COFFEE-TAVERNS.
SOME hundred years or more ago, Johnson, at Chapel House, "expatiated" to Boswell " on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having in any perfection the tavern life." His panegyric was not, as some might perhaps suppose, in praise of wine—we believe, indeed, that the Doctor at that time drank water only—nor, stranger still in one who spoke so bitterly of a badly kept table, did he hint that in no private house could he be so secure of cookery he approved. He dwelt rather on the independence of the place, the alacrity of the attendance, the oblivion of care and freedom from solicitude, which he himself enjoyed as ho entered the tavern door. " There is nothing," he concluded, " which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness has been produced as by a good tavern or inn."
Allowance made for Johnson's whimsical enthusiasm, there was real truth in his words. If we fail to see this at first, it is due to the change which a century has wrought in manners, and for that matter, in taverns also. Few private houses of the middle-class possessed in the eighteenth century the appliances of comfort or luxury which are common now. Few women were then educated enough to share in conversation on art, or literature, or politics ; and fewer still, perhaps, were bold enough to court the name which such education usually conferred. A formal affectation still lingered in some degree about the social intercourse of private houses, and reflected a peculiar charm on the independ- ence of the tavern. On the other hand, the tavern itself was still in.repute. The successor of the seventeenth century coffee- house, it inherited something of the dignity which attached to Will's or Garraway's, when coffee-houses were, as Macaulay has described them, the Londoner's home,—institutions of social, literary, and scarcely less political importance, worthy to be compared with the newspapers of to-day, as a kind of Fourth Estate of the Realm. Since those days, for the middle-class at least, the home has risen in comfort and in popular esteem as surely as the tavern has declined. Not so for the class below. Of the English working-man, strange as it may seem, the words of Johnson are almost literally true,—he has no private house at which he can enjoy himself so well as at a tavern or inn.
Now, this is an important point to grasp, and not the less because many people seem to confound the natural and innocent feeling which Johnson expressed on behalf of the middle-class of his time, and which the lower classes re-echo now, with a passion for intemperance and dissipation. It is a mistake to suppose that it is the taste for strong drink which first draws men to the public- house. Rather it is the attraction of cheerfulness and light, the love of warmth, the longing for society, the aspiration to be free, if but for a little while, from the pressure of domestic care and daily worry. These simple wants find too seldom a wholesome satisfaction now. Here and there, a country inn to some extent preserves the tradition of the past, leaving its guests to spend their evening over a single glass, if they please ; but in the greater part even of country inns, and in the beer-houses and gin-palaces of the towns, the repeated order is the condition of a continued welcome. The inhospitable, seatless bar itself suggests the host's intention that his customers shall drink, pay, and begone, or drink and pay again.
Some people indeed there are—Cardinal Manning, for instance, is one—who, holding that in the improvement of the workman's home is to be found the true satisfaction of his wants, deprecate the introduction of new places of entertainment abroad. With this view we venture to disagree, believing that the improve- ment of the man must precede the permanent improvement of his dwelling, and that no great improvement of the man is pos- sible while his chief places of recreation are unwholesome and demoralising.
It is, then, because we are persuaded of the need of some house of public entertainment which shall be to the indus- trial classes now what the Tavern was to the middle-class a century ago, that we are interested in watching the new Coffee-tavern movement which has been making itself heard during the last few months ; for the coffee-tavern claims to find its logical justification in this very want we have been discussing. Historically, indeed, the motives which have led to the foundation of the several institutions which fall under the same common name have been various. Religious zeal, charity, benevolence, have done their part. But reason and experience have alike shown that for permanent success reliance must be placed on a purely business-like satisfaction of a popular demand. The well-meant efforts that graft on this simple stock a mis-
sionary work do not merely fail financially themselves, but pre- judice other undertakings by their failure. Again and again the plan has been tried of using physical comfort as a bait to tempt men to direct spiritual instruction, but in vain. These children of charitable patronage never become emancipated, and after depending awhile for their existence on the benevolence which gave them birth, presently die of atrophy. It is, we repeat, an interesting fact that this is now clearly seen, and that men of an indisputable religious bent, such as Lord Shaftesbury, advocate the severance of the tavern as a business undertaking from all other and remoter aims, That the coffee-tavern does find its mission in the world and supply a social want seems to us fairly proved by facts. It is but some seventeen years since good Josiah Hunt placed his two cocoa-houses at either end of Almonbury Tunnel, and the kindly Friends were led by his success to open their little shops at Bristol. Since then, and especially within the last two years, the movement has grown, till now there is scarcely a considerable town in England but has its own coffee tavern or cocoa-house. There are no less than twenty-four in Liverpool alone, which take gross receipts of £36,000 a year, and pay largo profits to the Company that founded them. Here in London the movement is fairly active, and half-a-dozen flourishing taverns have been opened in as many months.
There is, indeed, one point in which these institutions are less catholic than the old coffee-house or tavern, viz., that no spirits, wine, or beer is bought or sold in them. Whether this is a flaw in them or not is, we believe, an open question. Their advocates maintain that the hybrid trade has been proved, and found wanting. One plea we may at least admit,—viz., that a shop- keeper is free to choose what goods he will and what he will not sell, and that while his shop is filled with customers, it is pre- mature to condemn his choice.
A few words, in conclusion, on the tendencies of this move- ment as a reforming influence on society. If, as seems well established, social evils can only be indirectly treated, and intem- perance is such an evil, then sumptuary laws, licensing Acts, per- missive Bills, the temperance pledge, and all the various remedies proposed or tried for its removal, have been directed to control or crush impulses far too deep in human nature to patiently endure the interference. All know the consequence of such control, when for the few years of the Commonwealth it was more or less effec- tually imposed. Now, the movement we have been considering claims to act indirectly, and therefore with better chances of suc- cess. In lieu of raising futile obstacles to arrest the natural stream, so deeply and, as we believe, so purely sprung, it seeks to divert its current before it meets with the corrupting influence, to utilise its abundant flood, whose powers of desolation are known so well, for the purpose of spreading beauty and fertility around. Whether the claim is well and wisely founded, time will show.
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