Horniman's Tea Advertisement

National Review, 32, April 1863, p.529

 

The

BEST and CHEAPEST

is

HORNIMAN’S PURE TEA

STRONG, DELICIOUS

and

INVIGORATING.

_____

HORNIMAN’s PURE BLACK .

In Richness, Strength, & Flavour it is unequalled;

The leaf is not artificially darkened, as it consists only of the Choice

Spring growths, which have no withered leaves to be disguised.

_____

HORNIMAN’s PURE GREEN.

This Tea is of a peculiar Delicious Flavour;

The leaf is a natural olive hue, as it is not coated with the usual

bluish powder employed to disguise and pass off inferior wintry leaves.

_____

HORNIMAN’s PURE MIXED

The preference given to this Favourite Tea

Arises from the unrivalled strength of the Pure Black, and the

Delicate Flavour of the Pure Green; from not being artificially

Coloured it is perfectly wholesome.

_____

Obtainable from 2280 authorised Agents. Black, Green,

Or Mixed, at 3s. 8d., 4s., ad 4s. 4d., per pound. Sold

Secured in Two-ounce, Quarter, Half, and Pound Packets,

Containing the full weight of Tea.

_____

CHOICE TEA at a very reasonable price is obtained by purchasing the Pure sorts imported by Horniman & Co., London , who to secure reliable quality, have for the last 15 years had their supply not covered with colour, because the Chinese “face” many teas on purpose to disguise and pass off refuse brown leaves knowing the usual artificial colour hides all defects and makes low sorts appear equal to and sell for the best.

 

The Inland Revenue Report on Tea , for 1862, also condemns this adulteration; it was printed by command of Her Majesty, and laid before both houses of Parliament. An able Leading Article in the “Times,” August 15, reviews this State Document, which cautions all against using the highly coloured leaf, and shows the impolicy of allowing mineral colour on Tea, especially as it is used as daily food.

 

***Hover your cursor over the highlighted terms in  the advertisement for further explanation. You can also hover your cursor over images to read the captions and citations.  ***

 

Background

 

According to legend, tea was discovered c. 2700 B.C. when the emperor of China was sitting under a tree, drinking boiled water for good health when a few leaves from a camellia sinensis fell into his cup. This was said to become the first cup of tea ("The History of Tea"). Dutch merchants first introduced the beverage to England in the 1650s. Carl Linnaeus brought the first living tea plant to England for domestication in 1736, but the British remained largely reliant on imports (Chambers, 32-33). Before the Victorian Period, tea was a luxury good, like sugar, typically purchased only for the British elite. But with the growth of the middle class, and growing dependency on imported goods to supply an expanding consumer culture, tea became a part of daily life in England. Earlier in the century, tea was sold in coffeehouses as a pre-made drink. But because tea is easier to make at home—as opposed to coffee, which requires roasting, grinding, and percolating of the beans—tea became the drink of British domesticity. Tea leaves could also be used multiple times, providing a very economical way for middle-class homes to participate in the daily ritual. Horniman’s Tea was the first to be sold in individual packets, simplified and ready to use for the Victorian consumer.

 

Tea from China arrived already dried and was sold by the pound. It simply required steeping before one could enjoy a warm cup. According to the Inland Report on Tea (a report commissioned by Parliament), there was a growing problem of merchants dyeing green tea leaves black, and vice versa, coloring tea refuse in order to pass it off as fresh tea. In a booklet titled Tea, Coffee and Cocoa: A Practical Treatise, James Alfred Wanklyn writes, “The tea of commerce is accused of three descriptions of sophistication. It is said to be sometimes mixed with leaves which are not tea; sometimes it is sanded, and adulterated with a variety of mineral substances; and sometimes it is more or less completely spent” (3). The British Medical Journal reported in 1862 that the most common adulteration of imported tea was the conversion of black tea into green tea by coloring (229).

 

 

 

 

China and the tea trade: A precursor to the Victorian tea economy

 

In the mid 1700s, the tea boom began in England.  At the end of the seventeenth century, only a few hundred pounds of tea were imported to the country per year (Guerty & Switaj 56). When the East India Trading Company began unrestricted trades with China just thirty years later, the influx of tea ballooned to more than two hundred thousand pounds per year.  By the 1750s, the figure was in the millions (Guerty & Switaj 57). This enormous economic influx of tea was largely due to the opium trade between China and England.

 

The trade was fairly straightforward. England would purchase a large quantity of Chinese tea and pay partially in currency.  The majority of the balance was remunerated by trading mass quantities of opium which were grown in the British colony of India. This practice survived for nearly a century (Melancon 855). The trade system fell into collapse when the Chinese began to voice disdain over the opium trade and subsequent drug addiction of their people.  They responded to the crisis by challenging the trade agreement with Britain. The British countered by declaring what would become a series of three wars on the Chinese. In 1833, Parliament ended the trade agreement between the East India Trading Company and China (Fromer 40).

 

Victorian tea economy and cultural tensions

 

Following the dissolution of the East India Trading Monopoly of China, Britain was in a precarious position. Although one of its colonies, India, had tea available for import, it was not the same tea that the British had grown accustomed to. Strong-flavored Indian teas were a large departure from the mild Chinese teas the English were used to (Fromer 58). Furthermore, Indian tea was less plentiful and thus more expensive to purchase.  Without many options at its disposal, Britain began pushing the import of Indian tea instead.  

 

The largest hurdle for the British economy was that Chinese tea was still available for purchase. It also cost a fraction of the price of Indian tea. The British found a way to use this to their advantage.  The Chinese tea that was once marketed as “cheap” and “exotic” would be marketed as “unclean” and a threat to British nationalism. Indian tea, however, was seen as the “clean” and “British” alternative to Chinese tea (Fromer 39). These appeals to "otherness" reflect the Victorian British ambivalence caused by simultaneously embracing the exotic and wanting to hold it at arm's length. When Chinese tea was aligned with British economic interests, the exoticism was favorable, but when it became a competitor of the imperial economy, it was labeled as corrupt. 

 

The British also made the distinction by employing clever marketing tactics. Previously, Chinese tea was imported in plain blocks which would be broken apart and sold by local merchants. Indian teas were prepared differently and pre-packaged before being sold (Fromer 40).  Elegant and elaborate wrappings were considered more sterile. In addition, the elaborate presentation could be associated with class and elegance.  Since tea had a new marketability, it offered promise for merchants. What was once sold in general markets was being reserved for trendy tea shops. From this point on, the British tea economy became increasingly internal.

 

Internal economics of tea in the British Empire

 

The cultivation of tea from within the British Empire was an incredibly long and arduous task. The persistence of the British government paid off when they discovered that the Assam region in India had a climate conducive to growing black tea. In 1839, the Assam Company was founded (Denyer 37). The company encountered numerous financial setbacks, but the project pushed forward. By 1853, the Assam Company finally became profitable. Within twenty years, Indian tea was beating Chinese tea at market (Denyer 38). 

After the Opium Wars with China ceased, duties and fees on tea slowly began to decline. As the duties decreased, so did the price of tea. Although tea was widely consumed prior to the Assam Company, lower prices meant the average person could afford to consume more tea than ever before. Furthermore, tea became an affordable commodity for people from all economic backgrounds. Even the poorest citizens of England were able to enjoy tea from India. Since Indian tea was much stronger than its Chinese counterpart, working class people could reuse Indian tea leaves, making it a much more viable financial decision.  All of these factors came to the forefront when tea consumption leaped from an average of 22 oz. per person, per year in 1842 to a whopping 85 oz. annual consumption per person in 1882 (Denyer 36). At the turn of the century, more tea was being consumed in the England than in any other part of the globe.

 

 

 

Tea time in the Victorian home

 

Making Tea

In order to make tea the most important thing to remember is that the water must be boiling. If the water is not boiling, the tea leaves will not open up, causing them not to blossom, which will result in a weak tea. If the tea is weak, or if the tea has been made improperly, the color will be very light or non-existent. Mrs. Beeton describes this as "nothing but tepid water" (351).

