Who Put the Tea in Britain?

Giving Taipei people a taste of drinking English afternoon tea, holding a saucer, lifting a porcelain cup, set off by fine cakes, was one of the main attractions of the 1995 British Festival in Taipei.Just what is "afternoon tea"? Why drink it in the afternoon? What time should one drink it? And what is "high tea"--or, for that matter, "low tea"?Sitting in his stately home, surrounded by Chinese-style pavilions and towers, an English marquess whose ancestor was once active in the East India Company's tea trade, in answer to the same questions put to him by a television reporter, replied humorously that when tea was first brought to England it was expensive and rare, and no-one knew how it should be drunk. So people asked the tea merchants, who answered glibly that the Chinese all drank their tea around four or five in the afternoon, and that is how the custom came into being!Is that really the way it was? China's tea with its myriad varieties has spread all over the world, but why did it--with the addition of milk--become the national drink of England?

Most Chinese prefer to drink green tea. So when this herb crossed the ocean to Britain, why was it black tea which became England's national drink? The most imaginative answer to this question is that several centuries ago, when what had started out as unfermented or lightly fermented green tea reached London after an 18-month sea voyage, it had all fermented and become black tea!

This French cartoon informs about the British fashion for drinking tea. The low rail around the edge of the table is to prevent the precious tea service falling off.

What's the right time for afternoon tea?

Perhaps green tea's transformation into black tea was simply the irresistible will of heaven, but when it got in the hands of this world power, why did the tea which the Chinese drink at any time of day have to be drunk in the afternoon?

Apart from making good material for a joke competition, questions like these also reflect that the broad range of interwoven topics such as time, place, agricultural techniques, science, society, lifestyles and culinary habits involved in the 300 years' history of tea's introduction to the West are part of a long story which is rarely told in full. Who says the Chinese mainly drink green tea, or that the English only drink black tea, or that afternoon tea has to be drunk in the afternoon?

In fact the English-style afternoon tea accompanied by cakes and biscuits, which is a familiar image to most people today, did not appear until very late. The story goes that in the 1840s Anna, wife of the 7th Duke of Bedford, found that in the afternoons time lay heavy on her hands, with many hours still to get through before the evening's formal dress dinner with all its manners and etiquette. So in a flash of inspiration she invited a few close friends to relax together and enjoy tea and snacks, never imagining that she was founding an institution.

But this was clearly not the origin of the custom of "drinking tea in the afternoon." Even back in the late 17th century, when tea was worth its own weight in gold in London, and drinking tea was still a great luxury, the proper time to drink tea was also in the afternoon. This was because right up until the early 18th century, it was the custom in Britain to take two meals a day, the main meal being at two or three o'clock in the afternoon. Thus we can calculate that when the guests moved to the drawing room after dinner to drink tea, the hour would indeed have been "about four or five in the afternoon."

After tea reached England it became a favorite of the upper classes, and not only found its way into poetry and painting, but played an important role in portraiture. The young lady in the picture is holding a Chinese-style teabowl.

Welcome the morning and solace the midnight

With the advance of lighting equipment, dinner gradually moved to a later hour and a light luncheon made its appearance. In the 19th century, dinner moved even later to eight in the evening, and "teatime," between lunch and dinner, came into being as a response to the workings of the biological clock, and not merely through the inventiveness of the Duchess of Bedford. Tea and snacks served informally on a low table was called "low tea," while if the tea was accompanied by cakes and pies in enough quantity to take the place of a full meal, it was "high tea."

In fact even the well-behaved English have never had a rule that tea can only be drunk in the afternoon. The famous 18th century tea-drinking man of letters Samuel Johnson described himself as someone "whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, and who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight and with tea welcomes the morning." We cannot confirm whether Dr. Johnson's long-standing habit of drinking China tea helped him complete the first dictionary of the English language, but when tea arrived in Britain it really did attract its first group of devotees for its marvelous powers to revive and refresh, and to dispel diseases.

