The World of Caffeine (32 page)

R.O.Mennell, one of Tuke’s distant descendants, in a charming little book published in 1926, proudly recounts the significance of his ancestor’s actions:
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In 1746, while the French were attempting to drive the English from India, Mary’s fourteen-year-old nephew, William Tuke, began an apprenticeship to her that was to last for six years. When he was only twenty, she died and left the business and property to him. After a rough start, he became extremely successful and controlled the thriving business for sixty-two years.

Tea adulteration, which had become a concern since the first shipments arrived from China, remained significant. Among the Tuke firm’s archives is a copy of an interesting contemporary act, 4 Geo. II cap. 14, by which it was decreed that fines would be levied on any dealer who “shall dye, fabricate or manufacture any Sloe leaves, Liquorice leaves, or the leaves of tea that have been used, or the leaves of any other tree, shrub or plant, in imitation of tea, or shall mix, colour, stain or dye such leaves or tea with terra japonica, sugar, molasses, clay, logwood, or with any other ingredients or materials whatsoever.”
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As evidence shows that the practice was increasing rather than abating, this edict may have served more as an advertisement of various methods of adulteration than as a deterrent against them. As a defense against this practice, John Horniman began selling measured amounts of tea in sealed paper packets. His company was later acquired by the two teenage Tetley brothers, and the use of tea bags became a general practice.
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Among the English, the ceremony and institution of afternoon tea has had the unifying force of the old Latin Mass in the Catholic Church. After all, like the members of the one true church, the English have long fancied themselves members of the one truly civilized society on earth, a claim that was bolstered by the fact that wherever in the world he was or whatever he was doing, every Englishman of any station throughout the empire reputedly observed the afternoon break for tea. This custom is still followed in situations Americans might find surprising. For example, international cricket matches in England, which of themselves demand almost supernal patience, are made still more spiritually challenging when interrupted at four o’clock for afternoon tea.

Tea has a habit of becoming identified with the best features of a civilization that sees itself as a refined and accomplished culture. Not only has it become so identified in England, but the traditions of China and, as we have seen, especially of Japan, elevate tea to the status of an emblem for their society and civilization. Afternoon tea, the introduction of which is credited to Anna of Bedford (1788–1861), epitomizes the meaning of tea in English life. Like the tea ceremony of Japan, the English afternoon tea did not spring full-grown into the world, but has a long and sometimes uncertain history.

The Tea,
by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, 1880. One of Cassatt’s most popular paintings, it shows two young women enjoying the decorous ritual of afternoon tea. (M.Theresa B.Hopkins Fund. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. © 2000 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved)

Almost from its earliest use in English, the word “tea” referred not only to the plant and the beverage but also to an occasion such as a reception where tea was served. The use of the word to refer to a light evening meal or supper, with tea as the accompanying beverage, first occurs in the eighteenth century. For example, John Wesley (1703–91), founder of Methodism, reported in 1780 that he encountered all the important persons of society “at breakfast and at tea,” which suggests that tea was an acknowledged repast at that time. High tea, or “meat tea,” which is sometimes confused by Americans with afternoon tea, is a full meal and came into existence sometime later, but exactly when is unknown.

At the time of Anna, the duchess of Bedford, the English ate large breakfasts, generally served with tea, snacked informally for lunch, and waited until eight in the evening to have their dinner, after which they also drank tea. Anna was one of the many people who experience a profound afternoon slump. To relieve what she called the “sinking feeling,” she is reputed to have directed her servants to bring her a tray of tea, bread and butter, and cake around four o’clock. This little repast picked her up so effectively that she busied herself spreading the new custom among her aristocratic friends and acquaintances.

By the 1880s, Anna’s invention had become a daily event, for which ladies, following an afternoon carriage ride, changed their costume and donned long tea gowns in expectation of the elegant ritual of refreshment. Meanwhile, the tea service, like its Japanese ceremonial counterpart, continued to evolve in sophistication, elaboration, and delicacy, including bread and butter plates and cake stands. By the turn of the twentieth century, wealthy Englishwomen and their escorts were able to take their tea at fancy establishments, the most famous of which was Rumpelmeyer’s. When the rage became international, establishments named “Rumpelmeyer’s,” in imitation of the original, were opened in Paris and elsewhere. Another Rumpelmeyer’s, in the St. Moritz on Central Park West, New York, still stands and was ambitiously redecorated in deco style in 1996.

