SIGNS OF PROSPERITY IN SOUTH OF ENGLAND EARLY KNIVES AND FORKS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1935, Page 16

SIGNS OF PROSPERITY

IN SOUTH OF ENGLAND

EARLY KNIVES AND FORKS

A TRAVELLER'S IMPRESSIONS

An impression of surprise at the extraordinary prosperity that prevailed in London and the south of England was gained by Mr. Edmund S. Paul, managing director in Australia of Schweppes, Ltd., and chairman of directors of the Australian Provincial Assurance Association, Ltd., who is at present in Wellington on the way back to his home in Sydney, after a brief visit to England.

"I was informed that things were far different in the North of England," he said in an interview, "because of unemployment in the coal mines." As an illustration of the prosperity in the south he mentioned that the RollsRoyce Company had* brought out a new model car, costing over £2500 and in less than a fortnight had sold out their production for a year ahead. Not 5 per cent, of the orders came from new owners of Rolls-Royce cars, the remainder coming from people who already owned a Rolls-Royce, but were purchasing another, regardless of cost, merely to own the latest model.

"Traffic- in London has increased fully 50 per cent, in volume since my last visit in 1931," continued Mr. Paul. "The transport manager of Schweppes in London advised me that the lorry trip with goods from Hendon to the docks took an hour more each way because of the heavier traffic. London has made no attempt apparently to tackle the .traffic problem, and as new and costly buildings are going up in all directions the cost of widening old streets or of creating new ones will in the near future be prohibitive. Even where slum dwellings have been pulled down and new buildings erected under the new housing schemes in districts ; such as Vauxhall where the roadways are only 20ft wifle and the pathways only about 4ft, no alteration has been made. In Sydney the Main Roads Eoard has gone to the other extreme by squandering money to make r.6ads straight. Sooner or later these moneys have to be paid by the taxpayer. BEDROOM AND BATH FETISH. "I travelled through the United States and met many Americans who expressed their desire to visit New Zealand," said Mr.- Paul. "When I told them of the prices charged by New Zealand hotels and that the full tariff included morning and afternoon tea and supper free of charge with unlimited table d'hote meals they were astonished. The prices seemed to them to be purely nominal compared with their own hotel charges. All the general comforts found in New Zealand hotels, such as lounges, diningrooms,'etc., are sacrificed in the States, to the bedroom and bath. Hotels there start and end with bedroom and bath. I stopped at Ogden, a small town with a huge hotel of 13 floors and 500 bedrooms, all with baths. When I came down tp breakfast I found it was being served in,what they termed the coffee shop, a pdky-lookirig room with small glass-topped tables. I looked in and decided to have my breakfast on the train.

"The price of a breakfast in New Zealand currency, was 3s 2d, and the meal consisted of one pat of butter, toast, tea, four stewed prunes, one egg, two pieces of bacon, and one teaspoonful of jelly, no more no less. The idea of letting the traveller help himself to unlimited supplies of anything is quite foreign.

"Of course, all the American hotels are centrally heated, the Americans liking a temperature not lower than 70 degrees. In Chicago, where they claim, and I think rightly, to possess the largest hotel in the world, containing 3000 bedrooms and accommodating 4500 people, the small room for breakfast was so hot that I might have been in Colombo without the benefit of a fan."

Knives and spoons have been in use for eating from early times, Wt until the early sixteenth century knives were not placed on the table, diners being expected to carry them on their person. Fingers were used chiefly in the Middle Ages; sometimes delicately —Chaucer's prioress did not wet

"hir fyngres in hir sauce deepe"— and more often not, to judge from Alexander Barclay, who, describing a Court feast as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, recommended the use of "gloves of mayle" at table in case fingers got cut off in the general confusion of hacking at food. The use of forks at table was an Italian fashion which was not introduced into England until the reign of James I. Forks had been known before^ but all through the Middle Ages they were luxuries. Thomas Coryate, writing in 1611 of his travels, noted that forks were used at table in Italy by both rich and poor, but that the custom was not adopted by any other Ration in Christendom; he himself was nicknamed "Furcifer" by his friends for using them.