It is said that the frozen Norwegians, on the first sight of roses,
dared not touch what they conceived were trees budding with fire: and
the natives of Virginia, the first time they seized on a quantity of
gunpowder, which belonged to the English colony, sowed it for grain,
expecting to reap a plentiful crop of combustion by the next harvest, to
blow away the whole colony.
In our own recollection, strange imaginations impeded the first period
of vaccination; when some families, terrified by the warning of a
physician, conceived their race would end in a species of Minotaurs--
Semibovemque virum, semivirumque bovem.
We smile at the simplicity of the men of nature, for their mistaken
notions at the first introduction among them of exotic novelties; and
yet, even in civilised Europe, how long a time those whose profession or
whose reputation regulates public opinion are influenced by vulgar
prejudices, often disguised under the imposing form of science! and when
their ludicrous absurdities and obstinate prejudices enter into the
matters of history, it is then we discover that they were only imposing
on themselves and on others.
It is hardly credible that on the first introduction of the Chinese
leaf, which now affords our daily refreshment; or the American leaf,
whose sedative fumes made it so long an universal favourite; or the
Arabian berry, whose aroma exhilarates its European votaries; that the
use of these harmless novelties should have spread consternation among
the nations of Europe, and have been anathematised by the terrors and
the fictions of some of the learned. Yet this seems to have happened.
Patin, who wrote so furiously against the introduction of antimony,
spread the same alarm at the use of tea, which he calls "l'impertinente
nouveauté du siècle." In Germany, Hanneman considered tea-dealers as
immoral members of society, lying in wait for men's purses and lives;
and Dr. Duncan, in his Treatise on Hot Liquors, suspected that the
virtues attributed to tea were merely to encourage the importation.[182]
Many virulent pamphlets were published against the use of this shrub,
from various motives. In 1670, a Dutch writer says it was ridiculed in
Holland under the name of hay-water. "The progress of this famous
plant," says an ingenious writer, "has been something like the progress
of truth; suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had
courage to taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its popularity
seemed to spread; and establishing its triumph at last, in cheering the
whole land from the palace to the cottage, only by the slow and
resistless efforts of time and its own virtues."[183]
The history of the Tea-shrub, by Dr. Lettsom, usually referred to on
this subject, I consider little more than a plagiarism on Dr. Short's
learned and curious dissertation on Tea, 1730, 4to. Lettsom has
superadded the solemn trifling of his moral and medical advice.
These now common beverages are all of recent origin in Europe; neither
the ancients nor those of the middle ages tasted of this luxury. The
first accounts we find of the use of this shrub are the casual notices
of travellers, who seem to have tasted it, and sometimes not to have
liked it: a Russian ambassador, in 1639, who resided at the court of the
Mogul, declined accepting a large present of tea for the Czar, "as it
would only encumber him with a commodity for which he had no use." The
appearance of "a black water" and an acrid taste seems not to have
recommended it to the German Olearius in 1633. Dr. Short has recorded
an anecdote of a stratagem of the Dutch in their second voyage to China,
by which they at first obtained their tea without disbursing money; they
carried from home great store of dried sage, and bartered it with the
Chinese for tea, and received three or four pounds of tea for one of
sage: but at length the Dutch could not export sufficient quantities of
sage to supply their demand. This fact, however, proves how deeply the
imagination is concerned with our palate; for the Chinese, affected by
the exotic novelty, considered our sage to be more precious than their
tea.
The first introduction of tea into Europe is not ascertained; according
to the common accounts it came into England from Holland, in 1666, when
Lord Arlington and Lord Ossory brought over a small quantity: the custom
of drinking tea became fashionable, and a pound weight sold then for
sixty shillings. This account, however, is by no means satisfactory. I
have heard of Oliver Cromwell's tea-pot in the possession of a
collector, and this will derange the chronology of those writers who are
perpetually copying the researches of others, without confirming or
correcting them.[184]
Amidst the rival contests of the Dutch and the English East India
Companies, the honour of introducing its use into Europe may be claimed
by both. Dr. Short conjectures that tea might have been known in England
as far back as the reign of James the First, for the first fleet set out
in 1600; but had the use of the shrub been known, the novelty had been
chronicled among our dramatic writers, whose works are the annals of our
prevalent tastes and humours. It is rather extraordinary that our East
India Company should not have discovered the use of this shrub in their
early adventures; yet it certainly was not known in England so late as
in 1641, for in a scarce "Treatise of Warm Beer," where the title
indicates the author's design to recommend hot in preference to cold
drinks, he refers to tea only by quoting the Jesuit Maffei's account,
that "they of China do for the most part drink the strained liquor of an
herb called _Chia_ hot." The word _Cha_ is the Portuguese term for tea
retained to this day, which they borrowed from the Japanese; while our
intercourse with the Chinese made us no doubt adopt their term _Theh_,
now prevalent throughout Europe, with the exception of the Portuguese.
