“ Is it the rich colouring of yellow, and old gold, and silver, and brown, the traditions mellow as old wine that sweeten the atmosphere, the satisfaction of the senses, the pure contentment of soul, the pause by the way for the furbishing of one’s mental apparel? It is all these and more that make the Old Cheshire Cheese a delight, and, when one has gone, leaves of its high-backed benches and polished tables, its general aspect of warm and cheery hospitality, a glowing memory. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Johnson and Goldsmith often sat together over a snug dinner, a tavern in Wine Office Court called the Old Cheshire Cheese. Passing along Fleet Street and glancing up this court, those magic words seem to take up all the space in the distance as completely as though they were being glanced at through a telescope, and if you follow the instincts of your nature you will dive down the telescope towards the attractive lamp above the door, and enter the tavern. The customary pint of stout in an old pewter will be placed before you, if your taste lies that way ”

“ What man who has ever been called into Fleet Street, either on business or pleasure, does not know [Pg 68] the sawdusted floor and old-time appointments of the Cheshire Cheese? Who would dare to confess ignorance of the Brobdingnagian chops, the world-famous point steaks, the stewed cheese, which constitute its main attractions all the year round? Who has not here devoted himself during the hot summer months, in the cool dining-room which seems ever impervious to the sun’s rays, to the manufacture of an elaborate salad to enjoy with his cold beef? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ There are other objects of interest in the room, particularly worth notice being the old china and glass. Nor must we omit to mention the young ladies behind the bar, but it is for the visitor to appraise their grace and charm. Beauty draws the human heart in every generation, and the men of Johnson’s day were no less susceptible to its appeal than are we. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Punch, a mysterious and delectable compound, we had better not order in the bar, its consumption is so much more pleasant upstairs; but there is no reason why we should not admire the punch bowls, and having considered them and studied the portrait of an erstwhile waiter over the fireplace as much as they deserve, we probably turn about, and, as the eyes become accustomed to the darkness, find ourselves confronted with the way out. ”

“ The Cock, immortalised by Tennyson, will live for ever in poetry, but the architects, alas! have decided that it shall vanish from the world of prose. But there is a favourite haunt of mine higher up in Fleet Street. There you can feast upon marrow bones. On Saturdays the pièce de résistance is a wonderful pudding compounded of steaks, oysters, kidneys, and other unknown delicacies; there is a smoking-room upstairs, where punch is served in an old-fashioned bowl, with glasses of the pattern in use in the last century. ”

“ And what is grey with age becomes religion.—Schiller. Old London is fast disappearing off the face of the earth. One by one its ancient taverns have gone, or if the names familiar to our ancestors have been retained, the hand of the builder has been laid remorselessly on the structures our forefathers knew, and they have been transformed beyond recognition. One of them, however, survives, untouched by the hand of time, spared by the vitality of the traditions, literary [Pg 2] and other, which it enshrines, and that is the Cheshire Cheese. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 29] sociable, Englishmen, everybody seeming to know everybody else in the place. ”

“ Though nominally a ‘steak pudding,’ there are very many other ingredients in the dish than rump steak. It is said that for more than 200 years the old tavern has changed hands but twice, and that it is now in the hands of the third family that has helped to keep up its ancient reputation. It is also said that the recipe by which the pudding is builded is a secret that belongs to the place, and is as sacred an heirloom as the old oil painting of Henry Todd, who, according to the inscription on the portrait, commenced waiter at the ‘Old Cheshire Cheese’ February 17, 1812. ”

“ 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 [Pg 31] restaurant! ”

“ Many of our most eminent journalists, legal luminaries, and successful merchants have been patrons of the Old Cheshire Cheese in the days when it was to them club, discussion forum, and even home.”
The “Cheese” bar resembles no other in London. The customers are unique, and the names of their drinks are peculiar. The simplest and amplest is “whisky,” and that means Scotch whisky. No old customer of the “Cheese” would ever think of asking for “Scotch.” If anyone dares to say “Scotch,” he is marked down at once as one not yet inured to the ways of the bar. ”

“ Possibly nowhere in the wide world is there a gastronomic temple of greater renown or more worthy of it, for here have always been cooked in huge copper boilers the famous pudding, the fire being fed and the pudding tended throughout the whole night previous to the solemn and regular introduction of this mammoth delicacy to the longing gaze of its patrons. ”

“ Upstairs there are extensive ranges of kitchens where burnt sacrifices are being perpetually offered up in the shape of mutton and beef; a dining-room and a smoke-room, dark-panelled and cosy, where a man may forget the world and be lost to it during a much coveted mid-day rest. ”

“ While I am on the subject of ‘food’ I must be permitted to mention that I enjoyed the privilege of partaking of ‘ye rumpe steake puddinge’ a few days since at no less celebrated board than ‘The Cheese,’ Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. ‘The Cheese,’ or, to give it its full title, ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,’ is now the most historical tavern of all the old taverns in London. Nearly all the other taverns have had to make way for the more modern restaurant or public-house. ”

“ But in Fleet Street there is one that is specially interesting. We can fancy the Doctor tramping up to his favourite tavern, the Cheshire Cheese.
“Passing into the dark alley known as Wine Office Court, we come to a narrow flagged passage, the house or wall on the other side quite close and excluding the light. The ‘Cheese’ looks indeed a sort of dark den, an inferior public-house, its grimed windows like those of a shop, which we can look at from the passage. On entering, there is the little bar facing us, and always the essence of snugness and cosiness ”

“ The late proprietor, Mr. Beaufoy A. Moore, could be with difficulty restrained from rising from his bed, when stricken down with illness, to drive to the ‘Cheese’ and serve out the pudding. No one, he believed, could do it with such judicious care and judgment as he did.
“Once, and once only was that pudding dropped. Alas, the sad day! In the room sat an expectant hungry army of fifty men. The waiter, bearing in triumph the pudding, appeared smiling on the scene. His foot slipped, he tripped, the pudding wavered, and then bowled along the floor, breaking up and gathering sawdust as it went. ”

“ 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 [Pg 64] 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 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 [Pg 62] 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. ”

“ John Cordy Jeaffreson (“A Book about the Table,” vol. ii. page 43) :
“But ere we pass from beef to less majestic delicacies, let us render homage to the steak pudding, than which no [Pg 92] goodlier fare can be found for a strong hungry man on a cold day. Rising from his pudding at the Cheshire Cheese, such a feaster is at a loss to say whether he should be most grateful for the tender steak, savoury oyster, seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent pepper, or delicate paste.” ”

“ Waiter, suddenly entering the bar—“Oh, I beg your pardon, but you did not pay for that steak you had in the room.”
Socialistic Journalist—“Pay for it! Not likely! It was from the beginning as much my steak as Charlie Moore’s. Now it is more mine than his. Pay? Base is the slave that pays.” ”

“ We are tolerated by the jovial crew, for they see that we mean well, and are as ‘clubbable’ as nature allows. Our favourite haunt is the OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE, the only tavern in Fleet Street left unchanged by what Johnson called that ‘fury of innovation’ which, beginning with Tyburn and its gallows-tree, has gradually transformed London. ”