Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (44 page)

Well, what had I got in my pocket? A coffee-twig! I had snapped it off one of the shrubs in Alves de Lima’s plantation. I was keeping it as a memento. It bore a few withered flowers and some fruits.

Of all the wealth of coffee in the world, I owned no more than this twig. Nor should I ever own more than this, being neither planter nor merchant, neither speculator nor dealer, nor with talent for any of these professions. I had nothing but my vision of them all, and perhaps a gift for expression.

I was no more than a consumer; and, when I wanted to drink coffee, I had to pay for it like anyone else in the world.

The notion was so comical that I burst out laughing.

How strange! I picked a berry and pierced it with one of the blades of my pocket-knife. The outer envelope through which the point passed was what is called the epicarp. The next wrapping was the endocarp. Then came the pulp; then the silver-skin; then two seeds, grown together by their bellies, like Siamese twins. Inside all that I could dissect there was a kernel, that was certain. But what was the innermost nucleus of this kernel? An incomprehensible mystery, which no botanist could unravel.

I sat there like a sportive boy. I was holding something sticky between my fingers. The dissected coffee-berry looked at me and hypnotized me. A day-dream took possession of me.

I seemed to be making my way up a river, a very wide river, so wide that the farther bank was invisible. Nor could I make out the nature of the fluid in this river, except that it was yellow, and flowed swiftly. But the first dam that I saw was unquestionably the Murray scheme; and the second dam, over which the current flowed irresistibly like Niagara, was the Defesa policy. Above this the stream narrowed somewhat, so that I could see the farther bank. I made my way to a very early dam, and read on it the words “Convenio di Taubaté.” This was the valorization of the year 1906. Now the channel narrowed yet more. I was no longer following up the course of a river, but was tracing back a current of human history; was studying well-known happenings, ranged in series. I saw towns full of coffee-houses, Napoleon’s Continental System, Frederick the Great, old Paris and Versailles where dwelt Louis XIV, old Leipzig and Johann Sebastian Bach. On the flat shores of the Upper Adriatic stood Venetians wearing dominoes. Marseille appeared, capped in the baroque fashion by a huge wig, proper to a seventeenth-century physician. To the left lay the port of Amsterdam, whence the high-pooped sailing-ships set forth towards the East Indies; and London, where, beneath the shadow of St. Paul’s, coffee had begun its fierce campaign against beer and brandy.

On the horizon lay Vienna, besieged by the Turks. The tower of St. Stephen’s, with its fine traceries, rose into the sunshine above the smoke of artillery. Then I followed up the stream—yes, it was still a stream—to Constantinople, across the Bosporus into Asia Minor, and farther on into a fabled Araby. While my nostrils were assailed by a familiar aroma, I heard in my dream the voice of the old sheikh Abd el Kader:

I came to myself and looked round me. Behind the National Monument the sky had turned orange. What would have happened if, near Shehodet Monastery, the goats had never eaten of the fruit of the coffee-shrub? If the imam had never discovered the sleep-dispelling energy of this marvellous plant, had never extracted its divine and demoniacal powers? What if this Prometheus among plants had never become known to man? “There are no plants, there is nothing material,” I murmured. “If there be such things, they are brought into existence by our mythology, the mythology of raw materials.”

It was time to turn in. But before I did so, I pencilled, to commit myself, the title of the opening chapter of my book:

“Night in the Land of Yemen.”

A
FTER
five years’ study, I bring this saga to a close. Besides the aid of books, I am indebted to the stimulating assistance of friends: first of all to that of Dr. Kurt Schechner of Vienna; next to that of Dr. Eckener, of the Zeppelin aerodrome at Friedrichshafen. These two gentlemen have enabled me to undertake a personal study of coffee culture in South America.

From the literary point of view, I have suffered the fate common to so many authors. As soon as my book was on the way, I was overwhelmed with letters, data, all kinds of information. New springs were continually welling up.

No doubt many historical facts must have been overlooked. Much that I had intended to include has slipped through the meshes of my net, because its inclusion would have confused the general impression, and because it was a refractory element. Not every interesting fact can be woven into a comprehensive survey like the present. Here is one example among many. If Francis Bacon, lord chancellor, and pioneer in the field of scientific method, compares the influence of coffee on the brain to the influence of opium, this is not a medical error (had it been such, I should have indicated the fact in the text); but evidence that in 1620 coffee as a beverage was unknown in London, and that one of the leading intelligences in the England of that day knew of it only from hearsay. Here is a historical fact from which inferences can be drawn, but one which has nothing to do with Bacon himself.

There are other obvious lacunæ. It might have been well to investigate Balzac’s attitude towards coffee, which was sometimes puritanical, sometimes one of intemperate use; or to ask why Fontenelle, in his hundredth year, had come to believe that coffee promotes longevity. A chapter might have been devoted to the great importance assumed by “eleven o’clock coffee” among the huge army of commercial employees in every modern great town. From this might be deduced the need for reducing the import duties on coffee in almost all European States.

