Vienna Café

Vienna Café was a coffeehouse and restaurant formerly located at 24–28 New Oxford Street in London, opposite Mudie’s Lending Library and close to the British Museum Reading Room. Although its precise opening date, founder, ownership history, and operating structure are not established in the available reference material, the café was already sufficiently recognized to appear in the 1889 Baedeker guide to London. It became particularly associated with the literary and artistic culture of early twentieth-century Bloomsbury and the wider London intellectual scene. The café’s importance rested less on a documented commercial expansion strategy than on its role as an informal meeting place. Its location made it convenient for people using the British Museum Reading Room, and its clientele included writers, poets, artists, critics, and other cultural figures. Regular or known visitors included Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells, W. B. Yeats, Amy Lowell, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, C. R. W. Nevinson, T. E. Hulme, Robert McAlmon, and several figures connected with the British Museum and London art circles. Wyndham Lewis met Sturge Moore at the café around 1902, and later encountered Ezra Pound there in 1910. Yeats arranged a lunch at the café with art critic D. S. MacColl in January 1905. Contemporary descriptions emphasize both the food and the atmosphere. Henry Newbolt referred to one group of regulars as the “Anglo-Austrians,” describing them as sustained by Viennese dishes and animated conversation. The café’s interior reportedly included a triangular first-floor room with a mirrored ceiling and red-plush, Danubian-style furnishings. These details helped distinguish the establishment from an ordinary refreshment venue and linked it to the broader European coffeehouse tradition, in which cafés served as spaces for sociability, debate, literary exchange, and artistic networking. The café’s history was abruptly affected by the outbreak of the First World War. It closed in 1914, shortly after hostilities began. The available account connects the closure with the Trading with the Enemy Act 1914 and the classification of the café’s Austrian or German owners as “alien enemies.” The closure was remembered by Ezra Pound, who wrote in a 1914 letter that Yeats considered the loss of the Vienna Café a significant inconvenience. The establishment later acquired a literary afterlife through Pound’s reference to it as the “Wiener Café” in Canto LXXX of The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948. The Vienna Café therefore survives in historical memory chiefly as a London coffeehouse associated with modernist literary and artistic networks, rather than as a continuing hospitality brand.

The Vienna Café was a former coffeehouse and restaurant at 24–28 New Oxford Street in London, England. The premises stood opposite Mudie’s Lending Library and near the British Museum Reading Room, placing the café within a particularly productive cultural geography. Its proximity to the reading room helped make it useful to writers, artists, scholars, and critics who worked or socialized in the surrounding area. The café was listed in the 1889 Baedeker Guide for London, demonstrating that it had achieved public visibility by the late nineteenth century, although the available sources do not establish its opening year or original founders. During the early twentieth century, the Vienna Café developed a reputation as a gathering place for literary and artistic circles. Its patrons included Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells, and W. B. Yeats, alongside a broader network of modernist writers, visual artists, museum workers, and cultural commentators. The artist Wyndham Lewis first met Sturge Moore there around 1902. In 1910, Lewis was at the café with Moore when he was introduced to Ezra Pound, who had come with Laurence Binyon, an assistant keeper in the British Museum Print Room. Pound later recalled eating lunch at the café after completing his poem “Ballad of the Goodly Fere” in the British Museum Reading Room. Yeats also used the café as a setting for professional and social meetings. He arranged lunch there with art critic D. S. MacColl on 16 January 1905. Other people associated with the café included Amy Lowell, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, C. R. W. Nevinson, T. E. Hulme, R. A. Streatfeild, Robert McAlmon, and several figures connected with literary and artistic London. Henry Newbolt described a group of regulars as the “Anglo-Austrians.” The group included Laurence Binyon, Walter Crum, Oswald Valentine Sickert, and Barclay Squire, while other visitors included Samuel Butler, Festing Jones, Selwyn Image, John Masefield, Luigi Villari, Frederic Baron Corvo, Lawrence Weaver, Roger Fry, Edward Garnett, and a son of Giovanni Segantini. Descriptions of the café emphasize its European character. Newbolt remembered the regulars as consuming Viennese dishes while engaging in rapid and unconventional conversation. The establishment reportedly employed an Italian waiter named Joseph. Its first-floor triangular room had a mirrored ceiling that Wyndham Lewis described as reflecting activity above the diners, while later commentary characterized the interior as furnished in a Danubian style with red-plush chairs and seats. These features made the café a recognizable expression of the continental coffeehouse tradition in London. The business closed in 1914, soon after the beginning of the First World War. The closure was connected in the historical account with the Trading with the Enemy Act 1914. Because the owners were Austrian or German, they were classified under wartime rules as “alien enemies,” creating circumstances in which the business could not continue. Ezra Pound referred to the closure in a letter to Wilfrid Blunt in October 1914, reporting that Yeats found the loss of the café particularly inconvenient. Although the Vienna Café no longer operated, it retained a place in literary memory. Pound referred to it as the “Wiener Café” in Canto LXXX of The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948. Its historical significance consequently derives from the intersection of place, clientele, and literary representation: it was a documented London hospitality venue, a meeting point for important cultural networks, and later a remembered location in accounts of modernist literary life.

