Inns and Taverns of Old London

INNS AND TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON

By Henry Shelley

Part II: Coffee-houses of old London.

Chapter 1: Coffee-houses on 'Change and near-by

Coffee-Houses still exist in London, but it would be difficult to find one answering to the type which was so common during the last forty years of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. The establishment of to-day is nothing more than an eating-house of modest pretensions, frequented mostly by the labouring classes. In many cases its internal arrangements follow the old-time model, and the imitation extends to the provision of a daily newspaper or two from which customers may glean the news of the day without extra charge. Here and there, too, the coffee-house of the present perpetuates the convenience of its prototype by allowing customers' letters to be sent to its address. But the more exalted type of coffee-house has lost its identity in the club.

It is generally agreed that 1652 was the date of the opening of the first coffee-house in London. There are, however, still earlier references to the drink itself. For example, Sir Henry Blount wrote from Turkey in 1634 to the effect that the natives of that country had a drink called cauphe ...in taste a little bitterish, and that they daily entertained themselves two or three hours in cauphe-houses, which, in Turkey, abound more than inns and alehouses with us. Also it will be remembered that Evelyn, under date 1637, recorded how a Greek came to Oxford and was the first I ever saw drink coffee.

Whether the distinction of opening the first coffee-house in London belongs to a Mr. Bowman or to a Pasqua Rosee cannot be decided. But all authorities are as one in locating that establishment in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, and that the date was 1652. The weight of evidence seems to be in favour of Rosee, who was servant to a Turkey merchant named Edwards. Having acquired the coffee-drinking habit in Turkey, Mr. Edwards was accustomed to having his servant prepare the beverage for him in his London house, and the new drink speedily attracted a levee of curious onlookers and tasters. Evidently the company grew too large to be convenient, and at this juncture Mr. Edwards suggested that Rosee should set up as a vendor of the drink. He did so, and a copy of the prospectus he issued on the occasion still exists. It set forth at great length the virtue of the Coffee Drink First publiquely made and sold in England by Pasqua Rosee, the berry of which was described as a simple innocent thing but yielding a liquor of countless merits. But Rosee was frank as to its drawbacks; it will prevent drowsiness, he continued, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to watch; and therefore you are not to drink it after supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for three or four hours.

That Pasqua Rosee prospered amazingly in St. Michael's Alley, at the Signe of his own Head, is the only conclusion possible from the numerous rival establishments which were quickly set up in different parts of London. By the end of the century it was computed that the coffee-houses of London numbered nearly three thousand.

But there were days of tribulation to be passed through before that measure of success was attained. In eight years after Rosee had opened his establishment the consumption of coffee in England had evidently increased to a notable extent, for in 1660 the House of Commons is found granting to Charles II for life the excise duty on coffee and other outlandish drinks. But it is a curious fact that while the introduction of tea was accepted with equanimity by the community, the introduction of coffee was strenuously opposed for more than a decade. Poets and pamphleteers combined to decry the new beverage. The rhyming author of A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours, published in 1663, voiced his indignation thus:

For men and Christians to turn Turks and think

To excuse the crime, because 'tis in their drink!

Pure English apes! ye might, for aught I know,

Would it but mode learn to eat spiders too.

Should any of your grandsires' ghosts appear

In your wax-candle circles, and but hear

The name of coffee so much called upon,

Then see it drank like scalding Phlegethon;

Would they not startle, think ye, all agreed

'Twas conjuration both in word and deed?

By way of climax this opponent of the new drink appealed to the shades of Ben Jonson and other libation-loving poets, and recalled how they, as source of inspiration, drank pure nectar as the Gods drink too.

Three years later a dramatist seems to have tried his hand at depicting the new resort on the stage, for Pepys tells how in October, 1666, he saw a play called The Coffee-House. It was not a success; the most ridiculous, insipid play that ever I saw in my life, was Pepys' verdict. But there was nothing insipid about the pamphlet which, under the title of The Character of a Coffee-House, issued from the press seven years later. The author withheld his name, and was wise in so doing, for his cuts and thrusts with his pen would have brought down upon him as numerous cuts and thrusts with a more dangerous weapon had his identity been known. A coffee-house, he wrote,

is a lay-conventicle, good-fellowship turned puritan, ill-husbandry in masquerade; whither people come, after toping all day, to purchase, at the expense of their last penny, the repute of sober companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, that, to make each man his penny-worth, draws out into petty parcels what the merchant receives in bullion. He, that comes often, saves two-pence a week in Gazettes, and has his news and his coffee for the same charge, as at a three-penny ordinary they give in broth to your chop of mutton; it is an exchange where haberdashers of political smallwares meet, and mutually abuse each other, and the public, with bottomless stories, and headless notions; the rendezvous of idle pamphlets, and persons more idly employed to read them; a high court of justice, where every little fellow in a camlet cloke takes upon him to transpose affairs both