伦敦咖啡馆前世今生.docVIP

伦敦咖啡馆前世今生 　　The Starbucks on Russell Street near Covent Garden piazza is one of London’s many cloned coffee shops. Can you imagine walking in, sitting next to a stranger and asking for the latest news? Or slamming a recent novel down next to someone’s coffee and asking for their opinion before delivering yours? It’s not the done thing1). 　　But 300 years ago, precisely this kind of behaviour was encouraged in thousands of coffeehouses all over London. In 1712, the Starbucks site was occupied by Button’s coffeehouse. Inside, poets, playwrights, journalists and members of the public gathered around long wooden tables drinking, thinking, writing and discussing literature into the night. Nailed to the wall, near where the Starbucks community notice board now stands, was the white marble head of a lion with wide-open jaws. The public was invited to feed it with letters, limericks2) and stories; the best of the lion’s digest were published in a weekly edition of Joseph Addison3)’s Guardian newspaper, entitled “the roarings of the lion.” 　　Today, not even a blue plaque4) commemorates Button’s. It’s just one of London’s forgotten coffeehouse sites. 　　London’s first coffeehouse (or rather, coffee stall) was opened by an eccentric Greek named Pasqua Roseé in 1652. While a servant for a British Levant merchant in Smyrna, Turkey, Roseé developed a taste for the exotic Turkish drink and decided to import it to London. People from all walks of life swarmed5) to his business to meet, greet, drink, think, write, gossip and jest, all fuelled by coffee. 　　Before long, the ale house and tavern keepers of Cornhill could only look on despairingly as Pasqua sold over 600 dishes of coffee a day. Worse still, coffee came to be portrayed as an antidote6) to drunkenness, violence and lust; providing a catalyst7) for pure thought, sophistication and wit. Roseé had triggered a coffeehouse boom and his “bitter Mohammedan gruel8)” would transform London forever. 　　By 1663 there were 82 coffeeho