All About Coffee - William H. Ukers (best novel books to read .TXT) 📗
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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.
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.
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.
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
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