Will's Coffee House

Will's Coffee-house, No. 1 Bow Street, Covent Garden, on the west side, corner of Russell Street, and so called from William Urwin, who kept it. "It seems," says Sir Walter Scott, "that the original sign of the house had been a Cow. It was changed, however, to a Rose in Dryden's time."¹ Scott appears to have confused two houses. The Rose Tavern was on the south side of Russell Street, at the east corner of Bridges Street; Will's Coffee-house was, as said above, on the north side, at the corner of Bow Street. The change from the Cow to the Rose is also very doubtful. It certainly must have taken place, if at all, before Dryden's time. William Long is entered in the parish books as landlord of The Rose as early as 1651. [See Rose Tavern.] The lower part of Will's was let in 1693 to a woollen draper, "Mr. Philip Brent, woollen draper, under Will's Coffee-house in Russell Street, Covent Garden."² In 1722 it was occupied by a bookseller," James Woodman, at Camden's Head, under Will's Coffee-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden." The wits' room was upstairs on the first floor.

In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, under the year 1675, are the following entries:—

An accompt of money received for misdemeanors.
July 8, 1675.—Of William Urwin ... 4s.

"Will" kept at times, it appears, a disorderly coffee-house. He was alive in 1695.

Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the Universities, translators and index-makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the Chair where John Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast.—Macaulay, Hist. of England, chap. iii.

February 3, 1663–1664.—In Covent Garden to-night, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the Great Coffee-house there, where I never was before: where Dryden, the poet (I knew at Cambridge), and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither; for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse.—Pepys.

This sort of men you shall hear say in the Pit, or at the Coffee House (speaking of an author) Damn me! How can he write? He's a raw young fellow newly come from the university. ... Of another they say S'death, he's no scholar, can't write true grammar, etc. Ravenscroft (To the Reader), The Careless Lovers, 4to, 1673.

A boy of about 14 years old, being threatened, run away from his Master in Bow Street yesterday being the first of November [1674] ...; his name Thomas Parsons. Whoever shall give notice of him where he is to William Urwin's Coffee House in Bow Street in Covent Garden, shall be well rewarded for his pains.—London Gazette, No. 934.

Johnson. Faith, sir, 'tis mighty pretty, I saw it at the Coffee-house.
Bays. 'Tis a trifle hardly worth owning; I was t'other day at Will's throwing out something of that nature; and I' gad, the hint was taken, and out came that picture; indeed, the poor fellow was so civil to present me with a dozen of 'em for my friends: I think I have one here in my pocket; would you please to accept it, Mr. Johnson.—Prior and Montague, The Hind and the Panther Transfers'd.

But granting matters should be spoke
By method rather than by luck;
This may confine their younger stiles,
Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's:
But never could be meant to tie
Authentic wits like you and I.
Prior to Fleetwood Shepheard.

As I remember said the sober mouse
I've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee House.
Thither, says Brindle, thou shalt go and see
Priests sipping coffee, Sparks and Poets tea;
Here rugged frieze, there Quality well drest,
These baffling the Grand Seigneur, those the Test.
And here shrewd guesses made, and reasons given
That human laws were never made in heaven.
But above all, what shall oblige thy sight
And fill thy eye-balls with a vast delight,
Is the Poetic Judge of sacred wit
Who does i' the darkness of his glory sit.
Prior, Town and Country Mouse.

I had been listening what objections had been made against the conduct of the play [Don Sebastian]; but found them all so trivial, that if I should name them, a true critic would imagine that I had played booby, and only raised up phantoms for myself to conquer.—Dryden, Preface to Don Sebastian.

Dryden, in various prefaces, takes notice of objections that had been made by critics to his Plays; which one naturally expects to find in some of the pamphlets published in his time. But the passage before us (ut sup.) inclines me to believe that most of the criticisms which he has noticed were made at his favourite haunt, Will's Coffee House.—Malone (Dryden, vol. iii. p. 191).

Bays. But if you please to give me the meeting at Will's Coffee House, about three in the afternoon, we'll remove into a private room, where, over a dish of tea, we may debate this important affair with all the solitude imaginable.
The Reasons of Mr. Bays's [Dryden's] changing his Religion, 4to, 1688.

I cannot omit to tell you, that a Wit of the Town, a friend of mine, at Will's Coffee House, the first night of the play, cry'd it down as much as in him lay, who before had read it and assured me he never saw a prettier comedy.—Mrs. Behn's Preface to The Lucky Chance, 4to, 1687.

A Wit and a Beau set up with little or no expense. A pair of red stockings and a sword-knot sets up one, and peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or three second-hand sayings, the other. Tom Brown's Laconics.

From thence we adjourned to the Wits' Coffee-house.... Accordingly up stairs we went, and found much company, but little talk.... We shuffled through this moving crowd of philosophical mutes to the other end of the room, where three or four wits of the upper class were rendezvous'd at a table, and were disturbing the ashes of the old poets by perverting their sense. ... At another table were seated a parcel of young, raw, second-rate beaus and wits, who were conceited if they had but the honour to dip a finger and thumb into Mr. Dryden's snuff-box.—Ned Ward, The London Spy, part x.

It was in returning home from Will's that Dryden was set upon and beaten by the dastardly Lord Rochester's hired ruffians.

To Will's I went, where Beau and Wit
In mutual contemplation sit;
But which were Wits, and which were Beaus,
The Devil sure's in him who knows,
For either may be which you please,
These look like those who talk'd like these;
To make amends, there I saw Dryden.
A Day's Ramble in Covent Garden, 1691. Poems in Burlesque, 4to, 1692.

Will's is the mother church: From thence their creed
And as that censures poets must succeed.
Verses prefixed to "Sir Noisy Parrot," 4to, 1693.

I am by no means free of the Poet's Company, having never kissed their Governor's hands nor made the least court to the Committee that sits in Covent Garden.—Sir Richard Blackmore, Preface to King Arthur, fol. 1697.

Had but the people, scar'd with danger, run
To shut up Will's, where the sore plague begun,
Had they the first infected men convey'd
Straight to Moorfields!
Blackmore, A Satire upon Wit, 1700.

Blackmore has another gird at Will's in connection with his proposed Bank for Wit.

The Bank when thus establish'd will supply
Small places for the little loitering fry,
That follow G[arth], or at Will Ur[wi]n's ply.
Blackmore, ibid.

Why should a poet fetter the business of his plot, and starve his action, for the nicety of an hour or the change of a scene; since the thought of man can fly over a thousand years with the same ease, and in the same instant of time, that your eye glances from the figure of six to seven on the dial-plate, and can glide from the Cape of Good Hope to the Bay of St. Nicholas, which is quite across the world, with the same quickness and activity, as between Covent Garden Church and Will's Coffee-house?—Farquhar, A Discourse upon Comedy, 1702.

Whate'er success this play from Will's may meet,
We still must crave the favour of the Pit.
Prologue to Orrery's As You find It, 4to, 1703.

I am sensible by experience, that there's a great deal of artifice and accomplishment required in a gentleman that will write for the Theatre; and 'tis a mighty presumption in any one to attempt it, who has not ingratiated himself among the Quality, or been conversant at Will's.—Walker's Preface to Marry or do Worse, 4to, 1704.

I think our business done and to some purpose, to put one King out and another in within the year! I meant only to relieve the Duke of Savoy, and then Will's Coffee House in Winter.—Earl of Peterborough, Valencia. July 2, 1706 (Mahon's War of the Succession, p. 198).

Now view the beaus at Will's, the men of wit,
By nature nice, and for discerning fit,
The finished fops, the men of wig and snuff,
Knights of the famous Oyster-barrel snuff.
Defoe's Reformation of Manners.

I was about seventeen when I first came up to town, an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will's to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. "If anything of mine is good," says he, "'tis Mac Flecknoe; and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in Heroics." On hearing this, I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just loud enough to be heard, that "Mac Flecknoe was a very fine poem; but that I had not imagined it to be the first that ever was writ that way." On this, Dryden turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing; asked me how long I had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile, "Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before?" I named Boileau's Lutrin, and Tassoni's Secchia Rapita, which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. "'Tis true," said Dryden, "I had forgot them." A little after Dryden went out, and in going spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation; went to see him accordingly, and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived.—Dean Lockier (Spence, by Singer, p. 59).

I had the honour of bringing Mr. Pope from our retreat in the Forest of Windsor, to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee House.—Sir Charles Wogan to Swift (Scott's Swift, vol. xviii. p. 21).

It was Dryden who made Will's Coffee-house the great resort of the wits of his time. After his death, Addison transferred it to Button's, who had been a servant of his; they were opposite each other, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.—Pope (Spence, by Singer), p. 263.

Addison passed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined en famille, and then went to Will's: only he came home earlier a' nights.—Pope (Spence, by Singer), p. 286.

Let us see if we can find anything in his rhymes, which may direct us to his Coffee House or to his Bookseller's. By his taking three opportunities to commend Mr. Dryden in so small a compass, I fancy we may hear of him at Shakspeare's Head [Tonson's], or at Will's.—Dennis, Reflections on Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1712, p. 27.

The translator [Pope] seems to think a good genius and a good ear to be the same thing. Dryden himself was more sensible of the difference between them, and when it was in debate at Will's Coffee House what character he would have with posterity; he said, with a sullen modesty, I believe they will allow me to be a good versifier.—Oldmixon, An Essay on Criticism, 8vo, 1728, p. 24.

I find, that upon his [Pope's] first coming to Town, out of pure Compassion for his exotick Figuor, narrow circumstances, and humble appearance, the late Mr. Wycherley admitted him into his society, and suffered him, notwithstanding his make, to be his humble admirer at Will's.—Pope, Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility Examined, 4to, 1729, p. 13.

When I was a young fellow, I wanted to write the Life of Dryden; and in order to get materials, I applied to the only two persons then alive who had seen him; these were old Swinney and old Cibber. Swinney's information was no more than this, "That at Will's Coffee House Dryden had a particular chair for himself, which was set by the fire in winter, and was then called his winter-chair; and that it was carried out for him to the balcony in summer, and was then called his summer-chair." Cibber could tell no more but "that he remembered him a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes at Will's."—Dr. Johnson, in Boswell, ed. Croker, vol. iii. p. 435.

When Steele started the Tatler, 1709, he announced that—

All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate House; poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; learning under the title of Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from St. James's Coffee House. And goes on with a statement which may be taken to indicate the comparative expenses of the four establishments. "I cannot keep the ingenious man to go daily to Will's, under two-pence each day merely for his charges; to White's, under sixpence; nor to the Grecian, without some plain Spanish, to be as able as others at the learned table; and that a good observer cannot speak with even kidney at St. James's without clean linen.—The Tatler, No. 1 (1709).

This place [Will's] is very much altered since Mr. Dryden frequented it; where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game.—The Tatler, No. 1, April 8, 1709.

Rail on, ye triflers, who to Will's repair,
For new lampoons, fresh cant, or modish air.
E. Smith, On John Phillips's Death.

Be sure at Will's the following day,
Lie snug, and hear what critics say;
And if you find the general vogue
Pronounces you a stupid rogue,
Damns all your thoughts as low and little,
Sit still, and swallow down your spittle.
Swift, On Poetry; a Rhapsody.

After the Play, the best company go to Tom's and Will's Coffee House near adjoining, where there is playing at Picket, and the best of conversation till midnight. Here you will see blue and green ribbons and stars sitting familiarly, and talking with the same freedom as if they had left their quality and degrees of distance at home.—Macky, A Journey through England, 8vo, 1722, p. 172.

There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of Politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. The Spectator, No. 1.

Would it not employ a Beau prettily enough, if, instead of playing eternally with a snuff box, he spent some part of his time in making one? Such a method as this would very much conduce to the public emolument, by making every man living good for something; for there would then be no one member of human society but would have some little pretension for some degree in it; like him who came to Will's Coffee House upon the merit of having writ a Posie of a ring.—The Spectator, No. 43.

Robin the porter, who waits at Will's Coffee House, is the best man in town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town.—The Spectator, No. 398.

Before five in the afternoon I left the City, and came to my common scene of Covent Garden, and passed the evening at Will's in attending the discourses of several sets of people who relieved each other within my hearing on the subjects of cards, dice, love, learning, and politics. The last subject kept me till I heard the streets in the possession of the bell-man, who had now the world to himself, and cried past two o'clock.—The Spectator, No. 454, August 11, 1712.

.    Truewit. Just as it was I find when I us'd Will's; but pray, Sir, does that ancient rendezvous of the Beaux Esprits hold its ground? And do men now, as formerly, become Wits by sipping coffee and tea with Wycherley and the reigning poets?
     Freeman. No, no; there have been great revolutions in this state of affairs since you left us: Button's is now the established Wit's Coffee-house, and all the young scribblers of the times pay their attendance nightly there to keep up their pretensions to sense and understanding.—Gildon, A New Rehearsal, 12mo, 1714.

Why, Faith (answered I), the Controversy [about Pope's Homer] as yet remains undecided: Will's Coffee House gives it to the four Books, Button's to the one. ... But leaving the division of the merits of the cause to those two sovereign tribunals of Will's and Button's.—Gildon, Art of Poetry, 1718.

---

¹ Scott's Life of Dryden (in Misc. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 382).
² London Gazette for 1693, No. 2957.

Will's Coffee-House. Will's, the predecessor of Button's, and even more celebrated than that Coffee-house, was kept by William Urwin, and was the house on the north side of Russell-street at the end of Bow-street—the corner house—now occupied as a ham and beef shop, and numbered twenty-three. "It was Dryden who made Will's Coffee-house the great resort of the wits of his time." (Pope and Spence). The room in which the poet was accustomed to sit was on the first floor; and his place was the place of honour by fire-side in the winter; and at the corner of the balcony, looking over the street, in fine weather; he called the two places his winter and his summer seat. This was called the dining-room floor in the last century. The company did not sit in boxes, as subsequently, but at various tables which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was permitted in the public room: it was then so much in vogue that it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided themselves into parties; and we are told by Ward, that the young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal table, thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box.

Dean Lockier has left this life-like picture of his interview with the presiding genius at Will's:—"I was about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. 'If anything of mine is good,' says he, ''tis Mac-Flecno; and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hearing this I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just loud enough to be heard, 'that Mac-Flecno was a very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing; asked me how long 'I had been a dealer in poetry;' and added, with a smile, 'Pray, Sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before?'—I named Boileau's Lutrin, and Tassoni's Secchia Rapita, which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. ''Tis true,' said Dryden, 'I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation; went to see him accordingly; and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived."

Will's Coffee-house was the open market for libels and lampoons, the latter named from the established burden formerly sung to them:—

"Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone."

There was a drunken fellow, named Julian, who was a characterless frequenter of Will's, and Sir Walter Scott has given this account of him and his vocation:—

"Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he calls himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors. 'He is described,' says Mr. Malone, 'as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a liable.' Several satires were written, in the form of addresses to him as well as the following. There is one among the State Poems beginning—

"'Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,
Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence:
This did inspire my muse, when out at heel,
She saw her needy secretary reel;
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;
A crying scandal that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expense
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants,
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.'

"Another, called a 'Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been written by the Duke of Buckingham.

"From a passage in one of the Letters from the Dead to the Living, we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more that brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones faster than lampoons exposed them."

How these lampoons were concocted we gather from Bays, in the Hind and the Panther transversed:—"'Tis a trifle hardly worth owning; I was 'tother day at Will's, throwing out something of that nature; and, i' gad, the hint was taken, and out came that picture; indeed, the poor fellow was so civil as to present me with a dozen of 'em for my friends; I think I have here one in my pocket.... Ay, ay, I can do it if I list, tho' you must not think I have been so dull as to mind these things myself; but 'tis the advantage of our Coffee-house, that from their talk, one may write a very good polemical discourse, without ever troubling one's head with the books of controversy."

