tea pour tu; At a bright and lovely atelier in the Marais, an illustrator throws a glamorous the party.

Teas are much easier to give than dinners, and I prefer the earlier hour," said the artist Florine Asch as she decorated her Paris atelier and apartment with flowers, sweets, and bowls of fruit.

Nothing fussy, nothing fancy, just a simple, satisfying plenitude of fresh pickings from the grocers and florists of the Marais, where Asch lives within a brushstroke of the Picasso Museum. The author and illustrator of such travel journals as My Italian Sketchbook and My Egyptian Sketchbook, Asch had invited about eight friends, men and women, for tea this afternoon. Much easier than a dinner party, true, where nervous hosts become apoplectic if a guest drops out at the last minute; Asch was not certain who exactly was coming, but it did not worry her. Among those expected were Lee Radziwill, a friend and patron, and Kasia Wandycz, an American-born photographer with Paris Match.

"Only the French do a good tea anymore," Vogue contributing editor Miranda Brooks had told me, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, when I was visiting England earlier in the summer and inquired where I might find a nice one. "Too many Starbucks in London."

I asked the Paris architect and arbiter Stephane Chamard if this was true. "Especially among younger people who stay in town on the weekend in the winter, yes, we have a lot of teas," he said. "It gets dark so early in Paris, but if you are out doing errands you don't want to go straight home. It is wonderful to stop at a friend's place around five o'clock for tea and company."

Tea was, once upon a time, a grand and courtly proceeding for aristocrats in France and England and, later, for American blue bloods. During the Industrial Revolution, tea was the meal served in blue-collar houses after a long day's work. (High tea simply meant the meal was put out on a high dining table with meats, breads, and rarely many sweets.) The idea of tea as a dainty, girls-only affair is predominantly American, a notion popularized in the 1950s, when homemaking peaked as a political polonaise.

Tea is one of the secrets of many successful dieters, who find it advantageous to the waistline not to eat after six. Tea can be spiritual; ask the Buddhists. ...