You remember his
announcement, dated April 12, 1709:
All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall
be under the article of White's Chocolate-house; poetry, under
that of Will's Coffee-house; learning, under the title of The
Grecian; foreign and domestic news, you will have from Saint
James's Coffee-house; and what else I have to offer on any
other subject shall be dated from my own apartment.
Sir Dick--would one speak of him as the first colyumist?--continued
by making what is, we suppose, one of the earliest references in
literature to the newspaper man's "expense account." But the
expenses of the reporter two centuries ago seem rather modest.
Steele said:
I once more desire my reader to consider that as I cannot keep
an ingenious man to go daily to Will's under twopence each day,
merely for his charges; to White's under sixpence; nor to The
Grecian, without allowing him some plain Spanish, to be as able
as others at the learned table; and that a good observer cannot
speak with even Kidney[*] at Saint James's without clean linen:
I say, these considerations will, I hope, make all persons
willing to comply with my humble request of a penny-a-piece.
[* Evidently the bus boy.]
But what we started to say was that if, like Dick Steele, we were in
the habit of dating our stuff from various inns around the town, our
choice for a quiet place in which to compose items of "gallantry,
pleasure, and entertainment" would be McSorley's--"The Old House at
Home"--up on Seventh Street.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71