MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA AND OTHERS ON THE “CHEESE”
For he’s a jolly good fellow.—_Old Song._
The late Mr. George Augustus Sala, in an article entitled “Brain
Street,” which is to be found in “Old and New London” (Cassell,
Petter & Galpin), thus describes Wine Office Court and the Cheshire
Cheese:—
“The vast establishments of Messrs. Pewter and Antimony,
type-founders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year ’46);
of Messrs. Quoin, Case, and Chappell, printers to the Board of
Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge and Treecalf, bookbinders; with the
smaller industries of Scawper and Tinttool, wood-engravers; and
Treacle, Gluepot, and Lampblack, printing-roller makers, are packed
together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in
a cask. The ‘Cheese’ is at the Brain Street end. It is a little
lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of
a high-shouldered man with his hands in his pockets. It is full of
holes and corners and cupboards and sharp turnings; and in ascending
the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if
you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and dishes momentarily
deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at the ‘Cheese’
are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable old
tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity;
and the guests and the waiter are the oldest of familiars. Yet the
waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure
when you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that
waiter’s soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused
by the savoury odour of steaks and ‘muts’ to follow; of cheese
bubbling in tiny tins—the original ‘speciality’ of the house; of
floury potatoes and fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler
tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout and ‘goes’ of Cork
and ‘rack,’ by which is meant gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish
stew and rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every sense?
To be compelled to run to and fro with these succulent viands from
noon to late at night, without being able to spare time to consume
them in comfort—where do waiters dine, and when, and how?—to be
continually taking other people’s money only for the purpose of
handing it to other people—are not these grievances sufficient to
cross-grain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter? Somebody
is always in a passion at the ‘Cheese’: either a customer because
there is not fat enough on his ‘point’ steak, or because there is
too much bone in his mutton-chop; or else the waiter is wroth with
the cook; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all.
Yes, there is a barmaid at the ‘Cheese,’ mewed up in a box not much
bigger than a bird-cage, surrounded by groves of lemons, ‘ones’ of
cheese, punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care
to dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a
punch-ladle, having a William-the-Third guinea soldered in the bowl.”
“Old and New London,” ch. 10, part iii., p. 123, contains this
paragraph:—
“Mr. William Sawyer[5] has also written a very admirable sketch of
the ‘Cheese’ and its old-fashioned conservative ways, which we cannot
resist quoting:—
“‘We are a close, conservative, inflexible body—we, the regular
frequenters of the “Cheshire,”’ says Mr. Sawyer. ‘No new-fangled
notions, new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have
our history, our traditions, and our observations, all sacred and
inviolable. Look around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or
effeminately luxurious here. A small room, with heavily timbered
windows, a low-planked ceiling. A huge projecting fireplace, with a
great copper boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which might
have roused even old John Willett, of the “Maypole,” to admiration.
High, stiff-backed, inflexible “settees,” hard and grainy in texture,
box off the guests half a dozen each to a table. Sawdust covers the
floor, giving forth that peculiar faint odour which the French avoid
by the use of the vine sawdust with its pleasant aroma. A chief
ornament in which we indulge is a picture over the mantel-piece,
a full-length of a now departed waiter, whom, in the long past,
we caused to be painted, by subscription of the whole room, to
commemorate his virtues, and our esteem. We sit bolt upright round
our tables, waiting, but not impatient. A time-honoured solemnity
is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to
precipitate it? There are men in the room who have dined here every
day for a quarter of a century—aye, the whisper goes round that one
man did it on his wedding day! In all that time the more staid and
well-regulated among us have observed a steady regularity of feeding.
Five days in the week we have “Rotherham steak”—that mystery of
mysteries—or our “chop and chop to follow,” with the indispensable
wedge of Cheshire—unless it is preferred stewed or toasted—and
on Saturday decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the
world-renowned “Cheshire” pudding. It is of this latter luxury that
we are now assembled to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony
and observance.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The late Mr. Sawyer was for many years the brilliant editor of
_Funny Folks_. His articles signed “Rupert,” in the _Budget_ have
often been reprinted.