Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — THE ANCIENT DINNER TABLE. [ARTICLE]

THE ANCIENT DINNER TABLE.

Why Its Ceremonies Were Rigidly Observed. In studying the service of the ancient dinner table, the amount of ceremony which invested the meals of our forefathers is one of the first things which strikes us—a peculiarity, however, which is easily accounted for when we recollect that, during the middle ages, men separated from one another in rank so widely as were the feudal baron and his retainers were accustomed to eat together in common, a practice which could scarcely fail to have resulted In the growth of an elaborate system of etiquette, says the Quarterly Review. The ancient fashion of arranging the tables for a meal is still preserved in college halls, where the “high table” stands transversely on a raised platform at the upper end of the room. It was the further sideof this “table of dais” which at a feudal feast was alone occupied, the master of the house and his chief guests thus emphatically dining in public before his vassals. Everything pertaining to the service of this table was conducted with a ritual of almost ecclesiastical minuteness. At a time when, from the crown vassal to the petty baron, a man’s safety and consequence depended on the number of followers he could muster, the greater part of the revenue of an estate was spent in the support of retainers and hangers-on, and, there being thus no lack of service, the various duties of a household were much subdivided. The modern term, “butler’s pantry,” marks the coalescence of tw<r offices formerly distinct, when the butler or “boteler” presided over the buttery, or “botelerie,” and the “panter, ” or “pantier, ” over the pantry or bread closet The duties of carver and cupbearer were held to be very honorable ones, and could be discharged by men of high rank, and in great establishments the butler, the pantier, the porter, and the officers of all the several household departments had each his own contingent of grooms and yeomen.