Enjoy the present hour; adjourn the future thought.
Dryden’s Virgil.
Among the earlier notices of the “Cheese” which have appeared in newspapers is the following, taken from Common Sense, or, the Englishman’s Journal,[6] of Saturday, April 23, 1737:—
“On Sunday, April 17, one Harper, who formerly lived with Mr. Holyoake at the sign of the ‘Old Cheshire Cheese,’ in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, for eight years, found Means to conceal himself in the House, and early on Monday Morning got into the Room where the Daughter lay, and where Mr. Holyoake (as he well knew) kept his Money; and accordingly he took away a small Box wherein was £200 and Notes to the Value of £600 more. The Child, hearing a Noise, happily awaked, and cry’d out, ‘Mammy, Mammy, a Man has carried away the Box;’ which alarm’d her Father and Mother, who lay near, and immediately they got up; which oblig’d the Fellow to hide himself in the Chimney, where he was discover’d, with the Box carefully ty’d up in a Handkerchief, and being secur’d, was afterwards carried before the Lord Mayor, who committed him to Newgate.”
In the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser of Monday, August 9, 1784, we read an account of an attempted murder at the “Cheese.” It appears that a porter in the Temple named John Gromont induced a woman who had cohabited with, and then deserted him, to accept a drink at a public-house in Wine Office Court, “where, starting up in a fit of frenzy, he cut the woman’s throat.”
“Before the transaction he had made several attempts to destroy himself at Mr. Bosher’s, the Rainbow, opposite the end of Chancery Lane, in Fleet Street, and other public-houses in the neighbourhood.”
Coming to a more recent period, we find the press notices of the “Cheese” increase in frequency. Punch, for April 14, 1864, describes a famous evening at the “Cheese.” Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, no mean authority, in his “A Book about the Table,” mentions the “Cheese” as one of the three houses in the immediate neighbourhood of the Inns of Court worthy of comparison with those near St. Paul’s, and so the references go on ever spreading till they cross the Atlantic and even return from the Antipodes.
Considerations of space will only permit a few further quotations from the vast mass of journalistic literature dealing with the subject.
The Kent Examiner and Ashford Chronicle of June 20, 1885, referring to the “Cheese,” says:—“It is very generally believed that Shakespeare was one of its numerous frequenters, but undoubtedly one famous man was, namely—François Marie Arouet, otherwise Voltaire—while often enough were present Bolingbroke, Pope, and Congreve, and it is well known that Rare Ben Jonson was one of its most jolly frequenters. Coming down to more modern times, among the many customers of the house have been Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, Tom Hood, and last, but not least, Thackeray and Dickens.”
In “A Walk up Fleet Street,” which appeared in the Sunday Times, the following passage occurs:—“The Cheshire Cheese is not imposing in appearance, nor is it even to be seen from the street. Two little courts lead to its somewhat dingy portals; portals much frequented by the London correspondents of provincial journals and gallery reporters. More or less throughout every day of the week barristers and journalists—even members of Parliament are not always missing—come to this house for their dinner, and sit contentedly round the sides of two good old-fashioned rooms. But it is on Saturday that the Cheshire Cheese is seen at its best. Then it is that ‘rump-steak pudding’ makes its appearance; announced all the week, anxiously expected, come at last!”