They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.
[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the "Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials, and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in 1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, où il y a ij balays et X perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork of gold to take sops from wine (à prendre la soupe où vin). They appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.—Ed.]
[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]
Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence—
—the laudable use of forks,
To the sparing of napkins.
This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this FORKED cutting of meat, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St. Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In The Fox, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes—
—Then you must learn the use
And handling of your silver fork at meals.
[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the
"Dictionnaire de Trevoux.">[
Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick."
Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls