Sipping Tea, Georgian Style

 

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. 
        Japanese Proverb

Joanna here, dipping into the subject how we drink tea, Eighteenth Century style.
Is there no Latin word for Tea?  Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
        Hilaire Belloc

 

No Latin for tea because tea didn't travel the silk roads all the way to the west.  In Roman times, tea was an entirely Chinese secret.  Tea only made it to Europe about 1600, the Dutch and the Portuguese carrying it home along with the other spoils of oriental trade. 

 

It was the Age of Enlightenment. 
The Age of Exploration.  
The Age of Discovery. 
Europeans needed more than ale to fortify them for these earthshaking events.  They took to tea, coffee and chocolate like ducks to watercress.  

Within a half century of landing in Europe -- lickety-split as these things go -- tea established itself in England.  A 1657 advertisement offers it at Thomas Garraway's coffee house:

“This excellent beverage, recommended by all Chinese doctors, and which the Chinese call ‘Tcha’, other nations ‘Tay’ or ‘Tee’, is on sale at Sultaness Mead close to the Royal Exchange in London.”

Author Real Life aside here:  The fortune cookie I got at lunch today -- my fortune cookies keep trying to teach me Chinese, which is kind of them, of course -- tells me that 'teapot' is ch'a ha. 
This is an example of synchronicity. 
It also reminds us that the word for 'tea' or 'chai', like the words for coffee, chocolate, coca cola, television, whiskey and Angelina Jolie, stays about the same all over the world.
 
Returning to the late Seventeenth Century.

Europe, having got hands on tea, also imported lovely cups to drink tea from.  Meissen and Sèvres started making their own porcelains after the Chinese model -- pretty cups, with and without handles, and equally pretty bowl-like saucers for them.    

 

These early Eighteenth Century cups were often on the small side.

This cup, for instance, is only an inch and a half tall.  That's half the size of a teacup today.  It holds about a third as much. 

Look at the size of the cups in some of the pictures below.  You'll agree they are relatively itty bitty.

Folks tended to drink tea in a sip or two and get more fresh from the pot which made the whole tea pouring ceremony more lively, I should imagine. 
When Madame de Sévigné writes, "Saw the Princesse de Tarente . . . who takes 12 cups of tea every day," this does not mean the Princesse was just sloshing with tea.

How did people manage these small and handleless cups?  Pre'y much like this:

         

The making of tea in the early Eighteenth Century, was a drama enacted at the table with a whole bunch of props.  Let's take a look at a tea set.

Starting on the left-hand side, we have the tea pot.  Below that are our handless cups. 

Notice how they seem to have been doled out on the tray upside down. 
Folks did this.  Presumably an upside down cup was not as apt to fall over during transportation.  And things didn't fall into it.
Or something.

 

Continuing anit-clockwise around the tea things we come to the cream pitcher.  Above that is the very large sugar bowl.

That is just an amazing amount of sugar, isn't it? 

Two or three forces at work here making the sugar bowl so big.  The first is that sugar was expensive, so this was conspicuously showing off a luxury good.  The second is that sugar lumps had to be 'nipped off' a big, solid cone shape down in the kitchen.  This was time consuming and awkward so you didn't want to do it all that often.  You laid in a supply.  It's a bit like having a big woodpile.  You can't fit all that into the fireplace, but you like it handy.
The third reason for having a big sugar bowl is that every lump was handmade and idiosyncratic.  You wanted a nice choice.  Probably it was a delicate challenge wondering whether the 'two lumps' Aunt Edith wanted were big lumps or small.

The metalwork on top of the sugar bowl is a pair of sugar tongs, the handle to the right.

Center stage on the tray is bread-and-butter, which was what you got fed at tea in the Eighteenth Century.
This is so wrong.  

Moving our consideration back to the sugar bowl and up a bit, we come to the slops bowl, the final resort of all slops, liquid or solid.  There is a robust realism about an age that provides a slops bowl in the tea service.  Since they moved ash trays off restaurant tables there is nothing remotely resembling this in modern eateries.

If we complete our circuit of the tea tray we come at last to the tall thingum behind the tea pot. The tea canister. 

 
You must imagine an era so primitive they hadn't invented the tea bag.  The robust flavor of cheap paper not yet added to the tea.  Tea came in what might be considered its pretechnological state -- loose dried leaves.  Tea was expensive, so they made pretty and expensive objects to put it in. 

