Welcome to Jean Ross Ewing's England Page!

England! My native land and the perfect setting for swashbuckling, passionate historical romance.

Dear Jean:

Why do the English complain about not getting a good cup of tea in America? How is English tea different? What's the difference between "afternoon tea" and "high" tea?

A: "Next to water," said a visitor to England in 1809, "tea is the Englishman's proper element." The English answer to any of life's problems, triumphs, or tragedies is to 'sit down and have a nice cup of tea.'

Nowadays, afternoon tea is a dainty meal taken at around four o'clock. Tea is served with delicate cakes and fancy miniature sandwiches: a gentle and civilized way to prevent collapse from hunger when the evening meal is served late. Afternoon tea became fashionable when first formally served by Anna, Seventh Duchess of Bedford, in 1840.

High tea on the other hand is a robust country meal with savory dishes and hearty baked goods served at about six, often the main evening nourishment in a farmhouse.

The English have been hooked on tea since the 1650's. Until the nineteenth century, tea was usually taken twice a day, for breakfast and after dinner. Fine tea was available for purchase to Regency ladies and gentlemen at No. 3, St. James's Street, the present-day premises of Berry Bros. and Rudd Ltd., Wine and Spirit Merchants. This splendid place has remained essentially unchanged since Lord Byron had himself weighed on the shop's large scales. If you go to London, besides having afternoon tea at the Ritz, don't miss it!

Dear Jean:

I'm wondering when "Mothering Sunday" became a custom. Is it like our Mother's Day? How is it celebrated?

A: We go into the roots of antiquity on this one! "Mothering Sunday" is very old and part of the Church calendar. It's the middle Sunday of the fasting period of Lent (which lasts from Ash Wednesday to Easter), so it was also known as 'Refreshment Sunday.'

Children were allowed to feast on 'mothering cakes' and Simnel cakes. Since various foods-especially meat, eggs, cakes, or anything rich-must be 'given up for Lent' this must have been an important treat.

Violets were the emblem of the day. Into Victorian times, young servant girls would be given the day off to visit their mothers with bunches of violets and a small gift. A dictionary of 1850 defines 'Mothering' as follows: "a custom still prevalent in the West of England" of making parents "a present of money, trinkets, or some nice eatable." The language suggests the custom had begun to die out in other parts of the country.

However, children still give their mothers flowers (sometimes violets, though often daffodils) in church as part of the Mothering Sunday service, and Simnel cake is readily available in bakeries. The celebration has also taken on modern trappings, of course: cards and florists' deliveries.

Simnel cakes are very rich. Rather like the English Christmas fruitcake they are packed with raisins and dried currants, and traditionally layered with marzipan inside the cake, though modern Simnel cakes sometimes use the marzipan as decoration on the top. They were also served at Easter and sometimes at Christmas. The word 'Simnel' comes from the Latin 'siminellus': the finest wheat bread.

Special foods are often markers of Holy Days in the Church calendar. The last Tuesday before Lent is Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Tuesday, when eggs, milk and currants are used up before the long Lent fast by making big thick pancakes. In some English villages women hold 'pancake races', which involve running down the main street tossing a pancake in a frying pan, always duly shown on the local TV news. I have no idea if that's a very old custom or not!

Good Friday is celebrated with the Hot Cross Buns of the nursery rhyme: raisin or currant filled yeast buns decorated with a pastry cross on top. For those of you who don't know it, it goes like this:

Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns!

One a penny, two a penny, hot-cross buns.

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.

One a penny, two a penny, hot-cross buns.

Dear Jean:

For example, Bath limestone was quarried locally at Combe Down. Heart-of-England cottages tend to be timber-framed, reminders of long-lost forests. Kenilworth Castle boasts a glorious salmon-colored sandstone, and so did many local houses. Brick houses are found in areas rich in clay. During the Regency, London was surrounded by quarries which mined clay for brick making. In Cornwall and the North of England, where bedrock is close to the surface, almost all of the houses were stone. In Wales there were even cottages built simply from large undressed boulders piled into walls.

Roofing also reflected local materials. For example, Norfolk houses were topped with tile or thatch (often reeds), while the Welsh often sheltered under their native slate. Each local landscape must have been far more homogeneous and pleasing to the eye during the Regency than it is now. For the well-traveled, it must have been possible to recognize one's location from the type of local building glimpsed from the coach window-although the very wealthy built as they liked, and damn the expense!

Dear Jean:

Can you explain some of the strange terms found in Regencies?

A: The language is part of the fun of the period! The Regency was a time of passion and upheaval, not a straitlaced society of rules-though there were plenty of folk who tried to impose rules, of course. Nevertheless, the bucks, rogues, dandies, and dukes went their own way, gambling and drinking into the night, and-either to hide their disreputable activities or to revel in them-used lots of slang or "cant." Here are a few common terms found in romances:

The Quality, the ton, or the beau monde: the upper classes of society, the fashionable set. (The last two expressions are French, a language spoken fluently by most of the aristocracy, so the word 'ton' is pronounced with a French nasal twang to the vowel.)

The Fancy: enthusiasts of a sport, especially pugilism. Boxing was a favorite activity of fashionable Regency gentlemen, both to watch and to practice.

Fives: five fingers, a fist. Thus 'handy with his fives,' a good boxer.

Hell, or gaming hell: a place to gamble and drink-certainly not what one would do in heaven!

Blunt: money. Before the modern decimal system, twenty shillings made a pound, and twelve pennies made a shilling. A farthing was a quarter of a penny. And a guinea was twenty-one shillings, or one pound and one shilling.

Vail: a tip to a servant (as in "to avail" or to be of service)

Foxed, or three sheets to the wind: intoxicated, a common enough state for a Regency buck!