“Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum naturalium Palmæ attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hæc arbor non facile crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore aliquo conveniente irrigetur.”[355]

The Cocoa Tree was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that beverage was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous was in St James’ Street; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a Tory house:—“A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda’s, [another chocolate-house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St James’.”[356] Deep play was the order of the day in that as in all other fashionable resorts at the end of the last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to one of his friends:—

“Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand pounds. Mr O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said, ‘You can never pay me?’ ‘I can,’ said the youth, ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ said O., ‘I will win ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.’ They did, and Harvey won.”[357]

It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Roger North, attorney-general to James II., says,—

“The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention called Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all the quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of wh—— seldom fails: as if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of discipline.”[358]

Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Rauch wrote a treatise against that beverage and the monks. In England, however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it was advertised as a new drink:—

“IN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates.”[359]

It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its first introduction. Mme. de Sévigné, in her letters, gives many proofs of it; at one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as a perfect panacea, at other times she is as violently against it, and puts it down as the root of all evil.

The Coffee House is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in Chalton Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this neighbourhood was a delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower gardens. A short distance down the hill was the then famous Bagnigge Wells, and close by were the remains of Totten-Hall, with the Adam and Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John’s Palace. Many foreign Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this suburb, on account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for the small houses. “The Coffee House” was then the popular tea and coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant city. There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at hand, but the specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the traffic increased, it became a posting-house, uniting the business of an inn to the profits of a pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee fell off, and that for malt and spirituous liquors increased. At present the gardens are all built over, and the old gateway forms part of the modern bar; but there are aged persons in the neighbourhood who remember Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic parties from the crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.

The Holly Bush is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among the London trades tokens there is one of the Hand and Holly Bush at Templebar, evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, “on the north side, and about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near the church.”[360] This combination with the hand does not seem to have any very distinct meaning, and apparently arose simply from the manner of representing objects in those days, as being held by a hand issuing from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like some others of our old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the streets also appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that