Tea arrived in 'tea canisters' of ceramic or metal.  Beautiful things.  These early 1700s canisters would be placed in a box, with one side for black tea and one for green and a bowl for measuring and mixing. 

By 1800, this box was called a tea caddy, from the Chinese weight, kati, about six hundred grams, (1-1/3 pounds).  Large ones might be called tea chests.

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. 
        Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author real life note here:  I buy a couple sorts of coffee and mix them because it makes me feel powerful and creative.  
 
In Regency times, tea had become less expensive.  There was no need to keep it in the parlor under the eagle-eye of the lady of the house.  Tea was made in the kitchen and brought up on the tea tray.  The tea caddy, (I've been waiting to say this since I saw it in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica,) gradually fell into desuetude.

Now we come to some of the English weird about tea.
First off, the English added sugar and milk. 

Here's how I think that happened. 
Like every newly introduced food, tea was regarded with some suspicion.  In the early 1700s it was still treated as a tonic -- something likely to be good for you.  Often, tea was what you took with the nice healthful milk you were drinking. 

For instance, Madame de Sévigné writes, "It is true, Madame de Sabliere took tea with her milk; she told me so the other day; but it was from choice of taste,"

Milk or cream took the curse off the medicinal tea, as it were.  One sage remarks,
"Tea drinking is doubtless very proper in such cases, (i.e. bilious cholicks and weak nerves,) and especially by the addition of the milk, which renders it more powerful, in blunting the acid points of the bile."  
Useful to know.

When tea got frivolous and became merely a delightful enjoyment, sugar and milk followed it into its new role.

More English strange ensued. 
They poured the tea into the cup.  
They added cream and sugar. 
Then they poured the tea into the saucer. 
Whoa.


Right.  You didn't necessarily drink out of the cup.  Sometimes you drank it out of the saucer.  You had a 'dish of tea'. 

Here we got a couple of folks drinking tea out of their saucer with the greatest gentility.

   
  

Why did they do this?  Why did they drink tea out of a saucer?
To cool it quickly?  Did the English have less patience than the Chinese? 
These were gentlepersons and they had all the time in the world.

Anyways, at this same time folks were complicatedly pouring tea into tea saucers, the same folks were drinking chocolate and coffee out of cups.
I mean, like . . . why? 

Though I have to say the idea of drinking chocolate out of a tippy, flattish bowl seems fraught with peril and I am glad, for the sake of all those lovely fabrics, that folks did not do this.

Here's my theory.
I think they were predisposed to drink tea out of a 'dish' because of porringers.  

A porringer was a bowl sort of affair for dinking broth or caudle or posset.  Posset was a milky drink.  Caudle was a hot drink often given to the sick. 

Here was tea, starting out as a milky medicine or tonic.  Probably the tea 'dish' was seen as equivalent to the porringer.    

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.
        Bernard-Paul Heroux

 By the mid- to late- Eighteenth Century, tea caught up with its cousins, coffee and chocolate, and graduated to a cup with a handle.  Drinking tea from a 'dish' gradually became old-fashioned and rural and slid slowly down the social scale.  By Victorian times, drinking tea from a saucer was for elderly great aunts, their fretful little dogs, Eastern Europeans, and sturdy workmen on their Elevenses.

Dickens, writing much later, says:
"And yet the washerwoman looked to her afternoon 'dish of tea,' as something that might make her comfortable after her twelve hours' labour; and balancing her saucer on a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy beyond utterance as she cooled the draught."

 

More author real life stuff.  I remember my father pouring hot coffee into his saucer to drink it when he was in a hurry and wanted it to cool off quickly.

Sticking out your pinky when you drink tea had to wait till tea cups acquired a handle, as you will discover if you attempt to drink tea from a handleless cup and simultaneously hold out your pinky. 
(Don't try this at home.) 

As soon as they had a handle to grip onto, folks lifted the pinky up.  Now whether this was done to indicate delicacy or whether it is that one cannot, in a practical way, fit a multitude of fingers onto one little cup, is unclear. 
I have tried pinky up and pinky down and can't really detect a difference in the flavor of the tea.

Pinkies raised does not seem to have hit coffee drinkers.   Perhaps coffee was considered a more robust drink that had to be kept under firmer control.