Tom Brown describes "a Wit and a Beau set up with little or no expense. A pair of red stockings and a sword-knot set up one, and peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or three second-hand sayings, the other."

Pepys, one night, going to fetch home his wife, stopped in Covent Garden, at the Great Coffee-house there, as he called Will's, where he never was before: "Where," he adds, "Dryden, the poet (I knew at Cambridge), and all the Wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry; and, as it was late, they were all ready to go away."

Addison passed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined en famille, and then went to Will's, "only he came home earlier o' nights."

Pope, when very young, was impressed with such veneration for Dryden, that he persuaded some friends to take him to Will's Coffee-house, and was delighted that he could say that he had seen Dryden. Sir Charles Wogan, too, brought up Pope from the Forest of Windsor, to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee-house. Pope afterwards described Dryden as "a plump man with a down look, and not very conversible;" and Cibber could tell no more "but that he remembered him a decent old man, arbitor of critical disputes at Will's." Prior sings of—

     "the younger Stiles,
Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's!"

Most of the hostile criticisms on his Plays, which Dryden has noticed in his various Prefaces, appear to have been made at his favourite haunt, Will's Coffee-house.

Dryden is generally said to have been returning from Will's to his house in Gerard-street, when he was cudgelled in Rose-street by three persons hired for the purpose by Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in the winter of 1679. The assault, or "the Rose-alley Ambuscade," certainly took place; but it is not so certain that Dryden was on his way from Will's, and he then lived in Long Acre, not Gerard-street.

It is worthy of remark that Swift was accustomed to speak disparagingly of Will's, as in his Rhapsody on Poetry:—

"Be sure at Will's the following day
Lie snug, and hear what critics say;
And if you find the general vogue
Pronounces you a stupid rogue,
Damns all your thoughts as low and little;
Sit still, and swallow down your spittle."

Swift thought little of the frequenters of Will's: he used to say, "the worst conversation he ever heard in his life was at Will's Coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men, who had writ plays or at least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them."

In the first number of the Tatler, Poetry is promised under the article of Will's Coffee-house. The place, however, changed after Dryden's time: "you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met; you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game." "In old times, we used to sit upon a play here, after it was acted, but now the entertainment's turned another way."

The Spectator is sometimes seen "thrusting his head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences." Then, we have as an instance of no one member of human society but that would have some little pretension for some degree in it, "like him who came to Will's Coffee-house upon the merit of having writ a posie of a ring." And, "Robin, the porter who waits at Will's, is the best man in town for carrying a billet: the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town."

After Dryden's death in 1701, Will's continued for about ten years to be still the Wits' Coffee-house, as we see by Ned Ward's account, and by that in the Journey through England in 1722.

Pope entered with keen relish into society, and courted the correspondence of the town wits and coffee-house critics. Among his early friends was Mr. Henry Cromwell, one of the cousinry of the Protector's family: he was a bachelor, and spent most of his time in London; he had some pretensions to scholarship and literature, having translated several of Ovid's Elegies, for Tonson's Miscellany. With Wycherley, Gay, Dennis, the popular actors and actresses of the day, and with all the frequenters of Will's, Cromwell was familiar. He had done more than take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box, which was a point of high ambition and honour at Will's; he had quarrelled with him about a frail poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, whom Dryden had christened Corinna, and who was also known as Sappho. Gay characterized this literary and eccentric beau as

"Honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches;"

it being his custom to carry his hat in his hand when walking with ladies. What with ladies and literature, rehearsals and reviews, and critical attention to the quality of his coffee and Brazil snuff, Henry Cromwell's time was fully occupied in town. Cromwell was a dangerous acquaintance for Pope at the age of sixteen or seventeen, but he was a very agreeable one. Most of Pope's letters to his friend are addressed to him at the Blue Ball, in Great Wild-street, near Drury-lane; and others to "Widow Hambledon's Coffee-house at the end of Princes-street, near Drury-lane, London." Cromwell made one visit to Binfield; on his return to London, Pope wrote to him, "referring to the ladies in particular," and to his favourite coffee:

"As long as Mocha's happy tree shall grow,
While berries crackle, or while mills shall go;
While smoking streams from silver spouts shall glide
Or China's earth receive the sable tide,
While Coffee shall to British nymphs be dear,
While fragrant steams the bended head shall cheer,
Or grateful bitters shall delight the taste,
So long her honours, name, and praise shall last."

Even at this early period Pope seems to have relied for relief from headache to the steam of coffee, which he inhaled for this purpose throughout the whole of his life.

The Taverns and Coffee-houses supplied the place of the Clubs we have since seen established. Although no exclusive subscription belonged to any of these, we find by the account which Colley Cibber gives of his first visit to Will's, in Covent Garden, that it required an introduction to this Society not to be considered as an impertinent intruder. There the veteran Dryden had long presided over all the acknowledged wits and poets of the day, and those who had the pretension to be reckoned among them. The politicians assembled at the St. James's Coffee-house, from whence all the articles of political news in the first Tatlers are dated. The learned frequented the Grecian Coffee-house in Devereux-court. Locket's, in Gerard-street, Soho, and Pontac's, were the fashionable taverns where the young and gay met to dine: and White's and other chocolate houses seem to have been the resort of the same company in the morning. Three o'clock, or at latest four, was the dining-hour of the most fashionable persons in London, for in the country no such late hours had been adopted. In London, therefore, soon after six, the men began to assemble at the coffee-house they frequented if they were not setting in for hard drinking, which seems to have been much less indulged in private houses than in taverns. The ladies made visits to one another, which it must be owned was a much less waste of time when considered as an amusement for the evening, than now, as being a morning occupation.

1548. Will's Coffee House, Covent Garden. No.1, Bow Street on the west side of Russell Street. Will's appears to have been established by William Urwin shortly after the Restoration 1660; but whether the original Sign of the house was the Red Cow, and changed to the Rose, has long been a matter of dispute. Some writers give Unwin.

1663–68

Will's is said to be the coffee-house visited by Samuel Pepys between 1663 and 1668 and recorded in his Diary. Feb. 3, 1663–64 he mentions: 'In Covent Garden tonight going to fetch home my wife I stopped at the Great Coffee-house there, where I never was before: where Dryden, the poet (I knew at Cambridge) and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither; for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry; and as it was late, they were all ready to go away ...' April 25, 1668: '... Thence homeward by the Coffee House in Covent Garden ...' and 22 June 1668: '... Thence to the Harp and Ball I to drink, and so to the Coffee-house in Covent Garden ....'

1674

The 'London Gazette', No. 934, Nov. 1674, advertises: 'A boy of about 14 years old, being threatened, run away from his Master in Bow Street yesterday being the first of November ... his name Thomas Parsons. Whoever shall give notice of him where he is to William Urwin's Coffee House in Bow Street in Covent Garden, shall be well rewarded for his pains.'

1675

According to Wheatley, Cunningham, and others, William Urwin the Proprietor is credited with keeping a disorderly house, and in support, quote from the Churchwardens 'Accounts of St. Paul's Covent Garden: 'An accompt of money received for misdemeanors. July 8, 1675—Of William Urwin ... 4s.'

1678–79

William Urwin Coffeeman, is mentioned at the enquiry into the death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey whose body was found at Primrose Hill in October, 1678. (The Mystery of the death of Sir E.B. Godfrey—Roger L'Estrange, 1688.) Will's Coffee-house is referred to in 'An Extract and True Narrative of the Popish Intrigue, 1679'.

1679

The 'Mercurius Domesticus', also 'London Gazette' of 19 Dec. 1679, refer to an attack made on Dryden the previous night, by a gang of roughs as he was walking homewards from Will's Coffee-house. The gang is stated to have been in the pay of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who believed that Dryden was the author of the anonymous Essay on Satire which contained an attack upon the unpopular Duchess of Portsmouth and Rochester himself.

1683

Will's Coffee House appears in a list of some 25 houses, taken from an official narrative of the Rye House Plot of 1683. (Notes & Queries, 6 Feb. 1909, II, 10. Ser. p. 102.) See Joseph's Coffee-house. No. 1996.

1684

Francis Lockier at the age of 17 'thrust himself' into Will's 'to see the wits.'

1685

Macauley gives a description of Will's house in 1685: '... the coffee-house reeked with tobacco like a guard-room. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street ... Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen ...'

1687

Mrs. Behn's Preface to 'The Lucky Chance' 1687, refers to '... a Wit of the Town, a friend of mine, at Will's Coffee House, the first night of the play, cry'd it down as much as in him lay, who before had read it and assured me he never saw a prettier comedy'.

1688

'The Reasons of Mr. Bays's changing his Religion' 1688 (Mr. Bays being Dryden): 'But if you please to give me the meeting at Will's Coffee House, about three in the afternoon, we'll remove into a private room, where over a dish of tea, we may debate this important affair with all the solitude imaginable.' Will's was probably the most celebrated of London's Coffee-houses. Its patronage was obviously built-up and strengthened by the popularity of Dryden and his followers, and although various writers state that Will's lost its popularity after Dryden's death in 1700, there is little evidence to support this. Wheatley in 'London Past & Present' cites numerous anecdotes and references to Will's dating from the 1670s for a period of about sixty years: even after the establishment of Button's Coffeehouse by Addison in 1712–13, Will's appears to have maintained its attraction for some ten or more years, and only then perhaps 'steadily degenerated into a gaming-house'.

1693

'London Gazette' No. 2957, 1693, is quoted in support of the wit's coffee-room being 'upstairs on the first floor' as Mr. Philip Brent, woollen draper advertises himself 'under Will's Coffee-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden'.

1695

Cunningham remarks that William Urwin was still living in 1695.

1701

In 1701, Will's Coffee House Covent Garden figures in the extraordinary letters of Tom Brown in his 'Letters from the Dead to the Living.'

1709–10

Between 7 April 1709 and 31 Dec. 1710, no less than sixty items in the 'Tatler' are dated from Will's Coffee House. In No.1, 8 April 1709: 'This place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden frequented it; where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game.' And yet in the same number under date 12 April we read: 'All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate House; poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; learning under the title of the Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from st. James's Coffee House.' In the 'Tatler' No. 16: 'In old times we used to sit upon a play here after it was acted, but now the entertainment's turned another way.'

1710

Thomas Smith of King Street Westminster, the self-styled 'First Master Corn-cutter of England' advertised a daily call at Will's Coffee-house Covent Garden, in the course of his corn-cutting business. In the same year No. 69 of 'The Evening port' for 19–21 Jan., gives notice that the paper is on sale at Will's in Covent Garden.

1710–11

Addison in No.1, the 'Spectator', 1 March, 1710–11: '... There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences ... .' Again in No. 43, 19 April 1711: '... for there would then be no one member of human society but would have some little pretension for some degree in it: like him who came to Will's coffee-house, upon the merit of having writ a posy of a ring'.

1710–16

William Wycherley and Alexander Pope were frequenters of Will's. Of Wycherley it is said 'out of pure Compassion for his exotick Figuor, narrow circumstances, and humble appearance' admitted Pope 'into his society, and suffered him notwithstanding his make, to be his admirer at Will's'.

1712

Mention of Will's is made in the 'Spectator'. No. 398 refers to Robin the porter 'who waits at Will's Coffee-house'. 'Robin you must know, is the best man in town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town. This man carried Cynthio's first letter to Flavia, and, by frequent errands ever since, is well known to her. The fellow covers his knowledge of the nature of his messages with the most equisite low humour imaginable....'

