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The Lion's Head at Button's Coffee House

Designed by Hogarth, and put up by Addison, 1713 From a water color by T.H. Shepherd

Before entering the coffee house every one was recommended by the Tatler to prepare his body with three dishes of bohea and to purge his brains with two pinches of snuff. Men had their coffee houses as now they have their clubs—sometimes contented with one, sometimes belonging to three or four. Johnson, for instance, was connected with St. James's, the Turk's Head, the Bedford, Peele's, besides the taverns which he frequented. Addison and Steele used Button's; Swift, Button's, the Smyrna, and St. James's; Dryden, Will's; Pope, Will's and Button's; Goldsmith, the St. James's and the Chapter; Fielding, the Bedford; Hogarth, the Bedford and Slaughter's; Sheridan, the Piazza; Thurlow, Nando's.

Some Famous Coffee Houses

Among the famous English coffee houses of the seventeenth-eighteenth century period were St. James's, Will's, Garraway's, White's, Slaughter's, the Grecian, Button's, Lloyd's, Tom's, and Don Saltero's.

St. James's was a Whig house frequented by members of Parliament, with a fair sprinkling of literary stars. Garraway's catered to the gentry of the period, many of whom naturally had Tory proclivities.

One of the notable coffee houses of Queen Anne's reign was Button's. Here Addison could be found almost every afternoon and evening, along with Steele, Davenant, Carey, Philips, and other kindred minds. Pope was a member of the same coffee house club for a year, but his inborn irascibility eventually led him to drop out of it.

At Button's a lion's head, designed by Hogarth after the Lion of Venice, "a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws," was set up to receive letters and papers for the Guardian.[82] The Tatler and the Spectator were born in the coffee house, and probably English prose would never have received the impetus given it by the essays of Addison and Steele had it not been for coffee house associations.

Pope's famous Rape of the Lock grew out of coffee-house gossip. The poem itself contains one charming passage on coffee.[83]

Another frequenter of the coffee houses of London, when he had the money to do so, was Daniel Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe was the precursor of the English novel. Henry Fielding, one of the greatest of all English novelists, loved the life of the more bohemian coffee houses, and was, in fact, induced to write his first great novel, Joseph Andrews, through coffee-house criticisms of Richardson's Pamela.

Other frequenters of the coffee houses of the period were Thomas Gray and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Garrick was often to be seen at Tom's in Birchin Lane, where also Chatterton might have been found on many an evening before his untimely death.

The London Pleasure Gardens

The second half of the eighteenth century was covered by the reigns of the Georges. The coffee houses were still an important factor in London life, but were influenced somewhat by the development of gardens in which were served tea, chocolate, and other drinks, as well as coffee. At the coffee houses themselves, while coffee remained the favorite beverage, the proprietors, in the hope of increasing their patronage, began to serve wine, ale, and other liquors. This seems to have been the first step toward the decay of the coffee house.

A Trio of Notables at Button's in 1730

The figure in the cloak is Count Viviani; of the figures facing the reader, the draughts player is Dr. Arbuthnot, and the figure standing is assumed to be Pope]

The coffee houses, however, continued to be the centers of intellectual life. When Samuel Johnson and David Garrick came together to London, literature was temporarily in a bad way, and the hack writers of the time dwelt in Grub Street.

It was not until after Johnson had met with some success, and had established the first of his coffee-house clubs at the Turk's Head, that literature again became a fashionable profession.

This really famous literary club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and Adam Smith, the political economist.

Certain it is that during the sway of the English coffee house, and at least partly through its influence, England produced a better prose literature, as embodied alike in her essays, literary criticisms, and novels, than she ever had produced before.

The advent of the pleasure garden brought coffee out into the open in England; and one of the reasons why gardens, such as Ranelagh and Vauxhall, began to be more frequented than the coffee houses was that they were popular resorts for women as well as for men. All kinds of beverages were served in them; and soon the women began to favor tea as an afternoon drink. At least, the great development in the use of tea dates from this period; and many of these resorts called themselves tea gardens.

The use of coffee by this time, however, was well established in the homes as a breakfast and dinner beverage, and such consumption more than made up for any loss sustained through the gradual decadence of the coffee house. Yet signs of the change in national taste that arrived with the Georges were not wanting; for the active propaganda of the British East India Company was fairly well launched during Queen Anne's reign.

The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century were unique. At one time there was a "mighty maze" of them. Their season extended from April or May to August or September. At first there was no charge for admission, but Warwick Wroth[84] tells us that visitors usually purchased cheese cakes, syllabubs, tea, coffee and ale.

