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Epsom and Ewell - Tea Time
The tea plant is native to north-east India and China. It is an evergreen, much like the garden camellia or privet in appearance, with fragrant white flowers; the Chinese kind grows as large as an elder in the wild, while the Assamese forms a tall tree. Tea, like herbs and vines, is more fragrant when grown at the limit of its ecological range and the best plantations are on high hills in damp acid soil. Good tea could in theory be grown in southern Ireland, but labour costs are cheaper in the Third World and tea cultivation requires many hands; the drink is made from the top two leaves and bud on each shoot, which have to be picked every few days. To facilitate picking, tea bushes are grown in rows along terraces and pruned four feet high. Tea, originally grown only in China, was introduced into Japan in the 12th century. The cultivation of the Indian variety was not undertaken until 1838; thirty years later plantations were established in Ceylon and East Africa In the Chinese countryside tea is prepared by methods which have remained unchanged since antiquity. Leaves are picked, left to wither, and then dropped into a drying pan like a wok which rests on top of a brick furnace; they are stirred for five minutes, becoming soft and pliable. Then the leaves are shaken out onto a table and a row of workers twist and roll them by hand. This can also be done by treading them underfoot. Afterwards the leaves are dried in the sun, and when the process has been repeated three times it yields a fine green tea. The art of making black or fermented tea - the kind now drunk by Europeans - was developed among the Bohea Hills of China. The withered leaves are bruised and mashed by rollers and then thinly spread to oxidise, which turns them a coppery colour; after about an hour of this process they are taken and dried. Black tea gained control of the Western market in the 1840s, partly because it was more difficult to adulterate. Since then all the tea grown in plantations outside China has been mechanically produced by this method. Long ago in the kingdoms of the East there was a monk called Dharuma who sought to achieve the highest perfection. To this end, he developed a spiritual practice of alert watchfulness and sat still for many long hours in a lonely place, bravely advancing on the inward journey. However, each time he felt himself on the threshold of the great realisation, sleep would overpower him and his drowsy eyelids would close against his will. Vexed by this repeated failure, at length the monk seized a sharp knife and cut off the offending eyelids, throwing them far behind him. Soon his sleepless vigil was rewarded by true enlightenment. May the example of the venerable Dharuma inspire us all to the practice of true mindfulness! The discarded eyelids were tended by mountain spirits, who in honour of his great sacrifice transformed them into the leaves of a plant: and this was the origin of tea. An infusion of this plant retains its supernatural powers of promoting alertness and encouraging the intellectual faculties. The sacrifice of the noble Dharuma would have been forgotten had it not been for its rediscovery by a less savoury character. The subjects of the Emperor Wan Tu, wearying of his vile and perverted tyranny, banished him to a barren province of southern China. Here he encamped in desolation, plotting unpleasant forms of revenge. Deserted by his followers, he was reduced in his poverty to a diet of hot water until one day some leaves from the bush which overshadowed his hut fluttered down into the brew, and he tasted for the first time the flavour of tea. The effects were startling. So effectively was his mind cleared of hatred and delusion that he returned anonymously, an honest and humble man, to the capital city. There he worked his way through various menial posts until, his virtue being a matter of general remark, he was appointed to the rank of government minister under his supplanter. Only after the death of that individual did Wan Tu reveal his true identity, reassume the Dragon Throne, and promote the universal consumption of tea. In 1666 Samuel Pepys wrote 'I did send for a cup of Tee (a China drink) of which I have never drunk before'. He was not the first European to discover its delights. Since 1595 the natives of Holland and Portugal had been in contact with Eastern civilisation and were bringing home its refinements. Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who became Charles II's queen, was a confirmed tea drinker and spread the habit among his court. Importers began by advertising it as a medicinal herb - a cure for cramps in Holland, constipation in Italy and scurvy, colic and heavy dreams in England. Tea was consumed with barbarian vigour - 50 to 200 cups a day was thought reasonable by a Dutch authority, and Dr. Johnson, 'a hardened and shameless tea-drinker', reported that his kettle hardly ever had time to cool down. Blends were named after famous figures of the day, including the prime minister Earl Grey, although this tea flavoured with bergamot was not (contrary to legend) discovered by him. The early European traders were baffled, not just by the oriental custom of drinking hot water, but by its associated refinements. Even the cups were novelties to a race acquainted only with metal and earthen tableware; not until the 1730s did the imitative Europeans hit on the secret of porcelain. Until then tea and china were imported together, and the consumption of one from the other was a mark of social standing. Tea was the drink