clutches
the wheel and drives to work with his eyes on the surrounding
traffic.
In fact over-eating may be due to various factors such as stress
or boredom. A religious superior giving a retreat to future priests
in an order warned that for some clergy greed was a compensation
for celibacy – and explained their well-rounded appearance!
In any case, self-discipline, involving spiritual motives, care
for good manners and vigorous daily exercise, is the necessary
corrective. In every way, good manners restore beauty to our lives.
(1) Note a difference
between the British usage and the American, particularly important
when following instructions for taking medicine. In British usage,
a dessert spoon is the one used for eating pudding or taking soup
and a tablespoon is a very large spoon used for serving, not for
eating.
(2)“You English are too soft, but we French
peasants…”
(3)A common bad habit with long-term consequences
now is turning music on very loud, so young people are becoming
prematurely deaf. In middle age they are becoming stone deaf.
This appeared in NDU Spirit, issue 39, Spring 2007, publication
of Notre Dame University, Lebanon.