The four best-known London gardens were Vauxhall; Marylebone; Cuper's, where the charge for admission subsequently was fixed at not less than a shilling; and Ranelagh, where the charge of half a crown included "the Elegant Regale" of tea, coffee, and bread and butter.

The pleasure gardens provided walks, rooms for dancing, skittle grounds, bowling greens, variety entertainments, and promenade concerts; and not a few places were given over to fashionable gambling and racing.

The Vauxhall Gardens, one of the most favored resorts of pleasure-seeking Londoners, were located on the Surrey side of the Thames, a short distance east of Vauxhall Bridge. They were originally known as the New Spring Gardens (1661), to distinguish them from the old Spring Gardens at Charing Cross. They became famous in the reign of Charles II. Vauxhall was celebrated for its walks, lit with thousands of lamps, its musical and other performances, suppers, and fireworks. High and low were to be found there, and the drinking of tea and coffee in the arbors was a feature. The illustration shows the garden brightly illuminated by lanterns and lamps on some festival occasion. Coffee and tea were served in the arbors.

Vauxhall Gardens on a Gala Night

The Ranelagh, "a place of public entertainment," erected at Chelsea in 1742, was a kind of Vauxhall under cover. The principal room, known as the Rotunda, was circular in shape, 150 feet in diameter, and had an orchestra in the center and tiers of boxes all around. Promenading and taking refreshments in the boxes were the principal divertisements. Except on gala nights of masquerades and fireworks, only tea, coffee, bread and butter were to be had at Ranelagh.

The Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens With the Company at Breakfast—1751

In the group of gardens connected with mineral springs was the Dog and Duck (St. George's Spa), which became at last a tea garden and a dancing saloon of doubtful repute.

Still another division, recognized by Wroth, consisted mainly of tea gardens, among them Highbury Barn, The Canonbury House, Hornsey and Copenhagen House, Bagnigge Wells, and White Conduit House. The two last named were the classic tea gardens of the period. Both were provided with "long rooms" in case of rain, and for indoor promenades with organ music. Then there were the Adam and Eve tea gardens, with arbors for tea-drinking parties, which subsequently became the Adam and Eve Tavern and Coffee House. Well known were the Bayswater Tea Gardens and the Jews Harp House and Tea Gardens. All these were provided with neat, "genteel" boxes, let into the hedges and alcoves, for tea and coffee drinkers.

Locating the Notable Coffee Houses

Garraway's, 3 'Change Alley, Cornhill, was a place for great mercantile transactions. Thomas Garway, the original proprietor, was a tobacconist and coffee man, who claimed to be the first that sold tea in England, although not at this address. The later Garraway's was long famous as a sandwich and drinking room for sherry, pale ale, and punch, in addition to tea and coffee. It is said that the sandwich-maker was occupied two hours in cutting and arranging the sandwiches for the day's consumption. After the "great fire" of 1666 Garraway's moved into the same place in Exchange Alley where Elford had been before the fire. Here he claimed to have the oldest coffee house in London; but the ground on which Bowman's had stood was occupied later by the Virginia and the Jamaica coffee houses. The latter was damaged by the fire of 1748 which consumed Garraway's and Elford's (see map of the 1748 fire).

Will's, the predecessor of Button's, first had the title of the Red Cow, then of the Rose. It was kept by William Urwin, and was on the north side of Russell Street at the corner of Bow Street. "It was Dryden who made Will's coffee house the great resort of the wits of his time." (Pope and Spence.) The room in which the poet was accustomed to sit was on the first floor; and his place was the place of honor by the fireside in the winter, and at the corner of the balcony, looking over the street, in fine weather; he called the two places his winter and his summer seat. This was called the dining-room floor. The company did not sit in boxes as subsequently, but at various tables which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was permitted in the public room; it was then so much in vogue that it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided themselves into parties; and we are told by Ward that the young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal table, thought it a great honor to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. After Dryden's death Will's was transferred to a house opposite, and became Button's, "over against Thomas's in Covent Garden." Thither also Addison transferred much company from Thomas's. Here Swift first saw Addison. Hither also came "Steele, Arbuthnot and many other wits of the time." Button's continued in vogue until Addison's death and Steele's retirement into Wales, after which the coffee drinkers went to the Bedford, dinner parties to the Shakespeare. Button's was subsequently known as the Caledonien.