An antique lacquerware tea-chest with lock form the collection of Twinings' tea shop in London.

A marvelous cure-all

When tea first came to the continent of Europe around 1610 it provoked a great war of words in Holland and France over its supposed curative properties. In the end the pro-tea faction, whose number included a royal physician, gained the upper hand. its arguments backed up with authoritative case histories. Thus some people believe that the reason why tea never matched coffee for popularity in continental Europe was that it could never shake off its stereotyped image as a medicinal herb.

But in England, with the help of merchants' advertising, tea became an all-curing marvelous elixir.

The advertising broadsheets of a tea merchant named Thomas Garraway boasted that his shop sold tea "in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing merchants and travellers into eastern countries." Among other ailments, he claimed, it would help cure headache, dropsy, scurvy, sleepiness, loss of memory, looseness of the guts, heavy dreams, and collick proceeding from the wind. Garraway also assured his readers that "if you are of corpulent body it ensures a good appetite, and if you have had a surfeit it is just the thing to give you a gentle vomit."

This special advertisement obviously appealed to consumers. The English naval administrator Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary how one day in 1667 he returned home to find his wife "making of Tea . . . a drink which Mr. Pelling the potticary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions"!

A tea table in a corner of the Blue Room at the English stately home Woburn Abbey reminds visitors of the rare tea, valuable porcelain and elegant manners of the 18th century.

All thanks to high taxes

So was drinking tea as effective in curing Mrs. Pepys cold as Mr. Garraway's advertisement suggested? Unfortunately, Pepys' next diary entry does not tell us. But from records of the time we do know that in 1666 the East India Company imported 231b of tea leaves from the Orient, and that in the same year Lord Arlington sold China tea which he brought back to London from Amsterdam to friends for over ●2 18s. a pound! In other words, even if Mrs. Pepys' cup of rare and expensive tea had no pharmaceutical effect, its psychological effect must have been incomparable.

Investigating further, the reason tea became Britain's national drink is said to have had much to do with this kind of "social effect."

Tea came to continental Europe before it reached England, so why was it only England which developed a unique culture of tea drinking, with tea becoming the national drink of the whole people? Of course, there were many reasons. Samuel Twining, 9th-generation chairman of the Twinings tea company of England, founded in 1706, said--to this reporter's surprise--that the real cause was "snobbery"!

Rarity gives things value, and value is a source of human pride; Twining ascribes the main credit for creating this national drink to the monarchs, starting with CharlesII, who taxed tea heavily from the 17th century onwards. After English tea taxes were first introduced, they increased repeatedly to reach a high of 119%. The heavier the duty, the dearer tea grew, and the more insatiable consumers' demand for it became. The "conspicuous consumption" described by the economist Veblen is by no means only a modern phenomenon.

Another product from China found its way into Europeans' lives at the same time as tea: tea sets made of porcelain, which was previously unknown in Europe.

The coffee-houses of 17th and 18th-century London were places where people from political and business circles gathered to converse and debate, and to sample a novel drink: tea.

Rare tea, valuable porcelain and elegant ladies

"It's hard for us to imagine how delighted the English ladies were to get Chinese porcelain, when they were still using pewter," says Mr. Twining. From that time on "China" became synonymous with "china." In those days even people rich enough to afford an entire service of silverware would do their best to procure a set of durable and beautiful imported porcelain--which would not burn their fingers--as a status symbol. What's more, when the upper class ladies elegantly picked up these fine, white translucent Chinese teabowls (cups without handles) with their middle and forefingers, at the same time they could display how their own delicate hands possessed the same properties.

With rare tea, valuable porcelain and elegant ladies, it is hardly surprising that the high taxes only encouraged the English, and the culture of tea drinking quickly spread from the court and aristocracy to the rich merchant class.

Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, was the first tea-loving queen in English history, and a leader of the tea-drinking fashion. When she married Charles she brought tea leaves with her from Portugal in her trousseau; on her birthday, a court poet compared the virtues of tea with the virtues of the queen, and even had them surpassing those of the Muses and Venus. Later the celebrated Elizabeth Duchess of Lauderdale busied herself at Ham House, in a curve of the Thames, ordering silver teabowls in imitation of Chinese porcelain ware, a carved tea table, and matching "Japaned backstooles with Cane bottomes." From then on all kinds of imitation-lacquer tea chests, tea tables and silverware made their appearance in the houses of the royal family and the aristocracy. The arrival of China tea sparked off the fashion for Chinoiserie in interior decoration.

A wooden box at the coffee-house doorway was marked T.I.P.--"to insure promptness." When the waiters heard the jangle of a sufficiently large amount of coin falling into the box, they hurried out to give preferential service. This is said to be the origin of the expression "tipping.".

Under lock and key

From Mrs. Pepys' cup of China tea drunk to treat a cold, to 1678 when the East India Company began importing tea for resale, the quantity of tea reaching Britain increased by 200 times, not counting the tea brought in privately by ships' masters or smuggled in by other means. In the same year, someone was already complaining at the wickedness of those "who call for TEA instead of Pipes and Bottles after dinner" and decrying this base unworthy oriental practice as unsuitable for a Christian family.

Nevertheless, tea drinking spread rapidly in 18th-century Britain. It not only found its way into poetry, literature and art, but also became an indispensable element in social life. Ladies kept their tea in individually made, carefully crafted wooden "tea-chests," which were carved and embellished with such materials as ivory, mother of pearl and tortoiseshell. Tea-chests were usually kept locked, and the little key was hung from the mistress' waist to prevent pilfering by the servants. Around this time a variety of accessories also appeared on the little tea table in the living room, such as silver kettles, silver tea strainers and porcelain slop bowls.

When tea was drunk, because tea and the tea "equipage" were so valuable, the sacred right to brew the beverage could not be delegated to servants. Instead the mistress of the house wielded the teapot herself, passing the cups to each guest in turn.

Poured into the cup, drunk from the saucer

Quaffing this expensive Eastern infusion and using these novel and elegant imported utensils was by no means a pleasure accessible to everyone. Thus all kinds of genteel etiquette for the tea table began to play an important role in English society.

For instance, initially the Chinese cups were small and had no handles, and the saucers were deep, so some people took to pouring their tea into the saucer to cool it before drinking. At some times and in some places this was acceptable, but generally it was considered uncouth. But even His Majesty King George III, who sent the first British ambassador to China to visit Emperor Qianlong, had the "bad habit" of drinking from the saucer.

Another widely told story is that of a French diplomat on his first visit to London who, at the tea table of some Lady, after politely accepting the 14th cup of tea from his hostess' hands, finally rose in agony and cried: "Madam, excuse me, I can take no more!" It seems he was unaware that after finishing his cup he should put that accursed teaspoon into it, to show that he had had enough; thus good manners left his hostess no choice but to pour him another. Strictly speaking, apart from having failed to acquaint himself with the rules of local etiquette--not to mention the abuse of his tortured bladder--the real faux pas in this Frenchman's behavior was that he actually drank those 14 cups of tea, subjecting himself to such expensive discomfort!

Twinings' old shop in London stands beside a bank and opposite a courthouse, on the site of the original Tom's Coffee-house.

Want a cup of tea? Go to a coffee-house!

The Twining family made no mean contribution to the spread of tea drinking in England. In 1706 the young Thomas Twining showed his astute commercial judgment by opening a coffee-house in the area where London's banks and courts were concentrated. In 18th-century London, coffee-houses were places were professional people such as lawyers, judges, journalists, merchants and bankers gathered. As well as drinking a cup of fashionable coffee, they could also read the newspaper (provided free) and chat or debate with people of shared interests. But naturally these places were not open to women.