The Chinese origin is still preserved in the term _Bohea_, tea which
comes from the country of _Vouhi_; and that of _Hyson_ was the name of
the most considerable Chinese then concerned in the trade.
The best account of the early use, and the prices of tea in England,
appears in the handbill of one who may be called our first _Tea-maker_.
This curious handbill bears no date, but as Hanway ascertained that the
price was sixty shillings in 1660, his bill must have been dispersed
about that period.
Thomas Garway, in Exchange-alley, tobacconist and coffee-man, was the
first who sold and retailed tea, recommending it for the cure of all
disorders. The following shop-bill is more curious than any historical
account we have.
"Tea in England hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes
for ten pounds the pound weight, and in respect of its former scarceness
and dearness it has been only used as a regalia in high treatments and
entertainments, and presents made thereof to princes and grandees till
the year 1657. The said Garway did purchase a quantity thereof, and
first publicly sold the said tea in _leaf_ or _drink_, made according to
the directions of the most knowing merchants into those Eastern
countries. On the knowledge of the said Garway's continued care and
industry in obtaining the best tea, and making drink thereof, very many
noblemen, physicians, merchants, &c., have ever since sent to him for
the said leaf, and daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof.
He sells tea from 16s. to 50s. a pound."
Probably, tea was not in general use domestically so late as in 1687;
for in the diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, he registers that "Père
Couplet supped with me, and after supper we had tea, which he said was
really as good as any he had drank in China." Had his lordship been in
the general habit of drinking tea, he had not probably made it a subject
for his diary.
While the honour of introducing tea may be disputed between the English
and the Dutch, that of coffee remains between the English and the
French. Yet an Italian intended to have occupied the place of honour:
that admirable traveller Pietro della Valle, writing from
Constantinople, 1615, to a Roman, his fellow-countryman, informing him
that he should teach Europe in what manner the Turks took what he calls
"_Cahué_," or as the word is written in an Arabic and English pamphlet,
printed at Oxford, in 1659, on "the nature of the drink _Kauhi_ or
Coffee." As this celebrated traveller lived to 1652, it may excite
surprise that the first cup of coffee was not drank at Rome; this
remains for the discovery of some member of the "Arcadian Society." Our
own Sandys, at the time that Valle wrote, was also "a traveller," and
well knew what was "_Coffa_," which "they drank as hot as they can
endure it; it is as black as soot, and tastes not much unlike it; good
they say for digestion and mirth."
It appears by Le Grand's "Vie privée des François," that the celebrated
Thevenot, in 1658, gave coffee after dinner; but it was considered as
the whim of a traveller; neither the thing itself, nor its appearance,
was inviting: it was probably attributed by the gay to the humour of a
vain philosophical traveller. But ten years afterwards a Turkish
ambassador at Paris made the beverage highly fashionable. The elegance
of the equipage recommended it to the eye, and charmed the women: the
brilliant porcelain cups in which it was poured; the napkins fringed
with gold, and the Turkish slaves on their knees presenting it to the
ladies, seated on the ground on cushions, turned the heads of the
Parisian dames. This elegant introduction made the exotic beverage a
subject of conversation, and in 1672, an Armenian at Paris at the
fair-time opened a coffee-house. But the custom still prevailed to sell
beer and wine, and to smoke and mix with indifferent company in their
first imperfect coffee-houses. A Florentine, one Procope, celebrated in
his day as the arbiter of taste in this department, instructed by the
error of the Armenian, invented a superior establishment, and introduced
ices; he embellished his apartment, and those who had avoided the
offensive coffee-houses repaired to Procope's; where literary men,
artists, and wits resorted, to inhale the fresh and fragrant steam. Le
Grand says that this establishment holds a distinguished place in the
literary history of the times. It was at the coffee-house of Du Laurent
that Saurin, La Motte, Danchet, Boindin, Rousseau, &c., met; but the
mild streams of the aromatic berry could not mollify the acerbity of so
many rivals, and the witty malignity of Rousseau gave birth to those
famous couplets on all the coffee drinkers, which occasioned his
misfortune and his banishment.
