VIII. THE INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO GERMANY…

VIII. THE INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO GERMANY

The contributions made by German travelers and writers to the literature of the early history of coffee--The first coffee house in Hamburg opened by an English merchant--Famous coffee houses of old Berlin--The first coffee periodical, and the first kaffee-klatsch--Frederick the Great's coffee-roasting monopoly--Coffee persecutions--"Coffee-smellers"--The first coffee king

As we have already seen, Leonhard Rauwolf, in 1573, made his memorable trip to Aleppo and, in 1582, won for Germany the honor of being the first European country to make printed mention of the coffee drink.

Adam Olearius (or Oelschlager), a German Orientalist (1599-1671), traveled in Persia as secretary to a German embassy in 1633-36. Upon his return he published an account of his journeys. In it, under date of 1637, he says of the Persians:

They drink with their tobacco a certain black water, which they call cahwa, made of a fruit brought out of Egypt, and which is in colour like ordinary wheat, and in taste like Turkish wheat, and is of the bigness of a little bean.... The Persians think it allays the natural heat.

In 1637, Joh. Albrecht von Mandelsloh, in his Oriental Trip, mentions "the black water of the Persians called Kahwe", saying "it must be drunk hot."

Coffee drinking was introduced into Germany about 1670. The drink appeared at the court of the great elector of Brandenburg in 1675. Northern Germany got its first taste of the beverage from London, an English merchant opening the first coffee house in Hamburg in 1679-80. Regensburg followed in 1689; Leipsic, in 1694; Nuremberg, in 1696; Stuttgart, in 1712; Augsburg, in 1713; and Berlin, in 1721. In that year (1721) King Frederick William I granted a foreigner the privilege of conducting a coffee house in Berlin free of all rental charges. It was known as the English coffee house, as was also the first coffee house in Hamburg. And for many years, English merchants supplied the coffees consumed in northern Germany; while Italy supplied southern Germany.

Other well known coffee houses of old Berlin were, the Royal, in Behren Strasse; that of the Widow Doebbert, in the Stechbahn; the City of Rome, in Unter-den-Linden; Arnoldi, in Kronen Strasse; Miercke, in Tauben Strasse, and Schmidt, in Post Strasse.

Later, Philipp Falck opened a Jewish coffee house in Spandauer Strasse. In the time of Frederick the Great (1712-1786) there were at least a dozen coffee houses in the metropolitan district of Berlin. In the suburbs were many tents where coffee was served.

The first coffee periodical, The New and Curious Coffee House, was issued in Leipsic in 1707 by Theophilo Georgi. The full title was The New and Curious Coffee House, formerly in Italy but now opened in Germany. First water debauchery. "City of the Well." Brunnenstadt by Lorentz Schoepffwasser [draw-water] 1707. The second issue gave the name of Georgi as the real publisher. It was intended to be in the nature of an organ for the first real German kaffee-klatsch. It was a chronicle of the comings and goings of the savants who frequented the "Tusculum" of a well-to-do gentleman in the outskirts of the city. At the beginning the master of the house declared:

I know that the gentlemen here speak French, Italian and other languages. I know also that in many coffee and tea meetings it is considered requisite that French be spoken. May I ask, however, that he who calls upon me should use no other language but German. We are all Germans, we are in Germany; shall we not conduct ourselves like true Germans?

In 1721 Leonhard Ferdinand Meisner published at Nuremberg the first comprehensive German treatise on coffee, tea, and chocolate.

During the second half of the eighteenth century coffee entered the homes, and began to supplant flour-soup and warm beer at breakfast tables.

Meanwhile coffee met with some opposition in Prussia and Hanover. Frederick the Great became annoyed when he saw how much money was paid to foreign coffee merchants for supplies of the green bean, and tried to restrict its use by making coffee a drink of the "quality". Soon all the German courts had their own coffee roasters, coffee pots, and coffee cups.

Many beautiful specimens of the finest porcelain cups and saucers made in Meissen, and used at court fetes of this period, survive in the collections at the Potsdam and Berlin museums. The wealthy classes followed suit; but when the poor grumbled because they could not afford the luxury, and demanded their coffee, they were told in effect: "You had better leave it alone. Anyhow, it's bad for you because it causes sterility." Many doctors lent themselves to a campaign against coffee, one of their favorite arguments being that women using the beverage must forego child-bearing. Bach's Coffee Cantata[64] (1732) was a notable protest in music against such libels.

On September 13, 1777, Frederick issued a coffee and beer manifesto, a curious document, which recited:

It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors, and his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer; and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon to endure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war.

For a time beer was restored to its honored place; and coffee continued to be a luxury afforded only by the rich. Soon a revulsion of feeling set in; and it was found that even Prussian military rule could not enforce coffee prohibition. Whereupon, in 1781, finding that all his efforts to reserve the beverage for the exclusive court circles, the nobility, and the officers of his army, were vain, the king created a royal monopoly in coffee, and forbade its roasting except in royal roasting establishments. At the same time, he made exceptions in the cases of the nobility, the clergy, and government officials; but rejected all applications for coffee-roasting licenses from the common people. His object, plainly, was to confine the use of the drink to the elect. To these representatives of the cream of Prussian society, the king issued special licenses permitting them to do their own roasting. Of course, they purchased their supplies from the government; and as the price was enormously increased, the sales yielded Frederick a handsome income. Incidentally, the possession of a coffee-roasting license became a kind of badge of membership in the upper class. The poorer classes were forced to get their coffee by stealth; and, failing this, they fell back upon numerous barley, wheat, corn, chicory, and dried-fig substitutes, that soon appeared in great numbers.

This singular coffee ordinance was known as the "Declaration du Roi concernant la vente du cafe brule", and was published January 21, 1781.

After placing the coffee regie (revenue) in the hands of a Frenchman, Count de Lannay, so many deputies were required to make collections that the administration of the law became a veritable persecution. Discharged wounded soldiers were mostly employed, and their principal duty was to spy upon the people day and night, following the smell of roasting coffee whenever detected, in order to seek out those who might be found without roasting permits. The spies were given one-fourth of the fine collected. These deputies made themselves so great a nuisance, and became so cordially disliked, that they were called "coffee-smellers" by the indignant people.

Taking a leaf out of Frederick's book, the elector of Cologne, Maximilian Frederick, bishop of Muenster, (Duchy of Westphalia) on February 17, 1784, issued a manifesto which said:

To our great displeasure we have learned that in our Duchy of Westphalia the misuse of the coffee beverage has become so extended that to counteract the evil we command that four weeks after the publication of this decree no one shall sell coffee roasted or not roasted under a fine of one hundred dollars, or two years in prison, for each offense.

Every coffee-roasting and coffee-serving place shall be closed, and dealers and hotel-keepers are to get rid of their coffee supplies in four weeks. It is only permitted to obtain from the outside coffee for one's own consumption in lots of fifty pounds. House fathers and mothers shall not allow their work people, especially their washing and ironing women, to prepare coffee, or to allow it in any manner under a penalty of one hundred dollars.

All officials and government employees, to avoid a penalty of one hundred gold florins, are called upon closely to follow and to keep a watchful eye over this decree. To the one who reports such persons as act contrary to this decree shall be granted one-half of the said money fine with absolute silence as to his name.

This decree was solemnly read in the pulpits, and was published besides in the usual places and ways. There immediately followed a course of "telling-ons", and of "coffee-smellings", that led to many bitter enmities and caused much unhappiness in the Duchy of Westphalia. Apparently the purpose of the archduke was to prevent persons of small means from enjoying the drink, while those who could afford to purchase fifty pounds at a time were to be permitted the indulgence. As was to be expected, the scheme was a complete failure.

While the king of Prussia exploited his subjects by using the state coffee monopoly as a means of extortion, the duke of Wuerttemberg had a scheme of his own. He sold to Joseph Suess-Oppenheimer, an unscrupulous financier, the exclusive privilege of keeping coffee houses in Wuerttemberg. Suess-Oppenheimer in turn sold the individual coffee-house licenses to the highest bidders, and accumulated a considerable fortune. He was the first "coffee king."

But coffee outlived all these unjust slanders and cruel taxations of too paternal governments, and gradually took its rightful place as one of the favorite beverages of the German people.

IX. TELLING HOW COFFEE CAME TO VIENNA

The romantic adventure of Franz George Kolschitzky, who carried "a message to Garcia" through the enemy's lines and won for himself the honor of being the first to teach the Viennese the art of making coffee, to say nothing of falling heir to the supplies of the green beans left behind by the Turks; also the gift of a house from a grateful municipality, and a statue after death--Affectionate regard in which "brother-heart" Kolschitzky is held as the patron saint of the Vienna kaffee-sieder--Life in the early Vienna cafes

A romantic tale has been woven around the introduction of coffee into Austria. When Vienna was besieged by the Turks in 1683, so runs the legend, Franz George Kolschitzky, a native of Poland, formerly an interpreter in the Turkish army, saved the city and won for himself undying fame, with coffee as his principal reward.

It is not known whether, in the first siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529, the invaders boiled coffee over their camp fires that surrounded the Austrian capital; although they might have done so, as Selim I, after conquering Egypt in 1517, had brought with him to Constantinople large stores of coffee as part of his booty. But it is certain that when they returned to the attack, 154 years later, they carried with them a plentiful supply of the green beans.

Mohammed IV mobilized an army of 300,000 men and sent it forth under his vizier, Kara Mustapha, (Kuprili's successor) to destroy Christendom and to conquer Europe. Reaching Vienna July 7, 1683, the army quickly invested the city and cut it off from the world. Emperor Leopold had escaped the net and was several miles away. Nearby was the prince of Lorraine, with an army of 33,000 Austrians, awaiting the succor promised by John Sobieski, king of Poland, and an opportunity to relieve the besieged capital. Count Rudiger von Starhemberg, in command of the forces in Vienna, called for a volunteer to carry a message through the Turkish lines to hurry along the rescue. He found him in the person of Franz George Kolschitzky, who had lived for many years among the Turks and knew their language and customs.

On August 13, 1683, Kolschitzky donned a Turkish uniform, passed through the enemy's lines and reached the Emperor's army across the Danube. Several times he made the perilous journey between the camp of the prince of Lorraine and the garrison of the governor of Vienna. One account says that he had to swim the four intervening arms of the Danube each time he performed the feat. His messages did much to keep up the morale of the city's defenders. At length King John and his army of rescuing Poles arrived and were consolidated with the Austrians on the summit of Mount Kahlenberg. It was one of the most dramatic moments in history. The fate of Christian Europe hung in the balance. Everything seemed to point to the triumph of the crescent over the cross. Once again Kolschitzky crossed the Danube, and brought back word concerning the signals that the prince of Lorraine and King John would give from Mount Kahlenberg to indicate the beginning of the attack. Count Starhemberg was to make a sortie at the same time.

The battle took place September 12, and thanks to the magnificent generalship of King John, the Turks were routed. The Poles here rendered a never-to-be-forgotten service to all Christendom. The Turkish invaders fled, leaving 25,000 tents, 10,000 oxen, 5,000 camels, 100,000 bushels of grain, a great quantity of gold, and many sacks filled with coffee--at that time unknown in Vienna. The booty was distributed; but no one wanted the coffee. They did not know what to do with it; that is, no one except Kolschitzky. He said, "If nobody wants those sacks, I will take them", and every one was heartily glad to be rid of the strange beans. But Kolschitzky knew what he was about, and he soon taught the Viennese the art of preparing coffee. Later, he established the first public booth where Turkish coffee was served in Vienna.

This, then, is the story of how coffee was introduced into Vienna, where was developed that typical Vienna cafe which has become a model for a large part of the world. Kolschitzky is honored in Vienna as the patron saint of coffee houses. His followers, united in the guild of coffee makers (kaffee-sieder), even erected a statue in his honor. It still stands as part of the facade of a house where the Kolschitzygasse merges into the Favoritengasse, as shown in the accompanying picture.

Vienna is sometimes referred to as the "mother of cafes". Cafe Sacher is world-renowned. Tart a la Sacher is to be found in every cook-book. The Viennese have their "jause" every afternoon. When one drinks coffee at a Vienna cafe one generally has a kipfel with it. This is a crescent-shaped roll--baked for the first time in the eventful year 1683, when the Turks besieged the city. A baker made these crescent rolls in a spirit of defiance of the Turk. Holding sword in one hand and kipfel in the other, the Viennese would show themselves on top of their redoubts and challenge the cohorts of Mohammed IV.

Mohammed IV was deposed after losing the battle, and Kara Mustapha was executed for leaving the stores--particularly the sacks of coffee beans--at the gates of Vienna; but Vienna coffee and Vienna kipfel are still alive, and their appeal is not lessened by the years.

The hero Kolschitzky was presented with a house by the grateful municipality; and there, at the sign of the Blue Bottle, according to one account, he continued as a coffee-house keeper for many years.[65] This, in brief, is the story that--although not authenticated in all its particulars--is seriously related in many books, and is firmly believed throughout Vienna.

It seems a pity to discredit the hero of so romantic an adventure; but the archives of Vienna throw a light upon Kolschitzky's later conduct that tends to show that, after all, this Viennese idol's feet were of common clay.

It is said that Kolschitzky, after receiving the sacks of green coffee left behind by the Turks, at once began to peddle the beverage from house to house, serving it in little cups from a wooden platter. Later he rented a shop in Bischof-hof. Then he began to petition the municipal council, that, in addition to the sum of 100 ducats already promised him as further recognition of his valor, he should receive a house with good will attached; that is, a shop in some growing business section. "His petitions to the municipal council", writes M. Bermann[66], "are amazing examples of measureless self-conceit and the boldest greed. He seemed determined to get the utmost out of his own self-sacrifice. He insisted upon the most highly deserved reward, such as the Romans bestowed upon their Curtius, the Lacedaemonians upon their Pompilius, the Athenians upon Seneca, with whom he modestly compared himself."

At last, he was given his choice of three houses in the Leopoldstadt, any one of them worth from 400 to 450 gulden, in place of the money reward, that had been fixed by a compromise agreement at 300 gulden. But Kolschitzky was not satisfied with this; and urged that if he was to accept a house in full payment it should be one valued at not less than 1000 gulden. Then ensued much correspondence and considerable haggling. To put an end to the acrimonious dispute, the municipal council in 1685 directed that there should be deeded over to Kolschitzky and his wife, Maria Ursula, without further argument, the house known at that time as 30 (now 8) Haidgasse.

It is further recorded that Kolschitzky sold the house within a year; and, after many moves, he died of tuberculosis, February 20, 1694, aged fifty-four years. He was courier to the emperor at the time of his death, and was buried in the Stefansfreithof Cemetery.

Kolschitzky's heirs moved the coffee house to Donaustrand, near the wooden Schlagbruecke, later known as Ferdinand's bruecke (bridge). The celebrated coffee house of Franz Mosee (d. 1860) stood on this same spot.

In the city records for the year 1700 a house in the Stock-im-Eisen-Platz (square) is designated by the words "allwo das erste kaffeegewoelbe" ("here was the first coffee house"). Unfortunately, the name of the proprietor is not given.

Many stories are told of Kolschitzky's popularity as a coffee-house keeper. He is said to have addressed everyone as bruderherz (brother-heart) and gradually he himself acquired the name bruderherz. A portrait of Kolschitzky, painted about the time of his greatest vogue, is carefully preserved by the Innung der Wiener Kaffee-sieder (the Coffee Makers' Guild of Vienna).

Even during the lifetime of the first kaffee-sieder, a number of others opened coffee houses and acquired some little fame. Early in the eighteenth century a tourist gives us a glimpse of the progress made by coffee drinking and by the coffee-house idea in Vienna. We read:

The city of Vienna is filled with coffee houses, where the novelists or those who busy themselves with the newspapers delight to meet, to read the gazettes and discuss their contents. Some of these houses have a better reputation than others because such zeitungs-doctors (newspaper doctors--an ironical title) gather there to pass most unhesitating judgment on the weightiest events, and to surpass all others in their opinions concerning political matters and considerations.

All this wins them such respect that many congregate there because of them, and to enrich their minds with inventions and foolishness which they immediately run through the city to bring to the ears of the said personalities. It is impossible to believe what freedom is permitted, in furnishing this gossip. They speak without reverence not only of the doings of generals and ministers of state, but also mix themselves in the life of the Kaiser (Emperor) himself.

Vienna liked the coffee house so well that by 1839 there were eighty of them in the city proper and fifty more in the suburbs.

X. THE COFFEE HOUSES OF OLD LONDON

One of the most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee--The first coffee house in London--The first coffee handbill, and the first newspaper advertisement for coffee--Strange coffee mixtures--Fantastic coffee claims--Coffee prices and coffee licenses--Coffee club of the Rota--Early coffee-house manners and customs--Coffee-house keepers' tokens--Opposition to the coffee house--"Penny universities"--Weird coffee substitutes--The proposed coffee-house newspaper monopoly--Evolution of the club--Decline and fall of the coffee house--Pen pictures of coffee-house life--Famous coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Some Old World pleasure gardens--Locating the notable coffee houses

The two most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee have to do with the period of the old London and Paris coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much of the poetry and romance of coffee centers around this time.

"The history of coffee houses," says D'Israeli, "ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the morals and the politics of a people." And so the history of the London coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is indeed the history of the manners and customs of the English people of that period.

The First London Coffee House

"The first coffee house in London," says John Aubrey (1626-97), the English antiquary and folklorist, "was in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill, opposite to the church, which was sett up by one ... Bowman (coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant, who putt him upon it) in or about the yeare 1652. 'Twas about four years before any other was sett up, and that was by Mr. Farr. Jonathan Paynter, over-against to St. Michael's Church, was the first apprentice to the trade, viz., to Bowman."[67]

Another account, for which we are indebted to William Oldys (1696-1761), the bibliographer, relates that Mr. Edwards, a London merchant, acquired the coffee habit in Turkey, and brought home with him from Ragusa, in Dalmatia, Pasqua Rosee, an Armenian or Greek youth, who prepared the beverage for him. "But the novelty thereof," says Oldys, "drawing too much company to him, he allowed the said servant with another of his son-in-law to set up the first coffee house in London at St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill."

From this it would appear that Pasqua Rosee had as partner in this enterprise, the Bowman, who, according to Aubrey, was coachman to Mr. Hodges, the son-in-law of Mr. Edwards, and a fellow merchant traveler.

Oldys tells us that Rosee and Bowman soon separated. John Timbs (1801-1875), another English antiquary, says they quarreled, Rosee keeping the house, and his partner Bowman obtaining leave to pitch a tent and to sell the drink in St. Michael's churchyard.

Still another version of this historic incident is to be found in Houghton's Collection, 1698. It reads:

It appears that a Mr. Daniel Edwards, an English merchant of Smyrna, brought with him to this country a Greek of the name of Pasqua, in 1652, who made his coffee; this Mr. Edwards married one Alderman Hodges's daughter, who lived in Walbrook, and set up Pasqua for a coffee man in a shed in the churchyard in St. Michael, Cornhill, which is now a scrivener's brave-house, when, having great custom, the ale-sellers petitioned the Lord Mayor against him as being no freeman. This made Alderman Hodges join his coachman, Bowman, who was free, as Pasqua's partner; but Pasqua, for some misdemeanor, was forced to run the country, and Bowman, by his trade and a contribution of 1000 sixpences, turned the shed to a house. Bowman's apprentices were first, John Painter, then Humphry, from whose wife I had this account.

This account makes it appear that Edwards was Hodges' son-in-law. Whatever the relationship, most authorities agree that Pasqua Rosee was the first to sell coffee publicly, whether in a tent or shed, in London in or about the year 1652. His original shop-bill, or handbill, the first advertisement for coffee, is in the British Museum, and from it the accompanying photograph was made for this work. It sets forth in direct fashion: "The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink First publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee ... in St. Michaels Alley in Cornhill ... at the Signe of his own Head."[68]

H.R. Fox Bourne[69] (about 1870) is alone in an altogether different version of this historic event. He says:

"In 1652 Sir Nicholas Crispe, a Levant merchant, opened in London the first coffee house known in England, the beverage being prepared by a Greek girl brought over for the work."

There is nothing to substantiate this story; the preponderance of evidence is in support of the Edwards-Rosee version.

Such then was the advent of the coffee house in London, which introduced to English-speaking people the drink of democracy. Oddly enough, coffee and the Commonwealth came in together. The English coffee house, like its French contemporary, was the home of liberty.

Robinson, who accepts that version of the event wherein Edwards marries Hodges's daughter, says that after the partners Rosee and Bowman separated, and Bowman had set up his tent opposite Rosee, a zealous partisan addressed these verses "To Pasqua Rosee, at the Sign of his own Head and half his Body in St. Michael's Alley, next the first Coffee-Tent in London":

Were not the fountain of my Tears Each day exhausted by the steam Of your Coffee, no doubt appears But they would swell to such a stream As could admit of no restriction To see, poor Pasqua, thy Affliction.

What! Pasqua, you at first did broach This Nectar for the publick Good, Must you call Kitt down from the Coach To drive a Trade he understood No more than you did then your creed, Or he doth now to write or read?

Pull Courage, Pasqua, fear no Harms From the besieging Foe; Make good your Ground, stand to your Arms, Hold out this summer, and then tho' He'll storm, he'll not prevail--your Face[70] Shall give the Coffee Pot the chace.

Eventually Pasqua Rosee disappeared, some say to open a coffee house on the Continent, in Holland or Germany. Bowman, having married Alderman Hodges's cook, and having also prevailed upon about a thousand of his customers to lend him sixpence apiece, converted his tent into a substantial house, and eventually took an apprentice to the trade.

Concerning London's second coffee-house keeper, James Farr, proprietor of the Rainbow, who had as his most distinguished visitor Sir Henry Blount, Edward Hatton[71] says:

I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the coffee-house which is now the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple Gate (one of the first in England), was in the year 1657, prosecuted by the inquest of St Dunstan's in the West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called coffe, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighborhood, etc., and who would then have thought London would ever have had near three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee would have been, as now, so much drank by the best of quality and physicians?

Hatton evidently attributed Fair's nuisance to the coffee itself, whereas the presentment[72] clearly shows it was in Farr's chimney and not in the coffee.

Mention has already been made that Sir Henry Blount was spoken of as "the father of English coffee houses" and his claim to this distinction would seem to be a valid one, for his strong personality "stamped itself upon the system." His favorite motto, "Loquendum est cum vulgo, sentiendum cum sapientibus" (the crowd may talk about it; the wise decide it), says Robinson, "expresses well their colloquial purpose, and was natural enough on the lips of one whose experience had been world wide." Aubrey says of Sir Henry Blount, "He is now neer or altogether eighty yeares, his intellectuals good still and body pretty strong."

Women played a not inconspicuous part in establishing businesses for the sale of the coffee drink in England, although the coffee houses were not for both sexes, as in other European countries. The London City Quaeries for 1660 makes mention of "a she-coffee merchant." Mary Stringar ran a coffee house in Little Trinity Lane in 1669; Anne Blunt was mistress of one of the Turk's-Head houses in Cannon Street in 1672. Mary Long was the widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden. Mary Long's token from the "Rose coffee house by the playhouse" in Covent Garden is shown among the group of coffee-house keepers' tokens herein illustrated.

The First Newspaper Advertisement

The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared, May 26, 1657, in the Publick Adviser of London, one of the first weekly pamphlets. The name of this publication was erroneously given as the Publick Advertiser by an early writer on coffee, and the error has been copied by succeeding writers. The first newspaper advertisement was contained in the issue of the Publick Adviser for the week of May 19 to May 26, and read:

In Bartholomew Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink called Coffee, (which is a very wholsom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the morning, and at three of the clock in the afternoon).

Chocolate was also advertised for sale in London this same year. The issue of the Publick Adviser for June 16, 1657, contained this announcement:

In Bishopgate Street, in Queen's Head Alley, at a Frenchman's house is an excellent West India drink called chocolate, to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade at reasonable rates.

Tea was first sold publicly at Garraway's (or Garway's) in 1657.

Strange Coffee Mixtures

The doctors were loath to let coffee escape from the mysteries of the pharmacopoeia and become "a simple and refreshing beverage" that any one might obtain for a penny in the coffee houses, or, if preferred, might prepare at home. In this they were aided and abetted by many well-meaning but misguided persons (some of them men of considerable intelligence) who seemed possessed of the idea that the coffee drink was an unpleasant medicine that needed something to take away its curse, or else that it required a complex method of preparation. Witness "Judge" Walter Rumsey's Electuary of Cophy, which appeared in 1657 in connection with a curious work of his called Organon Salutis: an instrument to cleanse the stomach.[73] The instrument itself was a flexible whale-bone, two or three feet long, with a small linen or silk button at the end, and was designed to be introduced into the stomach to produce the effect of an emetic. The electuary of coffee was to be taken by the patient before and after using the instrument, which the "judge" called his Provang. And this was the "judge's" "new and superior way of preparing coffee" as found in his prescription for making electuary of cophy:

Take equal quantity of Butter and Sallet-oyle, melt them well together, but not boyle them: Then stirre them well that they may incorporate together: Then melt therewith three times as much Honey, and stirre it well together: Then add thereunto powder of Turkish Cophie, to make it a thick Electuary.

A little consideration will convince any one that the electuary was most likely to achieve the purpose for which it was recommended.

Another concoction invented by the "judge" was known as "wash-brew", and included oatmeal, powder of "cophie", a pint of ale or any wine, ginger, honey, or sugar to please the taste; to these ingredients butter might be added and any cordial powder or pleasant spice. It was to be put into a flannel bag and "so keep it at pleasure like starch." This was a favorite medicine among the common people of Wales.

The book contained in a prefix an interesting historical document in the shape of a letter from James Howell (1595-1666) the writer and historiographer, which read:

Touching coffee, I concurre with them in opinion, who hold it to be that black-broth which was us'd of old in Lacedemon, whereof the Poets sing; Surely it must needs be salutiferous, because so many sagacious, and the wittiest sort of Nations use it so much; as they who have conversed with Shashes and Turbants doe well know. But, besides the exsiccant quality it hath to dry up the crudities of the Stomach, as also to comfort the Brain, to fortifie the sight with its steem, and prevent Dropsies, Gouts, the Scurvie, together with the Spleen and Hypocondriacall windes (all which it doth without any violance or distemper at all.) I say, besides all these qualities, 'tis found already, that this Coffee-drink hath caused a greater sobriety among the nations; for whereas formerly Apprentices and Clerks with others, used to take their mornings' draught in Ale, Beer or Wine, which by the dizziness they cause in the Brain, make many unfit for business, they use now to play the Good-fellows in this wakefull and civill drink: Therefore that worthy Gentleman, Mr. Mudiford[74], who introduced the practice hereof first to London, deserves much respect of the whole nation.

The coffee drink at one time was mixed with sugar candy, and also with mustard. In the coffee houses, however, it was usually served black; "few people then mixed it with either sugar or milk."

Fantastic Coffee Claims

One can not fail to note in connection with the introduction of coffee into England that the beverage suffered most from the indiscretions of its friends. On the one hand, the quacks of the medical profession sought to claim it for their own; and, on the other, more or less ignorant laymen attributed to the drink such virtues as its real champions among the physicians never dreamed of. It was the favorite pastime of its friends to exaggerate coffee's merits; and of its enemies, to vilify its users. All this furnished good "copy" for and against the coffee house, which became the central figure in each new controversy.

From the early English author who damned it by calling it "more wholesome than toothsome", to Pasqua Rosee and his contemporaries, who urged its more fantastic claims, it was forced to make its way through a veritable morass of misunderstanding and intolerance. No harmless drink in history has suffered more at hands of friend and foe.

Did its friends hail it as a panacea, its enemies retorted that it was a slow poison. In France and in England there were those who contended that it produced melancholy, and those who argued it was a cure for the same. Dr. Thomas Willis (1621-1673), a distinguished Oxford physician whom Antoine Portal (1742-1832) called "one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived", said he would sometimes send his patients to the coffee house rather than to the apothecary's shop. An old broadside, described later in this chapter, stressed the notion that if you "do but this Rare ARABIAN cordial use, and thou may'st all the Doctors Slops Refuse."

As a cure for drunkenness its "magic" power was acclaimed by its friends, and grudgingly admitted by its foes. This will appear presently in a description of the war of the broadsides and the pamphlets. Coffee was praised by one writer as a deodorizer. Another (Richard Bradley), in his treatise concerning its use with regard to the plague, said if its qualities had been fully known in 1665, "Dr. Hodges and other learned men of that time would have recommended it." As a matter of fact, in Gideon Harvey's Advice against the Plague, published in 1665, we find, "coffee is commended against the contagion."

This is how the drink's sobering virtue was celebrated by the author of the Rebellious Antidote:

Come, Frantick Fools, leave off your Drunken fits. Obsequious be and I'll recall your Wits, From perfect Madness to a modest Strain For farthings four I'll fetch you back again, Enable all your mene with tricks of State, Enter and sip and then attend your Fate; Come Drunk or Sober, for a gentle Fee, Come n'er so Mad, I'll your Physician be.

Dr. Willis, in his Pharmaceutice Rationalis (1674), was one of the first to attempt to do justice to both sides of the coffee question. At best, he thought it a somewhat risky beverage, and its votaries must, in some cases, be prepared to suffer languor and even paralysis; it may attack the heart and cause tremblings in the limbs. On the other hand it may, if judiciously used, prove a marvelous benefit; "being daily drunk it wonderfully clears and enlightens each part of the Soul and disperses all the clouds of every Function."

It was a long time before recognition was obtained for the truth about the "novelty drink"; especially that, if there were any beyond purely social virtues to be found in coffee, they were "political rather than medical."

Dr. James Duncan, of the Faculty of Montpellier, in his book Wholesome Advice against the Abuse of Hot Liquors, done into English in 1706, found coffee no more deserving of the name of panacea than that of poison.

George Cheyne (1671-1743), the noted British physician, proclaimed his neutrality in the words, "I have neither great praise nor bitter blame for the thing."

Coffee Prices and Coffee Licenses

Coffee, with tea and chocolate, was first mentioned in the English Statute books in 1660, when a duty of four pence was laid upon every gallon made and sold, "to be paid by the maker." Coffee was classed by the House of Commons with "other outlandish drinks."

It is recorded in 1662 that "the right coffee powder" was being sold at the Turk's Head coffee house in Exchange Alley for "4s. to 6s. 8d. per pound; that pounded in a mortar, 2s; East India berry, 1s. 6d.; and the right Turkie berry, well garbled [ground] at 3s. The ungarbled [in the bean] for less with directions how to use the same." Chocolate was also to be had at "2s. 6d. the pound; the perfumed from 4s. to 10s."

At one time coffee sold for five guineas a pound in England, and even forty crowns (about forty-eight dollars) a pound was paid for it.

In 1663, all English coffee houses were required to be licensed; the fee was twelve pence. Failure to obtain a license was punished by a fine of five pounds for every month's violation of the law. The coffee houses were under close surveillance by government officials. One of these was Muddiman, a good scholar and an "arch rogue", who had formerly "written for the Parliament" but who later became a paid spy. L'Estrange, who had a patent on "the sole right of intelligence", wrote in his Intelligencer that he was alarmed at the ill effects of "the ordinary written papers of Parliament's news ... making coffee houses and all the popular clubs judges of those councils and deliberations which they have nothing to do with at all."

The first royal warrant for coffee was given by Charles II to Alexander Man, a Scotsman who had followed General Monk to London, and set up in Whitehall. Here he advertised himself as "coffee man to Charles II."

