What was masculine about the public sphere? Gender and the coffeehouse milieu in post-restoration England

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 51, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 127-157

  Cowan, Brian ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CATERING SERVICE; COMMERCIAL PHENOMENA; DRINKING BEHAVIOR; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SANITATION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIOECONOMICS; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

DRINKING BEHAVIOR; ENGLAND; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; OWNERSHIP; PUBLIC FACILITIES; RESTAURANTS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WOMEN; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 0344823837     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/2001.51.127     Document Type: Article

References (249)

1. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the 11th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (Rochester, New York) and seminar audiences at the Universities of Harvard, Utah, Leeds and London, to whom I am grateful for their comments and criticism.
2. Steven Pincus points to the Restoration as the key date in England, '"Coffee Politicians Does Create": Coffeehouses and Restoration Political Culture', Journal of Modern History 67, Dec. 1995, pp. 807-34;
3. but the concept is used for much earlier periods in David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics 1627-1660, Cambridge University Press, 1999,
4. and Peter Lake, 'Puritans, Papists, and Players: Was There a "Public Sphere" in Elizabethan England?', unpublished MS, 1999. I am grateful to Professor Lake for allowing me to read this essay in advance of publication.
5. Diane Willen, 'Women in the Public Sphere in Early Modern England: the Case of the Urban Working Poor', Sixteenth Century Journal 19: 4, 1988, pp. 559-75;
6. Alexandra Halasz, The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 1997;
7. David Zaret, 'Petitions and the "Invention" of Public Opinion in the English Revolution', American Journal of Sociology 101: 6, 1996, pp. 1,497-555;
8. and his Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, Princeton University Press, 2000.
9. Aytoun Ellis, The Penny Universities: a History of the Coffee Houses, Macmillan, London, 1956, p. 88;
10. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, transl. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1989, p. 33;
11. Craig Calhoun, 'Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere', in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1992, p. 43 n. 18;
12. J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: the Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction, Norton, New York, 1990, p. 378, n. 22;
13. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783, Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 101;
14. G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 92;
15. and Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 47.
16. This is most forcefully expressed in Pincus, '"Coffee Politicians Does Create"'; and Helen Berry, '"Nice and Curious Questions": Coffee Houses and the Representation of Women', in John Dunton's Athenian Mercury', Seventeenth Century 12: 2, autumn 1997: pp. 257-76;
17. but see also Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 112
18. and Robert Shoemaker, Gender in English Society 1650-1850, Longman, London, 1998, pp. 277-8.
19. Lois Schwoerer, 'Women's Public Political Voice in England: 1640-1740', in Women Writers and the Early Modern English Political Tradition, ed. Hilda Smith, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 62;
20. compare C. John Sommerville, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, p. 77.
21. Compare E. J. Clery, 'Women, Publicity, and the Coffee-House Myth', Women: a Cultural Review 2: 2, 1991, pp. 168-77.
22. See Barbara Hanawalt, 'At the Margins of Women's Space in Medieval Europe', in her 'Of Good and Ill Repute': Gender and Social Control in Medieval England, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998, pp. 70-87;
23. as well as Robert C. Davis, 'The Geography of Gender in the Renaissance', in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. Judith Brown and Robert C. Davis, Longman, London, 1998, pp. 19-38.
24. See Tony Claydon, 'Sermons and the Public Sphere', in The English Sermon Revised, ed. Peter McCullough and Lori Ann Ferrell, Manchester University Press, 1999.
25. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffenlichkeit, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt and Neuwied, 1962;
26. and his L'espace public: archéologie de la publicité comme dimension constitutive de la société bourgeoise, transl. Marc B. de Launay, Payot, Paris, 1978;
27. and Structural Transformation. Important reviews of the reception of Habermas by early modern historians include: Robert Darnton, 'An Enlightened Revolution?', New York Review of Books, 24 Oct. 1991;
28. Dena Goodman, 'Public Sphere and Private Life: toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime', History and Theory 31, 1992, pp. 1-20;
29. the essays in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Calhoun;
30. and John Brewer, 'This, That, and the Other: Public, Social, and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in Shifting the Boundaries, ed. Dario Castiglione and Lesley Sharpe, University of Exeter Press, 1995.
