An advise is hereby given that there has lately arrived in this city (Dublin) the famous Mrs. Cherry, the only gentlewoman truly learned in the occult science of tossing of coffee grounds; who has with uninterrupted success for some time past practiced to the general satisfaction of her female visitants. Her hours are after prayers are done at St. Peter's Church, until dinner.
(N.B. She never requires more than 1 oz. of coffee from a single gentlewoman, and so proportioned for a second or third person, but not to exceed that number at any one time.)
If the one ounce of coffee represented her payment for reading the future, the charge could not be considered exorbitant!
English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were noticeably affected by coffee, and the coffee-houses of the times have been immortalized by them; and in many instances they themselves were immortalized by the coffee houses and their frequenters. In the chapters already referred to and at the close of this chapter, will be found stories, quips, and anecdotes, in which occur many names that are now famous in art and literature.
Modern journalism dates from the publication, April 12, 1709, of the Tatler, whose editor was Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) the Irish dramatist and essayist. He received his inspiration from the coffee houses; and his readers were the men that knew them best. In the first issue he announced:
All accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Coffee House; poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; learning under the title of Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from St. James's Coffee House, and what else I shall on any other subject offer shall be dated from my own apartment.
Steele's Tatler was issued three times weekly until 1711, when it suspended to be succeeded by the Spectator, whose principal contributor was Joseph Addison (1672–1719), the essayist and poet, and Steele's school-fellow.
Sir Richard Steele immortalized the Don and Don Saltero's coffee house in old Chelsea in No. 34 of the Tatler, wherein he tells us of the necessity of traveling to know the world, by his journey for fresh air, no farther than the village of Chelsea, of which he fancied that he could give an immediate description—from the five fields, where the the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee house, where the literati sit in council. But he found, even in a place so near town as this, that there were enormities and persons of eminence, whom he before knew nothing of.
The coffee house was almost absorbed by the museum, Steele says:
When I came into the coffee-house, I had not time to salute the company, before my eyes were diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room, and on the ceiling. When my first astonishment was over, comes to me a sage of thin and meagre countenance, which aspect made me doubt whether reading or fretting had made it so philosophic; but I very soon perceived him to be that sort which the ancients call "gingivistee", in our language "tooth-drawers". I immediately had a respect for the man; for these practical philosophers go upon a very practical hypothesis, not to cure, but to take away the part affected. My love of mankind made me very benevolent to Mr. Salter, for such is the name of this eminent barber and antiquary.