All About Coffee Part 13

Nor profane Scripture, nor sawcily wrong Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue: Let mirth be innocent, and each man see That all his jests without reflection be; To keep the house more quiet and from blame, We banish hence cards, dice, and every game; Nor can allow of wagers, that exceed Five shillings, which ofttimes much trouble breed; Let all that's lost or forfeited be spent In such good liquor as the house doth vent.

And customers endeavour, to their powers, For to observe still, seasonable hours.

Lastly, let each man what he calls for pay, And so you're welcome to come every day.

The early coffee houses were often up a flight of stairs, and consisted of a single large room with "tables set apart for divers topics." There is a reference to this in the prologue to a comedy of 1681 (quoted by Malone):

In a coffee house just now among the rabble I bluntly asked, which is the treason table?

This was the arrangement at Man's and others favored by the wits, the _literati_, and "men of fashionable instincts." In the distinctly business coffee houses separate rooms were provided at a later time for mercantile transactions. The introduction of wooden part.i.tions--wooden boxes, as at a tavern--was also of somewhat later date.

A print of 1674 shows five persons of different ranks in life, one of them smoking, sitting on chairs around a coffee-house table, on which are small basins, or dishes, without saucers, and tobacco pipes, while a coffee boy is serving coffee.

In the beginning, only coffee was dispensed in the English coffee houses. Soon chocolate, sherbert, and tea were added; but the places still maintained their status as social and temperance factors.

Constantine Jennings (or George Constantine) of the Grecian advertised chocolate, sherbert and tea at retail in 1664-65; also free instruction in the part of preparing these liquors. "Drams and cordial waters were to be had only at coffee houses newly set up," says Elford the younger, writing about 1689. "While some few places added ale and beer as early as 1669, intoxicating liquors were not items of importance for many years."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LONDON COFFEE HOUSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

From a wood cut of the period]

After the fire of 1666, many new coffee houses were opened that were not limited to a single room up a flight of stairs. Because the coffee-house keepers over-emphasized the sobering qualities of the coffee drink, they drew many undesirable characters from the taverns and ale houses after the nine o'clock closing hour. These were hardly calculated to improve the reputation of the coffee houses; and, indeed, the decline of the coffee houses as a temperance inst.i.tution would seem to trace back to this att.i.tude of false pity for the victims of tavern vices, evils that many of the coffee houses later on embraced to their own undoing. The early inst.i.tution was unique, its distinctive features being unlike those of any public house in England or on the Continent. Later on, in the eighteenth century, when these distinctive features became obscured, the name coffee house became a misnomer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COFFEE HOUSE, QUEEN ANNE'S TIME--1702-14

Showing coffee pots, coffee dishes, and coffee boy]

However, Robinson says, "the close intercourse between the habitues of the coffee house, before it lost anything of its generous social traditions and whilst the issue of the struggle for political liberty was as yet uncertain, was to lead to something more than a mere jumbling or huddling together of opposites. The diverse elements gradually united in the bonds of common sympathy, or were forcibly combined by persecution from without until there resulted a social, political and moral force of almost irresistible strength."

_Coffee-House Keepers' Tokens_

The great London fire of 1666 destroyed some of the coffee houses; but prominent among those that survived was the Rainbow, whose proprietor, James Farr, issued one of the earliest coffee-house tokens, doubtless in grateful memory of his escape. Farr's token shows an arched rainbow emerging from the clouds of the "great fire," indicating that all was well with him, and the Rainbow still radiant. On the reverse the medal was inscribed, "In Fleet Street--His Half Penny."

A large number of these trade coins were put out by coffee-house keepers and other tradesmen in the seventeenth century as evidence of an amount due, as stated thereon, by the issuer to the holder. Tokens originated because of the scarcity of small change. They were of bra.s.s, copper, pewter, and even leather, gilded. They bore the name, address, and calling of the issuer, the nominal value of the piece, and some reference to his trade. They were readily redeemed, on presentation, at their face value. They were pa.s.sable in the immediate neighborhood, seldom reaching farther than the next street. C.G. Williamson writes:

Tokens are essentially democratic; they would never have been issued but for the indifference of the Government to a public need; and in them we have a remarkable instance of a people forcing a legislature to comply with demands at once reasonable and imperative. Taken as a whole series, they are homely and quaint, wanting in beauty, but not without a curious domestic art of their own.

Robinson finds an exception to the general simplicity in the tokens issued by one of the Exchange Alley houses. The dies of these tokens are such as to have suggested the skilled workmanship of John Roettier. The most ornate has the head of a Turkish sultan at that time famed for his horrible deeds, ending in suicide; its inscription runs:

Morat ye Great Men did mee call; Where Eare I came I conquer'd all.

