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Coffee

Page history last edited by Sarah Cooper 10 years ago

 

Introduction


 

Brief history: coffee's entrance into British society

Coffee, one of several exotic “soft drugs”(Cowan*,7) introduced into European culture from the orient between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, was believed to have medical properties, such as curing headaches and easing stomach pains. Like tobacco (see Snuff Boxes), it was advertised for the cure of ailments and was sold by apothecaries and physicians from the second half of the seventeenth century.  However, the main reason for its growing popularity in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was the curiosity of the emerging intellectual and fashionable middle class (particularly the so-called virtuosi)  and their desire for novelty. Antony Clayton, in London's Coffee Houses, indicates this desire, claiming that an "important part of coffee's appeal to Western Europe was its perception as an exotic, oriental product from a mysterious far-away region. It was part of a new range of imported luxuries including Tea, sugar, tobacco..."(Clayton,8) 

(*Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all reference to 'Cowan' is from The Social Life of Coffee- details in bibliography.)

 

Image: "COFFEE PLANT,Common Hop,Cola Nut,Cacao Tree "- Historical Collectible Botanical Art Print of an 1894 Antique Wood Engraving Image 1

 

Described by sixteenth and seventeenth century travellers to the Ottoman , Persian and Mughal empires, the rituals involved with coffee drinking were seen as part of exotic customs of the orient, whilst the mood-changing properties of the strange black liquid fascinated the English virtuosi. According to Cowan (p.30), “No other country took to coffee drinking with quite the same intensity as the British”. The fashionable and social nature of coffee drinking led to the establishment of coffee-houses in England, firstly in Oxford in 1650 and then, from 1652, in London. By 1734, according to the trade directories, there were 551 coffeehouses in the British capital (Cowan,154), frequented not only by intellectuals and businessmen, but by an increasing range of other social classes. Almost from the beginning two different types of coffee house emerged in London – the grand fashionable establishments in the wealthiest sections of the City of London, where business was conducted and politics discussed, and the more modest “local” coffee houses situated in the less fashionable parts of the metropolis. Meanwhile, in London at least, coffee was also increasingly consumed at home.

 

Exploring literature, studies and discussion contemporary to eighteenth century coffee drinking, it appears that this exotic, fashionable and sometimes controversial product from empire developed a host of social implications, from medicine to politics to gender conventions.

 

Coffee's increasing societal presence and relevance 

The chart below, generated using Google Books Ngram Viewer1, represents the frequency of the word "coffee" in the entire corpus of British English literature available to the Google Books records between 1600-1900 (dates selected by myself). This visual is a helpful indicator of the great increase of interest in coffee during the eighteenth century: note, in particular, the sharp increase in this word usage from around 1750. After the establishment of several coffee-houses in England at the end of the previous century, the 1700s brought explosion of popular interest and direct interaction with the stimulant. Yet coffee was not simply embraced and celebrated as the new fashion, and much of literature's increased occupation with coffee in the eighteenth century involved varied discussion and controversy on the coffee-drinking craze. 

 

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 Health and Mental Welfare


 

During the Eighteenth Century, imports from Empire were increasingly becoming commodities of everyday life. Coffee, as well as tea and tobacco (often in the form of snuff), excited discussion on the effects of substance on mood and health, all three usually popular in public coffee-houses. In a rapidly evolving consumer culture,  such substances became increasingly popular as physical and mental stimulants, as well as for their apparent relief of various ailments. Significantly reflecting the sensation of empire and import becoming a part of everyday fashion, social life and popular medical theory, markets surrounding these stimulants grew rapidly; indeed, Cowan notes the "peculiarly positive reception of coffee as an exotic, mood-altering substance in the medical marketplace of early modern England."(14) For further information on the increasing popularity and emerging marketplace around these imported soft drugs, see the pages on Snuff Boxes and Tea. These considerations supplement that of the social effect of coffee in the eighteenth-century, as "the complex of these relatively new and exotic consumer "luxuries" formed an interlocking complement of consumption habits. The success of one aided the progress of the others in establishing themselves as English consumer habits."(Cowan,44) 

 

With the growing import and usage of coffee in England, much of literature's concern with the substance involved the discussion of its effect on the drinker's health. The survey of such literary conversation interestingly reveals varied theories and arguments. 

 

Medical advantages 

For many writers, from literary to medical professions, coffee was seen as a powerful new tool in the treatment of poor health and discomfort.  In particular, coffee was attributed to curing headaches, easing the stomach and aiding breathing.       

 

Dr Allen’s Synopsis medicinae (1730, ECCO), a collection of medical advice, offers various claims in defense of coffee as a form of medicine. In "Willis' Opinion", for example, "an Infusion of Coffee... drank like tea" is recommended for the "Cure of... distemper" and headache (132). Similarly, Etmuller maintains that the "drinking of tea and coffee is very good" to "Cure a Head-ach"(133). This text also recommends that "in difficulties of Breathing the drinking of Coffee wonderfully helps and lays the Inflation most certainly and powerfully of any thing"(390). 

 

Indeed, such beliefs are not only evidenced in medical journals, but were included in fiction, such as  in Robert Bage's novel Mount Henneth (1782,ECCO):" Mine [my head] aches a little too, says I, and I shall be much obliged to you Mrs Betty for a dish of coffee. She rang the bell. A footman entered. I saw by this she was determined not to leave us. I took my coffee in silence"(263). Not only does such discourse in fiction show the influence of medical discussion and beliefs surrounding coffee upon society, but implies a reason for its increased popularity in the home and domestic life as a sort of store-cupboard remedy. 

 

Early evidence of such medicinal ideas come in the form of promotion for coffee and the first coffee-houses, such as the advertisement below:

 

 A 1652 handbill advertising St. Michael's Alley, the first coffee shop in London. It is held in the British Museum Image 2

 

Clearly, the early commercialization of the coffee trade made grand claims of its varied health benefits for a range of drinkers, some of which- such as its ability to "prevent Mis-Carrying in Child-bearing women"- seem astounding today. Nonetheless, coffee was gaining increasing public interest as an exotic, powerful and mood-altering luxury; positive discourse surrounding the drink allied it with medical secrets from the mystic 'East'. Such representation in literature was significant, as Cowan notes: "the virtuoso readers of travel literature and accounts of the commodities of exotic cultures, were the first Englishmen to learn about, write about, and indeed to drink coffee."(14) Indeed, the culture that would develop from this fashionable fascination and initial exclusivity, including the development of new literary forms in coffee-house magazines like The Spectator and The Tatler, would alter conventions of social interaction across the eighteenth-century.

 

Mental stimulation

Additionally to claims of physical benefits, coffee was often upheld for its effect on the human mind. Balzac, in his Treatise on Modern Stimulants2, offers an amusing account of his appreciation of coffee's mental stimulation:

This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder. 

 

Belief in coffee's stimulating effect on the mind was significant in its effect on culture, coffee-houses rapidly becoming more and more significant as places of high-minded discussion of subjects of academia, philosophy and politics. This is explored further in section "Coffee and Spaces" (below).

 

 

Negative effects on health

Despite the appraisal of coffee  in many writings as a miraculous cure for an array of health complaints, some argued that it was, in fact, detrimental to the body. From the late seventeenth-century, inquiries and debate arose around this subject, such as the Royal Society's investigations, prompted by a paper by Dr John Goddard that"occasioned...debate among the fellows thereafter"(Cowan,28). One of the concerns proposed was the possibility of "apopleptic fits or paralysis" from "the overconsumption of coffee"(Cowan,28); the exoticism of this product was evidently not only a cause for its fashionability, but for skepticism and anxiety in regards to health.

 

A significant criticism of coffee in and around the eighteenth-century was its apparent detrimental effects upon fertility. Coffee was believed by some to lower libido and even to "render men impotent and women barren"(Cowan,41). According to several writers and physicians, this was due to coffee "being a substance hot and dry in the second degree", thus having "the tendency to dry up" the fluids and moisture in the body that aid in sexual function. One of the physicians who followed this idea was Montpellier physician, Daniel Duncan, who claimed that a "hot and dry temperament and climate are least proper for fertility"(cited in Cowan,41).

 

Such literary discussion influenced public opinion towards the exotic new stimulant. A notable example was 'The Women's Petition Against Coffee', which claimed in 1674 that coffee "made men as unfruitful as the sandy deserts, from where that unhappy berry is said to be brought" (Bramah, 46). These women attributed coffee to the nation's falling birthrate and criticised the tendency of male society to centre around coffee-houses and coffee-drinking. As shall be investigated later, coffee-houses generally excluded women and public coffee-drinking became a characteristically male activity. The extent to which this and other female protests were solely critiquing coffee itself or were more against the male societal practice that sprung from it is certainly debatable.

 

Image: front page for the petition Image 3

 

Additionally, the strength of this bitter black liquid was often cause for concern. In The Best and easiest method of preserving uninterrupted health to extreme old age(1748), it is stated that whilst "[t]hey who are fat and corpus may bear to drink it strong" for the benefit of "contract[ing]" the "Fibres of their Stomachs" and having a "laxative" effect, the drink is warned as potentially "hurtful" to others. In particular, those who are "lean" are advised to "not drink it unless very weak, and then mix'd with Sugar and Milk"(61-62). Such implications certainly differ from other literature that presents coffee as a new miraculous cure for multiple ailments.

