Loaves and Hyacinths Tea Rooms in London and East Anglia

From the Thames Foyer at the Savoy in London to the Essex Rose in Dedham, Loaves and Hyacinths: Tea Rooms in London and East Anglia tells the story of author Gladys S. Lewis and artist Norma K. Brown's journey to over fifty British tea rooms. Their pilgrimage resulted in the book Loaves and Hyacinths, which richly describes each tea room with graceful prose and over thirty color paintings. Both author and artist found the perfect setting in the tea rooms to stop each day to take tea and to relax about life.

Tea rooms are a development of the last hundred years. In England, they have become an extension of the British economic and colonial involvment with the tea producing regions of the world. Volumes exist which take as subject coffeehouses, but little is recorded of tea rooms. The original ones were limited in appeal to women. They provided a place for afternoon tea and talk. Men remarked that more scandal originated in them than "hovered over the course of Good Queen Bess." The Tea room became the women's lodge, or the men's coffehouse counterpart.

The tea room made ints debut when restuarants had indifferent interiors and carelessly prepared food which was unattractively served. In contrast, tea rooms were small, snug and homely places. With the evolution of more substantial menus and the endurance of tea time, they have become centers for men as well as women. Tea rooms are not exclusivly British, but those encountered in England have a distinctive atmosphere. The principles of harmony, respect, purity of custom, and tranquility are present in the English tea room, and Loaves and Hyacyinths characterizes the uniqely British aesthetic experience. This is not a travel book, though Lewis and Brown crisscrossed the hamlets, villages, and towns of East Anglia. Neither is it a food critic's guide, though they ate in more than fifty tea rooms. Rather, the book highlights the journey to the social, historical, geographical, and literary environments and captures the essence of the renewing and relaxing experience of taking tea.