TEA.
The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been first used in China as a corrective for bad water; and that not at a remote date.
In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy “hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither useful nor agreeable.
The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.
Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was, as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertainty rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.
It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood; and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.
The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”) and his locale, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11s. to 50s. per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.
Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He “distilled some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be unwholesome”—to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are unsatisfactory. Nux vomica, for instance, deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many animals.
The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person could like such a diet.”
Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”
What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph Williams—“the Christian merchant” of the early and middle part of last century, whose biography is well known to serious readers—did, when he wrote to his friend Green upon the necessity of “setting the Lord always before us.” When treating of this subject, the pious layman adverts to a present of that new thing called “tea,” which Green had sent him, and which had lost some of its flavour in the transit. There is something amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea with one upon human morals. “The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath lost the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil communications among men, which nothing will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but taking to us the whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured with these sweet spices; so ‘he that walks with wise men shall be wise.’ He that converses with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven, whose treasure and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from their holy fire; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ I have put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world, by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.” The simile, however, limps a little; for if every man canistered himself, and a good example, from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example would never seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It is by contact we brighten, and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue as Mr. Williams did his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the commerce of the world, in the very centre of the chest of avarice; but what good does it do there? Let it circulate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected by the process. But good Joseph Williams would not have agreed with us, and he would take his saintly similes from traits of the table. “O that I may walk humbly,” he says, “and look on myself, when fullest of divine communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which, consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put into it.” A very tipsy-like simile!
I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition; and we are told by the disgusted Connoisseur, that “persons of fashion cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Ranelagh were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion.” A remark which shows how very poor a connoisseur this writer was in matters of propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be seated at the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used to be placed before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback, set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, there was a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the “Northern Ale-house in St. Paul’s Alley,” every member of which was of the name of Adam. It was formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour was more than Adam deserved; for the first created man not only betrayed his trust, but he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has managed to survive even the memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long since defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron posset, which Arabella, in “The Committee,” recommends as “a very good drink against the heaviness of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout,—an assertion which would seem to indicate that the author of it was of Hibernian origin!
There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that “tea” and “coffee” became, very early, fixed social observances. Pope, writing, in 1715, of a lady who left town after the coronation of George I., says that she went to the country—
“To part her time ’twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea;
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.”
At the same period, the more fortunate belles who remained in town made of tea a means for other ends than shortening time. Dr. Young, in his “Satires,” says of Memmia, that—
“Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow,
To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau;
While one white finger and a thumb conspire
To lift the cup and make the world admire.”
Dr. Parr’s delicate compliment is well known; but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing it here. He was not very partial to the Thea Sinensis, though lauded so warmly by a French writer, as “nostris gratissima Musis;” but once being invited to take tea by a lady, he, with a mixture of wit and gallantry, exclaimed, “Nec teacum possum vivere, nec sine te!” The Christchurch men at Oxford were remarkable, at an early period, for their love of tea; and, in reference to it, they were pleasantly recommended to adopt as their motto: “Te veniente die, te decedente notamus.” In 1718, Pope draws an illustration from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby: “My Lady Scudamore,” he remarks jocosely, “from having rusticated in your company too long, really behaves herself scandalously among us. She pretends to open her eyes for the sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night; drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, of good books, and has not seen Cibber’s play of ‘The Nonjuror.’” This is a pleasant picture of the “good woman” of the last century. She drank tea at nine in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to be aroused at last, like Belinda, by—
“Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leap’d up and waked his mistress with his tongue.”
Tea is little nutritious; it is often injurious from being drunk at too high a temperature, when the same quantity of the fluid at a lower temperature would be beneficial. It is astringent and narcotic; but its effects are various on various individuals, and the cup which refreshes and invigorates one, depresses or unnaturally excites and damages the digestive powers of others. Green tea can in no case be useful, except medicinally, in cases where there has been excessive fatigue of the mind or body; and even then the dose should be small. Tea, as a promoter of digestion, or rather, as a comforter of the stomach when the digestive process has been completed, should not be taken earlier than from three to four hours after the principal meal. Taken too early, it disturbs digestion by arresting chymification, and by causing distension. The astringency of tea is diminished by adding milk, and its true taste more than its virtue is spoiled by the addition of sugar.
These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure state, and not to the adulterated messes which come from China, or are made up in England. If sloe leaves here are made to pass for Souchong, so also is many an unbroken chest of “tea” landed, which is largely composed of leaves that are not the least akin to the genuine shrub. Black teas are converted into green, some say by means of a poisonous dye, others by roasting on copper; but I do not think this process is extensively adopted. At one time the chests were rendered heavy by an adulterated mixture of a considerable quantity of tea, and a not inconsiderable quantity of earthy detritus, strongly impregnated with iron. But our searchers soon put a stop to this knavery. They just dipped a powerful magnet into the chest, stirred it about, and, when drawn out, the iron particles, if any, were sure to be found adhering to the irresistible “detective.” I have heard that Lady Morgan’s tea-parties, in Dublin, were remarkable for the excellent qualities both of the beverage and the company; and also for her Ladyship’s stereotyped joke, of “Sugar yourselves, gentlemen, and I’ll milk you all.”
Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not confined in China to festive occasions. Tea is solemnly drunk on serious celebrations, with squibs to follow. Thus, for instance, at the funeral of a Buddhist Priest, there is thought taken for the living as well as for the dead, for the appetites of mortals as well as for the gratification of the gods. The latter are presented with various sorts of food, save animal. It is placed on the altar, and it is eaten at night by the deities, of course. While the ceremonies preliminary to the interment are proceeding, a servant enters the temple, and hands tea round to the reverend gentlemen who are officiating! The interment usually takes place in the morning, and it is numerously attended; but if, as the long procession is advancing, the hour of breakfast should happen to arrive, the corpse is suddenly dropped in the highway, the entire assembly rush to their respective homes, and not till they have consumed their tea and toast, or whatever materials go to the constituting of a Chinese déjeûner, do they return to carry the corse to its final resting-place, and fire no end of squibs over it, in testimony of their affliction. Which done, more refreshment follows; and perhaps some of the mourners retire to Chinese taverns, where inviting placards promise them “A cup of tea and a bird’s nest for 4d.!”