Celebrate with a Tea

 
Although high tea is a Victorian-era custom, it's a fun and festive way to mark Jane Austen's birthday. Here are a few recipes you could incorporate into your own celebration.

• Miss Bennet's Perfect Cup of Tea

• Currant Scones
• Tea Sandwiches
• Quick Mincemeat Pies
• Gingerbread Cake
• Mrs. Weston's Wedding Cake

The Importance of Tea in Jane Austen’s Time

By Dan Macey

Jane Austen was known to love tea. In fact, while living at Chawton Cottage with her sister, her mother, and their friend Martha Lloyd, one of her only household responsibilities was to keep the tea caddy stocked with tea from Twinings Tea Shop on the Strand in London—and to keep it under lock and key.

Antique Tea Caddy
(Photo by Paul Savidge, Food styling by Dan Macey.)

It was important to buy tea from reputable merchants at the time, since adulteration with other plant leaves—or even sheep dung—had become a common practice. Twinings, founded in 1706 and still located in its original shop, was the London’s first tea house and one of the earliest places where ladies could browse for merchandise. 

Austen often wrote of enjoying tea with friends. In a letter to Cassandra dated April 8, 1811, she wrote, “We drank tea again yesterday with the Tilsons, & met with the Smiths.—I find all these little parties very pleasant.”

According to Maggie Lane, in Jane's time most afternoons “whether spent formally or informally, always closed with this drinking of tea,” (Jane Austen and Food, p. 74). “The time for tea seems to have been set at about three hours after the commencement of dinner (when the Austens dined at half past three, they drank tea at half past six), which would give on formal occasions two hours to eat, and one for the after-dinner separation of the sexes; and on simple family days, perhaps an hour to eat and two hours for walking or other activity,” Lane adds.

Tea was considered something of a luxury during Austen’s lifetime, and servants were often not allowed to handle, serve, or pour it. At home, that responsibility fell to the lady of the house—or hostess.

"She felt the awkwardness of having no party to join."
C.E. Brock, Northanger Abbey, 1907

But in public, such as at balls, it was not socially acceptable for ladies to pour their own tea. In Northanger Abbey, Austen notes the difficulties Catherine Morland and her chaperone Mrs. Allen have obtaining a cup of tea. When Catherine attends her first assembly ball at the Upper Rooms, she has no dance partner, which means she has no gentleman to escort her to the Tea Room. Only when she and Mrs. Allen sit with a group of strangers is she finally able to drink tea. “After some time, they receive an offer of tea from one of their neighbors; it was thankfully accepted, and this introduced a light conversation with the gentleman who offered it." (Northanger Abbey, vol. 1, ch 2)

Public tea houses and gardens were beginning to pop up in London and were a permissible space for ladies to dine with each other unaccompanied by a man. To "insure the tea arrived hot from the often distant kitchen," guests would drop a coin into a locked wooden box placed on each table and inscribed with the letters “T.I.P.S.” (“To Insure Prompt Service”), according to Laura Boyle ("Tea Time: a History," Jane Austen Centre blog).

Tea References in Austen's Novels

Combining standalone references to "tea" and its hyphenated uses, the word "tea" appears 124 times in Austen’s major works, according to A Concordance to the Works of Jane Austen by Peter De Rose and S.W. McGuire. Mansfield Park is the most caffeinated novel, with 29 tea references, followed by Emma with 26. Curiously, Persuasion contains only one reference to tea. (Perhaps the navy folks preferred something a little more bracing.) And speaking of caffeine, Austen mentions coffee only 12 times in her major works, and there is not a single reference to chocolate.

Specifically, Jane Austen uses the word “tea” on its own 105 times: 25 times in Emma, 20 in Mansfield Park, 15 in Sanditon, 12 each in Sense and Sensibility and The Watsons, 11 in Pride and Prejudice, 8 in Northanger Abbey, and once each in Persuasion and Lady Susan. Austen also uses nine hyphenated forms of the word. “Tea-things” appears eight times: four in Mansfield Park, two in Sense and Sensibility, and once each in Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. “Tea-table” appears four times: twice in Mansfield Park and once each in Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility. “Tea-board” appears twice, both times in Mansfield Park. The remaining hyphenated words appear only once each: "tea-house" and "tea-room" in Northanger Abbey; "tea-maker’s" in Mansfield Park; "tea-time" in Persuasion; and "tea-visit" in Emma.

“References to tea in Jane Austen’ s stories reveal the significant part that tea played, the times at which it was drunk, and the gradual shifting of mealtimes in late Georgian and Regency England,” notes Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson (A Social History of Tea). In Jane Austen’s world “tea meant rest and pleasure, and its absence would be a severe disappointment." 

Photo by Paul Savidge, Food styling by Dan Macey

Low Tea versus High Tea

Tea in Austen’s time would have been served either at breakfast or what we now call “low tea,” because it would have been served on a low table, such as a coffee table, while ladies sat on comfortable chairs in a parlor.

The beginnings of the very British custom of high tea—afternoon tea around 4 p.m. —didn’t begin until well after Austen had died. In 1840, the Duchess of Bedford requesting light food with tea in the mid-afternoon to stave off hunger, since dinner was not served until 8 p.m. in her social circle. She soon invited friends to her room to join her for tea, and a new tradition took hold.

High tea gets its name from being served on a dining table or set on a sideboard, from where guests can serve themselves or be served by waiters.

The three-tiered sandwich tray—sometimes called a curate—that is so closely associated with today's high-tea service—didn’t come into use until the early 1900s, when afternoon tea transitioned from a casual upper-class ritual to a more formal social event, often held at hotels or fancy restaurants. The dramatic tray is an impressive centerpiece for the tea ritual.

“As afternoon tea gained favor in the later years of the 19^th century, the pedestal cake platters; the decorative, space-saving epergne; and the floor-standing wooden cake stands gradually merged to create a multitiered stand designed specifically for the display of irresistible cakes and pastries on the tea table,” according to TeaTime Magazine ("The Three-Tier Cake Stand"). (An epergne was a fancy silver or glass ornamental centerpiece used during the Victorian era that often contained a central bowl with smaller branches holding smaller bowls that were designed to hold fruit, flowers or sweets.)

The three-tiered stand allows each course to be showcased separately. The top plate is traditionally reserved for scones, sometimes served under a silver dome to keep the scones warm. The middle tier typically holds sweets, such as petits-fours, marzipan, or small cakes. The bottom tier is for the savory course of small, crustless tea sandwiches, such as watercress, cucumber, or egg salad. According to proper English etiquette, diners begin with the bottom tier and work their way up. 

According to Bruce Richardson, etiquette books of the late 1800s advised that the food offered with a high tea was not supposed to be a substantial meal—“merely light refreshments." He also noted that in Hints on Etiquette (1884), the author, Marie Bayard, recommended that “cakes, thin bread and butter, and hot buttered scones, muffins, or toast are all the accompaniments strictly necessary.” (Richardson, "A Victorian Afternoon Tea Guide," The Tea Master's Blog). 

Another popular household guide, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1892) noted that sandwiches “intended for afternoon tea are dainty trifles, pleasing to the eye and palate, but too flimsy to allay hunger where it exists.”

WORKS CITED

• Beeton, Isabella. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Ward Lock Bowden, London, 1892.
• Boyle, Laura. "Tea Time: a History", Jane Austen Centre Blog, March 3, 2013, janeausten.co.uk/blogs/customs-and-manners/tea-time
• De Rose, Peter and McGuire, S.W. A Concordance to the Works of Jane Austen. Garland Publishing, 1982.
• Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen and Food. The Hambledon Press, 1995.
• Pettigrew, Jane and Richardson, Bruce. A Social History of Tea. Benjamin Press, 2013.
• "The Three-Tier Cake Stand," TeaTime Magazine website, January 4, 2021, teatimemagazine.com/three-tier-cake-stand/2/
• Richardson, Bruce. "A Victorian Afternoon Tea Guide." The Tea Master's Blog, Boston Tea Party website, www.bostonteapartyship.com/tea-blog/victorian-afternoon-tea-guide 
                 

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