Owing to increased taxes on tea, coffee, and newspapers, near the end of Queen Anne's reign (1714) coffee-house keepers generally raised their prices as follows: Coffee, two pence per dish; green tea, one and a half pence per dish. All drams, two pence per dram. At retail, coffee was then sold for five shillings per pound; while tea brought from twelve to twenty-eight shillings per pound.

Coffee Club of The Rota

"Coffee and Commonwealth", says a pamphleteer of 1665, "came in together for a Reformation, to make 's a free and sober nation." The writer argues that liberty of speech should be allowed, "where men of differing judgements croud"; and he adds, "that's a coffee-house, for where should men discourse so free as there?" Robinson's comments are apt:

Now perhaps we do not always connect the ideas of sociableness and freedom of discussion with the days of Puritan rule; yet it must be admitted that something like geniality and openness characterized what Pepys calls the Coffee Club of the Rota. This "free and open Society of ingenious gentlemen" was founded in the year 1659 by certain members of the Republican party, whose peculiar opinions had been timidly expressed and not very cordially tolerated under the Great Oliver. By the weak Government that followed, these views were regarded with extreme dislike and with some amount of terror.

"They met", says Aubrey, who was himself of their number, "at the Turk's Head [Miles's coffee house] in New Palace Yard, Westminster, where they take water, at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, where was made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee."

Robinson continues:

This curious refreshment bar and the interest with which the beverage itself was regarded, were quite secondary to the excitement caused by another novelty. When, after heated disputation, a member desired to test the opinion of the meeting, any particular point might, by agreement, be put to the vote and then everything depended upon "our wooden oracle," the first balloting-box ever seen in England. Formal methods of procedure and the intensely practical nature of the subjects discussed, combined to give a real importance to this Amateur Parliament.

The Rota, or Coffee Club, as Pepys called it, was essentially a debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions. It was preceded only, in the reign of Henry IV, by the club called La Court de Bone Compagnie; by Sir Walter Raleigh's Friday Street, or Bread Street, club; the club at the Mermaid tavern in Bread Street, of which Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Raleigh, Selden, Donne, et al., were members; and "rare" Ben Jonson's Devil tavern club, between Middle Temple Gate and Temple Bar.

The Rota derived its name from a plan, which it was designed to promote, for changing a certain number of members of parliament annually by rotation. It was founded by James Harrington, who had painted it in fairest colors in his Oceana, that ideal commonwealth.

Sir William Petty was one of its members. Around the table, "in a room every evening as full as it could be crammed," says Aubrey, sat Milton (?) and Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, Harrington, Nevill, and their friends, discussing abstract political questions.

The Rota became famous for its literary strictures. Among these was "The censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book entitled The ready and easie way to establish a free commonwealth" (1660), although it is doubtful if Milton was ever a visitor to this "bustling coffee club." The Rota also censured "Mr. Driden's Conquest of Granada" (1673).

Early Coffee-House Manners and Customs

Among many of the early coffee-house keepers there was great anxiety that the coffee house, open to high and low, should be conducted under such restraints as might secure the better class of customers from annoyance. The following set of regulations in somewhat halting rhyme was displayed on the walls of several of the coffee houses in the seventeenth century:

THE RULES AND ORDERS OF THE COFFEE HOUSE.

Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you please, Peruse our civil orders, which are these.

First, gentry, tradesmen, all are welcome hither, And may without affront sit down together: Pre-eminence of place none here should mind, But take the next fit seat that he can find: Nor need any, if finer persons come, Rise up to assigne to them his room; To limit men's expence, we think not fair, But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear; He that shall any quarrel here begin, Shall give each man a dish t' atone the sin; And so shall he, whose compliments extend So far to drink in coffee to his friend; Let noise of loud disputes be quite forborne, No maudlin lovers here in corners mourn, But all be brisk and talk, but not too much, On sacred things, let none presume to touch. Nor profane Scripture, nor sawcily wrong Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue: Let mirth be innocent, and each man see That all his jests without reflection be; To keep the house more quiet and from blame, We banish hence cards, dice, and every game; Nor can allow of wagers, that exceed Five shillings, which ofttimes much trouble breed; Let all that's lost or forfeited be spent In such good liquor as the house doth vent. And customers endeavour, to their powers, For to observe still, seasonable hours. Lastly, let each man what he calls for pay, And so you're welcome to come every day.

The early coffee houses were often up a flight of stairs, and consisted of a single large room with "tables set apart for divers topics." There is a reference to this in the prologue to a comedy of 1681 (quoted by Malone):

In a coffee house just now among the rabble I bluntly asked, which is the treason table?

This was the arrangement at Man's and others favored by the wits, the literati, and "men of fashionable instincts." In the distinctly business coffee houses separate rooms were provided at a later time for mercantile transactions. The introduction of wooden partitions--wooden boxes, as at a tavern--was also of somewhat later date.

A print of 1674 shows five persons of different ranks in life, one of them smoking, sitting on chairs around a coffee-house table, on which are small basins, or dishes, without saucers, and tobacco pipes, while a coffee boy is serving coffee.

In the beginning, only coffee was dispensed in the English coffee houses. Soon chocolate, sherbert, and tea were added; but the places still maintained their status as social and temperance factors. Constantine Jennings (or George Constantine) of the Grecian advertised chocolate, sherbert and tea at retail in 1664-65; also free instruction in the part of preparing these liquors. "Drams and cordial waters were to be had only at coffee houses newly set up," says Elford the younger, writing about 1689. "While some few places added ale and beer as early as 1669, intoxicating liquors were not items of importance for many years."

After the fire of 1666, many new coffee houses were opened that were not limited to a single room up a flight of stairs. Because the coffee-house keepers over-emphasized the sobering qualities of the coffee drink, they drew many undesirable characters from the taverns and ale houses after the nine o'clock closing hour. These were hardly calculated to improve the reputation of the coffee houses; and, indeed, the decline of the coffee houses as a temperance institution would seem to trace back to this attitude of false pity for the victims of tavern vices, evils that many of the coffee houses later on embraced to their own undoing. The early institution was unique, its distinctive features being unlike those of any public house in England or on the Continent. Later on, in the eighteenth century, when these distinctive features became obscured, the name coffee house became a misnomer.

However, Robinson says, "the close intercourse between the habitues of the coffee house, before it lost anything of its generous social traditions and whilst the issue of the struggle for political liberty was as yet uncertain, was to lead to something more than a mere jumbling or huddling together of opposites. The diverse elements gradually united in the bonds of common sympathy, or were forcibly combined by persecution from without until there resulted a social, political and moral force of almost irresistible strength."

Coffee-House Keepers' Tokens

The great London fire of 1666 destroyed some of the coffee houses; but prominent among those that survived was the Rainbow, whose proprietor, James Farr, issued one of the earliest coffee-house tokens, doubtless in grateful memory of his escape. Farr's token shows an arched rainbow emerging from the clouds of the "great fire," indicating that all was well with him, and the Rainbow still radiant. On the reverse the medal was inscribed, "In Fleet Street--His Half Penny."

A large number of these trade coins were put out by coffee-house keepers and other tradesmen in the seventeenth century as evidence of an amount due, as stated thereon, by the issuer to the holder. Tokens originated because of the scarcity of small change. They were of brass, copper, pewter, and even leather, gilded. They bore the name, address, and calling of the issuer, the nominal value of the piece, and some reference to his trade. They were readily redeemed, on presentation, at their face value. They were passable in the immediate neighborhood, seldom reaching farther than the next street. C.G. Williamson writes:

Tokens are essentially democratic; they would never have been issued but for the indifference of the Government to a public need; and in them we have a remarkable instance of a people forcing a legislature to comply with demands at once reasonable and imperative. Taken as a whole series, they are homely and quaint, wanting in beauty, but not without a curious domestic art of their own.

Robinson finds an exception to the general simplicity in the tokens issued by one of the Exchange Alley houses. The dies of these tokens are such as to have suggested the skilled workmanship of John Roettier. The most ornate has the head of a Turkish sultan at that time famed for his horrible deeds, ending in suicide; its inscription runs:

Morat ye Great Men did mee call; Where Eare I came I conquer'd all.

A number of the most interesting coffee-house keepers' tokens in the Beaufoy collection in the Guildhall Museum were photographed for this work, and are shown herewith. It will be observed that many of the traders of 1660-75 adopted as their trade sign a hand pouring coffee from a pot, invariably of the Turkish-ewer pattern. Morat (Amurath) and Soliman were frequent coffee-house signs in the seventeenth century.

J.H. Burn, in his Catalogue of Traders' Tokens, recites that in 1672 "divers persons who presumed ... to stamp, coin, exchange and distribute farthings, halfpence and pence of brass and copper" were "taken into custody, in order to a severe prosecution"; but upon submission, their offenses were forgiven, and it was not until the year 1675 that the private token ceased to pass current.

A royal proclamation at the close of 1674 enjoined the prosecution of any who should "utter base metals with private stamps," or "hinder the vending of those half pence and farthings which are provided for necessary exchange." After this, tokens were issued stamped "necessary change."

Opposition to the Coffee House

It is easy to see why the coffee houses at once found favor among men of intelligence in all classes. Until they came, the average Englishman had only the tavern as a place of common resort. But here was a public house offering a non-intoxicating beverage, and its appeal was instant and universal. As a meeting place for the exchange of ideas it soon attained wide popularity. But not without opposition. The publicans and ale-house keepers, seeing business slipping away from them, made strenuous propaganda against this new social center; and not a few attacks were launched against the coffee drink. Between the Restoration and the year 1675, of eight tracts written upon the subject of the London coffee houses, four have the words "character of a coffee house" as part of their titles. The authors appear eager to impart a knowledge of the town's latest novelty, with which many readers were unacquainted.

One of these early pamphlets (1662) was entitled The Coffee Scuffle, and professed to give a dialogue between "a learned knight and a pitifull pedagogue," and contained an amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the classics, another confides to his neighbors how much he admires Euclid;

A third's for a lecture, a fourth a conjecture, A fifth for a penny in the pound.

Theology is introduced. Mask balls and plays are condemned. Others again discuss the news, and are deep in the store of "mercuries" here to be found. One cries up philosophy. Pedantry is rife, and for the most part unchecked, when each 'prentice-boy "doth call for his coffee in Latin" and all are so prompt with their learned quotations that "'t would make a poor Vicar to tremble."

The first noteworthy effort attacking the coffee drink was a satirical broadside that appeared in 1663. It was entitled A Cup of Coffee: or, Coffee in its Colours. It said:

For men and Christians to turn Turks, and think T'excuse the Crime because 'tis in their drink, Is more than Magick.... Pure English Apes! Ye may, for ought I know, Would it but mode, learn to eat Spiders too.

The writer wonders that any man should prefer coffee to canary, and refers to the days of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson. He says:

They drank pure nectar as the gods drink too, Sublim'd with rich Canary.... shall then These less than coffee's self, these coffee-men, These sons of nothing, that can hardly make Their Broth, for laughing how the jest doth take; Yet grin, and give ye for the Vine's pure Blood A loathsome potion, not yet understood, Syrrop of soot, or Essence of old Shooes, Dasht with Diurnals and the Books of news?

The author of A Cup of Coffee, it will be seen, does not shrink from using epithets.

_The Coffee Man's Granado Discharged upon the Maiden's Complaint Against Coffee_, a dialogue in verse, also appeared in 1663.

The Character of a Coffee House, by an Eye and Ear Witness appeared in 1665. It was a ten-page pamphlet, and proved to be excellent propaganda for coffee. It is so well done, and contains so much local color, that it is reproduced here, the text Museum. The title page reads:

The CHARACTER OF A COFFEE-HOUSE wherein Is contained a Description of the Persons usually frequenting it, with their Discourse and Humors, As Also The Admirable Vertues of COFFEE By an Eye and Ear Witness

_When Coffee once was vended here, The Alc'ron shortly did appear, For our Reformers were such Widgeons. New Liquors brought in new Religions._

Printed in the Year, 1665.

The text and the arrangement of the body of the pamphlet are as follows:

THE CHARACTER OF A COFFEE-HOUSE

THE DERIVATION OF A COFFEE-HOUSE

A Coffee-house, the learned hold It is a place where Coffee's sold; This derivation cannot fail us, For where Ale's vended, that's an Ale-house.

This being granted to be true, 'Tis meet that next the Signs we shew Both where and how to find this house Where men such cordial broth carowse. And if Culpepper woon some glory In turning the Dispensatory From Latin into English; then Why should not all good English men Give him much thanks who shews a cure For all diseases men endure?

SIGNS: HOW TO FIND IT OUT

As you along the streets do trudge, To take the pains you must not grudge, To view the Posts or Broomsticks where The Signs of Liquors hanged are. And if you see the great Morat With Shash on's head instead of hat, Or any Sultan in his dress, Or picture of a Sultaness, Or John's admir'd curled pate, Or th' great Mogul in's Chair of State, Or Constantine the Grecian, Who fourteen years was th' onely man That made Coffee for th' great Bashaw, Although the man he never saw; Or if you see a Coffee-cup Fil'd from a Turkish pot, hung up Within the clouds, and round it Pipes, Wax Candles, Stoppers, these are types And certain signs (with many more Would be too long to write them 'ore,) Which plainly do Spectators tell That in that house they Coffee sell. Some wiser than the rest (no doubt,) Say they can by the smell find't out; In at a door (say they,) but thrust Your Nose, and if you scent burnt Crust, Be sure there's Coffee sold that's good, For so by most 'tis understood.

Now being enter'd, there's no needing Of complements or gentile breeding, For you may seat you any where, There's no respect of persons there; Then comes the Coffee-man to greet you, With welcome Sir, let me entreat you, To tell me what you'l please to have, For I'm your humble, humble slave; But if you ask, what good does Coffee? He'l answer, Sir, don't think I scoff yee, If I affirm there's no disease Men have that drink it but find ease.

THE VERTUES OF COFFEE

Look, there's a man who takes the steem In at his Nose, has an extreme Worm in his pate, and giddiness, Ask him and he will say no less. There sitteth one whose Droptick belly Was hard as flint, now's soft as jelly. There stands another holds his head 'Ore th' Coffee-pot, was almost dead Even now with Rhume; ask him hee'l say That all his Rhum's now past away. See, there's a man sits now demure And sober, was within this hour Quite drunk, and comes here frequently, For 'tis his daily Malady, More, it has such reviving power 'Twill keep a man awake an houre, Nay, make his eyes wide open stare Both Sermon time and all the prayer. Sir, should I tell you all the rest O' th' cures 't has done, two hours at least In numb'ring them I needs must spend, Scarce able then to make an end. Besides these vertues that's therein. For any kind of Medicine, The Commonwealth-Kingdom I'd say, Has mighty reason for to pray That still Arabia may produce Enough of Berry for it's use: For't has such strange magnetick force, That it draws after't great concourse Of all degrees of persons, even From high to low, from morn till even; Especially the sober Party, And News-mongers do drink't most hearty Here you'r not thrust into a Box As Taverns do to catch the Fox, But as from th' top of Pauls high steeple, Th' whole City's view'd, even so all people May here be seen; no secrets are At th' Court for Peace, or th' Camp for War, But straight they'r here disclos'd and known; Men in this Age so wise are grown. Now (Sir) what profit may accrew By this, to all good men, judge you. With that he's loudly call'd upon For Coffee, and then whip he's gone.

THE COMPANY

Here at a Table sits (perplext) A griping Usurer, and next To him a gallant Furioso, Then nigh to him a Virtuoso; A Player then (full fine) sits down, And close to him a Country Clown. O' th' other side sits some Pragmatick, And next to him some sly Phanatick.

