Afternoon Tea: A History and Guide to the Great Edwardian Tradition by Vicky Straker

Author:Vicky Straker [Straker, Vicky]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

6

From the Other Side of the Coin

My mother used to say, ‘You’ll need to know all about kitchen stuff and household things because you’ll only be able to live if you can work.’

Nancy Jackman with Tom Quinn, The Cook’s Tale, 2012

It was the task of the servants to ensure that all accessories necessary for the service of tea were put in place. The average middle class home by this period had a servant. Having one showed that you belonged to a successful family. Where only one servant could be afforded, she was a ‘maid-of-all-work’, a position envied by none. Average-sized houses may have two servants, more if they could afford it.

Domestic writing of the Victorian and Edwardian era states that an average household had eight to ten bedrooms, with a cook, parlour maid, housemaid and a between-maid or ‘tweeny’.65 Live-in servants using up some of the bedrooms, as well as traditionally large families, explain this sizeable household being considered average; it may be argued that ‘average’ here is being applied to the average household who could afford servants rather than the average person in Britain.

A ‘tweeny’ would help the housemaid with her duties. Household books advised the mistress to ensure that advantage was not taken with the ‘tweeny’ being overworked. Dorothy Peel writes of much higher servant numbers in larger houses and stately homes where married servants may live in a house on the estate. The importance of the servants’ etiquette was such that entire chapters would be allocated in domestic books to their duties, dress and wages.66

Ordering the kitchen supplies was the job of the cook. The few books written by ladies during the Edwardian era advised on allowing 85 g of tea per head per week; this allows for twenty-five to thirty cups per person, showing just how important a role tea played! Tea was served to the family at about 4 o’clock, during which time, while the servants would be on call, the kitchen maid was busy preparing the vegetables for dinner and rustling up the servants’ tea for half-past five.

A nest of tea tables, one fitting on top of the other, was used in drawing rooms, tucked away and put out once each day at teatime. They varied in size and height, stacking up one on top of the other; they could be elaborate or plain, depending upon what the hostess could afford. This nest would be discretely put out by a maid with a tablecloth on the largest, on which would be laid the tea in front of the mistress. On one of the tables may be set a spirit lamp over which the tea, coffee or bouillon (meat broth) would be set to ensure it remained hot. Various other tea tables were invented at the time, such as the revolving tea tray, and the ‘surprise table’; it held the tea tray in its centre when opened and all signs of the tea would disappear by folding over the wings of the table to conceal the tray, were a servant not at hand to remove it.

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