To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other
end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James’ Coffee House,
either by miscalling the servants, or requiring things from them
as are not properly within their provinces; this is to give notice
that Kidney, keeper of the book debts of the outlying customers, and
observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that
employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer
of messages and first coffee grinder, William Bird is promoted; and
Samuel Burdock comes as shoe cleaner in the room of said Bird.
Again, to all men who believe that human nature changes and that only
in these latter and effete days are we burdened with bores, dogmatists,
pedants and prigs, read what follows. It is Richard Steele writing in
No. 145, and under date of August 16, 1711:
You cannot employ yourself more usefully than in adjusting the laws
of disputation in coffee-houses and accidental companies, as well
as in more formal debates. Among many other things which your own
experience must suggest to you, it will be very obliging if you
will take notice of wagerers. I will not here repeat what Hudibras
says of such disputants, which is so true, that it is almost
proverbial but shall only acquaint you with a set of fellows on the
inns-of-court whose fathers have provided them so plentifully, that
they need not be anxious to get law into their heads for the service
of their country at the bar; but are of those who are sent (as the
phrase of parents is) to the temple to know how to keep their own.
One of these gentlemen is very loud and captious at a coffee house
which I frequent, and being in his nature troubled with a humor of
contradiction, though withal excessively ignorant, he has found a
way to indulge this temper, go on in idleness and ignorance, and
yet still give himself the air of a very learned and knowing man
by the strength of his pocket. The misfortune of the thing is, I
have, as it happens sometimes, a greater stock of learning than
of money. The gentleman I am speaking of takes advantage of the
narrowness of my circumstances in such a manner that he has read all
that I can pretend to, and runs me down with a positive air, and
with such powerful arguments that from a very learned person I am
thought a mere pretender. Not long ago, I was relating that I had
read a passage in Tacitus; up starts my gentleman in company, and
pulling out his purse offered to lay me ten guineas, to be staked
immediately to that gentleman’s hands, (pointing to one smoking at
another table), that I was utterly mistaken. I was dumb for want
of ten guineas.... There are several of this sort of fellows in
town, who wager themselves into statesmen, historians, geographers,
mathematicians and every other art....
Like any other man of cultivated taste and cosmopolitan training,
Addison had the contempt of enlightened persons for the fanaticisms
of his time. For then, as now, there was political mistrust and
suspicion and fanatics were abroad. The changes were rung upon all the
familiar phrases of political oratory, gold and pinchbeck alike, and
the political rhetorician recklessly indulged in sentiments to which
the whole tenor of his career gave the lie. The coffee houses swarmed
with those who smelt treason where none existed, who scented plots
where were none, who saw in innocent remarks dangerous tendencies, and
beheld, in the sweet fiction of the _Spectator’s_ club a diabolical
contrivance for intrigue. Very magnificently Addison handles the
situation in _Spectator_ No. 46, of April 23, 1711, and we get
incidentally a pretty side light on coffee house society.