advertisement claims, “If you are not drinking [United Kingdom Tea Company’s Teas], you are depriving yourself of one of the Greatest Luxuries of the Day.” Tea advertisements hurry to assure consumers that, even within the financial limitations of household economy, English tea drinkers did not need to deprive themselves of luxuries. While middle-class values placed an emphasis on moderation and economy, they included an appreciation for luxury. As this ad suggests, consumers could join the larger community of tea drinkers enjoying “one of the Greatest Luxuries of the Day” by spending their money wisely, at “Immense Saving!” on the United Kingdom Tea Company’s Teas.
In his description of the position of tea within English consumption patterns, Samuel Day similarly embraces the possibility of a “luxury” that was affordable to everyone universally, of all classes. Day describes the voluble economic history of tea taxes in England, concluding, “The wisdom of successive financiers, and the enterprise of generations of merchants, have combined to deliver Tea in this country at a price which brings it within the reach of every individual, making it, perhaps, the only real luxury which is common to rich and poor alike” (70–71). According to Day, English men and women could be poor but still have access to the “luxury” of tea. Ideally, in these texts, tea drinking had a leveling affect, raising the social and moral status of the lower classes by asserting their good taste in drinking tea.
While many tea advertisements, with their dual emphasis on “the best and the cheapest,” appear to be aimed at the economically middle-class consumer, tea histories also assert the power of tea drinking to introduce middle-class values and attitudes into the working classes. Drinking tea, according to G. G. Sigmond’s Tea: Its Effects, Medicinal and Moral, reveals the inherent middle-class values of good taste and thrift within the working class. Sigmond describes in detail the inferior quality of Bohea tea, which he claims was often crushed and broken, mixed with stalks, and yielded a bitter mahogany liquor.12 But the lower classes of English tea drinkers had the good sense to avoid this inferior tea: “This tea has not now a very great consumption in this country; for even the humbler classes, if their means at all admit of it, will not purchase it: generally speaking, they are excellent judges of tea. . . . [A tea dealer, Mr. Thorpe of Leeds, testified to a committee of the House of Commons] that the working and middling classes always buy the finest tea” (Sigmond, 37). Sigmond appears to be proud of the taste that the English lower classes exhibited in their tea purchases. Consumer choice was a matter of national interest that required a committee to investigate the tea-drinking practices of the English people; the character of the nation thus rested on the consumer judgment of the “humbler classes.” Despite their limited budgets, the poor maintained the ability to make choices among available commodities, and they consistently chose “the finest tea.” The moral, upright character of the English public as a whole was affirmed by good taste and good consumer judgment in purchasing tea.
Displaying good judgment and discrimination, the poor thus revealed their respectability, morally allying themselves with the middle classes. Sigmond quotes a Dublin merchant, who declares that “the poor are excellent judges of tea, and have a great nicety of discrimination, preferring good Congou; and that they will walk very considerable distances to purchase at a shop at which they can rely” (38).13 Sigmond endorses the merchant’s claim, praising qualities of character that stem from making distinctions, choosing among available products, and asserting preferences. Preferring more-expensive, better-quality tea redeemed the character of the poorer classes, making them not only English but also respectable. Purchasing tea, even in a poor household, evoked middle-class English values of respectable discriminating taste and an appreciation for high-quality tea, duly tempered by thrift and economizing to make the most of limited financial resources. The poor household, therefore, represented a scaled-down version of the middle-class home, suggesting that nineteenth-century histories of tea portray class as a matter of degree rather than kind. Working-class families aspired to the same values as the middle classes, responding to their smaller incomes by taking further measures of economy but not by sacrificing the consumer commodities that had become necessary to English everyday life. Sigmond praises the economy of poorer tea drinkers who carefully measured their preferred tea leaves: “The great mass of the inhabitants of London like a good strongflavoured Congou; and they think very justly, that two spoonsful of Congou will go further than three of an inferior class of tea” (40). Although their socioeconomic class is revealed by their location within the “great mass of the inhabitants of London,” poorer English tea drinkers are described as smart household managers. They showed excellent economy in insisting on higher-quality tea, since its more concentrated, mellow flavor could be extended to multiple infusions and thus more cups of tea than the leaves of a weaker, cheaper kind. A unified English character depended not only on a taste for tea but also on discrimination and domestic economy.
The potential benefits of tea drinking for the physical health of the nation as a whole occupied the minds of many authors of tea histories, who illustrated that the chemical properties of tea could actually lessen the problem of having multiple economic strata in English society and simultaneously reduce middle-class concern for the extreme poverty of the lower classes. John Sumner’s 1863 A Popular Treatise on Tea, Samuel Day’s 1878 Tea: Its Mystery and History, and Samuel Baildon’s 1882 The Tea Industry of India all quote from an article written by a Dr. Johnston and published in the Edinburgh Review in 1855.14 Dr. Johnston’s article addresses social concerns about the consumption practices of the poor, who had very little money for food but nevertheless saved part of their weekly wages for tea. According to the article, drinking a hot cup of tea helps to mitigate the suffering of the poor, and the author illustrates his claim with a poignant vignette:
By her fireside, in her humble cottage, the lonely widow sits; the kettle simmers over the ruddy embers, and the blackened tea-pot on the hot brick prepares her evening drink. Her crust of bread is scanty, yet as she sips the warm beverage—little sweetened, it may be, with the produce of the sugar-cane—genial thoughts awaken in her mind; her cottage grows less dark and lonely, and comfort seems to enliven the illfurnished cabin. . . . Whence this great solace to the weary and worn? Why out of scanty earnings does the ill-fed and lone one cheerfully pay for the seemingly un-nourishing weekly allowance of Tea? From what ever-open fountain does the daily comfort flow which the tea-cup gently brings to the care-worn and the weak? (Day, 71; Baildon, 230–31)
This quotation from the Edinburgh Review article paints a rustic portrait of a working-class tea table, complete with a sooty teapot warmed by a brick near the fire. Despite the hardships suffered by the widow in this picture, a sip from her teacup cheers her thoughts, brightens her cottage, and comforts her. Defending the poor’s choice to purchase tea with their scanty resources, the article claims that tea succors those in need, providing both physical and mental solace.
Focusing on the ability of the lower classes to elect to drink tea, spending part of their limited incomes on an apparent “luxury,” suggests that they wielded the power to choose among their consumer purchases. Insisting on the ability of the poorer classes to discriminate between commodities is a method of displaying their relative well-being.15 Thus, by proposing that the poorer classes in England maintained the capacity to choose to spend their limited incomes on tea rather than on apparently more-nutritious substances, nineteenth-century tea histories imply that the poor enjoyed many of the same freedoms as the wealthier classes in England.16 Tea histories’ emphasis on the working classes’ taste for tea, their ability to discriminate wisely between various grades of tea, and their choice to include tea, a luxury, within their daily diet provided evidence that the poorer classes in English society were not suffering unduly and that the system of political economy and free market trade, in general, allowed workers to retain their dignity and the power to exercise their consumer freedoms.
In addition to emphasizing the mental solace that could be derived from a hot cup of tea, Dr. Johnston’s article offers a scientific argument for the physiological benefits of tea within a working-class diet. His article praises the chemical components of tea, especially “theine,” which has “tonic or strengthening qualities” (Day, 72). Day quotes from the