 

Indeed, issues over the effects of coffee on health continued to be discussed into the nineteenth-century, as is evident in William Andrus Alcott's Tea and Coffee (1839). Alcott warns his reader of the dangers of the soft drug society inherited from the eighteenth century: "Even coffee and tea, the common beverage of all classes of people, have a tendency to debilitate the digestive organs"(47). Clearly, both the popularity of coffee- a "narcotic", according to Alcott- and the debate of its physical effect continued to grow from the 1700s. Alcott goes on to state that soft drugs, including coffee, "do not nourish us at all, but only irritate our nervous system": "a foreign body in the system... indeed gives momentary strength, but in the end, weakens us"(158). In this work, prevailing arguments for the benefits of coffee on health are recognised and then dismissed, such as the idea of its being "necessary to assist the stomach in digesting", which is deemed "absolutely ridiculous" in the case of anyone with "any measure of what can be called health"(160). 

 

Alcott's final word is somewhat extreme, claiming that "no person can be in the habitual use of the smallest quantity of tea or coffee" in any form "without more or less deranging the action of the stomach and liver and, ultimately... of the whole system", as well as eventually "abridging human happiness and human life"(162). Certainly, coffee was by no means entirely accepted, nor had protest against its usage faded away, by the nineteenth-century. The ardour of Alcott's argument, after consideration in this work of various medical and literary opinions, demonstrates the extremity of this debate. However, as Alcott admits, coffee was still one of the "common beverages" of everyday life for a huge proportion of society and, of course, its widespread popularity lives on today.

 

Evidently, opinions on coffee and health were in no way unified across the 1700s, acting rather as a ready subject for debate. Nonetheless, in spite of, or perhaps enhanced by this controversy, the eighteenth-century marked a period where coffee became ubiquitous in English society.

 

 

Coffee, Spaces and Behaviour


Image, including caption, from Cowan.Image 4

 

The coffee-house

Central to the explosion of popular coffee-drinking, the establishment of coffee-houses in urban England would generate an important new cultural space for eighteenth-century society. Coffee houses were frequented almost exclusively by men, with various social exchanges taking place  as an accompaniment to drinking coffee, including those detailed below:

 

  • Academic discussion and activity

Coffee-houses became popular spaces for academic and literary discussion, so much so that they were often called "penny universities", "because the price of a dish of coffee provided hours of sociality and talk"(Sitter,16)3. Coffee-house culture helped contribute to the "public prominence of poetry" in particular, "because of what was at the time a certain fluidity between writing and orality, texts and talk"(16). In this way, coffee became associated with great academic literary men, a certain 'literati', and writers frequently met to drink coffee and discuss ideas.

 

One of the avid members of this society of coffee-house academics was Alexander Pope. Mr Addison recalls his somewhat infamous fervour for academic pursuits in his frequent coffee-house debates: "Pope, who whatever his other good qualities might be, certainly was not much troubled with good nature, was one evening at Button’s coffee-house, where he and a set of literati, had got poring over a manuscript of the Greek comic poet, Aristophenes, in which they found a passage they could not comprehend."(Addison, 281)4

 

Artist William Hogarth also recorded Pope discussing literary matters in Button’s coffee house in 1730 in the image included belowimage 5(although probably a copy). Pope is thought to be opposite the seated figure.

 

In fact, Pope was so keen on the coffee-house as a space for thinking that he had a seat reserved for him which offered a "Speculative Angle" over the coffee-room (Alexander Pope in a letter to Henry Cromwell, 29 August 1709)5. The fact that such a literary darling of Eighteenth Century culture appears to have found this space essential for his academic thought reflects the significance of the societal practice that sprang from the growing coffee-drinking craze. This was the time of "modish coffee-house philosophers", as John Brown described in 1751. (Brown,137)

 

However, Coffee houses were not just places for discussion or reflection, but became a venue for more formal educational activities. Lectures were arranged and advertised in newspapers such as The Guardian, for which Button's Coffee House acted as an office for founder Richard Steele. In such an advertisement, readers were informed of a series of lectures in Button's coffee house: "Beginning January 11, 1713-14, a course of philosophical lectures on mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, ... . This course of experiments is to be performed by Mr William Whiston and Francis Hauksbee"6. Coffee houses, in this way, were seen as centres for Englightenment thinking.  

 

Notably, it was not just the learned atmosphere that drew Pope to the coffee-house, but his love of the drink itself. This may be seen in his Rape of the Locke (1712), where he uses his 'heroicomical' style to give a grand description of the enticing, exotic beverage and surrounding ritual as it arrives in Canto III: 

For lo! the board with cups and spoon is crown'd,
The berries crackle, and the mills turn round;
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoaking tide:
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.

           

(Pope, Canto III, lines 105-112)

 

  • Political discussion 

Coffee-houses were not only important literary but political meeting spaces. Again, the coffee-drinking environment was seen as a stimulant one, and  issues of politics and political papers were often read and discussed in coffee-houses. For example, in the Hogarth drawing on the right[Image 6], one can spot on the table a document on a series of votes. Along with what appear to be Snuff Boxes, a pipe and a dish of coffee, this scene depicts the ideal coffee-house space, one of calm, high-minded discussion, aided and prompted by the exotic and fashionable stimulants of the age.

 

 

Indeed, coffee-house lover, Pope, exploited this use of coffee satirically in Rape of Lock, following his description of the drink:

Coffee (which make the politician wise,
And see thro' all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the Baron's brain,
New stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.

 

(Pope: Canto III, lines 117-120)

 

 This is a wonderful line of the poem, really demonstrating Pope's playful satircal style. Here, coffee's importance in the political domain is implied, even though mocking the politicians involved as naturally dopey and perhaps not so "wise". It appears that it was not just the coffee-house, but the drink itself, that was key to the political world, provoking thought, "[n]ew stratagems" and ambitions in its powerful "vapours". A space for public coffee-drinking became also a space for debate and political thinking.   

 

In fact, Daniel Defoe said that, "[a]s to handing treasonable papers about in coffee houses, every body knows it was the original if the very thing called a coffeehouse, and that it is the very profession of a coffee man to do so, and it seems hard to punish him by it.." (As cited in Cowan, 224)7. This implies that an institution built around coffee is one that not only encourages political discussion, but political boldness and challenge, and that this quality was part of the coffee-house's foundation. 

 

  • Business

  

coffeehouses.jpg

Coffee-houses acted as an ideal venue for the conduct of business and the gathering of commercial and other information, and several prestigious institutions can trace their origins to coffee-houses. Perhaps the most famous of these was the insurance market Lloyd's of London, which originated in a coffee house founded by Edward Lloyd in  Tower street in about 1688, moving to Lombard Street in 1691, where merchants and insurers met together to share shipping news and make insurance deals.  Meanwhile, stockbrokers tended to congregate in another coffee house in the City of London to conduct their business - Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley - which became the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange.

 

Image: Lloyd's Coffee houseImage 7 

 

Button's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had many literary customers and became a useful centre for news gathering and distribution. As previously mentioned, Richard Steele used it as an office for the Guardian,  which he began to publish in 1713 and continues to be hugely successful in the present day.8 

 

In his memoirs, Henri Misson de Valbourg recalls how coffee-houses facilitated conduction of business, particularly, it is implied, for their foundation:"You have a Dish of Coffee, you meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business, and all for a Penny, if you don't care to spend more"(1698, translated 1719) With an atmosphere and refreshment that were stimulant, both physically and socially, and crucially cost-effective with a low admittance fee, coffee-houses served eighteenth-century societies as accessible public offices and meeting-rooms for businessmen and networking. 

 

 

  • Social networking

During the eighteenth-century, society was shifting. As well as "massive population growth in the capital... due mainly to immigration from the rest of England and Europe", Clayton notes the significance of "the displacement of many communities that resulted from the devastation of the Great Fire of 1666."(Clayton,17) In the consequent social climate, the coffee-house offered a space for affordable and sober sociability, and it became "common practice for a newcomer to visit [a]...coffee house in order to find social contacts."(Clayton,17)

 

By 1730, an observer's comment documented in A Brief and Merry History of Great Britain claimed that "Coffee-Houses are the constant Rendezvous for Men of business, as well as the idle People, so that a Man is sooner ask'd about his Coffee-House than his Lodgings". Universally, it seems, the coffee-house and its chief beverage offered for men the opportunity to forge new relationships, whether for academic, business or just sociable ends, so far so that one's identity was partly acknowledged by "his Coffee-House". This commentator goes on to reflect upon the diverse, but constantly conversational, interactions the coffee-house space provided for eighteenth-century male society: "They smoak Tobacco, game and read Papers of Intelligence; here they treat of Matters of State, make Leagues with Foreign Princes, break them again, and transact Affairs of the Last Consequence of the Whole World."(Cited in Clayton, page 22)

 

  • Social outlet: coffee-house etiquette

 

