That I might begin as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of all called in at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics; the speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room, and were so much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner room, within the steams of the coffee-pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbons provided for in less than a quarter of an hour.

I afterwards called in at Giles's, where I saw a board of French gentlemen sitting upon the life and death of their grand monarque. Those among them who had espoused the Whig interest very positively affirmed that he had departed this life about a week since, and therefore, proceeded without any further delay to the release of their friends in the galleys, and to their own re-establishment; but, finding they could not agree among themselves, I proceeded on my intended progress.

Upon my arrival at Jenny Man's I saw an alert young fellow that cocked his hat upon a friend of his, who entered just at the same time with myself, and accosted him after the following manner: "Well, Jack, the old prig is dead at last. Sharp's the word. Now or never, boy. Up to the walls of Paris, directly;" with several other deep reflections of the same nature.

I met with very little variation in the politics between Charing Cross and Covent Garden. And, upon my going into Will's, I found their discourse was gone off, from the death of the French King, to that of Monsieur Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other poets, whom they regretted on this occasion as persons who would have obliged the world with very noble elegies on the death of so great a prince, and so eminent a patron of learning.

At a coffee-house near the Temple, I found a couple of young gentlemen engaged very smartly in a dispute on the succession to the Spanish monarchy. One of them seemed to have been retained as advocate for the Duke of Anjou, the other for his Imperial Majesty. They were both for regarding the title to that kingdom by the statute laws of England; but finding them going out of my depth, I pressed forward to Paul's Churchyard, where I listened with great attention to a learned man, who gave the company an account of the deplorable state of France during the minority of the deceased king.

I then turned on my right hand into Fish-street, where the chief politician of that quarter, upon hearing the news, (after having taken a pipe of tobacco, and ruminated for some time) "If," says he, "the King of France is certainly dead, we shall have plenty of mackerel this season: our fishery will not be disturbed by privateers, as it has been for these ten years past." He afterwards considered how the death of this great man would affect our pilchards, and by several other remarks infused a general joy into his whole audience.

I afterwards entered a by-coffee-house that stood at the upper end of a narrow lane, where I met with a Nonjuror engaged very warmly with a laceman who was the great support of a neighboring conventicle. The matter in debate was whether the late French King was most like Augustus Caesar, or Nero. The controversy was carried on with great heat on both sides, and as each of them looked upon me very frequently during the course of their debate, I was under some apprehension that they would appeal to me, and therefore laid down my penny at the bar and made the best of my way to Cheapside.

I here gazed upon the signs for some time before I found one to my purpose. The first object I met in the coffee-room was a person who expressed a great grief for the death of the French King; but upon his explaining himself, I found his sorrow did not arise from the loss of the monarch, but for his having sold out of the Bank about three days before he heard the news of it. Upon which a haberdasher, who was the oracle of the coffee-house, and had his circle of admirers about him, called several to witness that he had declared his opinion, above a week before, that the French King was certainly dead; to which he added, that considering the late advices we had received from France, it was impossible that it could be otherwise. As he was laying these together, and debating to his hearers with great authority, there came a gentlemen from Garraway's, who told us that there were several letters from France just come in, with advice that the King was in good health, and was gone out a hunting the very morning the post came away; upon which the haberdasher stole off his hat that hung upon a wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop with great confusion. This intelligence put a stop to my travels, which I had prosecuted with so much satisfaction; not being a little pleased to hear so many different opinions upon so great an event, and to observe how naturally, upon such a piece of news, every one is apt to consider it to his particular interest and advantage.

Johnson wrote in his Life of Addison concerning the Tatler and the Spectator that they were:

Published at a time when two parties, loud, restless and violent, each with plausible declarations, and both perhaps without any distinct determination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections.... They had a perceptible influence on the conversation of the time, and taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency, effects which they can never wholly lose.

Harold Routh in the Cambridge History of Literature, speaking of the Spectator, says:

It surpassed the Tatler in style and in thought. It gave expression to the power of commerce. For more than a century traders had been characterized as dishonest and avaricious, because playwrights and pamphleteers generally wrote for the leisure classes, and were themselves too poor to have any but unpleasant relations with men of business. Now merchants were becoming ambassadors of civilization, and had developed intellect so as to control distant and, as it seemed, mysterious sources of wealth; by a stroke of the pen and largely through the coffee houses they had come to know their own importance and power.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was very fond of good eating, and almost daily entries were made in his Diary of dinner delicacies that he had enjoyed. One dinner, that he considered a great success, was served to eight persons, and consisted of oysters, a hash of rabbits, a lamb, a rare chine of beef; next a great dish of roasting fowl ("cost me about 30 s.") a tart, then fruit and cheese. "My dinner was noble enough ... I believe this day's feast will cost me near 5 pounds." But it will be noted that coffee was not mentioned as a part of the menu.

He makes countless references to visits paid to this and that coffee house, but records only one instance of actually drinking coffee:

Up betimes to my office, and thence at seven o'clock to Sir G. Carteret, and there with Sir J. Minnes made an end of his accounts, but staid not to dinner my Lady having made us drink our morning draft there of several wines, but I drank nothing but some of her coffee, which was poorly made, with a little sugar in it.

This note which he considered worthy of record was certainly not inspired by the excellence of the good lady's matutinal coffee.

William Cobbett (1762-1835) the English-American politician, reformer, and writer on economics, denounced coffee as "slops"; but he was one of a remarkably small minority. Before his day, one of England's greatest satirists, Dean Swift, (1667-1745) led a long roll of literary men who were devotees of coffee.

Swift's writings are full of references to coffee; and his letters from Stella came to him under cover, at the St. James coffee house. There is scarcely a letter to Esther (Vanessa) Vanhomrigh which does not contain a significant reference to coffee, by which the course of their friendship and clandestine meetings may be traced. In one dated August 13, 1720, written while traveling from place to place in Ireland, he says:

We live here in a very dull town, every valuable creature absent, and Cad says he is weary of it, and would rather prefer his coffee on the barrenest mountain in Wales than be king here.

A fig for partridges and quails, Ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales, Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.



In another letter, about two years later, replying to one in which Vanessa has reproached him and begged him to write her soon, he advises:

The best maxim I know in life, is to drink your coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it; while you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you, that I am not cheerful enough to write, for, I believe, coffee once a week is necessary, and you know very well that coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical.

These various references to coffee are thought to have been based upon an incident in the early days of their friendship, when on the occasion of the Vanhomrigh family journeying from Dublin to London, Vanessa accidentally spilt her coffee in the chimney-place at a certain inn, which Swift considered a premonition of their growing friendship. Writing from Clogher, Swift reminds Vanessa:

Remember that riches are nine parts in ten of all that is good in life, and health is the tenth—drinking coffee comes long after, and yet it is the eleventh, but without the two former you cannot drink it right.

In another letter he writes facetiously, in memory of her playful badinage:

I long to drink a dish of coffee in the sluttery and hear you dun me for a secret, and "Drink your coffee; why don't you drink your coffee?"

Leigh Hunt had very pleasant things to say about coffee, giving to it the charm of appeal to the imagination, which he said one never finds in tea. For example:

Coffee, like tea, used to form a refreshment by itself, some hours after dinner; it is now taken as a digester, right upon that meal or the wine, and sometimes does not even close it; or the digester itself is digested by a liquor of some sort called a Chasse-Cafe [coffee-chaser]. We like coffee better than tea for taste, but tea "for a constancy." To be perfect in point of relish (we do not say of wholesomeness) coffee should be strong and hot, with little milk and sugar. It has been drunk after this mode in some parts of Europe, but the public have nowhere, we believe, adopted it. The favorite way of taking it at a meal, abroad, is with a great superfluity of milk—very properly called, in France cafe au lait (coffee to the milk). One of the pleasures we receive in drinking coffee is that, being the universal drink in the East, it reminds of that region of the "Arabian Nights" as smoking does for the same reason; though neither of these refreshments, which are identified with Oriental manners, is to be found in that enchanting work. They had not been discovered when it was written; the drink then was sherbet. One can hardly fancy what a Turk or a Persian could have done without coffee and a pipe, any more than the English ladies and gentlemen, before the civil wars, without tea for breakfast.

