Creativity |
In
1660 as coffee houses became more and more popular each
began to attract a certain crowd and began to house certain types of people.
The Soldiers could be found at Old or Young Man’s, people of the
Whig party at St. James or Smyrna Coffee House, and people of the Tory
party at Cocoa-Tree or Ozinda’s. People involved in literature would
be found at Will’s. Will’s was a coffee house owned by William
Urwin, but made famous by its constant patron and its presiding literary
genius, John Dryden. Located in Russel Street,
Covent Garden, one of the most fashionable parts of London, this coffee
house became a hub of literary critiques and discussions that inspired
many famous authors, leaving many of them in debt to both Will’s
and Dryden for what they learned or absorbed while attending such a discussion
within Will’s. One of these legendary writers, Alexander
Pope, first visited Will’s at the ripe age of |
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twelve years old. In fact, Pope’s famous Rape of the Lock rose out of coffee house gossip. Will’s and Dryden also had a great influence during this time on William Congreve and Joseph Addison. It was not long before Will’s became known as the Coffee house of the “Wit’s”. However, Will’s did have its critiques. Among those who did not speak highly of Will’s was Jonathan Swift who once said in his Hints to an Essay on Conversation: | |
The worst conversation I ever remember to have heard in
my life was that at Will’s |
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Another not so positive critique was put forth by the future Earl of Halifax. His critique is specifically on Dryden and how Dryden had a tendency not to acknowledge who influenced him in his writing. However, this critique written in the form of a parody of one of Dryden’s pieces The Hind and the Panther, Halifax’s version entitled The Hind and the Panther transcended, to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, also gives a critique on the Wit’s. Below is a brief extract from this work: |
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But above all… |
John Dryden |
By 1712 this house of Wit’s had come to an end, as with Dryden’s death, Will’s lost popularity. The community of writers found their new place to gather at Button’s Coffee House, also located in Russel Street, Covent Garden. Joseph Addison initially was responsible for the popularity of Button’s, however; the positive response and attendance of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift helped raise the coffee houses popularity as well. Still, Button’s is perhaps most remembered for the Lion’s Head Letter Box, where people could drop pieces they had written for publication in The Guardian, a local newspaper. Of this Lion’s head Addison says: |
This head is to open a most wide and voracious
mouth, which shall take |
By 1754 the wits could be found at Bedford Coffee house. The Bedford Coffee house attracted such writers as Henry Fielding, William Hogarth, Charles Churchill, and Oliver Goldsmith and “like its predecessors it was ‘the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism, and the standard of taste’” (Pelzer, website). However, also like its predecessor’s the function of Bedford’s as a place for the Wit’s to meet became a thing of the past, as private clubs began forming and other more standardized institutions where memberships were necessary. However, even though using coffee houses for this function became obsolete, these coffee houses were the centers of English literary life for over a hundred years. |