The Role of the Teashop in Literature

[callmemadam]

This is the title of something I shall get round to writing one day. In the first half of the twentieth century enterprising young women, when they weren't running chicken farms, tended to opt for a teashop as a genteel way to make some money. Teashops are abundant in Girlsown fiction, from Squirrel House in The Abbey Girls on Trial to the much later The Sugar and Spice, which is a lovely comfort read by Mollie Chappell. Then there's all the teashops Miss Climpson visits in the course of her researches for Lord Peter Wimsey and the number described in The Franchise Affair. I was filled with nostalgia recently, watching the 'Who do you think you are' programme about Nigella Lawson. I hadn't realised that part of her wealth came from being a Lyons heiress. Some wonderful archive pictures reminded me what a treat it was to be taken into the marble halls of a Lyons Corner House when I was a child. Never were there such enormous, sugary buns, it seems now, but then everyone knows Wagon Wheels are smaller than they used to be.

What has put all this into my head is reading an article in The People's Friend (don't ask) called From Our Archives 1934, How to Run a Tearoom. You might be able to read some of it here.

Comments

[coughingbear]

How fab! And doesn't George Fentiman's wife start a tea shop in Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, only it goes wrong?

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I loved the part about dressing the waitress. I can't remember about UATBC. I'll have to reread it: what a hardship!

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

When I was staying with my pa just before Christmas there was a rather nice programme on tea and tea shoppes etc on Channel Five, by Wendy Craig - it made him very reminiscent about Lyons Corner Houses and nippies and taking me out to tea when I was very little. We are thinking about doing something cafe-ish for our next venture; maybe it is time to revive the tea shop. Although I am a chicken girl at heart.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I saw that programme, too and found it very interesting. Even places purporting to be tea shoppes tend to use tea bags now. Bring back real tea, please. Places like Lyons Corner House and the ABC are missed. It used to annoy me that there was no longer anywhere you could take a child to have beans on toast or an egg: just Macdonalds. As for a cup of tea for Mum...