On the first day at luncheon, which we ate privately in my apartment, she said: “In England a knife is held as you hold a pen, the handle coming up above the thumb and between the thumb and first finger.” My sense of humor permitted me to ask, after trying it once, “What do you do when the meat is tough?” The Scotch aristocrat never smiled. “It is n't,” she answered.
I was humiliated and a little soul-sick before that luncheon ended. I had been told to break each bite of my bread; a lady never bites a piece of bread. I had been told to use a knife to separate my fish, when I had learned, oh, so carefully, in America to eat fish with a fork and a piece of bread. I might have laughed about it all had not so much been at stake, even Tom's respect.
The Scotch lady of aristocratic birth and social experience lived with me one terrible week. On the seventh day I came home from shopping with presents for the twins back in Wisconsin. A day or so earlier, while my mentor was out of the room, I had asked the chef waiter of our floor about himself and his family, and found that his family too included twins. So with the present for my family I also brought some for his.
Mr. MacLeod, the member of Parliament from Scotland, and Lord Lansdowne happened to be calling when I arrived, and Tom and the Scotch lady were there. The chef waiter was taking the coats of the gentlemen callers. I received the guests, acknowledged the introductions, and then, as I removed my own coat, I handed him the little package.
When we were alone the Scotch lady turned to me. “In England,” she said, “ladies never converse with their servants, particularly in the presence of guests.”
Then she sealed her doom. “Ladies never make gifts to their servants,” she added. “Their secretaries, housekeepers, or companions disburse their bounty.”
I remembered the old U. S. A. An American chef waiter might hope to be the father of a President. On the ranch I had cooked for men of less education and much worse manners than this domestic who brought my athletic husband's breakfast to his bedside and who happened to be the proud father of twins.
I would learn table manners from an English lady of aristocratic birth and social experience; but when it came to the human act of a little gift to a faithful servant, I declared my American independence.