In his old age, Immanuel Kant, the great metaphysician, became extremely fond of coffee; and Thomas de Quincey relates a little incident showing Kant's great eagerness for the after-dinner cup.

At the beginning of the last year of his life, he fell into a custom of taking, immediately after dinner, a cup of coffee, especially on those days when it happened that I was of his party. And such was the importance that he attached to his little pleasure that he would even make a memorandum beforehand, in the blank paper book that I had given him, that on the next day I was to dine with him, and consequently "that there was to be coffee." Sometimes in the interest of conversation, the coffee was forgotten, but not for long. He would remember and with the querulousness of old age and infirm health would demand that coffee be brought "upon the spot." Arrangements had always been made in advance, however; the coffee was ground, and the water was boiling: and in the very moment the word was given, the servant shot in like an arrow and plunged the coffee into the water. All that remained, therefore, was to give it time to boil up. But this trifling delay seemed unendurable to Kant. If it were said, "Dear Professor, the coffee will be brought up in a moment," he would say, "Will be! There's the rub, that it only will be." Then he would quiet himself with a stoical air, and say, "Well, one can die after all; it is but dying; and in the next world, thank God, there is no drinking of coffee and consequently no waiting for it."

When at length the servant's steps were heard upon the stairs, he would turn round to us, and joyfully call out: "Land, land! my dear friends, I see land."

Thackeray (1811-1863) must have suffered many tea and coffee disappointments. In the Kickleburys on the Rhine he asks: "Why do they always put mud into coffee aboard steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?"

In Arthur's, A. Neil Lyons has preserved for all time the atmosphere of the London coffee stall. "I would not," he says, "exchange a night at Arthur's for a week with the brainiest circle in London." The book is a collection of short stories. As already recorded, Harold Chapin dramatized this picturesque London institution in The Autocrat of the Coffee Stall.

In General Horace Porter's Campaigning with Grant, we have three distinct coffee incidents within fifty-odd pages; or explicitly, see pages 47, 56, 101; where, deep in the fiercest snarls of The Wilderness campaign we are treated to:

General Grant, slowly sipping his coffee ... a full ration of that soothing army beverage.... The general made rather a singular meal preparatory to so exhausting a day as that which was to follow. He took a cucumber, sliced it, poured some vinegar over it, and partook of nothing else except a cup of strong coffee.... The general seemed in excellent spirits, and was even inclined to be jocose. He said to me, "We have just had our coffee, and you will find some left for you." ... I drank it with the relish of a shipwrecked mariner.

One of the first immediate supplies General Sherman desired from Wilmington, on reaching Fayetteville and lines of communication in March, 1865, was, expressly, coffee; does he not say so himself, on page 297 of the second volume of his Memoirs?

Still more expressly, towards the close of his Memoirs, and among final recommendations, the fruit of his experiences in that whole vast war, General Sherman says this for coffee:

Coffee has become almost indispensable, though many substitutes were found for it, such as Indian corn, roasted, ground and boiled as coffee, the sweet potato, and the seed of the okra plant prepared in the same way. All these were used by the people of the South, who for years could procure no coffee, but I noticed that the women always begged of us real coffee, which seemed to satisfy a natural yearning or craving more powerful than can be accounted for on the theory of habit. Therefore I would always advise that the coffee and sugar ration be carried along, even at the expense of bread, for which there are many substitutes.

George Agnew Chamberlain's novel Home contains a vivid description of coffee-making on an old plantation, and could only have been written by a devoted lover of this drink. Gerry Lansing, the American, has escaped drowning in the river, and is now lost in the Brazilian forest. He finds his way at last to an old plantation house:

A stove was built into the masonry, and a cavernous oven gaped from the massive wall. At the stove was an old negress, making coffee with shaky deliberation.... The girl and the wrinkled old woman made him sit down at the table, and then placed before him crisp rusks of mandioc flour and steaming coffee whose splendid aroma triumphed over the sordidness of the scene and through the nostrils reached the palate with anticipatory touch. It was sweetened with dark, pungent syrup and was served black in a capacious bowl, as though one could not drink too deeply of the elixir of life. Gerry ate ravenously and sipped the coffee, at first sparingly, then greedily.... Gerry set down the empty bowl with a sigh. The rusks had been delicious. Before the coffee the name of nectar dwindled to impotency. Its elixir rioted in his veins.

In the Rosary, Florence L. Barclay has a Scotch woman tell how she makes coffee. She says:

Use a jug—it is not what you make it in; it is how ye make it. It all hangs upon the word fresh—freshly roasted—freshly ground—water freshly boiled. And never touch it with metal. Pop it into an earthenware jug, pour in your boiling water straight upon it, stir it with a wooden spoon, set it on the hob ten minutes to settle; the grounds will all go to the bottom, though you might not think it, and you pour it out, fragrant, strong and clear. But the secret is, fresh, fresh, fresh, and don't stint your coffee.

Cyrus Townsend Brady's The Corner in Coffee is "a thrilling romance of the New York coffee market."

Coffee, Du Barry, and Louis XV figure in one scene of the story of The Moat with the Crimson Stains, as told by Elizabeth W. Champney in her Romance of the Bourbon Chateaux.[354] It tells of the German apprentice Riesener, who assisted his master Oeben in designing for Louis XV a beautiful desk with a secret drawer, which it took ten years of unremitting industry to execute. At the end, Riesener was to be accepted by his master as a partner and a son-in-law. Little Victoire, who loved to sit in a punt and trail her doll in the waters of the Bievre to see to what color its frock would be changed by the dyes of the Gobelin factory, was then only five, and Madam Oeben twenty-three. As the years rolled by, Riesener grew to love the mother and not the daughter, who, meanwhile, shot up into a slim girl, not of her mother's beauty, but of a loveliness all her own. Then there was a quarrel because the young apprentice thought the master should have resented the suggestion of M. Duplessis that his wife pose in the nude for the statuettes which were to hold the sconces on the king's desk; and Riesener left in a fine youthful frenzy, vowing he would never return while the maitre lived. The latter, unable to complete the masterpiece which he loved more than anything else on earth, sought death, and perished in the crimson waters of the Bievre.

The maitre had no enemies, but his quarrel with Riesener caused a fear to spring up in the widow's heart that the apprentice might have been guilty of his murder, so she refused to see him when, hearing of his master's death, he returned, stricken with remorse, to finish the desk. On it were the statuettes modeled in perfect likeness of Mlle. de Vaubernier, a wily little milliner of Riesener's bohemian set who had taken this way to bring herself to the attention of Louis XV. The ruse was successful; and after the acceptance of the desk, there was installed a new maitresse en titre, the notorious Madame Du Barry, erstwhile the pretty milliner, Mlle. de Vaubernier.

Later, Madame Du Barry sent for the now famous ebeniste (cabinet maker); and, when her negro page Zamore admitted him, he found His Majesty Louis XV kneeling in front of the fireplace, making coffee for her while she laughed at him for scalding his fingers. He had been summoned to show the king the mechanism of the secret drawer, so cunningly concealed in the king's desk that no one could find it. But Riesener knew not the secret of his master, who had died without revealing it. Then the red revolution came; and when the pretty pavilion at Louveciennes was sacked, and its costly furniture hurled down the cliff to the Seine, the king's desk, shattered almost beyond repair, was carried to the Gobelins' factory and presented to Mme. Oeben in recognition of her husband's workmanship. Then the secret compartment was found to have been disclosed, and Riesener was absolved by a letter therein, from the maitre, who intimated he was about to end it all because of paralysis. Riesener marries the widow and all ends happily.

James Lane Allen, in The Kentucky Warbler, tells a tale of the Blue Grass country and of a young hero who wanders after a bird's note to find romance and the key to his own locked nature. Here is an incident from his first forest adventure:

There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on one—the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognize it if it yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once, when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the American forests that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee tree, and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last.... The Kentucky coffee tree—his favorite in Nature!

John Kendrick Bangs relates, in Coffee and Repartee[355], some amusing skirmishes indulged in at the boarding-house table, between the Idiot and the guests, where coffee served the purpose of enlivening the tilt:

"Can't I give you another cup of coffee?" asked the landlady of the School Master.

"You may," returned the School Master, pained at the lady's grammar, but too courteous to call attention to it save by the emphasis with which he spoke the word "may".

Said the Idiot: "You may fill my cup too, Mrs. Smithers."

"The coffee is all gone," returned the landlady, with a snap.

"Then, Mary," said the Idiot, gracefully turning to the maid, "you may give me a glass of ice water. It is quite as warm, after all, as the coffee and not quite so weak."

One other little skit remains at the expense of Mrs. Smithers' coffee. At the breakfast table, where the air, as usual, is charged with repartee, Mr. Whitechoker, the minister, says to his landlady:

"Mrs. Smithers, I'll have a dash of hot water in my coffee, this morning." Then with a glance toward the Idiot, he added, "I think it looks like rain."

"Referring to the coffee, Mr. Whitechoker?" queried the Idiot....

"Ah,—I don't quite follow you," replied the Minister with some annoyance.

"You said something looked like rain, and I asked you if the thing referred to was the coffee, for I was disposed to agree with you," said the Idiot.

"I am sure," put in Mrs. Smithers, "that a gentleman of Mr. Whitechoker's refinement would not make any such insinuation, sir. He is not the man to quarrel with what is set before him."

"I must ask your pardon, Madam," returned the Idiot politely. "I hope I am not the man to quarrel with my food, either. Indeed, I make it a rule to avoid unpleasantness of all sorts, particularly with the weak, under which category I find your coffee."

Coffee Quips and Anecdotes

Coffee literature is full of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sevigne, who, as already told in chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to Irene who thus accused the amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, could not deny it.

That Mme. de Sevigne was at one time a coffee drinker is apparent from this quotation from one of her letters: "The cavalier believes that coffee gives him warmth, and I at the same time, foolish as you know me, do not take it any longer."

La Roque called the beverage "the King of Perfumes", whose charm was enriched when vanilla was added.

Emile Souvestre (1806-1854) said: "Coffee keeps, so to say, the balance between bodily and spiritual nourishment."

Isid Bourdon said: "The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of illusion and given more promise to hope."

An old Bourbon proverb says: "To an old man a cup of coffee is like the door post of an old house—it sustains and strengthens him."

Jardin says that in the Antilles, instead of orange blossoms, the brides carry a spray of coffee blossoms; and when a woman remains unmarried, they say she has lost her coffee branch. "We say in France, that she has coiffe Sainte-Catherine."

Fontenelle and Voltaire have both been quoted as authors of the famous reply to the remark that coffee was a slow poison: "I think it must be, for I've been drinking it for eighty-five years and am not dead yet."

In Meidinger's German Grammar the "slow-poison" bon mot is attributed to Fontenelle.

It seems reasonable to give Fontenelle credit for this bon mot. Voltaire died at eighty-four. Fontenelle lived to be nearly a hundred years. Of his cheerfulness at an advanced age an anecdote is related. In conversation, one day, a lady a few years younger than Fontenelle playfully remarked, "Monsieur, you and I stay here so long, methinks Death has forgotten us." "Hush! Speak in a whisper, madame," replied Fontenelle, "tant mieux! (so much the better!) don't remind him of us."

Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Paul de Kock, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Zola, Coppee, George Sand, Guy de Maupassant, and Sarah Bernhardt, all have been credited with many clever or witty sallies about coffee.

Prince Talleyrand (1754-1839), the French diplomat and wit, has given us the cleverest summing up of the ideal cup of coffee. He said it should be "Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour." Or in English, "black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."

This quip has been wrongfully attributed to Brillat-Savarin. Talleyrand said also:

A cup of coffee lightly tempered with good milk detracts nothing from your intellect; on the contrary, your stomach is freed by it, and no longer distresses your brain; it will not hamper your mind with troubles, but give freedom to its working. Suave molecules of Mocha stir up your blood, without causing excessive heat; the organ of thought receives from it a feeling of sympathy; work becomes easier, and you will sit down without distress to your principal repast, which will restore your body, and afford you a calm delicious night.

Among coffee drinkers a high place must be given to Prince Bismarck (1815-1898). He liked coffee unadulterated. While with the Prussian army in France, he one day entered a country inn and asked the host if he had any chicory in the house. He had. Bismarck said: "Well, bring it to me; all you have." The man obeyed, and handed Bismarck a canister full of chicory.

"Are you sure this is all you have?" demanded the chancellor.

"Yes, my lord, every grain."

"Then," said Bismarck, keeping the canister by him, "go now and make me a pot of coffee."

This same story has been related of Francois Paul Jules Grevy (1807-1891), president of France, 1879-1887. According to the French story, Grevy never took wine, even at dinner. He was, however, passionately fond of coffee. To be certain of having his favorite beverage of the best quality, he always, when he could, prepared it himself. Once he was invited, with a friend, M. Bethmont, to a hunting party by M. Menier, the celebrated manufacturer of chocolate, at Noisiel. It happened that M. Grevy and M. Bethmont lost themselves in the forest. Trying to find their way out, they stumbled upon a little wine house, and stopped for a rest. They asked for something to drink. M. Bethmont found his wine excellent; but, as usual, Grevy would not drink. He wanted coffee, but he was afraid of the decoction which would be brought him. He got a good cup, however, and this is how he managed it:

"Have you any chicory?" he said to the man.

"Yes, sir."

"Bring me some."

Soon the proprietor returned with a small can of chicory.

"Is that all you have?" asked Grevy.

"We have a little more."

"Bring me the rest."

When he came again, with another can of chicory, Grevy said:

"You have no more?"

"No, sir."

"Very well. Now go and make me a cup of coffee."

As already told, Louis XV had a great passion for coffee, which he made himself. Lenormand, the head gardener at Versailles, raised six pounds of coffee a year which was for the exclusive use of the king. The king's fondness for coffee and for Mme. Du Barry gave rise to a celebrated anecdote of Louveciennes which was accepted as true by many serious writers. It is told in this fashion by Mairobert in a pamphlet scandalizing Du Barry in 1776:

His Majesty loves to make his own coffee and to forsake the cares of the government. One day the coffee pot was on the fire and, his Majesty being occupied with something else, the coffee boiled over. "Oh France, take care! Your coffee f—— le camp!" cried the beautiful favorite.

Charles Vatel has denied this story.

It is related of Jean Jacques Rousseau that once when he was walking in the Tuileries he caught the aroma of roasting coffee. Turning to his companion, Bernardino de Saint-Pierre, he said, "Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma." And such was the passion for coffee of this philosopher of Geneva that when he died, "he just missed doing it with a cup of coffee in his hand".

Barthez, confidential physician of Napoleon the first, drank a great deal of it, freely, calling it "the intellectual drink."

Bonaparte, himself, said: "Strong coffee, and plenty, awakens me. It gives me a warmth, an unusual force, a pain that is not without pleasure. I would rather suffer than be senseless."

Edward R. Emerson[356] tells the following story of the Cafe Procope. One day while M. Saint-Foix was seated at his usual table in this cafe an officer of the king's body-guard entered, sat down, and ordered a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, adding, "It will serve me for a dinner." At this, Saint-Foix remarked aloud that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner. The officer remonstrated. Saint-Foix reiterated his remark, adding that nothing he could say to the contrary would convince him that it was not a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the whole company present adjourned as spectators to a duel which ended by Saint-Foix receiving a wound in the arm.

"That is all very well," said the wounded combatant; "but I call you to witness, gentlemen, that I am still profoundly convinced that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner."

At this moment the principals were arrested and carried before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint-Foix, without waiting to be questioned, said:

"Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention of offending this gallant officer who, I doubt not, is an honorable man; but your excellency can never prevent my asserting that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner."

"Why, so it is," said the Duke.

"Then I am not in the wrong," persisted Saint-Foix; "and a cup of coffee"—at these words magistrates, delinquents, and auditory burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists forthwith became warm friends.

"Boswell in his Life of Johnson tells a story of an old chevalier de Malte, of ancienne noblesse, but in low circumstances, who was in a coffee house in Paris, where was also Julien, the great manufacturer at Gobelins, of fine tapestry, so much distinguished for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.'

"The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered:

"'Well, sir, you may take it home and dye it.'

"All the coffee house rejoiced at Julien's confusion."

Sydney Smith (1771-1845) the English clergyman and humorist, once said: "If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intellectual beverage."

Our own William Dean Howells pays the beverage this tribute: "This coffee intoxicates without exciting, soothes you softly out of dull sobriety, making you think and talk of all the pleasant things that ever happened to you."

The wife of the president of the United States prefers coffee to tea. Afternoon guests at the White House may be refreshed, if they choose, by a sip of tea. But while tea is on tap for callers, Mrs. Harding always has coffee for those who, like herself, prefer it.

Old London Coffee-House Anecdotes

A good-sized volume might be compiled of the many anecdotes that have been written about habitues of the London coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.



Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the lexicographer, was one of the most constant frequenters of the coffee houses of his day. His big, awkward figure was a familiar sight as he went about attended by his satellite, young James Boswell, who was to write about him for the delight of future generations in his marvelous Life of Johnson. The intellectual and moral peculiarities of the man found a natural expression in the coffee house. Johnson was fifty-four and Boswell only twenty-three when the two first met in Tom Davies' book-shop in Covent Garden. The story is told by Boswell with great particularity and characteristic naivete:

Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard so much, I said to Davies, "Don't tell him where I come from." "From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as a light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky, for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression, "come from Scotland!" which I used In the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come away from it, or left it, he retorted, "That, sir, I find is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help."

Nothing daunted, however, Boswell within a week called upon Johnson in his chambers. This time the doctor urged him to tarry. Three weeks later he said to him, "Come to me as often as you can." Within a fortnight thereafter Boswell was giving the great man a sketch of his own life and Johnson was exclaiming, "Give me your hand; I have taken a liking to you."



When people began to ask, "Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" Goldsmith replied: "He is not a cur; he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking."

Thus began one of the strangest friendships, out of which developed the most delightful biography in all literature. Boswell's taste for literary adventures, and Johnson's literary vagrancy met in a companionship that found much satisfaction in the bohemianism of the inns and coffee houses of old London. Boswell thus describes the eccentric doctor's outlook on this mode of living:

We dined today at an excellent inn at Chapel-House, where Mr. Johnson commented on English coffee houses and inns remarking that the English triumphed over the French in one respect, in that the French had no perfection of tavern life. There is no private house, (said he) in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that everybody should be easy; in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's house, as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone's lines:

"Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found His warmest welcome at an inn."



Patient delving into Johnsoniana is rewarded with many anecdotes about the mad doctor philosopher and his faithful reporter who delighted in translating his genius to the world.

Boswell was a wine-bibber, but Johnson confessed to being "a hardened and shameless tea drinker." When Boswell twigged him for abstaining from the stronger drink, the doctor replied: "Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine if he can do it in moderation. I find myself apt to go to excess in it and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it."

Another time he said of tea: "What a delightful beverage must that be that pleases all palates at a time when they can take nothing else at breakfast."



In his early days Johnson had David Garrick as an unwilling pupil. After the actor had become famous and his prosperity had turned his head, he was wont to "put the table in a roar" by mimicking the doctor's grimaces. There is a story that on the occasion of a certain dinner party where both were guests, Garrick indulged in a coarse jest on the great man's table manners. After the merriment had subsided, Doctor Johnson arose solemnly and said:

"Gentlemen, you must doubtless suppose from the extreme familiarity with which Mr. Garrick has thought fit to treat me that I am an acquaintance of his; but I can assure you that until I met him here, I never saw him but once before—and then I paid five shillings for the sight."

A certain sycophant, thinking to curry favor with Johnson, took to laughing loud and long at everything he said. Johnson's patience at last became exhausted, and after a particularly objectionable outburst, he turned upon the boor with:

"Pray sir, what is the matter? I hope I have not said anything which you can comprehend!"

Because of his physical and mental disabilities Dr. Johnson was not a good social animal. Nevertheless, when it pleased his humor, he could be the cavalier, for his mind overcame every impediment.

It is related of him that once when a lady who was showing him around her garden expressed her regret at being unable to bring a particular flower to perfection, he arose gallantly to the occasion by taking her hand and remarking:

"Then, madam, permit me to bring perfection to the flower!"

Again, when Mrs. Siddons, the great English tragedienne, called upon him in his chambers and the servant did not promptly bring her a chair, his quick wit made capital of the incident by the remark:

"You see, madam, wherever you go there are no seats to be had!"

John Thomas Smith in his Antiquarian Rambles in the Streets of London (1846), tells an amusing incident in the life of Sir George Etherege, the playright, who having run up a bill at Locket's ordinary, a coffee house much frequented by dramatists of the period, and finding himself unable to pay, began to absent himself from the place. Mrs. Locket thereupon sent a man to dun and to threaten him with prosecution if he did not pay. Sir George sent back word that if she stirred a step in the matter he would kiss her. On receiving this answer, the good lady, much exasperated, called for her hood and scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that "she would see if there was any fellow alive who would have the impudence—" "Prithee! my dear, don't be so rash," said her husband; "there is no telling what a man may do in his passion."

Richard Savage, the English poet and friend of Johnson, who included him in his famous Lives of the Poets, was arrested for the murder of James Sinclair after a drunken brawl in Robinson's coffee house in 1727. He was found guilty, but narrowly escaped the death penalty by the intercession of the countess of Hertford. A feature of his trial was the extraordinary charge to the jury of Judge Page, who for his hard words and his love of hanging, is damned to everlasting fame in the verse of Pope. The charge was:

Gentlemen of the jury! You are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has an abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?

Albert V. Lally[357] has made a collection of old coffee-house anecdotes. Among them are the following:

The story is told of how Sir Richard Steele in Button's Coffee House was once made the umpire in an amusing difference between two unnamed disputants. These two were arguing about religion, when one of them said: "I wonder, sir, you should talk of religion, when I'll hold you five guineas you can't say the Lord's prayer." "Done," said the other, "and Sir Richard Steele shall hold the stakes." The money being deposited the gentleman began with, "I believe in God", and so went right through the creed. "Well," said the other when he had finished, "I didn't think he could have done it."

