“There is another old City tavern where Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith often sat together over a snug dinner, a tavern in Wine Office Court called the Old Cheshire Cheese. Passing along Fleet Street and glancing up this court, those magic words seem to take up all the space in the distance as completely as though they were being glanced at through a telescope, and if you follow the instincts of your nature you will dive down the telescope towards the attractive lamp above the door, and enter the tavern. The customary pint of stout in an old pewter will be placed before you, if your taste lies that way; and when you have finished your chop, or steak, or pudding as the case may be, there will follow that speciality for which the Cheshire Cheese is principally noted, a dish of bubbling and blistering cheese, which comes up scorching in an apparatus resembling a tin of Everton toffee in size and shape.
“It was the same when frequented by Johnson and Goldsmith, and their favourite seats in the north-east corner of the window are still pointed out. Nothing is changed—except the waiters, in course of nature—in this conservative and cosy tavern. If Goldsmith did not actually write parts of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ in that corner, he must have thought out more chapters than one while seated there. He lived in Wine Office Court, and here it is supposed the novel begun at Canonbury Tower was finished.”
“Picturesque London” (Percy Fitzgerald):
“Fleet Street, interesting in so many ways, is remarkable for the curious little courts and passages into which you make entry under small archways. These are Johnson’s Court, Bolt Court, Racquet Court, and the like. But in Fleet Street there is one that is specially interesting. We can fancy the Doctor tramping up to his favourite tavern, the Cheshire Cheese.
“Passing into the dark alley known as Wine Office Court, we come to a narrow flagged passage, the house or wall on the other side quite close and excluding the light. The ‘Cheese’ looks indeed a sort of dark den, an inferior public-house, its grimed windows like those of a shop, which we can look at from the passage. On entering, there is the little bar facing us, and always the essence of snugness and cosiness; to the right a small room, to the left a bigger one. This is the favourite tavern, with its dingy walls and sawdusted floor, a few benches put against the wall, and two or three plain tables of the rudest kind. The grill is heard hissing in some back region where the chop or small steak is being prepared; and it may be said en passant that the flavour and treatment of the chop and steak are quite different from those ‘done’ on the more pretentious grills which have lately sprung up. On the wall is the testimonial portrait of a rather bloated waiter—Todd, I think, by name—quite suggestive of the late Mr. Liston. He is holding up his corkscrew of office to an expectant guest, either in a warning or exultant way, as if he had extracted the cork in a masterly style. Underneath is an inscription that it was painted in 1812, to be hung up as an heirloom and handed down, having been executed under the reign of Dolamore, who then owned the place. Strange to say, the waiter of the Cheshire Cheese has been sung, like his brother at the Cock, but not by such a bard. There is a certain irreverence, but the parody is a good one:
“Waiter at the Cheshire Cheese,
Uncertain, gruff, and hard to please,
When ‘tuppence’ smooths thy angry brow,
A ministering angel thou!