[13] There has been an enemy working underground during the past years—an ogre more wholesale and omnivorous than has yet appeared. This arises out of the burrowing of the underground lines in the City—the grand teredo, such as bored its way to the Mansion House Station from the Tower. It has been stated “that there has been no such general demolition since the days of the Great Fire. No less than 130 houses, some of them the oldest in London, and two of the City halls, have been pulled down in order to construct the new thoroughfare which continues Gracechurch Street to Tower Hill. The general destruction is added to by the tunnelling of the link line from the Tower to the Mansion House.”
[14] With such rapidity are the blows struck, and so capricious too is the spoiler in his work, now hurrying on, now suspending altogether, that it becomes difficult to bring the record “up to date,” as it were.
[15] It was sold “in lots” in 1882 for about £10,000; the grand marble staircase, which cost £11,000, went to Madame Tussaud’s for £1,000, where a portion may be seen. The massive gilt grille, or railing that faced the street, cost £3,500, and was bought for Sandown for 300 guineas. Being all levelled and cleared the ground was laid out and sold, when it was found there was room for seventy-five houses.
[16] Many will have noted the curious iron posts fixed in the ground in front of one of the corner houses. These are real cannon, captured in one of Admiral Keppel’s victories, and presented to his family.
[17] Since writing the above, the “White Hart” has been demolished.
[18] “The fate of the Cock Tavern was decided yesterday, when a special jury at the Recorder’s Court in the Guildhall awarded £9,000 for the freehold, and nearly £11,000 to the lessee and occupier, in all about £20,000. It was proved that the profits were £2,000 a year. A casual visitor would have great difficulty in believing the fact. The ancient dinner haunt was a small, dingy snuggery, greasy with the steam of fifty thousand dinners. It hardly seated a score guests, and served nothing but steaks, chops, and kidneys with ale and stout for liquor. Counsel for the lessee, in addressing the court on the amount of award, said he had himself seen only that day three of Her Majesty’s judges at luncheon hour in the neighbouring law court sitting over their chop and pewter of London stout in The Cock. The only articles reserved in the old place are the mantelpiece, a massive work in oak, of the time of James I., and the sign of the house, which was carved by Grinling Gibbons.”
[19] A sympathetic frequenter of the “Cheshire Cheese” has sent me a glowing account of its alternations, which I can cordially endorse. “The ‘Cheese’ is really the last of our old taverns, conducted on genuine principles, which one wishes to cherish. When genial spring has brought forward vegetation the waiter’s cheerful intimation that ‘Asparagus is on, sir,’ recalls the fact forcibly to your notice. When later, ‘’Am and peas’ can be secured, the vision of early summer is perfect, and is not even disturbed by boiled beans and bacon. In the hot, sultry days, cool salads are appropriate, and when these disappear there is a closing in of daylight and a general warning that the year is past its prime. Then does the ‘Cheese’ draw its blinds and light its gas, stoke up its fires and announce its great puddings. Yet, further ahead, when raw November days come upon us, the savoury smell of Irish stew—that fine winter lining for the hungry—pervades the place, and so the season goes round. Of all the changes brought about by the rolling year, however, none is so popular as the advent of the pudding, though it means frost, and damp, and cold winds. The pudding (italics for ‘the,’ please) has no rival in size or quality. Its glories have been sung in every country, even the Fort Worth Texas Gazette having something to say on the subject. The pudding ranges from fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty pounds weight, and gossip has it that in the dim past the rare dish was constructed to proportions of a hundredweight. It is composed of a fine light crust in a huge china basin, and there are entombed therein beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secret of which is known only to the compounder. The boiling process takes about sixteen to twenty hours, and the smell on a windy day has been known to reach as far as the Stock Exchange. The process of carving the pudding on Wednesdays and Saturdays when it is served is as solemn a ceremony as the cutting of the mistletoe with the golden sickle of the Druids. 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. The dining-room is fitted with rows of wooden benches and wooden tables without the slightest pretence of show. But the cloths are white and clean, and the cutlery bright, while the china service is of that ancient and undemonstrative blue design which delighted our forefathers, and is known as the willow pattern. The glasses are large, thick, and heavy, and might be used with effect in an argument. But the silver is silver, not Brummagem, and has seen more service than would destroy half the property of modern public-houses. On the walls hang three prominent objects (in addition to the usual advertisements of brands of champagnes and clarets), viz., a barometer, a print of Dr. Johnson, and an old oil painting by Wageman, representing the interior of the room with a gentleman trying his steak with his knife, a waiter holding up a port wine cork in the well-known attitude ‘two with you’; and a cat rubbing her oleaginous hide in anxious expectation against the leg of the settle. This picture, like one in the bar, is an heirloom, or rather a fixture, which cannot be sold, but must pass from landlord to landlord. The fireplaces are huge and commodious, capable of holding a hundredweight of coal at a time. On a cold winter’s day, when their genial warmth penetrates every portion of the room, and the merry flames dance and leap after each other up the capacious chimney space, a man listens to the howling wind without, or hears the rain pattering on the paved courts. Here gather poets, painters, lawyers, barristers, preachers, journalists, stockbrokers, musicians, town councillors, and vestrymen, with just a soupçon of sporting celebrities, and a decided dash of the impecunious ‘Have beens.’ The latter represent in the ‘Cheese’ colony the Irish division in Parliament. Up-stairs 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 midday rest. The privileged few who are allowed to go into the wondrous cellars—redolent of sawdust, cobweb-coated, and covered with dust—wander amidst avenues of wine-bins with wonder and astonishment at the space occupied underground as compared with the upper regions.”
[20] They gave an entertainment on St. Luke’s Day, and we find that on May 17th, 1635, Mr. Inigo Jones, the King’s surveyor, was invited to dinner, and very willingly came and dined with the company. Some of the invitations have the signature of Verrio and Sir Godfrey Kneller. The ancient pictures on the wall are mostly gifts from the painters, who were living men of the company. One of the minutes in the books has justly furnished considerable entertainment from its quaint simplicity: “On the 10th March, 1673,” is pronounced this censure: “That the painter of Joseph and Pottifer’s Wife and the Fowre Elements be fined £3 6s. 8d. for such bad work.”
[21] It may be added that the difficulties in getting admission to see old monuments in London seem insuperable. As a general rule they are rarely open—or open at awkward hours. No one about appears to know where the person in charge is to be found, and he is usually “out,” being busy with other functions. The old City Halls are jealously guarded, and we recall how shocked the old lady housekeeper was at one of these places when admission was proposed. Application must be made to high officials, who, however, are gracious enough in according permission. The result, however, is long delay and loss of opportunity.
[22] It was thus that passing by St. Magnus’s on one Sunday afternoon, the door open, the organ pealing out, we expected the usual “Sunday service” in the City, with its dozen or so of congregation—the few old women, the sleeping old men, who had turned in for the purpose. Who could have thought of realizing so perfectly the traditional Swift story of “Dearly Beloved Roger”? For there was literally the minister and his clerk, reading and responding, the pew-opener sitting by the door, and not a soul besides! The pew-opener rose, making a piteously imploring, despairing appeal to remain; the incumbent glanced over, half-ashamed—but the intruder fled!