 

The proper amount of tea leaves is a teaspoon for each person and one for the pot. The amount of boiling water for a pot is between half a pint and a whole pint. Once the water in the pot is boiling, add the tea and swiftly cover the pot.  Let the tea steep in the boiling water for five to ten minutes--five for green and ten for black, generally (352).

 

Responsibility for Buying, Making, and Serving Tea 

When buying tea one must take into account freshness first. The smell of the leaves should be pleasant, and the tea will be frequently perfumed. Also the tea leaf should be as whole as possible. According to Mrs. Beeton, on formal occasions, such as dinner parties, the tea is to be made and served by the footman. On less formal occasions the tea may be served by the mistress herself or another servant. Tea is served with cream or milk as well as tea cakes, biscuits, and or toast (402). 

 

Taking Tea

When tea was becoming more popular in the home it was advised that a lady must be careful not to drink too much tea or abuse tea in any way because it was thought that the abuse or over-consumption of tea could lead to the abuse of alcoho l(British Medical Jounal 233-235). Nevertheless, tea was used as a social tool and excuse for ladies to get together. It was one of the most popular refreshments at the time, and Mrs. Beeton describes it as “a necessity of life” (346).

 

The dishes and ways of serving tea were always changing with new designs and materials. A lady was always in the market for a new tea pot, tea stand, sets of cups or saucers, creamers, or spoons that were in the latest fashion.  Silver, brass, and copper tea pots were very popular, yet one of the trendiest materials was white-metal-pewter tea pots with delicate designs (Pennsylvania Gazette 34).

 

Representations of tea in Victorian literature: Cranford

 

Tea in Victorian literature embodies the ideal of middle-class domesticity and, by extension, British national identity. The tea table is a place of sustenance and restoration, and it becomes a space where class, gender and generational boundaries are erased in favor of a more intimate community (Fromer 117). Elizabeth Gaskell stands out as an author who uses these expectations to bring her characters together over their shared experience. Julie E. Fromer writes:

 

Within Gaskell’s novels, the tea table enables diverse situations of contact between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the crossing of established ideological boundaries within Victorian culture. Men and women meet and mingle, elder generations mix with younger ones, and members of the working class and middle class can begin to reconcile their political differences across the shared rituals of tea drinking. Tea fosters connections, bringing people together over a beverage that symbolized moral qualities of English identity, including respectability, discrimination and good taste, household economy, domesticity, and family affection (119).

 

Several examples of these “boundary-crossings” can be found in the episodic novel Cranford. Although the upper-class ladies of the village have a very insular clique, in their tea parties their community opens up to admit men, working-class women, and aristocrats. In the chapter titled “Visiting,” Miss Betty Barker, a former lady’s maid and retired milliner, invites the core women of Cranford society to her home for tea. Miss Betty is eager to conform to the rituals of tea, which include “the tea table…warmed by a fire, surrounded by soft carpets, and enshrouded by thick draperies that effectively shut out inclement weather, impending darkness, and presumptuous intruders” (Fromer 116). Thus Miss Betty “stirred the fire, and shut the door,” eager to distance herself from her servant and put herself on the same level as her higher-society guests (Gaskell 116). 

 

In contrast, the tea party at Mrs. Jamieson’s, in honor of her sister-in-law Lady Glenmire, takes place in a much better appointed drawing room. The windows are large and light, the furniture is white and gold. Mrs. Jamieson’s “japanned table” displays her ability to purchase consumer goods acquired through British imperialism. To the guests’ surprise (and relief), Lady Glenmire takes the lead in seating people, and “[they] found [them]selves for the first time placed agreeably, and not formally, in Mrs. Jamieson’s house” (127). The act of the woman of higher status placing herself on equal footing with the guests by arranging them for comfort and not hierarchy echoes Fromer’s observation that, “In Gaskell’s work, scenes of the working classes drinking cups of the national beverage function as a strategy of articulating that rich and poor, capitalist and worker, all belonged to a single nation with a common culture and shared moral values” (125).

