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!