Such is the history of the first use of coffee and its houses at Paris.
We, however, had the use before even the time of Thevenot; for an
English Turkish merchant brought a Greek servant in 1652, who, knowing
how to roast and make it, opened a house to sell it publicly. I have
also discovered his hand-bill, in which he sets forth, "The vertue of
the coffee-drink, first publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua
Rosee, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own
head."[185]
For about twenty years after the introduction of coffee in this kingdom,
we find a continued series of invectives against its adoption, both for
medicinal and domestic purposes. The use of coffee, indeed, seems to
have excited more notice, and to have had a greater influence on the
manners of the people, than that of tea. It seems at first to have been
more universally used, as it still is on the Continent; and its use is
connected with a resort for the idle and the curious: the history of
coffee-houses, ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the
morals, and the politics of a people. Even in its native country, the
government discovered that extraordinary fact, and the use of the
Arabian berry was more than once forbidden where it grows; for Ellis, in
his "History of Coffee," 1774, refers to an Arabian MS., in the King of
France's library, which shows that coffee-houses in Asia were sometimes
suppressed. The same fate happened on its introduction into England.
Among a number of poetical satires against the use of coffee, I find a
curious exhibition, according to the exaggerated notions of that day, in
"A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours," 1663. The writer, like
others of his contemporaries, wonders at the odd taste which could make
Coffee a substitute for Canary.
For men and Christians to turn Turks and think
To excuse the crime, because 'tis in their drink!
Pure English apes! ye may, for aught I know,
Would it but mode--learn to eat spiders too.[186]
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?
Or Catiline's conspirators, as they stood
Sealing their oaths in draughts of blackest blood,
The merriest ghost of all your sires would say,
Your wine's much worse since his last yesterday.
He'd wonder how the club had given a hop
O'er tavern-bars into a farrier's shop,
Where he'd suppose, both by the smoke and stench,
Each man a horse, and each horse at his drench.--
Sure you're no poets, nor their friends, for now,
Should Jonson's strenuous spirit, or the rare
Beaumont and Fletcher's, in your round appear,
They would not find the air perfumed with one
Castalian drop, nor dew of Helicon;
When they but men would speak as the gods do,
They drank pure nectar as the gods drink too,
Sublim'd with rich Canary--say, 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 does take,
Yet grin, and give ye for the vine's pure blood
A loathsome potion, not yet understood,
Syrop of soot, or essence of old shoes,
Dasht with diurnals and the books of news?
Other complaints arose from the mixture of the company in the first
coffee-houses. In "A Broadside against Coffee, or the Marriage of the
Turk," 1672, the writer indicates the growth of the fashion:--
Confusion huddles all into one scene,
Like Noah's ark, the clean and the unclean;
For now, alas! the drench has credit got,
And he's no gentleman who drinks it not.
That such a dwarf should rise to such a stature!
But custom is but a remove from nature.
In "The Women's Petition against Coffee," 1674, they complained that
"it made men as unfruitful as the deserts whence that unhappy berry is
said to be brought; that the offspring of our mighty ancestors would
dwindle into a succession of apes and pigmies; and on a domestic
message, a husband would stop by the way to drink a couple of cups of
coffee." It was now sold in convenient penny-worths; for in another poem
in praise of a coffee-house, for the variety of information obtained
there, it is called "a penny university."
