Knife, Fork and Plate

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 372 Report by C.G.

Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson once used to 'be sadly plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse but that it consisted of ten syllables. "Lay your knife and your fork across your plate" was to him a verse.' The usual prize was offered for the best poem embodying this line.

thanking you very much for your invaluable hints as to how to behave at table. It's ever so naice to think that I now have the knowledge to conceal my banausic provenance when I go to dine with the great, and will be able henceforth to pass myself off as definitely 'U.' That other competi- tors may, also profit thereby, I quote a few of these useful tips :

Don't blow upon the boiling soup or broth. Don't bite your roll unless it's smeared with butter. Don't wipe your mouth upon the hanging cloth. Don't have your mouth full every time you utter. (Vera Telfer) Lay your knife and your fork across your plate, Never wave them wildly in the air Lest you transfix your neighbour to his chair. Always swallow food before you speak, It is not safe to lodge it in the cheek. (Rosina Williamson) And always stop before you eat too much; Wiping your mouth, and giving ears a touch. (Frances Collingwood) However, after reading the same instruction over a hundred times, I felt like the little girl in A. Barrington's verses : 'Say it once more I'll throw plate in the grate.'

and I lighted with relief on the narrative, humor- ous or poignant (Sawdust Asgold and Arcas respectively), the most pleasing freshness of Elspeth's picnic (Who'd be other than her- bivores?'), Audrey L. Laski's Cowboy Lament (to be sung to a small guitar), T. E. Currer's ingenious use of quotations from Wordsworth, and J. A. Lindon's pessimism after A. E. Hous- man—philosophy and vocabulary correct, but not the rhythm, I felt. In this miscellaneous class there were also two highly successful serious poems : Annie Allen's Lament for Great-Aunt Esther, with its beautiful echoes of Lorca and Dylan Thomas, ending : A grief ago Came Great-Aunt Esther, gracious, graceful, gay,

Eran las cinco en sotnbra de la tarde!

and a Greek slave's lament by I. Lewis, that might have been a translation of one of the slighter Odes of Horace.

DEAR Competitors, I should like to begin by Four competitors saw the knife and fork as a

symbol like Omar Khayyam 's 'Where I made one, turn down an empty glass.' They were E. G. Moore, G. H. Baxter, W. Bernard Wake and W. K. Holmes. The last two remained in the 'short' list until the last minute, as also did Richard Clough, Alberick, Geoffrey W. S. Childs and Gloria Prince with her faultless and witty poem (not to mention an amusing PS by the next post). Her 'Disillusionment' opened : Lay your knife and your fork across your plate; Our meal is ended and our meeting too; The flower is faded, with no thorn of hate In me, no fruit in you.

Before disclosing the winners (which, of course, you all looked at long before reading this screed), a word about metre. Leslie Johnson dogmatically states that the given line 'must' be scanned as catalectic hendecasyllabic, and all praise to him and Arcas for their technical virtuosity in an adaptation of the Catullan metre. Dr. Johnson himself, however, read it as iambic pentameter (so-called), and the possible rightness of this can been seen, for example, in Nancy Gunter's clever monorhymed verses, beginning: Divine Luculla, dine with me at eight And dainty fare for dainty Fair, in state Shall be set forth on linen delicate.. • .

and ending:

And should my appetite ere yours abate My silver tools I'll 'down,' and sniiling wait Till you, my charmer, sweetly satiate, Lay your knife and your fork across your plate.

Other competitors successfully manipulated it as anapaestic tetrameter; And now, in the absence of the Great Cham of Literature, C.G. humbly suggests that the prize be divided equally among Nan Wishart, Allan M. Laing and R. A. McKenzie; their merits speak for themselves. Congratulations all round on an exceptionally good set of entries.

(NAN WISHART) TIME LOST

Lay your knife and your fork across your plate, Lie easy, and take your sleep; No dream will harry the word-stuffed mind, And why should the strong men weep? No din's in the yard, the ship lies stretched Like bone with no flesh to her; As bare she lies as the phantom hulk Of a bright-eyed Mariner!

You'll work again your permitted stint, And gains come smooth to the grip.

And these bones will rise full-fleshed, come time, And be ready for the slip; But there slips unknown throughout all time The ghost of an unmade ship.

(ALLAN M. LAING) BAFFLING THE DEVIL

Lay your knife and your fork across your plate And so do old Beelzebub out of his date; For the Sign of the Cross was ever the plan To counter old Nick when pursuing his man.

See now his forked tail, no longer cocked gay, How it droops 'tween his legs in a whipped-currish

way!,

His expression that once had a sinister charni Reveals dark intention now baffled of harm; And there where his feet seemed to you comme if

lTheocultoven hoof peeps from the riven shoe-toe. With a snarl and a sneer and a sulphurous smell The Devil flies off to brood darkly in Hell.

For the moment you're saved by the cross on your plate, But the Devil growls, 'Check; but it's never check- mate!'

(R. A. MCKENZIE) AND RUN

Lay your knife and your fork across your plate, I'm told, don't stick them in your hair, Your collar gets in such a state, Though greens and gravy feather bare Pink patches, while the yolk of eggs Looks well on some. But never fish : The parsley sauce runs down your legs! Far better take the junket-dish With cruet, flower-bowl, and fork, Knife, plate, and napkin, empty cup, Cold cauliflower, fat of pork, And wrap the whole caboodle up In the table-cloth—be thorough, now, You understand, don't miss a tater- And with a gentlemanly bow Just hand the bundle to a waiter.