TEA
GARDENS AND SOCIAL LIFE
Soon tea drinking as a way of socializing moved out
of the coffee houses and, for the summer at least,
into elaborate tea gardens wdiere men and women could
meet socially. Greatest and longest-lived was Vauxhall
on the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge. Many contained
serpentine paths, bowling green, and a "great
room" for concerts and dancing. Tea, as in v
the teahouses of Song China, was the pretext for socializing.
The beverage was served, with bread and butter or
small cakes, but prome-nading and conversing were
the major pastimes. Some gardens featured masked carnivals,
fireworks, races, gambling, and concerts. Cuper's
offered music by Corelli and Handel, the latter being
a frequent garden patron, along with Dr. Johnson and
novelists Henry Fielding and Horace Walpole. The vogue
passed and gardens proved unprofitable, though Vauxhall
endured from its opening in 1732 into the nineteenth
century. The last London tea garden closed in the
1850s. But in 1886, a new tea phenomenon appeared,
the tea shop. Often these were run by the large tea
companies such as Eyons, and served food as well.
Tea shops (or shoppes for quaintness) flourished in
cottages, too.
By the time the gardens disappeared, tea drinking
had moved into the home. The high government tax on
imports of tea had made smuggling-one of the big businesses
of the eighteenth century, but it also brought the
price down within the range of non-aristocrats. Many
a family purchased its tea from an illicit seller
in response to a rap on the window in the night. At
one time, so many persons were engaged in smuggling
that there was a shortage of farm labor. Unlawful
tea w-as even hidden in church vaults. Various authorities
maintain that one-half to two-thirds of Britain's
total tea imports entered illicitly.
Adulteration was another industry spawned by the tax,
which made the legal price of tea exorbitant. It was
done with the leaves of willow, elder, and ash trees,
and with used tea leaves. Sawdust, gunpowder, and
dried sheep dung were other additives. Forests were
mined and vast tracts were given over to growing leaves
just for this purpose. For over a century and a half
following the first law against adulteration in 1725,
various other tea regulations were passed, but it
wasn't until 1875 that legislation finally was successful
in halting the practice.
Green tea led over black tea from the start in imports
into Britain. But green tea, being unroasted, was
easier to adulterate, so people began turning away
from it and to the black.
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