[Illustration: KETTLE WITH STAND AND SPIRIT LAMP. 1746.
(_By courtesy of Messrs. Elkington & Co._)]
In regard to the coffee-pot, there is an example of the date of 1686, now on view at the London Museum from the collection of Mr. H. D. Ellis. It will be seen that the coffee-pot was always tall; it never lessened its height to become possessed of the pear or gourd-shaped or circular body of its rival. It actually influenced the height and form of the teapot and it was not until the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century that the teapot threw off its similitude to the coffee-pot in regard to height; and from that date when tea-drinking had become established, it pursued its own way in design.
The chocolate-pot followed in the wake of the coffee-pot and has never departed very materially from its early form. It is always rather smaller than its prototype, and may be distinguished from the coffee-pot by the handle, which in the chocolate-pot is not set opposite the spout, as is the case in the teapot and the coffee-pot, but is in the middle, set at right-angles to the spout.
It is necessary to examine the customs of the period to arrive at conclusions in regard to silver. In 1697 the Earl of Bristol notes in his diary the payment “of a bill in full to Mr. Chambers for tea-kettle and lamp, weight ninety oz. eleven dwts., at six shillings and two pence.” These tea-kettles were probably no new thing, and, as coffee came first, were possibly a continuation of similar forms for the decoction of coffee. They were the forerunners of the tea-urns which became popular a century later (see illustration p. 325). Tea and coffee and chocolate, ale and broth, and possibly canary, were all drunk by different classes of the community at the same time. Before the introduction of the eighteenth-century teacups--first from Holland and the East and later from our own porcelain factories, in the first stages without handles--the new beverage, especially in remote and unfashionable districts, was drunk from the silver porringers then in use. At the date of the _Tatler_ the middle classes in the country were still content with milk, water-porridge, broth, ale, or small beer for breakfast. The family of John Wesley drank small beer at every meal. By the third quarter of the eighteenth century Jonas Hanway, who introduced the umbrella to England, and John Wesley, both declaimed in vain against the prevalent tea-drinking. Just as in earlier days London apprentices were to have meat in lieu of salmon, then plentiful in the Thames, so country maids accepting service in London stipulated that they were to have tea twice a day.