The difference between Tom's Coffee-house and the other 2000 or more in London was that Twining also served tea, and especially stressed that he could supply a wide range of the best quality dry teas. This made it convenient for women to buy tea: ladies who could not enter the premises themselves could sit elegantly in their carriages and send a footman into the coffee-house to fetch their order. Ten years later, Twining opened a shop selling dry tea and coffee, which became de rigueur for upper-class ladies to visit. Buying tea was one reason; being seen buying tea was naturally even more important.

As London grew rapidly in size, its population came to include more and more rough elements, and thus from the mid-18th century onwards, the coffee-houses, which had become haunts of people of doubtful repute, gradually fell from genteel favor. Tea-gardens, whose high prices ensured a more select clientele, rose up in their stead. These gardens charged a stiff entrance fee, but one could enjoy drinking tea with one's whole family, and they were very popular for a time. Mozart may have been among their patrons when he visited London with his father at the age of five. His father wrote that as well as offering tea, flowers and music, the tea-gardens of the time also provided as much bread and butter as one could eat.

As the coffee-houses went into decline, tea gardens took over as fashionable places where well-heeled Londoners could imbibe and socialize.

Beggars drinking tea? Whatever next?

Just as the gentry followed the tea-drinking fashion of the aristocracy to show their status, as tea became more and more affordable, the laboring classes naturally also wanted to enjoy this auspicious beverage, which evidently symbolized prosperity and good breeding.

When the working classes began drinking tea in a big way, the former "tea-ed classes" were not at all amused. One essayist angrily exclaimed that the nation had arrived at the height of folly, "when ordinary people are not satisfied with wholesome food at home, but must go to the remotest regions to please a vicious palate!" Absurdly, he railed, even beggars and the laborers mending the roads were drinking tea!

Samuel Johnson also opposed this trend, for the reason that "tea is a liquor not proper for the lower classes of the people, as it supplies no strength to labour, or relief to disease, but gratifies the taste without nourishing the body."

Social reformers of the time, whatever their class, all attacked tea drinking as an extravagance. In 1771 the famous agricultural reformer Arthur Young remarked that society had grown accustomed to luxury, and "as much superfluous money is wasted on tea and sugar as would maintain four million more subjects on bread." All kinds of theories that tea-drinking would be the ruin of the nation appeared at this time. Intellectuals viewed this indulgence in "an article so unnecessary, so expensive, so destructive of time," as indicative of the decline of religion and morality, or even warned that drinking tea was "pernicious to health."

Drinking tea in a real tea garden is a pleasure which can only be enjoyed in a tea-growing country. Shown here is a tea garden in Mucha on the outskirts of Taipei which is open to sightseers.

Rampant adulteration

How people as poor as beggars could afford to go drinking tea "above their station," cannot be explained by smuggling alone (in the latter half of the 18th century, at least half the tea entering Britain was smuggled). But why was this "excellent drink," the curative properties of which had been "by all Physitians approved," now accused of harming the health? To answer this, we have to look at just what kind of "tea" the poor were drinking.

The China tea imported into Britain from the 17th century included both black and green teas. The green teas mainly comprised Pekoe, Souchong, Bohea and Congou, while the most popular black teas were Gunpowder and Hyson. In those days the price of a pound of tea ranged from 16 shillings to 50 shillings (before decimal currency, ●1 was equivalent to 20 shillings), which was as much as a craftsman earned in a fortnight to a month. In the 18th century the quantities imported increased vastly, and smuggling was rife, but prices were still beyond the means of poor people.

So just what tea were beggars and roadmenders drinking, to the great displeasure of the upper classes? A statute passed in 1776 gives us a clue. The law made it an offence "to dye or fabricate any sloe leaves, liquorice leaves or leaves of tea that has been used," and unscrupulous merchants found to be doing so could be sentenced to a ●5 fine or a year's imprisonment for every pound of tea "fabricated." The most common method of rejuvenating tea at the time is said to have been by adding dried hawthorn leaves or ash tree leaves to mouldy old tea leaves and boiling them with copperas or sheep's dung to make "green" or "black" tea!