Despite the association of coffee and coffee-houses, at least commercially, with high-minded thinkers, businessmen and political discussion, literature also reveals a recurring perception of these customers being arrogant, argumentative and violent.  In the eighteenth century, Roger North stated, “‘the mischief is arrived to perfection, and not only sedition and treason, but atheism, heresy, and blasphemy are publicly taught in diverse of the celebrated coffee-houses…and it is as unseemly for a reasonable, conformable person to come there, as for a clergyman to frequent a bawdy house.’”10

 

Such perception of coffee-houses as the scenes for argument it depicted in the print below[Image 8], with the title "The Coffehous Mob", where one patron is seen throwing his coffee in the face of another:

 

 

 

This was despite the rules laid down for acceptable coffee-house behaviour, which were seen as necessary as intellectual debates escalated into full-scaled arguments. On the bottom-right of the image below[Image 9] is an example of some coffee-house rules and orders, now held in the British Library:

 


 

Coffee at home: domestic role

Whereas the coffee-house acted as an almost entirely male social space, coffee was increasingly drunk by both men and women in the home, at several different times of the day and in several locations, including the parlour and garden. Though coffee-houses remained important social spaces, coffee became more widely consumed in tea gardens and in domestic spaces, and the coffee-house held less of a monopoly over coffee-drinking. In All About Coffee(2009), William H. Ukers notes that, by the second half of the eighteenth century, "[t]he use of coffee...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."(Ukers,82)

 

Evidence indicates that coffee was not just drunk at home for medicinal purposes, but for leisurely social occasions. In Bage's Mount Henneth, for instance, Mr Sutton’s letter to his sister details such an occasion: "In this [garden] pavilion we were drinking coffee in the afternoon after the English manner"(235). In The history of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, [1751], by Eliza Fowler Haywood, coffee is shown again in a leisurely social setting at home: "It being near breakfast time, they [Miss Flora and Miss Betsy] went down together into the parlour, and as they were drinking coffee..."(139). In both of these scenes, coffee does not appear a form of public ritual or official discussion, but for stimulation as part of domestic routine-particularly in the parlour- and more relaxed conversational purposes. 

 

Frances Brooke's novel, The Excursion [1785], notes another, even more intimate setting for drinking coffee, as Mrs Herbert and Miss Villiers are described to be "drinking their coffee in Mrs Herbert’s dressing room when a servant threw open the door"(208), interrupting this close conversation. The same novel implies another occasion for coffee, when "[t]he whole constellation of friends, the Montagues included, were drinking their coffee after dinner"(255). Though notably different times and supposedly different degrees of formality of occasion (dressing-room to dinner party), coffee is still suggested to be used to fuel and create occasion for sociability and discussion. In the latter example, it seems to be used specifically to extend a social occasion and the time spent with friends.  

 

Gendered spaces?

Clearly, coffee-drinking was not solely a public, out-of-the-house activity. Interestingly, coffee at home seems more connected with a female domain: unlike the numerous accounts of male interaction in coffee-houses, the examples above all involved mixed or even solely female society. This seems to align coffee with the function of Tea in the home. According to Clayton, drinking tea "was more of a domestic activity or ceremony than the public consumption of coffee in a coffee house"(31), yet here coffee seems to serve a similar purpose. It appears that this somewhat feminine space came out of a lack of female access to coffee-house culture. 

 

There is some contestation about how far women were allowed in coffee-houses. Bramah, for example, argues that this was space intended for men to engage in activities without females and that women were disallowed from joining in coffee-house activities(Bramah,47). Cowan, on the other hand, claims that women were not "prohibited from entering any coffeehouse", and even that "[w]omen were a vital part of coffeehouse society"(Cowan,228). But this was largely "as proprietors of coffee houses, often in partnership with their husband"(Clayton,98), including "perhaps the most notorious coffee-woman"Cowan,168), Moll King, whose coffee-house was a setting for "late-night rakish carousing and prostitution"(166). Clearly, women were not entirely absent from the coffee-house. However, historians seem to agree that "the activities commonly associated with coffeehouse society- especially debate on political or learned topics, business transactions, and the like- were considered to be traditionally masculine"(228)

 

For writer Daniel Defoe, though gossiping was engaged upon by members of both sexes, he claimed that it was "[t]he tea-table among the ladies, and the coffeehouse among the men" that were "places of new invention for a deprivation of our manners and morals, places devoted to scandal"(Cited in Cowan,242-3). Although women would often drink coffee at home and men drink tea at coffee-houses, activity that surrounded these beverages appears to have been strictly gendered by the space in which they were taken. Men would often drinking coffee at home as well as publicly- as is evidenced on multiple occasion in Boswell's London Journal, 1762-63, where coffee is consumed in both private and public settings, both alone and in company- but incidences involving "read[ing] the political papers"(51),  conversations of a philosophical and "literary" nature(257) and "serious conversation"(266) are generally attached to the public coffee-house and its male patrons. 

