All About Coffee Part 11

It is further recorded that Kolschitzky sold the house within a year; and, after many moves, he died of tuberculosis, February 20, 1694, aged fifty-four years. He was courier to the emperor at the time of his death, and was buried in the Stefansfreithof Cemetery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF KOLSCHITZKY ERECTED BY THE COFFEE MAKERS GUILD OF VIENNA]

Kolschitzky's heirs moved the coffee house to Donaustrand, near the wooden Schlagbrucke, later known as Ferdinand's _brucke_ (bridge). The celebrated coffee house of Franz Mosee (d. 1860) stood on this same spot.

In the city records for the year 1700 a house in the Stock-im-Eisen-Platz (square) is designated by the words "_allwo das erste kaffeegewolbe_" ("here was the first coffee house").

Unfortunately, the name of the proprietor is not given.

Many stories are told of Kolschitzky's popularity as a coffee-house keeper. He is said to have addressed everyone as _bruderherz_ (brother-heart) and gradually he himself acquired the name _bruderherz_.

A portrait of Kolschitzky, painted about the time of his greatest vogue, is carefully preserved by the Innung der Wiener Kaffee-sieder (the Coffee Makers' Guild of Vienna).

Even during the lifetime of the first _kaffee-sieder_, a number of others opened coffee houses and acquired some little fame. Early in the eighteenth century a tourist gives us a glimpse of the progress made by coffee drinking and by the coffee-house idea in Vienna. We read:

The city of Vienna is filled with coffee houses, where the novelists or those who busy themselves with the newspapers delight to meet, to read the gazettes and discuss their contents. Some of these houses have a better reputation than others because such _zeitungs-doctors_ (newspaper doctors--an ironical t.i.tle) gather there to pa.s.s most unhesitating judgment on the weightiest events, and to surpa.s.s all others in their opinions concerning political matters and considerations.

All this wins them such respect that many congregate there because of them, and to enrich their minds with inventions and foolishness which they immediately run through the city to bring to the ears of the said personalities. It is impossible to believe what freedom is permitted, in furnis.h.i.+ng this gossip. They speak without reverence not only of the doings of generals and ministers of state, but also mix themselves in the life of the Kaiser (Emperor) himself.

Vienna liked the coffee house so well that by 1839 there were eighty of them in the city proper and fifty more in the suburbs.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X

THE COFFEE HOUSES OF OLD LONDON

_One of the most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee--The first coffee house in London--The first coffee handbill, and the first newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt for coffee--Strange coffee mixtures--Fantastic coffee claims--Coffee prices and coffee licenses--Coffee club of the Rota--Early coffee-house manners and customs--Coffee-house keepers' tokens--Opposition to the coffee house--"Penny universities"--Weird coffee subst.i.tutes--The proposed coffee-house newspaper monopoly--Evolution of the club--Decline and fall of the coffee house--Pen pictures of coffee-house life--Famous coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Some Old World pleasure gardens--Locating the notable coffee houses_

The two most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee have to do with the period of the old London and Paris coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much of the poetry and romance of coffee centers around this time.

"The history of coffee houses," says D'Israeli, "ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the morals and the politics of a people." And so the history of the London coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is indeed the history of the manners and customs of the English people of that period.

_The First London Coffee House_

"The first coffee house in London," says John Aubrey (1626-97), the English antiquary and folklorist, "was in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill, opposite to the church, which was sett up by one ... Bowman (coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant, who putt him upon it) in or about the yeare 1652. 'Twas about four years before any other was sett up, and that was by Mr. Farr. Jonathan Paynter, over-against to St.

Michael's Church, was the first apprentice to the trade, viz., to Bowman."[67]

Another account, for which we are indebted to William Oldys (1696-1761), the bibliographer, relates that Mr. Edwards, a London merchant, acquired the coffee habit in Turkey, and brought home with him from Ragusa, in Dalmatia, Pasqua Rosee, an Armenian or Greek youth, who prepared the beverage for him. "But the novelty thereof," says Oldys, "drawing too much company to him, he allowed the said servant with another of his son-in-law to set up the first coffee house in London at St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill."

From this it would appear that Pasqua Rosee had as partner in this enterprise, the Bowman, who, according to Aubrey, was coachman to Mr.

Hodges, the son-in-law of Mr. Edwards, and a fellow merchant traveler.

Oldys tells us that Rosee and Bowman soon separated. John Timbs (1801-1875), another English antiquary, says they quarreled, Rosee keeping the house, and his partner Bowman obtaining leave to pitch a tent and to sell the drink in St. Michael's churchyard.

Still another version of this historic incident is to be found in _Houghton's Collection_, 1698. It reads:

It appears that a Mr. Daniel Edwards, an English merchant of Smyrna, brought with him to this country a Greek of the name of Pasqua, in 1652, who made his coffee; this Mr. Edwards married one Alderman Hodges's daughter, who lived in Walbrook, and set up Pasqua for a coffee man in a shed in the churchyard in St. Michael, Cornhill, which is now a scrivener's brave-house, when, having great custom, the ale-sellers pet.i.tioned the Lord Mayor against him as being no freeman. This made Alderman Hodges join his coachman, Bowman, who was free, as Pasqua's partner; but Pasqua, for some misdemeanor, was forced to run the country, and Bowman, by his trade and a contribution of 1000 sixpences, turned the shed to a house. Bowman's apprentices were first, John Painter, then Humphry, from whose wife I had this account.

