COLERIDGE’S PROTO-CAPPUCCINO: THE FROTH’S THE THING
The Friends of Coleridge website www.friendsofcoleridge.com celebrated Christmas 2005 by tackling the ultimate crux of Coleridge scholarship: did the Great Man invent, in 1802, an egg-based form of our favourite frothy coffee?
One half of the white of an egg—a couple of
tepid water after the egg has been beat up—Water enough to make the Coffee
moist whatever it be/—Then put in the ground Coffee, (one heaped
Coffee Cup to six cups of boiling water to be after put in) mix up
the Coffee with the beat up egg & tepid water/then put it into the Coffee
Boiler, & add boiling water in the proportion of 6 to 1—put it on a quick
fire—& let it boil up, two or three times. Then throw it into the China or Silver Coffee pot thro’ a Strainer/After boil & decant the Coffee grains &
use the Decantia instead of hot water the next time. (Notebooks
I 1300, Dec 1802)
It is surely the verb “throw” that reveals the panache of the man, and the influence of the dynamic philosophy on his recipe. Stand aside ye lightweight celebrity chefs who think Schelling is something you do to peas!
The following learned scholars responded to the call and applied their brains to this sticky topic:
Shirley Watters nimbly tackled the tensions within Coleridge's marriage, and shed new light on the build-up to 'This Lime-tree Bower' in her seminal paper: Re-interpreting purposive activity: A simmering throw-back to the skillet of boiling milk.
Dennis Low offered a stimulating extract from his book in progress Hot Chocolate and the Enlightenment Imagination, whose final chapter just happens to be very much concerned with coffee: Whipping up a Revolution: Coleridgean Politics, the Morning Chronicle and William Hazlitt's 'On Coffee-House Politicians' (1822)
Chris Goulding in a startlingly caffeinated response time, used Kantian metaphysics for his bold thesis - "Surely", he wrote, "Coleridge's Frothy Coffee trope foreshadows his later absorption of Kant's nebular hypothesis of stellar and galactic formation? The whirling froth of freshly-stirred coffee readily accommodates an interpretation as a microcosm of spiral nebulae such as our own galaxy - the lactic imagery inherent in the name "Milky Way" emphasising such an interpretation."
Sharon Ruston addressed the basic ontological issues from a courageously sceptical stance - "Is it serious? Are you having this conference?"
Jim Mays introduced us to parallel developments in Irish culture: "A famous Irish poet writes as follows: 'It was drug-induced literalism. He had been reading Swift's Battle of the Books (see below), and he decided to make a drink out of the scumming metaphor. I followed the recipe precisely and it gave me a headache. Maybe I should have added some Paddy's whiskey. That would have Irish eyes smiling.'"
There is a brain that will endure but one scumming: let the owner gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with husbandry; but of all things let him beware of bringing it under the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up into impertinence, and he will find no new supply. Wit, without knowledge, being a sort of cream, which gathers in the night to the top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth, but once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing but to be thrown to the hogs.
J. Swift, The Battle of the Books
The following approaches were wisely dispensed with: