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All About Coffee, a non-fiction book by William H. Ukers |
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Chapter 32. A History Of Coffee In Literature |
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_ CHAPTER XXXII. A HISTORY OF COFFEE IN LITERATURE The romance of coffee, and its influence on the discourse, poetry, history, drama, philosophic writing, and fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and on the writers of today--Coffee quips and anecdotes
Then arose many legends about coffee, that served as inspiration for Arabian, French, Italian, and English poets. Sheik Gemaleddin, mufti of Mocha, is said to have discovered the virtues of coffee about 1454, and to have promoted the use of the drink in Arabia. Knowledge of the new beverage was given to Europeans by the botanists Rauwolf and Alpini toward the close of the sixteenth century. The first authentic account of the origin of coffee was written by Abd-al-Kâdir in 1587. It is the famous Arabian manuscript commending the use of coffee, preserved in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, and catalogued as "Arabe, 4590." Its title written in Arabic is as follows:
or, more freely, "Argument in favor of the legitimate use of coffee." [Arabic] kahwa, is the Arabic word for coffee. The author is Abd-al-Kâdir ibn Mohammad al Ansâri al Jazari al Hanbali. That is, he was named Abd-al-Kâdir, son of Mohammed. Abd-al-Kâdir means "slave of the strong one" (i.e., of God); while al Ansâri means that he was a descendant of the Ansâri (i.e., "helpers"), the people of Medina who received and protected the Prophet Mohammed after his flight from Mecca; al Jazari means that he was a man of Mesopotamia; and al Hanbali that in law and theology he belonged to the well known sect, or school, of the Hanbalites, so called after the great jurist and writer, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who died at Bagdad A.H. 241 (A.D. 855). The Hanbalites are one of the four great sects of the Sunni Mohammedans. Abd-al-Kâdir ibn Mohammed lived in the tenth century of the Hegira--the sixteenth of our era--and wrote his book in 996 A.H., or 1587 A.D. Coffee had then been in common use since about 1450 A.D. in Arabia. It was not in use in the time of the Prophet, who died in 632 A.D.; but he had forbidden the drink of strong liquors which affect the brain, and hence it was argued that coffee, as a stimulant, was unlawful. Even today, the community of the Wahabis, very powerful in Arabia a hundred years ago, and still dominant in part of it, do not permit the use of coffee. Abd-al-Kâdir's book is thought to have been based on an earlier writing by Shihâb-ad-Dîn Ahmad ibn Abd-al-Ghafâr al Maliki, as he refers to the latter on the third page of his manuscript; but if so, this previous work does not appear to have been preserved. La Roque says Shihâb-ad-Dîn was an Arabian historian who supplied the main part of Abd-al-Kâdir's story. La Roque refers also to a Turkish historian. Research by the author has failed to disclose anything about Shihâb-ad-Dîn save his name (al Maliki means that he belonged to the Malikites, another of the four great Sunni sects), and that he wrote about a hundred years before Abd-al-Kâdir. No copy of his writings is known to exist. The illustrations show the title page of Abd-al-Kâdir's manuscript, the first page, the third page, and the fly leaf of the cover, the latter containing an inscription in Latin made at the time the manuscript was first received or classified. It reads: Omdat al safouat fl hall al cahuat. The translation of the Latin is: Concerning the legitimate and lawful use of the drink commonly known as café by Abdalcader Ben Mohammed al Ansâri. The book is composed in seven chapters and was brought out by the author in the year of the Hegira 996 at which time a hundred and twenty years had passed since the use of this drink had become firmly established in Arabia Felix.
The Abd-al-Kâdir work immortalized coffee. It is in seven chapters. The first treats of the etymology and significance of the word cahouah (kahwa), the nature and properties of the bean, where the drink was first used, and describes its virtues. The other chapters have to do largely with the church dispute in Mecca in 1511, answer the religious objectors to coffee, and conclude with a collection of Arabic verses composed during the Mecca controversy by the best poets of the time. De Nointel, ambassador from the court of Louis XIV to the Ottoman Porte, brought back with him to Paris from Constantinople the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript, and another by Bichivili, one of the three general treasurers of the Ottoman Empire. The latter work is of a later date than the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript, and is concerned chiefly with the history of the introduction of coffee into Egypt, Syria, Damascus, Aleppo, and Constantinople. The following are two of the earliest Arabic poems in praise of coffee. They are about the period of the first coffee persecution in Mecca (1511), and are typical of the best thought of the day: IN PRAISE OF COFFEE
IN PRAISE OF COFFEE Translation from the Arabic O coffee! Doved and fragrant drink, thou drivest care away, The object thou of that man's wish who studies night and day. Thou soothest him, thou giv'st him health, and God doth favor those Who walk straight on in wisdom's way, nor seek their own repose. Fragrant as musk thy berry is, yet black as ink in sooth! And he who sips thy fragrant cup can only know the truth. Insensate they who, tasting not, yet vilify its use; For when they thirst and seek its help, God will the gift refuse. Oh, coffee is our wealth! for see, where'er on earth it grows, Men live whose aims are noble, true virtues who disclose. COFFEE COMPANIONSHIP During the period of the second religious persecution of coffee in the latter part of the sixteenth century, other Arabian poets sang the praises of coffee. The learned Fakr-Eddin-Aboubeckr ben Abid Iesi wrote a book entitled The Triumph of Coffee, and the poet-sheikh Sherif-Eddin-Omar-ben-Faredh sang of it in harmonious verse, wherein, discoursing of his mistress, he could find no more flattering comparison than coffee. He exclaims, "She has made me drink, in long draughts, the fever, or, rather, the coffee of love!" The numerous