Dinner-tables are seldom sufficiently lighted, or attended. An active waiter will have enough to do to attend upon half a dozen active eaters. There should be about half as many candles as there are guests, and their flame be about eighteen inches above the table. Our foolish modern pompous candelabras seem intended to illuminate the ceiling, rather than to give light on the plates, &c.
Wax lights at dinner are much more elegant, and not so troublesome and so uncertain as lamps, nor so expensive; for to purchase a handsome lamp will cost you more than will furnish you with wax candles for several years.
[38-*] Swilling cold soda water immediately after eating a hearty dinner, is another very unwholesome custom—take good ginger beer if you are thirsty, and don’t like Sir John Barleycorn’s cordial.
[38-†] Strong peppermint or ginger lozenges are an excellent help for that flatulence with which some aged and dyspeptic people ate afflicted three or four hours after dinner.
[39-*] Le Grand Sommelier, or CHIEF BUTLER, in former times was expected to be especially accomplished in the art of folding table linen, so as to lay his napkins in different forms every day: these transformations are particularly described in Rose’s Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth, 1682, p. 111, &c. “To pleat a napkin in the form of a cockle-shell double”—“in the form of hen and chickens”—“shape of two capons in a pye”—or “like a dog with a collar about his neck”—and many others equally whimsical.
[43-*] In days of yore “Le Grand Ecuyer Tranchant,” or the MASTER CARVER, was the next officer of the mouth in rank to the “Maître d’Hôtel,” and the technical terms of his art were as singular as any of those which ornament “Grose’s Classical Slang Dictionary,” or “The Gipsies’ Gibberish:” the only one of these old phrases now in common use is, “cut up the TURKEY:”—we are no longer desired to “disfigure a PEACOCK“—“unbrace a DUCK”—“unlace a CONEY”—“tame a CRAB”—“tire an EGG”—and “spoil the HEN,” &c.—See Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth, by Rose, 1682.
[43-†] Those in the parlour should recollect the importance of setting a good example to their friends at the second table. If they cut bread, meat, cheese, &c. FAIRLY, it will go twice as far as if they hack and mangle it, as if they had not half so much consideration for those in the kitchen as a good sportsman has for his dogs.
FRIENDLY ADVICE TO COOKS,[46-*]
AND OTHER
SERVANTS
On your first coming into a family, lose no time in immediately getting into the good graces of your fellow-servants, that you may learn from them the customs of the kitchen, and the various rules and orders of the house.