that brought middle-class families together at home, whereas the coffee house and the inn were exclusively male domains. London's tea gardens, of which Vauxhall in 1732 was the first and Ranelagh the most magnificent, were places where anyone who was respectable enough to afford the entry fee of a shilling could promenade, meet other gentlemen and ladies, and be served tea with bread and butter. The gardens were illuminated by lanterns and the occasional firework display and the music varied from pipe organs to light opera. Tea was not cheap. Between 1680 and 1780 it rose in cost from 12/- to 15/- per pound, largely due to taxation; smuggled tea was cheaper by a third. Even then it might be adulterated with previously brewed tea leaves, dried and reused, or with ash leaves which had been baked and steeped in copperas with sheeps' dung. There was an eloquent literature on the menace of tea, said to cause jaundice, asthma, and vapours in the ladies. Christian leaders wondered whether tea should be prohibited as a drug, just as Muslim ones agonised over coffee. John Wesley left off tea after hearing how it had unstrung the nerves of Londoners, but repented in 1761 and ordered a one-gallon Wedgwood teapot. William Cobbett, in his advice to cottagers, fulminated against the cost of tea itself and the time spent brewing up, and advocated home-brewed beer for all the family, but he was fighting a losing battle. The working class had embraced tea for its Victorian values. It was a drink for the upwardly mobile, it left you sober, and it kept the family together. Tea was easy to make at home, unlike coffee which had to be prepared by professionals. So men went out to the coffee-house, but women had tea at each other's homes. Afternoon tea was invented by the Duchess of Bedford in the 1750s, in order to stave off 'a sinking feeling' at five o'clock; in an age when nothing was eaten between breakfast and dinner, this was hardly surprising. A hundred years later Mrs.Beeton was providing recipes for tea scones and tea cakes. From 1826 tea could be bought in sealed packets, the invention of John Horniman, and this reassured housewives worried about the risk of adulteration. Tea had its mystical side, too, and you could read your future from it. You must drink your tea, swirl round the dregs in your cup three times, turn it over, and then inspect the leaves for meaningful patterns. Hearts and flowers mean love, a butterfly signifies pleasures, a ladder advancement, and a cow (supposing you can make one out) stands for prosperity. Tea-time developed from a domestic ritual to a public institution with the spread of concern about alcohol. From the 1830s tea meetings were held in which reformed drunkards obliged by manning the kettles, and by 1870 local groups would sponsor a tea house, coffee tavern or reading room as an optimistic alternative to the pub. Women clerical workers, who grew in numbers after 1914, needed somewhere to meet over a cup of tea, as did ladies coming up to London for a day's shopping. The first tea rooms were in the premises of pastrycooks and confectioners. The Aerated Bread Company, noticing that customers were being served tea at the back of one of their cake shops, set up the ABC chain; Joseph Lyons (inspired by a commercial friend who disliked stopping off at pubs for refreshments) opened the first Lyons tea shop at Piccadilly in 1894. The growth of the tea shop in the 1920s went hand in hand with better train services and suburban living; people could spend a whole day out in town and needed somewhere to stave off that sinking feeling halfway through. Tea meant Chinese tea until the 1860s. This was due to a privilege of the East India Company, who controlled the trade in tea and silk from the East and did not welcome competition. Chinese merchants, drawing on the dispersed production of tea as a cottage industry, were able to keep pace with Western taste by supplying black tea as well as green until in 1833 an Act of Parliament broke the Company's monopoly on two things - tea and the occupation of land in India. New settlers in Assam, a mountainous and insubordinate province between the Raj and Burma, were able to prepare a black tea which took over a half share of the market, largely through being advertised as a British Empire product in competition with suspicious oriental imports. The disappearance of Keemun and Oolong from the tea-tables of the West came after 1900 when the fall of the Manchu dynasty led to the end of international trade from China. By this time the English market was accustomed to proprietary brands such as Ridgways, Jacksons and Twinings which might mix the produce of three continents in a single blend. The first consignments of tea came to Europe in porcelain jars. Tea spoils easily, either by getting damp or by contamination from other odours, and tea chests had to be airtight to preserve flavour on the long journey. At first tea came from China via the Dutch trading posts in Java and arrived in London over a year after they had been picked. Even when the East India Company were buying it from their post on the waterfront at Canton, the return journey took four years. Once the China trade was opened up, American ship-builders developed the clipper, a vessel which cut the journey down to three months. The last of the great clipper races took place in 1866, just before steamers took over their business. About half the tea drunk in England, however, had arrived more circumspectly in smugglers' vessels; these landed packs of tea at night until 1831 when the Navy suppressed them, and afterwards tea had to be brought