31. I am grateful to Martin Jay for discussing Habermas's relationship with his first work; see also Habermas, 'Further Reflections on the Public Sphere', in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Calhoun, pp. 421-61.
32. Habermas, Structural Transformation, pp. 29-30;
33. and compare his Strukturwandel der Öffenlichkeit, p. 45.
34. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 55-95,
35. and David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980, pp. 260-7, 330-50, are both useful guides to Habermas's brand of critical theory.
36. Among the Marxisants, the most prominent has been Colin Jones, 'Bourgeois Revolution Revivified: 1789 and Social Change', in Rewriting the French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 69-118;
37. and 'The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisement, the Bourgeois Public Sphere, and the Origins of the French Revolution', American Historical Review 101: 1, Feb. 1996, pp. 13-40.
38. The revisionist appropriation of Habermas in French historiography is most apparent in Keith Michael Baker, 'Public Opinion as Political Invention', in his Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 167-99, 337-45;
39. 'Defining the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France: Variations on a Theme by Habermas', in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Calhoun, pp. 181-211;
40. and Mona Ozouf, 'Public Opinion at the End of the Old Regime', Journal of Modern History 60 (suppl.), 1988, pp. S1-S21.
41. See especially: Peter Lake, 'Review Article', Huntingdon Library Quarterly 57: 2, 1994, pp. 167-97;
42. Lake, 'Puritans, Papists, and Players';
43. and Pincus, '"Coffee Politicians Does Create"'.
44. Habermas, Structural Transformation, p. 30;
45. and compare the lucid explication in Goodman, 'Public Sphere and Private Life', pp. 4-6.
46. Philipe Ariès, 'Introduction', to A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier; transl. Arthur Goldhammer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1989, p. 9;
47. compare Goodman, 'Public Sphere and Private Life', pp. 8-12.
48. Roger Chartier, 'Introduction', in A History of Private Life, ed. Chartier, pp. 15-19;
49. Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane, Duke University Press, Durham NC, 1991, pp. 20-37, and compare pp. 184-5;
50. and Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997, pp. 79-80, and compare pp. 107-43.
51. Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: the Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993, p. 13.
52. Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY, 1988, p. 7.
53. Goodman, 'Public Sphere and Private Life', pp. 14-20;
54. Baker, 'Defining the Public Sphere', pp. 201-2;
55. Daniel Gordon, 'Philosophy, Sociology, and Gender in the Enlightenment Conception of Public Opinion', French Historical Studies 17: 4, fall 1992, pp. 899-901;
56. and compare the more tempered criticisms of Sarah Maza, 'Women, the Bourgeoisie, and the Public Sphere: Response to Daniel Gorden and David Bell', French Historical Studies 17: 4, fall 1992, pp. 942-56.
57. For a review and powerful critique of this literature, see Amanda Vickery, 'Golden Age to Separate Spheres? a Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History', Historical Journal 36: 2, 1993, pp. 383-414;
58. and compare Shoemaker, Gender in English Society.
59. Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: the Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical, Routledge, London, 1989, p. 1;
60. and compare Lawrence Klein, 'Gender, Conversation, and the Public Sphere', in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices, ed. Judith Still and Michael Worton, Manchester University Press, 1993, pp. 101-2.
61. Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678-1730, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 125. (Walpolean England refers to the years of Whig ascendancy, c. 1720-42.)
62. McDowell, Women of Grub Street, pp. 9-10.
63. McDowell, Women of Grub Street, p. 32.
64. McDowell, Women of Grub Street, pp. 9-10; 285-7 (at 289).
65. Pincus, '"Coffee Politicians Does Create"', p. 811.
66. Compare the similar conclusions in Helen Berry, '"Nice and Curious Questions"'.
67. Klein, 'Gender, Conversation, and the Public Sphere';
68. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: a Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY, 1994;
69. Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789, Princeton University Press, 1994.
70. Bernard Capp, 'Separate Domains? Women and Authority in Early Modern England', in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox, and Steve Hindle, Macmillan, London, 1996, p. 139;
71. Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England, Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1998, p. 228.
72. For a study of eighteenth-century urban life which emphasizes women's participation, see Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660-1770, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.
73. Compare here the observations and attempts to define a set of distinct public 'spheres' in Lawrence Klein, 'Gender and the Public/Private Distinction in the Eighteenth Century: Some Questions about Evidence and Analytic Procedure', Eighteenth-Century Studies 29: 1, fall 1995, pp. 97-109.
74. Penelope J. Corfield, 'Walking the City Streets: the Urban Odyssey in Eighteenth-Century England', Journal of Urban History 16:2, Feb. 1990, pp. 132-74;
75. and Ariette Farge, Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, transl. Rosemary Morris (1992), Penn State Press reprint, University Park PA, 1994.
76. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 180-1, 413-5;
77. McDowell, Women of Grub Street;
78. and Catherine Gallagher, Nobody's Story: the Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670-1820, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, esp. chaps 1-2 on Aphra Behn;
79. but see also Harold Love, The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1998, pp. 54-8, for the continuing importance of manuscript publication as a refuge for female authors.
80. Donna Andrew, 'Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780', Historical Journal 39: 2, 1996, pp. 405-23;
81. Mary Thale, 'Women in London Debating Societies in 1780', Gender and History 7: 1, 1995, pp. 5-24.
82. For studies which emphasize the reciprocal influence of French and English conceptions of each other's respective Enlightened culture, see Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty
83. and Lawrence Klein, 'The Figure of France: the Politics of Sociability in England, 1660-1715', Yale French Studies 92, 1997, pp. 30-45.
84. For some important fissures in the discourse of politeness, see Brian Cowan, 'Reasonable Ecstasies: Shaftesbury and the Languages of Libertinism', Journal of British Studies 37: 2, April 1998, pp. 111-38.
85. For an introduction to both of these bodies of theory, see the essays in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, ed. James Tully, Princeton University Press, 1988.
86. Compare Klein, 'Gender and the Public/Private Distinction', p. 101, which relies on the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens.
87. This is also the premise upon which the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu is built, as in his classic Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
88. The positive valence of this portrayal of coffeehouse society is called into question however by the presence on the walls of a paper declaring 'Here is right lyes' along with others which bear the names of the Grub-street writers D'Urfey and Fletcher. Although the words are not clear in the figure reproduced here, they are clearly visible in the version held by the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings. Compare the similar print of a coffeehouse interior in Bodleian Library [Bod], Douce Prints W.1.2. (203), and reproduced in Klein, 'Coffeehouse Civility', p. 34.
89. The Spectator no. 49, 26 April 1711;
90. in The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, five vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965, vol. 1, p. 208.
91. Compare The Tatler no. 10, 3 May 1709;
92. in The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond, three vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987, vol. 1, p. 89.
93. The masculine (public) coffeehouse was often contrasted with the feminine (domestic) tea table, as in Daniel Defoe, The Compleat English Tradesman (1726), Alan Sutton reprint, Gloucester, 1987, pp. 133-4.
94. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady - , 1 April [1717], Adrianople in The Complete Letters of Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband, three vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965, vol. 1, p. 314;
95. for a ladies' coffeehouse in Bath, see Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, ed. Lewis M. Knapp, with revisions by Paul-Gabriel Boucé (1771), Oxford University Press reprint, 1984, p. 40 (quoted);
96. compare Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter, pp. 258, 342 n. 82.
97. Spectator no. 10, 12 Mar. 1711;
98. Spectator in ed. Bond, vol. 1, p. 44;
99. and compare Bond, 'Introduction', pp. xxv-xxvii, lxxxiii.