This account makes it appear that Edwards was Hodges' son-in-law.

Whatever the relations.h.i.+p, most authorities agree that Pasqua Rosee was the first to sell coffee publicly, whether in a tent or shed, in London in or about the year 1652. His original shop-bill, or handbill, the first advertis.e.m.e.nt for coffee, is in the British Museum, and from it the accompanying photograph was made for this work. It sets forth in direct fas.h.i.+on: "The Vertue of the _COFFEE_ Drink First publiquely made and sold in England, by _Pasqua Rosee_ ... in St. _Michaels Alley_ in _Cornhill_ ... at the Signe of his own Head."[68]

H.R. Fox Bourne[69] (about 1870) is alone in an altogether different version of this historic event. He says:

"In 1652 Sir Nicholas Crispe, a Levant merchant, opened in London the first coffee house known in England, the beverage being prepared by a Greek girl brought over for the work."

There is nothing to substantiate this story; the preponderance of evidence is in support of the Edwards-Rosee version.

Such then was the advent of the coffee house in London, which introduced to English-speaking people the drink of democracy. Oddly enough, coffee and the Commonwealth came in together. The English coffee house, like its French contemporary, was the home of liberty.

Robinson, who accepts that version of the event wherein Edwards marries Hodges's daughter, says that after the partners Rosee and Bowman separated, and Bowman had set up his tent opposite Rosee, a zealous partisan addressed these verses "To Pasqua Rosee, at the Sign of his own Head and half his Body in St. Michael's Alley, next the first Coffee-Tent in London":

Were not the fountain of my Tears Each day exhausted by the steam Of your Coffee, no doubt appears But they would swell to such a stream As could admit of no restriction To see, poor Pasqua, thy Affliction.

What! Pasqua, you at first did broach This Nectar for the publick Good, Must you call Kitt down from the Coach To drive a Trade he understood No more than you did then your creed, Or he doth now to write or read?

Pull Courage, Pasqua, fear no Harms From the besieging Foe; Make good your Ground, stand to your Arms, Hold out this summer, and then tho'

He'll storm, he'll not prevail--your Face[70]

Shall give the Coffee Pot the chace.

Eventually Pasqua Rosee disappeared, some say to open a coffee house on the Continent, in Holland or Germany. Bowman, having married Alderman Hodges's cook, and having also prevailed upon about a thousand of his customers to lend him sixpence apiece, converted his tent into a substantial house, and eventually took an apprentice to the trade.

Concerning London's second coffee-house keeper, James Farr, proprietor of the Rainbow, who had as his most distinguished visitor Sir Henry Blount, Edward Hatton[71] says:

I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the coffee-house which is now the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple Gate (one of the first in England), was in the year 1657, prosecuted by the inquest of St Dunstan's in the West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called coffe, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighborhood, etc., and who would then have thought London would ever have had near three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee would have been, as now, so much drank by the best of quality and physicians?

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT FOR COFFEE--1652

Handbill used by Pasqua Rosee, who opened the first coffee house in London From the original in the British Museum]

Hatton evidently attributed Fair's nuisance to the coffee itself, whereas the presentment[72] clearly shows it was in Farr's chimney and not in the coffee.

Mention has already been made that Sir Henry Blount was spoken of as "the father of English coffee houses" and his claim to this distinction would seem to be a valid one, for his strong personality "stamped itself upon the system." His favorite motto, "_Loquendum est c.u.m vulgo, sentiendum c.u.m sapientibus_" (the crowd may talk about it; the wise decide it), says Robinson, "expresses well their colloquial purpose, and was natural enough on the lips of one whose experience had been world wide." Aubrey says of Sir Henry Blount, "He is now neer or altogether eighty yeares, his intellectuals good still and body pretty strong."

Women played a not inconspicuous part in establis.h.i.+ng businesses for the sale of the coffee drink in England, although the coffee houses were not for both s.e.xes, as in other European countries. The London City _Quaeries_ for 1660 makes mention of "a she-coffee merchant." Mary Stringar ran a coffee house in Little Trinity Lane in 1669; Anne Blunt was mistress of one of the Turk's-Head houses in Cannon Street in 1672.

Mary Long was the widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden. Mary Long's token from the "Rose coffee house by the playhouse" in Covent Garden is shown among the group of coffee-house keepers' tokens herein ill.u.s.trated.

_The First Newspaper Advertis.e.m.e.nt_

The first newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt for coffee appeared, May 26, 1657, in the _Publick Adviser_ of London, one of the first weekly pamphlets. The name of this publication was erroneously given as the _Publick Advertiser_ by an early writer on coffee, and the error has been copied by succeeding writers. The first newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt was contained in the issue of the _Publick Adviser_ for the week of May 19 to May 26, and read:

In _Bartholomew_ Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink called _Coffee_, (which is a very wholsom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the morning, and at three of the clock in the afternoon).

Chocolate was also advertised for sale in London this same year. The issue of the _Publick Adviser_ for June 16, 1657, contained this announcement: