Bread and Jam for Kecklers

April 14, 2003

My older sister and I instituted "Afternoon Tea" in our household when we were about eight and eleven. It was brought on by an obsession with the Frances books. We had all the books, Bread and Jam for Frances, Best Friends for Frances, A Bargain for Frances, etc. Before we could read, we made my mother read them to us over and over and over again. Exactly what kind of animal was Frances? A badger? Raccoon? Anyway, what we really loved about them was the way they talked about food. Frances was a picky eater and only liked to eat bread and jam in the beginning of the first book but as the book goes on, she is tempted by other foods. At school, her friend Albert lays out such a spread of food that although she sticks to her diet, she seems tempted to stray. To this day Albert's lunch still makes me hungry:

"'I have a cream-cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread,' said Albert, 'And a pickle to go with it. And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that. And a thermos bottle of milk. And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine. And a cup of custard and a spoon to eat it with.'"

A bit further on, we learn that Albert follows a regimented way of eating one bite of each item and making it so certain items "come out even." Jennie and I were so entranced by this Nazi way of eating lunch that we started doing it with our own food.

Later on, Frances pushes away a breaded veal cutlet in favor of more bread and jam at dinner. Now, we didn't entirely know what breaded veal cutlets were, but it didn't really matter because the word sounded delicious. Cut-let. In refusing to eat her soft-boiled egg one morning, she sings a little song to it. Frances was always singing songs to inanimate objects. Despite not liking eggs of any kind, I still wanted to try soft-boiled eggs after reading about them in that book. Frances finally gives up her strict diet after she cries over finding only bread and jam on her plate instead of the spaghetti and meatballs the rest of her family is eating. She also sings a little song about being very tired of jam and then asks her mother to dish up some spaghetti for her. The next day at school, Frances suprises Albert with her own feast.

"'Well,' said Frances, laying a paper doily on her desk and setting a tiny vase of violets in the middle of it, 'let me see.' She arranged her lunch on the doily. 'I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup,' she said. 'And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread. I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery. And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries. And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with.' 'That's a good lunch,' said Albert."

We liked these books so much my mom gave us the record with Gynnis Johns (the mother in Mary Poppins) reading the story aloud. This is what put the bug in our ear to create our own Afternoon Tea. It was the direct result of A Bargain for Frances in which Frances' calculating friend, Thelma, tricks Frances into buying Thelma's old pink-flowered plastic tea set off of her. Thelma takes Frances' money and buys a real china tea set with "pictures all in blue" -- the exact kind Frances had been saving up for until Thelma told her they didn't make that kind anymore. My sister and I got two china tea sets with blue flowers for Christmas. We'd put the Frances record in the brown sleeve on, set up some TV trays, and arrange our cups and saucers while my mother made the tea for us. Bigelow was the sole sponsor of our tea parties and we drank either Lemon Lift or Constant Comment. As a kid, I thought that "Constant Comment" was a really weird name for a tea. I still think it's a over-anxious marketing ploy gone awry, but I do love the spicy clove and orange tea. On a little china plate we placed slices of lemons for squeezing, filled a tiny pitcher with milk for pouring, and dipped a baby spoon into an open dish filled with sugar for sweetening. Always finding new ways of stuffing sugar into our mouths at any opportunity, we sometimes took a spoonful of sugar and suspended it briefly in our tea cup. It was a delicate balance. We held it just long enough for the sugar to get wet without allowing it to swirl away into the brew. Then we ate the spoonful of tea-dampened sugar.

Looking back, I wonder if Frances was the only inspiration for our tea parties. After all, my mother had already introduced us to the world of murder mysteries through books, movies, and Masterpiece Theatre, and we noted that a lot of tea drinking went on in them. That probably had something to do with the fact that they were chiefly British sleuths: Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, even Hercule Poirot's tisanes -- which we learned were herbal teas -- they all drank vats of tea in each book. The influence was strong. Sherry, too, was another British murder mystery thing. Heroines were constantly dabbing eau de cologne on their temples and sipping on glasses of sherry in order to recover from the shock of discovering a dead body. Or in order to recover from the shock of disposing of a dead body. My parents had a dust-encrusted bottle of sherry that we dipped into once. And promptly spit it out. We weren't curious about it after that.

Sometimes we had food to accompany our tea. Nothing fancy like cucumber sandwiches or scones with clotted cream and preserves, though. We were perfectly happy with our stacks of San Francisco sourdough or the Very Thin Pepperidge Farm bread, lightly toasted, buttered, and dusted with cinnamon and sugar.

In one of Russell Hoban's other books, Best Friends for Frances, there's an even bigger feast to behold. Along with "A Bargain for Frances," this was the other story on our record. After being snubbed by Albert because she's just a girl and therefore can't go on his outings where he catches snakes and frogs, Frances declares that her little sister Gloria is her best friend and they come up with an outing all their own. On their way to their outing, and carrying a sign that reads "Best Friends Outing No Boys," they specifically pass by Albert's house to rub his nose in it. Frances describes all the goodies they have in their hamper:

"'I don't know,' said Frances. 'Nothing much. Hard-boiled eggs and whole fresh tomatoes. Carrot and celery sticks. There are some cream cheese-and-chives sandwiches, I think and cream cheese-and-jelly sandwiches too, and salami-and-egg and pepper-and-egg sandwiches. Cole slaw and potato chips, of course. Ice-cold root beer packed in ice, and watermelon and strawberries and cream for dessert. And there are things I forget, like black and green olives and pickles and Popsicles and probably some pretzels and things like that. And there are salt and pepper shakers and napkins and a checked tablecloth, which is the way girls do it.'"

We listened to that part so many times, I could almost type that all in without even looking at my book. Again, being picky eaters, half the things in Frances' hamper would probably get an "Ew!" from us if our mother ever tried to put it in front of us, but it sounded so tempting and yummy when Gynnis Johns read it out. I think it was the way she said "toe-mah-toes" all Britishy that really did it for us.

It's weird how early impressions -- particularly food impressions, at least for me -- stick with us throughout our lives. I will never be able to hear "cutlet" without immediately associating it with Bread and Jam for Frances.

"'I think it's nice that there are all diffent kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.' 'So do I,' said Frances, and she made the lobster-salad sandwich, the celery, and the carrot sticks, and the olives come out even."