We may here group the leading Coffee-houses,[8] the principal of which will be more fully described hereafter:
"Before 1715, the number of Coffee-houses in London was reckoned at two thousand. Every profession, trade, class, party, had its favourite Coffee-house. The lawyers discussed law or literature, criticized the last new play, or retailed the freshest Westminster Hall "bite" at Nando's or the Grecian, both close on the purlieus of the Temple. Here the young bloods of the Inns-of-Court paraded their Indian gowns and lace caps of a morning, and swaggered in their lace coats and Mechlin ruffles at night, after the theatre. The Cits met to discuss the rise and fall of stocks, and to settle the rate of insurance, at Garraway's or Jonathan's; the parsons exchanged university gossip, or commented on Dr. Sacheverel's last sermon at Truby's or at Child's in St. Paul's Churchyard; the soldiers mustered to grumble over their grievances at Old or Young Man's, near Charing Cross; the St. James's and the Smyrna were the head-quarters of the Whig politicians, while the Tories frequented the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, all in St. James's-street; Scotchmen had their house of call at Forrest's, Frenchmen at Giles's or Old Slaughter's, in St. Martin's-lane; the gamesters shook their elbows in White's and the Chocolate-houses round Covent Garden; the virtuosi honoured the neighbourhood of Gresham College; and the leading wits gathered at Will's, Button's, or Tom's, in Great Russell-street, where after the theatre was playing at piquet and the best of conversation till midnight. At all these places, except a few of the most aristocratic Coffee or Chocolate-houses of the West-End, smoking was allowed. A penny was laid down at the bar on entering, and the price of a dish of tea or coffee seems to have been two-pence: this charge covered newspapers and lights. The established frequenters of the house had their regular seats, and special attention from the fair lady at the bar, and the tea or coffee boys.
"To these Coffee-houses men of all classes, who had either leisure or money, resorted to spend both; and in them, politics, play, scandal, criticism, and business, went on hand-in-hand. The transition from Coffee-house to Club was easy. Thus Tom's, a Coffee-house till 1764, in that year, by a guinea subscription, among nearly seven hundred of the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age, became the place of meeting for the subscribers exclusively.[9] In the same way, White's and the Cocoa-tree changed their character from Chocolate-house to Club. When once a house had customers enough of standing and good repute, and acquainted with each other, it was quite worth while—considering the characters who, on the strength of assurance, tolerable manners, and a laced coat, often got a footing in these houses while they continued open to the public, to purchase power of excluding all but subscribers."
Thus, the chief places of resort were at this period Coffee and Chocolate-houses, in which some men almost lived, as they do at the present day, at their Clubs. Whoever wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not where he resided, but which coffee-house he frequented. No decently attired idler was excluded, provided he laid down his penny at the bar; but this he could seldom do without struggling through the crowd of beaux who fluttered round the lovely bar-maid. Here the proud nobleman or country squire was not to be distinguished from the genteel thief and daring highwayman. "Pray, sir," says Aimwell to Gibbet, in Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem, "ha'n't I seen your face at Will's Coffee-house?" The robber's reply is: "Yes, Sir, and at White's too."
Three of Addison's papers in the Spectator, (Nos. 402, 481, and 568,) are humorously descriptive of the Coffee-houses of this period. No. 403 opens with the remark that "the courts of two countries do not so much differ from one another, as the Court and the City, in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside, who are likewise removed from those of the Temple on the one side, and those of Smithfield on the other, by several climates and degrees in their way of thinking and conversing together." For this reason, the author takes a ramble through London and Westminster, to gather the opinions of his ingenious countrymen upon a current report of the King of France's death. "I know the faces of all the principal politicians within the bills of mortality; and as every Coffee-house has some particular statesman belonging to it, who is the mouth of the street where he lives, I always take care to place myself near him, in order to know his judgment on the present posture of affairs. And, as I foresaw, the above report would produce a new face of things in Europe, and many curious speculations in our British Coffee-houses, I was very desirous to learn the thoughts of our most eminent politicians on that occasion.
"That I might begin as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of all called in at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics; the speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room, and were so much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner room, within the steams of the coffee-pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbons provided for in less than a quarter of an hour.
"I afterwards called in at Giles's, where I saw a board of French gentlemen sitting upon the life and death of their grand monarque. Those among them who had espoused the Whig interest very positively affirmed that he had departed this life about a week since, and therefore, proceeded without any further delay to the release of their friends in the galleys, and to their own re-establishment; but, finding they could not agree among themselves, I proceeded on my intended progress.
"Upon my arrival at Jenny Man's I saw an alert young fellow that cocked his hat upon a friend of his, who entered just at the same time with myself, and accosted him after the following manner: 'Well, Jack, the old prig is dead at last. Sharp's the word. Now or never, boy. Up to the walls of Paris, directly;' with several other deep reflections of the same nature.
"I met with very little variation in the politics between Charing Cross and Covent Garden. And, upon my going into Will's, I found their discourse was gone off, from the death of the French King, to that of Monsieur Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other poets, whom they regretted on this occasion as persons who would have obliged the world with very noble elegies on the death of so great a prince, and so eminent a patron of learning.