Chapter X: The Coffee Houses of Old London (2)

And so it came to pass that coffee history repeated itself in England. Many good people became convinced that coffee was a dangerous drink. The tirades against the beverage in that far-off time sound not unlike the advertising patter employed by some of our present-day coffee-substitute manufacturers. It was even ridiculed by being referred to as "ninny broth" and "Turkey gruel."

_A brief description of the excellent vertues of that sober and wholesome drink called coffee_ appeared in 1674 and proved an able and dignified answer to the attacks that had preceded it. That same year, for the first time in history, the sexes divided in a coffee controversy, and there was issued _The Women's Petition against Coffee, representing to public consideration the grand inconveniences accruing to their sex from the excessive use of the drying and enfeebling Liquor_, in which the ladies, who had not been accorded the freedom of the coffee houses in England, as was the custom in France, Germany, Italy, and other countries on the Continent, complained that coffee made men as "unfruitful as the deserts where that unhappy berry is said to be bought." Besides the more serious complaint that the whole race was in danger of extinction, it was urged that "on a domestic message a husband would stop by the way to drink a couple of cups of coffee."

This pamphlet is believed to have precipitated the attempt at suppression by the crown the following year, despite the prompt appearing, in 1674, of _The Men's Answer to the Women's Petition Against Coffee, vindicating ... their liquor, from the undeserved aspersion lately cast upon them, in their scandalous pamphlet_.

The 1674 broadside in defense of coffee was the first to be illustrated; and for all its air of pretentious grandeur and occasional bathos, it was not a bad rhyming advertisement for the persecuted drink. It was printed for Paul Greenwood and sold "at the sign of the coffee mill and tobacco-roll in Cloath-fair near West-Smithfield, who selleth the best Arabian coffee powder and chocolate in cake or roll, after the Spanish fashion, etc." The following extracts will serve to illustrate its epic character:

When the sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape, Had Acted on the world a General Rape; Drowning our very Reason and our Souls In such deep Seas of large o'reflowing Bowls.

* * * * *

When Foggy Ale, leavying up mighty Trains Of muddy Vapours, had besieg'd our Brains;

* * * * *

Then Heaven in Pity, to Effect our Cure.

* * * * *

First sent amongst us this _All-healing-Berry_, At once to make us both _Sober_ and _Merry_.

_Arabian_ Coffee, a Rich Cordial To Purse and Person Beneficial, Which of so many Vertues doth partake, Its Country's called Felix for its sake. From the Rich Chambers of the Rising Sun, Where Arts, and all good Fashions first begun, Where Earth with choicest Rarities is blest, And dying _Phoenix_ builds Her wondrous Nest: COFFEE arrives, that Grave and wholesome Liquor, That heals the Stomack, makes the Genius quicker, Relieves the Memory, Revives the Sad.

* * * * *

Do but this Rare ARABIAN Cordial Use, And thou may'st all the Doctors Slops Refuse. Hush then, dull QUACKS, your Mountebanking cease, COFFEE'S a speedier Cure for each Disease; How great its Vertues are, we hence may think, The Worlds third Part makes it their common Drink: In Breif, all you who Healths Rich Treasures Prize, And Court not Ruby Noses, or blear'd Eyes, But own Sobriety to be your Drift. And Love at once good Company and Thrift; To Wine no more make Wit and Coyn a Trophy, But come each Night and Frollique here in Coffee.

The first one to be illustrated]

An eight-page folio, the last argument to be issued in defense of coffee before Charles II sought to follow in the footsteps of Kair Bey and Kuprili, was issued in the early part of 1675. It was entitled _Coffee Houses Vindicated. In answer to the late published Character of a Coffee House. Asserting from Reason, Experience and good Authors the Excellent Use and physical Virtues of that Liquor ... With the Grand Convenience of such civil Places of Resort and ingenious Conversation_.

The advantage of a coffee house compared with a "publick-house" is thus set forth:

First, In regard of easy expense. Being to wait for or meet a
friend, a tavern-reckoning soon breeds a purse-consumption: in an
ale house, you must gorge yourself with pot after pot.... But here,
for a penny or two, you may spend two or three hours, have the
shelter of a house, the warmth of a fire, the diversion of company;
and conveniency, if you please, of taking a pipe of tobacco; and
all this without any grumbling or repining. Secondly. For sobriety.
It is grown, by the ill influences of I know not what hydropick
stars, almost a general custom amongst us, that no bargain can be
drove, or business concluded between man and man, but it must be
transacted at some publick-house ... where continual sippings ...
would be apt to fly up into their brains, and render them drowsy
and indisposed ... whereas, having now the opportunity of a
coffee-house, they repair thither, take each man a dish or two (so
far from causing, that it cures any dizziness, or disturbant
fumes): and so, dispatching their business, go out more sprightly
about their affairs, than before.... Lastly, For diversion ...
where can young gentlemen, or shop-keepers, more innocently and
advantageously spend an hour or two in the evening than at a
coffee-house? Where they shall be sure to meet company, and, by the
custom of the house, not such as at other places stingy and
reserved to themselves, but free and communicative, where every man
may modestly begin his story, and propose to, or answer another, as
he thinks fit.... So that, upon the whole matter, spight of the
idle sarcasms and paltry reproaches thrown upon it, we may, with no
less truth than plainness, give this brief character of a
well-regulated coffee-house, (for our pen disdains to be an
advocate for any sordid holes, that assume that name to cloke the
practice of debauchery,) that it is the sanctuary of health, the
nursery of temperance, the delight of frugality, and academy of
civility, and free-school of ingenuity.

