"These be black Vespers' pageants." I have spoken so far of Tea in the evening. When did people begin to drink Tea in the morning? I seem to remember that, in our earlier romancists and dramatists, Coffee is the beverage for breakfast. Certainly it is so—and inimitably described as well—in Lord Beaconsfield's account of a Yorkshire breakfast in "Sybil." At Holland House, which was the very ark and sanctuary of luxury, Macaulay in 1831 breakfasted on "very good coffee and very good tea, and very good eggs, butter kept in the midst of ice, and hot rolls." Here the two liquids are proffered, but meat is rigidly excluded, and Dr. Wynn Westcott's law of life observed. But nine years later the character of breakfast had altered, and altered in an unwholesome direction. The increasing practice of going to Scotland for the shooting season had familiarized Englishmen with the more substantial fare of the Scotch breakfast, and since that time the unhallowed combination of meat and tea has been the law of our English breakfast-table. Sir Thomas in the "Ingoldsby Legends," on the morning of his mysterious disappearance, had eaten for breakfast some bacon, an egg, a little broiled haddock, and a slice of cold beef.
"And then—let me see!—he had two, perhaps three,
Cups (with sugar and cream) of strong gunpowder tea,
With a spoonful in each of some choice eau de vie,
Which with nine out of ten would perhaps disagree."
The same trait may be remembered in the case of Mrs. Finching, who, though she had cold fowl and broiled ham for breakfast, "measured out a spoonful or two of some brown liquid that smelt like brandy and put it into her tea, saying that she was obliged to be careful to follow the directions of her medical man, though the flavour was anything but agreeable."
Time passes, and the subject expands. We have spoken of Tea in the morning and Tea in the evening. To these must be added, if the topic were to be treated with scientific completeness, that early cup which opens our eyes, as each new day dawns, on this world of opportunity and wonder, and that last dread draught with which the iron nerves of Mr. Gladstone were composed to sleep after a late night in the House of Commons. But I have no space for these divagations, and must crown this imperfect study of Tea with the true, though surprising, statement that I myself—moi qui vous parle—have known the inventor of Five o'Clock Tea. This was Anna Maria Stanhope, daughter of the third Earl of Harrington and wife of the seventh Duke of Bedford. She died at an advanced age—rouged and curled and trim to the last—in 1857; but not before her life's work was accomplished and Five o'Clock Tea established among the permanent institutions of our free and happy country. Surely she is worthier of a place in the Positivist Kalendar of those who have benefited Humanity than Hippocrates, Harvey, or Arkwright; and yet Sir Algernon West writes thus in his book of "Recollections": "Late in the 'forties and in the 'fifties, Five o'Clock Teas were just coming into vogue, the old Duchess of Bedford's being, as I considered, very dreary festivities." Such is gratitude, and such is fame.
XXV
SUPPER
"S is the Supper, where all went in pairs;
T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs."
Though the merry muse of dear "C. S. C." may thus serve to introduce our subject, the repast which he has in view is only a very special and peculiar—one had almost said an unnatural—form of Supper. The Ball Supper, eaten anywhere between 12 o'clock and 2 a.m., is clearly a thing apart from the Supper which, in days of Early Dinner, made England great. Yet the Ball Supper had its charms, and they have been celebrated both in prose and in verse. Byron knew all about them:—