THE SEVERAL LIQUORS

The gallant he for Tea doth call, The Usurer for nought at all. The Pragmatick he doth intreat That they will fill him some Beau-cheat, The Virtuoso he cries hand me Some Coffee mixt with Sugar-candy. Phanaticus (at last) says come, Bring me some Aromaticum. The Player bawls for Chocolate, All which the Bumpkin wond'ring at, Cries, ho, my Masters, what d' ye speak, D' ye call for drink in Heathen Greek? Give me some good old Ale or Beer, Or else I will not drink, I swear. Then having charg'd their Pipes around.

THEIR DISCOURSE

They silence break; First the profound And sage Phanatique, Sirs what news? Troth says the Us'rer I ne'r use To tip my tongue with such discourse, 'Twere news to know how to disburse A summ of mony (makes me sad) To get ought by't, times are so bad. The other answers, truly Sir You speak but truth, for I'le aver They ne'r were worse; did you not hear What prodigies did late appear At Norwich, Ipswich, Grantham, Gotam? And though prophane ones do not not'em, Yet we--Here th' Virtuoso stops The current of his speech, with hopes Quoth he, you will not tak'd amiss, I say all's lies that's news like this, For I have Factors all about The Realm, so that no Stars peep out That are unusual, much less these Strange and unheard-of prodigies You would relate, but they are tost To me in letters by first Post. At which the Furioso swears Such chat as this offends his ears It rather doth become this Age To talk of bloodshed, fury, rage, And t' drink stout healths in brim-fill'd Nogans. To th' downfall of the Hogan Mogans. With that the Player doffs his Bonnet, And tunes his voice as if a Sonnet Were to be sung; then gently says, O what delight there is in Plays! Sure if we were but all in Peace, This noise of Wars and News would cease; All sorts of people then would club Their pence to see a Play that's good. You'l wonder all this while (perhaps) The Curioso holds his chaps. But he doth in his thoughts devise, How to the rest he may seem wise; Yet able longer not to hold, His tedious tale too must be told, And thus begins, Sirs unto me It reason seems that liberty Of speech and words should be allow'd Where men of differing judgements croud, And that's a Coffee-house, for where Should men discourse so free as there? Coffee and Commonwealth begin Both with one letter, both came in Together for a Reformation, To make's a free and sober Nation. But now--With that Phanaticus Gives him a nod, and speaks him thus, Hold brother, I know your intent, That's no dispute convenient For this same place, truths seldome find Acceptance here, they'r more confin'd To Taverns and to Ale-house liquor, Where men do vent their minds more quicker If that may for a truth but pass What's said, In vino veritas. With that up starts the Country Clown, And stares about with threatening frown. As if he would even eat them all up. Then bids the boy run quick and call up, A Constable, for he has reason To fear their Latin may be treason But straight they all call what's to pay, Lay't down, and march each several way.

THE COMPANY

At th' other table sits a Knight, And here a grave old man ore right Against his worship, then perhaps That by and by a Drawer claps His bum close by them, there down squats A dealer in old shoes and hats; And here withouten any panick Fear, dread or care a bold Mechanick.

HEIR DISCOURSE

The Knight (because he's so) he prates Of matters far beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And contradicts what all have said.

* * * * *

There by the fier-side doth sit, One freezing in an Ague fit. Another poking in't with th' tongs, Still ready to cough up his lungs Here sitteth one that's melancolick, And there one singing in a frolick. Each one hath such a prety gesture, At Smithfield fair would yield a tester. Boy reach a pipe cries he that shakes, The songster no Tobacco takes, Says he who coughs, nor do I smoak, Then Monsieur Mopus turns his cloak Off from his face, and with a grave Majestick beck his pipe doth crave. They load their guns and fall a smoaking Whilst he who coughs sits by a choaking, Till he no longer can abide. And so removes from th' fier side. Now all this while none calls to drink, Which makes the Coffee boy to think Much they his pots should so enclose, He cannot pass but tread on toes. With that as he the Nectar fills From pot to pot, some on't he spills Upon the Songster. Oh cries he. Pox, what dost do? thou'st burnt my knee; No says the boy, (to make a bald And blind excuse.) Sir 'twill not scald. With that the man lends him a cuff O' th' ear, and whips away in snuff. The other two, their pipes being out, Says Monsieur Mopus I much doubt My friend I wait for will not come, But if he do, say I'm gone home. Then says the Aguish man I must come According to my wonted custome, To give ye' a visit, although now I dare not drink, and so adieu. The boy replies, O Sir, however You'r very welcome, we do never Our Candles, Pipes or Fier grutch To daily customers and such, They'r Company (without expence,) For that's sufficient recompence. Here at a table all alone, Sits (studying) a spruce youngster, (one Who doth conceipt himself fully witty, And's counted one o' th' wits o' th' City,) Till by him (with a stately grace,) A Spanish Don himself doth place. Then (cap in hand) a brisk Monsieur He takes his seat, and crowds as near As possibly that he can come. Then next a Dutchman takes his room. The Wits glib tongue begins to chatter, Though't utters more of noise than matter, Yet 'cause they seem to mind his words, His lungs more battle still affords At last says he to Don, I trow You understand me? Sennor no Says th' other. Here the Wit doth pause A little while, then opes his jaws, And says to Monsieur, you enjoy Our tongue I hope? Non par ma foy, Replies the Frenchman: nor you, Sir? Says he to th' Dutchman, Neen mynheer, With that he's gone, and cries, why sho'd He stay where wit's not understood? There in a place of his own chusing (Alone) some lover sits a musing, With arms across, and's eyes up lift, As if he were of sence bereft. Till sometimes to himself he's speaking, Then sighs as if his heart were breaking. Here in a corner sits a Phrantick, And there stands by a frisking Antick, Of all sorts some and all conditions Even Vintners, Surgeons and Physicians. The blind, the deaf, and aged cripple Do here resort and Coffee tipple.

Now here (perhaps) you may expect My Muse some trophies should erect In high flown verse, for to set forth The noble praises of its worth.

Truth is, old Poets beat their brains To find out high and lofty strains To praise the (now too frequent) use Of the bewitching grapes strong juice, Some have strain'd hard for to exalt The liquor of our English Mault Nay Don has almost crackt his nodle Enough t'applaud his Caaco Caudle. The Germans Mum, Teag's Usquebagh, (Made him so well defend Tredagh,) Metheglin, which the Brittains tope, Hot Brandy wine, the Hogans hope. Stout Meade which makes the Russ to laugh, Spic'd Punch (in bowls) the Indians quaff. All these have had their pens to raise Them Monuments of lasting praise, Onely poor Coffee seems to me No subject fit for Poetry At least 'tis one that none of mine is, So I do wave 't, and here write-- FINIS.

_News from the Coffe House; in which is shewn their several sorts of Passions_ appeared in 1667. It was reprinted in 1672 as _The Coffee House or News-mongers' Hall_.

Several stanzas from these broadsides have been much quoted. They serve to throw additional light upon the manners of the time, and upon the kind of conversation met with in any well frequented coffee house of the seventeenth century, particularly under the Stuarts. They are finely descriptive of the company characteristics of the early coffee houses. The fifth stanza of the edition of 1667, inimical to the French, was omitted when the broadside was amended and reprinted in 1672, the year that England joined with France and again declared war on the Dutch. The following verses with explanatory notes are from Timbs:

NEWS FROM THE COFFE HOUSE

You that delight in Wit and Mirth, And long to hear such News, As comes from all Parts of the Earth, Dutch, Danes, and Turks, and Jews, I'le send yee to a Rendezvouz, Where it is smoaking new; Go hear it at a Coffe-house, It cannot but be true.

There Battles and Sea-Fights are Fought, And bloudy Plots display'd; They know more Things then ere was thought Or ever was betray'd: No Money in the Minting-house Is halfe so Bright and New; And comming from a Coffe-house It cannot but be true.

Before the Navyes fall to Work, They know who shall be Winner; They there can tell ye what the Turk Last Sunday had to Dinner; Who last did Cut Du Ruitters[75] Corns, Amongst his jovial Crew; Or Who first gave the Devil Horns, Which cannot but be true.

A Fisherman did boldly tell, And strongly did avouch, He Caught a Shoal of Mackarel, That Parley'd all in Dutch, And cry'd out Yaw, yaw, yaw Myne Here; But as the Draught they Drew They Stunck for fear, that Monck[76] was there, Which cannot but be true.

* * * * *

There's nothing done in all the World, From Monarch to the Mouse But every Day or Night 'tis hurld Into the Coffe-house. What Lillie[77] or what Booker[78] can By Art, not bring about, At Coffe-house you'l find a Man, Can quickly find it out.

They know who shall in Times to come, Be either made, or undone, From great St. Peters street in Rome, To Turnbull-street[79] in London;

* * * * *

They know all that is Good, or Hurt, To Dam ye, or to Save ye; There is the Colledge, and the Court, The Country, Camp and Navie; So great a Universitie, I think there ne're was any; In which you may a Schoolar be For spending of a Penny.

* * * * *

Here Men do talk of every Thing, With large and liberal Lungs, Like Women at a Gossiping, With double tyre of Tongues; They'l give a Broad-side presently, Soon as you are in view, With Stories that, you'l wonder at, Which they will swear are true.

The Drinking there of Chockalat, Can make a Fool a Sophie: 'Tis thought the Turkish Mahomet Was first Inspir'd with Coffe, By which his Powers did Over-flow The Land of Palestine: Then let us to, the Coffe-house go, 'Tis Cheaper farr then Wine.

You shall know there, what Fashions are; How Perrywiggs are Curl'd; And for a Penny you shall heare, All Novells in the World. Both Old and Young, and Great and Small, And Rich, and Poore, you'l see; Therefore let's to the Coffe All, Come All away with Mee.

FINIS.

Robert Morton made a contribution to the controversy in Lines Appended to the Nature, Quality and Most Excellent Vertues of Coffee in 1670.

There was published in 1672 _A Broad-side Against Coffee, or the Marriage of the Turk_, verses that attained considerable fame because of their picturesque invective. They also stressed the fact that Pasqua Rosees partner was a coachman, and imitated the broken English of the Ragusan youth:

A BROAD-SIDE AGAINST COFFEE; OR, THE MARRIAGE OF THE TURK

Coffee, a kind of Turkish Renegade, Has late a match with Christian water made; At first between them happen'd a Demur, Yet joyn'd they were, but not without great stir;

* * * * *

Coffee was cold as Earth, Water as Thames, And stood in need of recommending Flames;

* * * * *

Coffee so brown as berry does appear, Too swarthy for a Nymph so fair, so clear:

* * * * *

A Coachman was the first (here) Coffee made, And ever since the rest drive on the trade; Me no good Engalash! and sure enough, He plaid the Quack to salve his Stygian stuff; Ver boon for de stomach, de Cough, de Ptisick And I believe him, for it looks like Physick. Coffee a crust is charkt into a coal, The smell and taste of the Mock China bowl; Where huff and puff, they labour out their lungs, Lest Dives-like they should bewail their tongues. And yet they tell ye that it will not burn, Though on the Jury Blisters you return; Whose furious heat does make the water rise, And still through the Alembicks of your eyes. Dread and desire, ye fall to't snap by snap, As hungry Dogs do scalding porrige lap, But to cure Drunkards it has got great Fame; Posset or Porrige, will't not do the same? Confusion huddles all into one Scene, Like Noah's Ark, the clean and the unclean. But now, alas! the Drench has credit got, And he's no Gentleman that drinks it not; That such a Dwarf should rise to such a stature! But Custom is but a remove from Nature. A little Dish, and a large Coffee-house, What is it, but a Mountain and a Mouse?

* * * * *

Mens humana novitatis avidissima.

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.

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 habitues 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.

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."

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

WHITE'S chocolate house, established by Francis White about 1693 in St. James's Street, originally open to any one as a coffee house, soon became a private club, composed of "the most fashionable exquisites of the town and court." In its coffee-house days, the entrance was sixpence, as compared with the average penny fee of the other coffee houses. Escott refers to WHITE'S as being "the one specimen of the class to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost the same roof, and always bearing the same name, whether as coffee house or club, the same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred years."

Among hundreds of other coffee houses that flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the following more notable ones are deserving of mention:

BAKER'S, 58 'Change Alley, for nearly half a century noted for its chops and steaks broiled in the coffee room and eaten hot from the gridiron; the BALTIC, in Threadneedle Street, the rendezvous of brokers and merchants connected with the Russian trade; the BEDFORD, "under the Piazza, in Covent Garden," crowded every night with men of parts and "signalized for many years as the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism and the standard of taste"; the CHAPTER, in Paternoster Row, frequented by Chatterton and Goldsmith; CHILD'S, in St. Paul's Churchyard, one of the Spectator's houses, and much frequented by the clergy and fellows of the Royal Society; DICK'S, in Fleet Street, frequented by Cowper, and the scene of Rousseau's comedietta, entitled The Coffee House; ST. JAMES'S, in St. James's Street, frequented by Swift, Goldsmith, and Garrick; JERUSALEM, in Cowper's Court, Cornhill, frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of China, India, and Australia; JONATHAN'S, in 'Change Alley, described by the Tatler as "the general mart of stock jobbers"; the LONDON, in Ludgate Hill, noted for its publishers' sales of stock and copyrights; MAN'S, in Scotland Yard, which took its name from the proprietor, Alexander Man, and was sometimes known as OLD MAN'S, or the ROYAL, to distinguish it from YOUNG MAN'S, LITTLE MAN'S, NEW MAN'S, etc., minor establishments in the neighborhood;[85] NANDO'S, in Fleet Street, the favorite haunt of Lord Thurlow and many professional loungers, attracted by the fame of the punch and the charms of the landlady; NEW ENGLAND AND NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN, in Threadneedle Street, having on its subscription list representatives of Barings, Rothschilds, and other wealthy establishments; PEELE'S, in Fleet Street, having a portrait of Dr. Johnson said to have been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the PERCY, in Oxford Street, the inspiration for the Percy Anecdotes; the PIAZZA, in Covent Garden, where Macklin fitted up a large coffee room, or theater, for oratory, and Fielding and Foote poked fun at him; the RAINBOW, in Fleet Street, the second coffee house opened in London, having its token money; the SMYRNA, in Pall Mall, a "place to talk politics," and frequented by Prior and Swift; TOM KING'S, one of the old night houses of Covent Garden Market, "well known to all gentlemen to whom beds are unknown"; the TURK'S HEAD, 'Change Alley, which also had its tokens; the TURK'S HEAD, in the Strand, which was a favorite supping house for Dr. Johnson and Boswell; the FOLLY, a coffee house on a house-boat on the Thames, which became quite notorious during Queen Anne's reign.

XI. HISTORY OF THE EARLY PARISIAN COFFEE HOUSES

The introduction of coffee into Paris by Thevenot in 1657--How Soliman Aga established the custom of coffee drinking at the court of Louis XIV--Opening the first coffee houses--How the French adaptation of the Oriental coffee house first appeared in the real French cafe of Francois Procope--The important part played by the coffee houses in the development of French literature and the stage--Their association with the Revolution and the founding of the Republic--Quaint customs and patrons--Historic Parisian cafes

If we are to accept the authority of Jean La Roque, "before the year 1669 coffee had scarcely been seen in Paris, except at M. Thevenot's and at the homes of some of his friends. Nor had it been heard of except in the writings of travelers."

As noted in chapter V, Jean de Thevenot brought coffee into Paris in 1657. One account says that a decoction, supposed to have been coffee, was sold by a Levantine in the Petit Chatelet under the name of cohove or cahoue during the reign of Louis XIII, but this lacks confirmation. Louis XIV is said to have been served with coffee for the first time in 1664.

Soon after the arrival, in July, 1669, of the Turkish ambassador, Soliman Aga, it became noised abroad that he had brought with him for his own use, and that of his retinue, great quantities of coffee. He "treated several persons with it, both in the court and the city." At length "many accustomed themselves to it with sugar, and others who found benefit by it could not leave it off."

Within six months all Paris was talking of the sumptuous coffee functions of the ambassador from Mohammed IV to the court of Louis XIV.

