There could be few nicer texts for an epitaph on anybody than that casual remark on that most discerning monarch, Queen Anne :
“Here, thou, Great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea.”
It would be so fragrant and grateful a memory to leave behind if it were said of anyone of us after death that we foo did sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea. For the humble need of counsel for frail humanity is certainly endless : so would appear to be the humble need of tea. Only, you may not get a decent unanimity on the universal usefulness of counsel; consult dear Carlyle who said it did no man any good. But of the splendid efficacy of the leaf who shall dare make denial ? I know a man who had not in him to admire either the private goodness or the public deeds of Queen Anne, but this man always mitigated his disapproval with the thought that “after all the lady liked her tea.”
Great and sage counsellors have in the long run of the centuries had statues erected to their memory to commemorate their sundry benefactions to the race. But there is none to that quiet immortal, the benignant discoverer of tea—the father of the tea-pot; the first maker and .filler of the tea-cup. Perhaps no omission in the gratitude of our civilization is so discreditable as this oversight of that seer and prophet who first of all the world was inspired with the possibilities of the leaf and, inserting it into steaming water, first concocted the beverage and made a historic ritual for the social self-expression of the world, I have been searching for the name of this great mystic and experimental philosopher rolled into one; but in vain. In the learned books of reference, I admit, there is mentioned a shadowy Emperor called Shen Mung who is said to have flourished in China and hit upon-the shrub in B. C. 2737. This would have been a credible story, but for the silly addition to his precocity that “all agriculture was due to him.”
No, the single discovery of the leaf is overpowering, enough to achieve the immortality of any one single great man without the enhancement of his reputation by throwing in rice and turnips and vegetable marrows. It is also said in the same learned books that one Bodhi Dharma, an Indian, first taught the Doctrine of Infusion to the Chinese about the year A.D. 543. Even this is hardly satisfactory. One has the unpleasant and even offensive picture of a great man leaving his own countrymen in ignorance and in the lurch and sneaking into a far country with a great revolutionising gospel.
Leaving these two alleged origins aside, I can only accept the assurance of P. Thomas who writes in the Journal of Anson’s Voyages (1745) as about the furthest one can get to in the state of our present knowledge. He writes; “Because warm water is unpalatable the Chinese bethought themselves of putting some leaves of a tree into it to give a better taste. Those of tea seemed to be the best”. It was undeniably a great day when those Chinese bethought themselves of this improvement. One must thank Providence for those anonymous Chinese.
I should not, however, be understood to say that those splendid fellows called their marvellous brew by such a mild and unobtrusive name as Tea. No. They, it seems, called it “Chaa;” a truly powerful word blending rather an explosive exultation with an ecstatic surprise. And then they smacked their lips. And the Portuguese, it seems, were the first to hear the wonderful cry, and then the Dutch, and both parties, thereupon, proceeded at once to adopt the joyous invocation, as approximately as they could pick it up, into their letters home and the brew itself into their diet, According to Meyer’s Konversations-Lexicon, the first mention of “Chaa” in Europe is due to the Portuguese in 1559 (for which the rest of Europe cannot be too grateful), but the Dutch, apparently not being so acute of hearing, reported from Bantam, a “te” or “thee” in 1610 or1 thereabouts.
In 1598 Europe is acquainted enough with the thing, but more or less from afar, for W. Philip, translating the Linschoten, makes a definition of the term. A definition implies a demand for knowledge; also for the goods. W. Philip’s information is : “The aforesaid warm water is made with the powder of a certain herb called “Chaa.” But in 1655 Semedo, writing in his History of China, cannot only define but identify the tree as if he has seen it with his own eyes : “a leaf of a tree about the bigness of mirtle; its also called Tay.” Semedo, manifestly, was not much good as a phonetician and did certainly mislead his generation. From the couplet which I have quoted at the outset it is clear Alexander Pope called for his Tay; so, perhaps, did even Queen Anne, if she did not rather call for her Bohea (Bohay). I, for one, feel bound to regret the degeneracy that befell that most expressive vocable, “Chaa.”
To some extent the hurry and hustle of the markets which arose to deal in the commodity no doubt favoured the more abrupt and snappier cry of “Tea”. The sellers have no time to waste. In 1660 Thomas Garway issues an Exact Description of the Growth, Quality and Virtues of the Leaf Tea alias Tay and “these are to give notice that the said Thomas Garway hath Tea to sell from sixteen to fifty shillings the pound.” Wives and others of the female sex at home are writing letters to press their men in the Far Eastern lands to send them presents of the fashionable commodity. Even the East India Company’s Directors write in January, J 667, with hearty appetite, though without the same kind of sex appeal:” “We desire you to procure and send us by these ships 100 lb. weight of the Best Tay that you can get.” To such an extent the draughts have increased since the day of Mr. Wickham. The first letterwriter of all, who wrote in 1615 from Firando in Japan to his friend, Mr. Eaton, modestly asking for just a “pot of the best sort of chaa.”
Once discovered, the leaf is quickly getting famous and winning golden opinions. It is doing good everywhere, Perhaps a handful of Golden Tips have already done more good to the world in its way than a whole book of the Golden Rules of Confucius. Bontius, a writer of a Natural and Medical History of the East, Indies cannot express his enthusiasm except in Latin. He asks : “Memineras de Chinensium Thee vocato, quid tu de eo sentis?,” which in plain English is “What think you of Tea?” The History does not record the reply which might have been put briefly; “d—D” good.” Dryden’s Wild Gallant has in 1663 sent for three dishes of tea. What a useful lady for the advertisement of tea ! About the same time the eager Mr. Pepys is entering up in his Diary : “I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of which I had not drunk before.”