From the 19th century onwards, discussing politics over a drink of tea was no longer the exclusive reserve of professional people. This satirical cartoon shows the laboring classes taking tea and debating politics in a farmhouse.

From luxury to necessity

Tea did not really become the British national drink until after 1784 when Parliament passed the Commutation Act, which cut the tea tax from 119% to 12.5%. This event was a milestone in the popularization of tea drinking. Lobbying by Richard Twining, then Chairman of the Tea Dealers, greatly helped the bill's passage. The immediate reason for reducing the tax was a failure of the wheat harvest, which severely affected the production of ale.

For the British, who in those days had no purified drinking water, weak ale had been the only safe beverage. In 18th century Britain there was an acute rack of fuel wood, because of the industrial Revolution and the boom in shipbuilding for sea trade. Thus the lower classes lived largely on dry bread, since they had insufficient fuel for cooking, but only enough to boil the occasional kettle. If they could boil tea to drink instead of beer, then they would have a safe source of drinking water, and hot tea twice a day might also be the only warm and comforting item in their diet. The passage of the Commutation Act amounted to official recognition that tea had become a necessity in the lives of the English of every class.

The direct consequence of the tax cut was that the price of tea fell and the supply greatly increased. From the late 18th century into the 19th century, tea merchants no longer had to stress tea's medicinal effects or try to attract customers with such phrases as "suppliers to the nobility and gentry." Instead they began to compete with all kinds of free gifts, giving away everything from sugar, maps and calendars to teacups and tea-trays. Also, while in the early days drinking tea had been seen as an evil habit unsuitable for Christian households and injurious to health and spirit, in the 19th-century Temperance Movement it was coopted into the camp of the guardians of morality. The fact that moralists strongly promoted tea showed clearly that it no longer bore any stigma of extravagance. One result of ordinary people switching from ale to tea was a great fall in the high death rate among Britain's laboring classes, which had been caused by drinking bad ale over long periods.

At first in England tea was mainly sold loose. Merchants did not generally sell tea in prepackaged quantities until the 1880s. From selling imported Chinese tea to creating its own brands, the story of Twinings is a microcosm of the history of tea drinking in Britain.

Indian black tea takes the lead

From royalty and the nobility to common traders and porters, from the City of London to the poorest country town, "don't forget that the spread of tea was inseparable from the arteries of Britain's industrial revolution: the canals and railways," says Edward Bramah, professional tea taster and director of London's Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum, who in his youth planted tea in Africa. Apart from this, Britain's extensive colonies, which provided the British Empire with raw materials and labor, naturally also played an important role in the history of Britain's tea drinking in the 19th century.

"We can say that before 1850, all Britain's tea came from China," says Mr. Bramah, explaining that in 1830 the Briton C.A. Bruce made an unsuccessful attempt to transplant tea from China to Assam. But later indigenous varieties were found locally. The Chinese varieties which were later successfully planted in Darjeeling and Ceylon were all large-leafed black teas. In 1834 the British set up a committee to plan the introduction of tea growing into their Indian colonies, and sent people to China to study tea growing and processing techniques and to buy tea seeds and saplings. They also hired tea masters and workers from areas such as Wuyi. Five years later the first consignment of Assam tea was auctioned in London.

Most Britons' preference for black tea today, says Samuel Twining, also has to do with the tea tax. This is because tea from Britain's colonies entered the country duty free, whereas duty on China tea was not lifted until 1956. "But green tea never died out in England, and now it is coming back very strongly," Mr. Twining stresses. He explains that since the 1980s there has been a great increase in health consciousness, and many medical reports have confirmed that green tea is beneficial to the health. Green teas also have a greater range of flavors, and they are returning to popularity. Among the teas currently imported by Twinings, China teas now account for 43%, including many types of green tea such as Gunpowder and Oolong.

