All About Coffee, William H. Ukers [short story to read .txt] 📗
- Author: William H. Ukers
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The Coffee House, a dramatick Piece by James Miller, was performed at the Theater Royal in Drury Lane in 1737. The interior of Dick's coffee house figured as an engraved frontispiece to the published version of the play.
The author states in the preface that "this piece is partly taken from a comedy of one act written many years ago in French by the famous Rosseau, called 'Le Caffè', which met with great applause in Paris." The coffee house in the play is conducted by the Widow Notable, who has a pretty daughter for whom, like all good mothers, she is anxious to arrange a suitable marriage.
In the first scene, an acrimonious conversation takes place between Puzzle, the Politician, and Bays, the poet, in which squabble the Pert Beau and the Solemn Beau, and other habitués of the place take part. Puzzle discovers that a comedian and other players are in the room, and insists that they be ejected or forbidden the house. The Widow is justly incensed, and indignantly replies:
Forbid the Players my House, Sir! Why, Sir, I get more by them in a Week than I do by you in seven Years. You come here and hold a paper in your hand for an Hour, disturb the whole Company with your Politics, call for Pen and Ink, Paper and Wax, beg a Pipe of Tobacco, burn out half a Candle, eat half a Pound of Sugar, and then go away, and pay Two-pence for a Dish of Coffee. I could soon shut up my doors, if I had not some other good People to make amends for what I lose by such as you, Sir.
All join the Widow in scoffing and jeering, and exit the highly discomfited Puzzle. The pretty little Kitty tricks her mother with the aid of the Player, and marries the man of her choice, but is forgiven when he is found to be a gentleman of the Temple.
The play is in one act and has several songs. The last is one of five stanzas, with music "set by Mr. Caret:"
Song
What Pleasures a Coffee-House daily bestows!
To read and hear how the World merrily goes;
To laugh, sing and prattle of This, That, and T' other;
And be flatter'd and ogl'd and kiss'd too, like Mother.
Here the Rake, after Roving and Tipling all Night,
For his Groat in the Morning may set his Head right.
And the Beau, who ne'er fouls his White fingers with Brass,
May have his Sixpen' worth of—Stare in the Glass.
The Doctor, who'd always be ready to kill,
May ev'ry Day here take his Stand, if he will;
And the soldier, who'd bluster and challenge secure,
May draw boldly here, for—we'll hold him he's sure.
The Lawyer, who's always in quest of his Prey,
May find fools here to feed upon every Day;
And the sage Politician, in Coffee-Grounds known,
May point out the Fate of each Crown but—his own.
Then, Gallants, since ev'rything here you may find
That pleasures the Fancy or profits the Mind,
Come all, and take each a full Dish of Delight,
And crowd up our Coffee-House every night.
John Timbs tells us this play "met with great opposition on its representation, owing to its being stated that the characters were intended for a particular family (that of Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter) who kept Dick's, the coffee-house which the artist had inadvertently selected as the frontispiece. It appears," Timbs continues, "that the landlady and her daughter were the reigning toast of the Templars, who then frequented Dick's; and took the matter up so strongly that they united to condemn the farce on the night of its production; they succeeded, and even extended their resentment to everything suspected to be this author's (the Rev. James Miller) for a considerable time after."
Carlo Goldoni, who has been called the Molière of Italy, wrote La Bottega di Caffè, (The Coffee House), a naturalistic comedy of bourgeois Venice, satirizing scandal and gambling, in 1750. The scene is a Venetian coffee house (probably Florian's), where several actions take place simultaneously. Among several remarkable studies is one of a prattling slanderer, Don Marzio, which ranks as one of the finest bits of original character drawing the stage has ever seen. The play was produced in English by the Chicago Theatre Society in 1912. Chatfield-Taylor[353] thinks Voltaire probably imitated La Bottega di Caffè in his Le Café, ou l'Ecossaise. Goldoni was a lover of coffee, a regular frequenter of the coffee houses of his time, from which he drew much in the way of inspiration. Pietro Longhi, called the Venetian Hogarth, in one of his pictures presenting life and manners in Venice during the years of her decadence, shows Goldoni as a visitor in a café of the period, with a female mendicant soliciting alms. It is in the collection of Professor Italico Brass.
Goldoni, in the comedy The Persian Wife, gives us a glimpse of coffee making in the middle of the eighteenth century. He puts these words into the mouth of Curcuma, the slave:
Here is the coffee, ladies, coffee native of Arabia,
And carried by the caravans into Ispahan.
The coffee of Arabia is certainly always the best.
While putting forth its leaves on one side, upon the other the flowers appear;
Born of a rich soil, it wishes shade, or but little sun.
Planted every three years is this little tree in the surface of the soil.
The fruit, though truly very small,
Should yet grow large enough to become somewhat green.
Later, when used, it should be freshly ground.
Kept in a warm and dry place and jealously guarded.
***
But a small quantity is needed to prepare it.
