Slaughter's, famous as the resort of painters and sculptors in the eighteenth century, was situated at the upper end of the west side of St. Martin's Lane. Its first landlord was Thomas Slaughter, 1692. A second Slaughter's (New Slaughter's) was established in the same street in 1760, when the original Slaughter's adopted the name of Old Slaughter's. It was torn down in 1843–44. Among the notables who frequented it were Hogarth; young Gainsborough; Cipriani; Haydon; Roubiliac; Hudson, who painted the Dilettanti portraits; M'Ardell, the mezzotinto-scraper; Luke Sullivan, the engraver; Gardell, the portrait painter; and Parry, the Welsh harper.

Tom's, in Birchin Lane, Cornhill, though in the main a mercantile resort, acquired some celebrity from having been frequented by Garrick. Tom's was also frequented by Chatterton, as a place "of the best resort." Then there was Tom's in Devereux Court, Strand, and Tom's at 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, opposite Button's, a celebrated resort during the reign of Queen Anne and for more than a century after.

The Grecian, Devereux Court, Strand, was originally kept by one Constantine, a Greek. From this house Steele proposed to date his learned articles in the Tatler; it is mentioned in No. 1 of the Spectator, and it was much frequented by Goldsmith. The Grecian was Foote's morning lounge. In 1843 the premises became the Grecian Chambers, with a bust of Lord Devereux, earl of Essex, over the door.

Lloyd's, Royal Exchange, celebrated for its priority of shipping intelligence and its marine insurance, originated with Edward Lloyd, who about 1688 kept a coffee house in Tower Street, later in Lombard Street corner of Abchurch Lane. It was a modest place of refreshment for seafarers and merchants. As a matter of convenience, Edward Lloyd prepared "ships' lists" for the guidance of the frequenters of the coffee house. "These lists, which were written by hand, contained," according to Andrew Scott, "an account of vessels which the underwriters who met there were likely to have offered them for insurance." Such was the beginning of two institutions that have since exercised a dominant influence on the sea-carrying trade of the whole world—the Royal Exchange Lloyd's, the greatest insurance institution in the world, and Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Lloyd's now has 1400 agents in all parts of the world. It receives as many as 100,000 telegrams a year. It records through its intelligence service the daily movements of 11,000 vessels.

In the beginning one of the apartments in the Exchange was fitted up as Lloyd's coffee room. Edward Lloyd died in 1712. Subsequently the coffee house was in Pope's Head Alley, where it was called New Lloyd's coffee house, but on September 14, 1784, it was removed to the northwest corner of the Royal Exchange, where it remained until the partial destruction of that building by fire.

In rebuilding the Exchange there were provided the Subscribers' or Underwriters' room, the Merchants' room, and the Captains' room. The City, second edition, 1848, contains the following description of this most famous rendezvous of eminent merchants, shipowners, underwriters, insurance, stock and exchange brokers:

The British, Cockspur Street, "long a house of call for Scotchmen," was fortunate in its landladies. In 1759 it was kept by the sister of Bishop Douglas, so well known for his works against Lauder and Bower, which may explain its Scottish fame. At another period it was kept by Mrs. Anderson, described in Mackenzie's Life of Home as "a woman of uncommon talents and the most agreeable conversation."

Don Saltero's, 18 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, was opened by a barber named Salter in 1695. Sir Hans Sloane contributed of his own collection some of the refuse gimcracks that were to be found in Salter's "museum." Vice-Admiral Munden, who had been long on the coast of Spain, where he had acquired a fondness for Spanish titles, named the keeper of the house Don Saltero, and his coffee house and museum Don Saltero's.

Squire's was in Fulwood's Rents, Holburn, running up to Gray's Inn. It was one of the receiving houses of the Spectator. In No. 269 the Spectator accepts Sir Roger de Coverley's invitation to "smoke a pipe with him over a dish of coffee at Squire's. As I love the old man, I take delight in complying with everything that is agreeable to him, and accordingly waited on him to the coffee-house, where his venerable figure drew upon us the eyes of the whole room. He had no sooner seated himself at the upper end of the high table, but he called for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle and the 'Supplement' (a periodical paper of that time), with such an air of cheerfulness and good humour, that all the boys in the coffee room (who seemed to take pleasure in serving him) were at once employed on his several errands, insomuch that nobody else could come at a dish of tea until the Knight had got all his conveniences about him." Such was the coffee room in the Spectator's day.

