For he’s a jolly good fellow.—Old Song.
The late Mr. George Augustus Sala, in an article entitled “Brain Street,” which is to be found in “Old and New London” (Cassell, Petter & Galpin), thus describes Wine Office Court and the Cheshire Cheese:—
“The vast establishments of Messrs. Pewter and Antimony, type-founders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year ’46); of Messrs. Quoin, Case, and Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge and Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of Scawper and Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, and Lampblack, printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in a cask. The ‘Cheese’ is at the Brain Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of a high-shouldered man with his hands in his pockets. 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 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. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter’s soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury odour of steaks and ‘muts’ to follow; of cheese bubbling in tiny tins—the original ‘speciality’ of the house; of floury potatoes and fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout and ‘goes’ of Cork and ‘rack,’ by which is meant gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every sense? 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; or else the waiter is wroth with the cook; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes, there is a barmaid at the ‘Cheese,’ mewed up in a box not much bigger than a bird-cage, surrounded by groves of lemons, ‘ones’ of cheese, punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a punch-ladle, having a William-the-Third guinea soldered in the bowl.”
“Old and New London,” ch. 10, part iii., p. 123, contains this paragraph:—
“Mr. William Sawyer[5] has also written a very admirable sketch of the ‘Cheese’ and its old-fashioned conservative ways, which we cannot resist quoting:—
“‘We are a close, conservative, inflexible body—we, the regular frequenters of the “Cheshire,”’ says Mr. Sawyer. ‘No new-fangled notions, new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have our history, our traditions, and our observations, all sacred and inviolable. Look around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or effeminately luxurious here. A small room, with heavily timbered windows, a low-planked ceiling. A huge projecting fireplace, with a great copper boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which might have roused even old John Willett, of the “Maypole,” to admiration. 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. A time-honoured solemnity is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to precipitate it? 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 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 of this latter luxury that we are now assembled to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony and observance.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The late Mr. Sawyer was for many years the brilliant editor of Funny Folks. His articles signed “Rupert,” in the Budget have often been reprinted.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRESS AND THE “CHEESE”
Crown high the goblets with a cheerful draught;