All About Coffee Part 6

This [coffee] is a kind of pea that grows in _Egypt_, which the _Turks_ pound and boil in water, and take it for pleasure instead of brandy, sipping it through the lips boiling hot, persuading themselves that it consumes catarrhs, and prevents the rising of vapours out of the stomach into the head. The drinking of this coffee and smoking tobacco (for tho' the use of tobacco is forbidden on pain of death, yet it is used in _Constantinople_ more than any where by men as well as women, tho' secretly) makes up all the pastime among the _Turks_, and is the only thing they treat one another with; for which reason all people of distinction have a particular room next their own, built on purpose for it, where there stands a jar of coffee continually boiling.

It is curious to note that among several misconceptions that were held by some of the peoples of the Levant was one that coffee was a promoter of impotence, although a Persian version of the Angel Gabriel legend says that Gabriel invented it to restore the Prophet's failing metabolism. Often in Turkish and Arabian literature, however, we meet with the suggestion that coffee drinking makes for sterility and barrenness, a notion that modern medicine has exploded; for now we know that coffee stimulates the racial instinct, for which tobacco is a sedative.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST PRINTED REFERENCE TO COFFEE, AS IT APPEARS IN RAUWOLF'S WORK, 1582]

CHAPTER IV

INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO WESTERN EUROPE

_When the three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, came to Europe--Coffee first mentioned by Rauwolf in 1582--Early days of coffee in Italy--How Pope Clement VIII baptized it and made it a truly Christian beverage--The first European coffee house, in Venice, 1645--The famous Caffe Florian--Other celebrated Venetian coffee houses of the eighteenth century--The romantic story of Pedrocchi, the poor lemonade-vender, who built the most beautiful coffee house in the world_

Of the world's three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, cocoa was the first to be introduced into Europe, in 1528, by the Spanish. It was nearly a century later, in 1610, that the Dutch brought tea to Europe. Venetian traders introduced coffee into Europe in 1615.

Europe's first knowledge of coffee was brought by travelers returning from the Far East and the Levant. Leonhard Rauwolf started on his famous journey into the Eastern countries from Ma.r.s.eilles in September, 1573, having left his home in Augsburg, the 18th of the preceding May. He reached Aleppo in November, 1573; and returned to Augsburg, February 12, 1576. He was the first European to mention coffee; and to him also belongs the honor of being the first to refer to the beverage in print.

Rauwolf was not only a doctor of medicine and a botanist of great renown, but also official physician to the town of Augsburg. When he spoke, it was as one having authority. The first printed reference to coffee appears as _chaube_ in chapter viii of _Rauwolf's Travels_, which deals with the manners and customs of the city of Aleppo. The exact pa.s.sage is reproduced herewith as it appears in the original German edition of Rauwolf published at Frankfort and Lauingen in 1582-83. The translation is as follows:

If you have a mind to eat something or to drink other liquors, there is commonly an open shop near it, where you sit down upon the ground or carpets and drink together. Among the rest they have a very good drink, by them called _Chaube_ [coffee] that is almost as black as ink, and very good in illness, chiefly that of the stomach; of this they drink in the morning early in open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of _China_ cups, as hot as they can; they put it often to their lips but drink but little at a time, and let it go round as they sit.

In this same water they take a fruit called _Bunnu_ which in its bigness, shape and color is almost like unto a bayberry, with two thin sh.e.l.ls surrounded, which, as they informed me, are brought from the _Indies_; but as these in themselves are, and have within them, two yellowish grains in two distinct cells, and besides, being they agree in their virtue, figure, looks, and name with the _Bunchum_ of _Avicenna_, and _Bunca_, of _Rasis ad Almans_ exactly; therefore I take them to be the same, until I am better informed by the learned. This liquor is very common among them, wherefore there are a great many of them that sell it, and others that sell the berries, everywhere in their _Batzars_.

_The Early Days of Coffee in Italy_

It is not easy to determine just when the use of coffee spread from Constantinople to the western parts of Europe; but it is more than likely that the Venetians, because of their close proximity to, and their great trade with, the Levant, were the first acquainted with it.

Prospero Alpini (Alpinus; 1553-1617), a learned physician and botanist of Padua, journeyed to Egypt in 1580, and brought back news of coffee.