In Congreve’s “Double Dealer” you find that delicious concomitant of tea for the first time celebrated : “They are at the end of the gallery, retired to their Tea and Scandal.” From Prior’s Advice to Young Gentlemen in Love” you will learn the value of a cup to brace one up after achieving of the heroic :
“He thanked her on his bended knee,
Then drank a quart of milk and tea.”
But beware of the grave censure of the “Gentlemen’s Magazine’* of April 1762 on a too selfish visit to your hostess :
“No crowding sychophants from day to day.
Came to admire the babe – but more the tea.”
If the Portuguese and the Dutch first smelt tea, let it be said of England, my England that she it was who spread tea-tables all the world over. Among the world-wide benefactions, of her genius remember to count her Afternoon Tea. Forget not her High Tea, These her institutions began early enough. Even such a fervent man of religion as Wesley relates very importantly that “at breakfast and at tea, on those two days, I met all Society.” Francis Kemble in an autobiography dated 1882 recalls his introduction to afternoon tea which took place on a visit to Belvoir. “I do not believe,” he writes, “that the now universally honoured institution of five o’clock tea dates further back than this.” By 1883 the English public is described in “Cassell’s Family Magazine” as “the tea-loving English public.” “The Westminster Gazette” in 1894 thinks “The British have become the greatest tea-producers in the world.”
The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1888 calls England “the greatest tea-importing country of the world,” with a pat on the back for Ceylon “whose tea-industry has developed with marvellous rapidity.” In 1886 the “Pall Mall Gazette” has already noted this about Ceylon : “The new industry of tea-farming promises to become a new source of wealth to Ceylon.” In 1897 in one of Miss Harraden’s novels the most memorable festivity is “a rattling good tea—hot rolls, fried potatoes and quail.” But over a century earlier Horace Walpole, if not such a zesty gourmand of the tea-table, was more of a slave. “You will think”, he fears, “I have removed my philosophy” from Windsor with my tea-things hither.
No doubt, the urn had triumphed which had subjugated the wits and statesmen, leaders and thinkers, dames and ladies and snobs and swells of three centuries and enlisted her poets laureate from among Pope and Cowper, Gay and Goldsmith, Coleridge and Lamb, Addison and the great tea-swilling thirty-cup-at-a-time Johnson himself. It might have even been feared if the brew was not undermining a nation. W. Philips comments sardonically in his Life of Charles Martyn (1837) : “Certainly we sons of the teaspillers are a marvellously patient generation ” Asks Hanway with sarcasm in his Essay on Tea (1756) : “Were they the sons of tea-sippers who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt ?”
But really the moralists have failed altogether to destroy the ritual of tea which has gone on adding to its rubrics. It has since added plentifully of sugars and confectionery; it has evolved a range of utensils and vessels proper for the ceremony; started and re-made many times over vogues and modes of dress for the drinkers and rehabilitated codes politeness and produced matter for hand-books of wit and sprightly social conversation. The one small word has begotten a host of others swelling the vocabulary of everyday speech from “tea-bug” to “tea-party” (Boston.)
In the West the manners of the tea service has clearly had or its badge the doctrine of Liberalism; it has, therefore, changed from season to season. In the Far East, where the leaf first sprang, it has remained strictly conservative. Witness the otiose and elaborate formality and polite procedure of the Chinese tea-ceremony. The Second Good Rule of Propriety reads. “The guest brings the bowl of tea to his forehead in token of respect before proceeding to drink. His mind should be attuned to higher things that it may be susceptible to any aesthetic suggestion that the bowl of tea may induce.’ The Fourth says “Correct manner of holding tea-bowl: it is held securely in both hands, a, perfect balance being essential to maintenance of mental equilibrium.
The beauty of the grey beverage whose bubbles suggest the effervesence of life should not escape the notice of him who drinks.” The Fifth Rule runs thus “Drinking the tea is in three sips and a half, the last being accompanied by an appreciative sound of drawing the last drop. After wiping the edge where the lips touched, the drinker looks into the bowl at the design which may possibly give him a clue for an aesthetic contemplation.”
All which is so beautiful and mystical and everything. I regret we have departed so much from those Norms of Pure Potation. Drinking the 927,394,000 lbs., of tea which, according to official figures, got consumed by the world in 1931, how few of us, or our ladies, as we did that high huge trick by just adding cup to cup, ever remembered to “maintain a mental equilibrium?” How many of us, as we drank up our 10 ½ lb. averaged out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for each one of us in 1932, delayed at least a moment in “aesthetic contemplation?” Our great Mr. Churchill the other day remarked that all was right with the nation because there was a steady increase all round in those key articles of consumption—tea and sugar, I am wondering if to him at least “the grey beverage and its’ bubbles suggested the effervesence of life.”
I am not questioning in the haughty spirit of a perfect and punctilious devotee of the beverage like a pig-tailed lord in Peking but in all the guilt of our common departure from those polished codes of the oldest tea-service. Even now, I fancy, we could make up for it. At our very next tea, I for one, shall, most orthodoxically and in a firm voice, request of her: “Chaa, and two lumps, please.” I should not forget the duty of proper “aesthetic contemplation,” noting of course, the need also, of a “maintenance of mental equilibrium.” And having received the cup from her (ta!) should then drain it (pardon me) to the “accompaniment of an appreciative sound.”