  I have not said a word about tea-in-first or milk-in-first.  This is  because I can't get past the 'Why would you add milk?' question.  However, I am of firm opinion in the lemon-slice-before-or-after-the-tea debate. 
The lemon slice is mean to float daintily on top, like the Lady of Shallot, not drown like Ophelia. 

 

 

It's always afternoon tea, somewhere.

        Joanna Bourne 

 

photocredits:  pink flowered tea canister is cc attrib Veronik, sugar cone attrib felix

 

                                               

What's your favorite tea story or quote?  One commenter will win a copy of Forbidden Rose or the modestly clad trade edition of Spymaster's Lady, your choice.

Comments

[Helen]

Joanna

What a great post I loved the pictures of all the different cups and dishes LOL.
I remember when I was young that my Mum and Dad drank a lot of tea made in a tea pot with tea leaves and they would always give us kids a bit of tea from the saucer because as you said it cools quicker.
I have a teapot and tea leaves and often make a pot of tea for my girlfriend and I. The teapot also has a crocheted owl tea cosy to keep the tea warm while we talk a lot LOL.
I do have some lovely tea sets with the sugar bowl and milk jug and sometimes use them there is nothing nicer than drinking tea from a fine china tea cup and for me the milk goes in before the tea some say it is to stop the cup from cracking when the hot tea is poured in that is what my Grandmother always told me anyway LOL

Have Fun
Helen

[Elaine McCarthy]

I've always liked "The cup that soothes but not intoxicates." No idea who first said it; it sounds too old-fashioned to be Carrie Nation.

[Maureen]

That was an interesting post and I have to admit to putting milk in my morning tea. My two children are in college and were home for the weekend and go shopping. They see a tea store, know their mother likes tea and go to get some. They ended up spending quite a bit of money without realizing how expensive it was going to be. You had BETTER ENJOY THIS they insisted upon arriving home.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Maureen --

The milk in tea is probably more common than milk-without-tea. In fact, the countries where they drink the most tea are exactly the ones where folks tend to add milk to the brew.

Is this significant?
Hmmmm.
You be the judge.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Elaine McCarthy --

That's from William Cowper, A Winter Evening,

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa around,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

which leaves me wondering how one wheels the sofa round and why as well as somewhat nervous of a hissing urn lest it open up to reveal coiled and bad-tempered cobras.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Helen --

The teapot also has a crocheted owl tea cosy

I love tea cozies. I covet them. Perhaps I will knit a tea cozy now that I have been reminded how much I like them.

Thanks for the story of drinking tea from a saucer. That is just wonderful.
I drink tea from tiny little Japanes cups, about the size of an eggshell.

[Julie]

I like the English style of tea with milk and sugar. I am annoyed when restaurants supply a whole jug full of coffee, but a small pot that holds maybe 10 oz of hot water if you order tea. And then they are often surprised if you ask for cream. Fortunately there are some nice tea shops in my city (Minneapolis), so I can support my habit for loose black tea. Unfortunately the most ubiquitous coffee shop here stopped carrying plain black tea in favor of flavored varieties. One of the many things I liked about my trip to Australia earlier in the year was the availability of tea English style.

[Betty Navta]

Jo ~
Wonderful post!
My dear cousin Will, being a lover of all things Irish, drinks nothing buy Irish brands of "tay." This would not be so bad if he didn't brew it strong enough to grow hair on one's eyeballs. His five daughters have been completely turned off of the delights of a nice cuppa to the point of rolling their eyes at the mere mention of the stuff.

Very sad.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Betty --

My understanding is that there are two basic varieties of tea. You got yer Chinese tea, which can come as black tea or green tea depending on how you treat it. And then you got yer Assam tea from India. The Chinese tea is a couple of millenia old. The Assam tea is a Nineteenth Century hybrid of Chinese tea plants and wild tea plants from India.

These two kind of plants have different growing requirements and taste a bit different.

I'd guess Cousin Will's Irish tea, besides being strong enough to resist the introduction of a spoon, is Assam tea. Maybe have your cousins, (the young ones,) try a black tea from China and see what they think of that.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Julie --

It seems unfair that restaurants are assiduously at your elbow asking if you want the cup refilled,
or refilling your cup,
when you have finally drunk enough coffee off the top to get cream in at just the right proportion.

Anyhow, you get Niagaras of coffee.

But tea . . .you get one little pot of tea and that's that.

[Phyllis]

Ah tea! Plain, black tea. Green tea has overtones of fish to me.

