A Warm Cup and a Quiet Minute

About this drawing

It is easy to think of a princess drinking tea as a timeless image, but in England the habit really does trace back to one royal bride. Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, married King Charles II in 1662 and brought her taste for tea to a court that mostly drank ale and wine.

Tea was already an old story in Asia, where people in China had been drinking it for many centuries. Portuguese and Dutch merchants carried it to Europe in the 1600s, and for a long time it stayed outrageously expensive. Wealthy households locked their leaves in small chests called caddies so the servants could not help themselves.

Once the queen drank it, everyone at court wanted some. Afternoon tea came along much later, in the 1840s. Dinner had drifted so late in the evening that Anna, Duchess of Bedford, reportedly started asking for tea and snacks around four o'clock. Her friends joined in, and a tradition was born.

Americans have their own complicated history with the drink. A tax on tea helped spark the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when colonists dumped chests of it into the harbor. The country went on to invent its own twist, and today a tall glass of iced tea is about as American as a summer porch gets.

• princesses
• tea
• history
• traditions