MR. JOSEPH PENNELL AND LADY COLIN CAMPBELL ON “THE CHEESE”
Hard by there is the Cheshire Cheese,
A famous tap.—T. HOOD.
In the last chapter no mention was made of the fact that in 1887
a remarkable picture of the Cheshire Cheese by Mr. Seymour Lucas,
R.A., was exhibited at the Royal Academy, since it is not among the
art treasures of the house. It can, however, not be passed by, since
Mr. Seymour Lucas and the Cheshire Cheese are mutual friends. We
will therefore quote here the description given of the picture by
a well-known London evening paper. To Mr. Dendy Sadler’s picture,
“Toddy at the Cheshire Cheese,” allusion has already been made.
[Illustration: “THE WAY IN.”]
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of March 29, 1887: “It represents a scene in
the Old Cheshire Cheese inn, and is entitled ‘The Latest Scandal.’
In one corner of the quaint old room, on the bench which is still
pointed out as the place where Dr. Johnson used to sit, we see a
typical group of the wits of the period. Some wear powder, while
others have the full dark wigs of an older fashion still. One of
the group, in the uniform of the Guards, is relating the latest
scandal to the rest, and pointing over his shoulder towards two
young beaux, who stand by the fireside. One of these wears his
right arm in a sling, and has evidently come to grief in a duel on
the previous night. He and his friend are mightily disconcerted to
discover that their escapade has become the talk of the town, and
that it is affording vast amusement to this group of scandal-mongers.”
What Mr. Seymour Lucas and Mr. Dendy Sadler have so admirably
portrayed for us with the brush, an American writer of distinction
has both described with his pen and illustrated with his pencil
in the pages of _Harper’s Weekly_. In a November number of that
periodical, in 1887, Mr. Joseph Pennell writes as follows:—
“On my first coming to London, I had fortified myself, not with a
course of English history, but by re-reading ‘Pickwick.’ My first
Sunday morning, about one o’clock, I found myself in Chancery
Lane outside the entrance to Lincoln’s Inn, in the company of the
proverbial solitary policeman and convivial cat. On my asking the
policeman where in the world I could get something to eat—as it is
well known one must starve in London on Sunday before one and after
three—he gave me the inevitable answer, ‘Down to the bottom, first
to your left, under the lamp, up the passage, and there you are!’
After he had repeated these mysterious directions two or three times,
and had found me hopelessly ignorant of his meaning, he did what
I have very seldom known a London policeman to do—a proof of his
loneliness; he walked to the end of Chancery Lane with me, and there
being no one in Fleet Street, pointed out the sign of the Cheshire
Cheese.... A push at the door, and I have passed into another world.
I was in a narrow hall, at the far end of which was a quaint bar,
where, framed in by small panes, were two very pretty, but I cannot
say fascinating barmaids—I never could be fascinated by the ordinary
English barmaid. Suddenly a waiter with a very short nose came out of
another room and screamed up the stairs: ‘Cotherum steak. Boatherum
foozlum mash. Fotherum coozlum, botherum steak!’ and then remarked to
me: ‘Lunch, sir? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. What can I get you, sir?
Steak, sir; chop, sir; kidney, sir; potatoes, sir, cooked in their
jackets, sir? Yes, sir; thank you, sir.’ Then up the stairs he added:
‘Underdone steak one!’ Then to me again: ‘Walk in, sir. Take a seat,
sir. Paper, sir? _Lloyd’s_, sir? _Reynolds’_, sir? Yes, sir.’...
“I had begun to look around me. I found I had stumbled on just
what I had determined to make a hunt for. I was in one of the
greenbaize-curtained boxes into which Mr. Pickwick was always
dropping under the guidance of Sam Weller, whose ‘knowledge of London
was extensive and peculiar.’ Unless you have a Sam Weller at your
elbow you will not very easily find the Cheshire Cheese, the last
of the London chop-houses, even though it is in Baedeker. In the
opposite corner was, not Mr. Pickwick, but one of those respectable
shabby old gentlemen you never see outside of London. The waiter
asked him in the same confidential tone, ‘if he would not have a
half-bitter! if he would not like to see yesterday’s _Times_? A most
interestin’ article in it, sir, Mr. Price, sir.’ Then Mr. Price’s
half-bitter came in a dented old pewter pot, and along with it an
exaggerated wine-glass; and Mr. Price held the pewter in the air, and
a softly murmuring stream flowed from the one into the other. Beyond
the box I was in I saw other hard straight-backed seats, and between
them other most beautifully clean, white cloth-covered tables, at all
of which were three or four rather quiet and sedate, but after their
manner sociable, Englishmen, everybody seeming to know everybody
else in the place. Everything seemed happy, even to the cat purring
on the hearth, and the brass kettle singing on the hob. Perhaps I
should except the restless waiter, who, when anyone came in, rushed
to the bottom of the stairs and gave his unearthly yell. Soon down
the same stairs came the translation of the yell in the shape of the
steak I had ordered, and with it the potatoes in their jackets, all
on old blue willow-ware plates.
“‘Your steak, sir. Yes, sir. Anything else, sir? Napkin, sir? Oh,
serviette! Yes, sir. All Americans like them, sir.’
“And so I found for the first time that napkins and bread, freely
bestowed in decent restaurants at home, are in England looked upon as
costly luxuries.[1]
... “I have returned again and again to the Cheshire Cheese, and
have, moreover, tried to induce others to go there with me. For if
the place is not haunted, as it is said to be, by the shades of
Ben Jonson and Herrick, of Samuel Johnson and Boswell, the waiter
is perfectly willing, for a consideration, to point out to you
the stains of their wigs on the wall. It is certain that Dickens,
Forster, Tom Hood, Wilkie Collins, and many other worthies did
frequent it, while Sala periodically puffs it, and a host of other
lights have written about it. In my own small way I have endeavoured
to lead some modern junior novelists and poets there, to show them
how near they could come to some of the great masters whom they
apparently worship so thoroughly. But on the only occasion when
I succeeded in placing one probably in the seat of Goldsmith or
Herrick, he sniffed at the chops and remarked that if Johnson had had
a napkin it would have been better for his personal appearance.
“I hardly know myself what is the attraction of the place, for
you can only[2] get chops and steaks, kidneys and sausages, or on
Saturdays a gigantic pudding, to eat your money’s worth of which
you must have the appetite of a Gargantua, or, on Shrove Tuesdays,
pancakes. If you should happen to want anything else, you would
probably get the answer which Mr. Sala says was given to a friend of
his who asked (at the Cock) for a hard boiled egg with his salad: ‘A
hegg! If Halbert Hedward ’imself wuz to cum ’ere he couldn’t ’ave
a hegg.’ Whoever really cares to see the last of the Old London
chop-houses, let him, when next in London, look up the sign of YE
OLDE CHESHYRE CHEESE.”
Not out of place, after the remarks of Mr. Pennell, will be found
a vivacious description of a dinner at the “Cheese,” given by Lady
Colin Campbell, writing under the pseudonym of “Ina” in the _World_
of August 31, 1892. Its “go” and high spirits render an apology for
quoting at length unnecessary. This clever lady writes as follows:—
“It is August, London is empty, and we are bored; yet dine we
must somewhere, and where to go is the difficulty. Everybody one
knows is either at Homburg or Cowes, so we cannot possibly go to
the Savoy or the Amphitryon. There is nothing more utterly stupid
than to visit the haunts of society after society has left, and to
find them peopled by the unknown—good creatures in their way, no
doubt, but not exactly _des nôtres_; not fashionably dressed enough
to admire, nor ridiculously dressed enough to be amusing, and the
affairs of whom we cannot discuss, for the simple reason that we
know nothing about them, good, bad, or indifferent. How strange
it is to think that only a short time ago no lady would ever have
dreamed of dining at a London restaurant! Then a few somewhat fast
people set the fashion of supping at some public place instead of
their own homes; and now there is probably no inhabitant of Mayfair
or Belgravia, with any pretensions to smartness, who has not at some
time or other either dined or supped at one of the many fashionable
cafés which have sprung up in various parts of the town, and have
become for a time the rage, only to be displaced by some newer,
more pretentious, and more expensive restaurant, to which people
flock, quite as much to see and discuss each other as they do to
discuss the delicacies provided for them by the latest celebrated
_chef_ imported direct from Paris. But, as I said before, dine we
must somewhere; and dining at a restaurant being depressing, and
dining at home dull, we are just turning over in our minds what we
had best do under the circumstances, when there comes a loud peal
at the front door bell. We all start up, and”—and, to abridge Lady
Colin’s narrative, three ladies and three gentlemen find themselves
in Fleet Street “in front of a little narrow alley, suggestive (to
me) of robbery and murder. Here we alight, and, with many apologies
for the shabbiness of the entrance, our host conducts us—by the
back way by mistake—into a dining place. A flare of unshaded gas
lights up a small, old-fashioned room, the floor of which is covered
with sawdust. The ceiling is white, with projecting cross-beams,
and at one side of the room is a long oak table, at which Johnson,
Goldsmith, and a few other choice spirits, were wont to sit and feed;
and here, it is said, originated the well-known riddle about the
number of beefsteaks it would take to reach the moon. All along one
side of the room are wooden partitions, exactly like old-fashioned
pews, with hard, cushionless sets. One of our party says, as she
sits down, that she feels as if she were in church; we devoutly
wished she would _behave_ a little more as though she were there,
long before the evening was over; but reaction having set in, we
are all, I fear, in a terribly frivolous humour, not by any means
in keeping with the solemn respectability of our surroundings, for
we are told that this chop-house has been in existence ever since
the year 1667, and is no ephemeral mushroom-house of the hour, to be
sought out one day and forgotten the next.... Our pew just holds six
comfortably, and we sit down three and three, opposite each other,
on either side of a very narrow table covered with a spotless white
cloth. We have willow-pattern plates, large and hot for the meat, and
small and cold, each with a pat of butter on it, for our potatoes.
First, we have thick slices of hot ham, the lean tender and pink and
the fat succulent, with an immense dish of the most delicious peas
I ever ate, and young potatoes served in their jackets. Anyone who
has tasted a fresh-run salmon which has been green-kippered, and has
compared it with the hard, salt fish that is cured for the London
market, will appreciate the difference between an ordinary ham and
one that is prepared for immediate consumption. These Yorkshire hams
were not intended for keeping, and, as the cook afterwards informed
us, were all eaten up in a day. I could easily have believed her
if she had said one was eaten up at every meal, judging by the
thickness of the slices to which we were helped, and the amount we
were supposed to eat of them. The next dish is a point steak, rosy
without being _saignant_, accompanied by fresh dishes of young peas
and potatoes.... Our somewhat eccentric dinner is brought to a close
by a bowl of rum punch, accompanied by six long churchwarden pipes
and a glass full of bird’s-eye tobacco.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Serviettes are now provided as a matter of course.
[2] A more extensive menu is now provided.