Anglomania

Damn this week went by so fast!

This is usually my favourite time of year back in Europe, but I hear that it’s uncharacteristically cold at the moment, that people are digging out their portable heaters. This from a friend in Paris, who may herself be uncharacteristically sensitive to the cold…

So about this unexpected protrusion of land in southeast DRC… The answer, obscurely, is tea! I am told, quite seriously, that every day at precisely 4pm all the English officials at the border post between the Congo and the Zambia would simultaneously retire for their afternoon tea, leaving the post unattended. Consequently, every day at 4pm the Belgians would discreetly shift the post a few meters southeast. Over the years, the meters turned to kilometres, until eventually the Congo had an extra 200 km.

According to some quick mental arithmetic (undoubtedly flawed – mental arithmetic is not my forte), this would mean that the Belgians shifted the border post by over 5m every day, unnoticed by the English. It makes one wonder what the English put in their tea back then!

I did specify, in phrasing the quiz question, “according to my Congolese sources”.

Now at the risk of dealing an unforgivable blow to the Entente Cordiale, guess what else I found out about tea recently? It was introduced to Europe by… the French!

“It's a little known fact, but after its introduction to Europe in the 17th century tea was tremendously popular in France. It first arrived in Paris in 1636 (22 years before it appeared in England!) and quickly became popular among the aristocracy. (…) Madame de Sévigné also reported that it was a Frenchwoman, the Marquise de la Sablière, who initiated the fashion of adding milk to tea. (…) The English delighted in this "French touch" and immediately adopted it. (…) However, popularity among the upper classes may have been the kiss of death for tea in France. In 1789, (…) the king and queen had lost their heads and so had a goodly number of counts, dukes, and the like. Tea, a symbol of royalty, went the way of royalty. Tea's story was not over in France, however. Only 50 years after the Revolution, an Anglomania swept the country. Everything English was all the fashion and it again became stylish to take tea, often in the evening after dinner and accompanied by small pastries.”

(Extracts from an article in TeaMuse)

“There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims