They are mice and bears and things and whenever I stumble into their worlds they are all unfailingly polite.
But maybe I don’t want to have to tea with them. Do I want to have tea with them? Let’s see.
Dormouse, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland
I like you Dormouse. I truly do! There are few things I love more than small sleepy animals. But I like to sit and drink my tea, not engage in impromptu therapy sessions with Hatters. Hence, you sit here, near the bottom of the list, snoring away. Gosh you’re cute.
The Depressed Bear, The Magicians
Sorry, Bear. You may invite me to hang out at your tavern with plenty of honey-drenched tea, but first of all, you are one lachrymose ursus. Second, you tend to have a pretty one-track mind, and I think we’d exhaust your one or two conversational topics in about five minutes. Third, and probably most important: is Quentin Coldwater at the tavern?
Because I am not listening to that.
Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
You guys set out a mean tea spread! (Although your take on fish and chips is a little odd…) And since I’m assuming that I would only meet you if you were sheltering me, a Daughter of Eve, from the White Queen, it’s fair to say that I’m a fan of yours.
But. None of that will matter in the moment when I have to stand face-to-face with a toddler-sized mammal with teeth the size of my fist. I love you Beavers, honestly, but I don’t think I can watch you eat a scone.
Plus I don’t think I want to get into this weird Aslan-cult-prophecy thing you keep talking about.
I hope you can forgive me.
Worm and His Missus, Labyrinth
Worm, I think you’re great. I appreciate your attempt to help me with the Labyrinth, and it pains me to hear you say you’re “just” a worm. You are a worm of distinction! And I do, truly, appreciate your kind offer of tea with your Missus.
How am I supposed to fit through the door? I see the door. I know it’s worm-sized. What exactly is your plan? Is this some TARDIS-foolery, where suddenly your wormhole is enormous inside? Fine. We’re in a fantasyland, I can accept that, but that does not solve my central conundrum: how do I fit through your worm-door?
You come up with an answer to that, Worm, and then we’ll talk about tea.
TUMNUS, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
So if walking through the woods on a snowy evening I should chance to see a streetlight, I’ll be a little confused? And then if I chance to see a faun carrying his groceries home I’ll… probably faint, to be honest. But after that, Tumnus? Once you’ve dropped your groceries in the snow and shaken me awake, if you do me the honor of inviting me into your home? I know I’ll be in the presence of EPIC TEA.
Come on, you’re a creature who risks your own life to protect a human you’ve only known for an hour! You chose to be turned into a statue rather than betray your new friend. Tumnus, you are a ride-or-die faun, and I’m guessing you’ll create a tea that will reflect your noble soul.
Say I’d like some jam with my scone? Tumnus is all like “Strawberry preserves, orange marmalade, or LEMON CURD, motherfucker? You have your choice of all three in my cave that has been transformed into a cozy library.”
So what I’m saying, Tumnus, is that after you’ve roused me from my shocked sleep, I’ll say hell yes to your kind offer of tea.
However, you’re still not quite Number One.
Ratty, Mole, and Badger, The Wind in the Willows
If I’m sailing down the river with you, Rat and Mole, there is a very strong likelihood of a picnic breaking out, and since this would be a pastoral Edwardian English picnic, there won’t be any annoying bees or ants, just cute bees and ants. That will probably help us set up the blanket.
When the two of you inadvertently crashed Badger’s winter hibernation, he totally dropped his earlier plan of sleeping for three months and welcomed you in. Badger is warm, friendly, and trustworthy, basically, the best-scenario tea companion. Badger, you never would have voted for Brexit. You would have kept The Great British Bake Off on the BBC where it belongs.
I’m imagining Christmas Tea at your home, Mole. The sideboard creaks beneath the weight of the pies you’ve prepared. The cheese and pickle sandwiches. The Cornish pasties. I’m imagining Mole carefully unspooling honey into my steaming mug as I drowse by a crackling fire, ornaments glinting on a fragrant pine tree… and then I could spend New Year’s Eve getting wrecked with Toad.
The next time a rat or a mole or a badger approaches me and asks me in to tea, I’m saying yes.
Originally published September 2016.
Although, if she’s being honest, Leah Schnelbach prefers coffee. Come talk to her about tasty beverages (and the fantasy creatures who love them) on Twitter!
As an American tea is not really my thing but you can’t beat the company of a Wind In The Willows tea. And you can enjoy yourself without worrying about White Witches or prophecies. Or Queens calling for your head.
I would totally take tea with Bilbo Baggins.
I bet Hobbits are fantastic bakers!