• 1948

  Referenced in The Pisan Cantos

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  Ezra Pound referred to the establishment as the “Wiener Café” in Canto LXXX of The Pisan Cantos.

• 1914

  The café closes during the First World War

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  The Vienna Café closed shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, in circumstances associated with wartime enemy-alien restrictions.

• 1910

  Wyndham Lewis is introduced to Ezra Pound

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  Lewis encountered Ezra Pound at the café while visiting with Sturge Moore; Pound had arrived with Laurence Binyon.

• 1905

  Yeats arranges a literary lunch

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  W. B. Yeats arranged a lunch at the café with art critic D. S. MacColl on 16 January 1905.

• 1902

  Wyndham Lewis meets Sturge Moore

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  Wyndham Lewis met Sturge Moore at the café around 1902; the two subsequently became close friends.

• 1889

  Listed in Baedeker’s London guide

  [1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  The Vienna Café appeared in the 1889 Baedeker Guide for London, indicating that it was an established and publicly recognized coffeehouse by that date.

A European-style coffeehouse and restaurant positioned as a convivial meeting place near the British Museum, with Viennese food, distinctive interior design, and strong cultural associations.

• Coffeehouse beverages

  Coffee and café refreshments

  The Vienna Café operated primarily as a coffeehouse, serving coffee and related refreshments to customers using the nearby British Museum and to its literary and artistic clientele. The available sources do not provide a detailed menu or identify particular beverage preparations.

• Restaurant food

  Viennese dishes

  Historical descriptions specifically associate the café with excellent Viennese dishes. These meals contributed to its continental identity and supported its role as a lunch and meeting venue, although the surviving reference material does not specify individual recipes or menu items.

• 1914

  Closure following wartime enemy-alien restrictionsOther

  Background

  The outbreak of the First World War led to rapid implementation of the Trading with the Enemy Act 1914. The café’s Austrian or German owners were treated as enemy aliens under the wartime legal environment.

  Action taken

  The Vienna Café ceased operating shortly after the war began.

  Aftermath

  The closure ended the café’s role as a London meeting place, but its association with writers and artists continued through memoirs, letters, and later literary references.

  Source

• 1948

  Vienna Café remembered in Ezra Pound’s The Pisan Cantos[1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  Other

  The former coffeehouse appears under the name “Wiener Café” in Canto LXXX of Ezra Pound’s The Pisan Cantos, extending its cultural significance beyond its operating life.

• 1914

  Vienna Café closes after the outbreak of the First World War[1]Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org

  Regulation · Other

  The coffeehouse closed shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The available historical account links the closure to wartime legislation and the treatment of its Austrian or German owners as enemy aliens.

1. 1Vienna Caféen.wikipedia.org