Amidst these contests of popular prejudices, between the lovers of
forsaken Canary, and the terrors of our females at the barrenness of an
Arabian desert, which lasted for twenty years, at length the custom was
universally established; nor were there wanting some reflecting minds
desirous of introducing the use of this liquid among the labouring
classes of society, to wean them from strong liquors. Howell, in
noticing that curious philosophical traveller, Sir Henry Blount's
"Organon Salutis," 1659, observed that "this coffa-drink hath caused a
great sobriety among all nations: formerly apprentices, clerks, &c.,
used to take their morning draughts in ale, beer, or wine, which often
made them unfit for business. Now they play the good-fellows in this
wakeful and civil drink. The worthy gentleman, Sir James Muddiford, who
introduced the practice hereof first in London, deserves much respect of
the whole nation." Here it appears, what is most probable, that the use
of this berry was introduced by other Turkish merchants, besides Edwards
and his servant Pasqua. But the custom of drinking coffee among the
labouring classes does not appear to have lasted; and when it was
recently even the cheapest beverage, the popular prejudices prevailed
against it, and ran in favour of tea. The contrary practice prevails on
the continent, where beggars are viewed making their coffee in the
street. I remember seeing the large body of shipwrights at Helvoetsluys
summoned by a bell, to take their regular refreshment of coffee; and the
fleets of Holland were not then built by arms less robust than the
fleets of Britain.
The frequenting of coffee-houses is a custom which has declined within
our recollection, since institutions of a higher character, and society
itself, have so much improved within late years. These were, however,
the common assemblies of all classes of society. The mercantile man, the
man of letters, and the man of fashion, had their appropriate
coffee-houses. The Tatler dates from either to convey a character of
his subject. In the reign of Charles the Second, 1675, a proclamation
for some time shut them all up, having become the rendezvous of the
politicians of that day. Roger North has given, in his Examen, a full
account of this bold stroke: it was not done without some apparent
respect to the British constitution, the court affecting not to act
against law, for the judges were summoned to a consultation, when, it
seems, the five who met did not agree in opinion. But a decision was
contrived that "the retailing of coffee and tea might be an innocent
trade; but as it was said to nourish sedition, spread lies, and
scandalise great men, it might also be a common nuisance." A general
discontent, in consequence, as North acknowledges, took place, and
emboldened the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea to petition;
and permission was soon granted to open the houses to a certain period,
under a severe admonition, that the masters should prevent all
scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them; and hinder
every person from spreading scandalous reports against the government.
It must be confessed, all this must have frequently puzzled the
coffee-house master to decide what was scandalous, what book was fit to
be licensed to be read, and what political intelligence might be allowed
to be communicated. The object of the government was, probably, to
intimidate, rather than to persecute, at that moment.
Chocolate the Spaniards brought from Mexico, where it was denominated
_Chocolati_; it was a coarse mixture of ground cacao and Indian corn
with rocou; but the Spaniards, liking its nourishment, improved it into
a richer compound, with sugar, vanilla, and other aromatics. The
immoderate use of chocolate in the seventeenth century was considered as
so violent an inflamer of the passions, that Joan. Fran. Rauch published
a treatise against it, and enforced the necessity of forbidding the
_monks_ to drink it; and adds, that if such an interdiction had existed,
that scandal with which that holy order had been branded might have
proved more groundless. This _Disputatio medico-diætetica de aëre et
esculentis, necnon de potû_, Vienna, 1624, is a _rara avis_ among
collectors. This attack on the monks, as well as on chocolate, is said
to be the cause of its scarcity; for we are told that they were so
diligent in suppressing this treatise, that it is supposed not a dozen
copies exist. We had chocolate-houses in London long after
coffee-houses; they seemed to have associated something more elegant
and refined in their new term when the other had become common.[187]
Roger North thus inveighs against them: "The use of coffee-houses seems
much improved by a new invention, called chocolate-houses, for the
benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gaming is added to all
the rest, and the summons of W---- seldom fails; as if the devil had
erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors,
as well as his schools of discipline." Roger North, a high Tory, and
Attorney-General to James the Second, observed, however, these
rendezvous were often not entirely composed of those "factious gentry he
so much dreaded;" for he says "This way of passing time might have been
stopped at first, before people had possessed themselves of some
convenience from them of meeting for short despatches, and passing
evenings with small expenses." And old Aubrey, the small Boswell of his
day, attributes his general acquaintance to "the modern advantage of
coffee-houses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be
acquainted, but with their own relations, and societies;" a curious
statement, which proves the moral connexion with society of all
sedentary recreations which induce the herding spirit.