As a newcomer, she is entranced by the spectacle, and we are invited to join the trance: He and two other men are soon joined by a female character. The whole setup sounds suspiciously English was it for this that Emerson, Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and others had founded the magazine, twenty-three years before? Suspicions are confirmed, as the tale unfurls the setting is indeed an English lawn, rug-soft, on a waning summer’s day, and one of the tea-takers, to make matters worse, is an English lord.

It began, “Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” This is hardly the most American of starts, and certainly not the most American of sentiments those readers, if canvassed, could have nominated a host of more agreeable experiences. Readers of The Atlantic Monthly, browsing the edition of November, 1880, and already looking forward to articles on “The Silk Industry in America” and “The Future of Weather Foretelling,” were greeted, on the opening page, by the first installment of a new story. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him.Our foremost explorer of the private life: Henry James, circa 1890. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.

There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not-some people of course never do-the situation is in itself delightful.

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

The portrait of a lady by henry james