With regard to the knives and forks, everything is now made very easy for the novice by the way in which the table is laid.
Taking soup.
The tablespoon is for soup, which must be eaten from the side of the spoon close to the point. The fish knife and fork are placed outside the others, so as to be ready to the hand, the fish course coming directly after the soup.
Carving.
The dishes are usually all handed round at dinner-parties, the carving being done at the sideboard or in an immediately adjoining room, but sometimes the host carves the joint and game.
There is occasionally a subtle reason for this preference, not wholly unconnected with a taste for those morsels that especially appeal to the gourmand. The host may desire to secure these for some special, appreciative guest—or for himself! In some families the principal dishes are always placed before the master of the house to be carved. Maidservants can rarely carve well, and butlers have gone considerably out of fashion in the upper middle classes of society of late years.
Choice of dishes and wines.
When offered the usual choice of dishes or wines, the guest must decide at once and indicate his choice without delay. Any hesitation gives him the air of being unable to reject either; of being in the position, with regard to food, occupied by the poet who wrote—
“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away!”
So he must be prompt, and, should the dish be handed round, help himself without delay.