Isaac D'Israeli best describes them in his Curiosities of Literature:

On bended knee, the black slaves of the Ambassador, arrayed in the most gorgeous Oriental costumes, served the choicest Mocha coffee in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong and fragrant, poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold bullion, to the grand dames, who fluttered their fans with many grimaces, bending their piquant faces--be-rouged, be-powdered and be-patched--over the new and steaming beverage.

It was in 1669 or 1672 that Madame de Sevigne (Marie de Rabutin-Chantal; 1626-96), the celebrated French letter-writer, is said to have made that famous prophecy, "There are two things Frenchmen will never swallow--coffee and Racine's poetry," sometimes abbreviated into, "Racine and coffee will pass." What Madame really said, according to one authority, was that Racine was writing for Champmesle, the actress, and not for posterity; again, of coffee she said, "s'en degouterait comme; d'un indigne favori" (People will become disgusted with it as with an unworthy favorite).

Larousse says the double judgment was wrongly attributed to Mme. de Sevigne. The celebrated aphorism, like many others, was forged later. Mme. de Sevigne said, "Racine made his comedies for the Champmesle--not for the ages to come." This was in 1672. Four years later, she said to her daughter, "You have done well to quit coffee. Mlle. de Mere has also given it up."

However it may have been, the amiable letter-writer was destined to live to see Frenchmen yielding at once to the lure of coffee and to the poetical artifices of the greatest dramatic craftsman of his day.

While it is recorded that coffee made slow progress with the court of Louis XIV, the next king, Louis XV, to please his mistress, du Barry, gave it a tremendous vogue. It is related that he spent $15,000 a year for coffee for his daughters.

Meanwhile, in 1672, one Pascal, an Armenian, first sold coffee publicly in Paris. Pascal, who, according to one account, was brought to Paris by Soliman Aga, offered the beverage for sale from a tent, which was also a kind of booth, in the fair of St.-Germain, supplemented by the service of Turkish waiter boys, who peddled it among the crowds from small cups on trays. The fair was held during the first two months of spring, in a large open plot just inside the walls of Paris and near the Latin Quarter. As Pascal's waiter boys circulated through the crowds on those chilly days the fragrant odor of freshly made coffee brought many ready sales of the steaming beverage; and soon visitors to the fair learned to look for the "little black" cupful of cheer, or petit noir, a name that still endures.

When the fair closed, Pascal opened a small coffee shop on the Quai de l'Ecole, near the Pont Neuf; but his frequenters were of a type who preferred the beers and wines of the day, and coffee languished. Pascal continued, however, to send his waiter boys with their large coffee jugs, that were heated by lamps, through the streets of Paris and from door to door. Their cheery cry of "cafe! cafe!" became a welcome call to many a Parisian, who later missed his petit noir when Pascal gave up and moved on to London, where coffee drinking was then in high favor.

Lacking favor at court, coffee's progress was slow. The French smart set clung to its light wines and beers. In 1672, Maliban, another Armenian, opened a coffee house in the rue Bussy, next to the Metz tennis court near St.-Germain's abbey. He supplied tobacco also to his customers. Later he went to Holland, leaving his servant and partner, Gregory, a Persian, in charge. Gregory moved to the rue Mazarine, to be near the Comedie Francaise. He was succeeded in the business by Makara, another Persian, who later returned to Ispahan, leaving the coffee house to one Le Gantois, of Liege.

About this period there was a cripple boy from Candia, known as le Candiot, who began to cry "coffee!" in the streets of Paris. He carried with him a coffee pot of generous size, a chafing-dish, cups, and all other implements necessary to his trade. He sold his coffee from door to door at two sous per dish, sugar included.

A Levantine named Joseph also sold coffee in the streets, and later had several coffee shops of his own. Stephen, from Aleppo, next opened a coffee house on Pont au Change, moving, when his business prospered, to more pretentious quarters in the rue St.-Andre, facing St.-Michael's bridge.

All these, and others, were essentially the Oriental style of coffee house of the lower order, and they appealed principally to the poorer classes and to foreigners. "Gentlemen and people of fashion" did not care to be seen in this type of public house. But when the French merchants began to set up, first at St.-Germain's fair, "spacious apartments in an elegant manner, ornamented with tapestries, large mirrors, pictures, marble tables, branches for candles, magnificent lustres, and serving coffee, tea, chocolate, and other refreshments", they were soon crowded with people of fashion and men of letters.

In this way coffee drinking in public acquired a badge of respectability. Presently there were some three hundred coffee houses in Paris. The principal coffee men, in addition to plying their trade in the city, maintained coffee rooms in St.-Germain's and St.-Laurence's fairs. These were frequented by women as well as men.

The Progenitor of the Real Parisian Cafe

It was not until 1689, that there appeared in Paris a real French adaptation of the Oriental coffee house. This was the Cafe de Procope, opened by Francois Procope (Procopio Cultelli, or Cotelli) who came from Florence or Palermo. Procope was a limonadier (lemonade vender) who had a royal license to sell spices, ices, barley water, lemonade, and other such refreshments. He early added coffee to the list, and attracted a large and distinguished patronage.

Procope, a keen-witted merchant, made his appeal to a higher class of patrons than did Pascal and those who first followed him. He established his cafe directly opposite the newly opened Comedie Francaise, in the street then known as the rue des Fosses-St.-Germain, but now the rue de l'Ancienne Comedie. A writer of the period has left this description of the place: "The Cafe de Procope ... was also called the Antre [cavern] de Procope, because it was very dark even in full day, and ill-lighted in the evenings; and because you often saw there a set of lank, sallow poets, who had somewhat the air of apparitions."

Because of its location, the Cafe de Procope became the gathering place of many noted French actors, authors, dramatists, and musicians of the eighteenth century. It was a veritable literary salon. Voltaire was a constant patron; and until the close of the historic cafe, after an existence of more than two centuries, his marble table and chair were among the precious relics of the coffee house. His favorite drink is said to have been a mixture of coffee and chocolate. Rousseau, author and philosopher; Beaumarchais, dramatist and financier; Diderot, the encyclopedist; Ste.-Foix, the abbe of Voisenon; de Belloy, author of the Siege of Callais; Lemierre, author of Artaxerce; Crebillon; Piron; La Chaussee; Fontenelle; Condorcet; and a host of lesser lights in the French arts, were habitues of Francois Procope's modest coffee saloon near the Comedie Francaise.

Naturally, the name of Benjamin Franklin, recognized in Europe as one of the world's foremost thinkers in the days of the American Revolution, was often spoken over the coffee cups of Cafe de Procope; and when the distinguished American died in 1790, this French coffee house went into deep mourning "for the great friend of republicanism." The walls, inside and out, were swathed in black bunting, and the statesmanship and scientific attainments of Franklin were acclaimed by all frequenters.

The Cafe de Procope looms large in the annals of the French Revolution. During the turbulent days of 1789 one could find at the tables, drinking coffee or stronger beverages, and engaged in debate over the burning questions of the hour, such characters as Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Hebert, and Desmoulins. Napoleon Bonaparte, then a poor artillery officer seeking a commission, was also there. He busied himself largely in playing chess, a favorite recreation of the early Parisian coffee-house patrons. It is related that Francois Procope once compelled young Bonaparte to leave his hat for security while he sought money to pay his coffee score.

After the Revolution, the Cafe de Procope lost its literary prestige and sank to the level of an ordinary restaurant. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Paul Verlaine, bohemian, poet, and leader of the symbolists, made the Cafe de Procope his haunt; and for a time it regained some of its lost popularity. The Restaurant Procope still survives at 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comedie.

History records that, with the opening of the Cafe de Procope, coffee became firmly established in Paris. In the reign of Louis XV there were 600 cafes in Paris. At the close of the eighteenth century there were more than 800. By 1843 the number had increased to more than 3000.

The Development of the Cafes

Coffee's vogue spread rapidly, and many cabarets and famous eating houses began to add it to their menus. Among these was the Tour d'Argent (silver tower), which had been opened on the Quai de la Tournelle in 1582, and speedily became Paris's most fashionable restaurant. It still is one of the chief attractions for the epicure, retaining the reputation for its cooking that drew a host of world leaders, from Napoleon to Edward VII, to its quaint interior.

Another tavern that took up coffee after Procope, was the Royal Drummer, which Jean Ramponaux established at the Courtille des Porcherons and which followed Magny's. His hostelry rightly belongs to the tavern class, although coffee had a prominent place on its menu. It became notorious for excesses and low-class vices during the reign of Louis XV, who was a frequent visitor. Low and high were to be found in Ramponaux's cellar, particularly when some especially wild revelry was in prospect. Marie Antoinette once declared she had her most enjoyable time at a wild farandole in the Royal Drummer. Ramponaux was taken to its heart by fashionable Paris; and his name was used as a trade mark on furniture, clothes, and foods.

The popularity of Ramponaux's Royal Drummer is attested by an inscription on an early print showing the interior of the cafe. Translated, it reads:

The pleasures of ease untroubled to taste, The leisure of home to enjoy without haste, Perhaps a few hours at Magny's to waste, Ah, that was the old-fashioned way! Today all our laborers, everyone knows, Go running away ere the working hours close, And why? They must be at Monsieur Ramponaux'! Behold, the new style of cafe!

When coffee houses began to crop up rapidly in Paris, the majority centered in the Palais Royal, "that garden spot of beauty, enclosed on three sides by three tiers of galleries," which Richelieu had erected in 1636, under the name of Palais Cardinal, in the reign of Louis XIII. It became known as the Palais Royal in 1643; and soon after the opening of the Cafe de Procope, it began to blossom out with many attractive coffee stalls, or rooms, sprinkled among the other shops that occupied the galleries overlooking the gardens.

Life In The Early Coffee Houses

Diderot tells in 1760, in his Rameau's Nephew, of the life and frequenters of one of the Palais Royal coffee houses, the Regency (Cafe de la Regence):

In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my practice to go toward five o'clock in the evening to take a turn in the Palais Royal.... If the weather is too cold or too wet I take shelter in the Regency coffee house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess as skillfully as in Paris and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest talk, for if a man be at once a wit and a great chess player, like Legal, he may also be a great chess player and a sad simpleton, like Joubert and Mayot.

The beginnings of the Regency coffee house are associated with the legend that Lefevre, a Parisian, began peddling coffee in the streets of Paris about the time Procope opened his cafe in 1689. The story has it that Lefevre later opened a cafe near the Palais Royal, selling it in 1718 to one Leclerc, who named it the Cafe de la Regence, in honor of the regent of Orleans, a name that still endures on a broad sign over its doors. The nobility had their rendezvous there after having paid their court to the regent.

To name the patrons of the Cafe de la Regence in its long career would be to outline a history of French literature for more than two centuries. There was Philidor the "greatest theoretician of the eighteenth century, better known for his chess than his music"; Robespierre, of the Revolution, who once played chess with a girl--disguised as a boy--for the life of her lover; Napoleon, who was then noted more for his chess than his empire-building propensities; and Gambetta, whose loud voice, generally raised in debate, disturbed one chess player so much that he protested because he could not follow his game. Voltaire, Alfred de Musset; Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, J.J. Rousseau, the Duke of Richelieu, Marshall Saxe, Buffon, Rivarol, Fontenelle, Franklin, and Henry Murger are names still associated with memories of this historic cafe: Marmontel and Philidor played there at their favorite game of chess. Diderot tells in his Memoirs that his wife gave him every day nine sous to get his coffee there. It was in this establishment that he worked on his Encyclopedia.

Chess is today still in favor at the Regence, although the players are not, as were the earlier patrons, obliged to pay by the hour for their tables with extra charges for candles placed by the chess-boards. The present Cafe de la Regence is in the rue St.-Honore, but retains in large measure its aspect of olden days.

Michelet, the historian, has given us a rhapsodic pen picture of the Parisian cafes under the regency:

Paris became one vast cafe. Conversation in France was at its zenith. There were less eloquence and rhetoric than in '89. With the exception of Rousseau, there was no orator to cite. The intangible flow of wit was as spontaneous as possible. For this sparkling outburst there is no doubt that honor should be ascribed in part to the auspicious revolution of the times, to the great event which created new customs, and even modified human temperament--the advent of coffee.

Its effect was immeasurable, not being weakened and neutralized as it is today by the brutalizing influence of tobacco. They took snuff, but did not smoke. The cabaret was dethroned, the ignoble cabaret, where, during the reign of Louis XIV, the youth of the city rioted amid wine-casks in the company of light women. The night was less thronged with chariots. Fewer lords found a resting place in the gutter. The elegant shop, where conversation flowed, a salon rather than a shop, changed and ennobled its customs. The reign of coffee is that of temperance. Coffee, the beverage of sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which, unlike spirituous liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of truth; coffee anti-erotic....

The three ages of coffee are those of modern thought; they mark the serious moments of the brilliant epoch of the soul.

Arabian coffee is the pioneer, even before 1700. The beautiful ladies that you see in the fashionable rooms of Bonnard, sipping from their tiny cups--they are enjoying the aroma of the finest coffee of Arabia. And of what are they chatting? Of the seraglio, of Chardin, of the Sultana's coiffure, of the Thousand and One Nights (1704). They compare the ennui of Versailles with the paradise of the Orient.

Very soon, in 1710-1720, commences the reign of Indian coffee, abundant, popular, comparatively cheap. Bourbon, our Indian island, where coffee was transplanted, suddenly realizes unheard-of happiness. This coffee of volcanic lands acts as an explosive on the Regency and the new spirit of things. This sudden cheer, this laughter of the old world, these overwhelming flashes of wit, of which the sparkling verse of Voltaire, the Persian Letters, give us a faint idea! Even the most brilliant books have not succeeded in catching on the wing this airy chatter, which comes, goes, flies elusively. This is that spirit of ethereal nature which, in the Thousand and One Nights, the enchanter confined in his bottle. But what phial would have withstood that pressure?

The lava of Bourbon, like the Arabian sand, was unequal to the demand. The Regent recognized this and had coffee transported to the fertile soil of our Antilles. The strong coffee of Santo Domingo, full, coarse, nourishing as well as stimulating, sustained the adult population of that period, the strong age of the encyclopedia. It was drunk by Buffon, Diderot, Rousseau, added its glow to glowing souls, its light to the penetrating vision of the prophets gathered in the cave of Procope, who saw at the bottom of the black beverage the future rays of '89. Danton, the terrible Danton, took several cups of coffee before mounting the tribune. 'The horse must have its oats,' he said.

The vogue of coffee popularized the use of sugar, which was then bought by the ounce at the apothecary's shop. Dufour says that in Paris they used to put so much sugar in the coffee that "it was nothing but a syrup of blackened water." The ladies were wont to have their carriages stop in front of the Paris cafes and to have their coffee served to them by the porter on saucers of silver.

Every year saw new cafes opened. When they became so numerous, and competition grew so keen, it was necessary to invent new attractions for customers. Then was born the cafe chantant, where songs, monologues, dances, little plays and farces (not always in the best taste), were provided to amuse the frequenters. Many of these cafes chantants were in the open air along the Champs-Elysees. In bad weather, Paris provided the pleasure-seeker with the Eldorado, Alcazar d'Hiver, Scala, Gaiete, Concert du XIXme Siecle, Folies Bobino, Rambuteau, Concert Europeen, and countless other meeting places where one could be served with a cup of coffee.

As in London, certain cafes were noted for particular followings, like the military, students, artists, merchants. The politicians had their favorite resorts. Says Salvandy:[86]

These were senates in miniature; here mighty political questions were discussed; here peace and war were decided upon; here generals were brought to the bar of justice ... distinguished orators were victoriously refuted, ministers heckled upon their ignorance, their incapacity, their perfidy, their corruption. The cafe is in reality a French institution; in them we find all these agitations and movements of men, the like of which is unknown in the English tavern. No government can go against the sentiment of the cafes. The Revolution took place because they were for the Revolution. Napoleon reigned because they were for glory. The Restoration was shattered, because they understood the Charter in a different manner.