Much, however, has been intentionally omitted. Friends in Warsaw have written to ask whether I am unaware that the proper spelling of Kolshitsky is Kulczycki. I don’t wish to take sides too obviously in so delicate a matter, but it is questionable whether the valiant Kolshitsky was, after all, a Pole! The best and oldest authorities describe him as a Rascian. Rascia is in Serbia, and in Banat Serbs are often called Rascians. If Kolshitsky was a Serb and not a Pole, that explains a good deal. Then, the “Sambor” which is said to have been his birthplace was not the Sambor near Lemberg in Galicia, but “Sombor” in Jugoslavia, a town whose population is today still a mixed one, consisting of Serbs, Hungarians, and Germans. Like all Banat, Sombor was in those days under Turkish rule. This would explain how it was that Kolshitsky could speak Turkish as a second mother-tongue. His servant, Georg Mihailovich, was unquestionably a Serb. Ruthenians contend that Kolshitsky was a Ukrainian, and that his name was really Kolshetshko. The Viennese always spell it Kolschitzky; but Kolshitsky will do for the English-speaking world, the question being one of phonetics rather than of an indeterminable orthography and racial origin.

The sources of the history of coffee are in a queer condition. Where we should like them to be abundant, they are inclined to dry up. On the other hand, matters of trifling importance are confirmed by a wealth of identical testimony. Hitherto, moreover, there have only been monographs, and works in which coffee is incidentally mentioned; no attempt at an inclusive treatment of the subject. For data concerning the early use of coffee in France, and down to the days of the revolution of 1789, an excellent authority is Alfred Franklin’s
Vie privée d’autrefois
, in
“Arts et métiers des Parisiens du XII
^e
au XVIII
^e
siècle”
As to the English “coffeo-mania,” consult Westerfrölke’s monograph; as to the Viennese coffee-houses, the
Festschrift des Gremiums der Kaffeehausbesitzer in Wien
. Uker’s
All about Coffee
contains trustworthy information upon the history of coffee in America. There are monographs by Dr. Hans Roth, Dr. Hermann Kurth, and Dr. Klara Ratzka-Ernst on the economic history of coffee in Brazil during the nineteenth century, and the latest problems of the coffee industry: over-production and the world market, sequestration, and valorization.

BOOK ONE

ALBANUS, Prosper: De plantis Ægypti liber, Venice, 1592. BOER, de: Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam, 1901. BROCKELMANN: Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur. 1897–1902. BUNGE, Gustav von: Lehrbuch der physiologischen und pathologischen Chemie, Leipzig, 1894. BURCKHARDT, I. L.: Travels in Arabia, London, 1829. DEFLERS, A.: Voyage au Yemen, Paris, 1889. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz: Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, Leyden, 1899. GROHMANN, A.: Süd-Arabien als Wirtschaftsgebiet, Vienna, 1922. HAMMER-PURGSTALL, Joseph Freiherr von: Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, 1835,
and
Literaturgeschichte der Araber, Vienna, 1856. HERBERT, Sir Thomas: A Description of the Persian Monarchy, 1634, reissued with additions as Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great, 1638. HORMAYR, Joseph: Wien, seine Geschichte und Denkwürdigkeiten, Vienna, 1823–4. KAEMPFER, Engelbrecht: Amoenitatum exoticarum, Lemgo, 1712. KOENIG: Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs-und Genussmittel, Berlin, 1823. (KOLSHITSKY, F. G.) Warhaffte Erzehlung welcher gestallt in der änstlichen Türkischen Belägerung der kayserl. Haupt-und Residentzstadt Wien in Österreich durch das feindliche Lager gedrungen und die erste Kundschafft zur kayserlichen Haupt-Armee, wie auch von da glücklich wieder zuruck gebracht worden, 1683. KLAGES, Ludwig: Vom kosmogonischen Eros, Munich, 1922. LECLERC: Histoire de la médecine arabe, Paris, 1875–6. LEWIN, Louis: Phantastica, die betäubenden und erregenden Genussmittel, Berlin, 1924. MANZONI, R.: El Yemen, Rome, 1884. MAYER, Hans and Gottlieb: Die experimentelle Pharmakologie als Grundlage der Arzneibehandlung, Berlin, 1930. MOHAMMED, the Prophet: The Koran. MÜLLER, August: Der Islam, 1885–7. MULLER, Edgar: Arabiens Vermächtnis, Hamburg, 1931. NAIRON, Antonius Faustus: De saluberrima potione cahue seu cafe nuncupate discursus, Rome, 1671. NIEBUHR, Karsten: Reisebeschreibung von Arabien, Copenhagen, 1774. NIETZSCHE, Friedrich: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872. NOORDEN, von, and SALOMON: Handbuch der Ernährungslehre, Berlin, 1920. PAULITSCHKE: Harrar, Leipzig, 1888. POLAK, I. E.: Persien, Leipzig, 1865. PRESCOTT, Samuel C: Report of an Investigation of Coffee, New York, 1927. RAUWOLF, Leonhard: Eigentliche Beschreibung der Raisz so er vor diser Zeit gegen Auffgang in die Morgenländer vollbracht, Laugingen, 1582. RENNER, Victor von: Wien im Jahre 1683, Vienna, 1883. RITTER, Carl: Vergleichende Erdkunde von Arabien, Berlin, 1846. ROHDE, Erwin: Psyche. Seelenkult und Unsterblichskeitsglaube der Griechen, 1890–4. SILVESTRE DE SACY, Antoine: Chrestomathie arabe, Paris, 1826. SNOUCK HURGRONJE, G: Mekkanische Sprichwörter, The Hague, 1886,
and
Mekka, The Hague, 1888–9. SPENGLER, Oswald: Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich, 1922. SPENGER, A.: Das Leben und die Lehre des Mahommed, 1868–9. SCHMIDT, W.: Das südwestliche Arabien, Frankfort-on-Main, 1913. SCHWEINFURTH, Georg: Arabische Pflanzennamen, 1912. TORNAUW, N. von: Das moslemische Recht, St. Petersburg, 1856. TRAPPEN, I. E. van der: Specimen historico-medicum de Coffea, Utrecht, 1843. VAELKEREN: Vienna a Turcis obsessa, Vienna, 1863. VALLE, Pietro della: Viaggi, Brighton, 1843. WELTER: Essai sur l’histoire du café, Paris, 1868.

BOOK TWO

ANDERSON, Adam: Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce from Earliest Accounts to the Present Time, 1762. AUDIGER: La maison réglée, Paris, 1692. BRANDES, Georg: Shakespeare, 1898. BRODE, Reinhold: Friedrich der Grosse und der Conflict mit seinem Vater, Leipzig, 1904. Capitular des deutschen Hauses in Venedig, edited by Thomas, Berlin, 1874. BUNTEKUH, Cornelius: Korte verhandeling van ‘t menschenleven, Amsterdam, 1684. CHARLES-ROUX, I.: Aigues-Mortes, Paris, 1910. DAWSON, Warren R.: The Treasures of Lloyds, London, 1930. DROYSEN, J. G.: Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, Leipzig, 1872. DUFOUR, Sylvestre: Traitez nouveaux et curieux du café, du thé et du chocolat, Lyons, 1685. ELLIS, John: An Historical Account of the Coffee, London, 1774. ENNEN: Die Stadt Köln und das Kaufhaus der Deutschen in Venedig. (In the first annual number of the
Monatschriften für rheinisch-westphälische Geschichtsforschung und Altertumskunde.)
ERD-MANNSDOERFER: De commercio quod inter Venetos et Germaniae civitates aevo medio intercessiti Leipzig, 1858. GALLAND, Antoine: De l’origine et du progrès du café, Caen, 1699. GARNETT, R.: The Age of Dryden, London, 1897. GURLITT, Cornelius: August der Starke, Dresden, 1924. HAENDCKE, Berthold: Deutsche Kultur im Zeitalter des 30-jährigen Krieges, Leipzig, 1906. HAHN, Ludwig: Geschichte des preussischen Vaterlandes, Berlin, 1893. HASCHE: Diplomatische Geschichte Dresdens, von seiner Entdeckung bis auf unsere Tage, Dresden, 1816. HEYD, Wilhelm: Abhandlungen über das Haus der deutschen Kaufleute in Sybels historischer Zeitschrift, 1874,
and
Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1879. HETTNER, Hermann: Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts. KIESSELBACH, Arnold: Die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Hanse und die Handelsstellung Hamburgs, Berlin, 1907. KNACKFUSS, H.: Tizian, Leipzig, 1907. LENTHÉRIC, Charles: Le Rhône, Paris, 1905. MACAULA Y, Thomas Babington: Complete Works, London, 1898. MICHEL, Karl: Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Bierbrauerei, Munich, 1906. MONE: Der Süddeutsche Handel mit Venedig (in seiner Zeitschrift). MOSELEY, B.: A Treatise concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee, London, 1792. OLEARIUS (Oelschläger), Adam: Beschreibung der Newen Orientalischen Reise, Schleswig, 1647. ROBINSON, E. F.: The Early History of Coffee-Houses in England, London, 1893. ROQUE, de la: Voyage de l’Arabie Heureuse, Amsterdam, 1716,
and
Voyage de Syrie et du Mont Liban, 1723. SCHÄFFLER: König Waldemar und die Hansestädte, Jena, 1879. SCHÜCK: Brandenburg-Preussens Kolonialpolitik. STRIEDER, Jakob: Levantinische Handelsfahrten deutscher Kaufleute des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1919. THÉVENOT, Jean de: Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant, Paris, 1665. TISSOT: Von der Gesundheit der Gelehrten, Leipzig, 1769. WARD, Edward: The Humours of a Coffee-House, London, 1709. WESTERFRÖLKE, Hermann: Englische Kaffeehäuser als Sammelpunkte der literarischen Welt im Zeitalter von Dryden und Addison, Jena, 1924. WESTER-MAYER: Jacobus Balde, sein Leben und seine Werke, Munich, 1868. WICQUE-FORT: Relation du voyage d’Adam Olearius en Moscovie, Tartarie et Perse, traduit de l’Allemand, Paris, 1666.