It is difficult today to grasp how unsafe were most beverages available even in highly developed countries before the twentieth century. Because of the pure water shortage, even alcoholic drinks were regarded primarily as thirst quenchers.
Despite increased investments in water companies after 1805, outbreaks of water-borne diseases created several scandals over succeeding years. In the 1820s it became difficult for Londoners to find any drinking water, which created a new profession: water carrier. London hospitals served their patients only alcoholic drinks, and they were prudent to do so. In the 1840s it was an open secret that the poorer quarters of London were supplied with water that was clearly unfit for human use. In the 1850s private water supplies remained scarce and the city had few public pumps. At this time, even in upper-class households, water supply from the mains was intermittent, and only when the wooden pipes were replaced with iron ones would the shortages be alleviated.

Other sources of liquid refreshment were just as bad. Milk was dangerous even when fresh, and it was of poor quality or even adulterated, especially in the anonymously produced supplies reaching the city. In addition, this bad milk was very expensive and around 1850 was double the price of beer. Carbonated soda water was not sold in England until after 1790, and no Parisian-style
limonadiers
wandered the streets to slake the thirst of passersby. London residents were wise to rely on intoxicants, for which the water had been pumped from deep wells, or on the temperance drinks, coffee, tea, and chocolate, for which the water had been boiled. Adulteration of foodstuffs was still an unpleasant and nearly unavoidable fact of life, as it had been in Mary Tuke’s day. In a poem called “London Adulterations” published in 1825, the anonymous author laments these depredations:
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However, the cost of the nonalcoholic drinks, still high, was falling, and by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century these drinks became more available for home consumption. By the 1880s tea had declined in price so far that it had become a necessary fixture in working-class homes. Unfortunately, how much of this “tea” was actually
Camellia sinensis
is doubtful. The demand for tea created a large market in ersatz tea, actually compounded of blackthorn leaves and other substitutes, colored to make them resemble true tea. As Daniel Pool states, “The government estimated that for every seven pounds of authentic East India tea being sold under the monopoly, there were four phony pounds being sold to unsuspecting buyers.” By the 1840s, the plight of tea drinkers was further exacerbated by the operations of eight London factories, “busily recycling used tea leaves, often dyeing them and then mixing them with new tea for resale.”
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Perhaps eighty thousand pounds of tea were recycled annually in this way.

The reductions on duties on coffee enacted in 1808 and the subsequent renaissance in the London coffeehouses boosted coffee sales rapidly through the 1850s. In 1815 there were no more than a dozen coffeehouses in London. In 1821 William Lovett (1800–1887), an English writer and cartographer, found “comparatively few” and was forced to eat in a tavern. Further reductions in duties in 1825 helped to change this picture dramatically. By 1830, coffee had finally become cheap enough to compete with beer. As a result, coffeehouses began to open in greater numbers and reinstituted the custom of providing newspapers for the enjoyment of their patrons.

Chocolate was still a minor player in the story of English beverages. Van Houten’s invention of the modern process for making cacao was made only in 1828, and in 1830 John Cleave, a London merchant, was able to advertise chocolate as a “new beverage” called “theobroma.” The word “cocoa” was not generally in use until after 1840.

Despite all these developments, alcoholic drinks remained the cheapest and, because of the prevalence of the adulteration of milk and the temperance drinks, arguably the safest refreshments available. In 1830, a pint of coffee cost about three pence, at least twice the cost of gin or ale. In 1840, coffee cost about one and a half shillings a cup, tea about two shillings a
cup, and chocolate about four shillings a cup. In comparison, at this same time, a decent pint of porter, a dark brown bitter beer, was only two and a half shillings. By later Victorian times, coffee and tea had been fully integrated into the roster of necessaries kept and used in every workingclass household. In “How Five and Twenty Shillings Were Expended in a Week,” a poem published in an 1876 Birmingham broadside, a housewife accounts for her weekly expenditures for coffee, tea, alcohol, and the occasional luxury of soda pop: