WHAT THE WORLD SAYS OF THE “CHEESE”
That all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul—the dinner-bell.—BYRON.
The “Diner Out,” in the _Evening Standard_ of January 10, 1867,
writes:—
“In each of the apartments on the ground floor is a full-length
portrait, in oil, of a departed waiter—subscribed for upon his
retirement by the gentlemen ‘using’ the house. The one which most
strikes my memory at the moment is the representation of a portly,
respectable—scrupulously respectable—middle-aged man, clad in a
costume worn early in the century—that is to say, the coat is of
blue, the buttons are gilt, the cravat is a cheerful roll surmounting
a frilled shirt, and the legs know no trousers but the breeches and
stockings of departed days, when well-made men ‘stood upon their
legs’ in something more than the merely literal sense of the term.
The background of the picture is a faithful representation of a
section of the room in which it is hung. The box before which the
waiter is standing, opening a bottle of port (I say port, because
a man would never open a bottle of sherry with the same grave, but
complacent, air of responsibility), is a speaking likeness, and so is
evidently the representation of the guest for whom the order is being
executed—a person even more respectable than the waiter, if possible,
with a very high coat collar, his hair all brushed up to the top of
his head, and a cute knowledge of wine depicted in every lineament
of his countenance. You may be sure that no inferior quality is being
opened for him. Indeed, the waiter is as incapable of deceiving as
the guest of being deceived. The wine is evidently of that degree
of excellence which impels people to talk about it while they drink
it—a wine which is its own aim and end—not a mere stimulating drink,
setting men on to be enthusiastic upon general subjects. The diner is
plainly the model diner of the Cheshire Cheese, as the waiter is the
model waiter.
“The Cheshire Cheese is famous for steak-pudding, agreeably tempered
by kidneys, larks, and oysters. This dish, which is often ordered
for private parties, and even for private houses, is frequently
made the occasion of social gatherings of an extensive character—so
much so, indeed, that Madame Roland might have extended her
celebrated apostrophe to Liberty by saying—‘O Steak Pudding, how
much conviviality is committed in thy name!’ Whatever you get at the
‘Cheshire’ is sure to be good and capitally cooked.”
From an article entitled “At the Cheshire Cheese,” which appeared
in the _Commercial Travellers’ Review_, the following is taken:—“At
one o’clock—the time at which the ‘Cheese’ is most frequented—we
accompanied our friends up Fleet Street, and then by devious ways and
turnings, more than enough to upset our geography, until we finally
arrived at that part of Wine Office Court where the ‘Cheshire’
stands. We were ushered into what seemed most like the after cabin
of a steamer, with comfortably arranged and well appointed miniature
tables on either side, attended by trim obliging waiters, and
everything else equally inviting, and fully justifying our friend’s
previous good report. ‘Roast Lamb,’ ‘Roast Beef,’ ‘Boiled Beef,’
‘Beefsteak Pie,’ and——‘Thanks—plates for four of the first with
the various &c., and four tankards of stout.’ ‘Yes, sir’—and away
vanishes our excellent friend, the waiter, to the unknown regions
where cook holds sway and reigns supreme, only to return in less time
than it takes to record the fact, with all that was calculated to
make us content and comfortable.... We enjoyed one of the pleasantest
afternoons it has been our good fortune to participate in for many
a day. Pleasant dinner—pleasant company over a well-brewed bowl
of palatably flavoured sipping punch, that engendered pleasant
reflections on past assemblies and present associations—in the heart
of dear old London—surely no alloy was possible in our midst, and
nothing more was needed save the presence of some other far away
friends to overflow the cup of pleasure at the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’”
In the _World_ of December 24, 1884, there is an article on the “The
Old Chop Houses,” in which the writer, drawing on the recollections
of thirty years, says: “There was only one other house that excelled
the old Cheshire Cheese for a steak, and that was the Blue Posts in
Cork Street.... But as regards mutton, chops, the Cheshire Cheese
was unrivalled in London, or anywhere short of Barnsley, where a
mutton chop is about a third part of a loin, not reckoning the chump
end, and where this doubled or trebled chop is so taperly trimmed
and freed from its superfluous fat, that when cooked, by a process
which I take to be rather roasting than grilling, and served with
the fillet under, like a sirloin of beef, it might, by virtue of its
shapely plumpness, be taken for a roast partridge or grouse.”
Under the head of “Public Refreshment,” in Knight’s “London,” vol.
iv., p. 314, appears this passage:—
“There is a dingy house in a court in Fleet Street where the chops
and steaks are unrivalled. Who that has tasted there that impossible
thing of private cookery, a _hot_ mutton chop—a second brought
when the first is despatched—has not pleasant recollections of the
never-ending call to the cook of ‘two muttons to follow’?”
In Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” (book ii., chap. 4),
after the trial at the Old Bailey, the text proceeds:
“‘I begin to think I _am_ faint.’
“‘Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those
numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to—this or
some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.’
“Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill
to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern.[7] Here
they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon
recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine; while
Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate
bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon
him.”
“Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,” in a letter dated from Regent Street,
London, June 26, 1879, to the San Francisco _Daily Evening Post_,
thus refers to the Cheshire Cheese:—
“The Old Cheshire Cheese is, perhaps, at the present writing, one of
the most popular of the old hostelries, and when you consider that
for over two hundred years it has been in existence, and has been
patronised by celebrities of every degree, rank, and station, and
even royalty—for Charles II. ate a chop here with Nell Gwynne—and the
genial landlord will actually show you the seats used by Dr. Samuel
Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, even to the marks on the wainscotted
wall made by their greased wigs; the corner where the author of
‘Pendennis’ and ‘The Newcomes’ sat, or where Charles Dickens, Mark
Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, and a host of
others enjoyed their ’arf-and-’arf and toasted cheese. The tavern is
situated up a little narrow passage called
‘WINE OFFICE COURT.’
I don’t think it can be more than three feet wide. On the right hand
side of it is the entrance. Over the door is a glass lamp painted
red, with the words ‘Old Cheshire Cheese’ on it. But, oh! what chops,
what steaks, what cold lamb and salad, what beefsteak pudding you
do get here! It is indeed a revelation! And should you be permitted
to ascend to the upper part of the building you will find the walls
adorned with paintings, articles of vertu, and other evidences of
comfort and ease, where the proprietor dispenses his hospitality in
the most genial manner; and, when I inform you that Mr. Moore is
a vestryman and churchwarden of St. Bride’s, will shortly become
Councilman, and probably Alderman and Lord Mayor, you will see that
it is no common thing to be the landlord of the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’”
Mr. Moore did not live to attain the dignity of Lord Mayor which
“Jeems Pipes” presaged. He died in 1886, loved and respected in his
life, and deeply lamented at his death by the troops of friends who
knew him both in his private and business life.
The following are extracted from a London letter in the _New York
World_ of September 14, 1884, and are interesting:—
“London abounds in historic taverns, but of them all none are
more historic and interesting than the ‘Cheese.’ To eat a steak
here is not to masticate fried cork, while the tankards of bitter
ale, foaming and delicious, with which you wash down the steak
are worth a long journey to enjoy. The folk-lore of this famous
haunt is interesting, not alone to tavern-loving, but to general
posterity, although as to a complete and detailed account of its
very early history there is much of obscurity. While there are no
positive proofs, there are authentic legends that Shakespeare spent
many an idle hour at this place, because it was on his way to the
Blackfriars’ Theatre, in Playhouse Yard, Ludgate Hill, of which he
was so long a time absolute manager. In his time the play began at 1
p.m. and ended at 5 p.m., at which hour the wits of the town mustered
forces in Fleet Street haunts.
“In modern times, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and
now to-day that prince of diners and _bons vivants_, George Augustus
Sala, have frequented the Cheshire Cheese and waxed eloquent over
its comforts and subtle charms. Both Dickens and Thackeray knew how
to appreciate a good inn, and, after singing the praises of the bill
of fare, pay deserved compliments to the waiters. Men who serve
the frequenters of the Cheshire grow gray in the service, and each
boasts his own particular customers. Of the younger waiters all are
most civil, and the young women at the bar are not only polite, but
lady-like in manners and appearance.
“It is surprising how soon one gets used to the innovation of the
feminine bar-tender, and it is not to be questioned that it is a good
custom, productive of greater refinement among the male frequenters,
and, where the young women conduct themselves modestly, in no wise
degrading to their minds or morals.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE OF BILL OF FARE.
_By Cruickshank_]
“It matters little what hour you select to visit ‘Ye Olde Cheshire
Cheese,’ you will have plenty to amuse and instruct you, and always
find the pretty barmaids in the bar room attentive and clever.
The cutting of the rump-steak and kidney pie is a spearing process
performed by the proprietor, and often as many as three, even four
waiters are needed to lift the huge smoking hot pie to the centre
table, while often from thirty to sixty hungry men wait at the
various tables for a triangle of this toothsome viand. Take my word
for it, you will have a great desire for a second help, and even
though, like myself, you are a petticoat wearer, no one will annoy
you or even look surprised at your devoting an evening among the odd
masculine characters nightly frequenting ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.’”
In an article written by Mr. W. Outram Tristram, and illustrated
by Mr. Herbert Railton, the _English Illustrated Magazine_ of
December, 1889, gives, under the title of “A Storied Tavern,” a most
interesting account of this old house.
“Here,” says the writer, “is no home for kickshaws and cigarettes.
From this kitchen comes no sample of fashionable culinary art, that
‘art with poisonous honey stolen from France.’ Nothing of that kind
obtains at the Cheshire Cheese. Here the narrowed kingdom lies
of point steaks turned to a second and served hissing on plates
supernaturally hot, of chops gargantuan in size and inimitable in
tenderness and flavour, of cheese bubbling sympathetically in tiny
tins, of floury potatoes properly cooked, of tankards of bitter beer,
of extra creaming stout, of a rump-steak and oyster pudding served
on Saturdays only,[8] and so much the specialty of the house, that I
must deal with it hereafter. All smacks here of that England of solid
comfort and solid plenty.
“There is a collection of useful
IMPLEMENTS OF INEBRIETY
in the bar of the Cheshire Cheese, which brings the place’s past more
vividly, perhaps, before one than any view of its sanded floors,
low ceilings, or quaint staircase, disappearing suddenly from the
entrance passage in formal but inviting bend.
“Voltaire was certainly here; Bolingbroke, in this place cracked many
a bottle of Burgundy; and Congreve’s wit flashed wine-inspired, while
Pope, sickly and intolerant of tobacco-smoke, suffered under these
low roofs I doubt not many a headache. But it is of its distinguished
visitors of later days that the Cheshire Cheese as it now stands
reminds one most fully. Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Chatterton
were undoubted frequenters. Many a time the great Samuel, turning
heavily in his accustomed seat, and beset by some pert sailing
pinnace, brought, like a galleon manœuvring, his ponderous artillery
to bear. Goldsmith lived at No. 6 Wine Office Court, where he wrote
or partly wrote the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ his flagging inspiration
possibly gaining assistance from the tavern’s famed Madeira.
“His (Dr. Johnson’s) frequent, nay, nightly visits here are matters
of history, and have been vouched for on
AUTHORITY BEYOND DISPUTE.
The time is not so far distant when old frequenters to the house
were to be found who had drunk and eaten with men whom Johnson had
conversationally annihilated, and who recalled the circumstance with
an extreme clearness of recollection. A recollection this which
joined the record of two generations of the tavern’s great visitors.
And the second generation offered names not unworthy to compare with
the first, such notabilities as these figuring in the list: Dickens,
Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor,
John Forster, Sir Alexander Cockburn, Professor Aytoun, Tom Hood,
Andrew Halliday, and Charles Mathews.”
Miss Sarah Morton, a special correspondent of the _Illustrated
Buffalo Express_ (N.Y.), gives in her paper, February 15, 1891, an
amusing report of her visit to the “Cheese.” “It was,” she says,
“with slow and lingering steps that I emerged from a visit to the
ghastly yet fascinating Tower of London, by the way of old St. Paul’s
Churchyard into Fleet Street, towards the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’ ’Twas
the night of the beefsteak pudding, a delicacy served only twice a
week, and in precisely the same way that it has been served in this
very place for 200 years.
* * * * *
“One feels just like sidling into an old-fashioned church pew, for
the three tables on the left, each accommodating six persons, are
provided with high-backed benches black with age.
“‘Will you wait for the pudding?’ asks the Imposing Personage.
“‘What time will it come on?’ I diffidently query.
“‘Six o’clock to the minute,’ was the answer.
“‘I will wait,’ I replied, and again I was left alone to continue my
observations.
“Over on the broad window seat is something under glass in a gilt
frame. It is a most glowing description of the glories of ‘Ye Olde
Cheshire Cheese,’ written by Jeems Pipes of Pipesville.
“Every seat is occupied.
“’Tis just six.
“The door swings slowly open. A huge, round white ball is borne
aloft, high above the head of The Personage, who enters with slow
and stately tread, followed in single file by six serious-faced
attendants. The salver is tenderly lowered, and rests upon the
table. Every eye is fixed upon it. The room is pervaded with perfect
hush.
“The Personage solemnly receives a big spoon and knife from his first
gentleman in waiting. The fateful moment has arrived. The pastry is
broken. The gravy gently oozes over it.
“The Personage gravely approaches me and apologises for not serving
me first, but ‘really the middle portion will be safer for you,’ he
explained.
“The plates of the others were heaped upon. My time has come. There
is my big dinner plate piled high with—what on earth! Birds! yes,
tiny bits of birds, skylarks, kidneys, strips of beef, just smothered
in pastry like sea-foam, and dark brown gravy, steaming with
fragrance, as seasoning.
“‘Half-and-half’—British bitter and stout in old-time pewter mugs was
brought; out of deference to my sex, I suppose, a glass tumbler was
placed before me, but I scorned to use it. Didn’t Thackeray say it
was worth a year’s absence in far-away countries to realise the joy
that filled one’s soul upon returning to old England and quaffing her
bitter from a pewter mug?
“Then came stewed cheese, on the thin shaving of crisp, golden toast
in hot silver saucers—so hot that the cheese was of the substance
of thick cream, the flavour of purple pansies and red raspberries
commingled.
“There were only 400 skylarks put into the pudding made for the
Prince of Wales at the banquet of the Forth Bridge opening in
Edinburgh. How many thousands of the ‘blithe spirits’ have been put
into the Cheshire Cheese pudding for 200 years?
“Shades of Shelley and Keats!”
In _Society_ a series of articles was devoted to the description
of famous restaurants and of the fare to be enjoyed within their
walls. The writer, long an intimate of the “Cheese,” devotes not the
least piquant of his descriptions to that immortal house. He writes:
“Christopher North chopped here, and has recorded his high opinion
of its kitchen and its cellar. I fancy, however, that it was about
the early _Punch_ period that its real connection with journalism
was ratified and the union consummated. Shirley Brooks has written
pleasantly about it, Albert Smith has chaffed it, Edmund Yates has
embalmed it in his ‘Reminiscences,’ and I have always had an idea
that the Fleet Street chop-house in which poor Sydney Carton is found
sitting in a semi-drunken condition is the Cheshire Cheese. Dickens,
at all events, knew this place well, nor was it likely to escape a
use of this sort. Mr. George Augustus Sala was a constant customer.”
The _Freemason’s Chronicle_ of June 5, 1886, in reviewing an earlier
edition of this little book, says:—“The praises of Ye Olde Cheshire
Cheese, one of the most antiquated, and yet the most favourite,
resorts in the city of London, have been sung by historians and
poets through the whole of the last century, and quaint stories have
been handed down to us of scenes and incidents that have from time
to time been enacted within the age-begrimed walls of this historic
‘chop-house.’ In these days of progress, when the links connecting
us with the bygone history of Old London are being snapped one by
one, and once familiar landmarks are being improved off the face
of the City by modern innovations, it is refreshing to be able to
sit down and con over the sayings and doings of eminent men who
have left ‘footprints on the sands of Time,’ and whose names are
immortalised in literature and song. This little volume brings us
_tête-à-tête_ with such sturdy intellects as those of Dr. Johnson,
Boswell, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, and a host of other ‘men of the
time,’ who in their periods of leisure sought ease and refreshment at
the ‘Cheese,’ and set the tables often in a roar with their pungent
criticisms and flights of mirth and satire.
“You can have pointed out to you the seats used by Dr. Samuel
Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, even to the marks on the wainscoted
walls made by their greased wigs; the corner where the author of
‘Pendennis’ and the ‘Newcomes’ sat; or where Charles Dickens, Mark
Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, and a host
of others enjoyed their ’arf-and-’arf and toasted cheese. The
‘Cheese’ has still its _habitués_ and on Saturday there is the
famous rump-steak pudding, which draws a large attendance, for it is
considered that you may search the wide world round without matching
that succulent delicacy. Although we miss the genial form and face
of the late Moore, whose prerogative it was to preside over this
_chef-d’œuvre_ of the culinary art, yet his place is filled by a
worthy scion of the race, and the company, if not so garrulous or
so boisterous as of yore, is still permeated by a sense of deep and
affectionate loyalty to the ‘old shop.’”
The _Globe_ of September 23, 1887, says: “London itself bristles with
associations of the great dead. The toil and moil of Fleet Street
has tired you. Then turn up Wine Office Court and enter the Cheshire
Cheese, where you may sit in the same seat, perchance drink out of
the same glass, and if, like poor Oliver, you still ask for more, it
is possible to rest your head on the identical spot of grease that
Johnson’s wig provoked on the bare wall.”
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Indubitably the Cheshire Cheese.
[8] An error on the part of the writer. It is served on Mondays and
Wednesdays as well.