 

Cranford is a culture entirely dominated by females, and when Captain Brown arrives, he is not considered part of the community until he begins attending the tea parties. His presence causes Mary a bit of anxiety, as she is not sure how a man will function at the party. But when Captain Brown enters the gathering, “He immediately and quietly assumed the man’s place in the room; attended to everyone’s wants, lessened the pretty maid-servant’s labour by waiting on empty cups, bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout” (Gaskell 49). Captain Brown’s active participation in the tea-time ritual is not anomalous but rather illustrates the idea that the man had as much a role in perpetuating British domestic culture at the tea table as the woman (Fromer 182).

 

Tea in Cranford appears as a commercial commodity as well as a daily ritual. When Miss Matty loses all her money she is persuaded to begin selling tea out of her home to make ends meet. She is reluctant at first, because in Cranford society commerce is considered “vulgar.” But just as the tea parties help erase class divisions, Miss Matty’s entrance into the tea business illustrates the loosening of the rigid divide between the upper and middle classes in the nineteenth century. Perhaps because of its associations with home and family, selling tea is apparently an acceptable occupation for a “lady.” Indeed, Matty admits “she did not think men ever bought tea,” again showing its close association with the mistress of the house (200).

 

For all the importance of tea in British national culture, its relationship to the “other” is not ignored in Cranford. Matty is wary of green tea, thinking it to be at best insomnia-inducing and at worst a kind of poison, echoing the anxiety over the “adulteration” of tea by corrupt Chinese producers. She even tries to stop her customers from purchasing it before Mary’s business sense wins out with her suggestion that “one man’s meat might be another man’s poison” (204). The canisters in Miss Matty’s tea shop are labeled with “cabalistic inscriptions” (202), suggesting an esoteric or almost magical knowledge involved in the making of tea. This motif is reinforced by the presence of Peter, whose return from the Orient coincides with Matty’s entrance into the tea trade and whose tales include such fantastic elements as “shooting a cherubim” (219). This situation thus portrays the entwined associations of “Englishness” and “empire” that were present throughout the nineteenth century. As Fromer says in her discussion of David Copperfield, “To be English is to remain snugly at home enjoying the luxuries of the world, but they can only be made available by the ‘meandering’—traveling, purchasing, cultivating and colonizing the world. Tea itself is made possible only by meandering” (185).

 

 

Works Cited

 

Beeton, Isabella. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 346-347, 361-352, 402.

 

The British Medical Journal. BMJ Publishing Group. Vol 2, No. 1335. 1886. Pages 233-235.

 

Chambers, Robert.  William Chambers.  “Jottings on Tea.”  Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts.  11 Jul. 1846: 31-32.

 

Denyer, C.H. "The Consumption of Tea and Other Staple Drinks." The Economic Journal 3.9 (1983): 33-51. Web. 08 Oct 2010.

 

Fromer, Julie E. A Necessary Luxury: Tea in Victorian England. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 2008. Print.

 

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Ed. Elizabeth Langland. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2010. Print.

 

Guerty, P.M., and Kevin Switaj. "Tea, Porcelain, and Sugar in the British Atlantic World." Organization of American Historians 18.3  (2004): 56-59. Web. 08 Oct 2010.

 

"The History of Tea". The Stash Tea Company and the World of Tea. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. <http://www.u.arizona.edu/~maxsh/>

 

Inland Report on Tea, National Review, 30 (1862:Oct.) p.434 

 

Melancon, Glenn. "Honour in Opium? The British Declaration of War on China, 1839-1840." International History Review 21.4  (199): 855-74. Web. 10 Oct 2010.

 

The Pennsylvania Gazette. To all Lovers of Decency, Neatness, and Tea. March 1733. Page 34.

 

Wanklyn, James Alfred. Tea, Coffee and Cocoa: A Practical Treatise. Trubner & Co., 1874. 1 Jun. 2007 <http://www.archive.org/details/teacoffeecocoapr00wankuoft.html>

 

 

 

Project Group Members 

Project Completed: Fall 2010 

 

Member Name	University	Course
Jamie Bernard	University of Missouri-Kansas City	English 426
Meredith Derks	University of Missouri-Kansas City	English 426
Andrew Johnson	University of Missouri-Kansas City	English 5526
Christine Pivovar	University of Missouri-Kansas City	English 5526
Michele Smith	University of Missouri-Kansas City	English 426