LEA: 689 
closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst 
the wind and the rain are raging audibly without.” “ 
The earliest known teapot (belonging to the Earl of Bristol) 
dates from 1697. At first the new beverage was drunk out of 
silver bowls, and afterwards from earthen cups, and then from 
China cups. Teapots were introduced from Holland. Probably 
the cups at first were smaller, and the infusion was not made 
so strong as at present. Hartley Coleridge, a great Tea-drinker, 
when asked how many cups he generally took, replied, “* Cups, 
Madam! I don’t reckon by cups! Pots, Madam, pots.” 
Boswell makes mention of a teapot which belonged to Dr. 
Johnson, and held two quarts. Another teapot of his was 
purchased some years ago at Mrs. Piozzi’s sale, at Streatham, 
and which was reputed to be the one he usually employed, 
holding more than three quarts; it was made of old Oriental 
porcelain, painted, and gilded. His consumption of Tea was 
prodigious, beyond all precedent; he professed to have drunk 
five-and-twenty cups at a sitting. China Tea cost sixteen 
shillings a pound at that time. Great ladies set the fashion of 
sipping it in dainty cups of the finest Oriental China. It was 
a common custom in the eighteenth century to put the spoon 
in the cup as an indication that no more Tea was then desired ; 
turning up the cup in the saucer was another way of signifying 
that one had finished Tea. In an old volume of Household 
Recipes (1776) the writer speaks of Tea as a “ tincture,” and 
says too much milk must not dilute the “tincture”; he uses 
this term as though the drink were a medicinal draught, so as 
to conceal its true forbidding flavour. Austin Dobson wrote 
concerning a famous eighteenth century lady :— 
““She was renowned, traditions say, 
For sweet conserves, and curds, and whey, 
For finest Tea (she called it ‘ Tay’), 
And ratafia.”’ 
Formerly there was infused a beverage known as Breast Tea, 
or Pectoral Tea; it was composed of marsh mallow leaves, 
eight parts; coltsfoot leaves, four parts; Russian liquorice, 
three parts; anise, two parts; mullein, two parts ; and orris, 
one part. A tea made with the dried petals of the wild violet 
(Tricolor), or common pansy, is invariably curative of the scald- 
head, or milk-crust of children if given weak, and in small 
quantities (from one to two tablespoontuls) three times a day; 
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