If you ever want to fall down an internet hole, then may I recommend the coffee houses of old London? Here are some of the links I poured through to get a feel for what life may have been like back then: the Rose Coffee House/Tavern; what the coffee houses look like now; and a coffee house in Oxford. But the most important research came from William Ukers’ All About Coffee (1922: citation below).
This is a found poem. More of my poetry here.
For a Minute There, the Internet Was a 17th-Century Coffee House
after Ukers, William H. All About Coffee. The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Co., 1922 Chapter 10 “The Coffee Houses of Old London” pp 53-89
Manners, morals and politics, taxidermied turtles and rattlesnakes,
where men of differing judgements clustered for a wakefull
and civill drink to clean and enlighten each part of the Soul.
The drink of democracy considered a cure for drunkenness
for Good-fellows. The all-healing berry made sober and merry,
brought sobriety to nations used to ale, beer or wine on the job,
because water was unclean and untrusted. Coffee was more
wholesome than toothsome, a deodorizer served black,
syrrop of soot, essence of old shooes sometimes served
with sugar candy or mustard.
One to two pence for a dish of strong coffee, drunk as hot as could be
endured. The Coffee houses of London so near to each other
in less than an hour many can be visited, fellows carried in chairs
or sedans, and your chair-man ran your errands as you drank.
But first you prepared with three dishes of bohea
and cleared your brains with two pinches of snuff. Off the street
or up the stairs, in a single large room of tables,
at each table divers topics of conversation. These were the
penny universities, your pennies left at the bar, and if you
spent more, and there was no change, you received a
token, a credit, embossed with the coffee house name.
Walls decorated with handbills for plays, auctions,
posters advertising medicines, salves, electuaries
that were bought from the barmaid in her smoaky territories,
who accepted compliments, and with whom messages were left
and received. The better places smelled of scented snuff
but in some of the coffee houses tobacco was allowed,
and like guard rooms, of tobacco they reeked.
Stock jobbers, paymasters, courtiers, sharpers,
shopkeepers, actors, politicians, rakes, army officers, literati,
fops with flaxen wigs, earls in stars and garters,
clergymen in cassocks, sheepish kids from universities,
Templars, translators and index markers crowded in.
Tom-Essences walked back and forth with their hats
in hand so as not to displace their wigs. Tables neat
and shining like the upper-leathers of an alderman’s shoes.
Floors swept ardent, clean as a dining room. Clatter, much bustle,
the clash of wood, ivory, iron, silver snuff boxes opening and closing,
and the humming of whispers like hornets in a chimney.
The shelter of a house, warmth of a fire. Conversation. Wax candles lit.
Strangers well received. Neighbours talked with neighbours
whether they were strangers or not, no matter what class they were.
An orator, all the papers and pamphlets of the day, and the coffee
boy served coffee, coffee, coffee while you a Scholar be
for the spending of a penny, learned of the day’s news and
heard political debate, and a pinch from John Dryden’s
snuff box after hearing his opinion on Racine’s tragedy
as he sat by the fire or on the balcony was the highest honour.
It was not where you lived but which coffee house you went to.
The Grecian, the Rainbow, the Turk’s Head, the Rose, Tom’s,
Sam’s, Jonathon’s, New Union, Sword Blade, Coles, Jamaica.
Where men carowsed, and the coffee ‘twill keep a man awake an houre.
Unlike the Continent, Women in England were not allowed
but they were there, famous for their houses; Anne Blunt of Cannon Street,
Mary Stringar of Little Trinity Lane, Mary Long of the Rose.
They were Centres of Egalitarian Intellectual Life.
Until out of the coffee houses evolved cliques. Evolved Clubs.
©elsp2026
If you like something sweet with your coffee, perhaps you might like passionfruit slice, or some truffles?
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