By Okakura-Kakuzo
which the publishers promise at an early date. Solemn indeed, as befits the subject, is the preliminary announcement:—
"This book in praise of tea, written by a Japanese, will surely find sympathetic readers in England, where the custom of tea-drinking has become so important a part of the national daily life. Mr. Kakuzo shows that the English are still behind the Japanese in their devotion to tea. In England afternoon tea is variously regarded as a fashionable and luxurious aid to conversation, a convenient way of passing the time, or a restful and refreshing pause in the day's occupation, but in Japan tea-drinking is ennobled into Teaism, and the English cup of tea seems trivial by comparison."
This is the right view of Tea. The wrong view was lately forced into sad prominence in the Coroner's Court:—
Dangers of Tea-Drinking
"In summing up at a Hackney inquest on Saturday, Dr. Wynn Westcott, the coroner, commented on the fact that deceased, a woman of twenty-nine, had died suddenly after a meal of steak, tomatoes, and tea. One of the most injudicious habits, he said, was to drink tea with a meat meal. Tea checked the flow of the gastric juice which was necessary to digestion. He was sorry if that went against teetotal doctrines, but if people must be teetotallers they had best drink water and not tea with their meals."
My present purpose is to enquire whether the right or the wrong view has more largely predominated in English history and literature. If, after the manner of a German commentator, I were to indulge in "prolegomena" about the history, statistics, and chemical analysis of Tea, I should soon overflow my limits; and I regard a painfully well-known couplet in which "tea" rhymes with "obey" as belonging to that class of quotations which no self-respecting writer can again resuscitate. Perhaps a shade, though only a shade, less hackneyed is Cowper's tribute to the divine herb:—
"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."
But this really leaves the problem unsolved. Cowper drank tea, and drank it in the evening; but whether he "had anything with it," as the phrase is, remains uncertain. Bread and butter, I think, he must have had, or toast, or what Thackeray scoffs at as the "blameless muffin"; but I doubt about eggs, and feel quite sure that he did not mingle meat and tea. So much for 1795, and I fancy that the practice of 1816 (when "Emma" was published) was not very different. When Mrs. Bates went to spend the evening with Mr. Woodhouse there was "vast deal of chat, and backgammon, and tea was made downstairs"; but, though the passage is a little obscure, I am convinced that the "biscuits and baked apples" were not served with the tea, but came in later with the ill-fated "fricassee of sweetbread and asparagus." Lord Beaconsfield, who was born in 1804, thus describes the evening meal at "Hurstley"—a place drawn in detail from his early home in Buckinghamshire: "Then they were summoned to tea.... The curtains were drawn and the room lighted; an urn hissed; there were piles of bread and butter, and a pyramid of buttered toast." And, when the family from the Hall went to tea at the Rectory, they found "the tea-equipage a picture of abundance and refinement. Such pretty china, and such various and delicious cakes! White bread, and brown bread, and plum cakes, and seed cakes, and no end of cracknels, and toasts, dry or buttered." Still here is no mention of animal foods, and even Dr. Wynn Westcott would have found nothing to condemn. The same refined tradition meets us in "Cranford," which, as we all know from its reference to "Pickwick," describes the social customs of 1836-7. Mrs. Jameson was the Queen of Society in Cranford, and, when she gave a tea-party, the herb was reinforced only by "very thin bread and butter," and Miss Barker was thought rather vulgar—"a tremendous word in Cranford"—because she gave seed cake as well. Even in "Pickwick" itself, though that immortal book does not pretend to depict the manners of polite society, the tea served in the sanctum of the "Marquis of Granby" at Dorking was flanked by nothing more substantial than a plate of hot buttered toast.
Impressive, therefore, almost startling, is the abrupt transition from these ill-supported teas (which, according to Dr. Wynn Westcott, were hygienically sound) to the feast, defiant of all gastronomic law, which Mrs. Snagsby spread for Mr. and Mrs. Chadband—"Dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley, new-laid eggs brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast." German sausage washed down with tea! What, oh what, would the Coroner say? And what must be the emotions of the waiters at the House of Commons, with their traditions of Bellamy's veal pies and Mr. Disraeli's port, when they see the Labour Members sit down to a refection of Tea and Brawn? But, it may be urged, Medical Science is always shifting its ground, and what is the elixir of life to-day may be labelled Poison to-morrow. Thus Thackeray, using his keenest art to stigmatize the unwholesome greediness of a City Dinner, describes the surfeited guests adjourning after dinner to the Tea Room, and there "drinking slops and eating buttered muffins until the grease trickled down their faces." This was written in 1847; but in 1823 the great Dr. Kitchener, both physician and gastronomer, pronounces thus—"Tea after Dinner assists Digestion, quenches Thirst, and thereby exhilarates the Spirits," and he suggests as an acceptable alternative "a little warmed Milk, with a teaspoonful of Rum, a bit of Sugar, and a little Nutmeg." Truly our forefathers must have had remarkable digestions.