contributions by early travelers to the literature of coffee have been mentioned in chronological order in the history chapters. After Rauwolf and Alpini, there were Sir Antony Sherley, Parry, Biddulph, Captain John Smith, Sir George Sandys, Sir Thomas Herbert, and Sir Henry Blount in England; Tavernier, Thévenot, Bernier, P. de la Roque, and Galland in France; Delia Valle in Italy; Olearius and Niebhur in Germany; Nieuhoff in Holland, and others. Francis Bacon wrote about coffee in his Hist. Vitae et Mortis and Sylva Sylvarum, 1623-27. Burton referred to it in his "Anatomy of Melancholy" in 1632. Parkinson described it in his Theatrum Botanicum in 1640. In 1652, Pasqua Rosée published his famous handbill in London, a literary effort as well as a splendid first advertisement. Faustus Nairon (Banesius) produced in Rome, in 1671, the first printed treatise devoted solely to coffee. The same year Dufour brought out the first treatise in French. This he followed in 1684 with his work, The manner of making coffee, tea, and chocolate. John Ray extolled the virtues of coffee in his Universal Botany of Plants, published in London in 1686. Galland translated the Abd-al-Kâdir manuscript into French in 1699, and Jean La Roque published his Voyage de l'Arabie Heureuse in Paris in 1715. Excerpts from nearly all these works appear in various chapters of this work. Leonardus Ferdinandus Meisner published a Latin treatise on coffee, tea, and chocolate in 1721. Dr. James Douglas published in London (1727) his Arbor yemensis fructum cofè ferens, or a description and history of the Coffee Tree. This work laid under contribution many of the Italian, German, French, and English scholars mentioned above; and the author mentioned as other sources of information: Dr. Quincy, Pechey, Gaudron, de Fontenelle, Professor Boerhaave, Figueroa, Chabraeus, Sir Hans Sloane, Langius, and Du Mont. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the poets and dramatists of France, Italy, and England found a plentiful supply in what had already been written on coffee; to say nothing of the inspiration offered by the drink itself, and by the society of the cafés of the period. French poets, familiar with Latin, first took coffee as the subject of their verse. Vaniére sang its praises in the eighth book of his Praedium rusticum; and Fellon, a Jesuit professor of Trinity College, Lyons, wrote a didactic poem called, Faba Arabica, Carmen, which is included in the Poemata didascalica of d'Olivet. Abbé Guillaume Massieu's Carmen Caffaeum, composed in 1718, has been referred to in chapter III. It was read at the Academy of Inscriptions. One of the panegyrists of this author, de Boze, in his Elogé de Massieu, says that if Horace and Virgil had known of coffee, the poem might easily have been attributed to them; and Thery, who translated it into French, says "it is a pearl of elegance in a rare jewel case." The following translation of the poem from the Latin original was made for this work:
A Poem by Guillaume Massieu of the French Academy (A literal prose translation from the original Latin in the British How coffee first came to our shores, You soft-spoken men, who have often tried the sweetness of this drink, Across Libya afar, and the seven mouths of the swollen Nile, To transplant this growth to our own fields Therefore come thou, whoever shall be possesed by a love for coffee, Therefore, what you shall know to be sufficient for your needs, None the less, meanwhile, must the utensils for coffee be cared for. [Illustration: CAMEL TRANSPORT BETWEEN HARAR AND DIRE-DAOUA, ABYSSINIA] [Illustration: SUN-DRYING IN LA LAGUNA, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS] [Illustration: COFFEE SCENES IN THE NEAR AND THE FAR EAST] There is also a hollow machine, like a small tower, which they But why do we linger over these less important matters? This soothing drink ought to be boiled with skill, to be drunk And now there remains awaiting us the other part of our task, Wherefore come, O you who have a care for your health! O happy peoples, on whom Titan, rising, looks with his first light! Yet, indeed, the soothing power of this invigorating drink And in the entire East this custom of coffee drinking And here I shall make known who taught the use of this pleasant An Arab shepherd was driving his young goats to the well-known Not far from here a holy band of brethren had built their In charge of the sacred temple, revered and obeyed by his When he has come to the hills, he observes the lambs, together You also, whose care it is to feed minds with divine eloquence Once a disease most deadly to life assailed the disciples of O plant, given to the human race by the gift of the Gods!
Translation from the French A liquid there is to the poet most dear,
Bright plants, the favorites of Phoebus,
LINES ON COFFEE Translation from the French Good coffee is more than a savory cup,
Among other notable poetic flights in praise of coffee produced in France mention should be made of: "L'Elogé du Café" (Eulogy of Coffee) a song in twenty-four couplets, Paris, Jacques Estienne, 1711; Le Café (Coffee), a fragment from the fourth chant (song) of La Grandeur de Dieu dans les merveilles de la Nature (The Grandeur of God in the Wonders of Nature) Marseilles; Le Café, extract from the fourth gastronomic song, by Berchoux; "A Mon Café" (To My Coffee), stanzas written by Ducis; Le Café, anonymous stanzas inserted in the Macedoine Poetique, 1824; a poem in Latin in the Abbé Olivier's collection; Le Bouquet Blanc et le Bouquet Noir, poesie en quatre chants; Le Café, C.D. Mery, 1837; Elogé du Café, S. Melaye, 1852. Many Italian poets have sung the praises of coffee. L. Barotti wrote his poem, Il Caffè in 1681. Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799), Italy's great satirical and lyric poet and critic of the eighteenth century, in Il Giorno (The Day), gives a delightful pen picture of the manners and customs of Milan's polite society of the period. William Dean Howells quotes as follows from these poems (his own translation) in his Modern Italian Poets. The feast is over, and the lady signals to the cavalier that it is time to leave the table:
Pope Leo XIII, in his Horatian poem on Frugality composed in his eighty-eighth year, thus verses his appreciation of coffee:
When you are worried, have trouble of one sort or another--to the coffee house!