In 1700 appeared the Portefeuille Galant, containing conversations of the cafes.

The Cafes in the French Revolution

The Palais Royal coffee houses were centers of activity in the days preceding and following the Revolution. A picture of them in the July days of 1789 has been left by Arthur Young, who was visiting Paris at that time:

The coffee houses present yet more singular and astounding spectacles; they are not only crowded within, but other expectant crowds are at the doors and windows, listening a gorge deployee to certain orators who from chairs or tables harangue each his little audience; the eagerness with which they are heard, and the thunder of applause they receive for every sentiment of more than common hardiness or violence against the government, cannot easily be imagined.

The Palais Royal teemed with excited Frenchmen on the fateful Sunday of July 12, 1789. The moment was a tense one, when, coming out of the Cafe Foy, Camille Desmoulins, a youthful journalist, mounted a table and began the harangue that precipitated the first overt act of the French Revolution. Blazing with a white hot frenzy, he so played upon the passions of the mob that at the conclusion of his speech he and his followers "marched away from the Cafe on their errand of Revolution." The Bastille fell two days later.

As if abashed by its reputation as the starting point of the mob spirit of the Revolution, Cafe Foy became in after years a sedate gathering-place of artists and literati. Up to its close it was distinguished among other famous Parisian cafes for its exclusiveness and strictly enforced rule of "no smoking."

Even from the first the Parisian cafes catered to all classes of society; and, unlike the London coffee houses, they retained this distinctive characteristic. A number of them early added other liquid and substantial refreshments, many becoming out-and-out restaurants.

Coffee-House Customs and Patrons

Coffee's effect on Parisians is thus described by a writer of the latter part of the eighteenth century:

I think I may safely assert that it is to the establishment of so many cafes in Paris that is due the urbanity and mildness discernible upon most faces. Before they existed, nearly everybody passed his time at the cabaret, where even business matters were discussed. Since their establishment, people assemble to hear what is going on, drinking and playing only in moderation, and the consequence is that they are more civil and polite, at least in appearance.

Montesquieu's satirical pen pictured in his Persian Letters the earliest cafes as follows:

In some of these houses they talk news; in others, they play draughts. There is one where they prepare the coffee in such a manner that it inspires the drinkers of it with wit; at least, of all those who frequent it, there is not one person in four who does not think he has more wit after he has entered that house. But what offends me in these wits is that they do not make themselves useful to their country.

Montesquieu encountered a geometrician outside a coffee house on the Pont Neuf, and accompanied him inside. He describes the incident in this manner:

I observe that our geometrician was received there with the utmost officiousness, and that the coffee house boys paid him much more respect than two musqueteers who were in a corner of the room. As for him, he seemed as if he thought himself in an agreeable place; for he unwrinkled his brows a little and laughed, as if he had not the least tincture of geometrician in him.... He was offended at every start of wit, as a tender eye is by too strong a light.... At last I saw an old man enter, pale and thin, whom I knew to be a coffee house politician before he sat down; he was not one of those who are never to be intimidated by disasters, but always prophesy of victories and success; he was one of those timorous wretches who are always boding ill.

Cafe Momus and Cafe Rotonde figure conspicuously in the record of French bohemianism. The Momus stood near the right bank of the River Seine in rue des Pretres St.-Germain, and was known as the home of the bohemians. The Rotonde stood on the left bank at the corner of the rue de l'Ecole de Medecine and the rue Hautefeuille.

Alexandre Schanne has given us a glimpse of bohemian life in the early cafes. He lays his scene in the Cafe Rotonde, and tells how a number of poor students were wont to make one cup of coffee last the coterie a full evening by using it to flavor and to color the one glass of water shared in common. He says:

Every evening, the first comer at the waiter's inquiry, "What will you take, sir?" never failed to reply, "Nothing just at present, I am waiting for a friend." The friend arrived, to be assailed by the brutal question, "Have you any money?" He would make a despairing gesture in the negative, and then add, loud enough to be heard by the dame du comptoir, "By Jove, no; only fancy, I left my purse on my console-table, with gilt feet, in the purest Louis XV style. Ah! what a thing it is to be forgetful." He would sit down, and the waiter would wipe the table as if he had something to do. A third would come, who was sometimes able to reply, "Yes. I have ten sous." "Good!" we would reply; "order a cup of coffee, a glass and a water bottle; pay and give two sous to the waiter to secure his silence." This would be done. Others would come and take their places beside us, repeating to the waiter the same chorus, "We are with this gentleman." Frequently we would be eight or nine sitting at the same table, and only one customer. Whilst smoking and reading the papers we would, however, pass the glass and bottle. When the water began to run short, as on a ship in distress, one of us would have the impudence to call out, "Waiter, some water!" The master of the establishment, who understood our situation, had no doubt given orders for us to be left alone, and made his fortune without our help. He was a good fellow and an intelligent one, having subscribed to all the scientific journals of Europe, which brought him the custom of foreign students.

Another cafe perpetuating the best traditions of the Latin Quarter was the Vachette, which survived until the death of Jean Moreas in 1911. The Vachette is usually cited by antiquarians as a model of circumspection as compared with the scores of cafes in the Quarter that were given up to debaucheries. One writer puts it: "The Vachette traditions leaned more to scholarship than sensuality."

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Parisian cafe was truly a coffee house; but as many of the patrons began to while away most of their waking hours in them, the proprietors added other beverages and food to hold their patronage. Consequently, we find listed among the cafes of Paris some houses that are more accurately described as restaurants, although they may have started their careers as coffee houses.

Historic Parisian Cafes

Some of the historic cafes are still thriving in their original locations, although the majority have now passed into oblivion. Glimpses of the more famous houses are to be found in the novels, poetry, and essays written by the French literati who patronized them. These first-hand accounts give insights that are sometimes stirring, often amusing, and frequently revolting--such as the assassination of St.-Fargean in Fevrier's low-vaulted cellar cafe in the Palais Royal.

There is Magny's, originally the haunt of such literary men as Gautier, Taine, Saint-Victor, Turguenieff, de Goncourt, Soulie, Renan, Edmond. In recent years the old Magny's was razed, and on its site was built the modern restaurant of the same name, but in a style that has no resemblance to its predecessor. Even the name of the street has been changed, from rue Contrescarpe to the rue Mazet.

Meot's, the Very, Beauvilliers', Masse's, the Cafe Chartres, the Troi Freres Provencaux, and the du Grand Commun, all situated in the Palais Royal, are cafes that figured conspicuously in the French Revolution, and are closely identified with the French stage and literature. Meot's and Masse's were the trysting places of the Royalists in the days preceding the outbreak, but welcomed the Revolutionists after they came in power. The Chartres was notorious as the gathering place of young aristocrats who escaped the guillotine, and, thus made bold, often called their like from adjoining cafes to partake in some of their plans for restoration of the empire. The Trois Freres Provencaux, well known for its excellent and costly dinners, is mentioned by Balzac, Lord Lytton, and Alfred de Musset in some of their novels. The Cafe du Grand Commun appears in Rousseau's Confessions in connection with the play Devin du Village.

Among the most famous of the cafes on the Rue St. Honore were Venua's, patronized by Robespierre and his companions of the Revolution, and perhaps the scene of the inhuman murder of Berthier and its revolting aftermath; the Mapinot, which has gone down in cafe history as the scene of the banquet to Archibald Alison, the 22-year-old historian; and Voisin's cafe, around which still cling traditions of such literary lights as Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Jules de Goncourt.

Perhaps the boulevard des Italiens had, and still has, more fashionable cafes than any other section of the French capital. The Tortoni, opened in the early days of the Empire by Velloni, an Italian lemonade vender, was the most popular of the boulevard cafes, and was generally thronged with fashionables from all parts of Europe. Here Louis Blanc, historian of the Revolution, spent many hours in the early days of his fame. Talleyrand; Rossini, the musician; Alfred Stevens and Edouard Manet, artists, are some of the names still linked with the traditions of the Tortoni. Farther down the boulevard were the Cafe Riche, Maison Doree, Cafe Anglais, and the Cafe de Paris. The Riche and the Doree, standing side by side, were both high-priced and noted for their revelries. The Anglais, which came into existence after the snuffing out of the Empire, was also distinguished for its high prices, but in return gave an excellent dinner and fine wines. It is told that even during the siege of Paris the Anglais offered its patrons "such luxuries as ass, mule, peas, fried potatoes, and champagne."

Probably the Cafe de Paris, which came into existence in 1822, in the former home of the Russian Prince Demidoff, was the most richly equipped and elegantly conducted of any cafe in Paris in the nineteenth century. Alfred de Musset, a frequenter, said, "you could not open its doors for less than 15 francs."

The Cafe Litteraire, opened on boulevard Bonne Nouvelle late in the nineteenth century, made a direct appeal to literary men for patronage, printing this footnote on its menu: "Every customer spending a franc in this establishment is entitled to one volume of any work to be selected from our vast collection."

The names of Parisian cafes once more or less famous are legion. Some of them are:

The Cafe Laurent, which Rousseau was forced to leave after writing an especially bitter satire; the English cafe in which eccentric Lord Wharton made merry with the Whig habitues; the Dutch cafe, the haunt of Jacobites; Terre's, in the rue Neuve des Petits Champs, which Thackeray described in The Ballad of Bouillabaisse; Maire's, in the boulevard St.-Denis, which dates back beyond 1850; the Cafe Madrid, in the boulevard Montmartre, of which Carjat, the Spanish lyric poet, was an attraction; the Cafe de la Paix, in the boulevard des Capucines, the resort of Second Empire Imperialists and their spies; the Cafe Durand, in the place de la Madeleine, which started on a plane with the high-priced Riche, and ended its career early in the twentieth century; the Rocher de Cancale, memorable for its feasts and high-living patrons from all over Europe; the Cafe Guerbois, near the rue de St. Petersburg, where Manet, the impressionist, after many vicissitudes, won fame for his paintings and held court for many years; the Chat Noir, on the rue Victor Masse at Montmartre, a blend of cafe and concert hall, which has since been imitated widely, both in name and feature.

XII. INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO NORTH AMERICA

Captain John Smith, founder of the Colony of Virginia, is the first to bring to North America a knowledge of coffee in 1607--The coffee grinder on the Mayflower--Coffee drinking in 1668--William Penn's coffee purchase in 1683--Coffee in colonial New England--The psychology of the Boston "tea party," and why the United States became a nation of coffee drinkers instead of tea drinkers, like England--The first coffee license to Dorothy Jones in 1670--The first coffee house in New England--Notable coffee houses of old Boston--A skyscraper coffee house

Undoubtedly the first to bring a knowledge of coffee to North America was Captain John Smith, who founded the Colony of Virginia at Jamestown in 1607. Captain Smith became familiar with coffee in his travels in Turkey.

Although the Dutch also had early knowledge of coffee, it does not appear that the Dutch West India Company brought any of it to the first permanent settlement on Manhattan Island (1624). Nor is there any record of coffee in the cargo of the Mayflower (1620), although it included a wooden mortar and pestle, later used to make "coffee powder."

In the period when New York was New Amsterdam, and under Dutch occupancy (1624-64), it is possible that coffee may have been imported from Holland, where it was being sold on the Amsterdam market as early as 1640, and where regular supplies of the green bean were being received from Mocha in 1663; but positive proof is lacking. The Dutch appear to have brought tea across the Atlantic from Holland before coffee. The English may have introduced the coffee drink into the New York colony between 1664 and 1673. The earliest reference to coffee in America is 1668[87], at which time a beverage made from the roasted beans, and flavored with sugar or honey, and cinnamon, was being drunk in New York.

Coffee first appears in the official records of the New England colony in 1670. In 1683, the year following William Penn's settlement on the Delaware, we find him buying supplies of coffee in the New York market and paying for them at the rate of eighteen shillings and nine pence per pound.[88]

Coffee houses patterned after the English and Continental prototypes were soon established in all the colonies. Those of New York and Philadelphia are described in separate chapters. The Boston houses are described at the end of this chapter.

Norfolk, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans also had them. Conrad Leonhard's coffee house at 320 Market Street. St. Louis, was famous for its coffee and coffee cake, from 1844 to 1905, when it became a bakery and lunch room, removing in 1919 to Eighth and Pine Streets.

In the pioneer days of the great west, coffee and tea were hard to get; and, instead of them, teas were often made from garden herbs, spicewood, sassafras-roots, and other shrubs, taken from the thickets[89]. In 1839, in the city of Chicago, one of the minor taverns was known as the Lake Street coffee house. It was situated at the corner of Lake and Wells Streets. A number of hotels, which in the English sense might more appropriately be called inns, met a demand for modest accommodation[90]. Two coffee houses were listed in the Chicago directories for 1843 and 1845, the Washington coffee house, 83 Lake Street; and the Exchange coffee house, Clarke Street between La Salle and South Water Streets.

The old-time coffee houses of New Orleans were situated within the original area of the city, the section bounded by the river, Canal Street, Esplanade Avenue and Rampart Street. In the early days most of the big business of the city was transacted in the coffee houses. The bruleau, coffee with orange juice, orange peel, and sugar, with cognac burned and mixed in it, originated in the New Orleans coffee house, and led to its gradual evolution into the saloon.

How the United States Became a Nation of Coffee Drinkers

Coffee, tea, and chocolate were introduced into North America almost simultaneously in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the first half of the eighteenth century, tea had made such progress in England, thanks to the propaganda of the British East India Company, that, being moved to extend its use in the colonies, the directors turned their eyes first in the direction of North America. Here, however, King George spoiled their well-laid plans by his unfortunate stamp act of 1765, which caused the colonists to raise the cry of "no taxation without representation."

Although the act was repealed in 1766, the right to tax was asserted, and in 1767 was again used, duties being laid on paints, oils, lead, glass, and tea. Once more the colonists resisted; and, by refusing to import any goods of English make, so distressed the English manufacturers that Parliament repealed every tax save that on tea. Despite the growing fondness for the beverage in America, the colonists preferred to get their tea elsewhere to sacrificing their principles and buying it from England. A brisk trade in smuggling tea from Holland was started.

In a panic at the loss of the most promising of its colonial markets, the British East India Company appealed to Parliament for aid, and was permitted to export tea, a privilege it had never before enjoyed. Cargoes were sent on consignment to selected commissioners in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The story of the subsequent happenings properly belongs in a book on tea. It is sufficient here to refer to the climax of the agitation against the fateful tea tax, because it is undoubtedly responsible for our becoming a nation of coffee drinkers instead of one of tea drinkers, like England.

The Boston "tea party" of 1773, when citizens of Boston, disguised as Indians, boarded the English ships lying in Boston harbor and threw their tea cargoes into the bay, cast the die for coffee; for there and then originated a subtle prejudice against "the cup that cheers", which one hundred and fifty years have failed entirely to overcome. Meanwhile, the change wrought in our social customs by this act, and those of like nature following it, in the New York, Pennsylvania, and Charleston colonies, caused coffee to be crowned "king of the American breakfast table", and the sovereign drink of the American people.

Coffee in Colonial New England

The history of coffee in colonial New England is so closely interwoven with the story of the inns and taverns that it is difficult to distinguish the genuine coffee house, as it was known in England, from the public house where lodgings and liquors were to be had. The coffee drink had strong competition from the heady wines, the liquors, and imported teas, and consequently it did not attain the vogue among the colonial New Englanders that it did among Londoners of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Although New England had its coffee houses, these were actually taverns where coffee was only one of the beverages served to patrons. "They were", says Robinson, "generally meeting places of those who were conservative in their views regarding church and state, being friends of the ruling administration. Such persons were terms 'Courtiers' by their adversaries, the Dissenters and Republicans."

Most of the coffee houses were established in Boston, the metropolis of the Massachusetts Colony, and the social center of New England. While Plymouth, Salem, Chelsea, and Providence had taverns that served coffee, they did not achieve the name and fame of some of the more celebrated coffee houses in Boston.

