In the UK, afternoon tea is a major deal for a lot of hotels and restaurants. It’s also popular everywhere else, particularly in Japanese malls. It makes sense that a lot of myths have grown up around it, and it can be challenging to separate the true origins of afternoon tea from the myths that the public has created.
Google and numerous passionate afternoon tea bloggers claim that afternoon tea was “invented sometime around 1840.” While some are more detailed, mentioning 1841 or 45, everything else is rather vague. The invention of afternoon tea by Anna Maria Russell, often known as the Duchess of Bedford, is one factor that ties these dates together.
Anna, why?
It’s really simple to make claims about Anna. She was the daughter of an Earl, shortly to be a Duchess, and married to a Marquess. Why shouldn’t it be Anna, who was also a Lady of the Bedchamber and a close confidante of Queen Victoria? According to Google!
It all breaks apart when we start to examine the history of afternoon tea in greater detail. Following the Lady Hastings controversy, Anna was fired from the Royal Service in 1841. Although the Queen continued to be close to her and decided to pay her a visit, Anna had lost her status in society and was no longer an “influencer,” to use the more contemporary phrase.
How did Anna behave?
Although it is true that Anna Russell served tea in the afternoon, or “five o’clock tea,” as she called it, this was common practice for aristocratic women in that and previous periods. In 1845, while visiting Queen Elizabeth of Prussia, Victoria wrote in her notebook, “We went down to what is called the Painted Room & had tea, quite in the German way,” if the Duchess of Bedford was indeed the one who invented afternoon tea. The Queen’s Ladies made the tea while the Princesses and I took our seats at an unclothed table and were served delicious pastries of every variety.
A cup of tea is served “in the German way,” which includes cakes and sounds a lot like “afternoon tea,” which was allegedly created by the Duchess of Bedford, a friend of Victoria’s. Although the journal gives no time, we can assume that it is late afternoon, as we know it is the afternoon and they had dressed for “supper.” You would think that Anna Russell’s friend the Queen would say something like “in the Bedford way” if she had invented this type of tea, but she doesn’t.
Who else, if not Anna?
If afternoon tea was not invented by the Duchess of Bedford, then by whom? Could it have been brought to Paris in 1837 by Countess Anastasia de Circourt? Regretfully, not at all, as several, much earlier references exist; in the 1750s and 1760s, most English spa towns, including Bath and Harrogate, served “afternoon teas.”
Even if Anna Maria Russell wasn’t the true inventor, it’s far simpler to blame her for the creation since, in all honesty, we just don’t know and people would rather know.