“It has its habitués, and on Saturday there is a famous rump-steak pudding which draws a larger attendance, for it is considered that you may search the wide world round without matching that succulent delicacy. These great savoury meat puddings do not kindle the ardour of many persons, being rather strong for the stomachs of babes.
“Well, then, hither it was that Dr. Johnson used to repair. True, neither Boswell nor Hawkins, nor after them Mr. Croker, takes note of the circumstances, but there were many things that escaped Mr. Croker, diligent as he was. There is, however, excellent evidence of the fact. A worthy solicitor named Jay—who is garrulous, but not unentertaining in a book of anecdotes which he has written—frequented the Cheshire Cheese for fifty years during which long tavern life he says, ‘I have been interested in seeing young men when I first went there who afterwards married; then in seeing their sons dining there, and often their grandsons, and much gratified by observing that most of them succeeded well in life. This applies particularly to the barristers with whom I have so often dined when students, when barristers, and some who were afterwards judges.’”
Mr. Fitzgerald then goes on to quote from Jay the extract given in an earlier chapter, and concludes by saying, “Be that as it may, it is an interesting locality and a pleasing sign—the Old Cheshire Cheese, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, which will afford the present generation, it is hoped, for some time to come an opportunity of witnessing the kind of tavern in which our forefathers delighted to assemble for refreshment.”
G. A. S. (“Twice Round the Clock: Six P.M.”) (talking of the ancient Roman repasts): “Better I take it, a mutton chop at the Cheshire Cheese than those nasty ancient Roman repasts.”
The “Gentleman’s Magazine,” April, 1895 (“A Six Days’ Tour in London with a Pretty Cousin”):—
“We must take a glance at a tavern of the good old pattern close by, which has a regular pedigree and has had books written about it—the Cheshire Cheese to wit. We go up Wine Office Court and there it stands with its blinking windows and somewhat shaky walls.... Not so, Mr. Sylvanus Urban, the windows of the good old house may blink, but there is nothing shaky about the walls, they at all events are founded on a rock solid as the credit of the house. No wonder too, for it carries its two hundred years or so bravely enough, and like its extinct neighbour, the Cock, witnessed the Plague and Fire. It is needless to say that the older Cheshire Cheese perished in the Fire of London, which stopped about a hundred yards west of Wine Office Court, just on the City side of St. Dunstan’s Church. Here the floor is sanded—or rather sawdusted; here are boxes and rude tables; the chop is done on a gridiron before you, and there is a beefsteak pudding which delights epicures.”
Walter Thornbury (“Old and New London”):