_The Ale Wives' Complaint Against the Coffee-houses_, a dialogue between a victualer's wife and a coffee man, at difference about spiriting away each other's trade, also was issued in 1675.

As early as 1666, and again in 1672, we find the government planning to strike a blow at the coffee houses. By the year 1675, these "seminaries of sedition" were much frequented by persons of rank and substance, who, "suitable to our native genius," says Anderson,[80] "used great freedom therein with respect to the courts' proceedings in these and like points, so contrary to the voice of the people."

In 1672, Charles II, seemingly eager to emulate the Oriental intolerants that preceded him, determined to try his hand at suppression. "Having been informed of the great inconveniences arising from the great number of persons that resort to coffee-houses," the king "desired the Lord Keeper and the Judges to give their opinion in writing as to how far he might lawfully proceed against them."

Roger North in his _Examen_ gives the full story; and D'Israeli, commenting on it, says, "it was not done without some apparent respect for the British constitution." The courts affected not to act against the law, and the judges were summoned to a consultation; but the five who met could not agree in opinion.

Sir William Coventry spoke against the proposed measure. He pointed out that the government obtained considerable revenue from coffee, that the king himself owed to these seemingly obnoxious places no small debt of gratitude in the matter of his own restoration; for they had been permitted in Cromwell's time, when the king's friends had used more liberty of speech than "they dared to do in any other." He urged, also, that it might be rash to issue a command so likely to be disobeyed.

At last, being hard pressed for a reply, the judges gave such a halting opinion in favor of the king's policy as to remind us of the reluctant verdict wrung from the physicians and lawyers of Mecca on the occasion of coffee's first persecution.[81] "The English lawyers, in language which, for its civility and indefiniteness," says Robinson, "would have been the envy of their Eastern brethren," declared that:

Retailing coffee _might_ be an innocent trade, as it _might_ be
exercised; but as it is used at present, in the nature of a common
assembly, to discourse of matters of State, news and _great
Persons_, as they are Nurseries of Idleness and Pragmaticalness,
and hinder the expence of our native Provisions, they _might_ be
thought common nuisances.

An attempt was made to mold public opinion to a favorable consideration of the attempt at suppression in _The Grand Concern of England explained_, which was good propaganda for his majesty's enterprise, but utterly failed to carry conviction to the lovers of liberty.

After much backing and filling, the king, on December 23, 1675, issued a proclamation which in its title frankly stated its object--"for the suppression of coffee houses." It is here given in a somewhat condensed form:

BY THE KING: A PROCLAMATION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF COFFEE HOUSES

_Charles R._

Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of Coffee Houses of
late years set up and kept within this kingdom, the dominion of
Wales, and town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the great resort of Idle
and disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and
dangerous effects; as well for that many tradesmen and others, do
herein mispend much of their time, which might and probably would
be employed in and about their Lawful Calling and Affairs; but
also, for that in such houses ... divers false, malitious and
scandalous reports are devised and spread abroad to the Defamation
of his Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace
and Quiet of the Realm; his Majesty hath thought fit and necessary,
that the said Coffee Houses be (for the future) Put down, and
suppressed, and doth ... strictly charge and command all manner of
persons, That they or any of them do not presume from and after the
Tenth Day of January next ensuing, to keep any Public Coffee House,
or to utter or sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses
(to be spent or consumed within the same) any Coffee, Chocolet,
Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost
perils ... (all licenses to be revoked).

Given at our Court at Whitehall, this third-and-twentieth day of
Dec., 1675, in the seven-and-twentieth year of our Reign.

GOD SAVE THE KING.

And then a remarkable thing happened. It is not usual for a royal proclamation issued on the 29th of one month to be recalled on the 8th day of the next; but this is the record established by Charles II. The proclamation was made on December 23, 1675, and issued December 29, 1675. It forbade the coffee houses to operate after January 10, 1676. But so intense was the feeling aroused, that eleven days was sufficient time to convince the king that a blunder had been made. Men of all parties cried out against being deprived of their accustomed haunts. The dealers in coffee, tea, and chocolate demonstrated that the proclamation would greatly lessen his majesty's revenues. Convulsion and discontent loomed large. The king heeded the warning, and on January 8, 1676, another proclamation was issued by which the first proclamation was recalled.

In order to save the king's face, it was solemnly recited that "His Gracious Majesty," out of his "princely consideration and royal compassion" would allow the retailers of coffee liquor to keep open until the 24th of the following June. But this was clearly only a royal subterfuge, as there was no further attempt at molestation, and it is extremely doubtful if any was contemplated at the time the second proclamation was promulgated.

"Than both which proclamations nothing could argue greater guilt nor greater weakness," says Anderson. Robinson remarks, "A battle for freedom of speech was fought and won over this question at a time when Parliaments were infrequent and when the liberty of the press did not exist."

"_Penny Universities_"

We read in 1677 that "none dare venture into the coffee houses unless he be able to argue the question whether Parliament were dissolved or not."

All through the years remaining in the seventeenth century, and through most of the eighteenth century, the London coffee houses grew and prospered. As before stated, they were originally temperance institutions, very different from the taverns and ale houses. "Within the walls of the coffee house there was always much noise, much clatter, much bustle, but decency was never outraged."