100. For a detailed study of the discursive variety of 'effeminacy', see Philip Carter, 'Mollies, Fops, and Men of Feeling: Aspects of Male Effeminacy and Masculinity in Britain, c. 1700-1780', D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1995;
101. and compare Kathleen Wilson, 'Citizenship, Empire, and Modernity in the English Provinces, c. 1720-90', Eighteenth-Century Studies 29: 1, 1995, pp. 76-8;
102. Cowan, 'Reasonable Ecstasies';
103. and George E. Haggerty, Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century, Columbia University Press, New York, 1999, esp. pp. 44-80.
104. [Abel Boyer], The English Theophrastus: Or the Manners of the Age, being the Modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City (1702), 3rd edn, Bernard Lintott, London, 1708, p. 53;
105. compare the coffeehouse anecdote in George Coleman, The Circle of Anecdote and Wit: to which is added, a choice selection of toasts and sentiments, J. Bumpus, London, 1821, p. 19.
106. Compare here Gordon, 'Philosophy, Sociology, and Gender', p. 903 (quoted).
107. Philip Carter, 'Mollies, Fops, and Men of Feeling', p. 24;
108. and compare his 'Men About Town: Representations of Foppery and Masculinity in Early Eighteenth-Century Urban Society', in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Barker and Chalus, p. 57.
109. See for instance the doggerel verse on 'The Compleat Fop' (1685) in Bod., MS Firth c.15, pp. 181-2; and National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, MS D25.F38, pp. 618-9;
110. Twelve Ingenious Characters: Or, Pleasant Descriptions, of the Properties of Sundry Persons and Things, S. Norris, London, 1680, pp. 30-6;
111. and The Character of the Beaux, publisher unknown, London, 1696.
112. Tatler no. 26, 9 June 1709;
113. Tatler in ed. Bond, vol. 1, pp. 200, 198-200.
114. Compare Edward Ward, The History of the London Clubs: Or, the Citizens' Pastime, J. Dutten, London, 1709, pp. 28-9
115. (also reprint in The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator, ed. Erin Mackie, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998, pp. 549-50); and see the poems, 'Jenny Cromwell's complaint against sodomy 1692/3' (which rails against the sodomite's 'bragging round the Chocolate House'), and 'The Womens Complaint to Venus', both in British Library [BL], Harley MS 7315, fos. 224v, 285r.
116. The Female Tatler no. 3, 11-13 July 1709;
117. in The Female Tatler, ed. Fidelis Morgan, Dent, London, 1992, pp. 5-6.
118. [Boyer], The English Theophrastus, pp. 55-6;
119. compare Anon., An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696), Source Book Press reprint, New York, 1970, p. 72 (which seems to have provided the template upon which Boyer elaborated);
120. and Anon., The Country Gentleman's Vade Mecum: Or his Companion for the Town, John Harris, London, 1699, p. 31;
121. [Edward Ward], The London Spy Compleat, 4th edn, J. How, London, 1709, pp. 144-5, 201-5;
122. The Female Tatler no. 21, 22-4 Aug. 1709,
123. and The Female Tatler no. 34, 21-3 Sept. 1709, in ed. Morgan, p. 49, p. 78.
124. See Carter, 'Men About Town', pp. 40-1; and Oxford English Dictionary (OED), under 'fop'.
125. Defoe, Compleat English Tradesman (1726), two vols, (1745), Burt Franklin reprint, New York, 1970, vol. 2, p. 231.
126. See, for example, the third earl of Shaftesbury's critique of court culture, discussed at length in Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, pp. 175-94;
127. and compare A view of Paris, and places adjoining, John Nutt, London, 1701, p. 18.
128. 'To Will's Coffeehouse' (1691), in BL, Harley MS 7317, fo. 126v, and in BL, Harley MS 7319, fo. 366r.
