III.
OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES.
A comparatively small room, considering it was one for public use, with dingy walls, a grimy ceiling, a sanded floor, boxes with upright backs and narrow seats, wooden chairs, liquor-stained tables, lighted up in the evening with smoky lamps or guttering candles, the whole room reeking with tobacco like a guard-room—such was the coffee-house of the later Stuart and the whole Georgian periods. Its distinctive article of furniture was spittoons. In such dens did the noblemen, in flowing wigs and embroidered coats, parsons in cassocks and bands, physicians in sable suits and tremendous perukes, together with broken-down gamesters, swindlers, country yokels, and out-at-elbows literary and theatrical adventurers, meet, not only for pleasure, but for business too. Dr. Radcliffe, who in 1685 had the largest practice in London, was daily to be seen at Garraway's, now demolished, its site being included in Martin's bank; and another favourite resort of doctors hereby was Batson's, where, as the 'Connoisseur' says, 'the dispensers of life and death flock together, like birds of prey watching for carcases. I never enter this place but it serves as a memento mori to me.... Batson's has been reckoned the seat of solemn stupidity.'
Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of customers. St. Paul's, for instance, was patronized by the clergy, both by those with fat livings and by 'battered crapes,' who plied there for an occasional burial or sermon. Dick's was frequented by members of the Temple, with whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept the house, were great favourites; wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a comedy, called 'The Coffee-House,' in which the ladies were thought to be indicated—the engraver having unfortunately fixed upon Dick's Coffee-House as the frontispiece scene—the Templars attended the first representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. Button's, in Covent Garden, was the resort of Addison and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of Savage and Davenant—in fact, of the wits of the time. At this house was the lion's head through whose mouth letters were dropped for the Tatlers and Spectators. The head was afterwards transferred to the Bedford Coffee-House, under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was purchased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn Abbey; Bedford's was the successor of Button's, and is described in the 'Memoirs' of it as having been signalized for many years as 'the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.' In 1659 was founded the Rota Club by James Charrington, a political writer, and its members met at Miles's, in Old Palace Yard. Pepys attended one of its meetings on January 10, 1659-60. It was a kind of debating-society for the dissemination of Republican opinions. Coffee-houses, indeed, at that period became important political institutions. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper then existed; in consequence, these houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion vented itself, and so threatening to the Court did, in course of time, their influence appear, that on December 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee-houses, 'because in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of disaffected persons in them, diverse false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty's Government, and to the disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm.' The opinions of the judges were taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently reported 'that retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, but as it was used to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalize great men, it might also be a common nuisance.' On a petition of the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea, permission was granted to keep open the coffee-houses until June 24 next, under an admonition that 'the masters of them should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them.' This, of course, was a huge joke on the part of the Cabal, who thus constituted the concoctors and dispensers of 'dishes'—to use the hideous word then employed—of coffee and tea censors and licensers of books, and judges of the truth or falsehood of political opinions and intelligence. After that no more was heard of the matter, and the coffee-houses remained political debating clubs, as is proved by the remarks on them in the Spectator and similar publications. See, for instance, Nos. 403, 476, 481, 521, etc.
The first London coffee-house was set up by one Bowman, coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant. Others say that Mr. Edwards brought over with him a Ragusa servant, Pasqua Rosee, who was associated with Bowman in establishing the first coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. But the partners soon quarrelled. They parted, and Bowman opened a coffee-house in St. Michael's Churchyard, from which we may infer that the public took to the new drink. Rosee issued handbills headed: 'The vertue of the coffee-drink. First made and publicly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.' The original of one of them is preserved in the British Museum. It is generally said that the second coffee-house in London was that established as the Rainbow (now a tavern) in Fleet Street, by one Fair, a barber, in the year 1657. In the Mercurius Politicus of September 30, 1658, an advertisement appeared, setting forth the virtues of the then equally new beverage, namely, tcha, or tay, or tee, which was sold at the Sultaness Head Cophee-house, in Sweeting's Rents, by the Royal Exchange. We thus see that as early as 1658 there were already three coffee-houses in London. But coffee met with opponents. The vintners called it 'sooty drink'; lampooners said it undermined virile power, and that to drink it was to ape the Turks and insult one's canary-drinking ancestors. Fair, the founder of the Rainbow, already mentioned, was indicted for 'making and selling a sort of liquor, called coffee, whereby in making it he annoyed his neighbours by evil smells, and for keeping of fire for the most part night and day, to the great danger and affrightment of his neighbours.' But Farr stood his ground, and in time became a person of importance in the parish, and coffee-houses multiplied. Cornhill and its purlieus were full of them. There were the Great Turk, Sword Blade, Rainbow, Garraway, Jerusalem, Tom's, and Weston's Coffee-Houses in Exchange Alley alone; in St. Michael's Alley, close by, there were, besides Rosee's, Williams's, and other coffee-houses. They also, as we have seen, had been established further west than the City, and they were also, as already mentioned, places of rendezvous, where appointments were made, where lawyers met clients, and doctors patients, merchants their customers, clerks their masters, where farce-writers, journalists, politicians, and literary hacks went to pick up ideas, and, as it was then called, watch, and if they could, catch the humours of the town. The Spectator, in his very first number, acknowledges his indebtedness to coffee-houses. 'There is no place of general resort,' he says, 'wherein I do not often make my appearance. Sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's (on the north side of Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street), and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's (St. Paul's Churchyard), and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's (the famous Whig coffee-house from the time of Queen Anne to late in the reign of George III.), and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve.'
There was another Will's in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was also a haunt of the Spectator, as were the other coffee-houses in that neighbourhood. He says in his ninety-ninth number: 'I do not know that I meet in any of my walks objects which move both my spleen and laughter so effectually as these young fellows at the Grecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness.' It appears that it was usual to resort to the coffee-house as early as six o'clock in the morning. In 'Moser's Vestiges,' Will's is thus referred to: 'All the beaux that used to breakfast in the coffee-houses and taverns appendant to the Inns of Court struck their morning strokes in an elegant déshabille, which was carelessly confined by a sash of yellow, red, blue, green, etc., according to the taste of the wearer. The idle fashion was not quite worn out in 1765. We can remember having seen some of these early loungers in their nightgowns, caps, etc., at Will's, Lincoln's Inn Gate, about that period.'
But the coffee-houses were not all for beer and skittles only. In the City especially, the business of the City, and of England, in fact, was transacted in them. Merchants and other business people, professional men, brokers, agents, had not then their private offices, which could only be reached through the ante-den of quill-driving cerberi, milgo clerks. All the transactions of daily life were then largely carried on in public, as they are in all communities, until they arrive at a high state of civilization. Even now among the peasantry of various European countries a man cannot have his child christened without the ceremony being rendered a public spectacle. And so here in England, in the barbarous days of dingy and musty coffee-houses, they were consulting-rooms, offices, counting-houses, auction-rooms, and shops. When the business was done, or in order to further it, refreshments of all sorts were handy, for the coffee-house did not confine itself to that innocent beverage, but supplied stronger stuffs; it was, in fact, a tavern, and many of the houses, now openly so called, were formerly coffee-houses. And the business transacted at them was, as may be imagined, of the most varied character. Agents for the purchase or sale of estates, houses and other property, instead of seeing people at their offices, met them at coffee-houses. Thus one Thomas Rogers advertised that he gave attendance daily at the Rainbow by the Temple; on Tuesdays at Tom's, by the Exchange, and on Thursdays at Will's, near Whitehall, for transacting agency business. This was legitimate enough, but what of the sale of human flesh at a coffee-house? In 1708 an advertisement appeared: 'A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee-house, in Finch-lane.' And again, in 1728: 'To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire at the Virginia Coffee-house, Threadneedle-street.' Sometimes the keeper of the coffee-house sold goods on account of others; thus from an advertisement in the Postman, January, 1705, we learn that Mr. Shipton, at John's Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, sold someone's famous razor strops. The landlords of those places, indeed, seem to have been very accommodating, especially in the taking in of letters, thus anticipating the practice of modern newspaper shops. And they were not squeamish as to the advertisements, answers to which were to be sent to them. Thus a gentleman (?) in the General Advertiser, October, 1745, expressed a wish to hear from a lady he had seen in one of the left-hand boxes at Drury Lane, and who seemed to take particular notice of a gentleman who sat about the middle of the pit (the advertiser, of course). Letter to be left for 'P.M.F.', at the Portugal Coffee-house, near the Exchange. In 1762 a young man advertised for his mother, 'who, in 1740, resided at a certain village near Bath, where she was delivered of a son, whom she left with a sum of money under the care of a person in the same parish, and promised to fetch him at a certain age, but has not since been heard of ... if living, she is asked to send a letter to "J.E.", at the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard ... this advertisement is published by the person himself [i.e., the son, born near Bath] not from motives of necessity, or to court any assistance (he being by a series of happy circumstances possessed of an easy and independent fortune).' It would, I fancy, be difficult at the present day to find anyone, having a reputation of any note to keep up, willing to receive answers to such an advertisement, which, if it was not a fraud, looked terribly like an attempt at one. It happened in those days, as it occasionally does now, that the estates of gentlemen who married late in life passed away to remote branches; the 'young gentleman' had no doubt reflected on this subject. The Turk's Head seems, to judge by advertisements, to have been somewhat heathenish. Here is another advertisement, also from the Morning Post, answers to which it took in: 'Whereas there are ladies, who have £2,000, £3,000, or £4,000 at their command, and who, from not knowing how to dispose of the same to the greatest advantage ... afford them but a scanty maintenance ... the advertiser (who is a gentleman of independent fortune, strict honour and character, and above reward) acquaints such ladies that if they will favour him with their name and address ... he will put them into a method by which they may, without any trouble, and with an absolute certainty, place out their money, so as to produce them a clear interest of 10 or 12 per cent.... on good and safe securities. Direct to "R.J.," Esq., at the Turk's Head Coffee-house, Strand.' We pity any lady who fell into the clutches of this 'gentleman of independent fortune'! And how the Turk's Head must have grinned when answers to 'R.J.' arrived! About the same time a gentleman advertised that he knew a method, which reduced it almost to a certainty to win a considerable sum by insuring numbers in the lottery. For ten guineas the gentleman was prepared to 'discover the plan.' Answers to be sent to the York Coffee-house, St. James's Street. Another gentleman is willing to lend £3,000 to anyone having sufficient interest to procure him a Government appointment, worth £200 or £300 per annum. Answers to this were to be sent to the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's. To some of the coffee-houses it would seem porters were attached, ready to run errands for customers, or the outside public; some of them seem to have earned a reputation of a certain character. Thus Cynthio (Spectator, No. 398) employs Robin, the porter, who waits Will's Coffee-house, to take a letter to Flavia. 'Robin, you must know,' we are told, 'is the best man in the town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town ... the fellow covers his knowledge of the nature of his messages with the most exquisite low humour imaginable; the first he obliged Flavia to take was by complaining to her that he had a wife and three children, and if she did not take that letter, which he was sure there was no harm in, but rather love, his family must go supperless to bed, for the gentleman would pay him according as he did his business.' He would seem to have been a mild Leporello.
We find the cheapness of living at coffee-houses frequently extolled in the publications and conversations of the day in which they were most flourishing. An Irish painter, whom Johnson knew, declared that £30 a year was enough to enable a man to live in London, without being contemptible. He allowed £10 for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at 1s. 6d. a week; few people would inquire where he lodged, and if they did, it was easy to say: 'Sir, you will find me at such and such a place'—just as nowadays impecunious swells, who live in garrets, manage to keep up their club subscription, and give as their address that of the club. By spending threepence at a coffee-house, Johnson's Irish painter further argued, a man might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day the painter went out to pay visits, as Swift also did.
With regard to the persons employed in a coffee-house, we learn from one advertisement: 'To prevent all mistakes 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 caterer of messages and first coffee-grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel Bardock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird.'
Well, the coffee-houses are things of the past; a few survive as taverns. What may be considered as their successors are called coffee-shops, patronized by working-men chiefly, but the 'humours' are of the tamest description; they may supply statistics to temperance apostles, but no literary entertainment to the public.