William Cowper's fine tribute to "the cups that cheer but not inebriate", a phrase which he is said to have borrowed from Bishop Berkeley, was addressed to tea and not to coffee, to which it has not infrequently been wrongfully attributed. It is one of the most pleasing pictures in The Task. Cowper refers to coffee but once in his writings. In his Pity for Poor Africans he expresses himself as "shocked at the ignorance of slaves":
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), and John Keats (1795-1834), were worshippers at the shrine of coffee; while Charles Lamb, famous poet, essayist, humorist, and critic, has celebrated in verse the exploit of Captain de Clieu in the following delightful verses:
Whene'er I fragrant coffee drink,
"You may have sherry in silver, hock in gold, or glass'd champagne "Commander of the Faithful!" answered Hum,
Numerous broadsides printed in London, 1660 to 1675, have been referred to in chapter X. Few of them possess real literary merit. "Coffee and Crumpets" has been much quoted. It was published in Fraser's Magazine, in 1837. Its author calls himself "Launcelot Littledo". The poem is quite long, and only those portions are printed here that refer particularly to "Yemen's fragrant berry":
By Launcelot Littledo of Pump Court, Temple, Barrister-at-law. There's ten o'clock! From Hampstead to the Tower To puff away an hour, and drink a cup, Coffee! oh, Coffee! Faith, it is surprising. Were I a poet now, whose ready rhymes. Thou sleepy-eyed Chinese--enticing siren, I love, upon a rainy night, as this is,
* * * * * Come, Oliver, and tell us what the news is; * * * * * Fill the bowl, but not with wine. * * * * * Gentle is the grape's deep cluster,
[Footnote 350: Kauhee (or kahvé) is the Turkish for coffee.] By Geoffrey Sephton I Away with opiates! Tantalising snares II O great Kauhee, thou democratic Lord,
LIKE HIS MOTHER USED TO MAKE[351] [Footnote 351: Copyright, 1913. Used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, Ind.]
"I was born in Indiany," says a stranger, lank and slim,
Voluptuous berry! Where may mortals find Thou wert of sneering, cynical Voltaire, Whene'er I breathe thy fumes, 'mid Summer stars,
O, boiling, bubbling, berry, bean! For what is tea? It can but mean, * * * * * But coffee! can other tales unfold. So here's a health to coffee! Coffee hot!
Oh, thou most fragrant, aromatic joy, impugned, abused, and often stormed against, Some ancient Arab, so the legend tells, first found thee--may his memory be blest! The lonely traveler in the desert range, if thou art with him, smiles at eventide-- "Use, not abuse, the good things of this life"--that is a motto from the Prophet's days,
Strong wine it is a mocker; strong wine it is a beast. Oh, cocoa's the drink for an elderly don who lives with an elderly niece;
Give me a man who drinks good, hot, dark, strong coffee for breakfast! Oh, sweet supernal coffee-pot! What is it, I ask you, when he comes down to breakfast dry of mouth, and touchy of temper-- What is it, on the morning after the club dance,
Coffee was first "dramatized", so to speak, in England, where we read that Charles II and the Duke of Yorke attended the first performance of Tarugo's Wiles, or the Coffee House, a comedy, in 1667, which Samuel Pepys described as "the most ridiculous and insipid play I ever saw in my life." The author was Thomas St. Serf. The piece opens in a lively manner, with a request on the part of its fashionable hero for a change of clothes. Accordingly, Tarugo puts off his "vest, hat, perriwig, and sword," and serves the guests to coffee, while the apprentice acts his part as a gentleman customer. Presently other "customers of all trades and professions" come dropping into the coffee house. These are not always polite to the supposed coffee-man; one complains of his coffee being "nothing but warm water boyl'd with burnt beans," while another desires him to bring "chocolette that's prepar'd with water, for I hate that which is encouraged with eggs." The pedantry and nonsense uttered by a "schollar" character is, perhaps, an unfair specimen of coffee-house talk; it is especially to be noticed that none of the guests ventures upon the dangerous ground of politics. In the end, the coffee-master grows tired of his clownish visitors, saying plainly, "This rudeness becomes a suburb tavern rather than my coffee house"; and with the assistance of his servants he "thrusts 'em all out of doors, after the schollars and customers pay." In 1694, there was published Jean Baptiste Rosseau's comedy, Le Caffè, which appears to have been acted only once in Paris, although a later English dramatist says it met with great applause in the French capital. Le Caffè was written in Laurent's café, which was frequented by Fontenelle, Houdard de la Motte, Dauchet, the abbé Alary Boindin, and others. Voltaire said that "this work of a young man without any experience either of the world of letters or of the theater seems to herald a new genius." About this time it was the fashion for the coffee-house keepers of Paris, and the waiters, to wear Armenian costumes; for Pascal had builded better than he knew. In La Foire Saint-Germain, a comedy by Dancourt, played in 1696, one of the principal characters is old "Lorange, a coffee merchant clothed as an Armenian". In scene 5, he says to Mlle. Mousset, "a seller of house dresses" that he has been "a naturalized Armenian for three weeks." Mrs. Susannah Centlivre (1667?-1723), in her comedy, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, produced about 1719, has a scene laid in Jonathan's coffee house about that period. While the stock jobbers are talking in the first scene of act II, the coffee boys are crying, "Fresh Coffee, gentlemen, fresh coffee?... Bohea tea, gentlemen?" Henry Fielding (1707-1754) published "The Coffee-House Politician, or Justice caught in his own trap," a comedy, in 1730. 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:"
What Pleasures a Coffee-House daily bestows! Here the Rake, after Roving and Tipling all Night, The Doctor, who'd always be ready to kill, The Lawyer, who's always in quest of his Prey, Then, Gallants, since ev'rything here you may find [Illustration: SONG FROM "THE COFFEE HOUSE"]
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.
* * * * * But a small quantity is needed to prepare it.
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.
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 of Good Living, he exclaims: You crossed and mitred abbots and bishops who dispensed the favors of Heaven, and you the dreaded templars who armed yourselves for the extermination of the Saracens, you knew nothing of the sweet restoring influence of our modern chocolate, nor of the thought-inspiring bean of Arabia--how I pity you! O. de Gourcuff's De la Café, épître attribué à Senecé, is deserving of honorable mention. An early French writer pays this tribute to the inspirational effects of coffee: It is a beverage eminently agreeable, inspiring and wholesome. It is at once a stimulant, a cephalic, a febrifuge, a digestive, and an anti-soporific; it chases away sleep, which is the enemy of labor; it invokes the imagination, without which there can be no happy inspiration. It expels the gout, that enemy of pleasure, although to pleasure gout owes its birth; it facilitates digestion, without which there can be no true happiness. It disposes to gaiety, without which there is neither pleasure nor enjoyment; it gives wit to those who already have it, and it even provides wit (for some hours at least) to those who usually have it not. Thank heaven for Coffee, for see how many blessings are concentrated in the infusion of a small berry. What other beverage in the world can compare with it? Coffee, at once a pleasure and a medicine; Coffee, which nourishes at the same moment the mind, body and imagination. Hail to thee! Inspirer of men of letters, best digestive of the gourmand. Nectar of all men. In Bologna, 1691, Angelo Rambaldi published Ambrosia arabica, caffè discorso. This work is divided into eighteen sections, and describes the origin, cultivation, and roasting of the bean, as well as telling how to prepare the beverage. During the time that Milan was under Spanish rule, Cesare Beccaria directed and edited a publication entitled Il Caffè, which was published from June 4, 1764, to May, 1766, "edited in Brescia by Giammaria Rizzardi and undertaken by a little society of friends," according to the salutatory. Besides the Marchese Beccaria, other editors and contributors were Pietro and Alexander Verri, Baillon, Visconti, Colpani, Longhi, Albertenghi, Frisi, and Secchi. The same periodical, with the same editorial staff, was published also in Venice in the Typografia Pizzolato. Another publication called Il Caffè, devoted to arts, letters, and science, was published in Venice in 1850-52. Still another, having the same name, a national weekly journal, was published in Milan, 1884-89. An almanac, having the title Il Caffè, was published in Milan in 1829. A weekly paper, called Il Caffè Pedrocchi, was published in Padua in 1846-48. It was devoted to art, literature and politics. A publication called Coffee and Surrogates (tea, chocolate, saffron, pepper, and other stimulants) was founded by Professor Pietro Polli, in Milan, in 1885; but was short-lived. An early English magazine (1731) contains an account of divination by coffee-grounds. The writer pays an unexpected visit, and "surprised the lady and her company in close cabal over their coffee, the interest very intent upon one whom, by her address and intelligence, he guessed was a tire woman, to which she added the secret of divining by coffee grounds. She was then in full inspiration, and with much solemnity observing the atoms around the cup; on the one hand sat a widow, on the other a maiden lady. They assured me that every cast of the cup is a picture of all one's life to come, and every transaction and circumstance is delineated with the exactest certainty." The advertisement used by this seer is quite interesting: An advise is hereby given that there has lately arrived in this city (Dublin) the famous Mrs. Cherry, the only gentlewoman truly learned in the occult science of tossing of coffee grounds; who has with uninterrupted success for some time past practiced to the general satisfaction of her female visitants. Her hours are after prayers are done at St. Peter's Church, until dinner. If the one ounce of coffee represented her payment for reading the future, the charge could not be considered exorbitant! English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were noticeably affected by coffee, and the coffee-houses of the times have been immortalized by them; and in many instances they themselves were immortalized by the coffee houses and their frequenters. In the chapters already referred to and at the close of this chapter, will be found stories, quips, and anecdotes, in which occur many names that are now famous in art and literature. Modern journalism dates from the publication, April 12, 1709, of the Tatler, whose editor was Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) the Irish dramatist and essayist. He received his inspiration from the coffee houses; and his readers were the men that knew them best. In the first issue he announced: All accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Coffee House; poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; learning under the title of Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from St. James's Coffee House, and what else I shall on any other subject offer shall be dated from my own apartment. Steele's Tatler was issued three times weekly until 1711, when it suspended to be succeeded by the Spectator, whose principal contributor was Joseph Addison (1672-1719), the essayist and poet, and Steele's school-fellow. Sir Richard Steele immortalized the Don and Don Saltero's coffee house in old Chelsea in No. 34 of the Tatler, wherein he tells us of the necessity of traveling to know the world, by his journey for fresh air, no farther than the village of Chelsea, of which he fancied that he could give an immediate description--from the five fields, where the the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee house, where the literati sit in council. But he found, even in a place so near town as this, that there were enormities and persons of eminence, whom he before knew nothing of. The coffee house was almost absorbed by the museum, Steele says: When I came into the coffee-house, I had not time to salute the company, before my eyes were diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room, and on the ceiling. When my first astonishment was over, comes to me a sage of thin and meagre countenance, which aspect made me doubt whether reading or fretting had made it so philosophic; but I very soon perceived him to be that sort which the ancients call "gingivistee", in our language "tooth-drawers". I immediately had a respect for the man; for these practical philosophers go upon a very practical hypothesis, not to cure, but to take away the part affected. My love of mankind made me very benevolent to Mr. Salter, for such is the name of this eminent barber and antiquary. The Don was famous for his punch, and for his skill on the fiddle. He drew teeth also, and wrote verses; he described his museum in several stanzas, one of which is:
He shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you "It is Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat." To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore, this is nothing but, under the specious pretense of learning and antiquities, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I can not tolerate among his rarities, as, the china figure of the lady in the glass-case; the Italian engine, for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it; both of which I hereby order to be taken down, or else he may expect to have his letters patent for making punch superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to London without his wife. Babillard says that Salter had an old grey muff, and that, by wearing it up to his nose, he was distinguishable at the distance of a quarter of a mile. His wife was none of the best, being much addicted to scolding; and Salter, who liked his glass, if he could make a trip to London by himself, was in no haste to return. Don Saltero's proved very attractive as an exhibition, and drew crowds to the coffee house. A catalog was published of which were printed more than forty editions. Smollett, the novelist, was among the donors. The catalog, in 1760, comprehended the following rarities: Tigers' tusks; the Pope's candle; the skeleton of a Guinea-pig; a fly-cap monkey, a piece of the true Cross; the Four Evangelists' heads cut out on a cherry stone; the King of Morocco's tobacco-pipe; Mary Queen of Scots' pincushion; Queen Elizabeth's prayer-book; a pair of Nun's stockings; Job's ears, which grew on a tree; a frog in a tobacco stopper; and five hundred more odd relics! The Don had a rival, as appears by A Catalogue of the Rarities to be seen at Adam's, at the Royal Swan, in Kingsland-road, leading from Shoreditch Church, 1756. Mr. Adams exhibited, for the entertainment of the curious: Miss Jenny Cameron's shoes; Adam's eldest daughter's hat; the heart of the famous Bess Adams, that was hanged at Tyburn with Lawyer Carr, January 18, 1736-37; Sir Walter Raleigh's tobacco pipe; Vicar of Bray's clogs; engine to shell green peas with; teeth that grew in a fish's belly; Black Jack's ribs; the very comb that Abraham combed his son Isaac and Jacob's head with; Wat Tyler's spurs; rope that cured Captain Lowry of the head-ach, ear-ach, tooth-ach, and belly-ach; Adam's key of the fore and back door of the Garden of Eden, etc., etc. These are only a few out of five hundred other equally marvellous exhibits. The success of Don Saltero in attracting visitors to his coffee house, induced the proprietor of the Chelsea bunhouse to make a similar collection of rarities, to attract customers for his buns; and to some extent it was successful. In the first number of the Spectator, Addison says: There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance. Sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James' coffee house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Hay Market. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock jobbers at Jonathan's; in short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips, but in my own club. In the second number he tells that: I am now settled with a widow woman, who has a great many children and complies with my humor in everything. I do not remember that we have exchanged a word together for these five years; my coffee comes into my chamber every morning without asking for it, if I want fire I point to the chimney, if water, to my basin; upon which my landlady nods as much as to say she takes my meaning, and immediately obeys my signals. Three of Addison's papers in the Spectator (Nos. 402, 481, and 568) are humorously descriptive of the coffee houses of the period. No. 403 opens with the remark that: The courts of two countries do not so much differ from one another, as the Court and the City, in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside, who are likewise removed from those of the Temple on the one side, and those of Smithfleld on the other, by several climates and degrees in their way of thinking and conversing together. For this reason, the author takes a ramble through London and Westminster, to gather the opinions of his ingenious countrymen upon a current report of the king of France's death. I know the faces of all the principal politicians within the bills of mortality; and as every coffee-house has some particular statesman belonging to it, who is the mouth of the street where he lives, I always take care to place myself near him, in order to know his judgment on the present posture of affairs. And, as I foresaw the above report would produce a new face of things in Europe, and many curious speculations in our British coffee-houses, I was very desirous to learn the thoughts of our most eminent politicians on that occasion. Johnson wrote in his Life of Addison concerning the Tatler and the Spectator that they were: Published at a time when two parties, loud, restless and violent, each with plausible declarations, and both perhaps without any distinct determination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections.... They had a perceptible influence on the conversation of the time, and taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency, effects which they can never wholly lose. Harold Routh in the Cambridge History of Literature, speaking of the Spectator, says: It surpassed the Tatler in style and in thought. It gave expression to the power of commerce. For more than a century traders had been characterized as dishonest and avaricious, because playwrights and pamphleteers generally wrote for the leisure classes, and were themselves too poor to have any but unpleasant relations with men of business. Now merchants were becoming ambassadors of civilization, and had developed intellect so as to control distant and, as it seemed, mysterious sources of wealth; by a stroke of the pen and largely through the coffee houses they had come to know their own importance and power. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was very fond of good eating, and almost daily entries were made in his Diary of dinner delicacies that he had enjoyed. One dinner, that he considered a great success, was served to eight persons, and consisted of oysters, a hash of rabbits, a lamb, a rare chine of beef; next a great dish of roasting fowl ("cost me about 30 s.") a tart, then fruit and cheese. "My dinner was noble enough ... I believe this day's feast will cost me near 5 pounds." But it will be noted that coffee was not mentioned as a part of the menu. He makes countless references to visits paid to this and that coffee house, but records only one instance of actually drinking coffee: Up betimes to my office, and thence at seven o'clock to Sir G. Carteret, and there with Sir J. Minnes made an end of his accounts, but staid not to dinner my Lady having made us drink our morning draft there of several wines, but I drank nothing but some of her coffee, which was poorly made, with a little sugar in it. This note which he considered worthy of record was certainly not inspired by the excellence of the good lady's matutinal coffee. William Cobbett (1762-1835) the English-American politician, reformer, and writer on economics, denounced coffee as "slops"; but he was one of a remarkably small minority. Before his day, one of England's greatest satirists, Dean Swift, (1667-1745) led a long roll of literary men who were devotees of coffee. Swift's writings are full of references to coffee; and his letters from Stella came to him under cover, at the St. James coffee house. There is scarcely a letter to Esther (Vanessa) Vanhomrigh which does not contain a significant reference to coffee, by which the course of their friendship and clandestine meetings may be traced. In one dated August 13, 1720, written while traveling from place to place in Ireland, he says: We live here in a very dull town, every valuable creature absent, and Cad says he is weary of it, and would rather prefer his coffee on the barrenest mountain in Wales than be king here. In another letter, about two years later, replying to one in which Vanessa has reproached him and begged him to write her soon, he advises: The best maxim I know in life, is to drink your coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it; while you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you, that I am not cheerful enough to write, for, I believe, coffee once a week is necessary, and you know very well that coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. These various references to coffee are thought to have been based upon an incident in the early days of their friendship, when on the occasion of the Vanhomrigh family journeying from Dublin to London, Vanessa accidentally spilt her coffee in the chimney-place at a certain inn, which Swift considered a premonition of their growing friendship. Writing from Clogher, Swift reminds Vanessa: Remember that riches are nine parts in ten of all that is good in life, and health is the tenth--drinking coffee comes long after, and yet it is the eleventh, but without the two former you cannot drink it right. In another letter he writes facetiously, in memory of her playful badinage: I long to drink a dish of coffee in the sluttery and hear you dun me for a secret, and "Drink your coffee; why don't you drink your coffee?" Leigh Hunt had very pleasant things to say about coffee, giving to it the charm of appeal to the imagination, which he said one never finds in tea. For example: Coffee, like tea, used to form a refreshment by itself, some hours after dinner; it is now taken as a digester, right upon that meal or the wine, and sometimes does not even close it; or the digester itself is digested by a liquor of some sort called a Chasse-Café [coffee-chaser]. We like coffee better than tea for taste, but tea "for a constancy." To be perfect in point of relish (we do not say of wholesomeness) coffee should be strong and hot, with little milk and sugar. It has been drunk after this mode in some parts of Europe, but the public have nowhere, we believe, adopted it. The favorite way of taking it at a meal, abroad, is with a great superfluity of milk--very properly called, in France café au lait (coffee to the milk). One of the pleasures we receive in drinking coffee is that, being the universal drink in the East, it reminds of that region of the "Arabian Nights" as smoking does for the same reason; though neither of these refreshments, which are identified with Oriental manners, is to be found in that enchanting work. They had not been discovered when it was written; the drink then was sherbet. One can hardly fancy what a Turk or a Persian could have done without coffee and a pipe, any more than the English ladies and gentlemen, before the civil wars, without tea for breakfast. In his old age, Immanuel Kant, the great metaphysician, became extremely fond of coffee; and Thomas de Quincey relates a little incident showing Kant's great eagerness for the after-dinner cup. At the beginning of the last year of his life, he fell into a custom of taking, immediately after dinner, a cup of coffee, especially on those days when it happened that I was of his party. And such was the importance that he attached to his little pleasure that he would even make a memorandum beforehand, in the blank paper book that I had given him, that on the next day I was to dine with him, and consequently "that there was to be coffee." Sometimes in the interest of conversation, the coffee was forgotten, but not for long. He would remember and with the querulousness of old age and infirm health would demand that coffee be brought "upon the spot." Arrangements had always been made in advance, however; the coffee was ground, and the water was boiling: and in the very moment the word was given, the servant shot in like an arrow and plunged the coffee into the water. All that remained, therefore, was to give it time to boil up. But this trifling delay seemed unendurable to Kant. If it were said, "Dear Professor, the coffee will be brought up in a moment," he would say, "Will be! There's the rub, that it only will be." Then he would quiet himself with a stoical air, and say, "Well, one can die after all; it is but dying; and in the next world, thank God, there is no drinking of coffee and consequently no waiting for it." Thackeray (1811-1863) must have suffered many tea and coffee disappointments. In the Kickleburys on the Rhine he asks: "Why do they always put mud into coffee aboard steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?" In Arthur's, A. Neil Lyons has preserved for all time the atmosphere of the London coffee stall. "I would not," he says, "exchange a night at Arthur's for a week with the brainiest circle in London." The book is a collection of short stories. As already recorded, Harold Chapin dramatized this picturesque London institution in The Autocrat of the Coffee Stall. In General Horace Porter's Campaigning with Grant, we have three distinct coffee incidents within fifty-odd pages; or explicitly, see pages 47, 56, 101; where, deep in the fiercest snarls of The Wilderness campaign we are treated to: General Grant, slowly sipping his coffee ... a full ration of that soothing army beverage.... The general made rather a singular meal preparatory to so exhausting a day as that which was to follow. He took a cucumber, sliced it, poured some vinegar over it, and partook of nothing else except