129. Compare Anon., An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, p. 79.
130. For criticisms of the beaus at Tom's Coffeehouse, see: The Humours and Conversations of the Town, p. 59;
131. [Marie Catherine D'Aulnoy], Countess of Dunois, Memoirs of the Court of England: In the Reign of King Charles II. Containing the amours of that prince, the Duke of Monmouth, Earl of Argyle. - of Buckingham, - of A - n Earl of Oxford - Lord Grey, andc. - St. Albans, two parts, J. Woodward, London, 1708, pt 2, p. 42 [repeated in new pagination];
132. and The Female Tatler, no. 26, 2-5 Sept. 1709, in ed. Morgan, p. 64.
133. Anon., The Character of a Coffee-House with the Symptomes of a Town-Wit, Johnathan Edwin, London, 1673, p. 5. Note the use of 'effeminated' here as a synonym for 'enervated'.
134. T. O., The True Character of a Town Beau, Randal Taylor, London, 1692, p. 2;
135. also repeated verbatim in the following: [Ez. Symson], A Farther Essay Relating to the Female Sex, A. Roper, London, 1696, pp. 113-14;
136. The Character of a Town-Gallant: Exposing the Extravagant Fopperies of Some Vain Self-Conceited Pretenders to Gentility, and Good Breeding, W.L., London, 1675, p. 7; and in its 2nd edn [printed for Rowland Reynolds in the Strand, London, 1680], p. 4.
137. Compare News from Covent-Garden or the Town Gallants Vindication, being the debates and result of a famous club of wits, and men of humours and intrigues, assembled for the damning of the late Character, J. T., London, 1675.
138. On Hobbism as a 'coffeehouse philosophy', see Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge University Press, 1962, p. 137,
139. and Steve Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 292-3.
140. Richard Bentley to Edward Bernard, [n.d., but 28 May '1691'], in Bod. MS Smith 45, p. 147; compare Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, Allen and Unwin, London, 1981, p. 89;
141. James R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe: Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 84;
142. Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 164;
143. and John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1976, pp. 30, 41, 66, 175.
144. Remarques on the Humours and Conversations of the Town, Allen Banks, London, 1673, p. 69.
145. Thomas Hunt to Matthew Henry, 28 June 1692, in Bod. MS Eng. Letters e.29, fo. 209r.
146. Robert Boyle, 'The Christian Virtuoso', in Boyle, Works, vol. 5, p. 515.
147. Michael Hunter, 'Science and Heterodoxy: an Early Modern Problem Reconsidered', in his Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in the late Seventeenth Century Britain, Boydell, Woodbridge, 1995, p. 233,
148. and see Hunter's 'The Decline of Magic Reconsidered', Unpublished typescript, 1999.
149. One of the most important censures of this culture of wit was Joseph Glanville, A Whip for the Droll, Fidler to the Atheist (1668) in Glanville's, A Blow at Modern Sadducism in Some Philosophical Considerations About Witchcraft . . ., 4th edn, E. Cotes, London, 1668, pp. 159-83.
150. [Richard Flecknoe], A Treatise of the Sports of Wit, Simon Neals, London, 1675, [sig. A3v].
151. Positive valorizations of wit in Augustan culture may be distilled from D. Judson Milburn, The Age of Wit 1650-1750, Macmillan, New York, 1976;
152. and Norman Pearson, Society Sketches in the Eighteenth Century, E. Arnold, London, 1911, pp. 86-111.
153. Astute comments on the relations between coffeehouse culture and freethought may be found in Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: the Church of England and its Enemies 1660-1730, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 7 (esp. n. 24), 187;
154. and compare Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720, Harvester, Hassocks, Sussex, 1976, p. 226;
155. and Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, p. 151.
156. Compare Stephen Copley, 'Commerce, Conversation, and Politeness', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 18, 1995, p. 68.
157. Spectator no. 87, 9 June 1711; in
158. Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 1, p. 371.
159. Compare: The Case Between the Proprietors of News-Papers, and the Coffee-Men of London and Westminster, Fairly Stated [1728], R. Walker, London, pp. 12-13.
160. Spectator no. 155, 28 Aug. 1711;
161. inSpectator ed. Bond, vol. 2, p. 107.
