All About Coffee Part 9

Conopios was a native of Crete, trained in the Greek church. He became _primore_ to Cyrill, Patriarch of Constantinople. When Cyrill was strangled by the vizier, Conopios fled to England to avoid a like barbarity. He came with credentials to Archbishop Laud, who allowed him maintenance in Balliol College.

It was observed that while he continued in Balliol College he made the drink for his own use called Coffey, and usually drank it every morning, being the first, as the antients of that House have informed me, that was ever drank in Oxon.[60]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOL'S COFFEE HOUSE, EXETER, ENGLAND, NOW WORTH'S ART ROOMS]

In 1640 John Parkinson (1567-1650), English botanist and herbalist, published his _Theatrum Botanic.u.m_[61], containing the first botanical description of the coffee plant in English, referred to as "_Arbor Bon c.u.m sua Buna._ The Turkes Berry Drinke".

His work being somewhat rare, it may be of historical interest to quote the quaint description here:

Alpinus, in his Booke of Egiptian plants, giveth us a description of this tree, which as hee saith, hee saw in the garden of a certain Captaine of the _Ianissaries_, which was brought out of _Arabia felix_ and there planted as a rarity, never seene growing in those places before.

The tree, saith _Alpinus_, is somewhat like unto the _Evonymus_ p.r.i.c.ketimber tree, whose leaves were thicker, harder, and greener, and always abiding greene on the tree; the fruite is called _Buna_ and is somewhat bigger then an Hazell Nut and longer, round also, and pointed at the end, furrowed also on both sides, yet on one side more conspicuous than the other, that it might be parted in two, in each side whereof lyeth a small long white kernell, flat on that side they joyne together, covered with a yellowish skinne, of an acid taste, and somewhat bitter withall and contained in a thinne sh.e.l.l, of a darkish ash-color; with these berries generally in _Arabia_ and _Egipt_, and in other places of the _Turkes_ Dominions, they make a decoction or drinke, which is in the stead of Wine to them, and generally sold in all their tappe houses, called by the name of _Caova_; _Paluda.n.u.s_ saith _Chaova_, and _Rauwolfius_ _Chaube_.

This drinke hath many good physical properties therein; for it strengthened a week stomacke, helpeth digestion, and the tumors and obstructions of the liver and spleene, being drunke fasting for some time together.

In 1650, a certain Jew from Lebanon, in some accounts Jacob or Jacobs by name, in others Jobson[62], opened "at the Angel in the parish of St.

Peter in the East", Oxford, the earliest English coffee house and "there it [coffee] was by some who delighted in noveltie, drank". Chocolate was also sold at this first coffee house.

Authorities differ, but the confusion as to the name of the coffee-house keeper may have arisen from the fact that there were two--Jacobs, who began in 1650; and another, Cirques Jobson, a Jewish Jacobite, who followed him in 1654.

The drink at once attained great favor among the students. Soon it was in such demand that about 1655 a society of young students encouraged one Arthur Tillyard, "apothecary and Royalist," to sell "coffey publickly in his house against All Soules College." It appears that a club composed of admirers of the young Charles met at Tillyard's and continued until after the Restoration. This Oxford Coffee Club was the start of the Royal Society.

Jacobs removed to Old Southhampton Buildings, London, where he was in 1671.

Meanwhile, the first coffee house in London had been opened by Pasqua Rosee in 1652; and, as the remainder of the story of coffee's rise and fall in England centers around the coffee houses of old London, we shall reserve it for a separate chapter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY ENGLISH REFERENCE TO COFFEE BY SIR GEORGE SANDYS

From the seventh edition of _Sandys' Travels_, London, 1673]

Of course, the coffee-house idea, and the use of coffee in the home, quickly spread to other cities in Great Britain; but all the coffee houses were patterned after the London model. Mol's coffee house at Exeter, Devons.h.i.+re, which is pictured on page 41, was one of the first coffee houses established in England, and may be regarded as typical of those that sprang up in the provinces. It had previously been a noted club house; and the old hall, beautifully paneled with oak, still displays the arms of noted members. Here Sir Walter Raleigh and congenial friends regaled themselves with smoking tobacco. This was one of the first places where tobacco was smoked in England. It is now an art gallery.

When the Bishop of Berytus (Beirut) was on his way to Cochin China in 1666, he reported that the Turks used coffee to correct the indisposition caused in the stomach by the bad water. "This drink," he says, "imitates the effect of wine ... has not an agreeable taste but rather bitter, yet it is much used by these people for the good effects they find therein."

In 1686, John Ray (1628-1704), one of the most celebrated of English naturalists, published his _Universal History of Plants_, notable among other things for being the first work of its kind to extol the virtues of coffee in a scientific treatise.

R. Bradley, professor of botany at Cambridge, published (1714) _A Short Historical Account of Coffee_, all trace of which appears to be lost.

Dr. James Douglas published in London (1727) his _Arbor Yemensis fructum Cofe ferens; or, a description and History of the Coffee Tree_, in which he laid under heavy contribution the Arabian and French writers that had preceded him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VII

THE INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO HOLLAND

_How the enterprising Dutch traders captured the first world's market for coffee--Activities of the Netherlands East India Company--The first coffee house at the Hague--The first public auction at Amsterdam in 1711, when Java coffee brought forty-seven cents a pound, green_

The Dutch had early knowledge of coffee because of their dealings with the Orient and with the Venetians, and of their nearness to Germany, where Rauwolf first wrote about it in 1582. They were familiar with Alpini's writings on the subject in 1592. Paluda.n.u.s, in his coffee note on _Linschoten's Travels_, furnished further enlightenment in 1598.