At prices ranging from one to two pence per dish, the demand grew so great that coffee-house keepers were obliged to make the drink in pots holding eight or ten gallons.

The seventeenth-century coffee houses were sometimes referred to as the "penny universities"; because they were great schools of conversation, and the entrance fee was only a penny. Two pence was the usual price of a dish of coffee or tea, this charge also covering newspapers and lights. It was the custom for the frequenter to lay his penny on the bar, on entering or leaving. Admission to the exchange of sparkling wit and brilliant conversation was within the reach of all.

So great a _Universitie_ I think there ne're was any; In which you may a Schoolar be For spending of a Penny.

"Regular customers," we are told, "had particular seats and special attention from the fair lady at the bar, and the tea and coffee boys."

It is believed that the modern custom of tipping, and the word "tip," originated in the coffee houses, where frequently hung brass-bound boxes into which customers were expected to drop coins for the servants. The boxes were inscribed "To Insure Promptness" and from the initial letters of these words came "tip."

The _National Review_ says, "before 1715 the number of coffee houses in London was reckoned at 2000." Dufour, who wrote in 1683, declares, upon information received from several persons who had staid in London, that there were 3000 of these places. However, 2000 is probably nearer the fact.

In that critical time in English history, when the people, tired of the misgovernment of the later Stuarts, were most in need of a forum where questions of great moment could be discussed, the coffee house became a sanctuary. Here matters of supreme political import were threshed out and decided for the good of Englishmen for all time. And because many of these questions were so well thought out then, there was no need to fight them out later. England's great struggle for political liberty was really fought and won in the coffee house.

To the end of the reign of Charles II, coffee was looked upon by the government rather as a new check upon license than an added luxury. After the revolution, the London coffee merchants were obliged to petition the House of Lords against new import duties, and it was not until the year 1692 that the government, "for the greater encouragement and advancement of trade and the greater importation of the said respective goods or merchandises," discharged one half of the obnoxious tariff.

_Weird Coffee Substitutes_

Shortly after the "great fire," coffee substitutes began to appear. First came a liquor made with betony, "for the sake of those who could not accustom themselves to the bitter taste of coffee." Betony is a herb belonging to the mint family, and its root was formerly employed in medicine as an emetic or purgative. In 1719, when coffee was 7s. a pound, came bocket, later known as saloop, a decoction of sassafras and sugar, that became such a favorite among those who could not afford tea or coffee, that there were many saloop stalls in the streets of London. It was also sold at Read's coffee house in Fleet Street.

_The Coffee Men Overreach Themselves_

The coffee-house keepers had become so powerful a force in the community in 1729 that they lost all sense of proportion; and we find them seriously proposing to usurp the functions of the newspapers. The vainglorious coffee men requested the government to hand over to them a journalistic monopoly; the argument being that the newspapers of the day were choked with advertisements, filled with foolish stories gathered by all-too enterprising newswriters, and that the only way for the government to escape "further excesses occasioned by the freedom of the press" and to rid itself of "those pests of society, the unlicensed newsvendors," was for it to intrust the coffee men, as "the chief supporters of liberty" with the publication of a _Coffee House Gazette_. Information for the journal was to be supplied by the habitués of the houses themselves, written down on brass slates or ivory tablets, and called for twice daily by the _Gazette's_ representatives. All the profits were to go to the coffee men--including the expected increase of custom.

Needless to say, this amazing proposal of the coffee-house masters to have the public write its own newspapers met with the scorn and the derision it invited, and nothing ever came of it.

The increasing demand for coffee caused the government tardily to seek to stimulate interest in the cultivation of the plant in British colonial possessions. It was tried out in Jamaica in 1730. By 1732 the experiment gave such promise that Parliament, "for encouraging the growth of coffee in His Majesty's plantations in America," reduced the inland duty on coffee coming from there, "but of none other," from two shillings to one shilling six pence per pound. "It seems that the French at Martinico, Hispaniola, and at the Isle de Bourbon, near Madagascar, had somewhat the start of the English in the new product as had also the Dutch at Surinam, yet none had hitherto been found to equal coffee from Arabia, whence all the rest of the world had theirs." Thus writes Adam Anderson in 1787, somewhat ungraciously seeking to damn England's business rivals with faint praise. Java coffee was even then in the lead, and the seeds of Bourbon-Santos were multiplying rapidly in Brazilian soil.

The British East India Company, however, was much more interested in tea than in coffee. Having lost out to the French and Dutch on the "little brown berry of Arabia," the company engaged in so lively a propaganda for "the cup that cheers" that, whereas the annual tea imports from 1700 to 1710 averaged 800,000 pounds, in 1721 more than 1,000,000 pounds of tea were brought in. In 1757, some 4,000,000 pounds were imported. And when the coffee house finally succumbed, tea, and not coffee, was firmly intrenched as the national drink of the English people.

A movement in 1873 to revive the coffee house in the form of a coffee "palace," designed to replace the public house as a place of resort for working men, caused the Edinburgh Castle to be opened in London. The movement attained considerable success throughout the British Isles, and even spread to the United States.

