CHAPTER XXXIII

COFFEE IN RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS

_How coffee and coffee drinking have been celebrated in painting, engraving, sculpture, caricature, lithography, and music--Epics, rhapsodies, and cantatas in praise of coffee--Beautiful specimens of the art of the potter and the silversmith as shown in the coffee service of various periods in the world's history--Some historical relics_

Coffee has inspired the imagination of many poets, musicians, and painters. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries those whose genius was dedicated to the fine arts seem to have fallen under its spell and to have produced much of great beauty that has endured. To the painters, engravers, and caricaturists of that period we are particularly indebted for pictures that have added greatly to our knowledge of early coffee customs and manners.

Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-1685), the Dutch genre painter and etcher, pupil of Frans Hals, in his "Dutch Coffee House" (1650), shows the genesis of the coffee house of western Europe about the time it still partook of some of the tavern characteristics. Coffee is being served to a group in the foreground. It is believed to be the oldest existing picture of a coffee house. The illustration is after the etching by J. Beauvarlet in the graphic collection at Munich.

William Hogarth (1697-1764), the famous English painter and engraver of satirical subjects, chose the coffee houses of his time for the scenes of a number of his social caricatures. In his series, "Four Times of the Day," which throws a vivid light on the street life of London of the period of 1738, we are shown Covent Garden at 7:55 A.M. by the clock on St. Paul's Church. A prim maiden lady (said to have been sketched from an elderly relation of the artist, who cut him out of her will) on her way home from early service, accompanied by a shivering foot-boy, is scandalized by the spectacle presented by some roystering blades issuing from Tom King's notorious coffee house to the right. The _beaux_ are forcing their attentions upon the more comely of the market women in the foreground. Tom King was a scholar at Eton before he began his ignoble career. At the date of this picture, it is thought he had been succeeded by his widow, Moll King, also of scandalous repute.

## Scene VI of the "Rake's Progress" by Hogarth is laid at the club in

White's chocolate (coffee) house, which Dr. Swift described as "the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies." The rake has lost all his recently acquired wealth, pulls off his wig and flings himself upon the floor in a paroxysm of fury and execration. In allusion to the burning of White's in 1733, flames are seen bursting from the wainscot, but the pre-occupied gamblers take no heed, even of the watchman crying "Fire!" To the left is seated a highwayman, with horse pistol and black mask in a skirt pocket of his coat. He is so engrossed in his thoughts that he does not notice the boy at his side offering a glass of liquor on a tray. The scene well depicts the low estate to which White's had fallen. It recalls a bit of dialogue from Farquhar's _Beaux' Stratagem_ (act III, scene 2), where Aimwell says to Gibbet, who is a highwayman: "Pray, sir, ha'nt I seen your face at Will's Coffee House?" "Yes sir, and at White's, too," answers the highwayman.

[Illustration: IN THE CLUB AT WHITE'S COFFEE HOUSE, 1733

From a painting in the series, "The Rake's Progress," by William Hogarth]

After the fire, the club and chocolate house were removed to Gaunt's coffee house. The removal was thus announced in the _Daily Post_ of May 3:

This is to acquaint all noblemen and gentlemen that Mr. Arthur having had the misfortune to be burnt out of White's Chocolate House is removed to Gaunt's Coffee House, next the St. James Coffee House in St. James Street, where he humbly begs they will favour him with their company as usual.

Alessandro Longhi (1733-1813) the Italian painter and engraver, called the Venetian Hogarth, in one of his pictures presenting life and manners in Venice during the years of her decadence, shows Goldoni, the dramatist, as a visitor in a café of the period, with a female mendicant soliciting alms.

In the Louvre at Paris hangs the "Petit Déjeuner" by François Boucher (1703-1770), famous court painter of Louis XV. It shows a French breakfast-room of the period of 1744, and is interesting because it illustrates the introduction of coffee into the home; it shows also the coffee service of the time.

In Van Loo's portrait of Madame de Pompadour, second mistress and political adviser of Louis XV of France, the coffee service of a later period of the eighteenth century appears. The Nubian servant is shown offering the marquise a demi-tasse which has just been poured from the covered oriental pot which succeeded the original Arabian-Turkish boiler, and was much in vogue at the time.

Coffee and Madame du Barry (or would it be more polite to say Madame du Barry and coffee?) inspired the celebrated painting of Madame de Pompadour's successor in the affections of Louis "the well beloved." This is entitled "Madame du Barry at Versailles", and in the Versailles catalog it is described as painted by Decreuse after Drouais. Decreuse was a pupil of Gros, and painted many of the historical portraits at Versailles.

[Illustration: TOM KING'S COFFEE HOUSE IS COVENT GARDEN, 1738

From a printing in the series, "Four Times of the Day," by William Hogarth]

Malcolm C. Salaman, in his _French Color Prints of the XVIII Century_, referring to Dagoty's print of this picture, done in 1771, says, "the original has been attributed to François Hubert Drouais, but there can be little doubt that the original portraiture was from the hand of the engraver (Dagoty), as the style is far inferior to Drouais." He thus describes it:

Here we see the last of Louis XV's mistresses, sitting in her bedroom in that alluring retreat of hers at Louveciennes, near the woods of Marly, as she takes her cup of coffee from her pet attendant, the little negro boy, Zamore, as the Prince de Conti had named him, all brave in red and gold. Doubtless she is expecting the morning visit of the King, no longer the handsome young gallant, but old and leaden-eyed, and puffy-cheeked; and perhaps it will be on this very morning that she will wheedle Louis, in a moment of extravagant badinage, into appointing the negro boy to be Governor of the Chateau and Pavilion of Louveciennes at a handsome salary, just as, on another day, she playfully teased the jaded old sensualist into decorating with the cordon bleu her cuisinière when it was triumphantly revealed to him that the dinner he had been praising with enthusiastic gusto was, after all, the work of a woman cook, the very possibility of which he had contemptuously doubted. But as we look at these two, the royal mistress and her little black favorite, we forget the "well beloved" and his voluptuous pleasures and indulgences, for in the shadows we see another picture, some twenty years on, when the proud unconscionable beauty, no longer _reine de la main gauche_, stands before the dreaded Tribunal of the Terror, while Zamore, the treacherous, ungrateful negro, dismissed from his service at Louveciennes and now devoted to the committee of public safety, and one of her implacable accusers, sends her shrieking to the guillotine.

[Illustration: "PETIT DÉJEUNER," BY BOUCHER

Showing the home coffee service of the period of 1744]

[Illustration: COFFEE SERVICE IN THE HOME OF MADAME DE POMPADOUR--PAINTING BY VAN LOO]

The introduction of the coffee house into Europe was memorialized by Franz Schams, the genre painter, pupil of the Vienna Academy, in a beautiful picture entitled "The First Coffee House in Vienna, 1684," owned by the Austrian Art Society. A lithographic reproduction was executed by the artist and printed by Joseph Stoufs in Vienna. There are several specimens in the United States; and the illustration printed on page 48 has been made from one of these in the possession of the author.

The picture shows the interior of the Blue Bottle, where Kolschitzky opened the first coffee house in Vienna. The hero-proprietor stands in the foreground pouring a cup of the beverage from an oriental coffee pot, and another is suspended from the coffee-house sign that hangs over the fireplace. In the fire alcove a woman is pounding coffee in a mortar. Men and women in the costumes of the period are being served coffee by a Vienna _mädchen_.

[Illustration: MADAME DU BARRY AND HER SLAVE BOY ZAMORE--PAINTING BY DECREUSE]

The painters Marilhat, Descamps, and de Tournemine have pictured café scenes; the first in his "Café sur une route de Syrie", which was shown at the Salon of 1844; the second in his "Café Turc", which figured at the Exposition of 1855; and the third in his "Café en Asia Mineure", which received honors at the Salon of 1859, and attracted attention at the Universal Exposition of 1867.

A decorative panel designed for the buffet at the Paris Opera House by S. Mazerolles was shown at the Exposition of 1878. A French artist, Jacquand, has painted two charming compositions; one representing the reading room, and the other the interior, of a café.

Many German artists have shown coffee manners and customs in pictures that are now hanging in well known European galleries. Among others, mention should be made of C. Schmidt's "The Sweets Shop of Josty in Berlin", 1845; Milde's "Pastor Rautenberg and His Family at the Coffee Table", 1833; and his "Manager Classen and His Family at the Afternoon Coffee Table", 1840; Adolph Menzel's "Parisian Boulevard Café", 1870; Hugo Meith's "Saturday Afternoon at the Coffee Table"; John Philipp's "Old Woman with Coffee Cup"; Friedrich Walle's "Afternoon Coffee in the Court Gardens at Munich"; Paul Meyerheim's "Oriental Coffee House"; and Peter Philippi's (Dusseldorf) "Kaffeebesuch."

At the Exposition des Beaux Arts, Salon of 1881, there was shown P.A. Ruffio's picture, "Le café vient au secours de la Muse" (Coffee comes to the aid of the Muse), in which the graceful form of an oriental ewer appears.

The "Coffee House at Cairo," a canvas by Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has been much admired. It shows the interior of a typical oriental coffee house with two men near a furnace at the left preparing the beverage; a man seated on a wicker basket about to smoke a hooka; a dervish dancing; and several persons seated against the wall in the background.

[Illustration: COFFEE HOUSE AT CAIRO--PAINTING BY GÉRÔME IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, NEW YORK]

The New York Historical Society acquired in 1907 from Miss Margaret A. Ingram an oil painting of the "Tontine Coffee House." It was painted in Philadelphia by Francis Guy, and was sold at a raffle, after having been admired by President John Adams. It shows lower Wall Street in 1796-1800, with the Tontine coffee house on the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets, where its more famous predecessor, the Merchants coffee house, was located before it moved to quarters diagonally opposite.

Charles P. Gruppe's (_b._ 1860) painting showing General "Washington's Official Welcome to New York by City and State Officials at the Merchants Coffee House," April 23, 1789, just one week before his inauguration as first president of the United States, is a colorful canvas that has been much praised for its atmosphere and historical associations. It is the property of the author.

The art museums and libraries of every country contain many beautiful water-colors, engravings, prints, drawings, and lithographs, whose creators found inspiration in coffee. Space permits the mention of only a few.

T.H. Shepherd has preserved for us Button's, afterward the Caledonien coffee house, Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, in a water-color drawing of 1857; Tom's coffee house, 17 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1857; Slaughter's coffee house in St. Martin's Lane, 1841; also, in 1857, the Lion's Head at Button's, put up by Addison and now the property of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn.

[Illustration: "KAFFEEBESUCH"

From the painting by Peter Philippi]

[Illustration: "COFFEE COMES TO THE AID OF THE MUSE"

From the painting by Ruffio]

Hogarth figures in the Sam Ireland collection with several original drawings of frequenters of Button's in 1730.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) the great English caricaturist and illustrator, has given us several fine pictures of English coffee-house life. His "Mad Dog in a Coffee House" presents a lively scene; and his water-color of "The French Coffee House" is one of the best pictures we have of the French coffee house in London as it looked during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

During the campaign in France in 1814, Napoleon arrived one day, unheralded, in a country presbytery, where the good curé was quietly turning his hand coffee-roaster. The emperor asked him, "What are you doing there, abbé?" "Sire", replied the priest, "I am doing like you. I am burning the colonial fodder." Charlet (1792-1845) made a lithograph of the incident.

Several French poet-musicians resorted to music to celebrate coffee. Brittany has its own songs in praise of coffee, as have other French provinces. There are many epics, rhapsodies, and cantatas--and even a comic opera by Meilhat, music by Deffes, bearing the title, _Le Café du Roi_, produced at the Théâtre Lyrique, November 16, 1861.

[Illustration: "MAD DOG IN A COFFEE HOUSE"--CARICATURE BY ROWLANDSON]

Fuzelier wrote, in honor of coffee, a cantata, set to music by Bernier. This is the burden of the poet's song:

Ah coffee, what climes yet unknown, Ignore the clear fires that thy vapors inspire! Thou countest, in thy vast empire Those realms that Bacchus' reign disown. Favored liquid, which fills all my soul with delights, Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade, We vanquish e'en sleep by thy fortunate aid, Thou hast rescued the hours sleep would rob from our nights. Favored liquid which fills all my soul with delights, Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade.

Oh liquid that I love, Triumphant stream of sable, E'en for the gods above, Drive nectar from the table. Make thou relentless war On treacherous juices sly, Let earth taste and adore The sweet calm of the sky. Oh liquid that I love, Triumphant stream of sable, E'en for the gods above, Drive nectar from the table.

During the early vogue of the café in Paris, a _chanson_, entitled _Coffee_, reproduced here, was set to music with accompaniment for the piano by M.H. Colet, a professor of harmony at the Conservatoire. Printed in the form of a placard, and put up in cafés, it received the approbation of, and was signed by, de Voyer d'Argenson, at that time (1711) lieutenant of police. The poetry is not irreproachable. It can hardly be attributed to any of the well known poets of the time; but rather to one of those bohemian rimesters that wrote all too abundantly on all sorts of subjects. It is the development of a theory concerning the properties of coffee and the best method of making it. It is interesting to note that the uses of advertising were known and appreciated in Paris in 1711; for in the _chanson_ there appears the name and address of one Vilain, a merchant, rue des Lombards, who was evidently in fashion at that period. The translation of the stanza reproduced is as follows:

COFFEE--A CHANSON

If you, with mind untroubled, Would flourish, day by day, Let each day of the seven Find coffee on your tray. It will your frame preserve from every malady, Its virtues drive afar, la! la! Migrain and dread catarrh--ha! ha! Dull cold and lethargy.

The most notable contribution to the "music of coffee," if one may be permitted the expression, is the _Coffee Cantata_ of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) the German organist and the most modern composer of the first half of the eighteenth century. He hymned the religious sentiment of protestant Germany; and in his _Coffee Cantata_ he tells in music the protest of the fair sex against the libels of the enemies of the beverage, who at the time were actively urging in Germany that it should be forbidden women, because its use made for sterility! Later on, the government surrounded the manufacture, sale, and use of coffee with many obnoxious restrictions, as told in