Jade pearls changed to gunpowder?

Of course it would be nice if Gunpowder tea from Zhejiang and Oolong from Taiwan became new favorites on English tea tables. But if they do, will they too change out of all recognition?

Entering the doorway of Twinings' London shop, passing under the two statues of Chinamen on the lintel, in among the beautiful array of exquisitely packed teas on the shelves, Chinese visitors may be surprised to discover tin after tin openly marked "Gunpowder".

However, this is not a terrorist munitions dump, but simply the English name for Chinese zhucha (literally "pearl tea"). The reason is that three centuries ago, when the jade-like balls of zhucha green tea had made their way across the ocean, although they had not fermented to become black tea, in the eyes of the English they seemed to have "changed" into lead shot. So it is not surprising that in World War II, tea was seen as the "secret weapon" which raised the British fighting spirit to resist Hitler. During the war the Minister of Food stressed again and again that "Tea is more than a beverage in Britain."

Apart from being a drink and gunpowder, what else is tea in Britain? We might as well remind our readers--especially any tea merchants who are rubbing their hands and hoping to get into the British market for green tea--of the following:

Full circle: English afternoon tea comes to Taiwan, at Taipei's 1995 British Festival.

More than just a drink

Looking over 300 years of tea's history in Britain, it has never been simply a drink--a fact which the 19th-century critic and humanist John Ruskin quite failed to grasp. Ruskin opened a tea shop in London specially to sell tea of guaranteed quality to the poor at reasonable prices. But his customers were few, and in the end he shut up shop, complaining that "the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly lit and eloquently ticketed."

[Picture Caption]

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From Shennong and Lu Yu to the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland, this giant-size teapot in London's Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum tells the story of China tea's journey across the oceans to faraway Britain.

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After tea found its way to the West, paintings of its land of origin became popular there too.

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This French cartoon informs about the British fashion for drinking tea. The low rail around the edge of the table is to prevent the precious tea service falling off.

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After tea reached England it became a favorite of the upper classes, and not only found its way into poetry and painting, but played an important role in portraiture. The young lady in the picture is holding a Chinese-style teabowl.

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An antique lacquerware tea-chest with lock from the collection of Twinings' tea shop in London.

A tea table in a corner of the Blue Room at the English stately home Woburn Abbey reminds visitors of the rare tea, valuable porcelain and elegant manners of the 18th century.

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The coffee-houses of 17th and 18th-century London were places where people from political and business circles gathered to converse and debate, and to sample a novel drink: tea.

p.11

A wooden box at the coffee-house doorway was marked T.I.P.--"to insure promptness." When the waiters heard the jangle of a sufficiently large amount of coin falling into the box, they hurried out to give preferential service. This is said to be the origin of the expression "tipping."

p.11

Twinings' old shop in London stands beside a bank and opposite a courthouse, on the site of the original Tom's Coffee-house.

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As the coffee-houses went into decline, tea gardens took over as fashionable places where well-heeled Londoners could imbibe and socialize.

p.13

Drinking tea in a real tea garden is a pleasure which can only be enjoyed in a tea-growing country. Shown here is a tea garden in Mucha on the outskirts of Taipei which is open to sightseers.

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From the 19th century onwards, discussing politics over a drink of tea was no longer the exclusive reserve of professional people. This satirical cartoon shows the laboring classes taking tea and debating politics in a farmhouse.

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At first in England tea was mainly sold loose. Merchants did not generally sell tea in prepackaged quantities until the 1880s. From selling imported Chinese tea to creating its own brands, the story of Twinings is a microcosm of the history of tea drinking in Britain.

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Full circle: English afternoon tea comes to Taiwan, at Taipei's 1995 British Festival.