The Cocoa-Tree was originally a coffee house on the south side of Pall Mall. When there grew up a need for "places of resort of a more elegant and refined character," chocolate houses came into vogue, and the Cocoa-Tree was the most famous of these. It was converted into a club in 1746.

White's chocolate house, established by Francis White about 1693 in St. James's Street, originally open to any one as a coffee house, soon became a private club, composed of "the most fashionable exquisites of the town and court." In its coffee-house days, the entrance was sixpence, as compared with the average penny fee of the other coffee houses. Escott refers to White's as being "the one specimen of the class to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost the same roof, and always bearing the same name, whether as coffee house or club, the same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred years."

Among hundreds of other coffee houses that flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the following more notable ones are deserving of mention:

Baker's, 58 'Change Alley, for nearly half a century noted for its chops and steaks broiled in the coffee room and eaten hot from the gridiron; the Baltic, in Threadneedle Street, the rendezvous of brokers and merchants connected with the Russian trade; the Bedford, "under the Piazza, in Covent Garden," crowded every night with men of parts and "signalized for many years as the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism and the standard of taste"; the Chapter, in Paternoster Row, frequented by Chatterton and Goldsmith; Child's, in St. Paul's Churchyard, one of the Spectator's houses, and much frequented by the clergy and fellows of the Royal Society; Dick's, in Fleet Street, frequented by Cowper, and the scene of Rousseau's comedietta, entitled The Coffee House; St. James's, in St. James's Street, frequented by Swift, Goldsmith, and Garrick; Jerusalem, in Cowper's Court, Cornhill, frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of China, India, and Australia; Jonathan's, in 'Change Alley, described by the Tatler as "the general mart of stock jobbers"; the London, in Ludgate Hill, noted for its publishers' sales of stock and copyrights; Man's, in Scotland Yard, which took its name from the proprietor, Alexander Man, and was sometimes known as Old Man's, or the Royal, to distinguish it from Young Man's, Little Man's, New Man's, etc., minor establishments in the neighborhood;[85] Nando's, in Fleet Street, the favorite haunt of Lord Thurlow and many professional loungers, attracted by the fame of the punch and the charms of the landlady; New England and North and South American, in Threadneedle Street, having on its subscription list representatives of Barings, Rothschilds, and other wealthy establishments; Peele's, in Fleet Street, having a portrait of Dr. Johnson said to have been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the Percy, in Oxford Street, the inspiration for the Percy Anecdotes; the Piazza, in Covent Garden, where Macklin fitted up a large coffee room, or theater, for oratory, and Fielding and Foote poked fun at him; the Rainbow, in Fleet Street, the second coffee house opened in London, having its token money; the Smyrna, in Pall Mall, a "place to talk politics," and frequented by Prior and Swift; Tom King's, one of the old night houses of Covent Garden Market, "well known to all gentlemen to whom beds are unknown"; the Turk's Head, 'Change Alley, which also had its tokens; the Turk's Head, in the Strand, which was a favorite supping house for Dr. Johnson and Boswell; the Folly, a coffee house on a house-boat on the Thames, which became quite notorious during Queen Anne's reign.

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Chapter XI

HISTORY OF THE EARLY PARISIAN COFFEE HOUSES

If we are to accept the authority of Jean La Roque, "before the year 1669 coffee had scarcely been seen in Paris, except at M. Thévenot's and at the homes of some of his friends. Nor had it been heard of except in the writings of travelers."

As noted in chapter V, Jean de Thévenot brought coffee into Paris in 1657. One account says that a decoction, supposed to have been coffee, was sold by a Levantine in the Petit Châtelet under the name of cohove or cahoue during the reign of Louis XIII, but this lacks confirmation. Louis XIV is said to have been served with coffee for the first time in 1664.

Soon after the arrival, in July, 1669, of the Turkish ambassador, Soliman Aga, it became noised abroad that he had brought with him for his own use, and that of his retinue, great quantities of coffee. He "treated several persons with it, both in the court and the city." At length "many accustomed themselves to it with sugar, and others who found benefit by it could not leave it off."

Within six months all Paris was talking of the sumptuous coffee functions of the ambassador from Mohammed IV to the court of Louis XIV.