_Evolution of the Club_

Every profession, trade, class, and party had its favorite coffee house. "The bitter black drink called coffee," as Mr. Pepys described the beverage, brought together all sorts and conditions of men; and out of their mixed association there developed groups of patrons favoring particular houses and giving them character. It is easy to trace the transition of the group into a clique that later became a club, continuing for a time to meet at the coffee house or the chocolate house, but eventually demanding a house of its own.

_Decline and Fall of the Coffee House_

Starting as a forum for the commoner, "the coffee house soon became the plaything of the leisure class; and when the club was evolved, the coffee house began to retrograde to the level of the tavern. And so the eighteenth century, which saw the coffee house at the height of its power and popularity, witnessed also its decline and fall. It is said there were as many clubs at the end of the century as there were coffee houses at the beginning."

For a time, when the habit of reading newspapers descended the social ladder, the coffee house acquired a new lease of life. Sir Walter Besant observes:

They were then frequented by men who came, not to talk, but to
read; the smaller tradesmen and the better class of mechanic now
came to the coffee-house, called for a cup of coffee, and with it
the daily paper, which they could not afford to take in. Every
coffee-house took three or four papers; there seems to have been in
this latter phase of the once social institution no general
conversation. The coffee-house as a place of resort and
conversation gradually declined; one can hardly say why, except
that all human institutions do decay. Perhaps manners declined; the
leaders in literature ceased to be seen there; the city clerk began
to crowd in; the tavern and the club drew men from the
coffee-house.

A few houses survived until the early years of the nineteenth century, but the social side had disappeared. As tea and coffee entered the homes, and the exclusive club house succeeded the democratic coffee forum, the coffee houses became taverns or chop houses, or, convinced that they had outlived their usefulness, just ceased to be.

_Pen Pictures of Coffee-House Life_

From the writings of Addison in the _Spectator_, Steele in the _Tatler_, Mackay in his _Journey Through England_, Macaulay in his history, and others, it is possible to draw a fairly accurate pen-picture of life in the old London coffee house.

In the seventeenth century the coffee room usually opened off the street. At first only tables and chairs were spread about on a sanded floor. Later, this arrangement was succeeded by the boxes, or booths, such as appear in the Rowlandson caricatures, the picture of the interior of Lloyds, etc.

The walls were decorated with handbills and posters advertising the quack medicines, pills, tinctures, salves, and electuaries of the period, all of which might be purchased at the bar near the entrance, presided over by a prototype of the modern English barmaid. There were also bills of the play, auction notices, etc., depending upon the character of the place.

Then, as now, the barmaids were made much of by patrons. Tom Brown refers to them as charming "Phillises who invite you by their amorous glances into their smoaky territories."

Messages were left and letters received at the bar for regular customers. Stella was instructed to address her letters to Swift, "under cover to Addison at the St. James's coffee house." Says Macaulay:

Foreigners remarked that it was the coffee house which specially
distinguished London from all other cities; that the coffee house
was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished to find a
gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street or
Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the
Rainbow.

So every man of the upper or middle classes went daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it. The better class houses were the meeting places of the most substantial men in the community. Every coffee house had its orator, who became to his admirers a kind of "fourth estate of the realm."

Macaulay gives us the following picture of the coffee house of 1685:

Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at
the bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of
religious and political opinion had its own headquarters.

There were houses near St. James' Park, where fops congregated,
their heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not
less ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by
the Speaker of the House of Commons. The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any form than that of richly
scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of
the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole
assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him
that he had better go somewhere else.

Nor, indeed, would he have far to go. For, in general, the
coffee-houses reeked with tobacco like a guard room. Nowhere was
the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house,
situated between Covent Garden and Bow street, was sacred to polite
letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities
of place and time. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures
to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from universities,
translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great
press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate. In winter
that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it
stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his
opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic
poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an
honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast.

There were coffee-houses where the first medical men might be
consulted. Dr. John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the
largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the
Exchange was full, from his house in Bow street, then a fashionable
part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded
by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular table.

There were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath was heard, and where
lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their
noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from
Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee-houses,
where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned over their
cups another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.

Ned Ward gives us this picture of the coffee house of the seventeenth century. He is describing Old Man's, Scotland Yard:

We now ascended a pair of stairs, which brought us into an
old-fashioned room, where a gaudy crowd of odoriferous Tom-Essences
were walking backwards and forwards, with their hats in their
hands, not daring to convert them to their intended use lest it
should put the foretops of their wigs into some disorder. We
squeezed through till we got to the end of the room, where, at a
small table, we sat down, and observed that it was as great a
rarity to hear anybody call for a dish of politicians porridge, or
any other liquor, as it is to hear a beau call for a pipe of
tobacco; their whole exercise being to charge and discharge their
nostrils and keep the curls of their periwigs in their proper
order. The clashing of their snush-box lids, in opening and
shutting, made more noise than their tongues. Bows and cringes of
the newest mode were here exchanged 'twixt friend and friend with
wonderful exactness. They made a humming like so many hornets in a
country chimney, not with their talking, but with their whispering
over their new Minuets and Bories, with the hands in their pockets,
if only freed from their snush-box. We now began to be thoughtful
of a pipe of tobacco, whereupon we ventured to call for some
instruments of evaporation, which were accordingly brought us, but
with such a kind of unwillingness, as if they would much rather
been rid of our company; for their tables were so very neat, and
shined with rubbing like the upper-leathers of an alderman's shoes,
and as brown as the top of a country housewife's cupboard. The
floor was as clean swept as a Sir Courtly's dining room, which made
us look round to see if there were no orders hung up to impose the
forfeiture of so much mop-money upon any person that should spit
out of the chimney-corner. Notwithstanding we wanted an example to
encourage us in our porterly rudeness, we ordered them to light the
wax candle, by which we ignified our pipes and blew about our
whiffs; at which several Sir Foplins drew their faces into as many
peevish wrinkles as the beaux at the Bow Street Coffee-house, near
Covent Garden, did when the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst
them, with his oyster-barrel muff and turnip-buttons, to ridicule
their foperies.