Garraway's Coffee House in 'Change Alley

Garway (or Garraway) claimed to have been first to sell Tea in England

Button's Coffee House, Great Russell Street

Afterward it became the Caledonien

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd

Slaughter's, famous as the resort of painters and sculptors in the eighteenth century, was situated at the upper end of the west side of St. Martin's Lane. Its first landlord was Thomas Slaughter, 1692. A second Slaughter's (New Slaughter's) was established in the same street in 1760, when the original Slaughter's adopted the name of Old Slaughter's. It was torn down in 1843–44. Among the notables who frequented it were Hogarth; young Gainsborough; Cipriani; Haydon; Roubiliac; Hudson, who painted the Dilettanti portraits; M'Ardell, the mezzotinto-scraper; Luke Sullivan, the engraver; Gardell, the portrait painter; and Parry, the Welsh harper.

Tom's, in Birchin Lane, Cornhill, though in the main a mercantile resort, acquired some celebrity from having been frequented by Garrick. Tom's was also frequented by Chatterton, as a place "of the best resort." Then there was Tom's in Devereux Court, Strand, and Tom's at 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, opposite Button's, a celebrated resort during the reign of Queen Anne and for more than a century after.

The Grecian, Devereux Court, Strand, was originally kept by one Constantine, a Greek. From this house Steele proposed to date his learned articles in the Tatler; it is mentioned in No. 1 of the Spectator, and it was much frequented by Goldsmith. The Grecian was Foote's morning lounge. In 1843 the premises became the Grecian Chambers, with a bust of Lord Devereux, earl of Essex, over the door.

Slaughter's Coffee House, St. Martin's Lane

It was taken down in 1843

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd, 1841

Tom's Coffee House, 17 Great Russell Street

Used as a coffee house until 1804 and razed in 1865

From a water color by T.H. Shepherd

Lloyd's, Royal Exchange, celebrated for its priority of shipping intelligence and its marine insurance, originated with Edward Lloyd, who about 1688 kept a coffee house in Tower Street, later in Lombard Street corner of Abchurch Lane. It was a modest place of refreshment for seafarers and merchants. As a matter of convenience, Edward Lloyd prepared "ships' lists" for the guidance of the frequenters of the coffee house. "These lists, which were written by hand, contained," according to Andrew Scott, "an account of vessels which the underwriters who met there were likely to have offered them for insurance." Such was the beginning of two institutions that have since exercised a dominant influence on the sea-carrying trade of the whole world—the Royal Exchange Lloyd's, the greatest insurance institution in the world, and Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Lloyd's now has 1400 agents in all parts of the world. It receives as many as 100,000 telegrams a year. It records through its intelligence service the daily movements of 11,000 vessels.

In the beginning one of the apartments in the Exchange was fitted up as Lloyd's coffee room. Edward Lloyd died in 1712. Subsequently the coffee house was in Pope's Head Alley, where it was called New Lloyd's coffee house, but on September 14, 1784, it was removed to the northwest corner of the Royal Exchange, where it remained until the partial destruction of that building by fire.

Lloyd's Coffee House in the Royal Exchange, Showing the Subscription Room

In rebuilding the Exchange there were provided the Subscribers' or Underwriters' room, the Merchants' room, and the Captains' room. The City, second edition, 1848, contains the following description of this most famous rendezvous of eminent merchants, shipowners, underwriters, insurance, stock and exchange brokers:

Here is obtained the earliest news of the arrival and sailing of vessels, losses at sea, captures, recaptures, engagements and other shipping intelligence; and proprietors of ships and freights are insured by the underwriters. The rooms are in the Venetian style with Roman enrichments. At the entrance of the room are exhibited the Shipping Lists, received from Lloyd's agents at home and abroad, and affording particulars of departures or arrivals of vessels, wrecks, salvage, or sale of property saved, etc. To the right and left are "Lloyd's Books," two enormous ledgers. Right hand, ships "spoken with" or arrived at their destined ports; left hand, records of wrecks, fires or severe collisions, written in a fine Roman hand in "double lines." To assist the underwriters in their calculations, at the end of the room is an Anemometer, which registers the state of the wind day and night; attached is a rain gauge.

The British, Cockspur Street, "long a house of call for Scotchmen," was fortunate in its landladies. In 1759 it was kept by the sister of Bishop Douglas, so well known for his works against Lauder and Bower, which may explain its Scottish fame. At another period it was kept by Mrs. Anderson, described in Mackenzie's Life of Home as "a woman of uncommon talents and the most agreeable conversation."

Don Saltero's, 18 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, was opened by a barber named Salter in 1695. Sir Hans Sloane contributed of his own collection some of the refuse gimcracks that were to be found in Salter's "museum." Vice-Admiral Munden, who had been long on the coast of Spain, where he had acquired a fondness for Spanish titles, named the keeper of the house Don Saltero, and his coffee house and museum Don Saltero's.

Squire's was in Fulwood's Rents, Holburn, running up to Gray's Inn. It was one of the receiving houses of the Spectator. In No. 269 the Spectator accepts Sir Roger de Coverley's invitation to "smoke a pipe with him over a dish of coffee at Squire's. As I love the old man, I take delight in complying with everything that is agreeable to him, and accordingly waited on him to the coffee-house, where his venerable figure drew upon us the eyes of the whole room. He had no sooner seated himself at the upper end of the high table, but he called for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle and the 'Supplement' (a periodical paper of that time), with such an air of cheerfulness and good humour, that all the boys in the coffee room (who seemed to take pleasure in serving him) were at once employed on his several errands, insomuch that nobody else could come at a dish of tea until the Knight had got all his conveniences about him." Such was the coffee room in the Spectator's day.

Interior of Dick's Coffee House

From the frontispiece to "The Coffee House—a dramatick Piece" (see chapter XXXII)

The Cocoa-Tree was originally a coffee house on the south side of Pall Mall. When there grew up a need for "places of resort of a more elegant and refined character," chocolate houses came into vogue, and the Cocoa-Tree was the most famous of these. It was converted into a club in 1746.

The Grecian Coffee House, Devereux Court

It was closed in 1843. From a drawing dated 1809

White's chocolate house, established by Francis White about 1693 in St. James's Street, originally open to any one as a coffee house, soon became a private club, composed of "the most fashionable exquisites of the town and court." In its coffee-house days, the entrance was sixpence, as compared with the average penny fee of the other coffee houses. Escott refers to White's as being "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 coffee house or club, the same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred years."

Among hundreds of other coffee houses that flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the following more notable ones are deserving of mention:

Don Saltero's Coffee House, Cheyne Walk

From a steel engraving in the British Museum

The British Coffee House in Cockspur Street

From a print published in 1770

Baker's, 58 'Change Alley, for nearly half a century noted for its chops and steaks broiled in the coffee room and eaten hot from the gridiron; the Baltic, in Threadneedle Street, the rendezvous of brokers and merchants connected with the Russian trade; the Bedford, "under the Piazza, in Covent Garden," crowded every night with men of parts and "signalized for many years as the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism and the standard of taste"; the Chapter, in Paternoster Row, frequented by Chatterton and Goldsmith; Child's, in St. Paul's Churchyard, one of the Spectator's houses, and much frequented by the clergy and fellows of the Royal Society; Dick's, in Fleet Street, frequented by Cowper, and the scene of Rousseau's comedietta, entitled The Coffee House; St. James's, in St. James's Street, frequented by Swift, Goldsmith, and Garrick; Jerusalem, in Cowper's Court, Cornhill, frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of China, India, and Australia; Jonathan's, in 'Change Alley, described by the Tatler as "the general mart of stock jobbers"; the London, in Ludgate Hill, noted for its publishers' sales of stock and copyrights; Man's, in Scotland Yard, which took its name from the proprietor, Alexander Man, and was sometimes known as Old Man's, or the Royal, to distinguish it from Young Man's, Little Man's, New Man's, etc., minor establishments in the neighborhood;[85] Nando's, in Fleet Street, the favorite haunt of Lord Thurlow and many professional loungers, attracted by the fame of the punch and the charms of the landlady; New England and North and South American, in Threadneedle Street, having on its subscription list representatives of Barings, Rothschilds, and other wealthy establishments; Peele's, in Fleet Street, having a portrait of Dr. Johnson said to have been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the Percy, in Oxford Street, the inspiration for the Percy Anecdotes; the Piazza, in Covent Garden, where Macklin fitted up a large coffee room, or theater, for oratory, and Fielding and Foote poked fun at him; the Rainbow, in Fleet Street, the second coffee house opened in London, having its token money; the Smyrna, in Pall Mall, a "place to talk politics," and frequented by Prior and Swift; Tom King's, one of the old night houses of Covent Garden Market, "well known to all gentlemen to whom beds are unknown"; the Turk's Head, 'Change Alley, which also had its tokens; the Turk's Head, in the Strand, which was a favorite supping house for Dr. Johnson and Boswell; the Folly, a coffee house on a house-boat on the Thames, which became quite notorious during Queen Anne's reign.

The French Coffee House in London, Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

From the original water-color drawing by Thomas Rowlandson

RAMPONAUX' ROYAL DRUMMER, ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR OF THE EARLY PARISIAN CAFÉS

Started originally as a tavern, this hostelry added coffee to its cuisine and became famous in the reign of Louis XV The illustration is from an early print used to advertise the "Royal Drummer's" attractions