The coffee-houses were the haunts of clubs and coteries almost from the date of their first establishment. Steele, in the familiar introduction to The Tatler, tells us how accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment were to come from "White's" Chocolate-house; poetry from "Will's" Coffee-house; learning from the "Grecian"; and foreign and domestic news from the "St. James's." Nearly fifty years later, Bonnell Thornton, in the first number of The Connoisseur, January 31st, 1754, similarly enumerates some of the leading houses. "White's" was still the fashionable resort; "Garraway's" was for stock-jobbers; "Batson's" for doctors; the "Bedford" for "wits" and men of parts; the "Chapter" for book-sellers; and "St. Paul's" for the clergy. Mackay, in his Journey through England, published in 1724, says that
"about twelve the beau-monde assembles in several chocolate and coffee-houses, the best of which are the Cocoa Tree and White's Chocolate-houses, St. James's, the Smyrna, and the British Coffee-houses; and all these so near one another that in less than an hour you see the company of them all.... I must not forget to tell you that the parties have their different places, where, however, a stranger is always well received; but a Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St. James's. The Scots go generally to the British, and a mixture of all sorts to the Smyrna. There are other little coffee-houses much frequented in this neighbourhood—Young Man's for officers, Old Man's for stock-jobbers, paymasters, and courtiers, and Little Man's for sharpers."
It was only natural that people of similar occupations or tastes should gravitate in their hours of leisure to common social centres, and no one classification, such as that just quoted, can exhaust the subject.
The devotees of whist had their own houses. The game began to be popular about 1730, and some of those who first played scientific whist—possibly including Hoyle himself—were accustomed to meet at the "Crown" Coffee-house in Bedford Row. Other groups soon met at other houses. A pirated edition of Hoyle's Whist, printed at Dublin in 1743, contains an advertisement of "A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, as play'd at Court, White's, and George's Chocolate-houses, at Slaughter's, and the Crown Coffee-houses, etc., etc." At "Rawthmell's" Coffee-house in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, the Society of Arts was founded in 1754. "Old Slaughter's" in St. Martin's Lane was a great resort in the second half of the eighteenth century of artists. Here Roubillac the sculptor, Hogarth, Bourguignon or Gravelot the book illustrator, Moser the keeper of the St. Martin's Lane Academy, Luke Sullivan the engraver, and many others of the fraternity were wont to foregather. Near by was "Young Slaughter's," a meeting-place for scientific and literary men.
R. L. Edgeworth, in his Memoirs (p. 118, Ed. 1844), says:—
"I was introduced by Mr. Keir into a society of literary and scientific men, who used formerly to meet once a week at Jack's Coffee-house [i.e., circa 1780] in London, and afterwards at Young Slaughter's Coffee-house. Without any formal name, this meeting continued for years to be frequented by men of real science and of distinguished merit. John Hunter was our chairman. Sir Joseph Banks, Solander, Sir A. Blagden, Dr. George Fordyce, Milne, Maskelyne, Captain Cook, Sir G. Shuckburgh, Lord Mulgrave, Smeaton and Ramsden, were among our members. Many other gentlemen of talents belonged to this club, but I mention those only with whom I was individually acquainted."
A favourite resort of men of letters during the middle and later years of the eighteenth century was the "Bedford" Coffee-house, under the Piazza, in Covent Garden. This house, it may be said, inherited the tradition from Button's, which that famous coffee-house had taken over from Will's. To the "Bedford" came Fielding, Foote, Garrick, Churchill, Sheridan, Hogarth, and many another man of note. Another haunt of literary men, as well as of book-sellers, was the "Chapter" Coffee-house in Paternoster Row. Chatterton wrote to his mother in May, 1770: "I am quite familiar at the 'Chapter' Coffee-house, and know all the geniuses there." Goldsmith was one of its frequenters. It was here that he came to sup one night as the invited guest of Churchill's friend, Charles Lloyd. The supper was served and enjoyed, whereupon Lloyd, without a penny in his pocket to pay for the meal he had ordered, coolly walked off and left Goldsmith to discharge the reckoning. It was at the same house that Foote, one day when a distressed player passed his hat round the coffee-room circle with an appeal for help, made the malicious remark: "If Garrick hear of this he will certainly send in his hat."
Close by was the "St. Paul's" Coffee-house, where, according to Bonnell Thornton, "tattered crapes," or poor parsons, were wont to ply "for an occasional burial or sermon, with the same regularity as the happier drudges who salute us with the cry of 'Coach, sir,' or 'Chair, your honour.'" The same writer relates how a party of bucks, by a hoaxing proffer of a curacy, "drew all the poor parsons to 'St. Paul's' Coffee-house, where the bucks themselves sat in another box to smoke their rusty wigs and brown cassocks."
Business men gathered at "Jonathan's" and "Garraway's," both in Exchange Alley, where the sale and purchase of stocks and bonds and merchandise of every kind formed the staple talk. The former house was a centre of operations for both bubblers and bubbled in the mania year of 1720. "Lloyd's" Coffee-house was for very many years a famous auction mart.
"Then to Lloyd's coffee-house he never fails,
To read the letters, and attend the sales,"