In _A Brief and Merry History of Great Britain_ we read:

There is a prodigious number of Coffee-Houses in London, after the
manner I have seen some in Constantinople. These Coffee-Houses are
the constant Rendezvous for Men of Business as well as the idle
People. Besides Coffee, there are many other Liquors, which People
cannot well relish at first. They smoak Tobacco, game and read
Papers of Intelligence; here they treat of Matters of State, make
Leagues with Foreign Princes, break them again, and transact
Affairs of the last Consequence to the whole World. They represent
these Coffee-Houses as the most agreeable things in London, and
they are, in my Opinion, very proper Places to find People that a
Man has Business with, or to pass away the Time a little more
agreeably than he can do at home; but in other respects they are
loathsome, full of smoak, like a Guard-Room, and as much crowded. I
believe 'tis these Places that furnish the Inhabitants with
Slander, for there one hears exact Account of everything done in
Town, as if it were but a Village.

At those Coffee-Houses, near the Courts, called White's, St.
James's, Williams's, the Conversation turns chiefly upon the
Equipages, Essence, Horse-Matches, Tupees, Modes and Mortgages; the
Cocoa-Tree upon Bribery and Corruption, Evil ministers, Errors and
Mistakes in Government; the Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing
Cross, on Places and Pensions; the Tiltyard and Young Man's on
Affronts, Honour, Satisfaction, Duels and Rencounters. I was
informed that the latter happen so frequently, in this part of the
Town, that a Surgeon and a Sollicitor are kept constantly in
waiting; the one to dress and heal such Wounds as may be given, and
the other in case of Death to bring off the Survivor with a Verdict
of Se Devendendo or Manslaughter. In those Coffee-Houses about the
Temple the Subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers,
Rejoinders and Exceptions; Daniel's the Welch Coffee-House in Fleet
Street, on Births, Pedigrees and Descents; Child's and the Chapter
upon Glebes, Tithes, Advowsons, Rectories and Lectureships; North's
Undue Elections, False Polling, Scrutinies, etc.; Hamlin's,
Infant-Baptism, Lay-Ordination, Free-Will, Election and
Reprobation; Batson's, the Prices of Pepper, Indigo and Salt-Petre;
and all those about the Exchange, where the Merchants meet to
transact their Affairs, are in a perpetual hurry about
Stock-Jobbing, Lying, Cheating, Tricking Widows and Orphans, and
committing Spoil and Rapine on the Publick.

In the eighteenth century beer and wine were commonly sold at the coffee houses in addition to tea and chocolate. Daniel Defoe, writing of his visit to Shrewsbury in 1724, says, "I found there the most coffee houses around the Town Hall that ever I saw in any town, but when you come into them they are but ale houses, only they think that the name coffee house gives a better air."

Speaking of the coffee houses of the city, Besant says:

Rich merchants alone ventured to enter certain of the coffee
houses, where they transacted business more privately and more
expeditiously than on the Exchange. There were coffee houses where
officers of the army alone were found; where the city shopkeeper
met his chums; where actors congregated; where only divines, only
lawyers, only physicians, only wits and those who came to hear them
were found. In all alike the visitor put down his penny and went
in, taking his own seat if he was an habitue; he called for a cup
of tea or coffee and paid his twopence for it; he could call also,
if he pleased, for a cordial; he was expected to talk with his
neighbour whether he knew him or not. Men went to certain coffee
houses in order to meet the well-known poets and writers who were
to be found there, as Pope went in search of Dryden. The daily
papers and the pamphlets of the day were taken in. Some of the
coffee houses, but not the more respectable, allowed the use of
tobacco.

From a broadside entitled _Wonders on the Deep_. Figure 2 is the Duke of York's Coffee House]

Mackay, in his _Journey Through England_ (1724), says:

We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levees find
entertainment at them till eleven, or, as in Holland, go to
tea-tables; about twelve the _beau monde_ assemble in several
coffee or chocolate houses; the best of which are the Cocoatree and
White's chocolate houses, St. James', the Smyrna, Mrs. Rochford's
and the British coffee houses; and all these so near one another
that in less than an hour you see the company of them all. We are
carried to these places in chairs (or sedans), which are here very
cheap, a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour, and your chairmen
serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at
Venice.

If it be fine weather we take a turn into the park till two, when
we go to dinner; and if it be dirty, you are entertained at picquet
or basset at White's, or you may talk politics at the Smyrna or St.
James'. I must not forget to tell you that the parties have their
different places, where, however, a stranger is always well
received; but a Whig will no more go to the Cocoatree than a Tory
will be seen at the Coffee House, St James'.