It is not definitely known when the first coffee was brought in; but it is reasonable to suppose that it came as part of the household supplies of some settler (probably between 1660 and 1670), who had become acquainted with it before leaving England. Or it may have been introduced by some British officer, who in London had made the rounds of the more celebrated coffee houses of the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The First Coffee License

According to early town records of Boston, Dorothy Jones was the first to be licensed to sell "coffee and cuchaletto," the latter being the seventeenth-century spelling for chocolate or cocoa. This license is dated 1670, and is said to be the first written reference to coffee in the Massachusetts Colony. It is not stated whether Dorothy Jones was a vender of the coffee drink or of "coffee powder," as ground coffee was known in the early days.

There is some question as to whether Dorothy Jones was the first to sell coffee as a beverage in Boston. Londoners had known and drunk coffee for eighteen years before Dorothy Jones got her coffee license. British government officials were frequently taking ship from London to the Massachusetts Colony, and it is likely that they brought tidings and samples of the coffee the English gentry had lately taken up. No doubt they also told about the new-style coffee houses that were becoming popular in all parts of London. And it may be assumed that their tales caused the landlords of the inns and taverns of colonial Boston to add coffee to their lists of beverages.

New England's First Coffee House

The name coffee house did not come into use in New England until late in the seventeenth century. Early colonial records do not make it clear whether the London coffee house or the Gutteridge coffee house was the first to be opened in Boston with that distinctive title. In all likelihood the London is entitled to the honor, for Samuel Gardner Drake in his History and Antiquities of the City of Boston, published in 1854, says that "Benj. Harris sold books there in 1689." Drake seems to be the only historian of early Boston to mention the London coffee house.

Granting that the London coffee house was the first in Boston, then the Gutteridge coffee house was the second. The latter stood on the north side of State Street, between Exchange and Washington Streets, and was named after Robert Gutteridge, who took out an innkeeper's license in 1691. Twenty-seven years later, his widow, Mary Gutteridge, petitioned the town for a renewal of her late husband's permit to keep a public coffee house.

The British coffee house, which became the American coffee house when the crown officers and all things British became obnoxious to the colonists, also began its career about the time Gutteridge took out his license. It stood on the site that is now 66 State Street, and became one of the most widely known coffee houses in colonial New England.

Of course, there were several inns and taverns in existence in Boston long before coffee and coffee houses came to the New England metropolis. Some of these taverns took up coffee when it became fashionable in the colony, and served it to those patrons who did not care for the stronger drinks.

The earliest known inn was set up by Samuel Cole in Washington Street, midway between Faneuil Hall and State Street. Cole was licensed as a "comfit maker" in 1634, four years after the founding of Boston; and two years later, his inn was the temporary abiding place of the Indian chief Miantonomoh and his red warriors, who came to visit Governor Vane. In the following year, the Earl of Marlborough found that Cole's inn was so "exceedingly well governed," and afforded so desirable privacy, that he refused the hospitality of Governor Winthrop at the governor's mansion.

Another popular inn of the day was the Red Lyon, which was opened in 1637 by Nicholas Upshall, the Quaker, who later was hanged for trying to bribe a jailer to pass some food into the jail to two Quakeresses who were starving within.

Ship tavern, erected in 1650, at the corner of North and Clark Streets, then on the waterfront, was a haunt of British government officials. The father of Governor Hutchinson was the first landlord, to be succeeded in 1663 by John Vyal. Here lived the four commissioners who were sent to these shores by King Charles II to settle the disputes then beginning between the colonies and England.

Another lodging and eating place for the gentlemen of quality in the first days of Boston was the Blue Anchor, in Cornhill, which was conducted in 1664 by Robert Turner. Here gathered members of the government, visiting officials, jurists, and the clergy, summoned into synod by the Massachusetts General Court. It is assumed that the clergy confined their drinking to coffee and other moderate beverages, leaving the wines and liquors to their confreres.

Some Notable Boston Coffee Houses

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century quite a number of taverns and inns sprang up. Among the most notable that have obtained recognition in Boston's historical records were the King's Head, at the corner of Fleet and North Streets; the Indian Queen, on a passageway leading from Washington Street to Hawley Street; the Sun, in Faneuil Hall Square, and the Green Dragon, which became one of the most celebrated coffee-house taverns.

The King's Head, opened in 1691, early became a rendezvous of crown officers and the citizens in the higher strata of colonial society.

The Indian Queen also became a favorite resort of the crown officers from Province House. Started by Nathaniel Bishop about 1673, it stood for more than 145 years as the Indian Queen, and then was replaced by the Washington coffee house, which became noted throughout New England as the starting place for the Roxbury "hourlies," the stage coaches that ran every hour from Boston to nearby Roxbury.

The Sun tavern lived a longer life than any other Boston inn. Started in 1690 in Faneuil Hall Square, it was still standing in 1902, according to Henry R. Blaney; but has since been razed to make way for a modern skyscraper.

New England's Most Famous Coffee House

The Green Dragon, the last of the inns that were popular at the close of the seventeenth century, was the most celebrated of Boston's coffee-house taverns. It stood on Union Street, in the heart of the town's business center, for 135 years, from 1697 to 1832, and figured in practically all the important local and national events during its long career. Red-coated British soldiers, colonial governors, bewigged crown officers, earls and dukes, citizens of high estate, plotting revolutionists of lesser degree, conspirators in the Boston Tea Party, patriots and generals of the Revolution--all these were wont to gather at the Green Dragon to discuss their various interests over their cups of coffee, and stronger drinks. In the words of Daniel Webster, this famous coffee-house tavern was the "headquarters of the Revolution." It was here that Warren, John Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere met as a "ways and means committee" to secure freedom for the American colonies. Here, too, came members of the Grand Lodge of Masons to hold their meetings under the guidance of Warren, who was the first grand master of the first Masonic lodge in Boston. The site of the old tavern, now occupied by a business block, is still the property of the St. Andrew's Lodge of Free Masons. The old tavern was a two-storied brick structure with a sharply pitched roof. Over its entrance hung a sign bearing the figure of a green dragon.

Patrons of the Green Dragon and the British coffee house were decidedly opposed in their views on the questions of the day. While the Green Dragon was the gathering place of the patriotic colonials, the British was the rendezvous of the loyalists, and frequent were the encounters between the patrons of these two celebrated taverns. It was in the British coffee house that James Otis was so badly pummeled, after being lured there by political enemies, that he never regained his former brilliancy as an orator.

It was there, in 1750, that some British red coats staged the first theatrical entertainment given in Boston, playing Otway's Orphan. There, the first organization of citizens to take the name of a club formed the Merchants' Club in 1751. The membership included officers of the king, colonial governors and lesser officials, military and naval leaders, and members of the bar, with a sprinkling of high-ranking citizens who were staunch friends of the crown. However, the British became so generally disliked that as soon as the king's troops evacuated Boston in the Revolution, the name of the coffee house was changed to the American.

The Bunch of Grapes, that Francis Holmes presided over as early as 1712, was another hot-bed of politicians. Like the Green Dragon over the way, its patrons included unconditional freedom seekers, many coming from the British coffee house when things became too hot for them in that Tory atmosphere. The Bunch of Grapes became the center of a stirring celebration in 1776, when a delegate from Philadelphia read the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the inn to the crowd assembled in the street below. So enthusiastic did the Bostonians become that, in the excitement that followed, the inn was nearly destroyed when one enthusiast built a bonfire too close to its walls. Another anecdote told of the Bunch of Grapes concerns Sir William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts from 1692-94, who was noted for his irascibility. He had his favorite chair and window in the inn, and in the accounts of the period it is written that on any fine afternoon his glowering countenance could be seen at the window by the passers-by on State Street.

After the beginning of the eighteenth century the title of coffee house was applied to a number of hostelries opened in Boston. One of these was the Crown, which was opened in the "first house on Long Wharf" in 1711 by Jonathan Belcher, who later became governor of Massachusetts, and still later of New Jersey. The first landlord of the Crown was Thomas Selby, who by trade was a periwig maker, but probably found the selling of strong drink and coffee more profitable. Selby's coffee house was also used as an auction room. The Crown stood until 1780, when it was destroyed in a fire that swept the Long Wharf. On its site now stands the Fidelity Trust Company at 148 State Street.

Another early Boston coffee house on State Street was the Royal Exchange. How long it had been standing before it was first mentioned in colonial records in 1711 is unknown. It occupied an ancient two-story building, and was kept in 1711 by Benjamin Johns. This coffee house became the starting place for stage coaches running between Boston and New York, the first one leaving September 7, 1772. In the Columbian Centinel of January 1, 1800, appeared an advertisement in which it was said: "New York and Providence Mail Stage leaves Major Hatches' Royal Exchange Coffee House in State Street every morning at 8 o'clock."

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the North-End coffee house was celebrated as the highest-class coffee house in Boston. It occupied the three-storied brick mansion which had been built about 1740 by Edward Hutchinson, brother of the noted governor. It stood on the west side of North Street, between Sun Court and Fleet Street, and was one of the most pretentious of its kind. An eighteenth century writer, in describing this coffee-house mansion, made much of the fact that it had forty-five windows and was valued at $4,500, a large sum for those days. During the Revolution, Captain David Porter, father of Admiral David D. Porter, was the landlord, and under him it became celebrated throughout the city as a high-grade eating place. The advertisements of the North-End coffee house featured its "dinners and suppers--small and retired rooms for small company--oyster suppers in the nicest manner."

A "Skyscraper" Coffee House

The Boston coffee-house period reached its height in 1808, when the doors of the Exchange coffee house were thrown open after three years of building. This structure, situated on Congress Street near State Street, was the skyscraper of its day, and probably was the most ambitious coffee-house project the world has known. Built of stone, marble, and brick, it stood seven stories high, and cost a half-million dollars. Charles Bulfinch, America's most noted architect of that period, was the designer.

Like Lloyd's coffee house in London, the Exchange was the center of marine intelligence, and its public rooms were thronged all day and evening with mariners, naval officers, ship and insurance brokers, who had come to talk shop or to consult the records of ship arrivals and departures, manifests, charters, and other marine papers. The first floor of the Exchange was devoted to trading. On the next floor was the large dining room, where many sumptuous banquets were given, notably the one to President Monroe in July, 1817, which was attended by former President John Adams, and by many generals, commodores, governors, and judges. The other floors were given over to living and sleeping rooms, of which there were more than 200. The Exchange coffee house was destroyed by fire in 1818; and on its site was erected another, bearing the same name, but having slight resemblance to its predecessor.

XIII. HISTORY OF COFFEE IN OLD NEW YORK

The burghers of New Amsterdam begin to substitute coffee for "must," or beer, at breakfast in 1668--William Penn makes his first purchase of coffee in the green bean from New York merchants in 1683--The King's Arms, the first coffee house--The historic Merchants, sometimes called the "Birthplace of our Union"--The coffee house as a civic forum--The Exchange, Whitehall, Burns, Tontine, and other celebrated coffee houses--The Vauxhall and Ranelagh pleasure gardens

The Dutch founders of New York seem to have introduced tea into New Amsterdam before they brought in coffee. This was somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century. We find it recorded that about 1668 the burghers succumbed to coffee[91]. Coffee made its way slowly, first in the homes, where it replaced the "must", or beer, at breakfast. Chocolate came about the same time, but was more of a luxury than tea or coffee.

After the surrender of New York to the British in 1674, English manners and customs were rapidly introduced. First tea, and later coffee, were favorite beverages in the homes. By 1683 New York had become so central a market for the green bean, that William Penn, as soon as he found himself comfortably settled in the Pennsylvania Colony, sent over to New York for his coffee supplies[92]. It was not long before a social need arose that only the London style of coffee house could fill.

The coffee houses of early New York, like their prototypes in London, Paris, and other old world capitals, were the centers of the business, political and, to some extent, of the social life of the city. But they never became the forcing-beds of literature that the French and English houses were, principally because the colonists had no professional writers of note.

There is one outstanding feature of the early American coffee houses, particularly of those opened in New York, that is not distinctive of the European houses. The colonists sometimes held court trials in the long, or assembly, room of the early coffee houses; and often held their general assembly and council meetings there.

The Coffee House as a Civic Forum

The early coffee house was an important factor in New York life. What the perpetuation of this public gathering place meant to the citizens is shown by a complaint (evidently designed to revive the declining fortunes of the historic Merchants coffee house) in the New York Journal of October 19, 1775, which, in part, said:

To the Inhabitants of New York:

It gives me concern, in this time of public difficulty and danger, to find we have in this city no place of daily general meeting, where we might hear and communicate intelligence from every quarter and freely confer with one another on every matter that concerns us. Such a place of general meeting is of very great advantage in many respects, especially at such a time as this, besides the satisfaction it affords and the sociable disposition it has a tendency to keep up among us, which was never more wanted than at this time. To answer all these and many other good and useful purposes, coffee houses have been universally deemed the most convenient places of resort, because, at a small expense of time or money, persons wanted may be found and spoke with, appointments may be made, current news heard, and whatever it most concerns us to know. In all cities, therefore, and large towns that I have seen in the British dominions, sufficient encouragement has been given to support one or more coffee houses in a genteel manner. How comes it then that New York, the most central, and one of the largest and most prosperous cities in British America, cannot support one coffee house? It is a scandal to the city and its inhabitants to be destitute of such a convenience for want of due encouragement. A coffee house, indeed, there is, a very good and comfortable one, extremely well tended and accommodated, but it is frequented but by an inconsiderable number of people; and I have observed with surprise, that but a small part of those who do frequent it, contribute anything at all to the expense of it, but come in and go out without calling for or paying anything to the house. In all the coffee houses in London, it is customary for every one that comes in to call for at least a dish of coffee, or leave the value of one, which is but reasonable, because when the keepers of these houses have been at the expense of setting them up and providing all necessaries for the accommodation of company, every one that comes to receive the benefit of these conveniences ought to contribute something towards the expense of them.

A FRIEND TO THE CITY.

New York's First Coffee House

Some chroniclers of New York's early days are confident that the first coffee house in America was opened in New York; but the earliest authenticated record they have presented is that on November 1, 1696, John Hutchins bought a lot on Broadway, between Trinity churchyard and what is now Cedar Street, and there built a house, naming it the King's Arms. Against this record, Boston can present the statement in Samuel Gardner Drake's History and Antiquities of the City of Boston that Benj. Harris sold books at the "London Coffee House" in 1689.

The King's Arms was built of wood, and had a front of yellow brick, said to have been brought from Holland. The building was two stories high, and on the roof was an "observatory," arranged with seats, and commanding a fine view of the bay, the river, and the city. Here the coffee-house visitors frequently sat in the afternoons. It is not shown in the illustration.

The sides of the main room on the lower floor were lined with booths, which, for the sake of greater privacy, were screened with green curtains. There a patron could sip his coffee, or a more stimulating drink, and look over his mail in the same exclusiveness affected by the Londoner of the time.

The rooms on the second floor were used for special meetings of merchants, colonial magistrates and overseers, or similar public and private business.

The meeting room, as above described, seems to have been one of the chief features distinguishing a coffee house from a tavern. Although both types of houses had rooms for guests, and served meals, the coffee house was used for business purposes by permanent customers, while the tavern was patronized more by transients. Men met at the coffee house daily to carry on business, and went to the tavern for convivial purposes or lodgings. Before the front door hung the sign of "the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown."

For many years the King's Arms was the only coffee house in the city; or at least no other seems of sufficient importance to have been mentioned in colonial records. For this reason it was more frequently designated as "the" coffee house than the King's Arms. Contemporary records of the arrest of John Hutchins of the King's Arms, and of Roger Baker, for speaking disrespectfully of King George, mention the King's Head, of which Baker was proprietor. But it is generally believed that this public house was a tavern and not rightfully to be considered as a coffee house. The White Lion, mentioned about 1700, was also a tavern, or inn.

