This affair of the table is one worth a good deal of attention, as it regards the temper and manners of the household, and the personal habits of each. There is no reason why the father's likings as to food should not be seen to be cared for. If he is a selfish eater, he will ensure that the matter is duly attended to. If he is above such care for himself,—if it is clear that his pleasure at his meals is in having his family about him,—that is a case in which the mother need not conceal her desire to provide what is liked best. The father, who never asks or thinks about what is for dinner, is most likely to be the one to find before him what he particularly relishes; a dish cooked, perhaps, by his wife's or his little daughter's hands. And, again, if the little daughters see that their mother never thinks about her own likings, perhaps they will put in a word on market-day, or at such times, to remind her that somebody cares for her tastes. Then, again, in middle-class families, where the servants dine after the family, they should always be openly considered. After the pudding has been helped round once, and some quick eaters are ready for a second plateful, it must be an understood thing that enough is to be left for the servants.—On the ground of the danger of causing too much thought about eating and drinking, it is desirable that, where the family take their meals together, all should fare alike. If there is anything at table which the younger children ought not to have, it is better that they should, if possible, dine by themselves. This is the plan in great houses, where the little ones dine at one o'clock, eating freely and without controversy of what is on the table, because there is nothing there that can hurt them. If the family dine together, and there are two or more dishes of meat on the table at the same time, all must learn the good manners of dividing their choice, so that the father may not have to send a helping of goose to everybody, while none is left for himself, but that the mother's boiled mutton may have left half the goose for the choice of the parents. All this is clear enough: but, if a present arrives of anything nice,—oysters, or salmon, or oranges, or such good things as relations and friends often send to each other, it seems best for all the household to enjoy the treat together, who are old enough to relish it.
It can scarcely be necessary to mention that the earliest time is the best for training children to proper behaviour at table, as every where else. Every one of them has to be trained; for how are the little things to know, unless they are taught, that they are not to put their fingers in their plates, or to drain their mugs, or to make shapes with their potato, or to crumble their bread, or to kick their chairs, or to run away to the window before dinner is done? They will require but little teaching, if they see everybody about them sitting and eating properly; but it is hard upon children when they have been allowed to take liberties and be rude at the nursery dinner, and then have everything to learn, under painful constraint, as they are growing up.
I have been sometimes struck with the conviction that the bad manners I have seen at the school-room table arise from a misconception as to what dinner is. In one house, you see the busy father hurry from his work to table, hardly stopping to wash his hands, turning over to his wife the task of helping the children, or even pushing round the dish for them to help themselves,—throwing his dinner down his throat, and after it his solitary pint of porter; snatching his hat, and off again to business, almost without saying "good bye" to any one. When he is gone, the others think they have liberty to do as they please; and a pretty scene of confusion there is,—one child scraping a dish, another kneeling on a chair to reach over for something, a third at the window: and the mother with baby on her arm, coming at last to carry off the dishes, saying that she is sure dinner has been about quite long enough, while some of the children are perhaps really wanting more.—Again: one sees in a rich gentleman's family, ill-managed, a great mistake as to dinner. The bell is rung at the nominal dinner-hour,—or probably a good deal after it: for servants can hardly be punctual under such management. The soup is on the table, and one or two of the family are in their seats, waiting for the rest. One young lady has her fancy-work in her hand: another has the newspaper. Papa comes in for luncheon. He will have a plate of soup. The reader jumps up to help him; but the soup is cold. As nobody seems to wish for any cold soup, it is sent away; but turned back at the door by a hungry boy, who has only just learned that dinner is ready, and is ravenous for the first thing he can get to eat. While the joint is helped, one drops in from the stable,—another from the music-lesson; a third from botanising in the wood; and the first comers run away to look for something in the library, or to have a turn on the gravel walk, saying that they do not care for pudding, and will come back for cheese. Altogether, it is an hour and a half before the cloth is removed, and the weary governess can get her charge in order for the Italian master,—if indeed he be not come and gone in the interval. This is an extreme, but not an impossible case: and in such a case, the plea we shall hear is that it is a waste of time for a whole family to sit doing nothing but eating their dinners in the middle of the day: and that formality makes eating of too much importance. Such is the plea; and here lies the mistake. The object of dinner is not only eating but sociable rest. The dinner hour is a seasonable pause amidst the hurry of the busy day; and the harder people have to work, the completer should be the pause of the dinner hour. The arrangement is very important to health; for the largest meal of the day is best digested when it is eaten with regularity, at leisure, and in a cheerful mood of mind; and when a space of cheerful leisure is left after it. And more important still is the arrangement to the manners and tempers and dispositions of the family. It is a great thing that every member of a household should be habituated to meet the rest in the middle of the day, neatly dressed and refreshed;—the boys' coats brushed, and the girls' frocks changed or set straight; the hair smoothed, and face and hands just washed. It is a great thing that they should take their chief nourishment of the day in the midst of the most cheerful conversation, and at a time so set apart as that nobody is hankering after doing anything else. When we consider too that after dinner is the only time between Sunday and Sunday that the working father has for play with his infants,—who are in their beds, or too sleepy for fun, when he comes home in the evening,—we shall own that there is no waste of time in the dinner hour, even if nothing whatever is done but eating and talking. In fact, it is this time which, from its importance, ought to be saved from all encroachment. The washed faces, and the cloth on the table, and the hot dinner should all be in readiness when the father appears. Not a minute of his precious hour should be lost or spoiled by any one's unpunctuality, or any body's ill-manners. All should go smoothly at his table by every one's gentleness and cheerfulness and good-breeding. When the meal is finished, all the clearing away should be quickly and quietly done, that he may have yet a clear half-hour for rest, or for play with the little ones. Where this hour is managed as it ought to be,—(and nothing is easier under the care of a sensible mother) the busy father goes forth to his work again with his mind even more refreshed by his hour of cheerful rest than his body is strengthened by food.
