The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-05-29

solid as IL looks; often, one must ad-
nit for the sake of truth. it is more solid,
but this is an Individual fault not a ma
tional one Sitting down to London meals
after Paris is like getting back to a meat
diet after one has made an excursion
into the mysteries of vegetarianism, 1t
also bears a queer resemblance, in the
sensations developed, to going home for
Christmas after having subsieted on
boarding house diet for year.
Besides preserving the best traditions
of English cooking-oh, those English
traditions.-The Cheshire cheese is de-
lightfully replete with suggestions of
Sam Weller and those excursions over
London wherein he displayed to Mr..
Pickwiek that knowledge of the city
so extensive and peculiar" He must
have led Mr.. Pickwicl1 into just such
places, slipped him into just such mys-
terious coy corners, behind just such
baize curtains of Lincoln green as you
will be slipped behind the first time
you wander into the Cheshire Cheese.
For although the management of the
Cheese appreciates the tourists, 1t has
a laudabl conception OF the grim ne
cessity of preserving the English at
mosphere and you must look sharp or
you will find yourself In that cozy cor
ner where the table doesn't quite fit
and where there is but one seat from
II
house See you must, however, for the
Cheshire Cheese is goodly feast for
the eyes and the ina gination as well
as for the less elusive taste of the
Anglo Saxon stomach.
SO you walk. jostling meanwhile the
newsboys and the merchants and the
pedlers and the people and the great
writer's yet to be who throng this
thoroughfare which George Augustus
Sala called Bran street, the intellect
of London. OF truth Fleet street looks
more like Nassau street used to look
in the older days, and in the older part,
for it is lined with tobacco stores,
haberdashers places to eat and the
narrow downtown newspaper offices,
they used to have In another day in
New York And by and by you come
to the place whore you must turn to
get into the Cheshire Cheese.
This is narrow, funny little alley,
leading back off nineteenth century
Fleet street into the mists of the sew
enteenth century. 1t Is only a step, as
1T Is always but step |" London,
where in the preservation of things old
they keep the spirit as we'll as the form,
the inner rooms and crannies even more
than the outer walls
In Wine office Court Goldsmith lived,
and few steps away, in Cough Square,
DR.. Johnson compiled the dictionary.
and right here to your right and so
close you can hardly see 1t is the
Cheshire Cheese, where both sat in
those long ago days, and the spot is
changed not bit, except for gas lamps
already with an ancient air themselves
Sala says that the Cheese looks like
high shouldered man with his hands
in his pockets" The lights of the
ground floor dining room CLEAN
through little square windows. COM
fortably warped as to panes, but dis
pensing into the dusky highway the
golden cheer that comes only from
the yellow burning of gas unaided by
modern incandescent mantles
The door into the Cheese creaks and
1t shuts by means of a screen door
spring, so that you have to turn on the
worn wooden floor to save a bang that
would announce you all too violently
To your right is the bar, officially
known as the coffee room, with the
real rosy checked English barmaids of
London fiction And to the left is the
stairway to the regions up above, where
DR.. Johnson's chair stands in coffin
looking glass case and where the cook
interprets and supplies such orders as
zone an one to follow and "rudder-
humbake'' and all the rest of that lar
gon of Hashland. which has dialect
of its own for every kitchen. A step
more and around a corner and there
you are.
In all 1t is perhaps four steps. small
ones, from the street to the dining
room, but over an uneven floor and
with old things and the old spirit to
stop you 1t must seem more.
The floor is sanded as floors should
be In restaurants. Directly In front is
a fireplace. with mirror hidden half
way up by books and mugs and dishes
To the right are two healthy pews,
each with a table and seats for six on
the benches, benches that are brown
with age and innocent of aught but
that soft stain on their oak. over to
the right is a long table, with chairs
on one side, benches on two others.
And there, under a brass plate, is the
favorite seat of DIR. Johnson.
Well, 1t might be the favorite seat
of anybody. for IL Is in the inglenooS
and would be your favorite seat too if
you could ever get there In time to
have it. But let that not be insisted
upon; British tradition must be
respected and it is "Dr. Johnson's s
seat" The brass plate bears a famous
inscription: mo, sir; there is nothing
which has yet been contrived by man
by which so much happiness has been
produced as by a good tavern