I heard an explanation given of the toleration shown by some of the frequenters of these places to the cockroach and the blackbeetle.
“They're afraid to complain,” said my informant, “lest it should be thought that they were seeing them, again.”
I shall never forget the awful dewey stare of a man who was facing a tumbler (his third) of hot punch in the Cheshire Cheese, at a mouse which made its appearance only a yard or two from where we were sitting shortly before closing time one night. He wiped his forehead and still stared. The aspect of relief that he showed when I made a remark about the tameness of the mouse, quite rewarded me for my interposition between old acquaintances.
Having mentioned the Cheshire Cheese in connection with the transition period from zinc to marble—marble is really my theme—I cannot resist the temptation to refer to the well-preserved tradition of Dr. Johnson's association with this place. Visitors were shown the place where Dr. Johnson was wont to sit night after night with his friends—nay, the very chair that he so fully occupied was on view; and among the most cherished memories of seeing “Old London” which people from America acquired, was that of being brought into such close touch with the eighteenth century by taking lunch in this famous place.
“There it was just as it had been in good old Samuel's day,” said a man who knew all about it. “Nothing in the dear old tavern had been changed since his day—nothing whatever—not even the sand or the sawdust or the smells.”
But it so happens that in the hundreds of volumes of contemporary Johnsoniana, not excepting Boswell's biography, there is no mention of the name of the Cheshire Cheese. There is not a shred of evidence to support the belief that Johnson was ever within its doors. The furthest that conjecture can reasonably go in this connection is that one has no right to assume that from the list of the taverns frequented by Johnson the name of the Cheshire Cheese should be excluded.
The fate of the Cheshire Cheese, however, proves that while tradition as an asset may be of great value to such a place, yet it has its limits. Just as soap and the “spellin' school” have done away with the romance of the noble Red Man, so against the influence of the marble of modernity, even the full flavoured aura of Dr. Johnson was unable to hold its own.
Thus I am brought back—not too late, I hope—to my original theme, which 1 think took the form of a protest against the protestations of those writers who believe that marble should not find its way into the ornamentation of an English garden. I have had seats and tables and vases and columns of various marbles in my House Garden—I have even had a fountain basin and carved panels of flowers and birds of the same material—but although some of them show signs of being affected by the climate, yet nothing has suffered in this way—on the contrary, I find that Sicilian and “dove” marbles have improved by “weathering.”
I have a large round table, the top of which is inlaid with a variety of coloured marbles, and as I allow this to remain out-of-doors during seven months of the year, I know what sorts best withstand the rigours of an English South Coast June; and I am inclined to believe that the ordinary “dove” shows the least sign of hardship at the end of the season. Of course, the top has lost all its polish, but the cost of repolishing such a table is not more than ten shillings—I had another one done some years ago, and that is the sum I was charged for the work by a well-known firm on the Fulham Road; so that if I should get tired of seeing it weather-beaten, I can get it restored without impoverishing the household.
And the mention of this leads me on to another point which should not be lost sight of in considering any scheme of garden decoration.