WITH milk. Without is too harsh.

Once, when I was about 17, I was out somewhere with my mother and had put milk in my tea before noticing the lemon wedges, so I dropped one in, too. And then wondered why the milk curdled. Seriously, I'm not that dumb, usually...

And my French mother-in-law's friend spent a good deal of time trying to convince me that tea doesn't have caffeine, because it has théine. Nice lady, just a bit odd about food and drink...

But I'm more of a coffee drinker, myself.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Phyllis --

For me green and black teas are so very different they seem totally separate animals. That is, green tea seems more like peppermint tea than black tea.

I have to admit I drink green tea only at Chinese and Japanese restaurants . . .

[Natascha]

Tea and I had a rough introduction during summer camp in the forest behind the castle in Heidelberg, Germany. As an American 10 year old, I had never been giving tea and the only beverage you got to drink during lunch, dinner, and field trips, was black tea. I was always wondering "When are we going to get lemonade or iced tea"? I think us campers were given black tea because it was inexpensive and healthy. All the other campers (all German) were fine with the tea. Only the sole American girl made squinty facial expressions trying to get the tea down.

To this day, I won't drink black tea, however, I do enjoy chai on cold fall and winter days.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Natascha --

Cool and interesting. I wonder how it would have worked out if you'd been given coffee.

Americans always seem a little scandalized at the thought of feeding schoolkids coffee, but have no problem with giving them tea -- as you were -- or sodas, which seem much less healthy

[Jo Beverley]

Great post, Joanna. My Duke of Ithorne is a tea fan and I read up about it. But then, as is often the case, I failed to find ways to info-dump all I knew. Alas. :)

On wheeling the sofa, it would have wheels and go where needed In "Mrs. Hurst Dancing" -- a great book of period pictures -- the sofa is used as extra seating at a family dinner.

Interesting that tea started as an addition to milk! I'm definitely a milk in tea person. But never cream. Too heavy in tea, but delicious in coffee. And never milk in green tea.

Did you know that the great benefit of tea to the health of the British was that it required boiling water? Beer also requires boiling water, which is why it was drunk instead of water, but with tea people in towns with a dubious water supply had a non-alcoholic drink that wouldn't make them ill.

Jo :)

[Louis]

Interesting comment.

I'm not a great tea fan. Pull the tea bag out of the carton and place in cup and pour hot water in cup. Cool and drink. That's it.

[Carolb]

Enjoyed the post and the detail in the pictures.
My husband does still drink his tea black, but I'm a coffee person.
I remember drinking tea out of a saucer as a child, for the reason mentioned- it cools quicker, but it was also easier for my small hands to hold when a filled cup was too heavy to balance.
It was always tea then add the milk followed by sugar.

[Jackie W]

I loved this post and the detail you provided. I am surprised by the bread and butter part, tho.

I am an avid drinker of both tea and coffee. I use my french (8 Cups) press pot to make it in. The tea diffuser sits on top because it is too hard to get the tea leaves out of the bottom of the pot and it also steeps too long. While it is hot, I add the sugar (diabeticsweet in my case) then add milk after I pour it into the mug or whatever i dink it out of.

Now mind you, I have really big mugs so I do not need to refill as often! LOL

However, I am now using my new favorite from Starbucks - which is really small for me and actually is for hot chocolate. It stars Huxley the mouse reading a book in the bottom of the glass (little plastic pieces where the liquid does not go. The also have Huxley the Writer (stuffed mouse) whose tag says something like "I dip my tail in ink to write with!" He is sooo cute and fits in with my book motiffed condo - that is - the condo's decor is wall to wall books!

As I live in the Chicago area I have access to tea stores as well as good coffee houses as well. So I have a series of tea canisters with Chai, Oolong, Earl Gray, etc. so I can switch off depending on my mood.

I also found out how to take regular tea and make it decaf: Add boiling water to tea and steep 4 minutes then toss. Re-steep the used tea leaves and you have decaf.

So Huxley and I are enjoying my tea while I am reading.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Carol --

I do think of children drinking out of saucers or bowls as very natural. All over Europe folks serve milky coffee in bowls in the morning.

The tea, milk, sugar procession does sound right.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Louis --

And they have some very enjoyable teas in little packets with a bag inside -- usually a choice of several varieties . . . though I admit I'm as happy with the plain breakfast tea as with anything more flavoured.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Jackie --

I have one of those coffee presses also. But it's a very small one. Just one large cup's worth.

