Chapter III: Relics and Art Treasures of “the Cheshire Cheese”

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so
much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.”—JOHNSON.

About half-way up Fleet Street, on the right or northern side if we are coming from Ludgate Circus, the sign of “The Cheshire Cheese” meets the eye of the wayfarer, and intimates to him the near presence of the famous hostelry. There are two approaches, the western by Wine Office Court, the other by the passage way leading to the annexe. We will take the western, by Wine Office Court, because up it have often strolled side by side Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, the latter parting for a moment with his dictatorial friend at the portals of “The Cheese” to go on to his lodgings a dozen yards further up the court on the other side the way. The sign beneath which the Doctor stands intimates to all and sundry that “The Cheshire Cheese” was rebuilt in 1667, seven years after the glorious Restoration, on the site of that older Cheshire Cheese, where Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and many another Elizabethan wit were wont to quaff their sack amid laughter and eager bandying of jest. We will leave the Doctor to make for his favourite seat in the room on the left, while we enter the bar. This is a delightful apartment in its tranquil reminder of the past. Ranged round it are a number of valuable punch bowls, of which we can imagine Mr. Pickwick if he were on a visit here took elaborate and reverential note. They speak eloquently of countless _noctes ambrosianæ_, when the wit and the liquor were alike of the best. The bar of the Cheshire Cheese has seen them drained to the last drop with effusive enthusiasm when the news of Blenheim, and Oudenarde, and Ramilies arrived, or later for Dettingen and Minden. We can imagine the punch was not without its tributory tears when its patriotic customers suddenly learnt that Nelson had fallen in the hour of victory, though there was nothing lachrymal to dilute their jovial joy in the frequent triumphs of “The Iron Duke.” If the old punch bowls could but speak! But the very air of the place is redolent of the past, both storied and convivial, and eloquent for him who but pauses to think and to recall.

One of the most touching things about “The Cheese” is the way in which it treasures the memory of its old servants. “William” has actually given his name to a room, and there over the fireplace of the bar just opposite the door is his portrait, the portrait of William Simpson, who commenced waiter at “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese” Chop-house in 1829. “This picture,” says the inscription below, “was subscribed for by the gentlemen frequenting the Coffee Room, and presented to Mr. Dolamore (the Landlord) to be handed down as an heirloom to all future Landlords of ‘Ye old Cheshire Cheese,’ Wine Office Court Fleet Street.” The name of the artist is unknown. It is worth noting that in this inscription the room in which we stand is called a Coffee Room. Its modern designation of “the bar” therefore is of comparatively recent origin.

The two small oil paintings on either side this heirloom were painted in 1883 by William Allen. One of them depicts the interior of the old bar, the other its exterior. To the right of the fireplace is a striking and important painting. It is a portrait, but it is not certainly known of whom. Tradition varies, and while according to some it is a portrait of Dean Swift, others maintain that here we have the counterfeit presentment of the first proprietor of the house after the Great Fire, Theophilus B. Cruneble. 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. The picture upstairs, near the “Grandfather’s Clock,” would have fired their imaginations as readily as it does ours.

But now, turning from the bar over which Hebes of our twentieth century so efficiently preside, we pass to the room opposite, and immediately on the left of the passage way as we enter. This room has not changed its character or its furniture for centuries. If Dr. Johnson were to come in now and go by us to his corner seat there to the right of the fireplace, he would find things essentially much as he left them. If his ghost wanders about Fleet Street, it must be a great relief to it to get, when it can, back safe into its unchanging old haunt, out of reach of the structural revolutions which elsewhere time has wrought.

As in the bar, the important picture in this room is that of a waiter. It is a portrait of Henry Todd, as the inscription informs us, who commenced waiter at the Olde Cheshire Cheese the 27th February, 1812. It was painted by Wageman, July, 1827, and “subscribed for by the gentlemen frequenting the Coffee Room, and presented to Mr. Dolamore (the landlord) in trust to be handed down as an heirloom to all future landlords of the Old Cheshire Cheese, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street.”

Two oil paintings by Seymour Lucas, R.A., of the dining-room, with portraits of customers, will repay inspection, while above Dr. Johnson’s old seat is an oil painting of the Lexicographer himself, a copy of the famous portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, now preserved in the National Gallery. Underneath may be read the following inscription:—“The Favourite Seat of Dr. Johnson. Born 18th Septr., 1709. Died 13th Decr., 1784. In him a noble understanding and a masterly intellect were united. With grand independence of character, and unfailing goodness of heart, which won the admiration of his own age and remain as recommendations to the reverence of posterity. ‘No, Sir! there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness has been produced as by a good tavern.—JOHNSON.’”

