CARRINGTON MEWS,
SHEPHERD MARKET,
_24th February._
My Dear Agatha,--To take up my story where I dropped it the other
night.... You can approach the "Cheshire Cheese" either by the front
door in Wine Office Court or by the back door in Cheshire Court. I
prefer the tunnel-like passage leading to the back door, it seems a more
fit means of transporting one from Fleet Street of to-day to the Fleet
Street of 1667.
Mrs. D.'s visions of bread and cheese gave place to something more
appetising as the combined odours of steak puddings, mutton chops, baked
potatoes, and Irish stew greeted our entrance into the narrow passage
where waiters jostled each other and hurled orders, like invectives, at
the kitchen upstairs. Walls, panelled to the ceiling, old rough benches,
sawdusted floors, a glowing fire burning in the large old-fashioned
grate--_this_ was the "Cheshire Cheese" of two hundred and fifty years
ago. One crosses the threshold of this homely tavern, and in the
twinkling of an eye is admitted to an intimacy with the rude comfort of
the past. Brisk waiters were pouring sparkling ale into tankards, and
placing before customers plates containing helpings generous enough to
satisfy the appetite of a starving man. In the box in the corner,
curtained off by a faded crimson frill from the rest of the room, were
two vacant places, which Mrs. D. and I took, and from my seat there I
could watch the gentleman in the morning coat who serves The Pudding. It
occupies the place of honour in the middle of the room, together with an
enormous joint of good old English roast beef. The Pudding resembles a
mountain of the volcanic order, and into its steaming crater the server,
after having cut slices of crust from its sides, delves deep with a
long-handled silver ladle, bringing up savoury portions of the
mysterious contents.
The waiter brought the menu, but we did not need to study it. To go to
the "Cheshire Cheese" without having some of The Pudding is to explore a
wine vault without tasting of the vintage stored in the old barrels. By
the way, if you want a napkin at "The Cheese" you have to ask for it.
The presence of pewter on the tables, and the absence of napkins, is all
part of the ritual which strives to keep alive the spirit of those days
when, rumour has it, Dr. Johnson frequented the place. As to whether he
ever did is one of those disputed points of history which furnish
material for conjecture and research with the student of old times.
Those who say he _didn't_ base their assumption chiefly on the fact that
Boswell never mentioned the "Cheshire Cheese," but even Boswell did not
record what Johnson had for dinner every day, or how often he visited
his barber. Also, Johnson may have given up frequenting the "Cheshire
Cheese" before he knew Boswell. Seeing that Johnson lived just round the
corner, it is only reasonable to suppose that now and again he might
drop in, especially as his friend Goldsmith, whose visits to the tavern
are usually granted, lived almost opposite it. Picture the Doctor, fed
up with his collection of quarrelsome old women--Mrs. Williams, Mrs.
Desmoulins, Miss Carmichael--not to mention Levet, the eccentric
apothecary (Good God, Agatha! was there ever such a victim to good
nature?)--Picture him, on some bitter winter's night, putting on his
cocked hat, his greatcoat and muffler, taking his stout stick, and
banging the door of his asylum behind him with a grunt of satisfaction.
How the wind howls through the dark courts! But there are ruddy lights
in the windows of "The Cheese," and inside a blazing fire, the smoke
from a dozen churchwardens, the scent of hot punch, and last but not
least, listeners and the companionship of congenial spirits. Whatever
Johnson may have done in his life, he certainly haunts the old place in
death. One cannot turn one's eyes in any direction without encountering
mementoes of the old lexicographer, and there is the brass tablet set in
the wall over "The Favourite Seat of Dr. Samuel Johnson". You can't get
away from that! "Deny it who can!" says the tablet defiantly, and it
suddenly occurred to me that here is another task for Paul Pry--a task
more fascinating even than the quest of the "curious sculptured figure,"
which disappeared so strangely from St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate. One
could make it the work of a lifetime to find out if Dr. Johnson was in
the habit of frequenting the "Cheshire Cheese". Meanwhile, perhaps the
problem would have been solved by accident. Some descendant of one of
the Doctor's correspondents finds an old letter amidst a bundle of dusty
documents that had not seen the light of day for many a long year--a
letter in which the Doctor, after giving a vivid account of the Gordon
Riots, congratulates himself that Bolt Court is so near the "Cheshire
Cheese," it not being safe for respectable citizens to be much abroad in
the streets at nights. The letter would be put up to auction, and the
"Cheshire Cheese" would run up the bidding....
The waiter placed before me a portion of The Pudding, and Mrs. D.
brought me back to realities to ask what I imagined was in it. I told
her there was steak in it, oysters, kidneys, and larks, and she said it
wasn't fair to the birds. She also subsequently became of the opinion
that it wasn't fair to the eaters, when she suffered embarrassment from
the tiny bones of the larks. If it was a bloater, said she, you'd know
what you were about, and where to look for the bones, but bones in a
beef-steak pudding, where you didn't expect them, were a trap for the
unwary. I reassured her that I had never heard of an accident, and I had
lunched and dined many times at "The Cheese," but I regret to say that
The Pudding, from Mrs. D.'s point of view, was not a success.
When paying the bill I said something to the waiter about the Familiar
Spirit of the place, and he suggested that we should visit the rooms
above. He then went out into the sawdusted passage by the bar, and in
exactly the same tone of voice as that with which he ordered chops and
steaks, shouted up the stairs, "Charlie, a gentleman to see The Chair".
Whereupon up we went, gathering sawdust on the soles of our shoes as we
climbed the twisted staircase, past the kitchen (where The Pudding is
cooked in a huge copper boiler which is kept going all night)--at this
moment the fizzling, sputtering, steaming scene of a score of culinary
activities--past a grandfather clock in the corner which is older than
Dr. Johnson himself, and into the room where stands the original chair
used by Dr. Johnson at the Mitre Tavern in Chancery Lane, which place, I
need hardly add, exists no longer.
There the old chair stands, wide enough and sturdy enough to hold the
ponderous form in the snuff-coloured coat with the brass buttons. I hope
the wearer of that coat had many a pleasant hour within the wooden arms,
now empty with an emptiness never more to be filled apparently. The
chair, alas! is enclosed in a glass case, no doubt a necessary
precaution, but one which must effectually keep the ghost out of his
seat. No self-respecting ghost could condescend to enter a glass case.
_I_ should have had the chair standing in a corner of the room where, in
some quiet hour, the Doctor might seat himself for a while to recall
bygone times in a spot where yesterday still defies to-day.
A night at the "Cheshire Cheese," by the way, might be prolific in
ghostly adventure. That grandfather clock on the staircase would have
something to say. A clock is, to me, the mouthpiece of a silent house,
and after I had visited the bar, to help myself to a drink, and had sat
for a while in the Doctor's seat in the dark coffee-room, I should mount
the stairs softly, taking the clock unawares. Old clocks are given to
thinking aloud, and there's no telling what this one might not reveal.
But I am forgetting--the house would not be as silent as I had been
picturing it. There would be another sound close at hand, one to which
no stretch of the imagination could impute a ghostly interpretation: the
sound of _The Pudding_ bubbling and rumbling in the copper boiler! And
the ghosts would reasonably wish to avoid the reminder of a feast in
which they are no longer able to participate. Nevertheless, I shall put
the "Cheshire Cheese" on the list of places I intend to visit when I'm a
ghost myself. Meanwhile, I am just going out to post this and buy an
evening paper. It therefore behoves me, dear Agatha, to say,
_Adieu._