The Tea Cyclopedia by Keith Souter

Author:Keith Souter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Tea Etiquette

Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.

Mark Twain (1835–1910)

TEA ETIQUETTE HARKENS BACK TO DAYS GONE BY, WHEN conventions and social conventions were much more rigid. Not surprisingly, most of the standard tea etiquette dates back to the days of the British Empire.

In the Regency and Victorian eras, social etiquette reached fastidious proportions, and virtually every activity had its own expected code of etiquette. Children were versed in social etiquette at a very early age in the nineteenth century. They were taught how they should behave in all manners of social situations: how they should greet people; how they should walk, talk, carry, and wear things. Table etiquette was considered of inestimable importance. Since tea had become such an integral part of society by the Victorian era, it acquired an entire array of manners and customs that were supposed to show that one was a person of good breeding.

You may very well think that all that is just tea snobbery. Perhaps it is, yet there is no excuse for rudeness, and it doesn’t cost anything to be polite. It is worth knowing, therefore, a bit about the etiquette of tea for the next time you drink it at the Ritz or when you are invited to drop in to see the Queen of England. You never know! And you wouldn’t want her to think you are a commoner, would you?

Social Divisions Linked by a Drink

Tea etiquette was originally built up around meals, for tea was the favored drink in Britain with every meal. Nowadays, we tend to think of polite afternoon tea as being the occasion when pinkies need to be raised, cucumber sandwiches are placed delicately on plates, and tea is poured in a ritualized manner. But afternoon tea was a meal that was introduced relatively late in society. And it wasn’t at all the same as high tea, with which it is often mistaken. In fact, the two were quite distinct meals and the thing that divided them was class!

British society was structured in three classes: the nobility and landed gentry, who were regarded as upper class; the middle classes, who included the office professions and clerical occupations; and the working class, who were regarded as lower class. England in the eighteenth century was no place to be if you were poor, and it was not a whole lot better at the start of the nineteenth century. This is not meant to be a diatribe about the English class system but rather a statement that society was grossly unequal in terms of what possessions and income people had. There were huge differences in both how individuals spent their time and in the different types of food that they ate. Indeed, this led to the classes having a different set of meals. The only thing that united them was tea.

How the Meals Changed

In the eighteenth century, meals were served in wealthy families at breakfast, then dinner was at four in the afternoon, followed by supper in the evening.

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