The Character of a Coffee-House, with the Symptomes of a Town-Wit. With Allowance, April 11th 1673 (London, Jonathan Edwin, 1673), [2], 7pp.; 2°. BL: 12330.k.5. ESTCR20219. Hünersdorff

This six-page folio tract comprises a ‘Character’ or satiric description of an unspecified, and hence generic, coffee-house in the City of London, together with several of its principal inhabitants, including the coffee-man, and the ‘town-wit’, a social and intellectual gad-fly. As a ‘Character’, the satire abides by the key conventions of that genre (see pp. 1–2 above for elaboration). This example is typical for the extraordinary mixture of discourses canvassed in its satire, reflecting a view that in the coffee-house disciplines, languages and attitudes that ought to remain separate are mixed uncritically. To reflect this loss of values, the satire’s language is enthusiastic and excessive, mixing medical language, political jargon, religious cant and classical erudition. The coffee-man is described as having a swarthy appearance, perhaps caused by the smoky effects of his product. He is a commercial pragmatist: where once he affected a turban, so as to appear Turkish, he now wears a broad brimmed hat, like a Royalist cavalier: in both guises, he is as inauthentic and fraudulent as the brew he retails. The text further describes the range of drinks served in the coffee-house; a ‘hodge-podge’ comprising not only coffee but also tea, aromatique (spiced eggnog), betony (a drink flavoured with the herb of that name), rosade (rosa solis, a liqueur flavoured with the plant sun-dew), Herefordshire redstreak (cider or scrumpy), chocolet (chocolate) and mum (wheat beer flavoured with herbs). The text then surveys some of the cli- ents: first a sycophant know-it-all, a retailer of old news and exaggerated rumour whose ignorance is betrayed by poor geographical knowledge; and secondly a stirrer of religious dissent, clandestinely revealing sham plots and counterplots against the church and state. The king or arch-devil of these coffee-house habitués is the town-wit: a man driven by contrarieties and contradictions, memorably described as ‘a Squib on a rope, a meteor composed of self-conceit and noise’. These portraits of new urban character types point to the chaotic cultural, intellectual and commercial climate of Restoration London, in which established 82social roles and hierarchies were overturned and debased. In this fevered atmosphere, men consumed by ambition and emulation grew wealthy, just as others saw opportunities for self-advancement offered by the new science, by sectarian struggles, and by commercial speculation.