I use it for travelling, mostly. With that and some coffee, I'm pretty sure to have the morning taken care of.

I'm not a fan of hotel coffeemakers, I'm afraid.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Jo --

In the early parts of C18, I'm finding as many references to cream added to tea as milk added. It does seem very heavy . . . but then, a lot of early C18 recipes seems overly rich.

Not so much of this tea info will be useful in the foreseeable future. . . alas.

[Alana]

I used to think I didn't like tea (poor benighted me) when I was a child because my grandmother would only give it to me with a ton of milk (the way she liked it). One day when I was really cold, I decided my distaste was less important than warming up and drank from my mother's teacup. She likes hers without anything in it (except honey and lemon when she has a sore throat), and I had a new favorite beverage!

My current favorite is a lovely bourbon vanilla flavored black tea (plus the box has a rhino on the front!).

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Alana --

I'm like your mother. I enjoy tea best when it's just me and the tea. Nobody else complicating the relationship.

But I'll admit I've never learned to appreciate flavored coffee or tea. Even some of the traditonal blends, like Earl Grey are only so-so for me.

Learning to enjoy these blends is a pleasure that may still lie ahead.

[JJ]

Such a great post! I started to enjoy tea when I became pregnant, as a way to assuage my 4 cup/day coffee habit. For me personally, green tea is the White Zinfandel of teas - it was the gateway tea that eventually readied me for the next step, Earl Gray & English Breakfast (bagged tea). The only loose tea I've embarked on has been Green Jasmine "pearls", but I'm sure some day I will be a genuine tea drinker, leaves and all.
And I always thought, when they said "dish", they were just being fancy in lieu of saying "cup". Curious.

[Christine]

Wonderful post! It made me feel cozy just reading it. I love tea in all it's forms and brews. When I am sick it's the only thing that makes me feel better. A teakettle to me says hospitality and love. My Irish grandparents were exclusively tea drinkers. As soon as anyone came over the first thing you would do is "put the kettle on" to offer them tea and hospitality. Even if one was full already you could always squeeze in a cup of tea. I start my morning with a cup everyday and whenever anyone in my family is unwell, even just blue, nothing but a hot cup of tea will do to cheer them. To misquote the chef Jasper White, tea is love.

[Sara Ramsey]

I adored this post! Growing up in Iowa, I was a huge fan of THE SECRET GARDEN (reread it every week for months), and I would have tea (Lipton bagged, because I was in the sticks and didn't know any better) with copious amounts of sugar and a slice of bread and butter (since that's what they ate in SECRET GARDEN, and I desperately wanted to be them, sans the whole 'losing your parents to cholera' thing). Now I have looseleaf black tea with milk and sugar at least twice a day, but no bread and butter.

The next time you come to San Francisco, you should try Samovar Tea Lounge -- they have three locations, but the most appealing is in Yerba Buena Gardens, across from the SFMOMA. They have my favorite tea service -- a tiered offering with quiche, salad, fruit, scones, and tea (or the best chai I've ever had). And the view is outstanding, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling windows across Yerba Buena Gardens and to the city beyond.

Again, excellent post -- and I'm glad to see a plausible explanation for why they drank their tea from their saucers :)

Cheers,
Sara Ramsey

[Jenny]

Hi Joanna, this was a great post. Australians are a bit like the Brits and tend to drink a lot of tea. Both my parents drank tea without anything added, mainly, according to my mother because they came from a dairying part of Victoria and were tired of milk! My mother always served tea in the afternoons with a full tea set, including the slops bowl (which always put me off because of what was floating around in the bottom). I do drink tea, however.

Anyway, my father was a shop keeper (watchmaker, jeweller, china and crystal) in a small country town, and one of my earliest memories was of the china and crystal arriving packed in tea chests. These were wooden boxes about three feet cubed (is that a word?) These boxes were made out of what was probably 3 ply timber, reinforced on all the edges with strips of metal, and lined with silver paper. If you pulled the silver paper away from the sides there was always a large residue of tea leaves. The tea was sent from India and Ceylon to Australia in these boxes, and when the tea was re-packaged for sale, the boxes were then used by others to send goods around the country. I had two of them as toy boxes. Recycling at its best.

