ENCHANTING COFFEE
A perfectly wise man is he who is fully expert and skilful in the true use of sensualities, as in all other duties belonging to life. In the household where wisdom rules, dinner, from savoury hors d'œuvre to aromatic coffee, will be without reproach—or suspicion. The foolish devote their powers to this course or that, and in one supreme but ill-advised endeavour exhaust their every resource. Invention carries them no further than the soul; even discreet imitation cannot pilot them beyond the entrée. With each succeeding dish their folly becomes more obvious, until it culminates in the coffee, which, instead of the divine elixir it should be, proves but a vile, degrading concoction of chicory. Here is the chief among gastronomic tests; the hostess who knows not how to prepare a cup of coffee that will bring new light to her guests' eyes, new gaiety to their talk, is not worthy to receive them; the guest, who does not know good coffee when it is set before him deserves to be cast into outer darkness and fed for evermore upon brimstone and treacle. Better far throw pearls before swine, than pour good coffee into the cups of the indifferent.
The sympathies of the gourmand are all for the mighty ones of old—for an Epicurus in Greece, a Lucullus in Rome—to whom the gods had not yet given the greatest of their gifts, coffee. Sad indeed the banquet, dreamy the evening uncheered, unblessed by fragrant Mocha or mild Mysore. Poor mortals still stood without the gates of Paradise, never once foreseeing the exquisite joys to come, unconscious of the penalty they paid for living so much too soon. And while they thus dwelt in sorrowful ignorance, shepherds, leading their flocks through sweet pasture-land, paused in their happy singing to note that the little kids and lambs, and even staid goats and sheep, waxed friskier and merrier, and frolicked with all the more light-hearted abandonment after they had browsed upon a certain berry-bearing bush. Thyme and lavender, mint and marjoram, never thus got into their little legs, and sent them flying off on such jolly rambles and led them into such unseemly antics. And the shepherds, no doubt, plucked the berry and tasted it, and found it good. And one day—who knows how?—by chance, they roasted it, and the fragrance was as incense in their nostrils. And then, another time they pounded it, and, it may be by merest accident, it fell into the water boiling over the fire for their midday meal. And thus, first, coffee was made.
To Abyssinia, otherwise an unknown factor in the history of good living, belongs the credit of producing the first coffee-drinkers. All honour where honour is due. The debt of the modern to Greece and Rome is smaller far than to that remote country which not one man in ten, to whom coffee is a daily necessity, could point out upon the map.
Arabs, wandering hither and thither, came to Abyssinia as they journeyed, and there drank the good drink and rejoiced. Among them were pious Moslems, who at times nodded over prayers, and, yawning pitifully as texts were murmured by lazy lips, knew that damnation must be their doom unless sleep were banished from their heavy eyes at prayer time. And to them as to the sheep and lambs, as to the goats and kids, the wonder-working berry brought wakefulness and gaiety. And into Arabia the Happy, they carried it in triumph, and coffee was drunk not for temporal pleasure but for spiritual uses. It kept worshippers awake and alert for the greater glory of Allah, and the faithful accepted it with praise and thanksgiving.
But, again, like the flocks in Abyssinian pastures, it made them too alert, it seems. After coffee, prayer grew frolicsome, and a faction arose to call it an intoxicant, to declare the drinking of it a sin against the Koran. Schisms followed, and heresies, and evils dire and manifold. But coffee fought a good fight against its enemies and its detractors; and from Arabia it passed to Constantinople, from Turkey to England, and so on from country to country, until in the end there was not one in Europe, or in the New World (which men had not then so long discovered), but had welcomed the berry that clears the clouded brain and stimulates the jaded body.
To all men its finest secrets have not been revealed. Dishonoured by many it has been and still is. Unspeakable liquids, some thick and muddy, others thin and pale, borrow its name with an assurance and insolence that fool the ignorant. Chicory arrogantly and unscrupulously pretends to compete with it, and the thoughtless are deceived, and go their way through life obdurate and unrepentant, deliberately blinding themselves to the truth. Others understand not the hour and the place, and order it at strange moments and for stranger functions. Americans there be who, from thick, heavy, odious cups, drink it, plentifully weakened with milk, as the one proper and fit accompaniment for dinner; a spoonful of coffee follows a spoonful of soup; another is prelude to the joint; a second cup poisons the sweet. On the other hand, be it admitted in fairness, no coffee is purer and better than that of the American who has not fallen into such mistaken courses. And he who doubts should, without delay, drop in at Fuller's in Regent Street, or the Strand, where to taste is to believe.
In the afternoon, plump German matrons and maids gather about the coffee-pot, and fancy, poor souls! that they, of all womankind, are most discriminating in their choice of time and opportunity. Gossip flows smoothly on; household matters are placidly discussed; and the one and only end of coffee remains for them, now and always, unknown and unsuspected. In their blameless innocence and guileless confidence, may they have whatever happiness belongs by right to the race of humble and unaspiring housewives.
In England the spurious is preferred to the genuine; and rare, indeed, is the house or restaurant, the hotel or lodgings, where good coffee is the portion of blundering humanity. Over the barbarous depths into which the soul-inspiriting berry has been dragged in unhappy Albion, it is kinder to draw a veil.