Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex

Title: Tea Is So Intoxicating
Author: Mary Essex
Preface: Alison Bailey Afterword: Simon Thomas
Publication: British Library Women Writers series, trade paper, originally published in 1950
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1950s England

Description: Germayne left her dull husband Digby, as well as their spoiled daughter and uncomfortable house in Streatham, for a retired Naval Officer, David Tomkins. He seemed a livelier option at the time but, instead, she has found herself married for the second time to a man who cannot admit he is wrong. Now that the war is over and David needs a new career, he has the unfortunate idea to operate a tea shop out of their cottage in Kent. David wrongly imagines he can cook and has no idea of all the things that can go wrong – and do – when he launches Cherry Tree Cottage Tea-House. Germayne is not thrilled by the reality of living in the midst of chaos, especially when she learns their enterprise has aroused the enmity of their new neighbors, and begins to long for her old boring life.

My Impression: Most characters in books who decide to start offering teas have an easier time than David and Germayne. I’m thinking of No Boats on Bannermere by Geoffrey Trease and The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley, and there are doubtless more I cannot recall. But David, who has drifted with minimal success his entire life, did not think this project through and he does not have either culinary skill or enough capital to undertake such a venture. The meal he plans as an investment inducement to their friends George and Gertrude is a disaster, beginning when it is revealed there is no functioning bathtub for their weekend guests:

“Where’s the bath?” asked George, who was a large man and fond of washing.

“For the moment it isn’t working,” said David, not entirely truthfully, but it would pass!

“Oh, hell,” said George, who was particularly fond of personal comfort and wouldn’t have come if he had known this.

But it was even worse than that, because it wasn’t only the bath, there was, as the agent had put it, no “upstairs convenience.” The convenience, which in itself was hardly that, was something that had once been a portion of the kitchen and had been walled off with matchboarding, and even that had been skimped.

George might have been able to forgive the primitive bathroom situation if David had been able to deliver a delectable dinner but that was not to be.

After a wait of several minutes, David put his head round the door and said that it wouldn’t be long now, then he bobbed back again. After another seven minutes (when the sherry ran out) he appeared triumphantly with four little bowls of soup that had not jellied completely, but which he had hoped to conceal with a thin spattering of chopped parsley.

“I say, your soup hasn’t jellied,” said the cruel George. He was one of those brutally plain-spoken men, more so when he was angry. He wasn’t going to be fobbed off with a half jellied bowl of soup and then preached at as to what a grand cook David was! Gertrude tried to kick George under the table, because he always made her go hot and cold with shame, but George was in one of his moods, and refused to be silenced easily.

You would think David’s inability to serve guests or customers with palatable food in a timely manner would be his biggest challenge but, alas, the most influential woman in the village thinks offering teas will cheapen the neighborhood, and the local pub fears competition. David does get a sort of reprieve when he hires a Viennese refugee, Mimi Valaska, to do the actual cooking and she is quite alluring so helps attract customers. However, when Germayne’s nearly-adult daughter arrives for a visit, she and Mimi form a disastrous alliance, precipitating various crises and the arrival of Digby, Germayne’s discarded first husband, who does not seem all that bad in contrast to David’s pig-headedness.

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Although I did not really like any of the characters, except a retired colonel who manages to get along with everyone, the book was very amusing and it would make a great BBC/PBS miniseries. When people ask me what my dream job would be, I think about the producer of Masterpiece Theatre, who gets to commission and select dramatizations. I am glad this book was given a second life by the British Library but David’s misadventures in the kitchen are giving me agita about hosting my book group tonight! My cooking or baking also takes longer than anticipated but, fortunately, my guests are politer and I never run out of wine. Hmm, better check on that now!

Source: The library purchased this at my request.