Wake up and smell the coffee
As other retail outlets disappear, high-street coffee shops continue to multiply. Stephen Wade explores our love of these places of refreshment, refuge and delight
Coffee shops have attracted raconteurs and rascals alike for centuries, reveals Stephen Wade
WE all have a singular vision of the perfect coffee house. Mine has several rooms, laid out over different levels; the ambience should be hemmed in by wooden beams and there should be log fires. Customers need to duck and seat themselves in half-light, so that they are, for the time of their sojourn with the aroma and taste of comforting coffee, beyond contact or interruption. The coffee shop is, for me, the ideal hideaway: step into a true example of the phenomenon and time stops.
Look around a coffee shop today and the reasons for their success aren’t hard to find. A man huddles into his seat, stare fixed on his tablet, as a woman types away on chapter six of her novel and two good friends chatter in comfortable sofa seats, updating, reassuring, sharing a laugh. What’s not to like?
These sanctuaries from the rush of modern life have been with us for a long time. When they began, they were the core of clubs and societies—entrepreneurs, as well as aspiring poets and Fleet Street hacks, recognised their appeal. The rich, aspiring rich, shabby chic and down at heel all found a spot inside the walls of the coffee shop.
Back in 1668, an anonymous artist produced an image that has everything you could include in an account of the coffee house as it began. Well-dressed men of the ton sit around a long table, eating, sipping drinks, reading periodicals and, most of all, relishing their animated conversation. The only woman in the scene is the mistress, who stands apart as skivvies deal with the four steaming coffee pots in the corner.
That was a coffee shop in the Augustan years, when writers, critics, literary chancers and raconteurs enjoyed the noisy, but enticing atmosphere of such places, where business deals were done and reputations won or lost.
There is some disagreement about which was the first coffee house in London. One opinion is that it was established by two former servants called Bowman and Rosee, in St Michael’s Alley near Cornhill, in 1652. Opposed to this is the argument for a place opened by Daniel Edwards. Whatever the facts, others soon followed the pioneers, the most notable arguably being Lloyd’s, first appearing in Tower Street and becoming famous as the maritime-insurance company.
The cosy nests of talkers and wheelerdealers expanded, most of them attracting particular customers in certain trades or areas of interest, so that each group found its own favourite haunt. By Dr Johnson’s time, in the mid to late 18th century, they were firmly placed as prime cultural hubs of the buzzing, go-ahead new London that had emerged after the Great Fire of 1666.
When Joseph Addison, co-founder of The Spectator, reflected on coffee shops, he celebrated their vivacity and their deeply humane and urbane nature: ‘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
The rich, aspiring rich, shabby chic and down at heel all found a spot in the coffee shop
In Augustan coffee shops, business deals were done and reputations won or lost
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 potman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room.’
The story of Lloyd’s is a template for this temple to Turkish brew and table talk. Edward Lloyd had his shop well established by 1713, the year of his death. The brand flourished and, soon, the amalgamation of the insurance business and the immensely successful shipping establishment of the Empire placed Lloyd’s at the very epicentre of information and intelligence about merchant transport.
In 1734, the then owner, Thomas Jemson, created the Registry, which later became the world-famous Lloyd’s Register. After a period of recession, Lloyd’s re-emerged as New Lloyd’s Coffee House. It took another century for Lloyd’s to become the massive establishment known to all Victorians and, by then, it was on far too large a scale to be contained in a coffee shop.
For Johnson, a man who adored public houses and good fellowship, to resort to an inviting, sociable room where like-minded folk debated current issues was absolute bliss. In a coffee house in Paternoster Row, he conducted his literary business.
In his account of Johnson, Henry Hitchings notes that ‘the popularity of coffee houses was a symptom of the increasingly secular nature of urban society’. It created a magnet for all walks of life, from new people on the scene without premises, who could lodge in such places—or at least sit in them for hours —to the established professions. Lawyers and printers, artists and prelates might all be found there, advancing their careers as they enjoyed the milieu and the company.
It comes as no surprise then, that the notion of sitting around drinking coffee became something denoting time-wasting and frippery. In the language of the hunt, for instance, the term ‘coffee-housing’ became a strong condemnation, explained very strongly by F. P. Delma Radcliffe in his book, The Noble
Science (1839): ‘We must return to the covert side, not, as I had hoped, “coffee-housing” amidst a group of idlers who are conspicuous ornaments of another certain spot, known by the name of Fools’ Corner.’
By the last years of the Regency, coffee shops had become culturally unacceptable for the more vigorous Empire builders and energetic sportsmen. Some commentators suggested that coffee was something that only idlers could waste time imbibing.
Things changed again, however, by the end of the century, when Jerome K. Jerome, author of reflections on idling, as well as his famous Three Men in a Boat, reminded his readers that messing about, doing no clockwatching at all, was admirable.
That’s exactly the appeal of the coffee shop to this day: the best ones never have a clock on the wall, even if most of us do now order our morning pick-me-up to take away.