 

Image: a depiction of the stereotypically female space of the tea table [Image 10]

 

Despite Cowan maintaining that women were never explicitly excluded from the coffeehouse, he suggests that public perception of women that lead to their exclusion: "[e]ven when their ostensible purpose there was only to serve the men, women were distractions from the serious business of masculine employments."(244) Certainly, in the case of Moll King's coffee-house as a space for prostitution, one can see some of the evidence that may have supported such a view and threatened literature's idealistic view of the coffee-house as a space for the male intellectual and entrepreneurial elite and masculine activity. 

 

Cowan goes on to explain that, as "there is no evidence of any woman actually taking part in coffeehouse debate", "it was the women of England's social elite who were most significantly absent from coffeehouse society. The coffeehouses of London were simply no place for a lady who wished to preserve her respectability"(246). Interestingly, whereas "penny universities" were famously accessible and affordable for men of all backgrounds and class seemed of no issue, there was a prevalent aversion to female encroachment upon this space of fraternity. Therefore, where women are depicted in literature and art in relation to coffee, it is not surprising that this is generally in a position of servitude in a coffee-house or presiding over the female space of the tea-table, "the stereotypical breeding ground for "scandal" spread by female gossips", as opposed to the "clearly demarcated... male preserve" of the coffee-house(Cowan,246). 

 

In both spaces, despite the different implications of surrounding activity, coffee was certainly an indicator of sociability and discussion. It was a drink that marked rituals of conversation, both for male intellectual debate and polite female conversation. 

 

 

And finally ....


Bach's Coffee Cantata

As in England, coffee was somewhat controversial in eighteenth-century Germany. Johann Sebastian Bach used this to comic affect, composing a sort of mini-opera on addiction to coffee, particularly that of women. This amusing piece involves a father attempting to discourage his daughter from her indulgent coffee-drinking as a bad habit, whilst she refuses to give it up, at one point declaring: "Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! Coffee, I must have coffee...".

 

Here is a performance of the final chorus in German...


<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaADFq9yOg> 

 

... along with a line-by-line translation by Francis Browne, 200511:


Die Katze lässt das Mausen nicht,
The cat does not leave the mouse,
Die Jungfern bleiben Coffeeschwestern.
young ladies remain coffee addicts.
Die Mutter liebt den Coffeebrauch,
The mother loves her cup of coffee
Die Großmama trank solchen auch,
the grandmother drank it also.
Wer will nun auf die Töchter lästern!
Who can blame the daughters!

 

 

Coffee and divination

In the eighteenth century, coffee was also considered by many as having fortune-telling properties.Similarly to Tea leaves, the shapes and patterns formed in coffee grounds were thought by some to reflect the drinker and aspects of the their future. This idea is also mentioned in 'it'-narrative, The adventures of a black coat when a lady admits that she has had readings of her future husband in a range of methods: "I have had my fortune told me by Cards, Coffee-Grounds, by inspecting the lines of my hand, and by the Man in the Old-Bailey…"(152). Additionally, in Low Life, or, One Half of the World, Knows Not How the Other Half Live(1764), "Young women" are reported "resolving lawful Questions by Coffee-Grounds"(89).

 

Although both these examples could be seen as presenting divination from coffee-grounds as a frivolous female activity, other literature does imply a genuine and wide-spread popularity for the activity. For instance, in the second volume of The Universal Spectator by Henry Stonecastle, the use of coffee for divination is praised: "this wonderful Science of casting Coffee Grounds though an Invention of the Moderns, is equal in Use and Value to all  the Ways of Foreknowledge amongst the Ancients"(126). Evidently, it was not only women who took interest in the spiritualist properties of coffee in the eighteenth century. In yet another way, coffee was ever-present and a significant part of the society and culture of the century.

 

Image: coffee grounds that may be used for divinationImage 11.

 

 

 

     

Images


 

1. ^From site "Vintage Views", a site for browsing antique prints and maps. Web, 10 March 2014.

http://www.vintage-views.com/coffee_plant-common-hop-cola-nut-cacao-tree.html

 

2, ^Stored on Wikipedia's database of images- 'Wikimedia'. Web, 10 March 2014.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/The_Vertue_of_the_COFFEE_Drink..jpg

 

3. ^From "Go Petition", a website on that promotes the use of petitions. Web, 10 March 2014.

http://cdn.gopetition.com/images2/news/news232.jpg

 

4. ^ Scan taken from  Cowan,, The Social Life of Coffee, page 81.

