In 1663, there were 82 coffeehouses in London; by 1734, there were 551 in the city.
With coffee and coffeehouses came conversation and meetings to discuss business. This applied to coffeehouses but also to taverns and homes of the middle class.
The Reading Room
The Spectator: Get Some Class, Folks!
Related was the mushrooming of the “club”—the club for every interest and hobby from foreign affairs to politics to literature. The locale that drew import-export traders was the Threadneedle Street coffeehouse. The Honest Whigs held Thursday gatherings of men like James Boswell and Benjamin Franklin. New Jonathan’s assembled the city’s bankers and eventually became the London Stock Exchange. Samuel (Dr.) Johnson’s Literary Club at the Turk’s Head on Gerrard Street in Soho had members such as Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith.
It was at the Kit-Cat Club (opened 1669 or earlier) of Whigs, who began meeting on Shire Street, that two old public-school friends, Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and the Anglo-Irish Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)—both facing certain financial stringencies—conceived a way to guide London’s emerging middle class into the revolutionary world of ideas, attitudes, and culture today called the Age of Enlightenment. They would champion civility, tolerance, and sociability. But more, they would offer readers aspiring to be new “gentry” the culture—even a certain cosmopolitanism—of the ideas already arresting the attention and stirring the passions of aristocrats, professionals, and academics. We shall, Addison told readers, aspire to “enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”
Today’s newspaper and magazine readers scarcely would put the Spectator in those categories. It celebrated ideas. Craig Nelson writes that Addison and Steele “portrayed life in London as it hurtled away from the ancien regime and toward a regime of consumers who worked for a living, all inspired by Horace’s encomium “ex fumo clara lucem”—'To turn the darkness [smoke] light.’” (It could only be expected; the men of the Enlightenment loved the classics, most of all the Latin classics, and none more than Horace.)
Steele took a warm, friendly tone balanced by Addison’s more dispassionate voice. Their style represented a break with the highly mannered prose, littered with classical allusions, that typified the 17th century. They were conducting discussions of serious ideas, potentially controversial ideas, not in the customary context of religious sectarianism and political partisanship, but as a normal pastime of men of the world. Their example became a pattern for subsequent periodicals and began to foster a significant readership for novels. The Spectator consciously addressed women who aspired to a role outside the home, a role in the “world of men.” Perhaps the broadest achievement that might be ascribed to the Spectator was the formation of a “public sphere” in 18th-century England and America.
Have A Coffee and Read This
They began publishing in 1711 (a bit earlier, Steele had tried to launch the Tatler), six times a week, each number (issue) about 2,500 words. They wrote almost all the articles themselves, although an occasional notable like Alexander Pope, Thomas Ticknell, or Ambrose Philips contributed. (Addison contributed most with 274 essays out of a total of 635.) They continued this demanding schedule of publication until 1714—a total of 550 numbers (plus 85 when Addison later briefly revived publication). In its best years, the Spectator reached an estimated quarter of the population of London. It is called the world’s first periodical with a mass readership, although they printed and distributed at most 3,000 copies a day. Most readers did not subscribe; they read the Spectator at their business, had a subscription in the family, but most of all in those hundreds of coffeehouses, taverns, and clubs.
The impact of the Spectator, when it was being published, was almost instantaneous and astonishing. But more impressive still was its lasting impact. For decade after decade afterward, the archived “old newspapers” in eight volumes were an essential acquisition of every educated (or aspiring to be viewed as educated) Englishman in the British Empire. That emphatically included the British colonies in North America, later the United States of America.
The initial “premise” of the Spectator was to be engaging, amusing, though once it was known and established that was of slight importance as compared with the contents, attitude, and, above all, literary style and model of civil discourse. Numbers were framed as reports of the Spectator Club of prudent, civil, and sociable members: a merchant, Sir Andrew Freeport; a retired army officer, Captain Sentry; a man-about-London, Will Honeycomb; and, as the “lead,” the country squire Sir Roger de Coverley (a name still famous in the annals of literature). There also is an unnamed clergyman and a law student. All issues were written, ostensibly, from the viewpoint of an “observer” of the London scene.
Club members discoursed on the theme, in every variation, of improving the sum of happiness—a key commitment of the Enlightenment, with a world of urbane courteousness and practical morality. It was an ethic descended from the eudemonism of Aristotle and reintroduced and made the standard of Enlightenment thinking by John Locke (1632-1704). From reasoned consideration came the advice for correct behavior and elevated standards of morality befitting the cosmopolitan citizens of the emerging new world—that is, of course, readers of the Spectator.
Here’s a snippet from one of their more convivial, sociable, and less philosophical conversations:
Sir Roger de Coverley: “Gentlemen, have you ever noticed how the youth of today are obsessed with fashion? Why, just the other day, I saw a young dandy sporting a hat so preposterous it could shelter a family of sparrows!”Captain Sentry: “Indeed, Sir Roger! But let us not forget that fashion is a reflection of our times. Just as the theater evolves, so do our sartorial choices. Besides, I find the cut of your own coat quite fashionable.”
Sir Andrew Freeport: “Ah, fashion and commerce! My dear friends, I’ve been pondering the impact of trade on our nation. The East India Company’s profits are soaring, and yet, I wonder if we’re losing sight of simpler pleasures.”
Will Honeycomb: “Simpler pleasures, you say? Well, I recently attended a masquerade ball where the ladies’ masks were more intriguing than their actual faces! But, my friends, let us not underestimate the allure of mystery.”
The Clergyman: “Gentlemen, while we discuss fashion and commerce, let us not neglect matters of the soul. The theater, the marketplace, and even the latest wig styles—they all offer glimpses into the human condition.”
The Student of Law: “True, true! But what about the legal intricacies of inheritance? I’ve been studying the case of Lady Penelope’s disputed estate. It’s a labyrinth of legalities!”
To a century still haunted by the Hobbesian pronouncement on humankind—driven by wolfish, snarling, self-centered acquisitiveness, tempered only by strong government—Addison and Steele posed an alternative. Society could be polite, easeful, at peace, both tolerant and sociable like the habitués of the London clubs and coffeeshops. They could be moderate businessmen who eschewed religious “enthusiasm” and political rancor because they enjoyed their work, their reading and learning, and good company. Content of the issues ranged over the ideas and attitudes of the Enlightenment, but partisan politics was not permitted to intrude (readers nevertheless could discern a broadly liberal Whig perspective). Addison and Steele consistently upheld the values of marriage, family, and, of course, in all matters, courtesy.
It is nearly impossible to overstate the cumulative effect of the Spectator both during the relatively few years it was published and the decades to come when the volumes were essential, indispensable guides to the aspiring new gentry, the on-the-make, the up-and-coming, the self-improving (in America and France, in the image of Benjamin Franklin). Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, for example, both studied the issues to acquire their literary style (as did Voltaire, Jefferson, and a multitude of other intellectuals) and the ideas that defined the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The poet and dramatist, John Gay, commented that Mr. Spectator had “come on like a Torrent and swept all before him.”
Craig Nelson comments in his biography of Thomas Paine that “These are ideas and sentiments and formulations, as we know, that would appear in various significant documents, sixty years later, on the other side of the world.” He is referring, of course, to writings of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and, perhaps above all, Thomas Paine.
Addison and Steele published their periodical for only a few years, but it was just the beginning of Joseph Addison’s influence, including on the American Revolution and George Washington personally.
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