KNIVES AND FORKS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2976, 8 January 1881, Page 5 (Supplement)

KNIVES AND FORKS.

We often laugh at the Chinese and their chopsticks of wood or ivory with which they eat, and fancy they must make very dirty work at their meals j yet they are cleanly and civilised, compared with the habits of our ancestors some 300 years ago. Then forks were unknown ; each man had his own knife, and at dinner seized the joint with his hand, and cut off what he wished ; the dish was then passed on to the next, who did the same. The knife then cut up the portions into small pieces, which were put into the mouth by the fingers of the hand unoccupied by the knife. In many parts of Spain, at present, drinking glasses, spoons, and forks are rarities, and in taverns in many countries, particularly in some towns in France, knives are not placed on the table, because it is expected that each person has one of hie own, a custom which the French seem to have retained from the old Gauls. But as no person will any longer eafc without forks, landlords are obliged to furnish these, together with plates and spoons. None of the sovereigns of England had forks till the reign of Henry VII.; all, high and low, used their fingers. Hence, in the royal households there was a dignity called the ewary, who, with a fet of subordinates, attended at the meals with basins, water, and towels. The office of cwary survived after forks came partially into fashion. We learn that when James I. entertained the Spanish ambassador at dinner, very shortly after his accession, " their majesties washed their hands with water from the same ewer, the towels being presented to the King by the Lord Treasurer, and to the Queen by the Lord High Admiral." The Prince of Wales had an ewer to himself, which was after him used by the ambassador. Aboout the first royal personage in England who is known to'have had a fork was Queen Elizabeth ; but although several were presented to her, it remains doubtful whether she used them on ordinary occasions. Forks come so slowly into use in this country that they were employed only by the higher classes at the middle of the seventeenth century. About the period of the Revolution (IGtiy) few noblemen had more than a dozen forks of silver, along with a few of iron or steel. At length, for general use, steel forks became an article of manufacture'at Sheffield. At first they had two prongs, and it was only in later times that the three -pronged kin:! was made. As late as the early part of the eighteenth century, tablo forks—and, we

may add, knives—were kept on so small a scale by country inns that it was customary for gentlemen, in travelling, to carry with them a portable knife and fork in a shagreen case. The general introduction of silver forks into Great Britain is quite recent; it can be dated no further back than the termination of the French war in 1814.