On Tawdry Women and Buxome Maides

A special thanks to the estimable Lamp-Daddy-J for passing along via e-mail a rather hilarious New Yorker article on the topic of drink in seventeenth-century Britain.

My favorite bit was probably the description of the period’s anti-coffee sentiment -- “there being scarce a Coffee-Hut but affords a Tawdry Woman, a wonton Daughter, or a Buxome Maide, to accommodate Customers.”

And the article even had an apparent shout-out to the equally estimable (and water/bread-hating) B-Lish. “But water isn’t a drink that you toast with; it doesn’t make the heart glad; and it doesn’t inspire. As Horace said, ‘No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water-drinkers.’”

I would provide a link, but (a) I don’t know how and (b) I’d rather play internet backgammon at the moment.