     In No. 454, 11 August 1712, Steele relates: '... before five in the afternoon I left the city, came to my common scene of Covent Garden, and passed the evening at Will's in attending the discourses of several sets of people, who relieved each other within my hearing on the subjects of cards, dice, love, learning, and politics. The last subject kept me till I heard the streets in the possession of the bellman, who had now the world to himself, and cried "Past two o'clock", This roused me from my seat: and I went to my lodging, led by a light ... to end my trivial day with the generosity of sixpence, instead of a third part of that sum ....'

1714

Will's, also known as the Wit's Coffee-house, apparently began to lose this title after Addison established Button's in 1712–13. 'A New Rehearsal' 1714 mentions: 'Button's is now the established Wit's Coffee House.'

1722

In 1722, the lower part of the premises housing Will's was 'occupied by a Bookseller, James Woodman at Camden's Head'. In the same year, Mackay's 'Journey through England' mentions 'After the play the best Company generally go to Tom's and Will's Coffee-houses, near adjoyning, where there is Playing at Picket, and the best of Conversation till Midnight ....'

1729–30

'Daily Post Boy' 7 Feb. 1729–30 advertises Ashmole's 'Berkshire' and locates Edmund Curll 'next door to Will's Coffee House'.

     It is not clear when Will's Covent Garden ended its existence. Both Cunningham and Wheatley place Spranger Barry, the actor 'in the corner house on the west side of Bow Street formerly Will's Coffee House' in the year 1749.

     Will's is mentioned in Fielding's novel 'Tom Jones' described in the dedication as the 'labour of some years of my life' and first appeared 28 Feb. 1749; but this does not confirm the existence of Will's in 1749. Contemporary mention of Will's seems to end with the 1720s–1730s and confirms Cunningham's reference that the house was closed prior to 1749. If this is so, James Boswell's entry in 'London Journal' (Pottle, Heinemann) under date Tuesday 28 June 1763, some 14 years later, requires an explanation: He says 'Temple and I drank coffee at Will's, so often mentioned in the Spectator'. The only Will's identified with the 'Spectator', is Will's in Covent Garden, although at least five other Will's Coffee-houses existed at that time, viz: Fuller's Rents; Laurence Lane; Threadneedle-street; Scotland Yard Gate; and Cornhill.

     If as Cunningham says, Will's, Covent Garden was closed by 1749, at which Will's did Boswell and Temple drink coffee in 1763?

     See Bickerstaff's Coffee House. No. 119.

Will's coffee house ... had been established in 1671 in a newly built house at No. 1 [Bow Street], by a William Urwin, from whom it took its name. It occupied part of the site of a larger property which had previously included, under the name of the Three Roses, the corner house (No. 21 Russell Street, originally the site of the Goat tavern) and No. 20 Russell Street. (fn. 11) Under Dryden's patronage Will's rapidly became famous, and by the 1690's had been extended to take in the upper part of the corner house. (fn. 12) At about this time, however, Urwin was 'lapsed in his fortunes' and his mortgagee, Doctor William Oldys, the civilian, (fn. 13) had to put in a manager. (fn. 14) In the 1720's it was sufficiently prosperous to include the upper part of No. 20 Russell Street. (fn. 15) No. 1 Bow Street continued under the name of Will's coffee house until at least 1730, (fn. 10) but in 1743 it was known as Chapman's coffee house, and by 1751 the name Will's had been transferred to a coffee house in the Little Piazza. (fn. 16) (fn. 1)

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1. In 1763 Boswell visited this latter house, in the belief that it was the coffee house 'so often mentioned in The Spectator'.
10. H. B. Wheatley and P. Cunningham, London Past and Present, 1891, vol. 1, p. 229.
11. R.B.; P.R.O., C5/92/8, C10/421/42, SP16/254, no. 22; Lacy's map.
12. R.B.; The London Gazette, no. 2957, 15 March 1693/4.
13. D.N.B. 16. G.L.R.O.(M), LV(W), 1743, 1751.
14. P.R.O., C10/421/42.
15. R.B.; Wheatley and Cunningham, op. cit., vol. III, p. 517.