appeared. As tea and coffee entered the
homes, and the exclusive club house succeeded the democratic coffee
forum, the coffee houses became taverns or chop houses, or, convinced
that they had outlived their usefulness, just ceased to be.

_Pen Pictures of Coffee-House Life_

From the writings of Addison in the _Spectator_, Steele in the _Tatler_,
Mackay in his _Journey Through England_, Macaulay in his history, and
others, it is possible to draw a fairly accurate pen-picture of life in
the old London coffee house.

In the seventeenth century the coffee room usually opened off the
street. At first only tables and chairs were spread about on a sanded
floor. Later, this arrangement was succeeded by the boxes, or booths,
such as appear in the Rowlandson caricatures, the picture of the
interior of Lloyds, etc.

The walls were decorated with handbills and posters advertising the
quack medicines, pills, tinctures, salves, and electuaries of the
period, all of which might be purchased at the bar near the entrance,
presided over by a prototype of the modern English barmaid. There were
also bills of the play, auction notices, etc., depending upon the
character of the place.

Then, as now, the barmaids were made much of by patrons. Tom Brown
refers to them as charming "Phillises who invite you by their amorous
glances into their smoaky territories."

Messages were left and letters received at the bar for regular
customers. Stella was instructed to address her letters to Swift, "under
cover to Addison at the St. James's coffee house." Says Macaulay:

Foreigners remarked that it was the coffee house which specially
distinguished London from all other cities; that the coffee house
was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished to find a
gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street or
Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the
Rainbow.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF MANY OF THE OLD LONDON
COFFEE HOUSES PREVIOUS TO THE FIRE OF 1748]

So every man of the upper or middle classes went daily to his coffee
house to learn the news and to discuss it. The better class houses were
the meeting places of the most substantial men in the community. Every
coffee house had its orator, who became to his admirers a kind of
"fourth estate of the realm."

Macaulay gives us the following picture of the coffee house of 1685:

Nobody was excluded from thes