Coffee and chicory

by P. L. Simmonds

From Turkey coffee found its way to Europe. It came in use in England before either tea or chocolate. A Turkey merchant of London, of the name of Edwards, is said to have brought the first bag of coffee to England, and his Greek servant to have made the first dish of English coffee about 1652. But it is stated in the Life of Wood, the antiquary, that “in 1651, one Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxon; and there it was, by some who delighted in noveltie, drunk. When he left Oxon, he sold it in Old Southampton-buildings, in Holborne, near London, and was living there in 1671.”

Coffee-houses were soon after opened in various parts of the metropolis, as also in other parts of the kingdom, for vending it. The excise officers visited the coffee-houses at fixed periods, and took an account of the number of gallons of the liquid that were made, upon which a duty of 4d. per gallon was charged until 1689.

Three years after the first introduction of coffee upon the statute books, the increase of houses for its sale had become so great, that by the Act passed in 1663, “For the better ordering and collecting the duty of excise, and preventing the abuses therein” (15 Chas. II., cap. 11, sect. 15), express provision is made for the licensing of all coffee-houses at the quarter sessions, under a penalty of 5l. for every month during which any person should retail coffee, chocolate, or tea, without having first procured such license from the magistrates. From that time to the revolution, coffee-houses multiplied so rapidly that, when Ray published his “History of Plants” in 1688, he estimated that the coffee-houses in London were at that time as numerous as in Cairo itself; whilst similar places of accommodation were to be met with in all the principal cities and towns in England.

There are now in London alone more than 1500 coffee-houses, besides confectioners’ shops, and other places where coffee is vended.

For half a century at least Arabia furnished all the coffee that Europe consumed, which, therefore, must have been very trifling. It was, in fact, long the luxury of a few fashionable people, with whom, however, it must have been in general use sixty years after its introduction, as we find from the well-known passage of the “Rape of the Lock,” published in 1712, in which politicians are described as seeing through it “with half-shut eyes.”

Le Grand d’Aussy, in his “Vie Privée des Français,” gives a curious and interesting account of the first introduction of the use of coffee in France. As early as 1658 some merchants of Marseilles introduced the use of coffee into that city, and Thévenot, after his return from his Eastern travels, about the year 1658, regaled his guests with coffee after dinner.

“This, however,” says Le Grand, “was but the eccentricity of a traveller, which would not come into fashion among such a people as the Parisians. To bring coffee into credit, some extraordinary and striking circumstance was necessary. This circumstance occurred on the arrival, in 1669, of an embassy from the Grand Seigneur Mahomet IV. to Louis XIV. Soliman Aga, chief of the mission, having passed six months in the capital, and during his stay having acquired the friendship of the Parisians by some traits of wit and gallantry, several persons of distinction, chiefly women, had the curiosity to visit him at his house. The manner in which he received them not only inspired a wish to renew the visit, but induced others to follow their example. He caused coffee to be served to his guests, according to the custom of his country; for since fashion had introduced the custom of serving this beverage among the Turks, civility demanded that it should be offered to visitors, as well as that those should not decline partaking of it. If a Frenchman, in a similar case, to please the ladies, had presented to them this black and bitter liquor, he would be rendered for ever ridiculous. But the beverage was served by a Turk—a gallant Turk—and this was sufficient to give it inestimable value. Besides, before the palate could judge, the eyes were seduced by the display of elegance and neatness which accompanied it, by those brilliant porcelain cups into which it was poured, by napkins with gold fringes, on which it was served to the ladies; add to this the furniture, the dresses, and the foreign customs, the strangeness of addressing the host through the interpreter, being seated on the ground, on tiles, &c., and you will allow that there was more than enough to turn the heads of French women. Leaving the hotel of the ambassador with an enthusiasm easily imagined, they hastened to their acquaintances, to speak of the coffee of which they had partaken; and Heaven only knows to what a degree they were excited.”

The extravagant price of coffee, notwithstanding that the fashion of drinking it was established, prevented it from coming into general use. It was only to be had, according to Le Grand, at Marseilles, and even there not in any quantity. Labat, quoted by him, states that the price at this time was the enormous one of forty crowns a pound. In 1672, an Armenian opened in Paris the first coffee-house, on the plan of those he had seen at Constantinople. Pascal was followed by a crowd of imitators, whose numbers became so great in 1676, that it was found necessary to form them into a society by statute.

As to the European names of coffee, they are all, observes Mr. Crawfurd, from the same source, the old Arabic word for wine, kăhwăh, which is composed of a very guttural k, unpronounceable by Europeans, except by an awkward effort, of the labial w, and of two short vowels ă, with an aspirate at the end of each syllable. The Turks have changed the labial w into v, and the European nations, who took the word directly from them, have corrupted the word by converting the labial v into the labial f, by substituting an ordinary k or hard c for the Arabic guttural, by omitting both the aspirates, and by converting the last short ă into ĕ, or as with ourselves, always the greatest corruptors of orthography, changing both the vowels.

The Mahomedans distinguish three kinds of kăhwăh—wine, or anything that inebriates; the extract from the pulp which contains the coffee-berry; and that from the berry itself. The deep brown colour of the liquor occasioned its being called the syrup of the Indian mulberry, under which specious name it first became fashionable in Europe; and some who imported the pulp called it the “flower of the coffee-tree,” but it failed in use. Coffee is used in vast quantities by the Turks and Arabians, and with peculiar propriety, as it counteracts the narcotic effects of opium, to the use of which they are so much addicted.