Put in the desired quantity and do not spill it over the fire;
Heat it till the foam rises, then let it subside again away from the fire;
Do this seven times at least, and coffee is made in a moment.
In 1760 there appeared in France Le Café, ou l'Ecossaise, comédie, which purported to have been written by a Mr. Hume, an Englishman, and to have been translated into French. It was in reality the work of Voltaire, who had brought out another play, Socrates, in the same manner a short time before. Le Café, was translated into English the same year under the title The Coffee House, or Fair Fugitive. The title page says the play is written by "Mr. Voltaire" and translated from the French. It is a comedy in five acts. The principal characters are: Fabrice, a good-natured man and the keeper of the coffee house; Constantia, the fair fugitive; Sir William Woodville, a gentleman of distinction under misfortune; Belmont, in love with Constantia, a man of fortune and interest; Freeport, a merchant and an epitome of English manners; Scandal, a sharper; and Lady Alton, in love with Belmont.
Il Caffè di Campagna, a play with music by Galuppi, appeared in Italy in 1762.
Another Italian play, a comedy called La Caffettiéra da Spirito was produced in 1807.
Hamilton, a play by Mary P. Hamlin and George Arliss, the latter also playing the title rôle, was produced in America by George C. Tyler in 1918. The first-act scene is laid in the Exchange coffee house of Philadelphia, during the period of Washington's first administration. Among the characters introduced in this scene are James Monroe, Count Tallyrand, General Philip Schuyler, and Thomas Jefferson.
The authors very faithfully reproduce the atmosphere of the coffee house of Washington's time. As Tallyrand remarks, "Everybody comes to see everybody at the Exchange Coffee House.... It is club, restaurant, merchants' exchange, everything."
The Autocrat of the Coffee Stall, a play in one act, by Harold Chapin, was published in New York in 1921.
Coffee and Literature in General
An interesting book might be written on the transformation that tea and coffee have wrought in the tastes of famous literary men. And of the two stimulants, coffee seems to have furnished greater refreshment and inspiration to most. However, both beverages have made civilization their debtor in that they weaned so many fine minds from the heavy wines and spirits in which they once indulged.
Voltaire and Balzac were the most ardent devotees of coffee among the French literati. Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), the Scottish philosopher and statesman, was so fond of coffee that he used to assert that the powers of a man's mind would generally be found to be proportional to the quantity of that stimulant which he drank. His brilliant schoolmate and friend, Robert Hall (1764–1831), the Baptist minister and pulpit orator, preferred tea, of which he sometimes drank a dozen cups. Cowper; Parson and Parr, the famous Greek scholars; Dr. Samuel Johnson; and William Hazlitt, the writer and critic, were great tea drinkers; but Burton, Dean Swift, Addison, Steele, Leigh Hunt, and many others, celebrated coffee.
Dr. Charles B. Reed, professor in the medical school of Northwestern University, says that coffee may be considered as a type of substance that fosters genius. History seems to bear him out. Coffee's essential qualities are so well defined, says Dr. Reed, that one critic has claimed the ability to trace throughout the works of Voltaire those portions that came from coffee's inspiration. Tea and coffee promote a harmony of the creative faculties that permits the mental concentration necessary to produce the masterpieces of art and literature.
Voltaire (1694–1778) the king of wits, was also king of coffee drinkers. Even in his old age he was said to have consumed fifty cups daily. To the abstemious Balzac (1799–1850) coffee was both food and drink.
In Frederick Lawton's Balzac we read: "Balzac worked hard. His habit was to go to bed at six in the evening, sleep till twelve, and, after, to rise and write for nearly twelve hours at a stretch, imbibing coffee as a stimulant through these spells of composition."
In his Treatise on Modern Stimulants, Balzac thus describes his reaction to his most beloved stimulant:
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.
When Balzac tells how Doctor Minoret, Ursule Minoret's guardian, used to regale his friends with a cup of "Moka," mixed with Bourbon and Martinique, which the Doctor insisted on personally preparing in a silver coffee pot, it is his own custom that he is detailing. His Bourbon he bought only in the rue Mont Blanc (now the chaussé d'Antin); the Martinique, in the rue des Vielles Audriettes; the Mocha, at a grocer's in the rue de l'Université. It was half a day's journey to fetch them.
There have been notable contributions to the general literature of coffee by French, Italian, English, and American writers. Space does not permit of more than passing mention of some of them.
The reactions of the early French and English writers have been touched upon in the chapters on the coffee houses of old London and the early Parisian coffee houses, and in the history chapters dealing with the evolution of coffee drinking and coffee manners and customs.
After Dufour, Galland, and La Roque in France, there were Count Rumford, John Timbs, Douglas Ellis, and Robinson in England; Jardin and Franklin in France; Belli in Italy; Hewitt, Thurber, and Walsh in America.
Mention has been made of coffee references in the works of Aubrey, Burton, Addison, Steele, Bacon, and D'Israeli.
Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) the great French epicure, knew coffee as few men before him or since. In his historical elegy, contained in Gastronomy as a Fine Art, or the Science
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