The Dutch were always great merchants and shrewd traders. Being of a practical turn of mind, they conceived an ambition to grow coffee in their colonial possessions, so as to make their home markets headquarters for a world's trade in the product. In considering modern coffee-trading, the Netherlands East India Company may be said to be the pioneer, as it established in Java one of the first experimental gardens for coffee cultivation.

The Netherlands East India Company was formed in 1602. As early as 1614, Dutch traders visited Aden to examine into the possibilities of coffee and coffee-trading. In 1616 Pieter Van dan Broeck brought the first coffee from Mocha to Holland. In 1640 a Dutch merchant, named Wurffbain, offered for sale in Amsterdam the first commercial s.h.i.+pment of coffee from Mocha. As indicating the enterprise of the Dutch, note that this was four years before the beverage was introduced into France, and only three years after Conopios had privately inst.i.tuted the breakfast coffee cup at Oxford.

About 1650, Varnar, the Dutch minister resident at the Ottoman Porte, published a treatise on coffee.

When the Dutch at last drove the Portuguese out of Ceylon in 1658, they began the cultivation of coffee there, although the plant had been introduced into the island by the Arabs prior to the Portuguese invasion in 1505. However, it was not until 1690 that the more systematic cultivation of the coffee plant by the Dutch was undertaken in Ceylon.

Regular imports of coffee from Mocha to Amsterdam began in 1663. Later, supplies began to arrive from the Malabar coast.

Pasqua Rosee, who introduced the coffee house into London in 1652, is said to have made coffee popular as a beverage in Holland by selling it there publicly in 1664. The first coffee house was opened in the Korten Voorhout, the Hague, under the protection of the writer Van Essen; others soon followed in Amsterdam and Haarlem.

At the instigation of Nicolaas Witsen, burgomaster of Amsterdam and governor of the East India Company, Adrian Van Ommen, commander of Malabar, sent the first Arabian coffee seedlings to Java in 1696, recorded in the chapter on the history of coffee propagation. These were destroyed by flood, but were followed in 1699 by a second s.h.i.+pment, from which developed the coffee trade of the Netherlands East Indies, that made Java coffee a household word in every civilized country.

A trial s.h.i.+pment of the coffee grown near Batavia was received at Amsterdam in 1706, also a plant for the botanical gardens. This plant subsequently became the progenitor of most of the coffees of the West Indies and America.

The first Java coffee for the trade was received at Amsterdam 1711. The s.h.i.+pment consisted of 894 pounds from the Jakatra plantations and from the interior of the island. At the first public auction, this coffee brought twenty-three and two-thirds _stuivers_ (about forty-seven cents) per Amsterdam pound.

The Netherlands East India Company contracted with the regents of Netherlands India for the compulsory delivery of coffee; and the natives were enjoined to cultivate coffee, the production thus becoming a forced industry worked by government. A "general system of cultivation" was introduced into Java in 1832 by the government, which decreed the employment of forced labor for different products. Coffee-growing was the only forced industry that existed before this system of cultivation, and it was the only government cultivation that survived the abolition of the system in 1905-08. The last direct government interest in coffee was closed out in 1918. From 1870 to 1874, the government plantations yielded an average of 844,854 piculs[63] a year; from 1875 to 1878, the average was 866,674 piculs. Between 1879 and 1883, it rose to 987,682 piculs. From 1884 to 1888, the average annual yield was only 629,942 piculs.

Holland readily adopted the coffee house; and among the earliest coffee pictures preserved to us is one depicting a scene in a Dutch coffee house of the seventeenth century, the work of Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-1675), shown on page 586.

History records no intolerance of coffee in Holland. The Dutch att.i.tude was ever that of the constructionist. Dutch inventors and artisans gave us many new designs in coffee mortars, coffee roasters, and coffee serving-pots.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VIII

THE INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO GERMANY

_The contributions made by German travelers and writers to the literature of the early history of coffee--The first coffee house in Hamburg opened by an English merchant--Famous coffee houses of old Berlin--The first coffee periodical, and the first kaffee-klatsch--Frederick the Great's coffee-roasting monopoly--Coffee persecutions--"Coffee-smellers"--The first coffee king_

As we have already seen, Leonhard Rauwolf, in 1573, made his memorable trip to Aleppo and, in 1582, won for Germany the honor of being the first European country to make printed mention of the coffee drink.

Adam Olearius (or Oelschlager), a German Orientalist (1599-1671), traveled in Persia as secretary to a German emba.s.sy in 1633-36. Upon his return he published an account of his journeys. In it, under date of 1637, he says of the Persians:

They drink with their tobacco a certain black water, which they call _cahwa_, made of a fruit brought out of Egypt, and which is in colour like ordinary wheat, and in taste like Turkish wheat, and is of the bigness of a little bean.... The Persians think it allays the natural heat.

In 1637, Joh. Albrecht von Mandelsloh, in his _Oriental Trip_, mentions "the black water of the Persians called _Kahwe_", saying "it must be drunk hot."

Coffee drinking was introduced into Germany about 1670. The drink appeared at the court of the great elector of Brandenburg in 1675.