Will's Coffee House
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For several decades after the Restoration, Will's Coffee House in Russell Street, Covent Garden, at the northwest corner of Bow Street, was the London center of the Wits, centring on the figure of John Dryden, who liked to frequent the coffee house that had been founded by Will Unwin.[1] Will's is mentioned repeatedly in the diary of Samuel Pepys, who first dropped in on the evening of 3 February 1663/4:
"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 time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there, I perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse".
From their first appearance in London [2] coffeehouses were centers of sociability, each one frequented by certain professions, a centre of communication for news and information. At Will's gathered those gentlemen of no profession at all and circulated their scurrilous epigrams and satires, and criticized the latest productions on stage or in print.
After Dryden's death (May 1709), the reputation of Will's declined rapidly, though it is noted in Daniel Defoe's Journey Through England. Though in the first number of The Tatler Poetry was promised under the heading Will's Coffee-house,[3] it was severely reviewed by Richard Steele in The Tatler, 8 April 1709, and fashion soon passed to Button's across the way, where Joseph Addison established Daniel Button in business, about 1712.[4].
[edit] References
- ^ 'Bow Street and Russell Street Area: Bow Street', Survey of London: volume 36: Covent Garden (1970), pp. 185-192. Date accessed: 08 July 2009; this gives the history of the site.
- ^ Pasqua Rosee, a native of Smyrna, opened a coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652
- ^ "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 Graecian; Foreign and Domestick News, you will have from St. James' Coffee-house."
- ^ William Harrison Ukers, All about Coffee, 1922:574-76.