If you want tea with talking animals, remember that Redwall is basically food porn, with occasional inter-species battles thrown in to provide excuses for celebratory feasts in the aftermath.
Seriously, never try reading those books without food readily available.
I prefer soda, even soda water, over tea. But if I must have tea, let it be iced, the way God meant it to be made.
@@@@@ 5 – If God had meant tea to be iced, he wouldn’t have given us Pimm’s. Or electric kettles.
princessroxana @3. “I bet Hobbits are fantastic bakers!”
We know from “The Hobbit” that Bilbo makes a delicious seed cake. Other baked goods he produces from his pantry when the Dwarves and Gandalf turn up for that “Unexpected Party” are apple tart, mince pies and pork pie. And the Dwarves keep calling for “…more cakes…” without specifying what kind.
We know that Dwarves would pass through the Shire when they were traveling. I wonder if they did so, at least in part, to take advantage of the good Hobbit cooking? Did they have their equivalent of the Michelin Guide?
Oh, Christmas at Mole’s house in Wind in the Willows… that chapter always makes me cry. His poor little house!
And Ratty was such a good sport about it once he realized what the trouble was. I always imagined after that Christmas they regularly visited Mole’s house. It would have been a cosy place to Winter. Much better than the Riverside house.
@@.-@: Yes. Redwall is definitely the place I would choose for dining with anthropomorphic animals. Possibly for dining, period.
6, if God didn’t want us to ice tea, those little glasses with the frozen gel encapsulated in the sides wouldn’t have fallen from the skies.
Seriously though, somebody should invent a fantasy where a guy slams down a bottle of Moxie.
I know it’s not really tea (hey, I’m a USian) but I *totally* want one of Dorothy’s lunch-boxes or dinner-pails from “Ozma of Oz.” (Fun story: my mom actually re-created the meal in the lunch-box for my sister after we all read the book and my sister was completely into the idea of lunch-boxes growing on trees and didn’t understand why we didn’t have lunch-box trees in our yard.)
My partner, until recently, worked for a U.K.-based company. His company ran yearly retreats in England, which meant that for three years I got to go to England as a “plus one” for his retreat. One year we had high tea at Westminster Abbey. It was NOT cheap but IT WAS SO GOOD. I don’t know enough positive adjectives to talk properly about clotted cream. *drools* Real scones (and not rock cakes – I’ve been “schooled” on the difference by Brits) with clotted cream and homemade jam…I require this NOW.
Also pies. The Brits do savoury pies so well. I think more things should be in pie form. I have fond memories of Cornish Pasties. The year the company retreat was in Plymouth (seaside) I also ate some of the BEST fresh-caught fish and chips I’ve ever had in my entire life. Don’t get me started on British candy…it makes Hershey chocolate taste like cardboard. And it is super cheap and you can buy it ANYWHERE!
Dang it – now I’m hungry.
@@@@@ 12 – If it had scones, clotted cream and jam, it wasn’t high tea, it was afternoon tea.
@Muswell – My bad. Did I mention I’m a USian and therefore unversed in the intricacies of British tea-time? ;)
Actually, we got a selection of sandwiches (including watercress and cucumber), a number of scones, different types of jam, clotted cream, a big pot of Earl Grey tea (I requested Earl Grey), some pastries, and glasses of sparkling white wine. I’m quite sure that it was kind of tailored to tourists, especially given how much it cost. But, at least for me, it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience to have tea in Westminster Abbey in the room where, supposedly, the monks used to eat. And it certainly didn’t hurt that everything was *incredibly* delicious!
I’ve heard a lot of people bashing British cuisine but I have to say that pretty much *everything* I ate in England was wonderful. (I’m sorry to say I couldn’t really get into Nando’s but I generally don’t like spicy food.) I also ate a LOT of good food in Scotland but I have to confess that I will probably never be a fan of haggis or black pudding. Just different tastes, I guess. I have a terrible sweet tooth and I’ve started ordering some candy from the UK through Amazon. Going to England also got me into drinking cider and putme off most US beers…but that’s a whole other topic. ;)
@leah: Badgers are bad tempered and smell awful. Beavers are extremely cute. [Except adolescent solitary males–stay away from them! But a beaver family would be fine.]
Victorian children kept dormice as pets; however, dormice hibernate in winter. When it was time for the dormice to hibernate, Victorian children would build them a nest of straw inside a teapot. The dormice would crawl inside and hibernate quite happily in the teapot, with the lid on, and the spout for an air hole. The dormouse at the mad tea party was sleepy because he was wanting to hibernate, which is why the Mad Hatter kept trying to put him in the teapot.
I didn’t know that! I gather a lot of Alice’s details fly over the heads of modern readers.