a cup of strong coffee.... The general seemed in excellent spirits, and was even inclined to be jocose. He said to me, "We have just had our coffee, and you will find some left for you." ... I drank it with the relish of a shipwrecked mariner. One of the first immediate supplies General Sherman desired from Wilmington, on reaching Fayetteville and lines of communication in March, 1865, was, expressly, coffee; does he not say so himself, on page 297 of the second volume of his Memoirs? Still more expressly, towards the close of his Memoirs, and among final recommendations, the fruit of his experiences in that whole vast war, General Sherman says this for coffee: Coffee has become almost indispensable, though many substitutes were found for it, such as Indian corn, roasted, ground and boiled as coffee, the sweet potato, and the seed of the okra plant prepared in the same way. All these were used by the people of the South, who for years could procure no coffee, but I noticed that the women always begged of us real coffee, which seemed to satisfy a natural yearning or craving more powerful than can be accounted for on the theory of habit. Therefore I would always advise that the coffee and sugar ration be carried along, even at the expense of bread, for which there are many substitutes. George Agnew Chamberlain's novel Home contains a vivid description of coffee-making on an old plantation, and could only have been written by a devoted lover of this drink. Gerry Lansing, the American, has escaped drowning in the river, and is now lost in the Brazilian forest. He finds his way at last to an old plantation house: A stove was built into the masonry, and a cavernous oven gaped from the massive wall. At the stove was an old negress, making coffee with shaky deliberation.... The girl and the wrinkled old woman made him sit down at the table, and then placed before him crisp rusks of mandioc flour and steaming coffee whose splendid aroma triumphed over the sordidness of the scene and through the nostrils reached the palate with anticipatory touch. It was sweetened with dark, pungent syrup and was served black in a capacious bowl, as though one could not drink too deeply of the elixir of life. Gerry ate ravenously and sipped the coffee, at first sparingly, then greedily.... Gerry set down the empty bowl with a sigh. The rusks had been delicious. Before the coffee the name of nectar dwindled to impotency. Its elixir rioted in his veins. In the Rosary, Florence L. Barclay has a Scotch woman tell how she makes coffee. She says: Use a jug--it is not what you make it in; it is how ye make it. It all hangs upon the word fresh--freshly roasted--freshly ground--water freshly boiled. And never touch it with metal. Pop it into an earthenware jug, pour in your boiling water straight upon it, stir it with a wooden spoon, set it on the hob ten minutes to settle; the grounds will all go to the bottom, though you might not think it, and you pour it out, fragrant, strong and clear. But the secret is, fresh, fresh, fresh, and don't stint your coffee. Cyrus Townsend Brady's The Corner in Coffee is "a thrilling romance of the New York coffee market." Coffee, Du Barry, and Louis XV figure in one scene of the story of The Moat with the Crimson Stains, as told by Elizabeth W. Champney in her Romance of the Bourbon Chateaux.[354] It tells of the German apprentice Riesener, who assisted his master Oeben in designing for Louis XV a beautiful desk with a secret drawer, which it took ten years of unremitting industry to execute. At the end, Riesener was to be accepted by his master as a partner and a son-in-law. Little Victoire, who loved to sit in a punt and trail her doll in the waters of the Bievre to see to what color its frock would be changed by the dyes of the Gobelin factory, was then only five, and Madam Oeben twenty-three. As the years rolled by, Riesener grew to love the mother and not the daughter, who, meanwhile, shot up into a slim girl, not of her mother's beauty, but of a loveliness all her own. Then there was a quarrel because the young apprentice thought the master should have resented the suggestion of M. Duplessis that his wife pose in the nude for the statuettes which were to hold the sconces on the king's desk; and Riesener left in a fine youthful frenzy, vowing he would never return while the maître lived. The latter, unable to complete the masterpiece which he loved more than anything else on earth, sought death, and perished in the crimson waters of the Bievre.
Later, Madame Du Barry sent for the now famous ebeniste (cabinet maker); and, when her negro page Zamore admitted him, he found His Majesty Louis XV kneeling in front of the fireplace, making coffee for her while she laughed at him for scalding his fingers. He had been summoned to show the king the mechanism of the secret drawer, so cunningly concealed in the king's desk that no one could find it. But Riesener knew not the secret of his master, who had died without revealing it. Then the red revolution came; and when the pretty pavilion at Louveciennes was sacked, and its costly furniture hurled down the cliff to the Seine, the king's desk, shattered almost beyond repair, was carried to the Gobelins' factory and presented to Mme. Oeben in recognition of her husband's workmanship. Then the secret compartment was found to have been disclosed, and Riesener was absolved by a letter therein, from the maître, who intimated he was about to end it all because of paralysis. Riesener marries the widow and all ends happily. James Lane Allen, in The Kentucky Warbler, tells a tale of the Blue Grass country and of a young hero who wanders after a bird's note to find romance and the key to his own locked nature. Here is an incident from his first forest adventure: There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on one--the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognize it if it yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once, when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the American forests that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee tree, and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last.... The Kentucky coffee tree--his favorite in Nature! John Kendrick Bangs relates, in Coffee and Repartee[355], some amusing skirmishes indulged in at the boarding-house table, between the Idiot and the guests, where coffee served the purpose of enlivening the tilt:
"Can't I give you another cup of coffee?" asked the landlady of the School Master. One other little skit remains at the expense of Mrs. Smithers' coffee. At the breakfast table, where the air, as usual, is charged with repartee, Mr. Whitechoker, the minister, says to his landlady: "Mrs. Smithers, I'll have a dash of hot water in my coffee, this morning." Then with a glance toward the Idiot, he added, "I think it looks like rain."