On the remaining topic of Personal Habits,—Modesty,—Decency—it cannot be necessary to say much. The points of mistake which strike me the most are two:—I think that in almost every part of the world, people herd too much and too continually together:—and I think that few people are aware how early it is right to respect the modesty of an infant.
As to the first point;—it is one of the heaviest misfortunes of our country,—I speak advisedly,—that among whole classes of our people, poverty or want of space from other causes, compels them to herd together in crowds, night and day. No words are needed to show how little hope of health there can be when people live in this way; and even less hope of good morals. Among classes more favoured than these, it appears that there is little thought of making the provision that might easily be made for more privacy than people are yet accustomed to. I fear it is the wish that is wanting: for "where there's a will there's a way;" and I have been in many houses, both at home and abroad, where the requisite privacy might have been had, if any wish for it had existed. In the factory villages in the United States, I was painfully struck by this. I saw good and pretty houses built from the savings of the factory girls,—with their shady green blinds, and their charming piazzas without; and places within for book-shelves, piano and pictures and work-tables; but not a corner of any house was there where any young woman of the household could sit by herself for ten minutes in a day, or say her prayers, or wash. The beds were ranged in dormitories; or four or six in a room: and there were not even washing-closets. Here, there was no excuse of inability; and at home I too often see the same thing, where there is no sufficient excuse of inability.
Where each child cannot possibly have a room, or the use of a dressing-closet to itself, arrangements may easily be made, by having folding screens, to secure absolute privacy to every member of a household, for purposes of the mind, as well as the body. When I see how indispensable it is to the anxious and hard-worked governess to have a room to herself, and how earnestly she (very properly) insists upon it, I am always sorry when I remember how many have to go without this comfort,—which should be considered a necessity of life. When I think of the school-boy, with his burden of school cares upon him, and the young girl, thoughtful, anxious and irritable, as most people are, at times, in entering upon the realities of life; and of the wearied servant maid, and of the child in the first fervours of his self-kindling piety, I pity them if they have no place which they can call their own, for ever so short a time in the day, where they can be free from the consciousness of eyes being upon them. The thing may be done. Mrs. Taylor of Ongar, the wife of a dissenting minister, and mother of a large family, who from an early age worked for their bread,—did contrive, by giving her mind to it, to manage separate sleeping places for a wonderful number of her children; and, where this could not possibly be accomplished for all, she so arranged closets and hours as that every one could have his or her season of retirement, secure from disturbance.
As for the case of the infant, to which I alluded above,—I believe it to be this. The natural modesty of every human being may be left to take care of itself; if only we are careful that it is really left entirely free. It is the simplest matter in the world for the mother to give this modesty its earliest direction during the first weeks, months, and year or two of life. After that, it will not fail, if only it be duly respected. That this respect should begin very early is desirable, not because the innocent little creature has then any consciousness which can be injured by anything it sees or is allowed to do; but because as it grows up, it should be unable ever to remember the time when every thing was not arranged with the same modesty and decorum as at a later period. Again, in order to the preservation of true modesty, the smallest possible amount of thought should be bestowed upon it. All transactions, personal and domestic, should go on with the smoothness of perfect regularity, propriety, and consequent freedom of mind and ease of manners. And it conduces much to this that there should never have been a time when the child was conscious of any particular change in its management. It should never have seen much of any body's personal cares; and the more gradually it slides into the care of its own person, with its accompanying privacy, the better is the chance that it will not dwell on such matters at all, but have its mind free for other subjects, wearing its modesty as unconsciously as it carries the expression of the eye, or utters the tones of its voice.
CHAPTER XXV.
CARE OF THE HABITS.—FAMILY HABITS.
It is difficult to keep a distinction between personal and family habits. In our last chapter, on Personal Habits, we got to the family dinner table; and here, in speaking of Family Habits, we shall doubtless fall in with the characteristics of individuals.