[theo]

Tea. I drank tea long before coffee. My gran used to brew fresh with leaves and when she was done with her tea, would read the leaves. I can't tell you how many times she won at the track! LOL But she really did. My grandfather used to tease that she must have a 'wee bit 'o the fae in yer old gran'. She'd smack him and we'd all laugh.

I still have the tea and cakes china set she brought from Scotland with her but alas, the teapot died some time ago though I kept the shards.

As to how I like to drink it, I prefer it very hot, very strong with a slice of lemon. (I am the rebel of the family) And on nights when I really want to relax, or am feeling poorly, I like it very hot, very strong with a slice of lemon, a dram of whisky and a drop of honey. I still enjoy that way best. ;o)

[LouisaCornell]

Another post for my research notebook. And it made me smile!

When my family returned Stateside after our three years stationed in England, my "Steel Magnolia" grandmother declared we three children had been horribly corrupted. At an age when most Southern children were learning to drink coffee we had been introduced to "hot" tea and have remained tea drinkers to this day. I don't know if she ever forgave England for doing this to us! LOL

To see me settle down with one of several cups of Earl Gray in which I indulge every day doesn't appear out of place. Try to visualize two large football playing, deer hunting, truck driving, good ole Alabama boys settling down with a cup of English breakfast tea and maids of honor on a Sunday afternoon at my Mom's and it boggles the mind.

Of course there weren't always so enamored of the idea. Not long after we moved to England, the church organist, a Mrs. Rowe, invited us to her home for afternoon tea. She put on a lovely spread - best bone china teacups, wonderful loose tea tea and lovely little water cress sandwiches. Imagine my mother's horror when my four year old brother announced to the room "Mom, these sandwiches got grass and butter on them!" Forty years later we still tease him about it.

Oh and I do drink my tea with milk and sugar. That's how I learned to drink it in the little village in Suffolk. Milk first then tea, then two sugars. And I'd give anything to be back in Mrs. Rowe's parlor drinking tea and eating sandwiches with grass and butter on them!

[LouisaCornell]

Oh and here are a few of my favorite tea quotes.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. ~Henry Fielding, "Love in Several Masques"

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. ~Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. ~Samuel Johnson

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors. ~Alice Walker

I wish I had photos of my Mom's tea cozy collection. She collects those and tea pots.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi JJ --

I'm the same way. I couldn't drink coffee. I should have thought of tea as alternative.

For me personally, green tea is the White Zinfandel of teas - it was the gateway tea

'gateway tea'. Oh giggle.

I run across the information that you start out with green tea and then it's 'fermented' to make black tea. I have the feeling I do not want to know how this happens.
Sometimes it is better if food processing remains mysterious.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Christine --

This is one of the quotes I came across that didn't make it into the posting . . .
in re tea works just fine even when nobody is actually thirsty:

Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

That's what your Irish grandparents were offering you -- delicate enjoyment.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Sara Ramsey --

The only thing that's better than great tea is great tea with a view. San Francisco is one of the world's great beautiful cities and I am utterly in love with it.

I will hold onto the Samovar Tea Lounge suggestion till my next trip out there. Maybe April to coincide with the RT Convention.

It sounds just lovely.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Jenny --

when the tea was re-packaged for sale, the boxes were then used by others to send goods around the country.

This is fascinating. Thank you for telling me. I am just so intrigued.

I'll bet you folks did exactly the same thing in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries -- they re-used crates that had shipped spices or tea or whatever in from the East.

Probably little Victorian kids had a toy box made the way yours was . . .

Kewl.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Theo --

How perfectly wonderful to have your grandmother's tea set. You are so lucky.

I've never known anyone who could read tea leaves, or even had tea leaves read. It's ancient skill, apparently.

Yet another argument against the tea bag, eh what.

Did you know they read coffee grounds back in the Regency?
Every time you go wading into history you get nibbled on by The Unexpected.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi

"Mom, these sandwiches got grass and butter on them!"

Oh. Oh. Absolute giggle. Oh.

You are one of relatively few 'milk in firsts' I've known in the States. I will blame it on the English, an honorable tradtion this side of the pond.

I have always been proud of the South for inventing ice tea, which strikes me as one of the great solutions to the combination of Long Hot Summers and tea.

[Elizabeth Reeve]

This is a fantastic post. It got me and everyone I linked to it giggling.

I don't have a favorite tea story or quote, but I DO have a favorite tea music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Louisa Cornell --

I'm very fond of this one which you quote:

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. ~Samuel Johnson

. . . me being one of those who neither exercise nor abstain -- which sounds vaguely legislative, doesn't it?