Isaac D'Israeli best describes them in his Curiosities of Literature:

It was in 1669 or 1672 that Madame de Sévigné (Marie de Rabutin-Chantal; 1626–96), the celebrated French letter-writer, is said to have made that famous prophecy, "There are two things Frenchmen will never swallow—coffee and Racine's poetry," sometimes abbreviated into, "Racine and coffee will pass." What Madame really said, according to one authority, was that Racine was writing for Champmeslé, the actress, and not for posterity; again, of coffee she said, "s'en dégoûterait comme; d'un indigne favori" (People will become disgusted with it as with an unworthy favorite).

Larousse says the double judgment was wrongly attributed to Mme. de Sévigné. The celebrated aphorism, like many others, was forged later. Mme. de Sévigné said, "Racine made his comedies for the Champmeslé—not for the ages to come." This was in 1672. Four years later, she said to her daughter, "You have done well to quit coffee. Mlle. de Mere has also given it up."

However it may have been, the amiable letter-writer was destined to live to see Frenchmen yielding at once to the lure of coffee and to the poetical artifices of the greatest dramatic craftsman of his day.

While it is recorded that coffee made slow progress with the court of Louis XIV, the next king, Louis XV, to please his mistress, du Barry, gave it a tremendous vogue. It is related that he spent $15,000 a year for coffee for his daughters.

Meanwhile, in 1672, one Pascal, an Armenian, first sold coffee publicly in Paris. Pascal, who, according to one account, was brought to Paris by Soliman Aga, offered the beverage for sale from a tent, which was also a kind of booth, in the fair of St.-Germain, supplemented by the service of Turkish waiter boys, who peddled it among the crowds from small cups on trays. The fair was held during the first two months of spring, in a large open plot just inside the walls of Paris and near the Latin Quarter. As Pascal's waiter boys circulated through the crowds on those chilly days the fragrant odor of freshly made coffee brought many ready sales of the steaming beverage; and soon visitors to the fair learned to look for the "little black" cupful of cheer, or petit noir, a name that still endures.

When the fair closed, Pascal opened a small coffee shop on the Quai de l'École, near the Pont Neuf; but his frequenters were of a type who preferred the beers and wines of the day, and coffee languished. Pascal continued, however, to send his waiter boys with their large coffee jugs, that were heated by lamps, through the streets of Paris and from door to door. Their cheery cry of "café! café!" became a welcome call to many a Parisian, who later missed his petit noir when Pascal gave up and moved on to London, where coffee drinking was then in high favor.

Lacking favor at court, coffee's progress was slow. The French smart set clung to its light wines and beers. In 1672, Maliban, another Armenian, opened a coffee house in the rue Bussy, next to the Metz tennis court near St.-Germain's abbey. He supplied tobacco also to his customers. Later he went to Holland, leaving his servant and partner, Gregory, a Persian, in charge. Gregory moved to the rue Mazarine, to be near the Comédie Française. He was succeeded in the business by Makara, another Persian, who later returned to Ispahan, leaving the coffee house to one Le Gantois, of Liége.

About this period there was a cripple boy from Candia, known as le Candiot, who began to cry "coffee!" in the streets of Paris. He carried with him a coffee pot of generous size, a chafing-dish, cups, and all other implements necessary to his trade. He sold his coffee from door to door at two sous per dish, sugar included.

A Levantine named Joseph also sold coffee in the streets, and later had several coffee shops of his own. Stephen, from Aleppo, next opened a coffee house on Pont au Change, moving, when his business prospered, to more pretentious quarters in the rue St.-André, facing St.-Michael's bridge.

All these, and others, were essentially the Oriental style of coffee house of the lower order, and they appealed principally to the poorer classes and to foreigners. "Gentlemen and people of fashion" did not care to be seen in this type of public house. But when the French merchants began to set up, first at St.-Germain's fair, "spacious apartments in an elegant manner, ornamented with tapestries, large mirrors, pictures, marble tables, branches for candles, magnificent lustres, and serving coffee, tea, chocolate, and other refreshments", they were soon crowded with people of fashion and men of letters.

In this way coffee drinking in public acquired a badge of respectability. Presently there were some three hundred coffee houses in Paris. The principal coffee men, in addition to plying their trade in the city, maintained coffee rooms in St.-Germain's and St.-Laurence's fairs. These were frequented by women as well as men.

The Progenitor of the Real Parisian Café

It was not until 1689, that there appeared in Paris a real French adaptation of the Oriental coffee house. This was the Café de Procope, opened by François Procope (Procopio Cultelli, or Cotelli) who came from Florence or Palermo. Procope was a limonadier (lemonade vender) who had a royal license to sell spices, ices, barley water, lemonade, and other such refreshments. He early added coffee to the list, and attracted a large and distinguished patronage.