A number of the most interesting coffee-house keepers' tokens in the Beaufoy collection in the Guildhall Museum were photographed for this work, and are shown herewith. It will be observed that many of the traders of 1660-75 adopted as their trade sign a hand pouring coffee from a pot, invariably of the Turkish-ewer pattern. Morat (Amurath) and Soliman were frequent coffee-house signs in the seventeenth century.

J.H. Burn, in his _Catalogue of Traders' Tokens_, recites that in 1672 "divers persons who presumed ... to stamp, coin, exchange and distribute farthings, halfpence and pence of bra.s.s and copper" were "taken into custody, in order to a severe prosecution"; but upon submission, their offenses were forgiven, and it was not until the year 1675 that the private token ceased to pa.s.s current.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 1--COFFEE-HOUSE KEEPERS' TOKENS OF THE 17TH CENTURY

Drawn for this work from the originals in the British Museum, and in the Beaufoy collection at the Guildhall Museum]

A royal proclamation at the close of 1674 enjoined the prosecution of any who should "utter base metals with private stamps," or "hinder the vending of those half pence and farthings which are provided for necessary exchange." After this, tokens were issued stamped "necessary change."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BROAD-SIDE OF 1663]

_Opposition to the Coffee House_

It is easy to see why the coffee houses at once found favor among men of intelligence in all cla.s.ses. Until they came, the average Englishman had only the tavern as a place of common resort. But here was a public house offering a non-intoxicating beverage, and its appeal was instant and universal. As a meeting place for the exchange of ideas it soon attained wide popularity. But not without opposition. The publicans and ale-house keepers, seeing business slipping away from them, made strenuous propaganda against this new social center; and not a few attacks were launched against the coffee drink. Between the Restoration and the year 1675, of eight tracts written upon the subject of the London coffee houses, four have the words "character of a coffee house" as part of their t.i.tles. The authors appear eager to impart a knowledge of the town's latest novelty, with which many readers were unacquainted.

One of these early pamphlets (1662) was ent.i.tled _The Coffee Scuffle_, and professed to give a dialogue between "a learned knight and a pitifull pedagogue," and contained an amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the cla.s.sics, another confides to his neighbors how much he admires Euclid;

A third's for a lecture, a fourth a conjecture, A fifth for a penny in the pound.

Theology is introduced. Mask b.a.l.l.s and plays are condemned. Others again discuss the news, and are deep in the store of "mercuries" here to be found. One cries up philosophy. Pedantry is rife, and for the most part unchecked, when each 'prentice-boy "doth call for his coffee in Latin"

and all are so prompt with their learned quotations that "'t would make a poor Vicar to tremble."

The first noteworthy effort attacking the coffee drink was a satirical broadside that appeared in 1663. It was ent.i.tled _A Cup of Coffee: or, Coffee in its Colours_. It said:

For men and Christians to turn Turks, and think T'excuse the Crime because 'tis in their drink, Is more than Magick....

Pure English Apes! Ye may, for ought I know, Would it but mode, learn to eat Spiders too.

The writer wonders that any man should prefer coffee to canary, and refers to the days of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson. He says:

They drank pure nectar as the G.o.ds drink too, Sublim'd with rich Canary....

shall then These less than coffee's self, these coffee-men, These sons of nothing, that can hardly make Their Broth, for laughing how the jest doth take; Yet grin, and give ye for the Vine's pure Blood A loathsome potion, not yet understood, Syrrop of soot, or Essence of old Shooes, Dasht with Diurnals and the Books of news?

The author of _A Cup of Coffee_, it will be seen, does not shrink from using epithets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 2--COFFEE-HOUSE KEEPERS' TOKENS OF THE 17TH CENTURY

Drawn for this work from the originals in the British Museum, and in the Beaufoy collection at the Guildhall Museum]

_The Coffee Man's Granado Discharged upon the Maiden's Complaint Against Coffee_, a dialogue in verse, also appeared in 1663.

_The Character of a Coffee House, by an Eye and Ear Witness_ appeared in 1665. It was a ten-page pamphlet, and proved to be excellent propaganda for coffee. It is so well done, and contains so much local color, that it is reproduced here, the text Museum. The t.i.tle page reads:

The CHARACTER OF A COFFEE-HOUSE wherein Is contained a Description of the Persons usually frequenting it, with their Discourse and Humors, As Also The Admirable Vertues of COFFEE By an Eye and Ear Witness

_When Coffee once was vended here, The Alc'ron shortly did appear, For our Reformers were such Widgeons.

New Liquors brought in new Religions._

Printed in the Year, 1665.

The text and the arrangement of the body of the pamphlet are as follows:

THE CHARACTER OF A COFFEE-HOUSE

THE DERIVATION OF A COFFEE-HOUSE

A _Coffee-house_, the learned hold It is a place where _Coffee's_ sold; This derivation cannot fail us, For where _Ale's_ vended, that's an _Ale-house_.

This being granted to be true, 'Tis meet that next the _Signs_ we shew Both _where_ and _how_ to find this house Where men such _cordial broth_ carowse.