No man was better qualified to do so, for the “specialty” of Will’s Coffee-house was poetry. Songs, epigrams, and satires, circulated from table to table; and the wits judged plays, even Dryden’s, until the playwrights began to satirize the wits. With Dryden, “Will’s” lost some of its dignity. Late hours, card-playing, and politics; poets more didactic in their verse, and essayists more instructive in their prose, than in their daily practice; “dissipateurs” like Addison, and peers who shared in Addison’s lower tastes, without either his talent or occasional refinement,—spoiled the character of “Will’s,” where, by the way, Pope had been introduced by Sir Charles Wogan, though, years before, in his youth, he had been proud to follow old Wycherley about from coffee-house to coffee-house; and then “Button’s” attracted the better portion of the company, and left Will’s to the vulgar and the witless.
“Button’s” Coffee-house was so named from its original proprietor, who had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, the wife of Addison. It was situated in Great Russell-street, on the south side, about two doors from Covent Garden. What Dryden had been at “Will’s,” Addison was at “Button’s.” There,—after writing during the morning at his house in St. James’s Place, where his breakfast-table was attended by such men as Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, with some of whom he generally dined at a tavern,—he was to be found of an evening, until the supper hour called him and his companions to some other tavern, where, if not at Button’s, they made a night of it. Pope was of the company for almost a year, but left it because the late hours injured his health; and furthermore, perhaps, for the reason, that his irritable temper had rendered him unpopular, and that he had so provoked Ambrose Philips, that the latter suspended a birchen rod over Pope’s usual seat, in intimation of what the ordinary occupant would get if he ventured into it. The Buttonians were famous for the fierceness of their criticism, but it appears to have been altogether a better organized establishment than Will’s; for while the parish registers show that the landlord of the latter was fined for misdemeanour, the vestry-books of St. Paul (Covent Garden), prove that Button paid “for two places in the pew No. 18, on the south side of the north aisle, £2. 2s.;” and charity leads us to conclude that Daniel and his wife occupied the places so paid for, and were orthodox as well as loyal. The “Lion’s Head” of the “Guardian,” which was put up at Button’s, over the box destined to receive contributions for the editor, is now at Woburn, in the possession of the Duke of Bedford.
Of coffee-houses that went by the name of “Tom’s” there were three. At the one in Birchin-lane, Garrick occasionally appeared among the young merchants; and Chatterton, before despair slew even ambition, more than once dined. At the second house so called, in Devereux-court, many of the scholars, critics, and scientific men of the last century used to congregate. There Akenside essayed to rule over the tables as Dryden had done at “Will’s,” and Addison at “Button’s;” but his imperious rule was often overthrown by “flat rebellion.” The “Tom’s” was opposite “Button’s,” and stood on the north side of Great Russell-street, No. 17. It received its name from the Christian appellation of its master, Thomas West, who committed suicide in 1722. If guests gained celebrity in the latter days at “Will’s” for writing a “posie for a ring,” so at “Tom’s” Mr. Ince was held in due respect, for the reason that he had composed a solitary paper for the “Spectator.” It was a place where the tables were generally crowded from the time of Queen Anne to that of George III. Seven hundred of the nobility, foreign Ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age, subscribed a guinea each, in 1714, for the erection of a card-room; and this fact, with the additional one that, only four years later, an enlarged room for cards and conversation was constructed, may serve to show by what sort of people, and for what particular purposes, “Tom’s” was patronized.
At the time that White’s Chocolate-house was opened at the bottom of St. James’s-street,—the close of the last century,—it was probably thought vulgar; for there was a garden attached, and it had a suburban air. At the tables in the house or garden more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly mounted his horse and rode slowly down Piccadilly towards Bagshot. Before the establishment was burned down, in 1733, it was famous rather for intensity of gaming than excellence of chocolate. It arose from its ashes, and settled, at the top of the street, into a fixedness of fashion that has never swerved. Gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment were the characteristics of the place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield there “gamed, and pronounced witticisms among the boys of quality.” Steele dated all his love-news in the “Tatler” from White’s. It was stigmatized as “the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies;” and bets were laid to the effect that Sir William Burdett, one of its members, would be the first Baronet who would be hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between his official table and the picquet-table at White’s. Selwyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the room with his wit. As a sample of the spirit of betting which prevailed, Walpole quotes “a good story made at White’s.” A man dropped down dead at the door, and was carried in; the Club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and, when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet!
Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in “table traits.” Thus, in 1736, every member was required to pay an extra guinea a year “towards having a good cook.” The supper was on table at ten o’clock; the bill at twelve. In 1758, it was agreed that he who transgressed the rules for balloting should pay the supper reckoning. In 1797 we find, “Dinner at 10s. 6d. per head, (malt liquor, biscuits, oranges, apples, and olives included,) to be on table at six o’clock; the bill to be brought at nine.” “That no hot suppers be provided, unless particularly ordered; and then be paid for at the rate of 8s. per head. That in one of the rooms there be laid every night (from the Queen’s to the King’s birthday) a table, with cold meat, oysters, &c. Each person partaking thereof to pay 4s., malt liquors only included.”
Colley Cibber was a member, but, as it would seem, an honorary one only, who dined with the Manager of the Club, and was tolerated afterwards by the company for the sake of his wit. Mr. Cunningham states, that at the supper given by the Club in 1814, at Burlington House, to the Allied Sovereigns, there were covers laid for 2,400 people, and that the cost was “£9,849. 2s. 6d.” “Three weeks after this, (July 6, 1814,) the Club gave a dinner to the Duke of Wellington, which cost £2,840. 10s. 9d.” The dinner given, in the month of February of the present year, to Prince George of Cambridge, was one not to welcome a victorious warrior, but to cheer an untried, about to go forth to show himself worthy of his spurs. White’s ceased to be an open Chocolate-house in 1736, from which period it has been as private an establishment as a Club can be said to be.
The politicians had their coffee-houses as well as the wits. The “Cocoa Tree,” in St. James’s-street, was the Tory house in the reign of Queen Anne. The “St. James’s” was the Whig house. It was a well-frequented house in the latter days of George II., when Gibbon recorded his surprise at seeing a score or two of the noblest and wealthiest in the land, seated in a noisy coffee-room, at little tables covered by small napkins, supping off cold meat or sandwiches, and finishing with strong punch and confused politics.
The St. James’s Coffee-house ranked Addison, Swift, Steele, and, subsequently, Goldsmith and Garrick, among its habitués. It had a more solid practical reputation than any of the other coffee-houses; for within its walls Goldsmith’s poem of “Retaliation” originated. But politics was its “staple;” and poor politicians seem to have been among its members, seeing that many of them were in arrears with their subscriptions: but these were probably the outer-room men; for the magnates, who were accustomed to sit and watch the line of Bourbon, within the steam of the great coffee-pot, were doubtless punctual in their payments ere they could have earned the privilege. And yet their poetical acumen was often more correct than their political discernment; for while the company at Button’s ascribed the “Town Eclogues” to Gay, the coffee-drinkers at St. James’s were unanimous in giving them to a lady of quality.
Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the “Bedford,” in Covent Garden, was probably the first; but, for good-fellowship, it equalled any of the more exclusive houses; for Garrick, and Quin, and Murphy, and Foote, were of the company. Wit was the serious occupation of all its members; and it never gave any of them serious trouble to produce in abundance. Quin, above all, was brilliant in the double achievements of Epicureanism and sparkling repartee. Garrick, in allusion to the sentiments often expressed here by his brother actor, wrote the epigrammatic lines, supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference to a discussion on embalming the dead, and which will be found in a subsequent chapter, under the head of “Table Traits of the last Century.”
Æsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin was to George the Third,—he “taught the boy to speak,”—Æsopus was as great an epicure, in his way, as Quin himself. It is related of him, that one day he dined off a costly dish of birds, the whole of which, when living, had been taught either to sing or speak. Æsopus was as fond of such a dish as his fellow-comedian, Quin, was of mullet; for which, and for some other of his favourite morceaux, he used to say that a man ought to have a swallow as long as from London to Botany Bay, and palate all the way! When the fish in question was in season, his first inquiry of the servant who used to awaken him was, “Is there any mullet in the market this morning, John?” and if John replied in the negative, his master’s reported rejoinder was, “Then call me at nine to-morrow, John.”