The Scots go generally to the British, and a mixture of all sorts
go to the Smyrna. There are other little coffee houses much
frequented in this neighborhood--Young Man's for officers; Old
Man's for stock jobbers, paymasters and courtiers, and Little Man's
for sharpers. I never was so confounded in my life as when I
entered into this last. I saw two or three tables full at faro, and
was surrounded by a set of sharp faces that I was afraid would have
devoured me with their eyes. I was glad to drop two or three half
crowns at faro to get off with a clear skin, and was overjoyed I so
got rid of them.

At two we generally go to dinner; ordinaries are not so common here
as abroad, yet the French have set up two or three good ones for
the convenience of foreigners in Suffolk street, where one is
tolerably well served; but the general way here is to make a party
at the coffee house to go to dine at the tavern, where we sit till
six, when we go to the play, except you are invited to the table of
some great man, which strangers are always courted to and nobly
entertained.

Mackay writes that "in all the coffee houses you have not only the foreign prints but several English ones with foreign occurrences, besides papers of morality and party disputes."

"After the play," writes Defoe, "the best company generally go to Tom's and Will's coffee houses, near adjoining, where there is playing at picquet and the best of conversation till midnight. Here you will see blue and green ribbons and stars sitting familiarly and talking with the same freedom as if they had left their equality and degrees of distance at home."

Designed by Hogarth, and put up by Addison, 1713 From a water color by T.H. Shepherd]

Before entering the coffee house every one was recommended by the _Tatler_ to prepare his body with three dishes of bohea and to purge his brains with two pinches of snuff. Men had their coffee houses as now they have their clubs--sometimes contented with one, sometimes belonging to three or four. Johnson, for instance, was connected with St. James's, the Turk's Head, the Bedford, Peele's, besides the taverns which he frequented. Addison and Steele used Button's; Swift, Button's, the Smyrna, and St. James's; Dryden, Will's; Pope, Will's and Button's; Goldsmith, the St. James's and the Chapter; Fielding, the Bedford; Hogarth, the Bedford and Slaughter's; Sheridan, the Piazza; Thurlow, Nando's.

_Some Famous Coffee Houses_

Among the famous English coffee houses of the seventeenth-eighteenth century period were St. James's, Will's, Garraway's, White's, Slaughter's, the Grecian, Button's, Lloyd's, Tom's, and Don Saltero's.

St. James's was a Whig house frequented by members of Parliament, with a fair sprinkling of literary stars. Garraway's catered to the gentry of the period, many of whom naturally had Tory proclivities.

One of the notable coffee houses of Queen Anne's reign was Button's. Here Addison could be found almost every afternoon and evening, along with Steele, Davenant, Carey, Philips, and other kindred minds. Pope was a member of the same coffee house club for a year, but his inborn irascibility eventually led him to drop out of it.

At Button's a lion's head, designed by Hogarth after the Lion of Venice, "a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws," was set up to receive letters and papers for the _Guardian_.[82] The _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_ were born in the coffee house, and probably English prose would never have received the impetus given it by the essays of Addison and Steele had it not been for coffee house associations.

Pope's famous _Rape of the Lock_ grew out of coffee-house gossip. The poem itself contains one charming passage on coffee.[83]

Another frequenter of the coffee houses of London, when he had the money to do so, was Daniel Defoe, whose _Robinson Crusoe_ was the precursor of the English novel. Henry Fielding, one of the greatest of all English novelists, loved the life of the more bohemian coffee houses, and was, in fact, induced to write his first great novel, _Joseph Andrews_, through coffee-house criticisms of Richardson's _Pamela_.

Other frequenters of the coffee houses of the period were Thomas Gray and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Garrick was often to be seen at Tom's in Birchin Lane, where also Chatterton might have been found on many an evening before his untimely death.

_The London Pleasure Gardens_

The second half of the eighteenth century was covered by the reigns of the Georges. The coffee houses were still an important factor in London life, but were influenced somewhat by the development of gardens in which were served tea, chocolate, and other drinks, as well as coffee. At the coffee houses themselves, while coffee remained the favorite beverage, the proprietors, in the hope of increasing their patronage, began to serve wine, ale, and other liquors. This seems to have been the first step toward the decay of the coffee house.

The figure in the cloak is Count Viviani; of the figures facing the reader, the draughts player is Dr. Arbuthnot, and the figure standing is assumed to be Pope]

The coffee houses, however, continued to be the centers of intellectual life. When Samuel Johnson and David Garrick came together to London, literature was temporarily in a bad way, and the hack writers of the time dwelt in Grub Street.

It was not until after Johnson had met with some success, and had established the first of his coffee-house clubs at the Turk's Head, that literature again became a fashionable profession.

This really famous literary club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and Adam Smith, the political economist.

Certain it is that during the sway of the English coffee house, and at least partly through its influence, England produced a better prose literature, as embodied alike in her essays, literary criticisms, and novels, than she ever had produced before.

The advent of the pleasure garden brought coffee out into the open in England; and one of the reasons why gardens, such as Ranelagh and Vauxhall, began to be more frequented than the coffee houses was that they were popular resorts for women as well as for men. All kinds of beverages were served in them; and soon the women began to favor tea as an afternoon drink. At least, the great development in the use of tea dates from this period; and many of these resorts called themselves tea gardens.

The use of coffee by this time, however, was well established in the homes as a breakfast and dinner beverage, and such consumption more than made up for any loss sustained through the gradual decadence of the coffee house. Yet signs of the change in national taste that arrived with the Georges were not wanting; for the active propaganda of the British East India Company was fairly well launched during Queen Anne's reign.

