Nearly every literary man of that time had his favourite coffee-house.
George’s, at No. 213 Strand, near Temple Bar, was the resort of Shenstone, who found it an economical place. Probably it was for this reason that the eccentric Sir James Lowther, a very rich man, but penurious, also went there. On his first visit he got the proprietors to change a piece of silver in order to pay twopence for his coffee. A few days later he returned expressly to tell the woman that she had given him a bad halfpenny, and demanded another in exchange for it.
Clients of this coffee-house could read pamphlets and papers for a very moderate subscription.
London hours were very different in those days. Three o’clock, or at latest four, was the dining hour of the most fashionable people, for in the country no such late hours had been adopted. In London, therefore, the men began to assemble soon after six at the coffee-house they frequented—unless, indeed, they were setting in for hard drinking, which seems to have prevailed much less in private houses than in taverns.
The conversation varied in different coffee-houses. In those about the Temple, legal matters formed the principal subject of discussion. On the other hand, at Daniel’s, the Welsh coffee-house in Fleet Street, it was mostly of births, pedigrees, and descents; Child’s and the Chapter, upon glebes, tithes, advowsons, rectories, and lectureships; North’s, undue elections, false pollings, scrutinies, and the like; Hamlin’s, infant baptism, lay ordination, free-will, election, and reprobation; Batson’s, the prices of pepper, indigo, and saltpetre; and all those about the Exchange, where the merchants met to transact their affairs, were in a perpetual hurry about stock-jobbing—cheating, and tricking widows and orphans, and committing spoil and rapine on the public, malicious people said.
In some coffee-houses and taverns political feeling ran high. One noted chop-house near Holborn lost its business owing to the democratic character of a number of its frequenters, and eventually had to be shut up. A new landlord, however, seeking to restore its prosperity, exhibited the sign of the King’s Head, referring to which a friend said to him: “Do you think your new sign will keep away old customers? Why, there is not one of them but would like as much as ever to have a chop at the King’s Head.”
The Chapter Coffee-house in Paternoster Row, an ancient building with low rooms and heavy beams, was in the eighteenth century the resort of all the booksellers and publishers; and the literary hacks, the critics, and even the wits, used to go there in search of ideas or employment. This was the place about which Chatterton wrote, in those delusive letters he sent to his mother at Bristol, while he was starving in London. The Chapter also retained traditions of Oliver Goldsmith.
In later years it became the tavern frequented by University men and country clergymen who were up in London for a few days, and, having no private friends or access into society, were glad to learn what was going on in the world of letters, from the conversation which they were sure to hear in the coffee-room.
At one time leather tokens were issued by the proprietor; and the Chapter was noted for being entirely managed by men, no women servants being kept.
In the north-east corner of the coffee-room was a box known as the Witenagemote, which in the early morning was occupied by a group of individuals nicknamed the Wet Paper Club. The name was derived from their habit of opening the papers as soon as these were brought in by the newsman, and reading them before they were dried by the waiter; a dry paper was regarded as a stale commodity. In the afternoon another party enjoyed the wet evening papers.