162. Enough original letters to the Spectator survive to indicate that they were genuine. For some transcriptions from manuscript, see Richmond P. Bond (ed.), New Letters to the Tatler and Spectator, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1959.
163. The reformation of male manners proposed by Addison and Steele is the subject of Shawn Lisa Maurer, Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the Eighteenth-Century English Periodical, Stanford University Press, 1998.
164. Spectator no. 155, 28 Aug. 1711;
165. in Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 2, p. 107;
166. compare also James Miller, The Coffee-House: a Dramatick Piece, J. Watts, London, 1737, pp. 27-8.
167. On the translation of the centre of London literary life from Will's Coffeehouse to Button's Coffeehouse, see Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison, 2nd edn, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968, pp. 92, 242-4, 281, 315-7;
168. and compare: A Poetical Contest between Toby and a Minor-Poet of B-tt-n's Coffee-House; at a bookseller's shop near Temple Bar. Being an imitation after the new mode of the 3rd Eclogue of Virgil... [1714?], Ferdinando Burleigh, London.
169. For a picture of Button's as a gathering place for prominent Whigs, see The Englishman, ser. 1, no. 36, 26 Dec. [1713];
170. in The Englishman, ed. Rae Blanchard, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955, pp. 144-8.
171. For one such accusation, see Alexander Pope's enigmatic comments (April 1739) on Addison and Steele in Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, vol. 1, p. 80,
172. and compare Michael G. Ketcham, Transparent Designs: Reading, Performance, and Form in the Spectator Papers, University of Georgia Press, Athens GA, 1985, p. 202 n. 24.
173. Spectator no. 49, 26 April 1711;
174. in Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 1, pp. 210, 209-10 (quotes).
175. Spectator no. 10, 12 March 1711;
176. in Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 1, p. 44.
177. This statement is a variation on Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 5.4.10,
178. and the reading here should be compared with Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, pp. 36-7, 42;
179. Klein, 'Gender, Conversation, and the Public Sphere', pp. 100, 109-10;
180. and Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, p. 103.
181. Spectator no. 606, 13 Oct. 1714;
182. in Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 5, p. 72;
183. compare Spectator no. 300, 13 Feb. 1712;
184. in Spectator ed. Bond, 3: 73;
185. Spectator no. 376, 12 May 1712;
186. in Spectator ed. Bond, vol. 3, p. 415;
187. and for the tea-table ideal, see Guardian no. 2, 13 March 1713;
188. in The Guardian, ed. John Calhoun Stephens, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1982, p. 46;
189. Guardian no. 16, 30 March 1713;
190. in Guardian ed. Stephens, p. 86.
191. 19 Jan. 1689, in Diary of Thomas Bellingham: an Officer under William III, ed. Anthony Hewitson, George Toulmin and Sons, Preston, 1908, p. 44. The social status of the women mentioned here is unclear.
192. Compare the readings in Pincus, 'Coffee Politicians Does Create', p. 816;
193. and Klein, 'Gender, Conversation, and the Public Sphere', p. 115 n. 29.
194. Martha Lady Giffard: Her Life and Correspondence (1664-1722) A Sequel to the Letters of Dorothy Osborne, ed. Julia G. Longe, George Allen and Sons, London, 1911, pp. 250-1.
195. The letter referred to in this text is not, however, included in the standard edition of Swift's Correspondence, ed. Harold Williams, five vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963-5.
196. Dingley's political interests and affiliations were the subject of Swift's speculation in his Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, two vols, Oxford University Press, 1948: 1 Feb. 1712, vol. 2, pp. 477-8;
197. Journal to Stella, 15 Jan. 1713, vol. 2, p. 603;
198. Journal to Stella, 3 April 1713, vol. 2, p. 652. This is worth noting, for it reminds us that the exclusion of gentlewomen from the coffeehouse norm did not entail their complete absence from the political culture of the day - it merely rechannelled their political influence into other quarters.
