Tea, its history and mystery

by Joseph M. Walsh

TEA AS A STIMULANT.

“Life without stimulants would be a dreary waste,” remarks some modern philosopher, which, if true, the moderate use of good tea, properly prepared and not too strong, will be found less harmful than the habitual resort to alcoholic liquors. The impression so long existing that vinous or alcoholic beverages best excite the brain and cause it to produce more or better work is rapidly being exploded, healthier and more beneficial stimulants usurping their place. But while the claims made in favor of the “wine cup” must be admitted, it cannot for a moment be denied that as excellent literary work has been accomplished under the influence of tea, in our own times, particularly when the poet, the essayist, the historian, the statesman and the journalist no longer work under the baneful influence of spirituous stimulants. Mantegaza, an Italian physiologist of high repute, who has given the action of tea and other stimulants careful study, confirms this claim by placing tea above all other stimulants, his enthusiasm for it being almost unbounded, crediting it with “the power of dispelling weariness and lessening the annoyances of life, classing it as the greatest friend to the man of letters by enabling him to work without fatigue, and to society as an aid to conversation, rendering it more easy and pleasant, reviving the drooping intellectual activity and the best stimulus to exertion, and finally pronouncing it to be one of the greatest blessings of Providence to man.”

Tea was Johnson’s only stimulant, he loved it as much as Porson loved gin, drinking it all times and under all circumstances, in bed and out, with his friends and alone, more particularly while compiling his famous dictionary. Boswell drank cup after cup, as if it had been the “Heliconian spring.” While Hazlitt, like Johnson, was a prodigious tea-drinker, Shelley’s favorite beverage was water, but at the same time tea was always grateful to him. Bulwer’s breakfast was generally composed of dry toast and cold tea, and De Quincy states that he invariably drank tea from eight o’clock at night until four in the morning, when engaged in his literary labors, and knew whereof he spoke when he named tea “the beverage of the intellectual.” Kent usually had a cup of tea and a pipe of tobacco, on which he worked eight hours at a stretch, and Motley, the historian tells us that he “usually rose at seven, and with the aid of a cup of tea only, wrote until eleven.” And Victor Hugo, as a general rule, used tea freely, but fortifying it with a little brandy. Turning from literature to politics, we find that Palmerston resorted to tea during the midnight sessions of Parliament. Cobden declaring “the more work he had to do the more tea he drank,” and Gladstone himself confesses to drinking large quantities of tea between midnight and morning during the prolonged parliamentary sittings, while Clemenceau, the leader of the French Radicals, admits himself to be “an intemperate tea-drinker” during the firey discussions of debate.

In moderation, tea is pre-eminently the beverage of the twilight hour, when tired humanity seeks repose after a day of wearying labor. Then the hot infusion with its alluring aroma refreshing and stimulating, increasing the respiration, elevating the pulse, softening the temper, producing tranquility in mind and body, and creating a sense of repose peculiarly grateful to those who have been taxed and tormented by the rush and routine of business cares and vexations. What a promoter of sociability, what home comforts does it not suggest, as, when Cowper, on a winter’s evening, draws a cheerful picture of the crackling fire, the curtained windows, the hissing urn and “the cup that cheers?” When, however, tea drinking ceases to be the amusement of the leisure moment or resorted to in too large quantities or strong infusions as a means of stimulating the flagging energies to accomplish the allotted task, whatever it might be, then distinct danger commences. A breakdown is liable to ensue in more than one way, as not infrequently the stimulus which tea in time fails to give is sought in alcoholic or other liquors, and the atonic dyspepsia which the astringent decoction produced, by overdrawing induces, helps to drive the victim to seek temporary relief in spirits chloral or the morphine habit, which is established with extraordinary rapidity. For it is a truth that as long as a person uses stimulants simply for their taste he is comparatively safe, but as soon as he begins to drink them for effect he is running into great danger. This may be stating the case too forcibly for stimulants, but if this rule was more closely adhered to we should have fewer cases of educated people falling into the habit of secret intemperance or morphomania.

TEA AND THE POETS.

The subdued irascibility, the refreshed spirits, and the renewed energies which the student and the poet so often owed to tea has been the theme of many an accomplished pen, eminent writers of all times and all countries considering it no indignity to extol the virtues of this precious and fascinating beverage. What Bacchanalian and hunting songs, cavalier and sea songs, rhapsodies and laudations of other subjects have been to our literature, such was tea to the writers, poets, artists and musicians of China and Japan, theirs being confined to the simple subject—Tea. Each plantation was supposed to possess its own peculiar virtues and excellences, not unlike the vineyards of the Rhine, the Rhone and the Moselle, each had its poet to sing its praises in running rhymes. One Chinese bard, who seemingly was an Anacreon in his way, magnifying the product of the Woo-e-shan mountains in terms literally translated as follows:—

“One ounce does all disorders cure.

With two your troubles will be fewer,

Three to the bones more vigor give,

With four forever you will live