All About Coffee

by William H. Ukers

We now ascended a pair of stairs, which brought us into an old-fashioned room, where a gaudy crowd of odoriferous Tom-Essences were walking backwards and forwards, with their hats in their hands, not daring to convert them to their intended use lest it should put the foretops of their wigs into some disorder. We squeezed through till we got to the end of the room, where, at a small table, we sat down, and observed that it was as great a rarity to hear anybody call for a dish of politicians porridge, or any other liquor, as it is to hear a beau call for a pipe of tobacco; their whole exercise being to charge and discharge their nostrils and keep the curls of their periwigs in their proper order. The clashing of their snush-box lids, in opening and shutting, made more noise than their tongues. Bows and cringes of the newest mode were here exchanged 'twixt friend and friend with wonderful exactness. They made a humming like so many hornets in a country chimney, not with their talking, but with their whispering over their new Minuets and Bories, with the hands in their pockets, if only freed from their snush-box. We now began to be thoughtful of a pipe of tobacco, whereupon we ventured to call for some instruments of evaporation, which were accordingly brought us, but with such a kind of unwillingness, as if they would much rather been rid of our company; for their tables were so very neat, and shined with rubbing like the upper-leathers of an alderman's shoes, and as brown as the top of a country housewife's cupboard. The floor was as clean swept as a Sir Courtly's dining room, which made us look round to see if there were no orders hung up to impose the forfeiture of so much mop-money upon any person that should spit out of the chimney-corner. Notwithstanding we wanted an example to encourage us in our porterly rudeness, we ordered them to light the wax candle, by which we ignified our pipes and blew about our whiffs; at which several Sir Foplins drew their faces into as many peevish wrinkles as the beaux at the Bow Street Coffee-house, near Covent Garden, did when the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst them, with his oyster-barrel muff and turnip-buttons, to ridicule their foperies.

In A Brief and Merry History of Great Britain we read:

There is a prodigious number of Coffee-Houses in London, after the manner I have seen some in Constantinople. These Coffee-Houses are the constant Rendezvous for Men of Business as well as the idle People. Besides Coffee, there are many other Liquors, which People cannot well relish at first. They smoak Tobacco, game and read Papers of Intelligence; here they treat of Matters of State, make Leagues with Foreign Princes, break them again, and transact Affairs of the last Consequence to the whole World. They represent these Coffee-Houses as the most agreeable things in London, and they are, in my Opinion, very proper Places to find People that a Man has Business with, or to pass away the Time a little more agreeably than he can do at home; but in other respects they are loathsome, full of smoak, like a Guard-Room, and as much crowded. I believe 'tis these Places that furnish the Inhabitants with Slander, for there one hears exact Account of everything done in Town, as if it were but a Village.

At those Coffee-Houses, near the Courts, called White's, St. James's, Williams's, the Conversation turns chiefly upon the Equipages, Essence, Horse-Matches, Tupees, Modes and Mortgages; the Cocoa-Tree upon Bribery and Corruption, Evil ministers, Errors and Mistakes in Government; the Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing Cross, on Places and Pensions; the Tiltyard and Young Man's on Affronts, Honour, Satisfaction, Duels and Rencounters. I was informed that the latter happen so frequently, in this part of the Town, that a Surgeon and a Sollicitor are kept constantly in waiting; the one to dress and heal such Wounds as may be given, and the other in case of Death to bring off the Survivor with a Verdict of Se Devendendo or Manslaughter. In those Coffee-Houses about the Temple the Subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers, Rejoinders and Exceptions; Daniel's the Welch Coffee-House in Fleet Street, on Births, Pedigrees and Descents; Child's and the Chapter upon Glebes, Tithes, Advowsons, Rectories and Lectureships; North's Undue Elections, False Polling, Scrutinies, etc.; Hamlin's, Infant-Baptism, Lay-Ordination, Free-Will, Election and Reprobation; Batson's, the Prices of Pepper, Indigo and Salt-Petre; and all those about the Exchange, where the Merchants meet to transact their Affairs, are in a perpetual hurry about Stock-Jobbing, Lying, Cheating, Tricking Widows and Orphans, and committing Spoil and Rapine on the Publick.

White's and Brookes', St. James's Street

In the eighteenth century beer and wine were commonly sold at the coffee houses in addition to tea and chocolate. Daniel Defoe, writing of his visit to Shrewsbury in 1724, says, "I found there the most coffee houses around the Town Hall that ever I saw in any town, but when you come into them they are but ale houses, only they think that the name coffee house gives a better air."

Speaking of the coffee houses of the city, Besant says:

Rich merchants alone ventured to enter certain of the coffee houses, where they transacted business more privately and more expeditiously than on the Exchange. There were coffee houses where officers of the army alone were found; where the city shopkeeper met his chums; where actors congregated; where only divines, only lawyers, only physicians, only wits and those who came to hear them were found. In all alike the visitor put down his penny and went in, taking his own seat if he was an habitue; he called for a cup of tea or coffee and paid his twopence for it; he could call also, if he pleased, for a cordial; he was expected to talk with his neighbour whether he knew him or not. Men went to certain coffee houses in order to meet the well-known poets and writers who were to be found there, as Pope went in search of Dryden. The daily papers and the pamphlets of the day were taken in. Some of the coffee houses, but not the more respectable, allowed the use of tobacco.