He was the first to print a description of the coffee plant and drink in his treatise _The Plants of Egypt_, written in Latin, and published in Venice, 1592. He says:

I have seen this tree at Cairo, it being the same tree that produces the fruit, so common in Egypt, to which they give the name _bon_ or _ban_. The Arabians and the Egyptians make a sort of decoction of it, which they drink instead of wine; and it is sold in all their public houses, as wine is with us. They call this drink _caova_. The fruit of which they make it comes from "Arabia the Happy," and the tree that I saw looks like a spindle tree, but the leaves are thicker, tougher, and greener. The tree is never without leaves.

Alpini makes note of the medicinal qualities attributed to the drink by dwellers in the Orient, and many of these were soon incorporated into Europe's materia medica.

Johann Vesling (Veslingius; 1598-1649), a German botanist and traveler, settled in Venice, where he became known as a learned Italian physician.

He edited (1640) a new edition of Alpini's work; but earlier (1638) published some comments on Alpini's findings, in the course of which he distinguished certain qualities found in a drink made from the husks (skins) of the coffee berries from those found in the liquor made from the beans themselves, which he calls the stones of the coffee fruit. He says:

Not only in Egypt is coffee in much request, but in almost all the other provinces of the Turkish Empire. Whence it comes to pa.s.s that it is dear even in the Levant and scarce among the Europeans, who by that means are deprived of a very wholesome liquor.

From this we may conclude that coffee was not wholly unknown in Europe at that time. Vesling adds that when he visited Cairo, he found there two or three thousand coffee houses, and that "some did begin to put sugar in their coffee to correct the bitterness of it, and others made sugar-plums of the berries."

_Coffee Baptized by the Pope_

Shortly after coffee reached Rome, according to a much quoted legend, it was again threatened with religious fanaticism, which almost caused its excommunication from Christendom. It is related that certain priests appealed to Pope Clement VIII (1535-1605) to have its use forbidden among Christians, denouncing it as an invention of Satan. They claimed that the Evil One, having forbidden his followers, the infidel Moslems, the use of wine--no doubt because it was sanctified by Christ and used in the Holy Communion--had given them as a subst.i.tute this h.e.l.lish black brew of his which they called coffee. For Christians to drink it was to risk falling into a trap set by Satan for their souls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN COFFEE HOUSE

After Goldoni, by Zatta]

It is further related that the pope, made curious, desired to inspect this Devil's drink, and had some brought to him. The aroma of it was so pleasant and inviting that the pope was tempted to try a cupful. After drinking it, he exclaimed, "Why, this Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage."

Thus, whatever harmfulness its opponents try to attribute to coffee, the fact remains (if we are to credit the story) that it has been baptized and proclaimed unharmful, and a "truly Christian beverage," by his holiness the pope.

The Venetians had further knowledge of coffee in 1585, when Gianfrancesco Morosini, city magistrate at Constantinople, reported to the Senate that the Turks "drink a black water as hot as they can suffer it, which is the infusion of a bean called _cavee_, which is said to possess the virtue of stimulating mankind."

Dr. A. Couguet, in an Italian review, a.s.serts that Europe's first cup of coffee was sipped in Venice, toward the close of the sixteenth century.

He is of the opinion that the first berries were imported by Mocengio, who was called the _pevere_, because he made a huge fortune trading in spices and other specialties of the Orient.

In 1615 Pierre (Pietro) Delia Valle (1586-1652), the well known Italian traveler and author of _Travels in India and Persia_, wrote a letter from Constantinople to his friend Mario Schipano at Venice:

The Turks have a drink of black color, which during the summer is very cooling, whereas in the winter it heats and warms the body, remaining always the same beverage and not changing its substance.

They swallow it hot as it comes from the fire and they drink it in long draughts, not at dinner time, but as a kind of dainty and sipped slowly while talking with one's friends. One cannot find any meetings among them where they drink it not.... With this drink, which they call _cahue_, they divert themselves in their conversations.... It is made with the grain or fruit of a certain tree called _cahue_.... When I return I will bring some with me and I will impart the knowledge to the Italians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: n.o.bILITY IN AN EARLY VENETIAN CAFFe

From the Grevembroch collection in the Museo Civico]

Della Valle's countrymen, however, were in a fair way to become well acquainted with the beverage, for already (1615) it had been introduced into Venice. At first it was used largely for medicinal purposes; and high prices were charged for it. Vesling says of its use in Europe as a medicine, "the first step it made from the cabinets of the curious, as an exotic seed, being into the apothecaries' shops as a drug."

