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.



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.



CHAPTER 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.