The Book of The Cheese
The Book of The Cheese
The Book of The Cheese
Reid
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
using this eBook.
Compiler: T. W. Reid
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE CHEESE ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
THE
FIFTH EDITION
London:
“Y_{E} OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE”
145, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1908
PREFACE
TO
In the present edition, while most of the matter which has appeared
in previous editions of our little book has been retained, we have
deleted portions that we considered could be dispensed with, and
added some fresh incidents and reminiscences that we think may add to
its interest. We have enlarged the work by the addition of a chapter
descriptive of the pictures and objects of interest to be seen within
the precincts of this historic House. We desire to record our thanks
to Messrs. W. Marchant & Co., of the Goupil Gallery, 5, Regent
Street, for assistance given in relation to the pictures, and to many
old customers of the House for facts relating to its past history.
Yours obediently,
THE DIRECTORS.
O. C. C., LD.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
IV. MR. JOSEPH PENNELL AND LADY COLIN CAMPBELL ON THE “CHEESE” 26
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_PLATES_
THE BAR ” 37
_IN TEXT_
PAGE
LONDON, E.C.
CHAPTER I
Time consecrates;
And what is grey with age becomes religion.—SCHILLER.
Old London is fast disappearing off the face of the earth. One by
one its ancient taverns have gone, or if the names familiar to our
ancestors have been retained, the hand of the builder has been laid
remorselessly on the structures our forefathers knew, and they
have been transformed beyond recognition. One of them, however,
survives, untouched by the hand of time, spared by the vitality of
the traditions, literary and other, which it enshrines, and that
is the Cheshire Cheese. Though its story reaches back long before
the eighteenth century, it is with the memory of Dr. Johnson and his
more brilliant contemporaries that it is very largely associated
in the minds of men. It is in a special sense London’s living
memorial of the great Lexicographer. Amid the changes which have
altered Fleet Street almost beyond recognition by the Doctor and his
contemporaries, it stands safe still, its old activities in full
swing in the narrow backwater of Wine Office Court, a venerable
reminder of the past. That men should be possessed with an unwearying
curiosity about the old tavern which was so much the haunt of the
mighty literary potentate who was the patron and friend of Goldsmith,
is but natural. They feel for it what the devotee feels for a
shrine. Dr. Johnson was not himself indifferent to a sentiment of
the sort, and just as we take an intense interest in the “Cheshire
Cheese” which he frequented, so he, in his day, was sympathetically
curious as to the places which Dryden half a century or so before the
Doctor’s time had made sacred to literary memory by his presence.
Even then the tavern as a club was beginning to fall into comparative
decay. Fashion was voting for the club proper, proprietary or
otherwise, and the habit of ceasing to live in the City carried away
the old frequenters of the Fleet Street taverns into the suburbs or
the more distant environs of London. Washington Irving gives us in
his “Sketch Book” a charming account of one of the city of London
hostelries, as it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The opening of the description would serve for the Cheshire Cheese
of to-day. “This has been a temple of Mirth and Wine from time
immemorial. It has always been in the family, so that its history
is tolerably well preserved by the present landlord. It was much
frequented by the gallants and cavalieros of the reign of Elizabeth,
and was looked into now and then by the wits of Charles the Second.
The members of the club which now holds its weekly sessions there
abound in old catches, glees, and choice stories that are traditional
in the place. The life of the club, and indeed the prime wit of the
neighbourhood, is mine host himself. At the opening of every club
night he is called in to sing his ‘Confession of Faith,’ which is the
famous old drinking troll from Gammer Gurton’s ‘Needle.’” Washington
Irving gives the words of the four verses of the song with chorus,
the first of which, as a specimen of an old-time City tavern song,
may suffice to be produced here:
But from the time of Dr. Johnson down to the present day unbroken
links of tradition connect the Cheshire Cheese of the twentieth
century with the Cheshire Cheese of the eighteenth, and through
that with all the taverns in story, which begin with the Tabard and
pass on, through the Mermaid and the rest, to the old house in Wine
Office Court. This venerable survivor of a vanished race has a double
interest: to the lover of antiquity in general it appeals as the type
of the place our forefathers loved; to the lover of the Johnsonian
cycle, as enabling him to picture to himself what that race of giants
did, where they ate and drank, and where they talked. That they had
reason for their choice of an inn, and could give a reason for that
choice too, is plain from a well-known passage in Boswell, which runs
as follows:—
Although the origin of the Old Cheshire Cheese (formerly spelt “Ye
Olde Cheshire Chese”) is not altogether involved in obscurity, there
is a decided want of complete, or even semi-complete, details as to
its very early history; but it is much more affluent in literary
anecdote.
It was in the Old Cheshire Cheese that the dispute arose about who
would most quickly make the best couplet. One said:—
I, Sylvester,
Kiss’d your sister.
I, Ben Jonson,
Kiss’d your wife.
“But that’s not rhyme,” said Sylvester. “No,” said Jonson; “but it’s
true.”
In fact, the “Cheese” was famous for epigrammatists. Who would not
like to have seen the face of the old glutton and scandalmonger when,
in the “Cheese,” the following lines were solemnly presented to him?—
Wine Office Court, where the Cheshire Cheese is situated, took its
name from the fact that wine licences were granted in a building
close by. The present “wine office” of the Old Cheshire Cheese is
exactly at the junction of the Court and Fleet Street.
