Tea and Henry James's 'Scenic Method' in The Awkward ... - subsite

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friends, and he decides the best way to take Nanda out of it is to marry her off,
preferably to Van, whom the girl loves. But the situation is complicated by the
fact that Mrs Brookenham is or has been, Van’s mistress. The Duchess sums up
Mrs Brookenham’s predicament: “she must sacrifice her daughter or…her
intellectual habits”(AA 255). Mrs Brookenham decides on sacrifice her daughter:
first, she tells Mitchy that Longdon has offered Van money to marry Nanda, thus
humiliates Van into rejecting Longdon’s offer. Second, she gives Longdon a
further impetus by her crude behaviour at Tishy Grendon’s party. Mrs
Brookenham, presses Nanda for a public declaration of whether or not she has
read the “French novel”. In Van’s final talk with Mrs Brookenham, he coldly
indicates that he cannot help but “understand now” that her crude demand to
have Nanda back from Longdon at Tishy Grendon’s party was, in fact, a
deliberate action so coarsely performed that Longdon would be forced to take
Nanda away forever.
Tea, tea delicacies and smart tea gossip, have been part of the charm Mrs
Brookenham has exerted over her small circle, and indeed it is dealings with tea
that highlight the aftermath of the “smash” which Mrs Brookenham stages at the
Grendon’s.
Mitchy enters Mrs Brookenham’s drawing–room after a considerable
interval, and, despite his hostess’s surprised delight at his appearance, “declined
to partake of her tea or to allow her to make him what she called “snug for a
good talk” in his customary corner of her sofa”(309). To decline tea is Mitchy’s
social rhetoric of refusal.
It is also at tea that Mrs Brookenham meets Van, who comes in alone, four
months after the “smash”. Mrs Brookenham makes the most of this opportunity
– using tea gossip to sabotage Vanderbank’s wavering intention to propose to
Nanda. Mrs Brookenham deliberately asks the servant who brought in tea, “Is