LITERARY HISTORY

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20247, 16 July 1937, Page 2

LITERARY HISTORY

DEBT TO COFFEE HOUSE. FASHIONABLE RENDEZVOUS. In England In the eighteenth century coffee houses became fashionable meeting places of the rich, leisured and literary. One of the most famous of cofTee houses was Will’s and Button's. In the first of these it was that Dryden took his seat, holding that "snush-box" whlcn was the fountain of literary honour. Here were discussed all those questions which still Interest us in his prefaces. When Addison’s patronage took the the time to Button’s, that coffee house, in its turn, became a hall of Apollo. There Addison presided Over his friends, at once grave and penial: there Swift, still obscure, signalised himself as the "mad parson"; and Phillips hung up a rod to warn the terrible Pope of the castigation which awaited him for his satire. In this phase of its history coffee became classical. Pope, In the delicate and chisselled lines of the "Rape of the Lock," proclaims— At this time the coffee of Arabv was the luxury of the rich and great; it glowed in china on their card-tables. The time was still distant when it would undergo that transition from, a luxury into a necessity, which has characterised so many discoveries. Tea Becomes a Rival. In the latter part of the eighteenth century tea became the literary rival of coffee; its mention at once suggests Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montague, Johnson, Goldsmith, and all the celebrities of the age. Great and gradual has been the increase in the consumption of coffee in England. In the year 1808 the duty on colonial coffee was reduced to 7d a pound, and that on "foreign" to lOd. Between 1801 and 18.'18 the consumption in England increased from 758.8611 b to 24,920,8241 b —a marvellous Increase, though during this interval the duty was again raised to one ■shilling for five years (1819 to 1824).

This increase must be partly attributed to the reduction in price of the ‘mportant accessory, -sugar, as well as to the reduction of the duty upon colonial and foreign coffees respectively to sixpence and ninepence in the year 1824. From this year there was a gradual and ■steady increase in the home consumption, so that, in 1832 it equalled the quantity produced by the British Colonies alone; which fact induced the foreign growers to practise an Invasion of their own severer imposts by reshipping for England from the Cape. This they were enabled to do by the laws of 1830 and 1832, which permitted the importation of foreign-grown coffee reshipped there at. a lower rate than when it came llreot. Chloory Cultivated. Hitherto there had been a difference of rates on East Indian and West Indian coffees; In 1842 they were equalised. Coffee In ships’ bags Is coffee; coffee in Minoing Lane is coffee; but what you get under that name at some grocers’ is often not pure coffee. We find chicory often mixed with coffee. Chicory Is the wild endive, an Indigenous plant. It is extensively cultivated in Belgium. Holland and Germany, and In Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. It is the root of this plant which, cut, dried and roasted, is used for mixing with coffee. Thus, prepared, it is a harmless production, but wants the fine flavour for which genuine coffee Is renowned. The use of chicory originated in France and Germany, and was soon adopted Jn England, obviously in consequence of the dearness of coffee, caused by taxation. Many people liked this mixture, which was to be had at a lower price, and somo preferred It to coffee Itself.