VIII THE TEA-TABLE AND ITS ACCESSORIES Tea-Caddies Tea-Poys Tea-Strainers Caddy-Spoons Some Curious Tea-pots Papier Maché Tea-Trays CHAPTER VIII THE TEA-TABLE AND ITS ACCESSORIES Tea-Caddies - Tea-Poys - Tea-Strainers - Caddy; Spoons-Some Curious Tea-pots-Papier Mache Tea-Trays. TEA was at one time a beverage in this country only enjoyed by gourmets. It came into fashion in the days of Charles II. The poet Edmund Waller has an ode "Of Tea commended by Her Majesty." It is poor verse, although the poet styles tea the "best of herbs" and terms it, The Muse's Friend, Tea does our fancy aid, As a matter of choice one prefers the verses of Robert Herrick and Sir John Suckling, produced after flagons of "Malago sack" or "Whitsun-ale," telling of "Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes," or when, as Lovelace sings, "flowing cups run swiftly round. . . . when healths and draughts go free." By the eighteenth century tea had taken so great a hold on the country and was established as the popular beverage that a maid stipulated in her agreement with her mistress that she was to have tea twice a day. Old diarists have enlightened us on this as they have in regard to the London apprentices a century and a half earlier, when it was duly laid down in their indentures that they were not to have salmon more than twice a week-salmon being plentiful then in the Thames and meat evidently being of a greater price. In regard to tea, it would be interesting to collect various tea advertisements from early days, to show the progress of the habit and the hold it has had upon the popular mind. It was first regarded as a stimulating medicine, it has now almost come to be considered as a staple article of food. Attempts have been made to supplant it by other herbal infusions, notably maté, a South American beverage which is stimulating and refreshing, but these attempts have not been successful. The tea habit seems to be deep-seated and world-wide. There are tea-tasters' pots and cups which in some cases are of antiquity enough to attract the collector. They are more utilitarian than artistic, but they have a genuine interest. The study of the tea-table can be pursued advantageously in regard to the comparison of the different types of vessel used at different periods-the shape of the tea-pot and its size, the form of tea-cups, and the style first introduced into England when tea was originally drunk here. In general the Chinese tea-pot and the Chinese tea-cups are delicate in character and of a finesse unknown in the Western countries. There certainly was no handle to the early Worcester and Bow and Plymouth cups, but they followed the Chinese forms which undoubtedly were used in England before the existence of English porcelain factories. Even New Hall, at a much later date, made cups without handles, although much larger in size. In crediting Dr. Johnson with his twenty to thirty cups of tea at a sitting, it must be borne in mind that they were cups of a miniature size, possibly Worcester or Bow; with this knowledge the Doctor's great drinking feats sink into comparative insignificance. The writer has measured the cups such as were in use in Dr. Johnson's time, and finds the contents of five such cups of the Bow" quail pattern equal to a modern breakfast cup. " Tea-Caddies.-In eighteenth and early nineteenth-century days the prudent housewife kept an eye on the tea-caddy, which had a lock and key. These were fashioned with as much artistry as the spice boxes of the East, and the receptacle was made worthy of its precious contents. The word " caddy" has a curious derivation. It comes from kati, a Malay word; it was a weight in the East Indies, commonly equal (in China exactly by treaty) to one and a half pounds or 6048 grams. This was presumably the weight of early packages of tea. Chippendale, in the list he gives in his Director, 1764, of the furniture he made, mentions "tea |