Chapter IV: 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.

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.