] John Thorpe says that he knows the General becasue "I have met him forever at the Bedford." My footnote says that this is "No doubt the Bedford Coffee House in Covent Garden" in London.

I've got a useful little book called Scenes from Georgian Life and it has this to say about coffee houses in general and The Bedford in particular:

Coffee Houses were introduced into England in the mid-seventeenth century. The first in London, Pasqua Rosee's Head, was opened in 1652 by a Turkey merchant Daniel Edwards, in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. He offered the 'strong, bitter brew' lately imported form the MIddle East. The idea took off, and by 1740 there were over 500 houses in the City, serving the exotic combination of Turkish coffee, West Indian sugar, Chinese tea and Virginian tobacco.

These houses were like clubs, where men (and only men) of similar mind could meet. In Pall Mall, Tories frequented the Cocoa Tree, while the Whigs favoured St James's. The theatrical scene gathered at Bedford Coffe House in the piazza at Covent Garden. William Hogarth's father opened an esbablishment in Smithfield which was learned and literary in tone, advertising for songs or poems that were 'New and Entertaining' to be left at his house: an idea that never got off the ground.