A GOOD CUP OF COFFEE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I notice with interest an article on the necessity of making good old London and England more attractive to Americans. It was an admirable and suggestive article, too. For while to all intelligent Americans of the old British stock, it is enough in itself to see, and to revisit again, the dear and beautiful Motherland and its grand old capital, yet unfor- tunately there are tens of thousands of rich and cultivated and uncultivated Americans who need more stimulating material " allurements " in order to attract, an I hold, them for any considerable time.
What Americans want, for the most part, is what they call
" a good time," or lots of excitement, with " baths " and "good coffee" as a matter of course ! Now it is a deplorable fact that it is not an easy matter for the average American to get a good cup of coffee in England, and le tst of all in London ! At all events, I found this so until I became initiated ; for, of course, there are hotels and place; where one can get good coffee ; but really, one has to be well advised. And yet I was born in England, and I well re- member what good coffee I had in my boyhood days, in my Leicestershire home.
My first disappointment was in London, where I ordered coffee at my hotel, not only with fond anticipations but with the greatest confidence. It was in the ' if I remember aright, where everything else was delightful—but the coffee simply dreadful I And yet, was not London once famous for its " coffee houses," and its literati so addicted to the coffee habit ? To be sure, it was. Well, then, how is it that London should have so " retrograded " in this respect ? Is it that the whole English nature has become meta- morphosed ? Or is it that the public " taste " has declined ? One would naturally suppose that all cultured minds and tastes would require positively good coffee, as well as good tea !
If only English public caterers were half as careful to provide good coffee as they are vigilant and successful in providing excellent tea, it would be a God-send to American visitors.
For while it is perfectly true that there are millions of Americans who gulp down their " corfee " as they would a glass of water or milk, it is just as true that nearly all Americans profess a taste—and preference—for coffee ; and however actually destitute of either taste or culture they may be, they invariably require " coffee," and draw the line at what they specially denounce as " English coffee." Yes, and the more insistent and discriminating among them too often hurry to get away from London, and on to Paris, very much on that account. Hence this letter. Perhaps it may start at least some few public " caterers and heads of better class hotels " thinking."—I am, Sir, &c., Jonx Oxaxoox.
1539, L. St., N.W., Washington, D.C. • P.S.— Possibly it may occur to some minds that it behoves any such " critic " to state frankly just what he understarols, or means, by " good coffee" ! Very well, then : it is coffee made from good berries, with a liberal quantum of cream. The result is a wholesome stimulant and an amber-coloured fluid—at once tasteful and exhilarating ; or else, of the nature of the French café au tail ; or, again, the French " drip-coffee." As it is, or was, the coffee 1 got in London was as muddy and almost as nauseous as ditch-water.
J. 0.
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