The New Coffee House

Under date of September 22, 1709, the Journal of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York refers to a conference held in the "New Coffee House." About this date the business section of the city had begun to drift eastward from Broadway to the waterfront; and from this fact it is assumed that the name "New Coffee House" indicates that the King's Arms had been removed from its original location near Cedar Street, or that it may have lost favor and have been superseded in popularity by a newer coffee house. The Journal does not give the location of the "New" coffee house. Whatever the case may be, the name of the King's Arms does not again appear in the records until 1763, and then it had more the character of a tavern, or roadhouse.

The public records from 1709 up to 1729 are silent in regard to coffee houses in New York. In 1725 the pioneer newspaper in the city, the New York Gazette, came into existence; and four years later, 1729, there appeared in it an advertisement stating that "a competent bookkeeper may be heard of" at the "Coffee House." In 1730 another advertisement in the same journal tells of a sale of land by public vendue (auction) to be held at the Exchange coffee house.

The Exchange Coffee House

By reason of its name, the Exchange Coffee House is thought to have been located at the foot of Broad Street, abutting the sea-wall and near the Long Bridge of that day. At that time this section was the business center of the city, and here was a trading exchange.

That the Exchange coffee house was the only one of its kind in New York in 1732 is inferred from the announcement in that year of a meeting of the conference committee of the Council and Assembly "at the Coffee House." In seeming confirmation of this conclusion, is the advertisement in 1733 in the New York Gazette requesting the return of "lost sleeve buttons to Mr. Todd, next door to the Coffee House." The records of the day show that a Robert Todd kept the famous Black Horse tavern which was located in this part of the city.

Again we hear of the Exchange coffee house in 1737, and apparently in the same location, where it is mentioned in an account of the "Negro plot" as being next door to the Fighting Cocks tavern by the Long Bridge, at the foot of Broad Street. Also in this same year it is named as the place of public vendue of land situated on Broadway.

By this time the Exchange coffee house had virtually become the city's official auction room, as well as the place to buy and to drink coffee. Commodities of many kinds were also bought and sold there, both within the house and on the sidewalk before it.

The Merchants Coffee House

In the year 1750, the Exchange coffee house had begun to lose its long-held prestige, and its name was changed to the Gentlemen's Exchange coffee house and tavern. A year later it had migrated to Broadway under the name of the Gentlemens' coffee house and tavern. In 1753 it was moved again, to Hunter's Quay, which was situated on what is now Front Street, somewhere between the present Old Slip and Wall Street. The famous old coffee house seems to have gone out of existence about this time, its passing hastened, no doubt, by the newer enterprise, the Merchants coffee house, which was to become the most celebrated in New York, and, according to some writers, the most historic in America.

It is not certain just when the Merchants coffee house was first opened. As near as can be determined, Daniel Bloom, a mariner, in 1737 bought the Jamaica Pilot Boat tavern from John Dunks and named it the Merchants coffee house. The building was situated on the northwest corner of the present Wall Street and Water (then Queen) Street; and Bloom was its landlord until his death, soon after the year 1750. He was succeeded by Captain James Ackland, who shortly sold it to Luke Roome. The latter disposed of the building in 1758 to Dr. Charles Arding. The doctor leased it to Mrs. Mary Ferrari, who continued as its proprietor until she moved, in 1772, to the newer building diagonally across the street, built by William Brownejohn, on the southeast corner of Wall and Water Streets. Mrs. Ferrari took with her the patronage and the name of the Merchants coffee house, and the old building was not used again as a coffee house.

The building housing the original Merchants coffee house was a two-story structure, with a balcony on the roof, which was typical of the middle eighteenth century architecture in New York. On the first floor were the coffee bar and booths described in connection with the King's Arms coffee house. The second floor had the typical long room for public assembly.

During Bloom's proprietorship the Merchants coffee house had a long, hard struggle to win the patronage away from the Exchange coffee house, which was flourishing at that time. But, being located near the Meal Market, where the merchants were wont to gather for trading purposes, it gradually became the meeting place of the city, at the expense of the Exchange coffee house, farther down the waterfront.

Widow Ferrari presided over the original Merchants coffee house for fourteen years, until she moved across the street. She was a keen business woman. Just before she was ready to open the new coffee house she announced to her old patrons that she would give a house-warming, at which arrack, punch, wine, cold ham, tongue, and other delicacies of the day would be served. The event was duly noted in the newspapers, one stating that "the agreeable situation and the elegance of the new house had occasioned a great resort of company to it."

Mrs. Ferrari continued in charge until May 1, 1776, when Cornelius Bradford became proprietor and sought to build up the patronage, that had dwindled somewhat during the stirring days immediately preceding the Revolution. In his announcement of the change of ownership, he said, "Interesting intelligence will be carefully collected and the greatest attention will be given to the arrival of vessels, when trade and navigation shall resume their former channels." He referred to the complete embargo of trade to Europe which the colonists were enduring. When the American troops withdrew from the city during the Revolution, Bradford went also, to Rhinebeck on the Hudson.

During the British occupation, the Merchants coffee house was a place of great activity. As before, it was the center of trading, and under the British regime it became also the place where the prize ships were sold. The Chamber of Commerce resumed its sessions in the upper long room in 1779, having been suspended since 1775. The Chamber paid fifty pounds rent per annum for the use of the room to Mrs. Smith, the landlady at the time.

In 1781 John Stachan, then proprietor of the Queen's Head tavern, became landlord of the Merchants coffee house, and he promised in a public announcement "to pay attention not only as a Coffee House, but as a tavern, in the truest; and to distinguish the same as the City Tavern and Coffee House, with constant and best attendance. Breakfast from seven to eleven; soups and relishes from eleven to half-past one. Tea, coffee, etc., in the afternoon, as in England." But when he began charging sixpence for receiving and dispatching letters by man-o'-war to England, he brought a storm about his ears, and was forced to give up the practise. He continued in charge until peace came, and Cornelius Bradford came with it to resume proprietorship of the coffee house.

Bradford changed the name to the New York coffee house, but the public continued to call it by its original name, and the landlord soon gave in. He kept a marine list, giving the names of vessels arriving and departing, recording their ports of sailing. He also opened a register of returning citizens, "where any gentleman now resident in the city," his advertisement stated, "may insert their names and place of residence." This seems to have been the first attempt at a city directory. By his energy Bradford soon made the Merchants coffee house again the business center of the city. When he died, in 1786, he was mourned as one of the leading citizens. His funeral was held at the coffee house over which he had presided so well.

The Merchants coffee house continued to be the principal public gathering place until it was destroyed by fire in 1804. During its existence it had figured prominently in many of the local and national historic events, too numerous to record here in detail.

Some of the famous events were: The reading of the order to the citizens, in 1765, warning them to stop rioting against the Stamp Act; the debates on the subject of not accepting consignments of goods from Great Britain; the demonstration by the Sons of Liberty, sometimes called the "Liberty Boys," made before Captain Lockyer of the tea ship Nancy which had been turned away from Boston and sought to land its cargo in New York in 1774; the general meeting of citizens on May 19, 1774, to discuss a means of communicating with the Massachusetts colony to obtain co-ordinated effort in resisting England's oppression, out of which came the letter suggesting a congress of deputies from the colonies and calling for a "virtuous and spirited Union;" the mass meeting of citizens in the days immediately following the battles at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts; and the forming of the Committee of One Hundred to administer the public business, making the Merchants coffee house virtually the seat of government.

When the American Army held the city in 1776, the coffee house became the resort of army and navy officers. Its culminating glory came on April 23, 1789, when Washington, the recently elected first president of the United States, was officially greeted at the coffee house by the governor of the State, the mayor of the city, and the lesser municipal officers.

As a meeting place for societies and lodges the Merchants coffee house was long distinguished. In addition to the purely commercial organizations that gathered in its long room, these bodies regularly met there in their early days: The Society of Arts, Agriculture and Economy; Knights of Corsica; New York Committee of Correspondence; New York Marine Society; Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York; Lodge 169, Free and Accepted Masons; Whig Society; Society of the New York Hospital; St. Andrew's Society; Society of the Cincinnati; Society of the Sons of St. Patrick; Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves; Society for the Relief of Distressed Debtors; Black Friars Society; Independent Rangers; and Federal Republicans.

Here also came the men who, in 1784, formed the Bank of New York, the first financial institution in the city; and here was held, in 1790, the first public sale of stocks by sworn brokers. Here, too, was held the organization meeting of subscribers to the Tontine coffee house, which in a few years was to prove a worthy rival.

Some Lesser Known Coffee Houses

Before taking up the story of the famous Tontine coffee house it should be noted that the Merchants coffee house had some prior measure of competition. For four years the Exchange coffee room sought to cater to the wants of the merchants around the foot of Broad Street. It was located in the Royal Exchange, which had been erected in 1752 in place of the old Exchange, and until 1754 had been used as a store. Then William Keen and Alexander Lightfoot got control and started their coffee room, with a ball room attached. The partnership split up in 1756, Lightfoot continuing operations until he died the next year, when his widow tried to carry it on. In 1758 it had reverted into its original character of a mercantile establishment.

Then there was the Whitehall coffee house, which two men, named Rogers and Humphreys, opened in 1762, with the announcement that "a correspondence is settled in London and Bristol to remit by every opportunity all the public prints and pamphlets as soon as published; and there will be a weekly supply of New York, Boston and other American newspapers." This enterprise had a short life.

The early records of the city infrequently mention the Burns coffee house, sometimes calling it a tavern. It is likely that the place was more an inn than a coffee house. It was kept for a number of years by George Burns, near the Battery, and was located in the historic old De Lancey house, which afterward became the City hotel.

Burns remained the proprietor until 1762, when it was taken over by a Mrs. Steele, who gave it the name of the King's Arms. Edward Barden became the landlord in 1768. In later years it became known as the Atlantic Garden house. Traitor Benedict Arnold is said to have lodged in the old tavern after deserting to the enemy.

The Bank coffee house belonged to a later generation, and had few of the characteristics of the earlier coffee houses. It was opened in 1814 by William Niblo, of Niblo's Garden fame, and stood at the corner of William and Pine Streets, at the rear of the Bank of New York. The coffee house endured for probably ten years, and became the gathering place of a coterie of prominent merchants, who formed a sort of club. The Bank coffee house became celebrated for its dinners and dinner parties.

Fraunces' tavern, best known as the place where Washington bade farewell to his army officers, was, as its name states, a tavern, and can not be properly classed as a coffee house. While coffee was served, and there was a long room for gatherings, little, if any, business was done there by merchants. It was largely a meeting place for citizens bent on a "good time."

Then there was the New England and Quebec coffee house, which was also a tavern.

The Tontine Coffee House

The last of the celebrated coffee houses of New York bore the name, Tontine coffee house. For several years after the burning of the Merchants coffee house, in 1804, it was the only one of note in the city.

Feeling that they should have a more commodious coffee house for carrying on their various business enterprises, some 150 merchants organized, in 1791, the Tontine coffee house. This enterprise was based on the plan introduced into France in 1653 by Lorenzo Tonti, with slight variations. According to the New York Tontine plan, each holder's share reverted automatically to the surviving shareholders in the association, instead of to his heirs. There were 157 original shareholders, and 203 shares of stock valued at L200 each.

The directors bought the house and lot on the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets, where the original Merchants coffee house stood, paying L1,970. They next acquired the adjoining lots on Wall and Water Streets, paying L2,510 for the former, and L1,000 for the latter.

The cornerstone of the new coffee house was laid June 5, 1792; and a year later to the day, 120 gentlemen sat down to a banquet in the completed coffee house to celebrate the event of the year before. John Hyde was the first landlord. The house had cost $43,000.

A contemporary account of how the Tontine coffee house looked in 1794 is supplied by an Englishman visiting New York at the time:

The Tontine tavern and coffee house is a handsome large brick building; you ascend six or eight steps under a portico, into a large public room, which is the Stock Exchange of New York, where all bargains are made. Here are two books kept, as at Lloyd's [in London] of every ship's arrival and clearance. This house was built for the accommodation of the merchants by Tontine shares of two hundred pounds each. It is kept by Mr. Hyde, formerly a woolen draper in London. You can lodge and board there at a common table, and you pay ten shillings currency a day, whether you dine out or not.

The stock market made its headquarters in the Tontine coffee house in 1817, and the early organization was elaborated and became the New York Stock and Exchange Board. It was removed in 1827 to the Merchants Exchange Building, where it remained until that place was destroyed by fire in 1835.

It was stipulated in the original articles of the Tontine Association that the house was to be kept and used as a coffee house, and this agreement was adhered to up to the year 1834, when, by permission of the Court of Chancery, the premises were let for general business-office purposes. This change was due to the competition offered by the Merchants Exchange, a short distance up Wall Street, which had been opened soon after the completion of the Tontine coffee house building.

As the city grew, the business-office quarters of the original Tontine coffee house became inadequate; and about the year 1850 a new five-story building, costing some $60,000, succeeded it. By this time the building had lost its old coffee-house characteristics. This new Tontine structure is said to have been the first real office building in New York City. Today the site is occupied by a large modern office building, which still retains the name of Tontine. It was owned by John B. and Charles A. O'Donohue, well known New York coffee merchants, until 1920, when it was sold for $1,000,000 to the Federal Sugar Refining Company.

The Tontine coffee house did not figure so prominently in the historic events of the nation and city as did its neighbor, the Merchants coffee house. However, it became the Mecca for visitors from all parts of the country, who did not consider their sojourn in the city complete until they had at least inspected what was then one of the most pretentious buildings in New York. Chroniclers of the Tontine coffee house always say that most of the leaders of the nation, together with distinguished visitors from abroad, had foregathered in the large room of the old coffee house at some time during their careers.

It was on the walls of the Tontine coffee house that bulletins were posted on Hamilton's struggle for life after the fatal duel forced on him by Aaron Burr.

The changing of the Tontine coffee house into a purely mercantile building marked the end of the coffee-house era in New York. Exchanges and office buildings had come into existence to take the place of the business features of the coffee houses; clubs were organized to take care of the social functions; and restaurants and hotels had sprung up to cater to the needs for beverages and food.

New York's Pleasure Gardens

There was a fairly successful attempt made to introduce the London pleasure-garden idea into New York. First, tea gardens were added to several of the taverns already provided with ball rooms. Then, on the outskirts of the city, were opened the Vauxhall and the Ranelagh gardens, so named after their famous London prototypes. The first Vauxhall garden (there were three of this name) was on Greenwich Street, between Warren and Chambers Streets. It fronted on the North River, affording a beautiful view up the Hudson. Starting as the Bowling Green garden, it changed to Vauxhall in 1750.

Ranelagh was on Broadway, between Duane and Worth Streets, on the site where later the New York Hospital was erected. From advertisements of the period (1765-69) we learn that there were band concerts twice a week at the Ranelagh. The gardens were "for breakfasting as well as the evening entertainment of ladies and gentlemen." There was a commodious hall in the garden for dancing. Ranelagh lasted twenty years. Coffee, tea, and hot rolls could be had in the pleasure gardens at any hour of the day. Fireworks were featured at both Ranelagh and Vauxhall gardens. The second Vauxhall was near the intersection of the present Mulberry and Grand Streets, in 1798; the third was on Bowery Road, near Astor Place, in 1803. The Astor library was built upon its site in 1853.

William Niblo, previously proprietor of the Bank coffee house in Pine Street, opened, in 1828, a pleasure garden, that he named Sans Souci, on the site of a circus building called the Stadium at Broadway and Prince Street. In the center of the garden remained the stadium, which was devoted to theatrical performances of "a gay and attractive character." Later, he built a more pretentious theater that fronted on Broadway. The interior of the garden was "spacious, and adorned with shrubbery and walks, lighted with festoons of lamps." It was generally known as Niblo's garden.

Among other well known pleasure gardens of old New York were Contoit's, later the New York garden, and Cherry gardens, on old Cherry Hill.