Procope, a keen-witted merchant, made his appeal to a higher class of patrons than did Pascal and those who first followed him. He established his café directly opposite the newly opened Comédie Française, in the street then known as the rue des Fossés-St.-Germain, but now the rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. A writer of the period has left this description of the place: "The Café de Procope ... was also called the Antre [cavern] de Procope, because it was very dark even in full day, and ill-lighted in the evenings; and because you often saw there a set of lank, sallow poets, who had somewhat the air of apparitions."

Because of its location, the Café de Procope became the gathering place of many noted French actors, authors, dramatists, and musicians of the eighteenth century. It was a veritable literary salon. Voltaire was a constant patron; and until the close of the historic café, after an existence of more than two centuries, his marble table and chair were among the precious relics of the coffee house. His favorite drink is said to have been a mixture of coffee and chocolate. Rousseau, author and philosopher; Beaumarchais, dramatist and financier; Diderot, the encyclopedist; Ste.-Foix, the abbé of Voisenon; de Belloy, author of the Siege of Callais; Lemierre, author of Artaxerce; Crébillon; Piron; La Chaussée; Fontenelle; Condorcet; and a host of lesser lights in the French arts, were habitués of François Procope's modest coffee saloon near the Comédie Française.

Naturally, the name of Benjamin Franklin, recognized in Europe as one of the world's foremost thinkers in the days of the American Revolution, was often spoken over the coffee cups of Café de Procope; and when the distinguished American died in 1790, this French coffee house went into deep mourning "for the great friend of republicanism." The walls, inside and out, were swathed in black bunting, and the statesmanship and scientific attainments of Franklin were acclaimed by all frequenters.

The Café de Procope looms large in the annals of the French Revolution. During the turbulent days of 1789 one could find at the tables, drinking coffee or stronger beverages, and engaged in debate over the burning questions of the hour, such characters as Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Hébert, and Desmoulins. Napoleon Bonaparte, then a poor artillery officer seeking a commission, was also there. He busied himself largely in playing chess, a favorite recreation of the early Parisian coffee-house patrons. It is related that François Procope once compelled young Bonaparte to leave his hat for security while he sought money to pay his coffee score.

After the Revolution, the Café de Procope lost its literary prestige and sank to the level of an ordinary restaurant. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Paul Verlaine, bohemian, poet, and leader of the symbolists, made the Café de Procope his haunt; and for a time it regained some of its lost popularity. The Restaurant Procope still survives at 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie.

History records that, with the opening of the Café de Procope, coffee became firmly established in Paris. In the reign of Louis XV there were 600 cafés in Paris. At the close of the eighteenth century there were more than 800. By 1843 the number had increased to more than 3000.

The Development of the Cafés

Coffee's vogue spread rapidly, and many cabaréts and famous eating houses began to add it to their menus. Among these was the Tour d'Argent (silver tower), which had been opened on the Quai de la Tournelle in 1582, and speedily became Paris's most fashionable restaurant. It still is one of the chief attractions for the epicure, retaining the reputation for its cooking that drew a host of world leaders, from Napoleon to Edward VII, to its quaint interior.

Another tavern that took up coffee after Procope, was the Royal Drummer, which Jean Ramponaux established at the Courtille des Porcherons and which followed Magny's. His hostelry rightly belongs to the tavern class, although coffee had a prominent place on its menu. It became notorious for excesses and low-class vices during the reign of Louis XV, who was a frequent visitor. Low and high were to be found in Ramponaux's cellar, particularly when some especially wild revelry was in prospect. Marie Antoinette once declared she had her most enjoyable time at a wild farandole in the Royal Drummer. Ramponaux was taken to its heart by fashionable Paris; and his name was used as a trade mark on furniture, clothes, and foods.

The popularity of Ramponaux's Royal Drummer is attested by an inscription on an early print showing the interior of the café. Translated, it reads:

The pleasures of ease untroubled to taste,
The leisure of home to enjoy without haste,
Perhaps a few hours at Magny's to waste,
Ah, that was the old-fashioned way!
Today all our laborers, everyone knows,
Go running away ere the working hours close,
And why? They must be at Monsieur Ramponaux'!
Behold, the new style of café!

When coffee houses began to crop up rapidly in Paris, the majority centered in the Palais Royal, "that garden spot of beauty, enclosed on three sides by three tiers of galleries," which Richelieu had erected in 1636, under the name of Palais Cardinal, in the reign of Louis XIII. It became known as the Palais Royal in 1643; and soon after the opening of the Café de Procope, it began to blossom out with many attractive coffee stalls, or rooms, sprinkled among the other shops that occupied the galleries overlooking the gardens.