Hard by are two interesting old prints, one of Dr. Johnson rescuing Oliver Goldsmith from his landlady, the other of a literary party at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Then there is an oil painting of a family group in which the Doctor is easily to be recognised. More modern, but still well worthy of inspection, is an artist’s proof, signed by the artist himself, of the well-known picture—“Toddy at the Cheese.” This is the painter, Mr. Dendy Sadler’s own gift to the house, the interior of whose dining-room he has so genially portrayed. Noticeable adjuncts of the apartments also are two old water-bottles, one of leather, the other of stone, and of what is known as Godstone ware.

The old staircase is well worth careful attention, having stood marvellously the test of time. If we ascend it we arrive at the first floor and William’s room, to which an announcement on the wainscot at the foot of the stairs served as a guide. It is immediately on our left when we reach the landing, perpetuating with its name the memory of Mr. Dolamore’s faithful old henchman. Its most interesting feature is a second copy in oils of the portrait of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to which I have just made allusion. But it is much more than a mere replica of the copy downstairs in the dining-room. It is a copy, indeed, but a very old copy, and dates back to the Doctor’s own time. It was painted in order that it might adorn the room at “The Mitre,” in Chancery Lane, where the club founded by Dr. Johnson first held its meetings. Dr. Johnson’s “Mitre” has long since been pulled down, but the club he founded exists, and meets several times a year in William’s room. Two prints next claim our attention—a coloured one of Dr. Johnson’s House in Gough Square, the other a book print of Dr. Johnson, who is also shown to us in a framed wax bas-relief model.

About the room also are a number of sepia drawings of the various parts of the house—the work of that accomplished artist, F. Cox—while there are several pictures on the wall which serve to show that the tastes of the frequenters of the “Cheese” are not limited to literature and journalism. For example, we have “Roach, Perch and Dace,” and “Salmon Trout” and “Trout,” by C. Foster, a coloured print of steeple-chasing, a portrait of Lord Palmerston, engraved by F. Holl from the painting by F. Grant; a landscape of considerable merit by an unknown artist, and a view of Fleet Street, showing the entrance to Wine Office Court. Very interesting too is a print of the meeting of Dr. Johnson and Flora Macdonald in the Isle of Skye in the year 1773. This valuable work was recently exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 at Shepherd’s Bush.

Issuing from this room, which embalms the memory of “William,” we must pause at the foot of the flight of stairs leading to the next floor to admire a handsome old grandfather’s clock, which even in Dr. Johnson’s time was venerable by reason of its years, as it was almost certainly part of the furniture of “The Cheese” when the hostelry was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1667. It is not impossible it was ticking off the flight of time when Hawkins and other Elizabethan sea captains were harrying the warships of the great Armada in its progress up the British Channel. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson may have studied that ancient clock-face which would warn them that it was desirable to cut short their pleasant revelry and hasten to the theatre. We pass on with a lingering look, and the next turn in the old staircase brings us to a private room, containing one of the most valued treasures of the Cheshire Cheese, nothing less than the original chair used by Dr. Johnson at the Mitre, the old Chancery Lane tavern, patronised occasionally by the Doctor and now pulled down. This chair was acquired by the proprietor of the Cheshire Cheese, and sedulously protected from all accident and injury. The better to ensure this end it is now enclosed in a glass case. On the back of the chair is a medallion of Dr. Johnson with the inscription—“Born Sept. 7th, 1709. Died Dec. 13th, 1784.” Copies of the chair can be supplied to order in oak at £5 each, but the medallion and inscriptions, which are perhaps modern, or at least post-Johnsonian additions to the original chair, are not copied. A notice card upon the seat of the chair announces to the visitor that “This chair was in daily use by Dr. Samuel Johnson,” while below follows the quotation:—“More regal in his state than many kings.” Though he passed away when George Washington was in the zenith of his renown after splendid epoch-making achievement in arms and diplomacy and council, the memory of the great Doctor is as fresh and fragrant as ever, as on the day when he last sat in the chair before us, the oracle of a select company of wits and scholars. It is idle to moralise further on this more than royal relic. Each intelligent visitor, as he reverently contemplates it, will pursue his own line of reflection.

Turning from the chair we find at the other end of the room a glass-fronted cupboard, which contains many original samples of the old willow pattern plate and also of the unique badge plate, which has been in use in the house for many years. Here, too, are several specimens of the old punch glasses, which have found favour with so many generations of _convives_ of the Cheshire Cheese. The stranger is not perhaps without a tremor of gastronomic emotion when the spoon used for at least three generations, probably for a period of over a century, in stirring _the_ pudding is pointed out to him. Hard by on the walls of the room are seven old prints from Hogarth’s “Rake’s Progress.”

The great artistic treasures of this room are, however, three important paintings, which have recently been restored by Messrs. William Marchant & Co., of the Goupil Gallery, 5 Regent Street. The first, which looks down on the chair of Dr. Johnson in its glass shrine, is an oil painting of a boy and dog. On the back of the picture is written:—“David Boyle, aged 10.” “Ye 19th of July, 1691.” So that it was painted eighteen years before the birth of Dr. Johnson. On the opposite wall is another oil painting, a still life picture, attributed by competent critics to Peter Boel, who lived from 1626 to 1680, and was a pupil of Snyders. The third of these oil paintings is a figure picture, probably of “Diana,” by Charles Le Brun, or the school (France, XVII. century).

In the smoking-room adjoining there is nothing of special interest for visitors, since this apartment is mainly devoted to the smoking of churchwarden pipes and to the consumption of “goes” of rack, cork, and, above all, of Punch, for the right compounding of which Ye Old Cheshire Cheese enjoys a reputation so deservedly high. Here take place noteworthy arguments, conducted with much skill and logical acumen by the regular customers, each in his own special chair, and each with his own churchwarden pipe in his mouth, or held gracefully poised to emphasise a rhetorical point. A case is provided in which gentlemen may keep from harm the favourite pipes to which use and wont have made them attached. In this room, too, the evening clubs hold their meetings. The subject of “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Clubs” is, however, dealt with elsewhere. Still attention may be drawn to the fact that on the walls of the smoking-room are some interesting pen and ink sketches and drawings relating to the clubs. It would be unbecoming perhaps to omit mention of an engraving of “The Empty Chair at Gadshill,” since it serves to remind us of the intimate association of Charles Dickens with “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,” while it suggests that other empty chair in the next room. Further, a pen and ink drawing of the old bar downstairs, by Joseph Pennell, must not be forgotten, any more than three Phil May sketches, the gift of the Goupil Gallery.

“An interesting episode in the family history of the House.”

_By F. Cox._

(William’s Room in the distance.)]

At the foot of the staircase leading up to the apartments sacred to the fair Hebes of the House a sepia drawing by F. Cox claims our notice. It is entitled “An interesting episode in the family history of the House.” A stalwart favourite of the bar is snatching a kiss, while two lovely colleagues of his beautiful victim are tip-toeing down these very stairs to see the fun, and one pretty forehead has just reached the corner of the wainscoting. And now as the smiling beauties to the right of the picture bar our further progress, let us descend to the kitchen, where the most interesting objects are the original coal range and coal grill, which have been in use for over a hundred years. 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. That is the hour when the analytical observer might make valuable studies of the watering mouth.

Dinners, by the way, are now served in the Annexe. This room has been formed by roofing with glass what was originally a court-yard. It contains amongst the rest two famous original prints by H. Bunbury—“A City Hunt” and “Hyde Park, 1780.” Other interesting prints are “Destruction of the Bastile, July 14, 1789,” after a painting by H. Singleton, and a line engraving by James Heath from a painting by F. Wheatley of “The Riot in Broad Street on the 17th of June, 1773.” Here also is a cabinet containing various articles which may be purchased by visitors. The price list may be conveniently appended here. It runs as follows:—

O.C.C. WARE, ETC. Each
_s._ _d._
Three-handle MUGS, silver mounted 50 0
Three-handle MUGS 10 0
Two-handle MUGS 7 6
One-handle MUGS 2 0
One-handle MUGS, silver mounted 21 0
Cream Jugs 1 0

Sugar Basins 1 0
Mustard Pots 1 0
Salt Cellars 1 0
Pepper Pots 1 0
Tea Pots —

Large. Small.
_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._
Badged Willow Pattern Plates 1 0 0 8
Badged Willow Pattern Dishes 1 0 0 8

POST CARDS.
No. 1 Series 6d. per packet.
No. 2 Series 6d. per packet.
Coloured Interior 1d. each.
Views of the House 6d. and 1s.

The above is a fairly complete inventory of the relics and art treasures of the Cheshire Cheese, that ancient hostelry which has become a place of pilgrimage for all in the wide realms of Anglo-Saxondom who cherish the memory of a unique figure in the literary history of the English-speaking peoples. Much has been said and written of the great men of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who have eaten good fare and waxed honestly merry within the precincts of the Cheshire Cheese, but little of the men of note of this generation and the preceding one who have at one time or another been its guests. There are few distinguished Englishmen who have not partaken of its hospitality, and few persons of eminence, whether hailing from the far Antipodes or from the great country over which floats the Stars and Stripes, who would deem a visit to England complete if due homage to the memory of the great Lexicographer in the Johnsonian shrine in Wine Office Court had not been paid. There is nothing to compare with this worship of the mighty literary monarch, unless it is to be found in that of which Shakespeare is the centre, which has made of Stratford-on-Avon the other Mecca of Anglo-Saxondom.