The World of Caffeine (30 page)

The English coffeehouse as a place in which men of every degree intermingled socially, in familiarity, was not to last long. While they endured, these coffeehouses offered democratic resorts in which, for a penny, a man could sit in comfort drinking coffee, and smoke, read, or converse in a manner marked by what Francis Maximillian Mission (1650–1722), a French traveler, called “the universal liberty of speech among the English.”
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By the 1760s and 1770s, however, the coffeehouses and chocolate houses yielded precedence to fashionable new clubs that showcased the aristocracy and had less and less to do with literature. One exception was a long-unnamed coffee-house club, later called “The Literary Club,” founded in 1764, that maintained the old traditions and provided the ideal forum for eliciting Samuel Johnson’s conversational skill, which, in the words of Macaulay, “was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a few friends whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send back every ball that he threw.”
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Like the Rota, which had convened at a different Turk’s Head coffeehouse more than a century before, this club, at the Turk’s Head on Gerrard Street

The nine original members, one for each of the Muses, were, in addition to Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Sir John Hawkins, Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Nugent, Mr. Beauclerk, Mr. Langton, and Mr. Chamier. It was expanded to thirtyfive, so reports Johnson’s follower James Boswell, a young Scottish lawyer of good family, described by Macaulay as “a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous,” whose conversation made clear to all “that he could not reason, that he had no wit, no humor, no eloquence.” One of several sources of friction between Johnson and Boswell was their disparate drinking habits.
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Johnson stuck to tea, explaining that, though he had consumed alcoholic drinks at the university “without being the worse for it,” he had found himself inclined to excess and sworn off their use so as to keep his mind clear, while Boswell was “a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a habitual sot.” In 1791 Boswell wrote an account of the club’s history. Some say that the pursuit of the literary profession in England became fashionable only with this club’s advent.
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This immense mixing and broadening of tastes, so concordant with the culture of the coffeehouse and its mix of popular and academic, was nowhere better exemplified than in the great success of Daniel Defoe and the various collaborative publications of Addison and Steele. Of his goals, Addison said, “I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I brought philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses.”

This was the time the first true newspapers appeared, successors to odd journals such as Dunton’s
Athenian Mercury
(1691– 97), in which questions about scientific, theological, literary, and social matters were asked and answered. Defoe, a coffeehouse habitué and admirer of Dunton’s publication, launched the
Review
(1704–13), a newspaper that he published three times a week. Written almost entirely by Defoe himself, it featured opinion pieces about political matters and initiated the tradition of editorial journalism. In speaking of his methods of courting readers, Defoe expounds the ideal of popularizing culture that animated Addison and Steele and many other leaders of coffeehouse conversations. By his style, Defoe explains that, in addressing a wide audience, he attempted to “
wheedle them in
(if it be allowed that expression) to the knowledge of the world; who, rather than take more pains, would be content with their ignorance, and search into nothing.” Because some of these early news publications featured verse, they even served as their readers’ introduction to poetry:
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Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) were two towering figures of early London journalism and coffeehouse literary life, perhaps best remembered for the daily
Spectator,
which they edited together. This publication was read by almost every literate person in London, especially the women, and was frequently read aloud to the illiterate. In contrast with Pope, their contemporary and rival, who addressed the elite, these famous collaborators spoke to a middleclass audience of businessmen and professionals, the mixed company who frequented the coffeehouses of London at the turn of the eighteenth century. The two had met at the Charterhouse public school where for a while at least, according to Pope’s malicious pen, they had been homosexually involved. Steele grew up to be a profligate debtor, although he settled down somewhat after his marriage in 1707, while Addison became a man of income and influence at court.

Addison held his own intellectual court at Button’s Coffee House (founded by his longtime retainer Button) on Russell Street, Covent Garden, where the favored among his followers gathered to enjoy his discourse, which, reportedly, combined “merriment with decency and humour with politeness,” and in conversations with such luminaries as Dryden and Pope, “reconciled wit and virtue after a long and disastrous separation.”
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Button’s boasted a mailbox with a lionine figurehead, designed by Hogarth in imitation of the lion of Venice, that was set up by Addison to receive mail sent to his publication the
Guardian
. Meanwhile, the
Spectator,
which had been born on a Button’s coffeehouse table, was in demand in other coffeehouses throughout the city. Around 1720, the popularity of Button’s coffeehouse declined, following Addison’s death and Steele’s retirement to Wales.

Many other coffeehouses, in which some of the more memorable conversations in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century London undoubtedly transpired, figured in the traditions of London letters. Will’s Coffee-House, named for its proprietor, William Unwin, was frequented by poets and men of letters, such as Wycherley, Addison, Pope, and Congreve. In the first issue of Steele’s periodical
Tatler,
April 12, 1709, Steele states that the publication would feature “all accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and entertainment…under the article of White’s Chocolate House, all poetry from Will’s, all foreign and domestic news from St. James’, and all learned articles from the Grecian.” Will’s is especially remembered for the literary disputes, which Dryden (1631–1700) presided over. Johnson wrote, in his
Lives of the English Poets,
that Dryden had assigned to himself an “armed chair, which in the winter had a settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the summer placed in the balcony…. From there he expressed his views on men and books, surrounded by an admiring crowd who said “ay” to all his remarks.” Will’s was the leading competitor of Button’s among the literati.

The Bedford Coffee-House, at Covent Garden, was described by its proprietors as “the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism and the standard of taste.” When Button’s fell out of favor, the Bedford became the new hangout for actors and writers. Some of its famous frequenters were: Garrick, Samuel Foote, Richard Sheridan, Hogarth, Fielding, and William Collins. In January 1754, the premiere issue of the
Connoisseur,
edited by Coleman and Thornton, stated, “This coffee-house is every night crowded with men of parts. Almost everyone you meet is a polite scholar and a wit.”

Watercolor drawing of the Lion’s Head sign for Button’s Coffee House, London. It was designed by Hogarth and erected by Addison in 1713. (W.H.Ukers,
All about Coffee)

Lloyd’s Coffee-House, in Lombard Street, was founded by Edward Lloyd around 1688. There the captains and merchants of England’s burgeoning sea trade met and cut deals with underwriters and insurance brokers to protect their investments from the hazards of expeditions that could last many months and take them through many uncertainties of weather and welcome. This was the beginning of two institutions, the Royal Exchange Lloyd’s, which, at least prior to its recent financial boondoggle, was the largest insurance company in the world, and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping.

Thomas Garraway’s Coffee-House, on Exchange Alley in Cornhill, which served as an auction house, is mentioned by Addison, Pope, and Swift. Jonathan’s Coffee-House, also in Exchange Alley, referred to in the
Tatler
and
Spectator,
was a center of trading in company shares. Shares in the South Sea Company, formed in 1711 by the earl of Oxford to advance trade with Spanish America, were, together with its ill-fated imitators, hotly traded there. The speculation spread, and confidence men took advantage of the public’s eagerness to share in the wealth expected from the New World by selling them stock in impossible ventures that quickly went bankrupt. Although the South Sea Company’s investors initially saw their holdings multiply tenfold, the enterprise soon failed and left them with nothing.

The Grecian Coffee-House in Devereux Court, Essex Street, Strand, was first presided over by Constantine, a Greek immigrant. It was attended by Addison and Steele, who dated his learned articles in the
Tatler
from there, as well as by Goldsmith and many members of the Royal Society. There Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), an antiquarian and topographer from Leeds, witnessed “Dr. Douglas dissecting a dolphin lately caught in the Thames,” evidently a favorite stunt of the members of the group, which had performed the same procedure while meeting at Tillyard’s.

Certain coffeehouses seemed to hold special attraction for men in particular professions or “callings.” Child’s Coffee-House, a favorite of the
Spectator
crowd, was popular with the clergy and the members of the Royal Society as well. Old Slaughter’s Coffee-House on St. Martin’s Lane was opened by Thomas Slaughter in 1692. It is remembered for the painters who assembled there, including Hogarth and Gainsborough. Tom’s Coffee-House, named for Thomas West, its proprietor, was located on Russell Street, Covent Garden, the theater district. After the curtain fell, the cream of the audience and performers would collect there, including Johnson, Goldsmith, and Garrick. It became a private club in 1768.

Don Saltero’s Coffee-House was founded in 1690 by John Salter, a former servant of Sir Hans Sloane, on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Salter, described by Steele in 1709 as “a Sage of thin and meagre Countinance,” decorated his establishment with strange curios and memorabilia, which Steele called “extraordinary absurdities.” Salter, who had been nicknamed “Don Saltero,” or “Old Salt,” by an English admiral, was, to put it mildly, a colorful character. While tending his famous house, he performed the services of a barber, including therapeutic bleeding, shaving, and pulling teeth, free of charge, played the violin, and wrote poetry. From his time as valet to Sloane (1660–1753), an Irish physician, scientist, traveler, and collector, Salter developed a passion for accumulating curiosities, including “Tiger’s tusks, the skeleton of a guinea pig, the Pope’s candle, a fly-cap monkey, Mary Queen of Scots pincushion, and pair of Nun’s stockings.” Although Steele thought little of these oddities, they attracted large crowds. When Salter died in 1728, he took with him the coffeehouse’s distinctive atmosphere, but the business survived until at least the middle of the nineteenth century, at the time when Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) moved to the same street.

White’s Chocolate House, founded in 1697 by Francis White on St. James’s Street, was converted about thirty-five years later into a stylish club whose members were “the most fashionable exquisites of the town and court.” Even in its early coffeehouse days, it charged high prices and was frequented by the upper classes. According to Escott, it was the “one specimen of the class to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost the same roof, and always bearing the same name, whether as coffeehouse or club, the same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred years.” It still exists today, and patrons look out a bay window dating from the time of George Bryan “Beau Brummell”—1755. At White’s and other clubs, such as Boodle’s and Brooks’, also on St. James’s Street, admission was by subscription only, and extravagant gambling continued all night. These became the resorts of the aristocrats, military officers, and important government officials.

Among the intellectual and artistic vanguard, Augustan civility was losing favor to self-imposed Romantic rustication. Coffeehouse conversation, with its sophisticated urban and urbane banter, held little attraction for William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and his confederates, who affected to celebrate the natural, rural, and commonplace. Of course, though the Romantics deserted the coffeehouses and “the smoke, the mud, and the cries of London,”
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which Johnson had so loved, and went hiking around the countryside in search of pastoral inspiration, they did not leave their coffee or tea behind. In his voluminous notebook diaries, Coleridge troubles to record the following recipe for making coffee, in an entry dated December 1802: