The Dining Room

It is the room toward which the eyes of the family's members turn, old and young alike. For while the kitchen is the storehouse of foods and the workshop that prepares for the appetite all that is delicious, good, and wholesome, none of it reaches us until its products are set before us in the dining room. The beauty of this presentation, or the lack of it, depends on the mistress of the house and on the arrangement of the table she prepares for it — and this calls for special care on her part, so that the food may be turned to account in a way that whets the appetite and pleases the eye at one and the same time.

In this small space of the house lies a wide scope, a spacious field, in which a woman can play one of the important parts of her life — the part that represents beauty, taste, generosity, and economy — that is, if she so wishes. Otherwise, her duties in this new, modern respect will remain confined to the mere performance of the duty of serving food, in a manner that the houseboy or the maid could perform just as well.

It is no easy thing for me to point to our shortcoming in the duty required of us toward the table; but it is the truth, which cannot be concealed — and how, save by honest criticism, can we reach what we want for our new home? We, regrettably, take no account of the family table except at banquets and when guests are with us. We see no harm in eating in the kitchen, or in the courtyard, or in the sitting room; in eating at a set time or at no set time; in gulping our food quickly or slowly; in eating from one plate or from several plates. All these are matters of no consequence whatever to us, so long as we remain adept at play-acting whenever occasion calls for it, and keep to sitting at the table with strangers among our foreign guests or persons of high station among our own people.

Yes, we do provide this room, and we set apart for it the amplest share of our money; we place in it sumptuous furniture and precious vessels of silver and porcelain — not from any desire that moves us to enjoy them, but for love of boasting before others of what we possess of the glories of ornament and furnishing. No sooner does a guest come in to us than we lead him to our dining room — not to share with him the prized works of our hands' artistry, nor the delicacies of our appetizing dishes, for it is not the hour for eating — but to show him the treasures that money and the love of imitation have bought.

The view that civilized people take of the table has changed greatly in recent years. Whereas once they took the utmost pains to select for it sumptuous furniture of cedar, mahogany, and oak, adorned its walls with drawings and oil paintings, and its ceiling with numerous lamps from which brilliant light streamed forth, and placed on its windows those thick, heavy curtains — so that one entering it might fancy he was entering a synagogue or a temple — it has today become the height of simplicity, together with perfect taste in its adornment and the harmony of its colors. Those thick curtains have been exchanged for transparent ones, and those massive cupboards — while care is still taken for good, solid wood — for sideboards of little breadth and height, easy to use when serving, with drawers to hold the table utensils. In place of those lamps hung from the ceiling and high on the walls, one lamp is set in a corner of the room, with a shade of lovely make to soften the harshness of the light upon the eyes. And some exchange the electric light for the light of candles, which they set on the supper table wrapped in the colored paper made for this purpose, in the belief that this kind of faint, natural light adds to the splendor of the table and its adornment, and to the sweetness of gathering around it.