RUMFORD—The history of tea includes some legends, Susan Marshall, Childrens’ Services Librarian, told the crowd of over 40 people at the Downton Abbey tea party.

One of the legends is of an Indian saint named Bodhidharma, who went to China in 5020 AD to prove some Zen principles. He decided to meditate for nine years, but towards the end of the nine years he fell asleep. “Upon waking up, he was so angry at himself that he ripped off his eyelids and threw them on the ground and tea was supposed to have sprouted up from his eyelids,” she said.

She also said that the people of China, Tibet, and northern India used to chew tea leaves and use them for medicinal purposes. “At one time, tea was compressed into bricks and you had to grate it off in order to use it, and the bricks were used as a currency because tea was very expensive,” she adds.

Tea arrived in the western world in the sixteenth century, by a Portuguese missionary and it wasn’t seriously traded until the Dutch merchants started shipping it via the Dutch East India Company and also the British East India Company, she said.

“Because tea cost so much, in big houses like Downton Abbey, the family would get the first use of the tea leaves, then the servants would use the tea leaves again, then they would sell the tea leaves out the back door for the common people to use,” she said.

Having tea developed a new social event in the late eighteen-thirties to forties. Women were the ones that really pushed the ritual forward because they couldn’t go out to coffee houses and gin was the national drink at that time, and women did not go to gin houses, Marshall said.

“Women were the driving force behind [having] the tea, which doesn’t surprise me, because women know how to get it done,” she adds.

Library Director Tamara Butler spoke about fashion and showed slides of fashion through the years of the Edwardian period to the 1920s Flapper fashions. “As you’ve seen in the [Downton Abbey] series, the Edwardian tailored suits were popular especially for traveling. People used to dress up to go on a plane or a train, and this is the silhouette of the Edwardian tailored suits,” she said while displaying the suits on the screen.

When women were entering a more commercial work-place, some men objected to the tailor made suit because they thought it was too masculine and challenged their authority, and women were going through a time when they were starting to want more independence, Butler said.

“Accessories were very important in the Edwardian years; the hats were very lavish with feathers and bows. Gloves were important, people used to wear the fancy gloves, worn all year round, with lace and pretty designs, parasols and bags,” she said.

A dramatic change in the dress style happened in the years 1914 to 1920, and a good part of that had to do with the Great War now known as World War I and all the changes that came because of the war, she said. “In 1915 the hemline rose dramatically to mid-calf, that was a big deal; women didn’t show their calves before then,” she adds.

To help in the war effort a lot of women left domestic service work for nursing, they did lamp-lighting and chimney sweeping, and over 700,000 women were employed making military weapons and ammunition. “After the war, those women that had been in the serving industry didn’t want to go back to that, because they were now used to working jobs with set hours and it gave them an independence they didn’t have before,” Butler said.

“The 1920s Flapper fashion embraced everything modern; the hair got shorter, a shapeless shift dress, chest as flat as a board, and they wore makeup and actually applied it in public, they smoked, and showed a little more leg.” she said. The style epitomized a whole different spirit, a little more recklessness, she added.

Gail Parent and Prudence Schofield were the winners of the ten question quiz about the Downton Abbey series. They each got only one question wrong on the quiz and won a Downton Abbey book donated by James Meader of St. Martin’s Press.

Test yourself on your Downton Abbey knowledge: 1. With what famous historical event does the first season begin? 2. With what deadly disease does the second season end? 3. What is the name of Lord Grantham’s dog? (See answers below).

mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net

Answers to Downton Abbey questions: 1. The sinking of the Titanic. 2. The Spanish flu.  3. Isis

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