[LouisaCornell]

Joanna,

It's one of my favorites too! I too, neither exercise nor abstain!

[Minna]

A tea story? I once had a chance to see -live- a Japanese tea ceremony. Well, an extremely short version of it, anyway. And I know someone (a Finn) who studied tea ceremony in Japan for a year. Now, Japanese take their tea very seriously!

[Ann Stephens]

I can't say I have a favorite quote about tea, but one of my favorite scenes in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is the use of Victorian tea service as a weapon between Gwendolyn and Cecily:

Gwendolen: "You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far."

Cecily: "To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy from the machinations of any other girl there are no lengths to which I would not go."

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Ann Stephens --

Yes. Yes. Yes!

I am *cough* Wilde about that scene. So perfect. The tea table as a scene of battle is so wonderful.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Minna --

I have not been privileged to attend a tea ceremony myself, though I have several times been able to see places where such ceremonies are held.

How lucky you are.

I find myself wondering what a coffee ceremony woud be like.

[theo]

Joanna,

I was not aware that they read coffee grounds. Very interesting. A side note on the coffee grounds, during the Civil War, rather than taking the time to brew their coffee, they'd simply chew the grounds.

*spppftackughewwwffft*

My gran was very good at reading and tried to show me. I sometimes saw what she did but most often no, I did not. And ancient is probably right because I've never met anyone else who can read them though I know it was not unusual in my gran's heyday (1890's)

I really love this post and copied it to a document to save if you don't mind.

I have noticed though in most of the historicals I read...people often pour tea, but they very rarely drink it.

[Joanna Bourne]

Here's a 1750 lithograph of a Gypsy doing the coffee grounds reading.

http://www.skeptiseum.org/index.php?id=123&cat=psychic&explain=false

Certainly you can save the document. No problem.

I have heard about soldiers chewing coffee grounds when there wasn't time to stop and make coffee. I connect it with WWII. If makes sense, really. If what you need is the caffeine, what better way to get it?

I had not thought about the poor characters never getting to drink their tea, but now that you mention it, I do beieve yu are right.

[Lori]

This was a great post! I can remember my family pouring a bit of their coffee or hot tea into their saucer and drinking it. My favorite tea quote is from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S.Elliott: "Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,/Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"

That poem also contains my favorite "coffee" quote: "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Lori --

I'm all of a sudden discovering the 'tea from a saucer' is alive and well in the Twenty-first century. I am so pleased.

Yes. Yes.

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

[Cathleen Ross]

I'm very fussy about my tea having an English mother. It has to be made in a pot. I would never consider a teabag. Someone once told me that teabags are made from the scraps that drop on the floor. I make sure the water is boiling and pour it over three heaped teaspoons of tea, then I have to turn the teapot around three times, put the milk in the cup and then pour the tea. This ritual can go on all day. I've turned my daughter into an addict too.
Best
Cathleen Ross

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Cathleen Ross --

My own objection to tea bags is I imagine I can taste the flavor of the actual paper. I wonder if I can or if I have just convinced myself I can.

I do think that high quality tea is far more likely to come loose. Folks who will go to the trouble of using loose tea are likely to be just a little more picky, thinks I.

[Diane]

Really enjoyed the pictures and explanations. I salute you with my pinky.
Diane

[Elisa Beatty]

Oh, lovely and wonderful, as always!!

I've always wondered at those references to "a dish of tea." Now I know. Much thanks!!

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Diane --

I just love all the bits and pieces of history. We can get so many original source on the internet these days.

[Joanna Bourne]

Hi Elisa --

It's 'dish of tea' in many, if not most period references. They must have been slurping from the saucer at a great rate.

[deniz]

Hi Jo,
Ah, but in one of the countries where tea is the most popular, Turkey, they never put milk in tea. And that's the way I like it too; I probably would have loved the days when "Folks tended to drink tea in a sip or two and get more fresh from the pot" - mine always gets cold and I only ever end up drinking half a cup each time, cos I'm so slow at it.

[Joanna Bourne]

I never had Turkish tea.

I am of two minds about Turkish coffee. I love it, but then I don't sleep for two days.

I look at it and wonder whether it's worth it and then I drink it anyhow. There is a certain antic madness that seizes me when it comes to Turkish coffee.