 

5. ^ From a website defined as a fan website dedicated to the paintings and art prints produced by famous British painter William Hogart". Web, 10 March 2014.

http://williamhogarth.org/

 

6. ^Cowan, page 181.

 

7. ^"British Literature Wiki". Web, 10 March 2014.

http://britlitwiki.wikispaces.com/The+Coffeehouse+Culture

 

8. ^ Cowan, page 227.

 

9. ^ Cowan, page 103.

 

10. ^ Cowan, page 247.

 

11. ^From Wikipedia page on "Tasseography". Web, 10 March 2014

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coffereading.jpg 

 

 

References


 

1. ^ Google Ngram Viewer website, 10 March 2014.

 https://books.google.com/ngrams

 

2. ^ As cited in William H. Uker's All About Coffee, Avon, Mass. : Newton Abbot : Adams Media  (2012).

 

3. ^ In his book, The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (2001)

 

4. ^ Mr Addison, Interesting anecdotes, memoirs, allegories, essays, and poetical fragments, Tending to amuse the fancy, and inculcate morality.London : Printed for the author, 1794. Volume 9

 

5. ^ Pope's letter as quoted by Maynard Mack in Alexander Pope: a Life (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1985. p145

 

6. ^ Historical project on mathematics and London Coffee houses. Web, 10 March 2014.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/PrintHT/Coffee_houses.html

 

7. ^ Originally from Defoe's Review, vol. [9], no.76 (28 Mar. 1713), S 152a.

 

8. ^ (see note 6)

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/PrintHT/Coffee_houses.html

 

9. ^ As cited in Clayton,19.

 

10. ^ Quoted in Cowan, “The rise of the coffeehouse reconsidered,” 22. Roger North, Examen: or, an enquiry into the credit and veracity of a pretented complete history (London, 1740), p. 141. A]

 

11. ^ A page dedicated to Bach's cantatas, providing details of lyrics, arrangement, performers, etc. Web, 10 March 2014.

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWV211-Eng3.htm

 

 

Annotated Bibliography 


PRIMARY SOURCES

 

Addison, 'Mr.',   A collection of interesting anecdotes, memoirs, allegories, essays, and poetical fragments, Tending to amuse the fancy, and inculcate morality.London. Volume 9 (1794, ECCO)

 

The title of this work effectively conveys its content: it is an amusing collage of Addison's observations and thoughts, as I assume have been noted by the author in some a book of commonplace as they occurred in order to expand these into entertaining anecdotes. Because of this, Addison's reflections of Pope not only give a sense of immediacy to the coffee-house experience, but reflect the significance of this space the literati that Addison associated with.

 

Dr Allen’s Synopsis medicinae (1730, ECCO),

 

 Again, much is suggested in the source's title: here is a useful synopsis of "causes and remedies" in medicine, reflecting contemporary discussions on health. This was therefore vital to my examination of coffee's representation in concerns with its effects on physical and mental health, acting as a collage of eighteenth-century medical opinion.

 

 

Bage, Robert,   Mount Henneth (1782,ECCO)

Brooke, Frances,    The Excursion (1785,ECCO)

 Haywood, Eliza F.,    The history of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, (1751,ECCO)

 

Considering the emergence of the novel across the eighteenth-century, it was interesting to consider how this form, which allowed the author to focus upon private lives and experiences of characters in more developed detail, picked up on coffee. Though all of the novels I considered only mentioned the drink in passing, all were quite revealing about the social interaction and discussion that accompanied the activity of coffee-drinking, helping my investigation of coffee's effect on behaviour.

 

Boswell, James London Journal, 1762-63, Penguin Classics, Reprint edition (2010)

 

Although the incidents of food and drink in Boswell's everyday journal are frequent and often seem inconsequential in the overall action, such literature offers valuable insight into the ubiquitous nature of material goods and allows one to spot patterns in surrounding behaviour. In my case, I noticed that the spaces where Boswell drank coffee affected the nature of his activity,  particularly the high-minded 'masculine' thinking associated with coffee-houses. 

 

Brown, John Essays on the characteristics London: Printed for C. Davis (1751)- as cited in the OED entry for 

ˈcoffee-house, n.', 11 March, 2014 <http://0-www.oed.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/Entry/35786?rskey=YGjahU&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid> 

 

Though not extensive, the citations of the OED for entries of the word 'coffee' and its compound forms did begin my thinking process early in the project, encouraging me to consider how and where coffee may have been picked up on- e.g. in Brown's assessment of a particular coffee-house philosophy, at least hypothetically, for its patrons. 