* * * * *

There is another story of a famous judge, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was importuned by a criminal to spare his life on account of kinship. "How so," demanded the judge. "Because my name is Hog and yours is Bacon; and hog and bacon are so near akin that they cannot be separated."

"Ay," responded the judge dryly, "but you and I cannot yet be kindred, for hog is not bacon until it is well hanged."

* * * * *

On another occasion a nervous barrister, pleading before this same judge, began with repeated references to his "unfortunate client." "Go on, sir," said the judge, "so far the Court is with you."

* * * * *

Of Jonathan Swift it is related that a gentleman who had sought to persuade him to accept an invitation to dinner said, in way of special inducement, "I'll send you my bill of fare." "Send me rather your bill of company," retorted Swift, showing his appreciation of the truth that not that which is eaten, but those who eat, form the more important part of a good dinner.

On the occasion when the "dreadful Judge Jeffreys" was trying Compton, bishop of London, before the Court of High Commission, that prelate, as Campbell relates in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, complained of having no copy of the indictment. Jeffreys replied to this excuse that "all the coffee houses had it for a penny." The case being resumed after the lapse of a week, the bishop again protested that he was unprepared, owing to his continued difficulty in obtaining a copy of the necessary document. Jeffreys was obliged once more to adjourn the case, and in so doing offered this bantering apology:

"My lord," said he, "in telling you our commission was to be seen in every coffee house, I did not speak with any design to reflect on your lordship, as if you were a haunter of coffee houses. I abhor the thoughts of it!"

As the Judge had once been distinctly opposed to the party and principles which he went to such a length in supporting, so had he formerly owed something to the very institution against which his last blow was directed. Roger North relates (and Campbell repeats the story) that, "after he was called to the bar, he used to sit in coffee houses and order his man to come and tell him that company attended him at his chamber; at which he would huff and say, 'let them stay a little, I will come presently,' and thus made a show of business."

John Timbs, in his Clubs and Club Life in London, has a host of anecdotes and stories of the old London coffee houses, among them the following:

Garraway's noted coffee-house, situated in Change-alley, Cornhill, had a threefold celebrity; tea was first sold in England here; it was a place of great resort in the time of the South Sea Bubble; and was later a place of great mercantile transactions. The original proprietor was Thomas Garway, tobacconist and coffee-man, the first who retailed tea, recommending it as a cure of all disorders.



Ogilby, the compiler of the Britannia, had his standing lottery of books at Mr. Garway's Coffee-house from April 7, 1673, till wholly drawn off. And, in the "Journey through England," 1722, Garraway's, Robins's, and Joe's are described as the three celebrated coffee-houses: "In the first, the People of Quality, who have business in the City, and the most considerable and wealthy citizens frequent. In the second the Foreign Banquiers, and often even Foreign Ministers. And in the third, the buyers and sellers of stock."

Wines were sold at Garraway's in 1673, "by the candle", that is, by auction, while an inch of candle burns. In the Tatler, No. 147, we read: "Upon my coming home last night, I found a very handsome present of French wine, left for me, as a taste of 216 hogshead, which are to be put on sale at 20L a hogshead, at Garraway's Coffee-house, in Exchange alley" etc. The sale by candle is not, however, by candlelight, but during the day. At the commencement of the sale, when the auctioneer has read a description of the property, and the conditions on which it is to be disposed of, a piece of candle, usually an inch long, is lighted, and he who is the last bidder at the time the light goes out is declared the purchaser.

Swift, in his Ballad on the South Sea Scheme, 1721, did not forget Garraway's:

There is a gulf, where thousands fell, Here all the bold adventurers came, A narrow sound, though deep as hell, 'Change alley is the dreadful name.

Subscribers here by thousands float, And jostle one another down, Each paddling in his leaky boat, And here they fish for gold and drown.

Now buried in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wits' end, like drunken men.

Meantime secure on Garway cliffs, A savage race, by shipwrecks fed, Lie waiting for the founder'd skiffs, And strip the bodies of the dead.

Dr. Jno. Radcliff, who was a rash speculator in the South Sea Scheme, was usually planted at a table at Garraway's about Exchange time, to watch the turn of the market; and here he was seated when the footman of his powerful rival, Dr. Edward Hannes, came into Garraway's and inquired by way of a puff, if Dr. H. was there. Dr. Radcliff, who was surrounded with several apothecaries and chirurgeons that flocked about him, cried out, "Dr. Hannes is not here," and desired to know "who wants him?" The fellow's reply was, "such a lord and such a lord;" but he was taken up with the dry rebuke, "No, no, friend, you are mistaken; the Doctor wants those lords." One of Radcliff's ventures was five thousand guineas upon one South Sea project. When he was told at Garraway's that 'twas all lost, "Why," said he, "'tis but going up five thousand pair of stairs more." "This answer," says Tom Brown, "deserved a statue."

* * * * *

Jonathan's Coffee-house was another Change-alley coffee-house, which is described in the Tatler, No. 38, as "the general mart of stock-jobbers," and the Spectator, No. 1, tells us that he "sometimes passes for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's." This was their rendezvous, where gambling of all sorts was carried on, notwithstanding a former prohibition against the assemblage of the jobbers, issued by the City of London, which prohibition continued unrepealed until 1825.

* * * * *

The Spectator, No. 16, notices some gay frequenters of the Rainbow Coffee-house in Fleet Street: "I have received a letter desiring me to be very satirical upon the little muff that is now in fashion; another informs me of a pair of silver garters buckled below the knee, that have been lately seen at the Rainbow Coffee-house in Fleet Street."

Mr. Moncrieff, the dramatist, used to tell that about 1780, this house was kept by his grandfather, Alexander Moncrieff, when it retained its original title of "The Rainbow Coffee-house."

* * * * *

Nando's Coffee-house at the east corner of Inner Temple-lane, No. 17, Fleet-Street, by some confused with Groom's house, No. 16, was the favourite haunt of Lord Thurlow before he dashed into law practice. At this coffee-house a large attendance of professional loungers was attracted by the fame of the punch and the charms of the landlady, which, with the small wits, were duly admired by and at the bar. One evening, the famous cause of Douglas v. the Duke of Hamilton was the topic of discussion, when Thurlow being present, it was suggested, half in earnest, to appoint him junior counsel, which was done. This employment brought him acquaintance with the Duchess of Queensberry, who saw at once the value of a man like Thurlow, and recommended Lord Bute to secure him by a silk gown.

* * * * *

Dick's Coffee-house, at No. 8, Fleet-street, (south side, near Temple Bar) was originally "Richard's", named from Richard Torner, or Turner, to whom the house was let in 1680. Richard's was frequented by Cowper, when he lived in the Temple. In his own account of his insanity, Cowper tells us:

"At breakfast I read the newspaper, and in it a letter, which, the further I perused it, the more closely engaged my attention. I cannot now recollect the purport of it; but before I had finished it, it appeared demonstratively true to me that it was a libel or satire upon me. The author appeared to be acquainted with my purpose of self-destruction, and to have written that letter on purpose to secure and hasten the execution of it. My mind, probably, at this time began to be disordered; however it was, I was certainly given to a strong delusion. I said within myself, 'Your cruelty shall be gratified; you shall have your revenge,' and flinging down the paper in a fit of strong passion, I rushed hastily out of the room; directing my way towards the fields, where I intended to find some house to die in; or, if not, determined to poison myself in a ditch, where I could meet with one sufficiently retired."

* * * * *

Lloyd's Coffee-house was one of the earliest establishments of its kind; it is referred to in a poem printed in the year 1700, called the Wealthy Shopkeeper, or Charitable Christian:

Now to Lloyd's Coffee-house he never fails, To read the letters, and attend the sales.

In 1710, Steele (Tatler, No. 246) dates from Lloyd's his Petition on Coffee-house Orators and Newsvendors. And Addison, in Spectator, April 23, 1711, relates this droll incident: "About a week since there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason of one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped at Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are usually kept. Before I missed it, there were a cluster of people who had found it, and were diverting themselves with it at one end of the coffee-house. It had raised so much laughter among them before I observed what they were about, that I had not the courage to own it. The boy of the coffee-house, when they had done with it, carried it about in his hand, asking everybody if they had dropped a written paper; but nobody challenging it, he was ordered by those merry gentlemen who had before perused it, to get up into the auction pulpit, and read it to the whole room, that if anybody would own it they might. The boy accordingly mounted the pulpit, and with a very audible voice read what proved to be minutes, which made the whole coffee-house very merry; some of them concluded it was written by a madman, and others by somebody that had been taking notes out of the Spectator. After it was read, and the boy was coming put of the pulpit, the Spectator reached his arm out, and desired the boy to given it him; which was done according. This drew the whole eyes of the company upon the Spectator; but after casting a cursory glance over it, he shook his head twice or thrice at the reading of it, twisted it into a kind of match, and lighted his pipe with it. 'My profound silence,' says the Spectator, 'together with the steadiness of my countenance, and the gravity of my behaviour during the whole transaction, raised a very loud laugh on all sides of me; but as I had escaped all suspicion of being the author, I was very well satisfied, and applying myself to my pipe and the Postman, took no further notice of anything that passed about me.'"

* * * * *

The Smyrna Coffee-house in Pall Mall, was, in the reign of Queen Anne, famous for "that cluster of wise-heads" found sitting every evening from the left side of the fire to the door. The following announcement in the Tatler, No. 78, is amusing: "This is to give notice to all ingenious gentlemen in and about the cities of London and Westminster, who have a mind to be instructed in the noble sciences of music, poetry and politics, that they repair to the Smyrna Coffee-house, in Pall Mall, betwixt the hours of eight and ten at night, where they may be instructed gratis, with elaborate essays 'by word of mouth', on all or any of the above-mentioned arts."

* * * * *

St. James's Coffee-house was the famous Whig coffee-house from the time of Queen Anne till late in the reign of George III. It was the last house but one on the southwest corner of St. James's street, and is thus mentioned in No. 1 of the Tatler: "Foreign and Domestic News you will have from St. James's Coffee-house." It occurs also in the passage quoted previously from the Spectator. The St. James's was much frequented by Swift; letters for him were left here. In his Journal to Stella he says: "I met Mr. Harley, and he asked me how long I had learnt the trick of writing to myself? He had seen your letter through the glass case at the Coffee-house, and would swear it was my hand."

Elliott, who kept the coffee-house, was, on occasions, placed on a friendly footing with his guests. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, November 19, 1710, records an odd instance of this familiarity: "This evening I christened our coffee-man Elliott's child; when the rogue had a most noble supper, and Steele and I sat amongst some scurvy company over a bowl of punch."

In the first advertisement of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "Town Eclogues," they are stated to have been read over at the St. James's Coffee-house, when they were considered by the general voice to be productions of a Lady of Quality. From the proximity of the house to St. James's Palace, it was much frequented by the Guards; and we read of its being no uncommon circumstance to see Dr. Joseph Warton at breakfast in the St. James's Coffee-house, surrounded by officers of the Guards, who listened with the utmost attention and pleasure to his remarks.

To show the order and regularity observed at the St. James's, we may quote the following advertisement, appended to the Tatler. No. 25; "To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's Coffee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces, this is to give notice that Kidney, keeper of the book-debts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer of messages and first coffee-grinder, William Bird is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird."

But the St. James's is more memorable as the house where originated Goldsmith's celebrated poem, "Retaliation." The poet belonged to a temporary association of men of talent, some of them members of the Club, who dined together occasionally here. At these dinners he was generally the last to arrive. On one occasion, when he was later than usual, a whim seized the company to write epitaphs on him as "the late Dr. Goldsmith", and several were thrown off in a playful vein. The only one extant was written by Garrick, and has been preserved, very probably, by its pungency:

Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll; He wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.

Goldsmith did not relish the sarcasm, especially coming from such a quarter; and, by way of retaliation, he produced the famous poem, of which Cumberland has left a very interesting account, but which Mr. Forster, in his "Life of Goldsmith", states to be "pure romance". The poem itself, however, with what was prefixed to it when published, sufficiently explains its own origin. What had formerly been abrupt and strange in Goldsmith's manners, had now so visibly increased, as to become matter of increased sport to such as were ignorant of its cause; and a proposition made at one of the dinners, when he was absent, to write a series of epitaphs upon him (his "country dialect" and his awkward person) was agreed to, and put in practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear to have been Garrick, Doctor Bernard, Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph; but it was complimentary and grave, and hence the grateful return he received. Mr. Forster considers Garrick's epitaph to indicate the tone of all. This, with the rest, was read to Goldsmith when he next appeared at the St. James's Coffee-house, where Cumberland, however, says he never again met his friends. But "the Doctor was called on for Retaliation," says the friend who published the poem with that name, "and at their next meeting produced the following, which I think adds one leaf to his immortal wreath." "'Retaliation'", says Sir Walter Scott, "had the effect of placing the author on a more equal footing with his Society than he had ever before assumed."

Cumberland's account differs from the version formerly received, which intimates that the epitaphs were written before Goldsmith arrived: whereas the pun, "the late Dr. Goldsmith" appears to have suggested the writing of the epitaphs. In the "Retaliation", Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly chastised; Burke, the Dinner-bell of the House of Commons, is not let off; and of all the more distinguished names of the Club, Thomson, Cumberland, and Reynolds alone escape the lash of the satirist. The former is not mentioned, and the two latter are even dismissed with unqualified and affectionate applause.

Still we quote Cumberland's account of the "Retaliation" which is very amusing from the closely circumstantial manner in which the incidents are narrated, although they have so little relationship to truth: "It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, that a party of friends who had dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds's and my house, should meet at the St. James's Coffee-house, which accordingly took place, and was repeated occasionally with much festivity and good fellowship. Dr. Bernard, Dean of Derry; a very amiable and old friend of mine, Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury; Johnson, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund and Richard Burke, Hickey, with two or three others, constituted our party. At one of these meetings, an idea was suggested of extemporary epitaphs upon the parties present; pen and ink were called for, and Garrick, offhand, wrote an epitaph with a good deal of humour, upon poor Goldsmith, who was the first in jest, as he proved to be in reality, that we committed to the grave. The Dean also gave him an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the Dean's verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and ink, inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson nor Burke wrote anything, and when I perceived that Oliver was rather sore, and seemed to watch me with that kind of attention which indicated his expectation of something in the same kind of burlesque with theirs; I thought it time to press the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a side-table, which, when I had finished, and was called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith, with much agitation, besought me to spare him; and I was about to tear them, when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them at the table. I have now lost recollection of them, and, in fact, they were little worth remembering; but as they were serious and complimentary, the effect upon Goldsmith was the more pleasing for being so entirely unexpected. The concluding line, which was the only one I can call to mind, was:

"All mourn the poet, I lament the man.

"This I recollect, because he repeated it several times, and seemed much gratified by it. At our next meeting he produced his epitaphs ... and this was the last time he ever enjoyed the company of his friends."

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house, the predecessor of Button's, and even more celebrated than that coffee-house, was kept by William Urwin. It first had the title of the Red Cow, then of the Rose, and, we believe, is the same house alluded to in the pleasant story in the second number of the Tatler. "Supper and friends expect we at the Rose."

Dean Lockier has left this life-like picture of his interview with the presiding genius (Dryden) at Will's.

"I was about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. 'If anything of mine is good,' says he, ''tis 'Mac-Flecno', and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hearing this I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just loud enough to be heard, 'that "Mac-Flecno" was a very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing; asked me how long 'I had been a dealer in poetry'; and added, with a smile, 'Pray, Sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before?'—I named Boileau's 'Lutrin' and Tassoni's 'Secchia Rapita,' which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. ''Tis true,' said Dryden, 'I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation; went to see him accordingly; and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived."

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house was the open market for libels and lampoons, the latter named from the established burden formerly sung to them:

Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone.

There was a drunken fellow, named Julian, who was a characterless frequenter of Will's, and Sir Walter Scott has given this account of him and his vocation:

"Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he called himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors. 'He is described,' says Mr. Malone, 'as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel.'"

* * * * *

Tom Brown describes 'a Wit and a Beau set up with little or no expense. A pair of red stockings and a swordknot set up one, and peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or three second-hand sayings, the other.'

* * * * *

Pepys, one night, going to fetch home his wife, stopped in Covent Garden, at the Great Coffee-house there, as he called Will's, where he never was before: "Where," he adds, "Dryden, the poet (I knew at Cambridge), and all the Wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry, and, as it was late, they were all ready to go away."

Addison passed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined en famille, and then went to Will's, "only he came home earlier o' nights."

Pope, when very young, was impressed with such veneration for Dryden, that he persuaded some friends to take him to Will's Coffee-house, and was delighted that he could say that he had seen Dryden. Sir Charles Wogan, too, brought up Pope from the Forest of Windsor, to dress a la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee-house. Pope afterwards described Dryden as "a plump man with a down look, and not very conversible," and Cibber could tell no more "but that he remembered him a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes at Will's." Prior sings of—

The younger Stiles, Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's!

Most of the hostile criticism on his Plays, which Dryden has noticed in his various Prefaces, appear to have been made at his favourite haunt, Will's Coffee-house.

Dryden is generally said to have been returning from Will's to his house in Gerard Street, when he was cudgelled in Rose Street by three persons hired for the purpose by Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in the winter of 1679. The assault, or "the Rose-alley Ambuscade," certainly took place; but it is not so certain that Dryden was on his way from Will's, and he then lived in Long-acre, not Gerard Street.

It is worthy of remark that Swift was accustomed to speak disparagingly of Will's, as in his "Rhapsody on Poetry:"

Be sure at Will's the following day Lie snug, and hear what critics say; And if you find the general vogue Pronounces you a stupid rogue, Damns all your thoughts as low and little; Sit still, and swallow down your spittle.

Swift thought little of the frequenters of Will's: "he used to say, the worst conversation he ever heard in his life was at Will's Coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men who had writ plays or at least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them."

In the first number of the Tatler, poetry is promised under the article of Will's Coffee-house. The place, however, changed after Dryden's time: "you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game." "In old times, we used to sit upon a play here, after it was acted, but now the entertainment's turned another way."

The Spectator is sometimes seen "thrusting his head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences." Then, we have as an instance of no one member of human society but that would have some little pretension for some degree in it, "like him who came to Will's Coffee-house upon the merit of having writ a posie of a ring." And, "Robin, the porter who waits at Will's, is the best man in town for carrying a billet: the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town."

After Dryden's death, in 1701, Will's continued for about ten years to be still the Wits' Coffee-house, as we see by Ned Ward's account, and by the "Journey through England" in 1722.

Pope entered with keen relish into society, and courted the correspondence of the town wits and coffee-house critics. Among his early friends was Mr. Henry Cromwell, one of the cousinry of the Protector's family: he was a bachelor, and spent most of his time in London; he had some pretensions to scholarship and literature, having translated several of Ovid's Elegies, for Tonson's Miscellany. With Wycherly, Gay, Dennis, the popular actors and actresses of the day, and with all the frequenters of Will's, Cromwell was familiar. He had done more than take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box, which was a point of high ambition and honor at Will's; he had quarrelled with him about a frail poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, whom Dryden had christened Corinna, and who was also known as Sappho. Gay characterized this literary and eccentric beau as

Honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches:

it being his custom to carry his hat in his hand when walking with ladies. What with ladies and literature, rehearsals and reviews, and critical attention to the quality of his coffee and Brazil snuff, Henry Cromwell's time was fully occupied in town. Cromwell was a dangerous acquaintance for Pope at the age of sixteen or seventeen, but he was a very agreeable one. Most of Pope's letters to his friends are addressed to him at the Blue Hall, in Great Wild-street, near Drury Lane, and others to "Widow Hambledon's Coffee-house, at the end of Princes-street, near Drury-lane, London." Cromwell made one visit to Binfield; on his return to London, Pope wrote to him, "referring to the ladies in particular," and to his favorite coffee.

* * * * *

Will's was the great resort for the wits of Dryden's time, after whose death it was transferred to Button's. Pope describes the houses as "opposite each other, in Russell-street, Covent Garden," where Addison established Daniel Button, in a new house, about 1712; and his fame, after the production of Cato, drew many of the Whigs thither. Button had been servant to the Countess of Warwick. The house is more correctly described as "over against Tom's, near the middle of the south side of the street."

Addison was the great patron of Button's; but it is said that when he suffered any vexation from his Countess, he withdrew from Button's house. His chief companions, before he married Lady Warwick, were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonell Brett. He used to breakfast with one or other of them in St. James's-place, dine at taverns with them, then to Button's, and then to some tavern again, for supper in the evening; and this was the usual round of his life, as Pope tells us in Spencer's Anecdotes, where Pope also says: "Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's, dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me; it hurt my health, and so I quitted it." Again: "There had been a coldness between me and Mr. Addison for some time, and we had not been in company together for a good while anywhere but at Button's Coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day."

Here Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexicographer, that "a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put together."

Button's was the receiving house for contributions to The Guardian, for which purpose was put up a lion's head letter box, in imitation of the celebrated lion at Venice, as humorously announced. Thus:

"N.B.—Mr. Ironside has, within five weeks last past, muzzled three lions, gorged five, and killed one. On Monday next the skin of the dead one will be hung up, in terrorem, at Button's Coffee-house."

* * * * *

"I intend to publish once every week the roarings of the Lion, and hope to make him roar so loud as to be heard over all the British nation. I have, I know not how, been drawn into tattle of myself, more majorum, almost the length of a whole Guardian. I shall therefore fill up the remaining part of it with what still relates to my own person, and my correspondents. Now I would have them all know that on the 20th instant, it is my intention to erect a Lion's Head, in imitation of those I have described in Venice, through which all the private commonwealth is said to pass. This head is to open a most wide and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as are conveyed to me by my correspondents, it being my resolution to have a particular regard to all such matters as come to my hands through the mouth of the Lion. There will be under it a box, of which the key will be in my own custody, to receive such papers as are dropped into it. Whatever the Lion swallows I shall digest for the use of the publick. This head requires some time to finish, the workmen being resolved to give it several masterly touches, and to represent it as ravenous as possible. It will be set up in Button's Coffee-house, in Covent Garden, who is directed to show the way to the Lion's Head, and to instruct any young author how to convey his works into the mouth of it with safety and secrecy."