The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century were unique. At one time there was a "mighty maze" of them. Their season extended from April or May to August or September. At first there was no charge for admission, but Warwick Wroth[84] tells us that visitors usually purchased cheese cakes, syllabubs, tea, coffee and ale.

The four best-known London gardens were Vauxhall; Marylebone; Cuper's, where the charge for admission subsequently was fixed at not less than a shilling; and Ranelagh, where the charge of half a crown included "the Elegant Regale" of tea, coffee, and bread and butter.

The pleasure gardens provided walks, rooms for dancing, skittle grounds, bowling greens, variety entertainments, and promenade concerts; and not a few places were given over to fashionable gambling and racing.

The Vauxhall Gardens, one of the most favored resorts of pleasure-seeking Londoners, were located on the Surrey side of the Thames, a short distance east of Vauxhall Bridge. They were originally known as the New Spring Gardens (1661), to distinguish them from the old Spring Gardens at Charing Cross. They became famous in the reign of Charles II. Vauxhall was celebrated for its walks, lit with thousands of lamps, its musical and other performances, suppers, and fireworks. High and low were to be found there, and the drinking of tea and coffee in the arbors was a feature. The illustration shows the garden brightly illuminated by lanterns and lamps on some festival occasion. Coffee and tea were served in the arbors.

The Ranelagh, "a place of public entertainment," erected at Chelsea in 1742, was a kind of Vauxhall under cover. The principal room, known as the Rotunda, was circular in shape, 150 feet in diameter, and had an orchestra in the center and tiers of boxes all around. Promenading and taking refreshments in the boxes were the principal divertisements. Except on gala nights of masquerades and fireworks, only tea, coffee, bread and butter were to be had at Ranelagh.

In the group of gardens connected with mineral springs was the Dog and Duck (St. George's Spa), which became at last a tea garden and a dancing saloon of doubtful repute.

Still another division, recognized by Wroth, consisted mainly of tea gardens, among them Highbury Barn, The Canonbury House, Hornsey and Copenhagen House, Bagnigge Wells, and White Conduit House. The two last named were the classic tea gardens of the period. Both were provided with "long rooms" in case of rain, and for indoor promenades with organ music. Then there were the Adam and Eve tea gardens, with arbors for tea-drinking parties, which subsequently became the Adam and Eve Tavern and Coffee House. Well known were the Bayswater Tea Gardens and the Jews Harp House and Tea Gardens. All these were provided with neat, "genteel" boxes, let into the hedges and alcoves, for tea and coffee drinkers.

_Locating the Notable Coffee Houses_

GARRAWAY'S, 3 'Change Alley, Cornhill, was a place for great mercantile transactions. Thomas Garway, the original proprietor, was a tobacconist and coffee man, who claimed to be the first that sold tea in England, although not at this address. The later Garraway's was long famous as a sandwich and drinking room for sherry, pale ale, and punch, in addition to tea and coffee. It is said that the sandwich-maker was occupied two hours in cutting and arranging the sandwiches for the day's consumption. After the "great fire" of 1666 GARRAWAY'S moved into the same place in Exchange Alley where Elford had been before the fire. Here he claimed to have the oldest coffee house in London; but the ground on which BOWMAN'S had stood was occupied later by the VIRGINIA and the JAMAICA coffee houses. The latter was damaged by the fire of 1748 which consumed GARRAWAY'S and ELFORD'S (see map of the 1748 fire).

WILL'S, the predecessor of BUTTON'S, first had the title of the RED COW, then of the ROSE. It was kept by William Urwin, and was on the north side of Russell Street at the corner of Bow Street. "It was Dryden who made Will's coffee house the great resort of the wits of his time." (_Pope_ and _Spence_.) The room in which the poet was accustomed to sit was on the first floor; and his place was the place of honor by the fireside in the winter, and at the corner of the balcony, looking over the street, in fine weather; he called the two places his winter and his summer seat. This was called the dining-room floor. The company did not sit in boxes as subsequently, but at various tables which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was permitted in the public room; it was then so much in vogue that it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided themselves into parties; and we are told by Ward that the young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal table, thought it a great honor to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. After Dryden's death WILL'S was transferred to a house opposite, and became BUTTON'S, "over against THOMAS'S in Covent Garden." Thither also Addison transferred much company from THOMAS'S. Here Swift first saw Addison. Hither also came "Steele, Arbuthnot and many other wits of the time." BUTTON'S continued in vogue until Addison's death and Steele's retirement into Wales, after which the coffee drinkers went to the BEDFORD, dinner parties to the SHAKESPEARE. BUTTON'S was subsequently known as the CALEDONIEN.

Garway (or Garraway) claimed to have been first to sell Tea in England]

Afterward it became the Caledonien

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd]

SLAUGHTER'S, famous as the resort of painters and sculptors in the eighteenth century, was situated at the upper end of the west side of St. Martin's Lane. Its first landlord was Thomas Slaughter, 1692. A second SLAUGHTER'S (NEW SLAUGHTER'S) was established in the same street in 1760, when the original SLAUGHTER'S adopted the name of OLD SLAUGHTER'S. It was torn down in 1843-44. Among the notables who frequented it were Hogarth; young Gainsborough; Cipriani; Haydon; Roubiliac; Hudson, who painted the Dilettanti portraits; M'Ardell, the mezzotinto-scraper; Luke Sullivan, the engraver; Gardell, the portrait painter; and Parry, the Welsh harper.

