CupScout

_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 Caffè 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 Marseilles 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
passage 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 shells 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 pass 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 substitute this hellish 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.

[Illustration: 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, asserts 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.

[Illustration: NOBILITY IN AN EARLY VENETIAN CAFFÈ

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 Caffè 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 _caffè_. 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 _caffè_[41]. Near the
Piazza was the Caffè 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 Caffè 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.

[Illustration: GOLDONI IN A VENETIAN CAFFÈ

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 classes. 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 classes, including the ladies.

For the most part, the rooms of the first Italian _caffè_ were low,
simple, unadorned, without windows, and only poorly illuminated by
tremulous and uncertain lights. Within them, however, joyous throngs
passed 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 _caffè_ 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 _caffè_ 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.

Probably no coffee house in Europe has acquired so world-wide a
celebrity as that kept by Florian, the friend of Canova the sculptor,
and the trusted agent and acquaintance of hundreds of persons in and out
of the city, who found him a mine of social information and a convenient
city directory. Persons leaving Venice left their cards and itineraries
with him; and new-comers inquired at Florian’s for tidings of those whom
they wished to see. “He long concentrated in himself a knowledge more
varied and multifarious than that possessed by any individual before or
since,” says Hazlitt[43], who has given us this delightful pen picture
of _caffè_ life in Venice in the eighteenth century:

Venetian coffee was said to surpass all others, and the article
placed before his visitors by Florian was the best in Venice. Of
some of the establishments as they then existed, Molmenti has
supplied us with illustrations, in one of which Goldoni the
dramatist is represented as a visitor, and a female mendicant is
soliciting alms.

So cordial was the esteem of the great sculptor Canova for him,
that when Florian was overtaken by gout, he made a model of his
leg, that the poor fellow might be spared the anguish of fitting
himself with boots. The friendship had begun when Canova was
entering on his career, and he never forgot the substantial
services which had been rendered to him in the hour of need.

In later days, the Caffè Florian was under the superintendence of a
female chef, and the waitresses used, in the case of certain
visitors, to fasten a flower in the button-hole, perhaps allusively
to the name. In the Piazza itself girls would do the same thing. A
good deal of hospitality is, and has ever been, dispensed at Venice
in the cafés and restaurants, which do service for the domestic
hearth.

There were many other establishments devoted, more especially in
the latest period of Venetian independence, to the requirements of
those who desired such resorts for purposes of conversation and
gossip. These houses were frequented by various classes of
patrons–the patrician, the politician, the soldier, the artist,
the old and the young–all had their special haunts where the
company and the tariff were in accordance with the guests. The
upper circles of male society–all above the actually
poor–gravitated hither to a man.

For the Venetian of all ranks the coffee house was almost the last
place visited on departure from the city, and the first visited on
his return. His domicile was the residence of his wife and the
repository of his possessions; but only on exceptional occasions
was it the scene of domestic hospitality, and rare were the
instances when the husband and wife might be seen abroad together,
and when the former would invite the lady to enter a café or a
confectioner’s shop to partake of an ice.

[Illustration: FLORIAN'S FAMOUS CAFFÈ IN THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO,
VENICE, NINETEENTH CENTURY]

The Caffè Florian has undergone many changes, but it still survives as
one of the favorite _caffè_ in the Piazza San Marco.

By 1775 coffee-house history had begun to repeat itself in Venice.
Charges of immorality, vice, and corruption, were preferred against the
_caffè_; and the Council of Ten in 1775, and again in 1776, directed the
Inquisitors of State to eradicate these “social cankers.” However, they
survived all attempts of the reformers to suppress them.

The Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua was another of the early Italian coffee
houses that became famous. Antonio Pedrocchi (1776-1852) was a
lemonade-vender who, in the hope of attracting the gay youth, the
students of his time, bought an old house with the idea of converting
the ground floor into a series of attractive rooms. He put all his ready
money and all he could borrow into the venture, only to find there were
no cellars, indispensable for making ices and beverages on the premises,
and that the walls and floors were so old that they crumbled when
repairs were started.

He was in despair; but, nothing daunted, he decided to have a cellar
dug. What was his surprise to find the house was built over the vault
of an old church, and that the vault contained considerable treasure.
The lucky proprietor found himself free to continue his trade of
lemonade-vender and coffee-seller, or to live a life of ease. Being a
wise man, he adhered to his original plan; and soon his luxurious rooms
became the favorite rendezvous for the smart set of his day. In this
period lemonade and coffee frequently went together. The Caffè Pedrocchi
is considered one of the finest pieces of architecture erected in Italy
in the nineteenth century. It was begun in 1816, opened in 1831, and
completed in 1842.

Coffee houses were early established in other Italian cities,
particularly in Rome, Florence, and Genoa.

In 1764, _Il Caffè_, a purely philosophical and literary periodical,
made its appearance in Milan, being founded by Count Pietro Verri
(1728-97). Its chief editor was Cesare Beccaria. Its object was to
counteract the influence and superficiality of the Arcadians. It
acquired its title from the fact that Count Verri and his friends were
wont to meet at a coffee house in Milan kept by a Greek named Demetrio.
It lived only two years.

Other periodicals of the same name appeared at later periods.