ve what freedom is
permitted, in furnishing this gossip. They speak without reverence
not only of the doings of generals and ministers of state, but also
mix themselves in the life of the Kaiser (Emperor) himself.

Vienna liked the coffee house so well that by 1839 there were eighty of
them in the city proper and fifty more in the suburbs.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

THE COFFEE HOUSES OF OLD LONDON

_One of the most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee--The
first coffee house in London--The first coffee handbill, and the
first newspaper advertisement for coffee--Strange coffee
mixtures--Fantastic coffee claims--Coffee prices and coffee
licenses--Coffee club of the Rota--Early coffee-house manners and
customs--Coffee-house keepers' tokens--Opposition to the coffee
house--"Penny universities"--Weird coffee substitutes--The proposed
coffee-house newspaper monopoly--Evolution of the club--Decline and
fall of the coffee house--Pen pictures of coffee-house life--Famous
coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Some Old
World pleasure gardens--Locating the notable coffee houses_

The two most picturesque chapters in the history of coffee have to do
with the period of the old London and Paris coffee houses of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much of the poetry and romance of
coffee centers around this time.

"The history of coffee houses," says D'Israeli, "ere the invention of
clubs, was that of the manners, the morals and the politics of a
people." And so the history of the London coffee houses of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is indeed the history of the
manners and customs of the English people of that period.

_The First London Coffee House_

"The first coffee house in London," says John Aubrey (1626-97), the
English antiquary and folklorist, "was in St. Michael's Alley, in
Cornhill, opposite to the church, which was sett up by one ... Bowman
(coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant, who putt him upon it) in or
about the yeare 1652. 'Twas about four years before any other was sett
up, and that was by Mr. Farr. Jonathan Paynter, over-against to St.
Michael's Church, was the first apprentice to the trade, viz., to
Bowman."[67]

Another account, for which we are indebted to William Oldys (1696-1761),
the bibliographer, relates that Mr. Edwards, a London merchant, acquired
the coffee habit