TOM'S, in Birchin Lane, Cornhill, though in the main a mercantile resort, acquired some celebrity from having been frequented by Garrick. TOM'S was also frequented by Chatterton, as a place "of the best resort." Then there was TOM'S in Devereux Court, Strand, and TOM'S at 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, opposite BUTTON'S, a celebrated resort during the reign of Queen Anne and for more than a century after.

THE GRECIAN, Devereux Court, Strand, was originally kept by one Constantine, a Greek. From this house Steele proposed to date his learned articles in the _Tatler_; it is mentioned in No. 1 of the _Spectator_, and it was much frequented by Goldsmith. The GRECIAN was Foote's morning lounge. In 1843 the premises became the Grecian Chambers, with a bust of Lord Devereux, earl of Essex, over the door.

It was taken down in 1843

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd, 1841]

Used as a coffee house until 1804 and razed in 1865

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd]

LLOYD'S, Royal Exchange, celebrated for its priority of shipping intelligence and its marine insurance, originated with Edward Lloyd, who about 1688 kept a coffee house in Tower Street, later in Lombard Street corner of Abchurch Lane. It was a modest place of refreshment for seafarers and merchants. As a matter of convenience, Edward Lloyd prepared "ships' lists" for the guidance of the frequenters of the coffee house. "These lists, which were written by hand, contained," according to Andrew Scott, "an account of vessels which the underwriters who met there were likely to have offered them for insurance." Such was the beginning of two institutions that have since exercised a dominant influence on the sea-carrying trade of the whole world--the Royal Exchange Lloyd's, the greatest insurance institution in the world, and Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Lloyd's now has 1400 agents in all parts of the world. It receives as many as 100,000 telegrams a year. It records through its intelligence service the daily movements of 11,000 vessels.

In the beginning one of the apartments in the Exchange was fitted up as LLOYD'S coffee room. Edward Lloyd died in 1712. Subsequently the coffee house was in Pope's Head Alley, where it was called NEW LLOYD'S coffee house, but on September 14, 1784, it was removed to the northwest corner of the Royal Exchange, where it remained until the partial destruction of that building by fire.

In rebuilding the Exchange there were provided the Subscribers' or Underwriters' room, the Merchants' room, and the Captains' room. _The City_, second edition, 1848, contains the following description of this most famous rendezvous of eminent merchants, shipowners, underwriters, insurance, stock and exchange brokers:

Here is obtained the earliest news of the arrival and sailing of
vessels, losses at sea, captures, recaptures, engagements and other
shipping intelligence; and proprietors of ships and freights are
insured by the underwriters. The rooms are in the Venetian style
with Roman enrichments. At the entrance of the room are exhibited
the Shipping Lists, received from Lloyd's agents at home and
abroad, and affording particulars of departures or arrivals of
vessels, wrecks, salvage, or sale of property saved, etc. To the
right and left are "Lloyd's Books," two enormous ledgers. Right
hand, ships "spoken with" or arrived at their destined ports; left
hand, records of wrecks, fires or severe collisions, written in a
fine Roman hand in "double lines." To assist the underwriters in
their calculations, at the end of the room is an Anemometer, which
registers the state of the wind day and night; attached is a rain
gauge.

THE BRITISH, Cockspur Street, "long a house of call for Scotchmen," was fortunate in its landladies. In 1759 it was kept by the sister of Bishop Douglas, so well known for his works against Lauder and Bower, which may explain its Scottish fame. At another period it was kept by Mrs. Anderson, described in Mackenzie's _Life of Home_ as "a woman of uncommon talents and the most agreeable conversation."

DON SALTERO'S, 18 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, was opened by a barber named Salter in 1695. Sir Hans Sloane contributed of his own collection some of the refuse gimcracks that were to be found in Salter's "museum." Vice-Admiral Munden, who had been long on the coast of Spain, where he had acquired a fondness for Spanish titles, named the keeper of the house Don Saltero, and his coffee house and museum DON SALTERO'S.

SQUIRE'S was in Fulwood's Rents, Holburn, running up to Gray's Inn. It was one of the receiving houses of the _Spectator_. In No. 269 the _Spectator_ accepts Sir Roger de Coverley's invitation to "smoke a pipe with him over a dish of coffee at Squire's. As I love the old man, I take delight in complying with everything that is agreeable to him, and accordingly waited on him to the coffee-house, where his venerable figure drew upon us the eyes of the whole room. He had no sooner seated himself at the upper end of the high table, but he called for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle and the 'Supplement' (a periodical paper of that time), with such an air of cheerfulness and good humour, that all the boys in the coffee room (who seemed to take pleasure in serving him) were at once employed on his several errands, insomuch that nobody else could come at a dish of tea until the Knight had got all his conveniences about him." Such was the coffee room in the _Spectator's_ day.

From the frontispiece to "The Coffee House--a dramatick Piece" (see chapter XXXII)]

THE COCOA-TREE was originally a coffee house on the south side of Pall Mall. When there grew up a need for "places of resort of a more elegant and refined character," chocolate houses came into vogue, and the COCOA-TREE was the most famous of these. It was converted into a club in 1746.

It was closed in 1843. From a drawing dated 1809]