The History of Tea and TeaTimes by Claire Hopley

Author:Claire Hopley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2009-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Tea-time match-making

Married women took pride in being empress of their tea tables, but mothers alert to the charms of pretty hands pouring tea and eyelids batting over the cups sometimes asked marriageable daughters to preside. Thus, in North and South Margaret Hale captivates John Thornton when she serves tea in her mother’s place.

This privilege could be whisked away when a daughter did not fall in with her parents’ wishes. When Clarissa Harlowe rejects Soames’s proposal in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, she goes down to tea only to find an icy atmosphere:

My mother’s eyes were fixed upon the tea cups and when she looked up it was heavily, as ifher eyelids had weights on them, and then not at me.

Clarissa asks if she should make tea, as normal:

No! A very short sentence, in one very short word, was the expressive answer. And she was pleased to take the canister in her own hands.

Tea-time and proposals: the case of Emma

Emma Woodhouse in Jane Austen’s Emma rules the tea table because her mother is dead. She shows how well she does the job early in the novel when she makes sure that Mr. Woodhouse doesn’t unwittingly deprive Miss Bates and other guests of choice dishes by excessive concern for their health. At the end of the novel she returns to the tea table after Mr. Knightly has proposed. She had been walking in the shrubbery after dinner, remorseful at the muddle she has made by meddling. Mr. Knightly is equally unhappy because he believes she loves Frank Churchill. When he realises his mistake, he asks her to marry him. Her acceptance changes life for both of them:

The one half hour had given each the same precious certainty of being beloved, and had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust. … They sat down to tea – the same party round the same table – But never in such a state of spirits, never in anything like it; and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her usual self to be the attentive lady of the house.

The lack of detail in this proposal, the emphasis on transformation conjured by ‘never in such a state of spirits, never in anything like it,’ lets the reader’s imagination paint Emma’s delight and floods the scene with meaning.

Notably, Mr. Knightly does not actually propose at the tea table. Nor do other fictional lovers. As a gathering place for a family and guests, the tea table is too public for intimate requests. But it’s a perfect setting for all the moments that lead up to a proposal. John Thornton falls in love with Margaret Hale; Rachel Ray realises that life would be perfect with Luke Rowan and Percy Gryce loses himself to Lily Bart. The tea table can be an arena where rivals like Cecily and Gwendolen tussle for the men they want, or a sanctuary where lovers tempt each other with delicious morsels. Then, after the flirtations and first steps, innuendoes and

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