The first coffee house in Italy is said to have been opened in 1645, but convincing confirmation is lacking. In the beginning, the beverage was sold with other drinks by lemonade-venders. The Italian word _aquacedratajo_ means one who sells lemonade and similar refreshments; also one who sells coffee, chocolate, liquor, etc. Jardin says the beverage was in general use throughout Italy in 1645. It is certain, however, that a coffee shop was opened in Venice in 1683 under the _Procuratie Nuove_. The famous Caffe Florian was opened in Venice by Floriono Francesconi in 1720.

The first authoritative treatise devoted to coffee only appeared in 1671. It was written in Latin by Antoine Faustus Nairon (1635-1707), Maronite professor of the Chaldean and Syrian languages in the College of Rome.

During the latter part of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, the coffee house made great progress in Italy. It is interesting to note that this first European adaptation of the Oriental coffee house was known as a _caffe_. The double _f_ is retained by the Italians to this day, and by some writers is thought to have been taken from _coffea_, without the double _f_ being lost, as in the case of the French and some other Continental forms.

To Italy, then, belongs the honor of having given to the Western world the real coffee house, although the French and Austrians greatly improved upon it. It was not long after its beginning that nearly every shop on the Piazza di San Marco in Venice was a _caffe_[41]. Near the Piazza was the Caffe della Ponte dell' Angelo, where in 1792 died the dog Tabacchio, celebrated by Vincenzo Formaleoni in a satirical eulogy that is a parody of the oration of Ubaldo Bregolini upon the death of Angelo Emo.

In the Caffe della Spaderia, kept by Marco Ancilloto, some radicals proposed to open a reading-room to encourage the spread of liberal ideas. The inquisitors sent a foot-soldier to notify the proprietor that he should inform the first person entering the room that he was to present himself before their tribunal. The idea was thereupon abandoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOLDONI IN A VENETIAN CAFFe

From a painting by P. Longhi]

Among other celebrated coffee houses was the one called Menegazzo, from the name of the rotund proprietor, Menico. This place was much frequented by men of letters; and heated discussions were common there between Angelo Maria Barbaro, Lorenzo da Ponte, and others of their time.

The coffee house gradually became the common resort of all cla.s.ses. In the mornings came the merchants, lawyers, physicians, brokers, workers, and wandering venders; in the afternoons, and until the late hours of the nights, the leisure cla.s.ses, including the ladies.

For the most part, the rooms of the first Italian _caffe_ were low, simple, unadorned, without windows, and only poorly illuminated by tremulous and uncertain lights. Within them, however, joyous throngs pa.s.sed to and fro, clad in varicolored garments, men and women chatting in groups here and there, and always above the buzz there were to be heard such choice bits of scandal as made worthwhile a visit to the coffee house. Smaller rooms were devoted to gaming.

In the "little square" described by Goldoni[42] in his comedy _The Coffee House_, where the combined barber-shop and gambling house was located, Don Marzio, that marvelous type of slanderous old romancer, is shown as one typical of the period, for Goldoni was a satirist. The other characters of the play were also drawn from the types then to be seen every day in the coffee houses on the Piazza.

In the square of St. Mark's, in the eighteenth century, under the _Procuratie Vecchie_, were the _caffe_ Re di Francia, Abbondanza, Pitt, l'eroe, Regina d'Ungheria, Orfeo, Redentore, Coraggio-Speranza, Arco Celeste, and Quadri. The last-named was opened in 1775 by Giorgio Quadri of Corfu, who served genuine Turkish coffee for the first time in Venice.

Under the _Procuratie Nuove_ were to be found the _caffe_ Angelo Custode, Duca di Toscana, Buon genio-Doge, Imperatore Imperatrice della Russia, Tamerlano, Fontane di Diana, Dame Venete, Aurora Piante d'oro, Arabo-Piastrelle, Pace, Venezia trionfante, and Florian.