On Russell Street, close to Covent Garden, sits a Starbucks that is popular with many of the tourists who visit the nearby markets and shops
that were first laid out by the Welsh architect, Inigo Jones, in the sixteenth century. For anyone at all familiar with the thousands of such
branches around the world, this particular Starbucks is immediately recognisable and thus perfectly unremarkable. It does, however, preserve a
remarkable secret, because this particular location shares a wall with an
older building that once was part of a much more famous coffee house:
Button’s.
The original shop was established in 1712 by Daniel Button, who was
set up in business by Joseph Addison. John Timbs, in his nineteenthcentury history of the life of clubs in London, wrote that Button had
been a servant of the Countess of Warwick and that, with Addison’s patronage, Button’s became the great rival to Will’s, which had dominated
the life of London wits during Dryden’s time, citing the poet Alexander
Pope’s observations on activities at the coffee house:
Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at
Button’s, dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes
far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found
it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.
1
It was during his time at Button’s that Addison set up his The Guardian newspaper, a short-lived successor to The Tatler and The Spectator, which received contributions via its famous lion’s head letterbox.
Various writers such as Pope were included in The Guardian, but the
cosy atmosphere of Button’s was not to last: Pope himself suffered a
breach with Addison in 1715, caused by political rivalries between
Whigs and Tories, and also by the perceived autocracy of Addison
who presided over his coffee house court as, in Pope’s words, a “Grand
Turk”:
We have, it seems, a great Turk in Poetry, who can never bear a
Brother on the throne; and has his Mutes too, a sett of Nodders,
5 Citizens
The Voice of the People in the
Age of Machines
that were first laid out by the Welsh architect, Inigo Jones, in the sixteenth century. For anyone at all familiar with the thousands of such
branches around the world, this particular Starbucks is immediately recognisable and thus perfectly unremarkable. It does, however, preserve a
remarkable secret, because this particular location shares a wall with an
older building that once was part of a much more famous coffee house:
Button’s.
The original shop was established in 1712 by Daniel Button, who was
set up in business by Joseph Addison. John Timbs, in his nineteenthcentury history of the life of clubs in London, wrote that Button had
been a servant of the Countess of Warwick and that, with Addison’s patronage, Button’s became the great rival to Will’s, which had dominated
the life of London wits during Dryden’s time, citing the poet Alexander
Pope’s observations on activities at the coffee house:
Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at
Button’s, dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes
far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found
it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.
1
It was during his time at Button’s that Addison set up his The Guardian newspaper, a short-lived successor to The Tatler and The Spectator, which received contributions via its famous lion’s head letterbox.
Various writers such as Pope were included in The Guardian, but the
cosy atmosphere of Button’s was not to last: Pope himself suffered a
breach with Addison in 1715, caused by political rivalries between
Whigs and Tories, and also by the perceived autocracy of Addison
who presided over his coffee house court as, in Pope’s words, a “Grand
Turk”:
We have, it seems, a great Turk in Poetry, who can never bear a
Brother on the throne; and has his Mutes too, a sett of Nodders,
5 Citizens
The Voice of the People in the
Age of Machines