The Book of Tea | Page 3

the guest to the fate
awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single
instance the Oriental spirit reigns supreme.
The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be found in the
statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the year 879 the main
sources of revenue in Canton were the duties on salt and tea. Marco
Polo records the deposition of a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for
his arbitrary augmentation of the tea-taxes. It was at the period of the
great discoveries that the European people began to know more about
the extreme Orient. At the end of the sixteenth century the Hollanders
brought the news that a pleasant drink was made in the East from the
leaves of a bush. The travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L.
Almeida (1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned tea.
In the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India Company brought
the first tea into Europe. It was known in France in 1636, and reached
Russia in 1638. England welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That
excellent and by all physicians approved China drink, called by the
Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee."
Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of Tea met with
opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville (1678) denounced drinking it as
a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway (Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men
seemed to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty
through the use of tea. Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen
shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made it "regalia
for high treatments and entertainments, presents being made thereof to
princes and grandees." Yet in spite of such drawbacks tea-drinking
spread with marvelous rapidity. The coffee-houses of London in the
early half of the eighteenth century became, in fact, tea-houses, the
resort of wits like Addison and Steele, who beguiled themselves over
their "dish of tea." The beverage soon became a necessity of life--a
taxable matter. We are reminded in this connection what an important
part it plays in modern history. Colonial America resigned herself to
oppression until human endurance gave way before the heavy duties
laid on Tea. American independence dates from the throwing of

tea-chests into Boston harbour.
There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible
and capable of idealisation. Western humourists were not slow to
mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. It has not the
arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering
innocence of cocoa. Already in 1711, says the Spectator: "I would
therefore in a particular manner recommend these my speculations to
all well-regulated families that set apart an hour every morning for tea,
bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good to
order this paper to be punctually served up and to be looked upon as a
part of the tea-equipage." Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as "a
hardened and shameless tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his
meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea
amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea
welcomed the morning."
Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism
when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good
action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For Teaism is
the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting
what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself,
calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of
philosophy. All genuine humourists may in this sense be called
tea-philosophers,--Thackeray, for instance, and of course, Shakespeare.
The poets of the Decadence (when was not the world in decadence?), in
their protests against materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened
the way to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation
of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in mutual
consolation.
The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning,
Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At last the Yellow Emperor,
the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the demon of darkness
and earth. The Titan, in his death agony, struck his head against the
solar vault and shivered the blue dome of jade into fragments. The stars
lost their nests, the moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms

of the night. In despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the
repairer of the Heavens. He had not to search in vain. Out of the
Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and
dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire. She welded the
five-coloured