Coffee literature is full of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sévigné, who, as already told in chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to Irene who thus accused the amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, could not deny it. That Mme. de Sévigné was at one time a coffee drinker is apparent from this quotation from one of her letters: "The cavalier believes that coffee gives him warmth, and I at the same time, foolish as you know me, do not take it any longer." La Roque called the beverage "the King of Perfumes", whose charm was enriched when vanilla was added. Emile Souvestre (1806-1854) said: "Coffee keeps, so to say, the balance between bodily and spiritual nourishment." Isid Bourdon said: "The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of illusion and given more promise to hope." An old Bourbon proverb says: "To an old man a cup of coffee is like the door post of an old house--it sustains and strengthens him." Jardin says that in the Antilles, instead of orange blossoms, the brides carry a spray of coffee blossoms; and when a woman remains unmarried, they say she has lost her coffee branch. "We say in France, that she has coiffé Sainte-Catherine." Fontenelle and Voltaire have both been quoted as authors of the famous reply to the remark that coffee was a slow poison: "I think it must be, for I've been drinking it for eighty-five years and am not dead yet." In Meidinger's German Grammar the "slow-poison" bon mot is attributed to Fontenelle. It seems reasonable to give Fontenelle credit for this bon mot. Voltaire died at eighty-four. Fontenelle lived to be nearly a hundred years. Of his cheerfulness at an advanced age an anecdote is related. In conversation, one day, a lady a few years younger than Fontenelle playfully remarked, "Monsieur, you and I stay here so long, methinks Death has forgotten us." "Hush! Speak in a whisper, madame," replied Fontenelle, "tant mieux! (so much the better!) don't remind him of us." Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Paul de Kock, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Zola, Coppée, George Sand, Guy de Maupassant, and Sarah Bernhardt, all have been credited with many clever or witty sallies about coffee. Prince Talleyrand (1754-1839), the French diplomat and wit, has given us the cleverest summing up of the ideal cup of coffee. He said it should be "Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour." Or in English, "black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love." This quip has been wrongfully attributed to Brillat-Savarin. Talleyrand said also: A cup of coffee lightly tempered with good milk detracts nothing from your intellect; on the contrary, your stomach is freed by it, and no longer distresses your brain; it will not hamper your mind with troubles, but give freedom to its working. Suave molecules of Mocha stir up your blood, without causing excessive heat; the organ of thought receives from it a feeling of sympathy; work becomes easier, and you will sit down without distress to your principal repast, which will restore your body, and afford you a calm delicious night. Among coffee drinkers a high place must be given to Prince Bismarck (1815-1898). He liked coffee unadulterated. While with the Prussian army in France, he one day entered a country inn and asked the host if he had any chicory in the house. He had. Bismarck said: "Well, bring it to me; all you have." The man obeyed, and handed Bismarck a canister full of chicory. "Are you sure this is all you have?" demanded the chancellor. "Yes, my lord, every grain." "Then," said Bismarck, keeping the canister by him, "go now and make me a pot of coffee." This same story has been related of François Paul Jules Grévy (1807-1891), president of France, 1879-1887. According to the French story, Grévy never took wine, even at dinner. He was, however, passionately fond of coffee. To be certain of having his favorite beverage of the best quality, he always, when he could, prepared it himself. Once he was invited, with a friend, M. Bethmont, to a hunting party by M. Menier, the celebrated manufacturer of chocolate, at Noisiel. It happened that M. Grévy and M. Bethmont lost themselves in the forest. Trying to find their way out, they stumbled upon a little wine house, and stopped for a rest. They asked for something to drink. M. Bethmont found his wine excellent; but, as usual, Grévy would not drink. He wanted coffee, but he was afraid of the decoction which would be brought him. He got a good cup, however, and this is how he managed it: "Have you any chicory?" he said to the man. "Yes, sir." "Bring me some." Soon the proprietor returned with a small can of chicory. "Is that all you have?" asked Grévy. "We have a little more." "Bring me the rest." When he came again, with another can of chicory, Grévy said: "You have no more?" "No, sir." "Very well. Now go and make me a cup of coffee." As already told, Louis XV had a great passion for coffee, which he made himself. Lenormand, the head gardener at Versailles, raised six pounds of coffee a year which was for the exclusive use of the king. The king's fondness for coffee and for Mme. Du Barry gave rise to a celebrated anecdote of Louveciennes which was accepted as true by many serious writers. It is told in this fashion by Mairobert in a pamphlet scandalizing Du Barry in 1776: His Majesty loves to make his own coffee and to forsake the cares of the government. One day the coffee pot was on the fire and, his Majesty being occupied with something else, the coffee boiled over. "Oh France, take care! Your coffee f---- le camp!" cried the beautiful favorite. Charles Vatel has denied this story. It is related of Jean Jacques Rousseau that once when he was walking in the Tuileries he caught the aroma of roasting coffee. Turning to his companion, Bernardino de Saint-Pierre, he said, "Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma." And such was the passion for coffee of this philosopher of Geneva that when he died, "he just missed doing it with a cup of coffee in his hand". Barthez, confidential physician of Napoleon the first, drank a great deal of it, freely, calling it "the intellectual drink." Bonaparte, himself, said: "Strong coffee, and plenty, awakens me. It gives me a warmth, an unusual force, a pain that is not without pleasure. I would rather suffer than be senseless." Edward R. Emerson[356] tells the following story of the Café Procope. One day while M. Saint-Foix was seated at his usual table in this café an officer of the king's body-guard entered, sat down, and ordered a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, adding, "It will serve me for a dinner." At this, Saint-Foix remarked aloud that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner. The officer remonstrated. Saint-Foix reiterated his remark, adding that nothing he could say to the contrary would convince him that it was not a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the whole company present adjourned as spectators to a duel which ended by Saint-Foix receiving a wound in the arm.
At this moment the principals were arrested and carried before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint-Foix, without waiting to be questioned, said: "Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention of offending this gallant officer who, I doubt not, is an honorable man; but your excellency can never prevent my asserting that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner." "Why, so it is," said the Duke. "Then I am not in the wrong," persisted Saint-Foix; "and a cup of coffee"--at these words magistrates, delinquents, and auditory burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists forthwith became warm friends. "Boswell in his Life of Johnson tells a story of an old chevalier de Malte, of ancienne noblesse, but in low circumstances, who was in a coffee house in Paris, where was also Julien, the great manufacturer at Gobelins, of fine tapestry, so much distinguished for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.' "The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered: "'Well, sir, you may take it home and dye it.' "All the coffee house rejoiced at Julien's confusion." Sydney Smith (1771-1845) the English clergyman and humorist, once said: "If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intellectual beverage." Our own William Dean Howells pays the beverage this tribute: "This coffee intoxicates without exciting, soothes you softly out of dull sobriety, making you think and talk of all the pleasant things that ever happened to you." The wife of the president of the United States prefers coffee to tea. Afternoon guests at the White House may be refreshed, if they choose, by a sip of tea. But while tea is on tap for callers, Mrs. Harding always has coffee for those who, like herself, prefer it. _ |
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