“In this court,” says Mr. Noble, “once flourished a fig tree, planted
a century ago by the vicar of St. Bride’s, who resided at No. 12. It
was a slip from another exile of a tree formerly flourishing in a
sooty kind of grandeur at the sign of the Fig Tree in Fleet Street.”
CHAPTER II
Among the bygone guests with whose memory the Cheshire Cheese is
fragrant, not the least notable was the immortal author of “The
Deserted Village” and “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Indeed he was its
very near neighbour, for Goldsmith’s lodging was at No. 6 Wine
Office Court, nearly opposite the “Cheese,” and here he wrote “The
Vicar of Wakefield.” It was on Johnson’s first visit to supper here
with Goldsmith that Percy called for him on his way, and found him
dressed in a new suit of clothes and well-powdered wig. Noticing
Johnson’s unusual smartness, he heard from him the reason of it.
“Sir, Goldsmith is a great sloven, and justifies his disregard of
propriety by my practice. To-night I desire to show him a better
example.” Johnson’s house, where the Dictionary was compiled, was
within a minute’s walk, in Gough Square. Boswell does not record
any visits to the “Cheese,” but Boswell’s acquaintance with Johnson
began when Johnson was an old man, when he had given up the house in
Gough Square, and Goldsmith had long departed from Wine Office Court.
At the best, Boswell only knew Johnson’s life in widely separated
sections. Boswell was in Edinburgh while Johnson was in Bolt Court,
and it is certain Johnson wrote no diary for the benefit of his
biographer. Witnesses who were on the spot supply the deficiency.
Some of them Mr. Cyrus Jay, in a little book entitled, “The Law—What
I have Seen, Heard and Known,” published in 1868, states that he had
met. The book contains this inscription:
TO THE
LAWYERS AND GENTLEMEN
WITH WHOM I HAVE DINED FOR MORE THAN
HALF A CENTURY
AT
THE OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE TAVERN
WINE OFFICE COURT, FLEET STREET
THIS WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT
CYRUS JAY
In his preface Mr. Jay says: “During the fifty-five years that I
have frequented the Cheshire Cheese Tavern ... there have been only
three landlords. When I first visited the house I used to meet
several very old gentlemen, who remembered Dr. Johnson, nightly at
the Cheshire Cheese; and they have told me, what is not generally
known, that the Doctor, whilst living in the Temple, always went to
the Mitre or the Essex Head; but when he removed to Gough Square and
Bolt Court he was a constant visitor at the Cheshire Cheese, because
nothing but a hurricane would have induced him to cross Fleet Street.”
Another writer, Mr. Cyrus Redding, who went to live in Gough Square
in 1806, in his “Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal,”
published in 1858, takes us a little further back. He says:
“I often dined at the Cheshire Cheese. Johnson and his friends,
I was informed, used to do the same, and I was told I should see
individuals who had met them there. This I found to be correct. The
company was more select than in later times. Johnson had been dead
about twenty years, but there were Fleet Street tradesmen who well
remembered both Johnson and Goldsmith in this place of entertainment.”
Mr. Cyrus Jay, deploring the loss of the Mitre, the Cock, and other
old taverns, remarks, “There still remains the Old Cheshire Cheese,
in Wine Office Court, which will afford the present generation, it
is hoped, for some years to come, an opportunity of witnessing the
kind of tavern in which our forefathers delighted to assemble for
refreshment.
“There was a Mr. Tyers, a silk merchant on Ludgate Hill, and Colonel
Laurence, who carried the colours of the 20th regiment at the battle
of Minden, ever fond of repeating that his regimental comrades bore
the brunt on that memorable day. The evening was the time we thus
met. There was also a sprinkling of lawyers, old demisoldes and men
of science; among the latter was a Mr. Adams, an optician, of Fleet
St.
“The left-hand room, entering the ‘Cheshire,’ and the table on the
extreme right upon entering that room, was the table occupied by
Johnson and his friends almost uniformly. This table and the room
are now as they were when I first saw them, having had the curiosity
to visit them recently. They were, and are still, as Johnson and his
friends left them in their time. Goldsmith sat at Johnson’s left
hand.” But the public room on the ground floor was not the only place
affected by Johnson and his friends. When they wished to retire from
the madding crowd a little room on another floor supplied all the
privacy they occasionally desired, and here to this day is carefully
preserved the chair from which the Doctor thundered.”
CHAPTER III
One of the most touching things about “The Cheese” is the way in
which it treasures the memory of its old servants. “William” has
actually given his name to a room, and there over the fireplace of
the bar just opposite the door is his portrait, the portrait of
William Simpson, who commenced waiter at “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese”
Chop-house in 1829. “This picture,” says the inscription below, “was
subscribed for by the gentlemen frequenting the Coffee Room, and
presented to Mr. Dolamore (the Landlord) to be handed down as an
heirloom to all future Landlords of ‘Ye old Cheshire Cheese,’ Wine
Office Court Fleet Street.” The name of the artist is unknown. It is
worth noting that in this inscription the room in which we stand is
called a Coffee Room. Its modern designation of “the bar” therefore
is of comparatively recent origin.
