We can lay down no further rule for the changing of table linen. It is perhaps better to keep breakfast and dinner cloths separate, the finer for dinner, that being the more formal meal; tea and luncheon can be served, if one wishes, without table cloth. If care be taken to lay a carving cloth or napkin under the meat platter, or a tea cloth where tea or coffee are to be poured, breakfast and dinner cloths can be kept fresh longer.
Some writers more nice than wise sneer at napkin rings, implying that no table linen should be used more than once without washing. But there are few families of any size that can afford such lavish laundry work. A family of six would require twenty-one dozen napkins in constant use, if given out fresh each meal. When the same napkin must serve for more than one meal, a napkin ring is the simplest and surest way of securing each person his own. Of course rings are only for family use, not for the transient guest, and they would be out of place at a dinner party.
Table cloths should be done up with a suspicion of starch, not enough to stiffen them, but with only so much as will make them iron well. Heavy linen looks and wears better than light. Large napkins are for dinner use. Delicate doilies of fine drawn linen work or silk embroidery are laid under finger bowls to protect the choice china plates on which the bowls rest. This doily should be laid to one side with the bowl, it should not be used as a fruit doily. I have seen an absent minded man roll up in a crumpled heap one of these delicate lace affairs costing five dollars, perhaps, and then carelessly wipe hands and moustache with it, while the mistress of the house looked on with an assumed placidity which spoke volumes for her powers of self-control.
The finger bowl is not an elegant affectation, but is a genuine comfort where fruit or sweets are served. Fruit napkins should be used to save large damask ones from stains.
If the first requirement for a well ordered table is cleanliness in damask and dishes, the second is tidiness and regularity of arrangement. If mats are placed under hot dishes let them lie on the square, and let the plates be put on at regular intervals, and in a straight line. A hotel waiter who flings plates and plated ware at the table by a dextrous twirl of the wrist is no model for the home table setter. Spoons for soup and dessert should lie to the right of the plate, knives above, forks to the left; this is the time honored usage, and it makes the labor of serving dessert easier if all knives, spoons and forks to be used during the meal are laid at the first by each plate. Tumblers stand to the right a little above the plate, butter-plates in a corresponding position to the left. Avoid the use of what are popularly known as “individual” dishes upon the table, such as butter plates, salt cellars, sauce plates, and so forth. This is another hotel fashion that should not find its way into the home. It is better to use a larger plate and take a greater variety of food upon it. The little butter dishes are really needed only with warmed plates; and beans, peas, corn, and other vegetables in separate dishes, about a dining plate, make a table look very untidy, and make extra and unnecessary work for the dishwasher. An English lady who visited me a year ago took home to London with her as an American curiosity a set of butter plates which, so she writes, she has not yet found opportunity to use, not having had any American visitors.
Steel knives are better, and where meats are to be served are more desirable in every way than plated ones, the latter being a device to save the labor of “scouring” with Bristol brick.
Flowers or fruit are never out of place upon the dining room table; a showy épergne is not necessary, for a pretty growing plant always makes a good center piece, and a single rose in a slender glass adds flavor to the best cooked meal. My grandmother of blessed memory used to say that the simpler the meal the more pains should be taken to serve it daintily. Broiled salt pork and baked potatoes, according to her theory, could be so bravely set out upon the table as to make a meal fit for gods and men. A parsley bed is of special service in decking out a simple dinner, and celery tops are not to be despised.
The heads of the household should face each other from the ends and not the sides of the table, if the meals are served English fashion, vegetables and meat being placed upon the table. No table can be set with any air of elegance when the meat platter or the tea equipage stand in the middle of one side. It makes comparatively little difference, however, when meals are served à la Russe, that is with meats and vegetables placed at side tables and passed by servants, while only fruit, bon-bons and ornamental dishes appear upon the board. The latter fashion seems to be obtaining in America, and an intelligent diner-out remarked in my hearing the other day, that fifty years hence no meats at all would be carved at table. This Russian fashion is pretty and wholly luxurious, as it removes all possible demands for service or helpfulness from those seated at table, and devolves it all upon servants. The fashion requires more and better trained servants than most of us have at command.
The bane of modern entertainments is the enormous number of courses that style makes essential. Women with but one or two servants at the most feel called upon to give luncheon or dinner parties, and course follows course, many of them sent away scarce tasted, and the home silver and china not sufficing for the occasion, must be eked out by borrowing or by expeditious washings between the courses. The giving of such entertainments by persons of moderate means exhausts nerves as well as purse. Let us wisely give up aping rich people’s ways, and aim for simplicity in our table service.
Colored table ware is cheerier upon the table than white. Very pretty English or American sets can be obtained at low prices. The Canton china (willow pattern) comes in good shapes, is of good color and standard design, and single pieces can always be bought to replace what has been broken, but