Tea Time with the Rev. Professor

A few pedestrians diverge suddenly from the stream of 5 p.m. foot traffic on Kirkland Street and walk briskly up a driveway lit by the warm glow from Sparks House’s enormous windows.

They huddle in their coats, silent, at the stone steps of the yellow and white home. Streams of mist pour from their mouths. At last someone speaks. “It’s a perfect day for tea,” he says.

The front door opens to reveal a hallway decked in intricately patterned wallpaper and framed paintings; a young woman invites the guests into a rose-colored parlor. Plates of cookies, brownies and small sandwiches cover a coffee table at one end of the room.

“Would you like some tea?” asks an elderly woman seated at the head of a long dining table. Her gentle Boston elocution draws the question into a lyrical arc. A silver samovar and a matching spouted pot rest before her on the table like gleaming chess pieces.

Guests in the rapidly filling parlor know what is expected: they accept a saucer and wander among armchairs initiating conversations. Some of them have been taking tea for years at Sparks House, nested behind Memorial Hall.

One of the hidden gems of Harvard life, this tea, hosted by Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church Peter J. Gomes in his home on Wednesdays, offers students an opportunity to mingle with the University’s most colorful luminaries and eccentrics.

Gomes’ tea parties have become a local institution. Alumni and past University affiliates who return to Cambridge can count on the weekly tea even if they hardly recognized the changed University says Gomes, who is also Plummer professor of Christian morals.

The archbishop of Canterbury, visiting Harvard, once pronounced tea at Sparks House better than tea parties at Oxford and Cambridge, Gomes says.

He admits a penchant for the genteel social environment his teas foster.

“I’m not a cocktail-party man,” explains Gomes.

He makes a point of meeting each of his guests, most of whom hear about the teas from friends or colleagues.

“I must speak to everybody and I must greet everybody,” he says.

Gomes regards his teatime visitors, even those whom he does not know, as his personal guests. Everyone who joins him for tea must sign a large register in the hallway before leaving.

“Peter is a great host,” says the Rev. Douglas Bond, a local resident who has been coming to Wednesday tea for more than four years.

Other guests glance around the room expectantly before Gomes arrives. “I wonder where the Reverend Professor is,” one visitor says.

Gomes emerges from the hallway in a gray suit and yellow tie. He briefly stops to speak with some of the guests before lighting polished candelabras on the tea table with extra-long matches. An arrangement of holly and apples forms a centerpiece between them.

The weekly tea also remains a comforting constant in Gomes busy schedule, he says. Regardless of his travels and appointments during the week, he always plans to be at Sparks House for tea.

“Gomes is more likely to be home on Wednesday than he is to be at Memorial Church on Sunday,” he joked about himself.

Gomes has been serving Wednesday tea since 1974, when he became Pusey minister in Memorial Church. The tradition of Wednesday teas predates his tenure, though. When he came to Harvard as a graduate student in 1965, the dean of the Divinity School also hosted a weekly tea on Wednesday.

University faculty members and administrators would often host social events offering “free eats” for students, he remembers.

“If you were a poor, impoverished graduate student, you could wander from place to place,” he says.

Gomes perpetuated the tradition of Wednesday tea himself when he moved into Sparks House in 1974.

“I decided that I would resurrect the tea that I had enjoyed,” Gomes explains.

Excepting Wednesdays at Sparks House, only a weekly tea at Lowell House and a semi-monthly tea at Adams House remain today.

Today, guests find new friends and common interests among jam cookies and plush armchairs. Gomes enjoys moving among their distinct conversations and different languages.

“Two Czechs discovered themselves here,” he remembers, “and they started nattering on.”

Adriana P. Dakin, a second-year student at the Kennedy School of Government, says she comes to Wednesday tea to enlarge her social circle.

“This is where I meet people from all over the Harvard campus,” she says.

Guests regularly include undergraduates, graduate students, professors and visitors to Harvard. Together, they reflect characteristic Cantabrigian erudition and eclecticism.

“Whatever question about anything you have, you come here and you go to Peter. He can point you toward someone who’s an expert in the field,” says Marc Callis, a frequent Wednesday tea guest and history student at the Extension School.

Indeed, some of Harvard’s most illustrious visitors have pressed their lips to Gomes’ china.

“We think of all of our guests as celebrities,” Gomes says, “but some are more celebrated than others.”

Many of Gomes’ special guests, such as the archbishop of Canterbury, have come from the religious communities.

“I had Sister Wendy to tea,” he says in his book-laden study, resting his head on the straight back of a plush armchair and raising his eyebrows above tortoiseshell eyeglass frames. He proudly displays a black-and-white photograph of himself standing with the habit-clad art historian and television personality.

The illustrious television chef Julia Child lived nearby in Cambridge for most of her life, and Gomes often invited her to pour tea on Wednesdays.

Students approaching the tea table would often be quite surprised to find the culinary doyenne presiding over the tea service, he says.

Gomes leans forward in his chair and casts his voice into a tremulous falsetto to imitate Child’s greeting: “How would you like your tea?”

Potential pourers receive a call in early September asking them to pick Wednesday evenings over the course of the term that would be convenient for them, says Helen Fernald. She is deftly serving cups of tea beside a sideboard laden with silverware and a small paperback book titled College Graces of Oxford and Cambridge. Gomes then designates each prospective pourer to serve tea at one party.

Fernald herself is a native Cantabrigian; her father, Roger Merriman, was a history professor and the first master of Eliot House.

“I’ve been doing this for I don’t know how many years and I love it,” she says.

The teas, included in the running expenses of Memorial Church, average a cost of $50 per evening, Gomes says. He hosts about 30 teas each year, including every term-time week except for breaks, reading period and exams.

“I wish we had an endowment for tea,” Gomes mused.

He demands that his teas end as briskly as they begin. At exactly 6 p.m. his assistants usher guests toward the front door. “Friends, friends,” someone calls, “we thank you for joining us this week and we hope you’ll come again next week.”

Gomes’ visitors claim their hats and coats from the hallway and emerge once more into the chilly Cambridge night.

Gomes insists on this regular schedule. “The nice thing about tea,” he says, “is that nothing earth-shattering happens.”