Vintage Gift for Mom

Tired of the usual Mother’s Day dinner at some crowded restaurant?

Guess what? So is mom.

So for her sake, break out of the mold and give the old girl something to look forward to--like a special Mother’s Day Victorian Tea at Ventura’s historic Olivas Adobe.

This isn’t some stuffy affair. In fact, the highlight of the two-hour event Saturday will be a humorous skit, “Victorian Clothing From the Outside In,” that literally takes you underneath the bustles and petticoats of those oh-so-proper ladies.

“It’s unique because not many things actually happen inside the Olivas Adobe,” said Glenda Jackson, the city’s public information assistant who presents the tea in British custom.

Museum visitors usually just peer into the rooms of the huge stately adobe that the Olivas family called home more than a century ago.

But the tea-sippers will sit around the big dining-room table where a subsequent owner, Max Fleischmann--of the famous margarine family--entertained his duck-hunting buddies during the 1930s and ‘40s.

Of course, on Saturday the table will be set in formal Victorian style with Jackson’s china collection and candelabra. Jackson’s passion is anything Victorian--clothing, accessories, furniture--and she often does programs on the era for the city as well as giving frequent teas at the adobe.

Traditional British tea is more than just tea. In keeping with the custom, Jackson will serve scones, tiny cake-like petit fours, and finger sandwiches made of cream cheese and cucumber or roasted red peppers, along with egg and tuna salad.

Coffee is still king, but tea is riding a small surge in popularity these days, as evidenced by the handful of tearooms that have popped up in Ventura County the last few years.

“All of a sudden everybody wants to do tea,” Jackson said. “With the coming of the turn of the century, there’s a keen interest in the Victorian era.”

During her program, Jackson sheds some light not only on the history of this lovely tradition, but also on the origin of Mother’s Day, which became a national holiday in 1914 through the efforts of a devoted daughter.

As for the origin of formal afternoon tea, it was Anna, Duchess of Bedford, who came up with the idea in the early 19th century. It seems Anna couldn’t make it through the long interval between lunch and the late evening meal without experiencing a “sinking feeling.”

So she instructed her maid to start bringing tea and a snack to her room in the late afternoon to stave off hunger. Anna began inviting friends to tea served with little sandwiches and cakes, and soon the custom spread to London’s fashionable set.

We have Queen Victoria to thank for popularizing it, Jackson said, and as a tribute, she always displays a picture of her royal highness during the teas.

According to Jackson, the British think Americans have corrupted the whole concept by using tea bags. The proper way to serve tea is to use the loose-leaf variety, which Jackson maintains is a higher quality.

There are other do’s and don’ts. You need two teapots--one, a kettle in which to bring the water just to a boil. Any longer dissipates the oxygen and produces flat tea. Pour some of the hot water into the other teapot, but empty it before pouring in the loose tea.

Rinse the second teapot with hot water to “release the aroma and essence” of the tea, Jackson said. After you pour more water into the pot, steeping the loose tea takes three to five minutes.

To complement the serving of tea, Dorothea Phelan and Joyce Nielsen have put together a program with a skit about the weighty layers of clothing fashionable ladies might have worn to tea during the Victorian era.

With up to six petticoats, the whole outfit could weigh close to 10 pounds. “You were not respectable,” said Phelan, “if anyone could see the outline of your legs.”

Phelan and Nielsen are docents for the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, and the presentation they’ve done the past four years for various organizations is offered through the museum’s speakers bureau.

In the skit, they play a prominent Ventura woman and her maid. The woman has just returned from tea wearing the usual layers of corset, bloomers and petticoats.

“They could hardly move, they wore so many clothes,” said Phelan, who has researched Victorian clothing extensively and wears some of her grandmother’s belongings.

When they do their historical gigs, Phelan has to have help getting into the corset, and then must be driven to the location because the get-up is too confining. It’s too tight to do most anything, she said. “I get invited to lunch at these things, but I can’t even eat.”

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If you do decide to take Mom out to brunch on her big day Sunday, what then? You can take her to see the quilt exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

This isn’t the typical early Americana quilt show. It’s a display of 30 quilts that document memorable events in the U.S. during this century. Made by men, women and children, the quilts commemorate disasters such as the Oklahoma City bombing, . Some tell stories of loved ones lost in wars. They also celebrate such things as women’s suffrage, Lindbergh’s flight, even baseball. The show, “America Remembers: Quilting the Twentieth Century,” continues through Oct. 4. The Reagan library is at 40 Presidential Drive, near Simi Valley. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $4, seniors $2, children 15 and under free. Call (800) 410-8354.

BE THERE

Mother’s Day Victorian Tea, Saturday, 2 to 4 p.m. at Olivas Adobe, 4200 Olivas Park Drive, Ventura. $23 per person. For information and reservations (required), call (805) 658-4726.