In spite of the tax many colonists continued to indulge in tea drinking. By 1773 the general public, according to one Philadelphia merchant, “can afford to come at this piece of luxury” while one-third of the population “at a moderate computation, drink tea twice a day.”[[13]] It was at this time, however, that efforts were made to enforce the English tea tax and the result was that most famous of tea parties, the “Boston Tea Party.”
Thereafter, an increasing number of colonists abstained from tea drinking as a patriotic gesture. Philip Fithian, a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Col. Robert Carter, wrote in his journal on Sunday, May 29, 1774:
After dinner we had a Grand & agreeable Walk in & through the Gardens—There is great plenty of Strawberries, some Cherries, Goose berries &c.—Drank Coffee at four, they are now too patriotic to use tea.
And indeed they were patriotic, for by September the taste of tea almost had been forgotten at Nomini Hall, as Fithian vividly recounted in his journal:[[14]]
Something in our palace this Evening, very merry happened—Mrs. Carter made a dish of Tea. At Coffee, she sent me a dish—& the Colonel both ignorant—He smelt, sipt—look’d—At last with great gravity he asks what’s this?—Do you ask Sir—Poh!—And out he throws it splash a sacrifice to Vulcan.
Figure 3.—A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina pledging to drink no more tea, 1775, an engraving published by R. Sayer and J. Bennet, London. In Print and Photograph Division, Library of Congress. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.)
Other colonists, in their own way, also showed their distaste for tea (see [fig. 3]). Shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution there appeared in several newspapers an expression of renouncement in rhyme, “A Lady’s Adieu to Her Tea-Table”[[15]] (below), which provides a picture of contemporary teatime etiquette and equipage.
A Lady’s Adieu to Her Tea-Table
FAREWELL the Tea-board with your gaudy attire,