Figure 2. — Susanna Truax, an American painting dated 1730. In collection of Edgar William 

 and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, National Gallery of Art. On the beige, marble-like table top 

 beside Susanna — who wears a dress of red, black, and white stripes — are a fashionable silver 

 teapot and white ceramic cup, saucer, and sugar dish. {Photo courtesy National Gallery oj .-Ir/.) 



to come at this piece of luxury" while one-third of 

 the population "at a mocierate computation, drink tea 

 twice a day." " It was at this time, however, that 

 efforts were made to enforce the English tea tax and 

 the result was that most famous of tea parties, the 

 "Boston Tea Party." 



Thereafter, an increasing number of colonists 

 abstained from tea drinking as a patriotic gesture. 

 Philip Fithian, a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia 

 plantation of Col. Robert Carter, wrote in his journal 

 on Sunday, May 29, 1774: 



After dinner we had a Grand & agreeable Walk in & 

 through the Gardens — There is great plenty of Strawberries, 

 some Cherries, Goose berries &c. — Drank Coffee at four, 

 they are now too patriotic to use tea. 



" Letter from Gilbert Barkly to directors of the East India 

 Company, May 26, 1773. Tea Leaves: Being a Collection oJ Letters 

 and Documents . . ., edited by Francis S. Drake, Boston, 1884, 

 p. 200. 



And indeed they were patriotic, for by September 

 the taste of tea almost had been forgotten at Nomini 

 Hall, as Fithian vividly recounted in his journal: '■* 



Something in our palace this Evening, very merry hap- 

 pened — Mrs. Carter made a dish of Tea. At Coffee, she sent 

 me a dish — & the Colonel both ignorant — He smelt, sipt — 

 look'd — At last with great gravity he asks what's this? — Do 

 you ask Sir — Poh! — And out he throws it splash a sacrifice 

 to Vulcan. 



Other colonists, in their own way, also showed their 

 distaste for tea (see fig. 3). Shortly before the out- 

 break of the American Revolution there appeared in 

 several newspapers an expression of renouncement in 



» Philip Vickers Fithian, Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers 

 Fithian, 7773-1774; a Plantation Tutor 0/ the Old Dominion, edited 

 by Hunter Dickinson Farish, Williamsburg, 1957, pp. 110, 

 195-196. 



PAPER 14: TEA DRINKING IN 18TH-CENTURY AMERICA 



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