The two small oil paintings on either side this heirloom were painted
in 1883 by William Allen. One of them depicts the interior of the
old bar, the other its exterior. To the right of the fireplace is
a striking and important painting. It is a portrait, but it is not
certainly known of whom. Tradition varies, and while according to
some it is a portrait of Dean Swift, others maintain that here we
have the counterfeit presentment of the first proprietor of the house
after the Great Fire, Theophilus B. Cruneble. There are other objects
of interest in the room, particularly worth notice being the old
china and glass. Nor must we omit to mention the young ladies behind
the bar, but it is for the visitor to appraise their grace and charm.
Beauty draws the human heart in every generation, and the men of
Johnson’s day were no less susceptible to its appeal than are we. The
picture upstairs, near the “Grandfather’s Clock,” would have fired
their imaginations as readily as it does ours.
But now, turning from the bar over which Hebes of our twentieth
century so efficiently preside, we pass to the room opposite, and
immediately on the left of the passage way as we enter. This room
has not changed its character or its furniture for centuries. If Dr.
Johnson were to come in now and go by us to his corner seat there to
the right of the fireplace, he would find things essentially much as
he left them. If his ghost wanders about Fleet Street, it must be a
great relief to it to get, when it can, back safe into its unchanging
old haunt, out of reach of the structural revolutions which elsewhere
time has wrought.
Hard by are two interesting old prints, one of Dr. Johnson rescuing
Oliver Goldsmith from his landlady, the other of a literary party at
the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Then there is an oil painting of
a family group in which the Doctor is easily to be recognised. More
modern, but still well worthy of inspection, is an artist’s proof,
signed by the artist himself, of the well-known picture—“Toddy at
the Cheese.” This is the painter, Mr. Dendy Sadler’s own gift to
the house, the interior of whose dining-room he has so genially
portrayed. Noticeable adjuncts of the apartments also are two old
water-bottles, one of leather, the other of stone, and of what is
known as Godstone ware.
About the room also are a number of sepia drawings of the various
parts of the house—the work of that accomplished artist, F. Cox—while
there are several pictures on the wall which serve to show that
the tastes of the frequenters of the “Cheese” are not limited to
literature and journalism. For example, we have “Roach, Perch and
Dace,” and “Salmon Trout” and “Trout,” by C. Foster, a coloured
print of steeple-chasing, a portrait of Lord Palmerston, engraved by
F. Holl from the painting by F. Grant; a landscape of considerable
merit by an unknown artist, and a view of Fleet Street, showing the
entrance to Wine Office Court. Very interesting too is a print of
the meeting of Dr. Johnson and Flora Macdonald in the Isle of Skye
in the year 1773. This valuable work was recently exhibited at the
Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 at Shepherd’s Bush.
Turning from the chair we find at the other end of the room a
glass-fronted cupboard, which contains many original samples of the
old willow pattern plate and also of the unique badge plate, which
has been in use in the house for many years. Here, too, are several
specimens of the old punch glasses, which have found favour with so
many generations of _convives_ of the Cheshire Cheese. The stranger
is not perhaps without a tremor of gastronomic emotion when the spoon
used for at least three generations, probably for a period of over
a century, in stirring _the_ pudding is pointed out to him. Hard by
on the walls of the room are seven old prints from Hogarth’s “Rake’s
Progress.”
_By F. Cox._
Dinners, by the way, are now served in the Annexe. This room has been
formed by roofing with glass what was originally a court-yard. It
contains amongst the rest two famous original prints by H. Bunbury—“A
City Hunt” and “Hyde Park, 1780.” Other interesting prints are
“Destruction of the Bastile, July 14, 1789,” after a painting by H.
Singleton, and a line engraving by James Heath from a painting by F.
Wheatley of “The Riot in Broad Street on the 17th of June, 1773.”
Here also is a cabinet containing various articles which may be
purchased by visitors. The price list may be conveniently appended
here. It runs as follows:—
Sugar Basins 1 0
Mustard Pots 1 0
Salt Cellars 1 0
Pepper Pots 1 0
Tea Pots —
Large. Small.
_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._
Badged Willow Pattern Plates 1 0 0 8
Badged Willow Pattern Dishes 1 0 0 8
POST CARDS.
No. 1 Series 6d. per packet.
No. 2 Series 6d. per packet.
Coloured Interior 1d. each.
Views of the House 6d. and 1s.
CHAPTER IV
In the last chapter no mention was made of the fact that in 1887
a remarkable picture of the Cheshire Cheese by Mr. Seymour Lucas,
R.A., was exhibited at the Royal Academy, since it is not among the
art treasures of the house. It can, however, not be passed by, since
Mr. Seymour Lucas and the Cheshire Cheese are mutual friends. We
will therefore quote here the description given of the picture by
a well-known London evening paper. To Mr. Dendy Sadler’s picture,
“Toddy at the Cheshire Cheese,” allusion has already been made.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of March 29, 1887: “It represents a scene in
the Old Cheshire Cheese inn, and is entitled ‘The Latest Scandal.’
In one corner of the quaint old room, on the bench which is still
pointed out as the place where Dr. Johnson used to sit, we see a
typical group of the wits of the period. Some wear powder, while
others have the full dark wigs of an older fashion still. One of
the group, in the uniform of the Guards, is relating the latest
scandal to the rest, and pointing over his shoulder towards two
young beaux, who stand by the fireside. One of these wears his
right arm in a sling, and has evidently come to grief in a duel on
the previous night. He and his friend are mightily disconcerted to
discover that their escapade has become the talk of the town, and
that it is affording vast amusement to this group of scandal-mongers.”
What Mr. Seymour Lucas and Mr. Dendy Sadler have so admirably
portrayed for us with the brush, an American writer of distinction
has both described with his pen and illustrated with his pencil
in the pages of _Harper’s Weekly_. In a November number of that
periodical, in 1887, Mr. Joseph Pennell writes as follows:—
“‘Your steak, sir. Yes, sir. Anything else, sir? Napkin, sir? Oh,
serviette! Yes, sir. All Americans like them, sir.’
“And so I found for the first time that napkins and bread, freely
bestowed in decent restaurants at home, are in England looked upon as
costly luxuries.[1]
... “I have returned again and again to the Cheshire Cheese, and
have, moreover, tried to induce others to go there with me. For if
the place is not haunted, as it is said to be, by the shades of
Ben Jonson and Herrick, of Samuel Johnson and Boswell, the waiter
is perfectly willing, for a consideration, to point out to you
the stains of their wigs on the wall. It is certain that Dickens,
Forster, Tom Hood, Wilkie Collins, and many other worthies did
frequent it, while Sala periodically puffs it, and a host of other
lights have written about it. In my own small way I have endeavoured
to lead some modern junior novelists and poets there, to show them
how near they could come to some of the great masters whom they
apparently worship so thoroughly. But on the only occasion when
I succeeded in placing one probably in the seat of Goldsmith or
Herrick, he sniffed at the chops and remarked that if Johnson had had
a napkin it would have been better for his personal appearance.
Not out of place, after the remarks of Mr. Pennell, will be found
a vivacious description of a dinner at the “Cheese,” given by Lady
Colin Campbell, writing under the pseudonym of “Ina” in the _World_
of August 31, 1892. Its “go” and high spirits render an apology for
quoting at length unnecessary. This clever lady writes as follows:—
FOOTNOTES:
CHAPTER V
The answer is not recorded, for in the manner of making chiefly lies
the speciality of the Old Cheshire Cheese. The hand of the proprietor
himself compounds the ingredients in a secret room, secure from the
gaze of even his most inquisitive attendants.
Yet when we look on the immense bowl from which sixty or seventy
people are to be fed, one cannot wonder at the lady’s desire to know
how such a Brobdingnagian dish could be so exquisitely prepared.
Old “William,” for many years the head-waiter, could only be seen in
his real glory on Pudding Days. He used to consider it his duty to
go round the tables insisting that the guests should have second or
third, ay, and with wonder be it spoken, fourth helpings.
“Any gentleman say pudden?” was his constant query; and his habit was
not broken when a crusty customer growled:
The narrow limits of this volume are all too small for a complete
collection of the prose and verse written in praise of the pudding. A
few examples must serve.
YE PUDDING’S REQUIEM
CHAPTER VI
THE BAR
The bar is crowded, and floating in the ambient air one detects
the rich voice of a Scotch poet who is being taken to task for his
grammar.
“It’s maybe not English at present, Mr. Bluggs; but wha maks your
English? It’s your Shakespeares, your Multons, an _Me_!”
“Of course the Scotch say they speak better English than the English.
I remember I once had a short engagement on an Edinburgh paper. When
about to leave ‘Auld Reekie’ there was a little _deoch-an-dorus_,
and some fifteen of the fellows came to wish me God-speed. They were
from some fifteen different parts of Scotland, and after certain
formalities in the way of hot toddy my Scotch friends brought up
the eternal question of their immaculate English. ‘It may be as you
say,’ I interposed, ‘but why do you speak it with fifteen different
accents?’ Had them there, ha! ha!”
Genial Advertising Manager—“I hear that poor old Mac’s dead” (general
sorrow and display of handkerchiefs). (Enter poor old Mac—silence
falls on the company.)
Poor old Mac—“Good evening, Miss S——, I haven’t seen you for a long
time.”
Solemn Man—“I do—and so do you. You must feel you were an ass when
you lent me that half-sovereign six months ago.”
Waiter, suddenly entering the bar—“Oh, I beg your pardon, but you did
not pay for that steak you had in the room.”
Impecunious Reporter—“I wish he would, for it’s very cold, and I have
to sleep on the Embankment.”
The story goes that on one occasion there was some little
misunderstanding at the bar; but misunderstandings are of the rarest,
and this one has become legendary. The account which reached me ran
something after this manner:—
G. S.-E.—“Why, I’ve been making masonic signs to you for the last
half-hour.”
G. S.-E.—“I do.”
FOOTNOTES:
CHAPTER VII.
“In this same room, with its floor as ‘nicely sanded’ as when
Goldsmith knew it, our club gathers from time to time; here,
undisturbed in our thoughts by a single modern innovation except the
gas, we sup on one of those beefsteak puddings for which the Cheshire
Cheese has been famous from time immemorial. So vast is it in all
its glorious rotundity that it has to be wheeled in on a table; it
disdains a successor in the same line, and itself alone satisfies
forty hungry guests. ‘A magnificent hot apple pie stuck with bay
leaves,’ our second course, recalls the supper with which Johnson
‘celebrated the birth of the first literary child of Mrs. Lennox,
the novelist, when at five in the morning his face still shone with
meridian splendour though his drink had been only lemonade.’[4] The
talk is of the liveliest; from time to time toasts are drunk and
responded to.”
Many notable men have sat down at the Johnson centenary dinners in
the Cheshire Cheese. At that held on December 13, 1894, for example,
the chair was taken by Mr. Augustine Birrell, Q.C., M.P., then most
popularly known as the author of “Obiter Dicta,” but subsequently to
become President of the Board of Education and later Chief Secretary
for Ireland in a Liberal Government. From the _Sketch_ of December
19, which devoted to this particular festivity a page and half of
illustrated literary matter, is taken the following extract:—“The
most interesting figure of the evening was undoubtedly Mr. Dobson.
His health was proposed just in such a way as it must have been in
the days when men of letters indited odes to one another.” Then
followed the reading of gentle imitations of Mr. Dobson’s style, but
exigency of space precludes our quoting more than a couple of stanzas
from a delightful perversion of “The Ladies of St. James’s”:—
When such sweet singers meet, it may well be believed that the night
was ambrosial, care and the world were banished, and the contests of
the “Cheese” and of the “Mermaid”—in miniature, it is no discourtesy
to say—live again, as Mr. Rhys sings:
ENVOI.
“THE 49 CLUB.”
Yclept ye 49 pudding,
Also Grylled Bones,
Also Stewed Cheese,
together with such Olde Ales, Costlie Wines, and strong waters as may
suit ye taste, purse, or conscience of ye Members.”
The Chronicle of this club is very diverting, and begins with a motto
_not_ from Goethe,
Ein guter Trunk
Macht Alte junk
which is, after all, a very partial and temporary truth. For the
guidance of other social clubs I cannot refrain from quoting _in
extenso_ the article headed “Rules”:—
“The Rules of the Club being of the sort once heard are never
forgotten, there is no need to repeat them in this Chronicle.”
“We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting days, and
moreo’er puddings and flapjacks; and thou shalt be welcome,” was
the Shakesperean motto of this frankly christened club. The pious
founder of the club, in a finely printed booklet, declared that “it
was deemed a requisite that your club should flourish under some
rollicking epithet such as had not previously been ‘empounded’ by
any other fraternity. The title should be terse; it should also be
outrageous. It should smack of the _caveau_, and have the scent of
the beeswing. Accordingly, many have been the creations that have in
turn possessed the mind of your promoters. Fuddling clubs, gorging
clubs, out Heroding Herod clubs—these comprised a whole hand of
clubs, in which was not a single trump. Then did your promoters
bethink themselves of that unctuous cognomen, ‘The Soakers.’ The
title is a nudity.... The name of ‘The Soakers’ Club’ is selected
only as conveying a sharp antithetical travestie upon our sober
habits as moderate men.” This last statement is consolatory, for
it would have been unpleasant if the club had come to the “Cheese”
merely to make manifest their loyalty to their name. They were good
fellows, and, though not quite antithetical to their designation
did not allow it to run riot with their moderate tendencies. They
dined at the “Cheese” regularly for years, but their numbers did not
increase, owing probably to the frank brutality of their title, and
the natural result was that they gradually dwindled away.
It appears by the Minute Book that the St. Dunstan’s Club was first
established at Anderton’s Coffee House on March 10, 1790, by the Rev.
Joseph Williamson, the then Vicar of St. Dunstan’s, Mr. Nicholls,
of St. Bride’s, Deputy of the South Side of the Ward of Farringdon
Without, and some fifteen others, inhabitants of Fleet Street and its
immediate vicinity. The club was limited to thirty members, whereof
twenty-six were to be inhabitants of the parish, and four gentlemen
resident in the ward. A chairman, treasurer, and secretary, were
annually elected at the first meeting of the club in the month of
October, and the toasts were fixed by resolution to be as follows:—
1st.—The King.
2nd.—The Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the rest of the Royal Family.
June 12, 1793.—“Mr. P. North lays that Mr. Hounsom will not forget to
pay Mr. Thorne the 2d. to-morrow in the course of the day which he
(Mr. Thorne) had lent and advanced for him to pay the waiter 2d. for
a Welsh rarebit which Mr. Hounsom had for his supper.”
January 19, 1793.—“Mr. Thorne reported that Mr. Hounsom had paid him
the 2d. at half-past 9 o’clock in the morning.”
June 12, 1793.—“Mr. Lambe and Mr. Dep. Nicholls ‘1 bottle.’ Mr. Lambe
lays that Mr. Dep. Nicholls knows Miss W——. _Upon explanation Mr.
Dep. Nicholls lost._ Mr. Jones and Mr. J. North ‘1 bottle.’ Mr. Jones
lays that neither Mr. Lambe nor Mr. Dep. Nicholls knows Miss W——. Mr.
Jones lost. Mr. Dep. Nicholls requested that the club would permit
him to pay a bottle for having termed Miss W—— Mr. Hounsom’s _friend_
instead of _neighbour_. Ordered that it be granted. Mr. Lambe and Mr.
J. North ‘a bottle.’ Mr. Lambe lays that he (Mr. Lambe) never ran
away from a good thing. After some discussion it was decided that Mr.
Lambe had lost the bet.”
In 1795 a great number of bets were made about the wearing of hair
powder, and the wagering was so keen that counsel’s opinion was
taken as to who had won the respective bets; the original opinion
and decision of the counsel (Mr. George Bond, of Serjeants’ Inn) is
attached to the Minute Book.
It was also the custom of the club to wager on the “_first letter_”
of the King’s or Queen’s Speech after the words “_My Lords and
Gentlemen_.” This naturally afforded great scope for speculation,
which, it appears by the minutes, the members were accustomed to take
full advantage of. When the funds of the club were low the following
among other expedients was adopted:—
Before leaving the subject of “Cheese” clubs one more of the many
which have enjoyed on occasion the hospitality of the “Cheese” may
be mentioned. Most people in this land, and presumably everybody in
America, would consider this club somewhat belated. It has an idea
that King Edward is a usurper, and that the rightful sovereign of
these isles and of the empire is some foreign potentate whom even his
own states disown. The following paragraph from the _Daily Telegraph_
of March 25, 1895, will show that whatever we may think of the views
of its members, the excellence of their taste in gastronomy cannot be
called in question:—
FOOTNOTES:
[4] “The supper was elegant. Johnson had directed that a magnificent
hot apple-pie should make part of it, and this he would have stuck
with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox had written verses,
and, further, he had prepared for her a crown of bays with which,
but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own
invention, he encircled her brows.”
The first literary child whose birth was here celebrated was a dreary
novel called _The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of Arabella_.
CHAPTER VIII
_Author_
LIVED HERE
B. 1709. D. 1784.]
CHAPTER IX
Resurgam.
_La découverte d’un mets nouveau fait plus pour le bonheur du genre
humain que la découverte d’une étoile._—BRILLAT-SAVARIN.
The _Sportsman_ of March 30, 1887, has a long and eulogistic article
on the “Cheese,” but exigencies of space preclude its being quoted
in its entirety. The writer says: “Happily the most famous of London
ancient taverns is left to us in the Old Cheshire Cheese, which
is yet nightly haunted by the shade of Dr. Johnson, whose modern
prototypes still enjoy their steaks and punch, and discuss politics,
polemics, and plays, though they wear short hair and masher collars
instead of full-bottomed wigs and ruffles.
THE PUDDING,
though it means frost, and damp, and cold winds. _The_ pudding
(italics for ‘the,’ please,) has no rival in size or quality. Its
glories have been sung in every country. The pudding ranges from
fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty pounds’ weight, and gossip has
it that in the dim past the rare dish was constructed to proportions
of a hundredweight. It is composed of a fine light crust in a huge
basin, and there are entombed therein beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters,
larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secret of
which is known only to the compounder. The boiling process takes about
and the smell on a windy day has been known to reach as far as the
Stock Exchange. The process of carving the pudding on Wednesdays and
Saturdays is a solemn ceremony. The late proprietor, Mr. Beaufoy A.
Moore, could be with difficulty restrained from rising from his bed,
when stricken down with illness, to drive to the ‘Cheese’ and serve
out the pudding. No one, he believed, could do it with such judicious
care and judgment as he did.
“Once, and once only was that pudding dropped. Alas, the sad day!
In the room sat an expectant hungry army of fifty men. The waiter,
bearing in triumph the pudding, appeared smiling on the scene. His
foot slipped, he tripped, the pudding wavered, and then bowled along
the floor, breaking up and gathering sawdust as it went. There was a
breathless silence. The proprietor dropped the upraised carver, stood
speechless for a moment, and then went out and wept bitterly. The
occasion was too much for him. One after another the awed and hungry
crowd put their hats on and departed, with sorrowful faces and watering
mouths.”
CHAPTER X
“Old and New London,” ch. 10, part iii., p. 123, contains this
paragraph:—
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.
“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.”
Under the heading “Some Gossip about Famous Taverns,” a writer in the
_Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette_ says:—
“What man who has ever been called into Fleet Street, either on
business or pleasure, does not know the sawdusted floor and old-time
appointments of the Cheshire Cheese? Who would dare to confess
ignorance of the Brobdingnagian chops, the world-famous point steaks,
the stewed cheese, which constitute its main attractions all the
year round? Who has not here devoted himself during the hot summer
months, in the cool dining-room which seems ever impervious to the
sun’s rays, to the manufacture of an elaborate salad to enjoy with
his cold beef? And who, again, has never yet been so fortunate as to
witness that appetising procession to be seen every Saturday during
the winter months, when Mr. Moore, the master of the house, in dress
coat clad, and armed with a mighty carver, precedes into the room
that mighty steak and oyster pudding, the secret of whose manufacture
has never been allowed to penetrate beyond the mazes of Wine Office
Court.”
And again the same writer observes:—“The secret of the success of the
Cheshire Cheese is that everything sold within its doors is good. For
this we prefer its sanded floors to marble halls, for this we listen
curiously to the weird cry of the waiter up the crooked staircase
of ‘Rudderhumbake,’ which, by old experience, we know heralds
the approach of a choice cut from the mighty rump of a succulent
shorthorn or an Aberdeen steer.”
“A famous man who haunted the ‘Cheese’ was Voltaire, side by side
with Bolingbroke, Pope, and Congreve, and there is to-day an old play
in manuscript in Scotland, written in Rare Ben Jonson’s day, in which
these lines occur:—
An article headed:—
“Old Harry” retired soon after the portrait-painting from age and
infirmity, but was alive at Christmas, 1838.
FOOTNOTES:
CHAPTER XII
“‘Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those
numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to—this or
some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.’
“Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill
to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern.[7] Here
they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon
recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine; while
Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate
bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon
him.”
“The Old Cheshire Cheese is, perhaps, at the present writing, one of
the most popular of the old hostelries, and when you consider that
for over two hundred years it has been in existence, and has been
patronised by celebrities of every degree, rank, and station, and
even royalty—for Charles II. ate a chop here with Nell Gwynne—and the
genial landlord will actually show you the seats used by Dr. Samuel
Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, even to the marks on the wainscotted
wall 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 tavern is
situated up a little narrow passage called
I don’t think it can be more than three feet wide. On the right hand
side of it is the entrance. Over the door is a glass lamp painted
red, with the words ‘Old Cheshire Cheese’ on it. But, oh! what chops,
what steaks, what cold lamb and salad, what beefsteak pudding you
do get here! It is indeed a revelation! And should you be permitted
to ascend to the upper part of the building you will find the walls
adorned with paintings, articles of vertu, and other evidences of
comfort and ease, where the proprietor dispenses his hospitality in
the most genial manner; and, when I inform you that Mr. Moore is
a vestryman and churchwarden of St. Bride’s, will shortly become
Councilman, and probably Alderman and Lord Mayor, you will see that
it is no common thing to be the landlord of the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’”
Mr. Moore did not live to attain the dignity of Lord Mayor which
“Jeems Pipes” presaged. He died in 1886, loved and respected in his
life, and deeply lamented at his death by the troops of friends who
knew him both in his private and business life.
The following are extracted from a London letter in the _New York
World_ of September 14, 1884, and are interesting:—
“It is surprising how soon one gets used to the innovation of the
feminine bar-tender, and it is not to be questioned that it is a good
custom, productive of greater refinement among the male frequenters,
and, where the young women conduct themselves modestly, in no wise
degrading to their minds or morals.
_By Cruickshank_]
“It matters little what hour you select to visit ‘Ye Olde Cheshire
Cheese,’ you will have plenty to amuse and instruct you, and always
find the pretty barmaids in the bar room attentive and clever.
The cutting of the rump-steak and kidney pie is a spearing process
performed by the proprietor, and often as many as three, even four
waiters are needed to lift the huge smoking hot pie to the centre
table, while often from thirty to sixty hungry men wait at the
various tables for a triangle of this toothsome viand. Take my word
for it, you will have a great desire for a second help, and even
though, like myself, you are a petticoat wearer, no one will annoy
you or even look surprised at your devoting an evening among the odd
masculine characters nightly frequenting ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.’”
“Here,” says the writer, “is no home for kickshaws and cigarettes.
From this kitchen comes no sample of fashionable culinary art, that
‘art with poisonous honey stolen from France.’ Nothing of that kind
obtains at the Cheshire Cheese. Here the narrowed kingdom lies
of point steaks turned to a second and served hissing on plates
supernaturally hot, of chops gargantuan in size and inimitable in
tenderness and flavour, of cheese bubbling sympathetically in tiny
tins, of floury potatoes properly cooked, of tankards of bitter beer,
of extra creaming stout, of a rump-steak and oyster pudding served
on Saturdays only,[8] and so much the specialty of the house, that I
must deal with it hereafter. All smacks here of that England of solid
comfort and solid plenty.
IMPLEMENTS OF INEBRIETY
in the bar of the Cheshire Cheese, which brings the place’s past more
vividly, perhaps, before one than any view of its sanded floors,
low ceilings, or quaint staircase, disappearing suddenly from the
entrance passage in formal but inviting bend.
“His (Dr. Johnson’s) frequent, nay, nightly visits here are matters
of history, and have been vouched for on
The time is not so far distant when old frequenters to the house
were to be found who had drunk and eaten with men whom Johnson had
conversationally annihilated, and who recalled the circumstance with
an extreme clearness of recollection. A recollection this which
joined the record of two generations of the tavern’s great visitors.
And the second generation offered names not unworthy to compare with
the first, such notabilities as these figuring in the list: Dickens,
Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor,
John Forster, Sir Alexander Cockburn, Professor Aytoun, Tom Hood,
Andrew Halliday, and Charles Mathews.”
* * * * *
“One feels just like sidling into an old-fashioned church pew, for
the three tables on the left, each accommodating six persons, are
provided with high-backed benches black with age.
“‘Will you wait for the pudding?’ asks the Imposing Personage.
“‘I will wait,’ I replied, and again I was left alone to continue my
observations.