* * * * *

"I think myself obliged to acquaint the publick, that the Lion's Head, of which I advertised them about a fortnight ago, is now erected at Button's Coffee-house, in Russell-street, Covent Garden, where it opens its mouth at all hours for the reception of such intelligence as shall be thrown into it. It is reckoned an excellent piece of workmanship, and was designed by a great hand in imitation of the antique Egyptian lion, the face of it being compounded out of that of a lion and a wizard. The features are strong and well furrowed. The whiskers are admired by all that have seen them. It is planted on the western side of the Coffee-house, holding its paws under the chin, upon a box, which contains everything that he swallows. He is, indeed, a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws."

* * * * *

"Being obliged, at present, to attend a particular affair of my own, I do empower my printer to look into the arcana of the Lion, and select out of them such as may be of publick utility; and Mr. Button is hereby authorized and commanded to give my said printer free ingress and egress to the lion, without any hindrance, let, or molestation whatsoever, until such time as he shall receive orders to the contrary. And, for so doing, this shall be his warrant."

* * * * *

"My Lion, whose jaws are at all times open to intelligence, informs me that there are a few enormous weapons still in being; but that they are to be met with only in gaming houses and some of the obscure retreats of lovers, in and about Drury-lane and Covent Garden."

* * * * *

This memorable Lion's Head was tolerably well carved: through the mouth the letters were dropped into a till at Button's; and beneath were inscribed these two lines from Martial:

Cervantur magnis isti Cervicibus ungues; Non nisi delicta pascitur ille fera.

The head was designed by Hogarth, and is etched in Ireland's "Illustrations." Lord Chesterfield is said to have once offered for the Head fifty guineas. From Button's it was removed to the Shakspeare's Head Tavern, under the Piazza, kept by a person named Tomkyns; and in 1751, was, for a short time, placed in the Bedford Coffee-house immediately adjoining the Shakspeare, and there employed as a letter-box by Dr. John Hill, for his Inspector. In 1769, Tomkyns was succeeded by his waiter, Campbell, as proprietor of the tavern and lion's head, and by him the latter was retained until November 8, 1804, when it was purchased by Mr. Charles Richardson, of Richardson's Hotel, for 17L 10s., who also possessed the original sign of the Shakspeare's Head. After Mr. Richardson's death in 1827, the Lion's Head devolved to his son, of whom it was bought by the Duke of Bedford, and deposited at Woburn Abbey, where it still remains.

Pope was subjected to much annoyance and insult at Button's. Sir Samuel Garth wrote to Gay, that everybody was pleased with Pope's Translation, "but a few at Button's;" to which Gay adds, to Pope, "I am confirmed that at Button's your character is made very free with, as to morals, etc."



Cibber, in a letter to Pope, says: "When you used to pass your hours at Button's, you were even there remarkable for your satirical itch of provocation; scarce was there a gentleman of any pretension to wit, whom your unguarded temper had not fallen upon in some biting epigram, among which you once caught a pastoral Tartar, whose resentment, that your punishment might be proportionate to the smart of your poetry, had stuck up a birchen rod in the room, to be ready whenever you might come within reach of it; and at this rate you writ and rallied and writ on, till you rhymed yourself quite out of the coffee-house." The "pastoral Tartar" was Ambrose Philips, who, says Johnson, "hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to chastise Pope."

Pope, in a letter to Crags, thus explains the affair: "Mr. Philips did express himself with much indignation against me one evening at Button's Coffee-house (as I was told), saying that I was entered into a cabal with Dean Swift and others, to write against the Whig interest, and in particular to undermine his own reputation and that of his friends, Steele and Addison; but Mr. Philips never opened his lips to my face, on this or any like occasion, though I was almost every night in the same room with him, nor ever offered me any indecorum. Mr. Addison came to me a night or two after Philips had talked in this idle manner, and assured me of his disbelief of what had been said, of the friendship we should always maintain, and desired I would say nothing further of it. My Lord Halifax did me the honour to stir in this matter, by speaking to several people to obviate a false aspersion, which might have done me no small prejudice with one party. However, Philips did all he could secretly to continue to report with the Hanover Club, and kept in his hands the subscriptions paid for me to him, as secretary to that Club. The heads of it have since given him to understand, that they take it ill; but (upon the terms I ought to be with such a man) I would not ask him for this money, but commissioned one of the players, his equals, to receive it. This is the whole matter; but as to the secret grounds of this malignity, they will make a very pleasant history when we meet."

Another account says that the rod was hung up at the bar of Button's, and that Pope avoided it by remaining at home—"his usual custom." Philips was known for his courage and superior dexterity with the sword; he afterwards became justice of the peace, and used to mention Pope, whenever he could get a man in authority to listen to him, as an enemy to the Government.

At Button's the leading company, particularly Addison and Steele, met in large flowing flaxen wigs. Sir Godfrey Kneller, too, was a frequenter.

The master died in 1731, when in the Daily Advertiser, October 5 appeared the following:

"On Sunday morning, died, after three days' illness, Mr. Button, who formerly kept Button's Coffee-house, in Russell-street, Covent Garden: a very noted house for wits, being the place where the Lyon produced the famous Tatlers and Spectators, written by the late Mr. Secretary Addison and Sir Richard Steele, Knt., which works will transmit their names with honour to posterity."

* * * * *

Among other wits who frequented Button's were Swift, Arbuthnot, Savage, Budgell, Martin Folkes, and Drs. Garth and Armstrong. In 1720, Hogarth mentions "four drawings in Indian ink" of the characters at Button's Coffee-house. In these were sketches of Arbuthnot, Addison, Pope (as it is conjectured) and a certain Count Viviani, identified years afterwards by Horace Walpole, when the drawings came under his notice. They subsequently came into Ireland's possession.

Jemmy Maclaine, or M'Clean, the fashionable highwayman, was a frequent visitor at Button's. Mr. John Taylor, of the Sun newspaper, describes Maclaine as a tall, showy, good-looking man. A Mr. Donaldson told Taylor that, observing Maclaine paid particular attention to the barmaid of the Coffee-house, the daughter of the landlord, he gave a hint to the father of Maclaine's dubious character. The father cautioned the daughter against the highwayman's addresses, and imprudently told her by whose advice he put her on her guard; she as imprudently told Maclaine. The next time Donaldson visited the coffee-room, and sitting in one of the boxes, Maclaine entered, and in a loud tone said, "Mr. Donaldson, I wish to spake to you in a private room." Mr. D. being unarmed, and naturally afraid of being alone with such a man, said, in answer, that as nothing could pass between them that he did not wish the whole world to know, he begged leave to decline the invitation. "Very well," said Maclaine, as he left the room, "we shall meet again." A day or two after, as Mr. Donaldson was walking near Richmond, in the evening, he saw Maclaine on horseback; but fortunately, at that moment, a gentleman's carriage appeared in view, when Maclaine immediately turned his horse towards the carriage, and Donaldson hurried into the protection of Richmond as fast as he could. But for the appearance of the carriage, which presented better prey, it is possible that Maclaine would have shot Mr. Donaldson immediately.

Maclaine's father was an Irish Dean; his brother was a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the Hague. Maclaine himself had been a grocer in Welbeck-street, but losing a wife that he loved extremely, and by whom he had one little girl, he quitted his business with two hundred pounds in his pockets which he soon spent, and then took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary.

Maclaine was taken in the autumn of 1750, by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker in Monmouth-street, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. Maclaine impeached his companion, Plunket, but he was not taken. The former got into verse: Gray, in his "Long Story," sings: