Henry James said that “there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” Well, maybe in your time Haz.
Afternoon tea has – all agreeable people must surely agree – become an absolute abomination. We have taken a repast that was once refined and restful, and turned it into a saccharine confection of pastel-coloured frou-frou. And that’s just the dress code.
Because afternoon tea is not only the height of twee, it’s become a Disney depiction of sophistication, the sort of primary-coloured princess experience that only children used to buy into. Now (in a dispiriting mark of where society is heading) it’s seen as a must-book activity for fully grown adults.
The origins
We can lay the blame for all this squarely at the feet of Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, who, in 1840, described a “sinking feeling” at about 5pm. To combat this despondence between lunch and dinner, she took to ordering a tray of tea, bread and butter and cake to her room. Afternoon tea was born.
Hers, though, was one I could get behind. How I admire her solitude, for starters. She was not surrounded by influencers snapping endless photos of their food. She just… ate it. Maybe even while reading a book. One can only dream.
Feminist fancies
Since men had monopolised the coffee houses, tea was taken up by women, leading the food historian Tasha Marks to suggest that, once Victorian afternoon tea became a social event, it could be considered “a radical feminist act... a place where women took centre stage and were able to exchange ideas.”
Compare today. Afternoon teas are the ‘go-to’ choice for hen and ‘gender reveal’ parties (if you don’t know, for God’s sake spare yourself and don’t Google). The most risque act associated with them is that of adding a naughty glass of champagne (and another £15 to the £60 you’ve somehow been bamboozled into spending on crispy finger sandwiches and an imminent sugar crash).
The final blow
The true tipping point came when afternoon tea moved out of the home. Today, no self-respecting hotel is without one. Dismantling the conventional wisdom that the hours between lunch and supper are designed for doing – not yet more eating – is a sure-fire money-spinner in an otherwise unprofitable period for them.
Which makes you the frivolous filler between the real guests who are there at breakfast, and the real money that’s taken at supper. Your insignificance is marked by the frequency with which you’re not even seated in a library, let alone the dining room. In the lobby, you eat from coffee tables, because nothing says luxury like cramp-inducing crunches over carbohydrates.
You perch on oddly architectural armchairs, designed for brief waits by the concierge desk, not an interminable ordeal that starts too late (forcing you to skip lunch and thus sit down dizzyingly ravenous) and ends just before supper (so that you’re turned out onto the street at dusk, your microbiome ravaged by sugar, your biological clock bulldozed and the rest of your evening stretching desolately before you).
Emperor’s new clothes
One should always be deeply suspicious when dishes doth protest too much. The afternoon tea was once bread, butter and cake. You still know where you are with that inimitable institution, the cream tea (scone, jam, cream or butter. Bish, bash, and brilliantly bosh.)
But today’s afternoon tea is not considered worthy of the name (or, crucially, it’s wildly over-inflated price tag) if umpteen teeny tiny treats in violent shades (that, in more sensible times were reserved for rat poison) aren’t wrapped up in a disorientating assault of gold leaf, honeycomb shards, spun candy-floss, and something illegible penned in chocolate.
The only time I’ve truly enjoyed afternoon tea was a Hogwarts themed one at the Wizarding-themed Georgian House Hotel in London (£40), taken in the company of my then-seven-year-old daughter and accompanied by dried ice bubbling from a cauldron. Not because it was especially fine but because it was hilariously honest: afternoon tea is all smoke and mirrors.
Fancy dress
As hotels compete with one another for the most outre offering, it is no longer enough to be handed an Eiffel Tower of carbohydrates and refined sugars. Now, it must arrive in fancy dress, your macaroon masquerading as a moon, or a Manet.
Thus, elsewhere in the capital, you can choose from a Salvador Dali-themed afternoon at the Rosewood (it’s not an egg-shaped cake, it’s the Metamorphosis of Narcissus, paired with a lobster telephone and more for £75 a head, £82 with a cocktail). Or else, a science-themed afternoon tea at the Ampersand (Mandarin & cherry jelly Petri dishes, Dulcey chocolate & Blackcurrant planets and more for £49.50, or £64.50 with a glass of champagne).
Actually, you can’t. Because the Ampersand’s, for one, is so wildly popular that its website warns, “due to the high number of enquiries we receive we are unable to accept bookings over the telephone or by e-mail.”
My opinion, it seems, is unpopular. Maybe even wrongheaded. But sitting here at home with my cheddar sarnie, mug of tea and Mr Kipling (total £2.50, from the garage shop), I feel confident in my ability to make peace with that. Let them eat cake.
Afternoon tea has become an absolute abomination
What was once a humble helping of Victoria sponge and Darjeeling has morphed into a world of saccharine and absurdly themed excess