199. Hooke's Diary entry for 2 Oct. 1675 (p. 184) reads: 'At Mans. Dind with Mr. Boyle and Lady Ranelaugh'.
200. It is unclear whether or not Hooke visited Man's before dining with Boyle and his sister, or whether they joined him for dinner at the coffeehouse. Given the abundant evidence throughout his diaries for Hooke's peripatetic nature, I am inclined to accept the former reading rather than that offered in Pincus, who claims ('Coffee Politicians Does Create', p. 816) that 'Hooke dined with Robert Boyle and Lady Ranelagh at Man's Coffee House in London'.
201. Pamela Sharpe, 'Dealing with Love: the Ambiguous Independence of the Single Woman in Early Modern England', Gender and History 11: 2, 1999.
202. Richard Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 153;
203. and compare the review of the literature on single women's economic prospects in Sharpe, 'Dealing with Love'.
204. Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, p. 249, although even here compare p. 272, where Borsay states that 'the ladies and gentlemen went their separate ways. . . the latter to the coffeehouses', as a part of the daily routine at Bath.
205. Toland, A New Description of Epsom, with the humours and politicks of the place: in a letter to Eudoxa, (1711) in A Collection of Several Pieces of Air. John Toland, Now first publish'd from his Original Manuscripts: with Some Memoirs of his Life and Writings, two vols, J. Peele, London, 1726, vol. 2, p. 105.
206. See the description of an opera house coffee-room in Fanny Burney, Evelina, ed. Edward A. Bloom (1778), Oxford University Press reprint, 1968, p. 39.
207. John de la Rocque, A Voyage to Arabia the Happy, by way of the Eastern Ocean, and the Streights of the Red Sea: Perform'd by the French for the first time, A.D. 1708, 1709, 1710, G. Strahan, London, 1726, pp. 294-5.
208. London Gazette no. 2527, 27-30 Jan. 1690.
209. BL 1402.g.1 (12); London Gazette no. 2477, 22-5 July 1689;
210. London Gazette no. 2578, 24-8 July 1690;
211. London Gazette no. 2584, 14-18 Aug. 1690;
212. London Gazette no. 2585, 18-21 Aug. 1690;
213. London Gazette no. 2781, 4-7 July 1692.
214. On the resort season, see Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, pp. 141-2.
215. Charles Bertie to the Countess of Rutland, 8 April 1682, in: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part 5: The Manuscripts of his grace, the Duke of Rutland, K.G., preserved at Belvoir Castle, two vols, H.M.S.O., London, 1889, vol. 2, pp. 67-8.
216. In the later eighteenth century, Anna Larpent frequently made 'educational' visits to London art auctions: John Brewer, 'Cultural Consumption in Eighteenth-Century England: the View of the Reader', in Frühe Neuzeit-Frühe Moderne? Forschungen zur Vielschichtigkeit von Übergangsprozessen, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1992, p. 380.
217. For a series of interesting letters documenting the extreme care and financial savvy that the Countess of Rutland brought to the decoration and furnishing of her house in 1670, see Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part 5, vol. 2, pp. 15-18.
218. HL, Stowe MS 26/1-2, 1 Oct. 1697, quoted; 22 April 1701.
219. On the social significance of the domestic visit - and thus the potential for social power it afforded to gentlewomen skilled in the practice of polite sociability - see: Susan Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late Stuart England, Oxford University Press, 1999.
220. Wilson, 'Citizenship, Empire, and Modernity', p. 78;
221. Klein, 'Gender and the Public/Private Distinction', p. 103.
222. McDowell, Women of Grub Street, pp. 60, 84-5, 102-3, and pp. 17 (quoted), 60-1. For an example of one of many attempts to restrain the activities of these hawkers, see London Metropolitan Archives [LMA], MJ/SBB/575 (August 1700), pp. 46-7.
223. James M. B. Alexander, 'The Economic and Social Structure of the City of London', Ph.D. Thesis, London School of Economics, 1989, p. 136.