past Customs disguised as innocent cargo. Capes and jackets with hollow linings served as a primitive form of tea bag. The tea which we drink does not come direct from a plantation in Ceylon or Kenya, as wine comes from a vineyard. Instead the produce of different areas is blended together to form a proprietary brand. The tea from any one garden can alter with the growth of the bushes and the change in weather throughout the year, but by blending a uniform taste can still be provided for the customer; prices are kept steady by a greater or lesser admixture of the cheaper, neutral teas. In more gentlemanly days, blends were subtly adjusted depending on whether they were sent to grocers in hard or soft water areas. Tea tasters study the appearance of the leaf, both dry and used, as well as the look and taste of the liquor; a particular tea, once tasted, is never forgotten. Samples going to auction are infused from a standard weight into special cups, with buyers sampling up to 800 teas on the Friday in readiness for bidding at Monday's auctions. London remains the centre of the trade, as it has been since the first Indian teas were sold at a patriotic 34/- per lb in 1838. Porcelain was developed by the Chinese in the 9th century, at a time when they were also discovering the pleasures of tea. This was made and drunk from small bowls: the early European traders brought both the tea and porcelain, having nothing equivalent to it in their own cultures. Instead of making tea in the bowls, as the Chinese did, they brewed up separately in red stoneware wine pots from Yixiang, the ancestors of the teapot. Throughout the 18th century porcelain, or China ware, was manufactured for export to the West. Saucers and handles were introduced and decorations were made to suit the taste of these new customers. Many Europeans tried to create a native manufacture of equal quality; by 1768 kaolin, the essential ingredient, had been found in France, and the potters of Limoge and Meissen were able to produce hard-paste porcelain. The English developed different recipes yielding soft-paste porcelain (with ground glass in it) and bone china (with calcined bone). Porcelain and quality earthwares were sold cheaply to all classes as the first consumer goods. People could afford to buy fashionable and fragile pottery instead of hoarding durable heirlooms in wood and pewter. The Staffordshire factories, led by Wedgwood, developed industrial techniques and set themselves to promote people's expectations - by the end of the 18th century a full tea service required 43 pieces in 16 varying shapes from the tea canister to the sugar bowl stand. The tea master Rikyu was asked to reveal the secrets of the Way of Tea, and replied that there were four rules and seven principles. The four rules are harmony, reverence, purity and tranquillity. The seven principles are:- 1) Make the tea so that your guest will enjoy it. Putting your heart into the task is more important than the choice of utensils. 2) Place charcoal so that it will boil water. The rules of etiquette for this action serve only to make sure that the fuel will be stocked up and do its work. 3) Arrange a flower in the way suited to it. You can learn much by arranging the shape of a flower as it grows and not twisting it unnaturally. 4) Keept the tea room cool in summer and warm in winter. By doing this you will be observing the seasons and not imposing your ideas on them. 5) Be ahead of time in arriving. You should try to have time spare in your life instead of rushing from one thing to another. 6) Have an umbrella even if it does not rain. It is good to be ready for change at any time. 7) Attune your heart to the other guests. The Zen priest Eisai brought the seeds of tea from China to Japan in 1191. the drink had become popular both as a restorative and as the focus for ceremonial etiquette before Murata Shuko, who died in 1502, established a way of tea which showed how the Buddha can be discovered in the gestures of filling an ordinary tea bowl with hot water. Other aspects of the tea ceremony which he founded include the use of simple but beautiful utensils inside a plain wooden hut, and the value of solicitude for guests. Sen no Rikyu, who was trained in Zen at Daitoku-ji Temple, developed the way of tea from 1555 onwards. In a spirit of purity and naturalness he replaced imported Chinese tea vessels by those based on everyday Japanese crafts. The tea garden should contain a waiting arbour, a waiting bench, a middle gate dividing the inner and outer paths, a stone lantern and a stone wash-basin as well as the tea house. Much care is taken over apparent artlessness and tranquillity; schools of thought differ, for instance, over whether the stepping stones through the garden should be 1.2, 1.6 or even 2.6 inches high. Oriental porcelain has long been popular in the West; by 1657, 3 million pieces had been sent to Holland alone. After that date the Chinese stopped production for export and the Europeans tried to imitate designs and shapes in their native tin-glazed earthenwares. The Chinese reopened a trading post at Canton for the East India Company in 1715 and back in far-off London and Amsterdam architects were instructed to design rooms especially for porcelain collections. After 1750 the Europeans were able to produce hard and soft paste porcelain themselves, but decoration was still often based on the imported wares. The Japanese, who had traded some widely copied wares through the port of Imari, reopened to Western trade in 1853 and created a new wave of aesthetic taste.
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