CHAPTER IV.
HOW TO MAKE TEA.
The Siamese method of making tea—A three-legged teapot—Advice of a Chinese poet—How tea should be made—How Abernethy made tea for his guests—The "bubbling and loud-hissing urn"—Tate's description of a tea-table—The tea of public institutions—Rev. Dr. Lansdell on Russian tea—The art of tea-making described—The kind of water to be used. The Chinese method of making tea—Invalids' tea—Words to nurses, by Miss Nightingale.
The mode of preparation of tea for the table has always given rise to discussion. Different nations have different methods. In Siam one method was thus described in a book entitled "Relation of the Voyage to Siam by Six Jesuits," which was published in 1685. "In the East they prepare tea in this manner: when the water is well boiled, they pour it upon the tea, which they have put into an earthen pot, proportionally to what they intend to take (the ordinary proportion is as much as one can take up with the finger and thumb for a pint of water); then they cover the pot until the leaves are sunk to the bottom of it, and afterwards serve it about in china dishes to be drunk as hot as can be, without sugar, or else with a little sugar-candy in the mouth; and upon that tea more boiling water may be poured, and so it may be made to serve twice. These people drink of it several times a day, but do not think it wholesome to take it fasting."
In "Recreative Science" (vol. i., 1821) there appears a very curious note relating to the translation of a Chinese poem. The editor says,—"Kien Lung, the Emperor of the Celestial Empire, which is in the vernacular China, was also a poet, and he has been good enough to give us a receipt also—would that all didactic poetry meddled with what its author understood. The poet Kien did, and he has left the following recipe how to make tea, which, for the benefit of the ladies who study the domestic cookery, is inserted: 'set an old three-legged teapot over a slow fire; fill it with water of melted snow; boil it just as long as is necessary to turn fish white or lobsters red; pour it on the leaves of choice, in a cup of Youe. Let it remain till the vapour subsides into a thin mist, floating on the surface. Drink this precious liquor at your leisure, and thus drive away the five causes of sorrow.'"
Poets, as everybody knows, are allowed a good deal of licence, and tea-maids may be pardoned if they are sceptical of the value of the advice of the Chinese poet. How, then, should tea be made? First and foremost, remarks Dr. Joseph Pope, it should be remembered that tea is an infusion, not an extract. An old verse runs thus:—
"The fragrant shrub in China grows,
The leaves are all we see,
And these, when water o'er them flows,
Make what we call our tea."
Dr. Pope lays emphasis on the word flows; it does not say soak. There is, he contends, an instantaneous graciousness, a momentary flavour that must be caught if we would rightly enjoy tea. Assuredly Dr. Abernethy, the celebrated surgeon, must be credited with the possession of this "instantaneous graciousness." "Abernethy," said Dr. Carlyon, in his "Early Years and Late Reflections," "never drank tea himself, but he frequently asked a few friends to come and take tea at his rooms. Upon such occasions, as I infer from what I myself witnessed, his custom was to walk about the room and talk most agreeably upon such topics as he thought likely to interest his company, which did not often consist of more than two or three persons. As soon as the tea-table was set in order, and the boiling water ready for making the infusion, the fragrant herb was taken, not from an ordinary tea-caddy, but from a packet consisting of several envelopes curiously put together, in the centre of which was the tea. Of this he used at first as much as would make a good cup for each of the party; and to meet fresh demands I observed that he invariably put an additional tea-spoonful into the teapot; the excellence of the beverage thus prepared insuring him custom. He had likewise a singular knack of supplying each cup with sugar from a considerable distance, by a jerk of the hand, which discharged it from the sugar-tongs into the cup with unerring certainty, as he continued his walk around the table, scarcely seeming to stop whilst he performed these and the other requisite evolutions of the entertainment."
If every woman had treated her guests in the same manner, there would have been little outcry against tea. The innovation of a "bubbling and loud-hissing urn" was strongly condemned by Dr. Sigmond, who, writing in 1839, after quoting Cowper, remarked: "Thus sang one of our most admired poets, who was feelingly alive to the charms of social life; but, alas! for the domestic happiness of many of our family circles, this meal has lost its character, and many of those innovations which despotic fashion has introduced have changed one of the most agreeable of our daily enjoyments. It is indeed a question amongst the devotees to the tea-table, whether the bubbling urn has been practically an improvement upon our habits; it has driven from us the old national kettle, once the pride of the fireside. The urn may be fairly called the offspring of indolence; it has deprived us, too, of many of those felicitous opportunities of which the gallant forefathers of the present race availed themselves to render them amiable in the eyes of the fair sex, when presiding over the distribution
"Of the Soumblo, the Imperial tea,
Names not unknown, and sanative Bohea."