Autobiographic Sketches Part 14

It cla.s.sed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made all ridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, substance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us.

Something of the same kind has happened in the history of silver forks.

Forks of any kind, as is well known, were first introduced into Italy; thence by a fantastic (but, in this instance, judicious) English traveller _immediately _(and not _mediately through France_) were introduced into England. This elegant revolution occurred about 240 years ago; and never since that day have there been wanting English protesters against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years, at least, against the paganism of using _steel _forks; or, 2dly, two- p.r.o.nged forks; or, 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years ago, the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, (Gay's d.u.c.h.ess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. "O, stop him, stop him!

that man's going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good defence. Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages to any elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver forks, came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which forks first superseded--viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the knife between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain select hacks of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a civilized dinner, and fancying that their own obscene modes of feeding prevailed every where, got up the name of the _Silver-fork_ School, (which should have indicated the school of decency,) as representing some ideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however, when cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-p.r.o.nged fork cheaper than the two-p.r.o.nged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this--that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict a.n.a.logy between "the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach--that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts to throw ridicule upon it--upon literature, in the one case, as a most appropriate female ornament; and upon silver forks, on the other, as an element of social decorum.

The author has exerted himself every where to keep the text accurate; and he is disposed to believe that his own care, combined with the general accuracy of the press, must have enabled him to succeed in that object. But if it should appear that any errors have after all escaped him, he must request his readers to excuse them, after explaining that he suffers under the oppression of a nervous distraction, which renders all labors exacting any energy of attention inexpressibly painful.