British afternoon tea is usually credited to Anna Maria Russell, the seventh Duchess of Bedford and one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, around 1840. As dinner was served later and later, she described a 'sinking feeling' at about 5 pm and had tea, bread and butter, and cake brought to her room. Historians debate whether she invented the meal or simply codified an existing custom.

American society adopted the tradition and argued over the name. Etiquette columnist Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood described how the kettledrum became the most fashionable of entertainments, until the word was dropped from invitations in favor of simply the date and hour. Her ideal New York tea was a hostess “At Home” at five o'clock daily, receiving gentlemen on their way from downtown. The habit spread unevenly. A 1905 writer noted that because Americans dined at six, five o'clock tea had caught on mainly with the leisure classes, college girls, bachelor maids, artists, and Bohemians.

Tea was one part of a broader Anglophilia among the Gilded Age elite. Sherwood observed that Americans were fond of copying the stately etiquette of England. Wealthy men imported English sports as eagerly as their wives imported English manners. Delancey Kane and Colonel William Jay, both taken with coaching in England, founded the New York Coaching Club in 1875, with Leonard Jerome and James Gordon Bennett among its early members.

Jerome's daughter Jennie became one of the first Dollar Princesses (see Letter #8). The next year, Bennett returned from England with polo equipment and the Hurlingham Club rules, sent to Texas for ponies, and formed the Westchester Polo Club. The admiration was not always returned. Sherwood reported that Queen Victoria refused to receive some of the Prince of Wales's American favorite acquaintances.