If the bulk of middle-America were a class they would have to have serious guidance on, hem, common socially acceptable behaviour. And, as it happens, they do.
Pontificates one website: ‘There is not much call for a complete working knowledge of table manners in America today. Many families only gather all at once around the dinner table at holiday feasts, and most restaurants are too casual to require, or even to allow for, more than basic good table manners.’ It could only have happened in America. If you think that American manners is an oxymoron, do trust that in the land of the free there are, indeed, rules. Having said that, there are a number of American people – women, mostly – who have propounded the virtues of, and professed to guide us on etiquette and manners.
Writer and socialite Emily Post apparently became the last word on socially acceptable behaviour. For many years a leading authority on socially correct etiquette from birth to burial, Emily Price Post (1873-1960) provided solutions to social problems. With a name synonymous with proper manners, she was a successful author, daily newspaper columnist, and radio commentator. Born into a wealthy, socialite Eastern family, says Post prissily, “Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them …manner is personality, the outward manifestation of one’s innate and character and attitude toward life.”
What saves polite American Judith Martin from being painful as Miss Manners is her intelligence and wit, column started in the late 1970s. 'Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior.'
But why the rules? Why don’t we all simply muck in and tuck in?
But why manners? Let’s keep our personal habits to ourselves, keep the area between us as appetizing as possible. But then what about the scene I watched at Naldo Gonzalves’s five-star Pigalle restaurant in Sandton City the other night? A group of people (one gorgeous, well known female celebrity of indeterminate age and four men of varying ages). During the course of the evening she must have left the table at least four times. She was also approached three times, twice by women coming to greet her. That makes six times that the men at the table, first one then the other following his lead, jumped up in the presence of ‘ladies’, albeit that a mouthful of mussels had to be swallowed, napkins fell from being tucked in to shirts, and so on. A general scramble, I’d say, although I vaguely enjoy this practice, but heaven knows why.
The bottom line – if you’ll pardon the expression – really is that although we see eating as a social event, it really is about feeding our faces. And feeding troughs really are rarely that attractive.
Perhaps it’s about the sophisticating of the planet. So we don’t hold a haunch in our hands any more, tearing pieces with our teeth (excluding the great South African ritual, the braai, of course), and we don’t pick our teeth in public (excluding the coy practice of sticking a piece of wood into your teeth while very obviously hiding behind the other hand) and we don’t burp at the table (and if it offends you, don’t go to Chinese or some middle Eastern restaurants) and we don’t …
Here’s what might be acceptable in one society, while frowned upon in another: filing your nails (really). Cleaning those nails with a fork (I’ve seen this). Picking your teeth with a utensil. Burping (a compliment to the chef or an insult?). Talking with food in your mouth (I’ve witnessed the depositing of food into the cheek, for later mastication). I wasn’t going to go there (it’s worth a book, not a squealing sentence), but a word about children. In his book ‘On Civility in Children’ Dutch-born Erasmus suggested in 1530 that spitting or blowing of the nose at the table was unacceptable. What was allowable was not putting bones back on the plate, but throwing them to the dogs.
Licking of fingers? Not okay. Acceptable was wiping hands on the tablecloth. That’s where the napkin of today comes from.
Think about it. We eat with our fingers or hands, but only sometimes. In the not too distant past Romans not only did that as common practice, but also did so in a reclining position.
Ok, so lessee, what can you eat with you fingers? Hey, we're not brain surgeons here, but this just makes sense. Better to be over-careful than under-careful. As for foods that you can eat with your fingers, they include asparagus, artichoke, sandwiches and the like, small fruits. I found reference that bacon (but only if it’s crisp) and caviar is also acceptable. Go figure.
While I try to digest all of this, my own prejudices about other’s behaviour, which I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting,
Back to the slurping. The Japanese are now seriously – and sadly, to my mind – looking to Western etiquette for guidance on modern manners. No more slurping – another traditional displaying appreciation of the food.
The Thai people, on the other hand, consider this rude.
So it’s okay to slurp in some Eastern countries, but not in others. Spitting of meat or chicken bones is also acceptable, as it is in some African countries, like Cameroon. I’ve been there a number of times, and twice had to work my way through a plate of snake. But that’s another story.
Eating habits, for instance, have changed and really, it’s about behaving in a way that is not offensive to the people around us.
And is globalization in the process of doing away with rules for righteousness? However, things do change: requires developing acceptable techniques of eating. “Eating together is about getting on with each other. I know it sounds a bit simple, but it is true…it’s about the beauty of convivial company, not which way to pass the port,” says witty British writer and broadcaster, Simon Fanshaw.
As it happens, the marvels of manners, the Brits, are also going through a crisis. ‘ Britains are becoming slobs’, declared a newspaper survey recently. More than half said they didn’t put their knife and fork together after finishing their meal, ‘let alone anything else’, about a quarter lick their knives and a fifth of this lot lick their plates.
Says Emily Post: “Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.”
The dining fashions of today might be frowned upon in the future.
“You should wipe your spoon before passing it to a neighbor."
"Do not blow your nose with the same hand that you use to hold the meat” Erasmus, Dutch humanist and author of the first modern book of manners in 1526.
Perhaps, in the end, it’s what was said to Miss Manners when asked why she does what she does. “I would like to see people accept the basic contract of civilization which is you want to do the best you can for yourself but not at the serious expense of other people.” In the end, do unto others – others as you would have them do unto you.
The last word goes to Fanshaw, who doesn't mind how you hold your knife or which way you pass the port, but cares about being considerate, thoughtful and polite so that life is easier and better to live.
So for civility’s sake,
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