“The door swings slowly open. A huge, round white ball is borne
aloft, high above the head of The Personage, who enters with slow
and stately tread, followed in single file by six serious-faced
attendants. The salver is tenderly lowered, and rests upon the
table. Every eye is fixed upon it. The room is pervaded with perfect
hush.
“The Personage solemnly receives a big spoon and knife from his first
gentleman in waiting. The fateful moment has arrived. The pastry is
broken. The gravy gently oozes over it.
“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.
“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?
“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.”
FOOTNOTES:
CHAPTER XIII.
“The waiter before one looks very different from the picture on the
wall of his one-time predecessor, but, what is important, the spirit
remains the same. In an atmosphere of good fellowship the frequenters
of to-day converse over their chop and pint, or perhaps before the
cheery fire nurse their knees in reflective mood, drawn together by
the same instincts that animated this delightful company of old.
“But who among these, if appealed to, could define the æsthetic
charm of the place? Is it the rich colouring of yellow, and old
gold, and silver, and brown, the traditions mellow as old wine that
sweeten the atmosphere, the satisfaction of the senses, the pure
contentment of soul, the pause by the way for the furbishing of one’s
mental apparel? It is all these and more that make the Old Cheshire
Cheese a delight, and, when one has gone, leaves of its high-backed
benches and polished tables, its general aspect of warm and cheery
hospitality, a glowing memory.”
* * * * *
“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.”
* * * * *
“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:
“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.”
* * * * *
* * * * *
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.”
* * * * *
* * * * *
“‘As soon as I enter the door of a tavern’—and many were the taverns
whose doors the great Samuel entered—exclaimed Dr. Johnson from that
tavern chair which he regarded as the throne of human felicity, ‘I
experience an oblivion of care and a freedom from solitude; when I
am seated I find the master courteous’ (courtesy is thus hereditary
in the masters of the Cheshire Cheese) ‘and the servants obsequious
to my call, anxious to know and ready to supply my wants; wine then
exhilarates my spirits and prompts me to free conversation and an
interchange of discourse with those whom I most love: I dogmatise and
am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I
delight.’
“One can picture to oneself Johnson when he had entered and taken his
favourite seat at the Cheshire Cheese, the fire blazing then as it
blazes to-day, after a lapse of more than a century, in the mighty
grate, and casting its flashes, as it casts them to-day, over the
same oak-wainscotted walls, infusing a ruddier glow into the red
curtains drawn across the windows, and dropping a deeper-dyed ruby
into the drink that was meant for men.
“All the other tavern haunts which Johnson and his disciples
frequented have passed away or been improved out of all semblance to
the Johnson era; but the Cheese remains, within and without, the same
as it did when Goldsmith reeled up the steps to his lodgings opposite
the main entrance in Wine Office Court, or Johnson rolled his huge
bulk past it to the house in Gough Square, where his wife died in
1752 and the Dictionary was completed in 1755.”
“The faithful journey to the Cheshire Cheese firm in the belief that
when Goldsmith lived hard by in Wine Office Court the two friends
must have spent many an hour together in those panelled rooms and
have sat on the seat assigned to them by tradition. Now that the Cock
has quitted his original home, though under his former proprietor”
(it must be remembered this was written in 1890, and does not hold
at present—he crows gallantly over the way) “the Cheshire Cheese is
unquestionably the most perfect specimen of an old-fashioned tavern
in London.”
JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON (“A Book about the Table,” vol. ii. page 43):
“But ere we pass from beef to less majestic delicacies, let us render
homage to the steak pudding, than which no goodlier fare can be
found for a strong hungry man on a cold day. Rising from his pudding
at the Cheshire Cheese, such a feaster is at a loss to say whether
he should be most grateful for the tender steak, savoury oyster,
seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent pepper, or
delicate paste.”
* * * * *
“These noisy and nasty eating-houses” (in and about Chancery Lane)
“are in striking contrast with the staid old-fashioned taverns in the
same neighbourhood, the Cheshire Cheese, etc.”
* * * * *
“The tavern,” says SIR WALTER BESANT (in “Fifty Years Ago”), “We can
hardly understand how large a place it filled in the lives of our
forefathers, who did not live scattered about in suburban villas,
but over their shops and offices. When business was over, all, of
every class, repaired to the tavern. Dr. Johnson spent the evenings
of his last years wholly at the tavern; the lawyer, the draper, the
grocer, even the clergyman, all spent their evenings at the tavern,
going home in time for supper with their families. The Cheshire
Cheese is a survival; the Cock, until recently, was another. And
when one contrasts the cold and silent coffee-room of the new great
club, where the men glare at each other, with the bright and cheerful
tavern where every man talked with his neighbour, and the song went
round, and the great kettle bubbled upon the hearth, one feels that
civilisation has its losses.”
* * * * *
“DEDICATED TO LOVELACE.
“Champagne will not a dinner make,
Nor caviare a meal.
Men gluttonous and rich may take
Those till they make them ill.
If I’ve potatoes to my chop,
And after chop have cheese,
Angels in Pond & Spiers’s shops
Know no such luxuries.”
Transcriber’s Notes
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE CHEESE ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.F.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you “AS-IS”, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org