Life In The Early Coffee Houses

Diderot tells in 1760, in his Rameau's Nephew, of the life and frequenters of one of the Palais Royal coffee houses, the Regency (Café de la Régence):

The beginnings of the Regency coffee house are associated with the legend that Lefévre, a Parisian, began peddling coffee in the streets of Paris about the time Procope opened his café in 1689. The story has it that Lefévre later opened a café near the Palais Royal, selling it in 1718 to one Leclerc, who named it the Café de la Régence, in honor of the regent of Orleans, a name that still endures on a broad sign over its doors. The nobility had their rendezvous there after having paid their court to the regent.

To name the patrons of the Café de la Régence in its long career would be to outline a history of French literature for more than two centuries. There was Philidor the "greatest theoretician of the eighteenth century, better known for his chess than his music"; Robespierre, of the Revolution, who once played chess with a girl—disguised as a boy—for the life of her lover; Napoleon, who was then noted more for his chess than his empire-building propensities; and Gambetta, whose loud voice, generally raised in debate, disturbed one chess player so much that he protested because he could not follow his game. Voltaire, Alfred de Musset; Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, J.J. Rousseau, the Duke of Richelieu, Marshall Saxe, Buffon, Rivarol, Fontenelle, Franklin, and Henry Murger are names still associated with memories of this historic café: Marmontel and Philidor played there at their favorite game of chess. Diderot tells in his Memoirs that his wife gave him every day nine sous to get his coffee there. It was in this establishment that he worked on his Encyclopedia.

Chess is today still in favor at the Régence, although the players are not, as were the earlier patrons, obliged to pay by the hour for their tables with extra charges for candles placed by the chess-boards. The present Café de la Régence is in the rue St.-Honoré, but retains in large measure its aspect of olden days.

Michelet, the historian, has given us a rhapsodic pen picture of the Parisian cafés under the regency:

The vogue of coffee popularized the use of sugar, which was then bought by the ounce at the apothecary's shop. Dufour says that in Paris they used to put so much sugar in the coffee that "it was nothing but a syrup of blackened water." The ladies were wont to have their carriages stop in front of the Paris cafés and to have their coffee served to them by the porter on saucers of silver.

Every year saw new cafés opened. When they became so numerous, and competition grew so keen, it was necessary to invent new attractions for customers. Then was born the café chantant, where songs, monologues, dances, little plays and farces (not always in the best taste), were provided to amuse the frequenters. Many of these cafés chantants were in the open air along the Champs-Elysées. In bad weather, Paris provided the pleasure-seeker with the Eldorado, Alcazar d'Hiver, Scala, Gaieté, Concert du XIX^me Siécle, Folies Bobino, Rambuteau, Concert Européen, and countless other meeting places where one could be served with a cup of coffee.

As in London, certain cafés were noted for particular followings, like the military, students, artists, merchants. The politicians had their favorite resorts. Says Salvandy:[86]

In 1700 appeared the Portefeuille Galant, containing conversations of the cafés.

The Cafés in the French Revolution

The Palais Royal coffee houses were centers of activity in the days preceding and following the Revolution. A picture of them in the July days of 1789 has been left by Arthur Young, who was visiting Paris at that time:

The Palais Royal teemed with excited Frenchmen on the fateful Sunday of July 12, 1789. The moment was a tense one, when, coming out of the Café Foy, Camille Desmoulins, a youthful journalist, mounted a table and began the harangue that precipitated the first overt act of the French Revolution. Blazing with a white hot frenzy, he so played upon the passions of the mob that at the conclusion of his speech he and his followers "marched away from the Café on their errand of Revolution." The Bastille fell two days later.

As if abashed by its reputation as the starting point of the mob spirit of the Revolution, Café Foy became in after years a sedate gathering-place of artists and literati. Up to its close it was distinguished among other famous Parisian cafés for its exclusiveness and strictly enforced rule of "no smoking."

Even from the first the Parisian cafés catered to all classes of society; and, unlike the London coffee houses, they retained this distinctive characteristic. A number of them early added other liquid and substantial refreshments, many becoming out-and-out restaurants.

Coffee-House Customs and Patrons

Coffee's effect on Parisians is thus described by a writer of the latter part of the eighteenth century: