A Little Centenary

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 42, 17 October 1907, Page 9

A Little Centenary

Of -the holding of centenaries there is no end. The latest announced is the approaching fourth centenary of the modern dinner-fork, which (we learn) is to be quietly celebrated, towards the close of the present year by disciples of Brillat-Savarin here and" there and by 'all others -that (as Mrs. Gamp remarks) are ' so ' dispoged '. The second volume of Chambers,' ' Book of Days ' gives (p. 573") some curious particulars of the origin of this useful substitute for the fingers at what Meredith calls ' the blessed hour of dinner '. The fork ' has long since figured so largely as a household necessary that we can hardly realise that it was a rarity in England just introduced by a few ' spruce gallants ', when Heylin wrote his ' Cosmography ' in 1652. About the close of the same century, the English traveller, Coryate, -found them iii Italy. 'Tie Italian,', said he, 'cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with lingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean '. Hence they used ' little forks ' made of iron, steel, or silver— a practice which Coryate -brought back with him to England and recommended to his countrymen. The use of the fork did not, however, become general in England till about the close of the seventeenth century. Nowadays the ' little fork ' is one of the outward signs that distinguish white civilisation from the outier barbarism of chop-sticks and of the literal ' finger in the pie 'or on the roast. Many years ago (so runneth a story in point) an island missionary conveyed this idea after a fashion of his own. He wrote in the course of a report of his work among the untutored Polynesian savage : ' I much regret that rry flock is- still addicted to cannibalism, but, thanks to my example and precept, they are become so far civilised that tfie use of knives and forks is becoming qiuite com--, mon '.