Chapter V
THE BEGINNINGS OF COFFEE IN FRANCE
What French travelers did for coffee—The introduction of coffee by P. de la Roque into Marseilles in 1644—The first commercial importation of coffee from Egypt—The first French coffee house—Failure of the attempt by physicians of Marseilles to discredit coffee—Soliman Aga introduces coffee into Paris—Cabarets à caffè—Celebrated works on coffee by French writers
We are indebted to three great French travelers for much valuable knowledge about coffee; and these gallant gentlemen first fired the imagination of the French people in regard to the beverage that was destined to play so important a part in the French revolution. They are Tavernier (1605–89), Thévenot (1633–67), and Bernier (1625–88).
Then there is Jean La Roque (1661–1745), who made a famous "Voyage to Arabia the Happy" (Voyage de l'Arabie Heureuse) in 1708–13 and to whose father, P. de la Roque, is due the honor of having brought the first coffee into France in 1644. Also, there is Antoine Galland (1646–1715), the French Orientalist, first translator of the Arabian Nights and antiquary to the king, who, in 1699, published an analysis and translation from the Arabic of the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript (1587), giving the first authentic account of the origin of coffee.
Probably the earliest reference to coffee in France is to be found in the simple statement that Onorio Belli (Bellus), the Italian botanist and author, in 1596 sent to Charles de l'Écluse (1526–1609), a French physician, botanist and traveler, "seeds used by the Egyptians to make a liquid they call cave.[44]"
P. de la Roque accompanied M. de la Haye, the French ambassador, to Constantinople; and afterward traveled into the Levant. Upon his return to Marseilles in 1644, he brought with him not only some coffee, but "all the little implements used about it in Turkey, which were then looked upon as great curiosities in France." There were included in the coffee service some findjans, or china dishes, and small pieces of muslin embroidered with gold, silver, and silk, which the Turks used as napkins.
Jean La Roque gives credit to Jean de Thévenot for introducing coffee privately into Paris in 1657, and for teaching the French how to use coffee.
De Thévenot writes in this entertaining fashion concerning the use of the drink in Turkey in the middle of the seventeenth century: