And many years later, Gilly Williams, in a letter to George Selwyn, dated November 1st, 1764, says: "I write this in a full coffee-house, and with such materials, that you have good luck if you can read two lines of it."
A curious proof of the close and intimate way in which the coffee-houses were linked with social life is to be seen in the occasional references, both in dramatic and prose literature, to some of the well-known servants of the coffee-houses. Steele, in the first number of The Tatler, refers familiarly to Humphrey Kidney, the waiter and keeper of book debts at the "St. James's"—he "has the ear of the greatest politicians that come hither"—and when Kidney resigned, it was advertised that he had been "succeeded by John Sowton, to whose place of caterer of messages and first coffee-grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel Bardock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird." "Robin, the Porter who waits at Will's Coffee-house," plays a prominent part in a little romance narrated in No. 398 of The Spectator. He is described as "the best man in the town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town." A waiter of the same name at Locket's, in Spring Gardens, is alluded to in Congreve's The Way of the World, where the fashionable Lady Wishfort, when she threatens to marry a "drawer" (or waiter), says, "I'll send for Robin from Locket's immediately."
The coffee-houses were employed as agencies for the sale of many things other than their own refreshments. Most of them sold the quack medicines that were staringly advertised on their walls. Some sold specific proprietary articles. A newspaper advertisement of 1711 says that the water of Epsom Old Well was "pumped out almost every night, that you may have the new mineral every morning," and that "the water is sold at Sam's Coffee-house in Ludgate Street, Hargrave's at the Temple Gate, Holtford's at the lower end of Queen's Street near Thames Street, and nowhere else in London." A "Ticket of the seal of the Wells" was affixed, so that purchasers "might not be cheated in their waters." The "Royal" Coffee-house at Charing Cross, which flourished in the time of Charles II., sold "Anderson's Pills"—a compound of cloves, jalap, and oil of aniseed. At the same house were to be had tickets for the various county feasts, then popular, which were an anticipation of the annual dinners of county associations so common nowadays.
Razor-strops of a certain make were to be bought in 1705 at John's Coffee-house, Exchange Alley. In 1742 it was advertised that "silver tickets" (season tickets) for Ranelagh Gardens were to be had at any hour of the day at Forrest's Coffee-house, near Charing Cross. "All Sorts of the newest fashion'd Tye Perukes, made of fresh string, Humane Hair, far exceeding any Country Work," were advertised in 1725 as to be bought at Brown's Coffee-house in Spring Gardens.
House agents, professional men, and other folk of more questionable kind, were all wont to advertise that they could be seen by clients at this or that coffee-house. The famous and impudent Mrs. Mapp, "the bone-setter," drove into town daily from Epsom in her own carriage, and was to be seen (and heard) at the "Grecian." Most of the houses were willing to receive letters in answer to advertisements, and from the nature of the latter must often, it is pretty certain, have been assisting parties to fraud and chicanery of various kind. At some houses, besides those like Lloyd's specially devoted to auction business, sales were held. A black boy was advertised to be sold at Denis's Coffee-house in Finch Lane in 1708. In the middle of the eighteenth century sales were often held at the "Apollo" Coffee-house, just within Temple Bar, and facing Temple Gate. Picture sales were usually held at coffee-houses. The catalogue of one such sale, held at the "Barbadoes" Coffee-house in February, 1689/90, contains a glowing address on the art of painting by Millington, the Auctioneer, written in the style made famous later by George Robins. Says the eloquent Millington:
"This incomparable art at the same time informs the Judgment, pleases the Fancy, recreates the Eye, and touches the Soul, entertains the Curious with silent Instruction, by expressing our most noble Passions, and never fails of rewarding its admirers with the greatest Pleasures, so Innocent and Ravishing, that the severest Moralists, the Morosest Stoicks cannot be offended therewith,"
and so on and so on.
Many of the early book sales, too, were held at coffee-houses. The third book auction in England, that of the library of the Rev. William Greenhill, was held on February 18th, 1677/78, "in the House of Ferdinand Stable, Coffee-Seller, at the Sign of the 'Turk's Head,'" in Bread Street. When sales were held elsewhere, catalogues could usually be had at some of the leading coffee-houses.
Besides serving as reading, writing and sale rooms, they seem sometimes to have been used as lecture rooms. William Whiston, in his Memoirs written by himself (1749), says:
"Mr. Addison, with his friend Sir Richard Steele, brought me upon my banishment from Cambridge, to have many astronomical lectures at Mr. Button's coffee-house, near Covent Garden, to the agreeable entertainment of a great number of persons, and the procuring me and my family some comfortable support under my banishment."