“The plates of the others were heaped upon. My time has come. There is my big dinner plate piled high with—what on earth! Birds! yes, tiny bits of birds, skylarks, kidneys, strips of beef, just smothered in pastry like sea-foam, and dark brown gravy, steaming with fragrance, as seasoning.
“‘Half-and-half’—British bitter and stout in old-time pewter mugs was brought; out of deference to my sex, I suppose, a glass tumbler was placed before me, but I scorned to use it. Didn’t Thackeray say it was worth a year’s absence in far-away countries to realise the joy that filled one’s soul upon returning to old England and quaffing her bitter from a pewter mug?
“Then came stewed cheese, on the thin shaving of crisp, golden toast in hot silver saucers—so hot that the cheese was of the substance of thick cream, the flavour of purple pansies and red raspberries commingled.
“There were only 400 skylarks put into the pudding made for the Prince of Wales at the banquet of the Forth Bridge opening in Edinburgh. How many thousands of the ‘blithe spirits’ have been put into the Cheshire Cheese pudding for 200 years?
“Shades of Shelley and Keats!”
In Society a series of articles was devoted to the description of famous restaurants and of the fare to be enjoyed within their walls. The writer, long an intimate of the “Cheese,” devotes not the least piquant of his descriptions to that immortal house. He writes: “Christopher North chopped here, and has recorded his high opinion of its kitchen and its cellar. I fancy, however, that it was about the early Punch period that its real connection with journalism was ratified and the union consummated. Shirley Brooks has written pleasantly about it, Albert Smith has chaffed it, Edmund Yates has embalmed it in his ‘Reminiscences,’ and I have always had an idea that the Fleet Street chop-house in which poor Sydney Carton is found sitting in a semi-drunken condition is the Cheshire Cheese. Dickens, at all events, knew this place well, nor was it likely to escape a use of this sort. Mr. George Augustus Sala was a constant customer.”
The Freemason’s Chronicle of June 5, 1886, in reviewing an earlier edition of this little book, says:—“The praises of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of the most antiquated, and yet the most favourite, resorts in the city of London, have been sung by historians and poets through the whole of the last century, and quaint stories have been handed down to us of scenes and incidents that have from time to time been enacted within the age-begrimed walls of this historic ‘chop-house.’ In these days of progress, when the links connecting us with the bygone history of Old London are being snapped one by one, and once familiar landmarks are being improved off the face of the City by modern innovations, it is refreshing to be able to sit down and con over the sayings and doings of eminent men who have left ‘footprints on the sands of Time,’ and whose names are immortalised in literature and song. This little volume brings us tête-à-tête with such sturdy intellects as those of Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, and a host of other ‘men of the time,’ who in their periods of leisure sought ease and refreshment at the ‘Cheese,’ and set the tables often in a roar with their pungent criticisms and flights of mirth and satire.
“You can have pointed out to you the seats used by Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, even to the marks on the wainscoted walls made by their greased wigs; the corner where the author of ‘Pendennis’ and the ‘Newcomes’ sat; or where Charles Dickens, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, and a host of others enjoyed their ’arf-and-’arf and toasted cheese. The ‘Cheese’ has still its habitués and on Saturday there is the famous rump-steak pudding, which draws a large attendance, for it is considered that you may search the wide world round without matching that succulent delicacy. Although we miss the genial form and face of the late Moore, whose prerogative it was to preside over this chef-d’œuvre of the culinary art, yet his place is filled by a worthy scion of the race, and the company, if not so garrulous or so boisterous as of yore, is still permeated by a sense of deep and affectionate loyalty to the ‘old shop.’”
The Globe of September 23, 1887, says: “London itself bristles with associations of the great dead. The toil and moil of Fleet Street has tired you. Then turn up Wine Office Court and enter the Cheshire Cheese, where you may sit in the same seat, perchance drink out of the same glass, and if, like poor Oliver, you still ask for more, it is possible to rest your head on the identical spot of grease that Johnson’s wig provoked on the bare wall.”