The French gentleman is
perpetually wiping his dirty fingers on a napkin spread out before him,
and of which the beauties are not invisible to his neighbours on each
side. The Englishman of the middle class requires no napkin, because his
fingers are never soiled. The French gentleman, incapable of raising
his left hand properly to his mouth, first hastily hacks his meat into
fragments, then throws down his dirty knife on the cloth, and seizing
the fork in his right hand, while his left fixes a mass of bread on his
plate, he runs up each fragment against it, and having eaten these, he
wipes up his plate with the bread and swallows it. An English peasant
would blush at such bestiality. A French gentleman not only washes his
filthy hands at table, but, after gulping a mouthful, and using it as a
gargle, squirts it into the basin standing before him, and the company,
who may see the charybdis or maelstrom he has made in it, and the
floating filth he has discharged, and which is now whirling in its
vortex. In England this practice is unknown, except to those whose taste
and stomach are too strong for offence. It has been stupidly borrowed
from the Oriental nations, who use no knives and forks, and where,
though it has this apology, it has always excited the disgust of
enlightened travellers. When dinner is over, the Englishman's carpet
is as clean as before; the Frenchman's bare boards resemble those of a
hog-sty.
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