It was sometime in about 1840 or so that Duchess of Bedford Anna Maria Russell found herself getting a little hangry. At the time, surging industrialization had begun to transform the daily schedule of the English, the wealthiest of whom tended to eat breakfast around 9:00 in the morning, luncheon around noon or so, and then dinner not until around 8:00 PM. There might also be a late morning coffee or tea break referred to as elevensies, which I recently learned is not just for Hobbits. That still left a long stretch of time between meals in the afternoon and into the evening.

Anna Maria wasn’t having it. As a lifelong friend of Queen Victoria, serving as a Lady of the Bedchamber (which because my knowledge of aristocratic life comes only from The Crown and Downton Abbey, I assume is just the officially recognized BBF to the queen), she didn’t have to just accept her fate. She was a pretty important lady, so she decided to so something about it.

The duchess began ordering herself a cup of tea and a light snack sometime in the mid-afternoon, and soon found that made her day a lot more pleasant. It became such a habit that she started inviting other important ladies to join her. They liked it, too.

When Anna Maria occasionally took leave of the queen and traveled back to her countryside home in Wobrun, Bedfordshire, she continued enjoying afternoon tea, invited her countryside pals to join her as well, and the tradition of afternoon tea was born.

Then one sunny August afternoon in 2024, a group of pretty important ladies in the United States decided it was high time they participated in the grand tradition of afternoon tea, too.

Okay, so these ladies might not be BFFs with royalty, but they are pretty important to me. I do also realize this may not have been the first time afternoon tea was ever served in the United States. In fact, I remember participating in a version of it in my eighth grade social studies class.

All I really recall from that experience was that we had to wear fancy clothes, had to eat kind of gross cucumber sandwiches right after lunch that I’m assuming consisted of rectangular cafeteria pizza, were warned not to add both milk and lemon to our tea, and had to take at least one no thank you sip. It was a highly educational experience.

When more than three decades later, one of my pretty important friends decided to invite a bunch of her equally important friends to afternoon tea, I didn’t entirely know what to expect. Thankfully, eighth grade social studies had prepared me for such a time as this.

I donned fancy clothes, including a big hat of the variety rarely worn these days by American ladies unless they are either going to the Kentucky Derby or to high church on Easter Sunday, and they happen to be six years old. I enjoyed my tea with milk, and no lemon, and I ate delicious goodies including some cucumber sandwiches that were excellent and very welcome after I failed to eat a lunch of rectangular cafeteria pizza. Truth be told, by the time afternoon tea rolled around, I was getting a little hangry.