Infused by Henrietta Lovell

Author:Henrietta Lovell [Henrietta Lovell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571357697
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

This valuable commodity was shipped back to Britain from China by the great galleons of the East India Company – a perilous journey. The EIC made bulk purchases for commercial trade, but the best stuff didn’t come through the official channels. It came in precious little packages stowed in the captain’s cabin as part of the tax-exempt allowance of the ship’s officers. Margaret Forbes was probably a captain’s wife. Her exotic merchandise was not an item on the vast inventory of a grand house’s kitchen but a purchase by the lady of the house herself. It was delivered via a chain of trusted relationships: from trader to captain to the ladies in their drawing rooms, unwrapping silk parcels and exchanging small fortunes.

Prices were kept ruinously high by the EIC. Having a complete monopoly on the tea trade, outside of those small personal transactions, allowed them to charge what they liked and to make vast profits. Added to this, the government imposed taxes of a prodigious 119 per cent, reputedly to discourage the tea-drinking habit and stem the flow of payment in precious metals from Europe to China. There were also wars to finance, and tea was an effective way of directly taxing the rich.

But high prices only encouraged the smuggling and contamination of the precious tea leaf. Those dark sailing ships stealing into quiet coves under cover of the blackest night lit by the slightest sliver of moon weren’t just sloshing with brandy and rum, they were heavily laden with tea. When you think of Cornish and Scottish fishermen smuggling goods down silent rivers, or pirates on the high seas, it is rum to know that it wasn’t rum they were concerned with but a few dry leaves. More tea was smuggled into Britain than the taxman ever saw. Some reports claim that 80 per cent of the tea drunk in Britain during the mid-eighteenth century was illegal. We’re talking billions of pounds, in today’s currency.

What was offered for sale, legitimately or otherwise, was often bulked up and contaminated. Sheep’s dung, for example, was used to pad out black tea, and highly toxic copper carbonate and lead chromate were used to make old green tea greener. Much as cocaine is cut to make it go further, or ecstasy is shammed from a combination of speed and tranquillisers, so tea was abused.

Smuggling and dangerous adulteration ended when the Commutation Act of 1784 ruled that the tea tax be reduced to 12.5 per cent. Legally purchased tea became drastically more affordable and those that had the funds were now more inclined to share it, and to do so publicly.

The established story has it that the Duchess of Bedford popularised afternoon tea in the middle of the nineteenth century. She certainly mentions the habit in letters, but it’s unlikely it was her idea alone. For the rich, lunch was served at one and dinner at eight. The servants ate first, at six, and a good household, like a good army, was said to run on its stomach.

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