Tea Time

By the end of the 17th century, the pattern of tea drinking had been established as an after-dinner ritual, presided over by the ladies in elegant surroundings away from the dining room. Its associations were with idle feminine chatter, stately homes and gardens, fine porcelain and genteel behavior. The incredibly high cost and the skill needed to brew the beverage meant that servants were never allowed to handle the leaf. Their responsibility was merely to deliver the tea-making equipment to the appropriate room with a plate of bread and butter and leave the lady of the house to carry out the brewing ritual.

Little changed through the 18th century, except that prices dropped a little and even those who could ill afford the still expensive leaf, replaced their earlier preference for ale and beer with a passionate love of tea. By the late 1700s, while wealth)" aristocrats entertained visitors to a 'dish of tea', servant girls were surreptitiously slurping the dregs from their mistresses' teapots, harvesters and laborers were eagerly quenching their thirst with bottles of cold tea in the shade of their haystacks, and even beggars were discovered lurking in country lanes brewing mugs of tea from cheaper smuggled and adulterated leaf.

Afternoon tea, the most British of all our tea occasions, is said to have been invented in the 1840s by the 7th Duchess of Bedford. The development was more an adaptation than an invention, and resulted from the gradual shifting of the mam meal from early afternoon to late evening. Breakfast at nine o'clock, newly created luncheon at midday and dinner at 8.00 or 9.00 p.m. left a long afternoon with no refreshment. What better to fill the gap than cups of tea with the customary platefuls of thin slices of bread and butter? And so dinner and tea quietly swapped places.

As the Victorian period progressed and the middle classes grew, tea became an ideal focus for social occasions amongst all ranks and in all corners of Britain. The aristocracy continued as before, the middle classes pretended that their lives and tea parties were just as grand, while the poorer classes pooled their meagre supply of china and brewed weak but comforting pots of tea that made their harsh days less dreary

Heady Edwardian days brought palm court lounges with string quartets to entertain the elegant rich while they sipped their tea at four o'clock. And the arrival in London of the tango in 1910 led to the somewhat eccentric addition of tango tea-dances to the teatime repertoire. Hands of whist, music and 'dancing on the carpet had long been features of both after-dinner and afternoon tea drinking, but now the colourful combination of tea and dance moved out of the home and onto the floor of the hotel lounge and fashionable restaurant.

Two world wars, radical shifts in lifestyle and the arrival of instant coffee and fast food brought about a temporary demise in teatime activities in the 1950s. But since the early 1980s, tea has shown its determination not to be ignored or rejected. It has become a special guest, welcomed by us all at every social event, and as comfortable at royal garden parties as by the fire in a simple country cottage. What other drink refreshes and revives, comforts and calms, provides a focus for quiet communication with such ease and simplicity as tea? Should it ever be replaced by less elegant and palatable beverages, we will have lost a trusted and loyal friend who has kept us company and improved our lives for 350 years.