says the author of The Wealthy Shopkeeper, published in 1700. Addison, in No. 46 of The Spectator, tells how he was accustomed to make notes or "minutes" of anything likely to be useful for future papers, and of how one day he accidentally dropped one of these papers at "Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are usually kept." It was picked up and passed from hand to hand, to the great amusement of all who saw it. Finally, the "boy of the coffee-house," having in vain asked for the owner of the paper, was made "to get up into the auction pulpit and read it to the whole room." The "Jerusalem" Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, was for generations the resort of merchants and traders interested in the East.
The doctors met at "Batson's" or "Child's." The pseudonymous author of Don Manoel Gonzales' Voyage to Great Britain, 1745, speaking of the London physicians, says: "You find them at Batson's or Child's Coffee-house usually in the morning, and they visit their patients in the afternoon." The Jacobites had two well-known houses of call—"Bromefield's" Coffee-house in Spring Gardens, and, later, the "Smyrna" in Pall Mall. Mr. J. H. MacMichael, in his valuable book on Charing Cross, 1906, quotes an order "given at their Majesties' Board of Green Cloth at Hampton Court" in 1689, to Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor of Their Majesties' Works, to have "bricked or otherwise so closed up as you shall judge most fit for the security of their Majesties' Palace of Whitehall" a certain door which led out of Buckingham Court into Spring Garden, because Bromefield's Coffee-house in that court was resorted to by "a great and numerous concourse of Papists and other persons disaffected to the Government." Mr. MacMichael suggests that probably "Bromefield's" was identical with the coffee-house known as "Young Man's." "The Smyrna," in Pall Mall, was the Jacobite resort in Georgian days. It was also a house of many literary associations. Thomson, the poet, there received subscriptions for his Seasons; Swift and Prior and Arbuthnot frequented it. In 1703 Lord Peterborough wrote to Arbuthnot from Spain:—"I would faine save Italy and yett drink tea with you at the Smirna this Winter." But it is impossible to catalogue fully all the different coffee-house centres. The "Grecian" in Devereux Court, Strand, was devoted to learning; barristers frequented "Serle's," at the corner of Serle and Portugal Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields; the Templars went to "Dick's," and later to the "Grecian"; and so the list might be prolonged.
In the earlier days of the coffee-houses the coterie or club of regular frequenters foregathered by the fire, or in some particular part of the general room, or in an inner room. At "Will's" in Russell Street, Covent Garden, where Mr. Pepys used to drop in to hear the talk, Dryden, the centre of the literary circle which there assembled, had his big arm-chair in winter by the fireside, and in summer on the balcony. Around him gathered many men of letters, including Addison, Wycherley, Congreve, and the juvenile Pope, and all who aspired to be known as "wits." On the outskirts of the charmed circle hovered the more humble and modest frequenters of the coffee-room, who were proud to obtain the honour even of a pinch of snuff from the poet's box. Across the road at "Button's," a trifle later, Addison became the centre of a similar circle, though here the tone was political quite as much as literary. Whig men of letters discussed politics as well as books. Steele, Tickell, Budgell, Rowe, and Ambrose Phillips were among the leading figures in this coterie. Pope was of it for a time, but withdrew after his quarrel with Addison.
Whig politicians met at the "St. James's"; and Addison, in a Spectator of 1712, pictures the scene. A rumour of the death of Louis XIV. had set the tongues going of all the gossips and quidnuncs in town; and the essayist relates how he made a tour of the town to hear how the news was received, and to catch the drift of popular opinion on so momentous an event. In the course of his peregrinations the silent gentleman visited the "St. James's," where he found the whole outer room in a buzz of politics. The quality of the talk improved as he advanced from the door to the upper end of the room; but the most thorough-going politicians were to be found "in the inner room, with the steam of the coffee-pot," and in this sanctum, says the humorist, "I heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbon provided for, in less than a quarter of an hour."
In later days coffee-house clubs became more exclusive. The members of a club or coterie were allotted a room of their own, to which admission ceased to be free and open, and thus was marked the beginning of the transition from the coffee-house of the old style to the club-house of the new. In The Gentleman's Magazine for 1841 (Part II., pp. 265-9) is printed a paper of proposals, dated January 23rd, 1768, for enlarging the accommodation for the club accustomed to meet at Tom's Coffee-house, Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, by taking into the coffee-room the first floor of the adjoining house. Admission to this club was obtained by ballot.
Coffee-houses were frequented for various purposes besides coffee, conversation, and business—professional or otherwise. The refreshments supplied were by no means confined to such innocuous beverages as tea and coffee and chocolate. Wines and spirits were freely consumed—"laced" coffee, or coffee dashed with brandy, being decidedly popular. Swift relates how on the occasion of his christening the child of Elliot, the proprietor of the "St. James's," he sat at the coffee-house among some "scurvy companions" over a bowl of punch so late that when he came home he had no time to write to Stella. The prolonged sittings and too copious libations of the company at Button's Coffee-house gave the feeble and delicate Pope many a headache; and Addison, who was notoriously a hard drinker, did not, we may feel sure, confine himself during those prolonged sittings to coffee.
The coffee-houses were also public reading-rooms. There could be read the newspapers and other periodical publications of the day. When Sir Roger de Coverley entered "Squire's," near Gray's Inn Gate, he "called for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle, and The Supplement."
Mackay, in his Journey through England, already quoted, says that "in all the Coffee-houses you have not only the foreign prints, but several English ones with the Foreign Occurrences, besides papers of morality and party disputes." Swift, writing to Stella, November 18th, 1711, says, "Do you read the Spectators? I never do; they never come in my way; I go to no coffee-houses"; and when The Tatler had disappeared, a little earlier, Gay wrote that "the coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's lucubrations alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together." Periodical publications were filed for reference; and at all the better houses The London Gazette, and, during the session, the Parliamentary Votes could be seen. At least one house possessed a library. This was the "Chapter," in Paternoster Row, already referred to as a literary haunt. Dr. Thomas Campbell, the author of a Diary of a Visit to England in 1775, which was published at Sydney in 1854, says that he had heard that the "Chapter" was remarkable for a large collection of books and a reading society.
The coffee-houses served as writing-rooms as well as reading-rooms. Many of Steele's numerous love-letters to "dear Prue," the lady who became his wife, the lovely Mary Scurlock, written both before and after his marriage, are dated from the "St. James's," the "Tennis Court," "Button's," or other coffee-house. But a popular coffee-room could hardly have been an ideal place for either reading or writing. A poet of 1690 says that
"The murmuring buzz which thro' the room was sent,
Did bee-hives' noise exactly represent,
And like a bee-hive, too, 'twas filled, and thick,
All tasting of the Honey Politick
Called 'News,' which they all greedily sucked in."