Two Cups Too Many
William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress, Plate 6, The Gaming House, or White's Chocolate House, 1733 From fall 2010 to late summer 2011, Jonathan Swift fulfilled a long-standing commission of chocolate for Stella (Esther Johnson) at the request of her companion, Rebecca Dingley. It is not clear from his letters whether or not Swift drank much of the drink himself until 1712, when he developed a social habit around his morning cup of cacao. However, early into the ‘unarrived cure’
The Case of the Unarrived Cure
Among other woes once the Glorious Revolution ended in a Declaration of Rights that imposed permanent Protestant rule over England and penal law on Ireland, Dubliners had a hard time procuring chocolate. We know this because Jonathan Swift spent many hours of his life in London worrying about a shipment he had sent to Stella in Ireland. Although scholars debate the nature of the relationship, the bond between Swift and Stella lasted a lifetime and may well have been deeper th
Chocolate on St. James
Pall Mall, St. James's Square and St. James's Street, c. 1833 If the aroma of coffee wafted circa 1650 from St. Michael's Cornhill to Fleet Street, the sites of London's first cafés, it was on the Mall in St. James's that chocolate found its public. Not one but several establishments cropped up in the 1690s to provide London with the cacao beverage and the space to gather and consume it. A few went on to become pillars of the elite proprietary club scene. White’s Chocolate ho