 

 

[n.d.]In The Best and easiest method of preserving uninterrupted health to extreme old age(1748, ECCO)

 

Another valuable medical document. Interestingly, this collection held converse views concerning coffee to Dr Allen's text, offering a helpful comparison of opinions in my work, highlighting contemporary controversy surrounding coffee.

 

[n.d.]  The adventures of a black coat. Dublin, MDCCLXII. (1762, ECCO)

 

In this 'it'-narrative, the black coat as an object is able to observe the odd behaviours of man in society, distancing the reader from their own everyday experience to amusing ends. Coffee is made a part of an example, as a lady confesses its used to tell her future, and is implicated in an eighteenth-century society shown as revolving around increasingly materially-based systems of communication, from coffee-houses to divination.

 

Pope, Alexander,   The Rape of Locke (1712), as printed in Eighteenth-Century Poetry: an Annotated Anthology, ed. David Fairer and Christine Gerrard. Blackwell (2004)

 

In his satirical poem, Pope's poking fun at his society and the 'heroicomical' grandeur allows for colourful depictions of a range of common eighteenth-century items that magnifies their social implications. In the case of coffee, this is certainly useful, as Pope both raises the product as a glorious, delicious and exotic luxury of empire and as a tool to stimulate the political minds that he mocks as ineffective in the course of the poem. This echoed several interests of mine concerning coffee's social effects.

 

Stonecastle, Henry,     The universal spectator- Volume II. By Henry Stonecastle, of Northumberland, Esq; ...London : printed for J. Pemberton, A. Ward, E. Symon, J. Clarke, D. Browne, R. Nutt, T. Worral, and T. Astley, M.DCC.XXXVI. (1736, ECCO)

 

Another eighteenth-century text concerned with an observation of societal behaviour, this text also reveals the use of coffee for the purposes of divination. However, here is a rational male voice actively praising the use of coffee-grounds for fortune-telling, which complicated assumptions I was close to making about this being seen as a female activity. 

 

 

SECONDARY SOURCES

 -(NOTE: due large amount of secondary material that I encountered, I have chosen to annotate a sample, conveying varying degrees of usefulness and influence on my research, feeling that this approach shall be most profitable and avoid repetition.)

 

[anon.]    Coffee in Europe. n.d. 10 March 2014. <http://www.realcoffee.co.uk/Coffee-Encyclopedia/History/Coffee-in-Europe/>.

 

Helpful overview of the the social implications of coffee's spreading influence across Europe in the century. Although I did not find this immediately helpful to the points I was investigating, this is certainly an interesting historical consideration of coffee for the curious.

 

Alcott, William Andrus,   Tea and Coffee, G. W. Light (1839)

 

Bramah, Edward,    Tea & coffee: a modern view of three hundred years of traditionHutchinson and Co. (Publishers) Ltd, (1972)

 

Clayton, Anthony,    London's Coffee Houses, Phillimore & Co. (2004)

 

Cowan, Brian,    The social life of coffee: the emergence of the British coffeehouse, Yale University Press (2005)

 

A well-balanced and researched examination of the growing popularity of coffee, and its societal and cultural influence in Britain across several centuries. Cowan's work was hugely helpful: from the roots of British coffee in Empire to the features and patrons of the eighteenth-century's most successful coffee-houses at the height of their fashion, this text helped me to bring aspects of my wider reading together in a logical progression of coffee through British society, as grounded by Cowan. Indeed, many of Cowan's own quotations and images supplement my page, and I would highly recommend this work as an in-depth exploration of the history of coffee for one who wants to investigate this topic further. 

 

Cowan, Brian,   'The rise of the Coffee house reconsidered' The Historical Journal Volume 47  Issue 01 (March 2004), pp. 21-46

 

McDonald, Hollie,   'Social Politics of Seventeenth Century London Coffee Houses: An Exploration of Class and Gender' Honors Projects. Paper 208. Grand Valley State University (2013) Web: 10 March 2014 [http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/208

 

Sitter, John,    The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Cambridge University Press (2001)

 

Ukers, William H.,   All About Coffee, Avon, Mass. : Newton Abbot : Adams Media ; David & Charles [distributor] (2012).

 

Another helpful comprehensive study of coffee, Ukers text is crammed with literary, visual and historical documents involving coffee. Though a fascinating work and a source of plentiful information, Ukers' scope was much wider than Cowan, as the title suggests. Therefore, the work of Cowan and Clayton, for example, whose focus was closer to my own, made extracting relevant information easier. Nonetheless, I would still recommend this work for one with a curiosity for coffee, its origins and the range of societal and cultural associations that come with it.

 

Weinberg, Bennett Alan and Bealer, Bonnie K,    The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug, Routeledge (2002)

 

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