Cheeky Baby and I, feeling ever so Princess Diary, had high tea at the Rose Tree Cottage in Pasadena last weekend. Cheeky, mind you, is 16 going on 17 now, and has been gently reminding me about my promise to bring her to the world-famous Pasadena tea house for years.
Rose Tree is beautiful, set in a home and studded with all things Brittania, with an outdoor garden and parlor, as well as a well-stocked shop with English snacks, food, decor and even china. But the biggest draw to the beloved place are Edmund and Mary Fry, its longtime proprietors.
“Sir Edmund,” in his veddy formal wear, offered Cheeky his arm and escorted her to our table, gently instructing her on how to take English tea (milk if you prefer, poured before the tea; lemon if no milk, and never raise your pinky when you raise your cup). It is a lesson good enough for the Duchess of Sussex, when she was still Megan Markle.
Dainty and generous portions of fruit, and warm scones with clotted cream and jam, savory finger sandwiches, a Yorkshire pudding selection finished with delicious sweets, were accompanied with Sir Edmund’s stories, and visits from Mary Fry of a blue-eyed, porcelain beauty.
She is actually an Oklahoman bred and true, a fact visitors marvel at because of her now-second nature Englishness.
The couple have been married for 50 years, and proprietors of Rose Tree Cottage for just as long. Their mantra has always been to offer a healthy dose of England, a chance to step away from the real world. No cellphone and photos are allowed in the tea house, a rule my teenager embraced.
It helped us focus on the lovely room, the Frys’ stories and instructions, and our own stories, the kind of focused conversations we have to be mindful to have. Enjoying all that over Sir Edmund’s house blend black tea, perfected over five years using loose-leaf teas from Ceylon, Indian and Kenya.
One wall in the tea house is covered with photos of VIPs who have visited through the years, from Angela Lansbury to “Phantom of the Opera” Michael Crawford, and rocker Adam Ant.
Cheeky loved it all.
Behind all the British mania is Bloom Where Planted, the Frys’ charitable foundation in Kenya, which helps maintain a school there, now boasting 900 students. Some of the first students they helped there are now graduate students and teachers, professionals and crafts folk. The Frys provide everything from meals to clothes, books and, on their yearly visits there, love.
Mary Fry said a recent visitor from China was an opera singer (whose photo now is included in the celebrity wall) with whom she found a special connection: both work with children in need, one in China and the other in Africa.
Helping children keeps the tea house warm, she said. Children have a way.
Brian Doyle said, the most miraculous of all our gifts are children.
“Without them we would laugh less, we would be bereft of innocence, we would lose hope, we would shrivel and vanish, with no one to remember what we so wished to be.”
Enjoying my view of my child across a table laden with a beautiful tea, I have to agree. Cheers in every way.