224. OED, under 'coffee-woman'.
225. Faramerz Noshir Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London, c.1660-c.1760', D. Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1995, p. 42;
226. compare Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: a Social History 1200-1830, Longman, London, 1983, p. 79.
227. On the close associations between alewives and prostitution in medieval English culture, see Barbara Hanawalt, 'Of Good and Ill Repute', p. 108.
228. The Life and Character of Moll King, Late Mistress of King's Coffee-House in Covent Garden [1747], W. Price, London;
229. and The Velvet Coffee-Woman: Or, the Life, Gallantries and Amours of the late Famous Mrs. Anne Rochford, Simon Green, London, 1728.
230. A girl's progress from humble origins to courtesan was a well-worn theme of eighteenth-century literature; the latter tract however, lacks the anti-court vitriol of the classic French example of the genre, the Anecdotes sur Mme La Comptesse Du Barry (1775), on which see Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Norton, New York, 1995, pp. 137-66.
231. [John Dunton], The Night-Walker: or, Evening Rambles in Search After Lewd Women, two vols, James Orme, London, 1696-7: Jan. 1697, vol. 2, pp. 8-9 (my emphasis).
232. Compare [John Dunton], The Night-Walker: or, Evening Rambles in Search After Lewd Women, Oct. 1696, vol. 1, p. 17.
233. For a comprehensive review of the circumstances surrounding the publication of this periodical, see Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London', pp. 246-59.
234. [Ward], London Spy, p. 27.
235. Saussure, 29 Oct. 1726, London, in: A Foreign View of England in 1725-1729: the Letters of Monsieur Cesar de Saussure to his family, ed. and transl. Madame van Muyden, Caliban, Hampstead, 1995, p. 102.
236. On early modern conceptions of the English whore, see Laura Cowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996;
237. Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London', esp. pp. 1-92;
238. and Tim Hitchcock, English Sexualities 1700-1800, Macmillan, London, 1997, pp. 94-101.
239. Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London', p. 93, quoting the indictment of Margaret Vemer (13 Jan. 1693) in LMA, MJ/SR/1808, ind. 45.
240. LMA, DL/C/237, 17 May 1678, Cutt vs. Jacombe; LMA, DL/C/244, fos. 95v-96v, 4 May 1694, Wollasten vs. Jennings; LMA, DL/C/245, fos. 4-7, 20 Jan. 1696, Branch vs. Palmer. I should like to thank Dr Jennifer Melville for kindly drawing my attention to these references.
241. Since these sources are the archival records of policing and prosecuting institutions, it is of course likely that the women who appear in them should be at least suspected of some sort of moral and/or legal wrongdoing.
242. Corporation of London Record Office [CLRO], Sessions Papers Box 2, 1679-86, Sept. 1682 Sessions, 29 Aug. 1682. For another example drawn from the London church-court records, see Peter Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London 1650-1750, Methuen, London, 1994, pp. 252, 300, n. 223.
243. For a coffeehouse also serving as a bawdy house, see indictment of Mary Hambleton in LMA, MJ/SP/1695, April 2, cited in Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London', p. 53.
244. Deposition of Christopher Dent, in LMA, DL/C/245, fos. 194-210, 24 Nov. 1696, Barnes vs. Barnes, quote at fo. 207r. Compare Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660-1730, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989, p. 242, to which I am indebted for drawing my attention to this reference.
245. The ways in which putatively public concerns were imbricated in the structure of the private lives of the middle class is explored at length and with great insight in Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996.
246. It was living above taverns, however, that especially raised the ire of her father. See Sharpe, 'Dealing with Love'.
247. 24-25 Oct. 1715 in Diary of Dudley Ryder 1715-1716, ed. William Matthews, Methuen, London, 1939, p. 124.
248. For a detailed study of the formal means of regulating coffeehouse society, see Brian Cowan, 'The Social Life of Coffee: Commercial Culture and Metropolitan Society in Early Modern England, 1600-1720', Ph.D. Diss., Princeton University, 2000, chap. 5.
249. See Frank Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History, New York, Berghahn Books, 2000.