Nearly everybody who goes to London finds his way, sooner or later, to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court. Tucked away, as it is, just off of Fleet Street, it presents anything but a pretentious appearance and more than one party of timid American women has hurried away, disappointed at sight of its dingy court. But the dinginess is all on the outside; within, there is light and warmth, and cheery greeting. The Cheese was a coffee house beloved by Samuel Johnson, and the chair in which the great man sat, night after night, while busy Boswell listened and took copious notes of the interchange of wits, is still there, standing now beneath the big portrait of Dr. Johnson that hangs on one side of the fireplace. Oliver Goldsmith was also a regular patron of the Cheese, which is one of the few meeting places of the literati of the eighteenth century that still remain. Indeed, these old relics of the past are fast disappearing. Five years ago, when I first visited the Cheese, the waiter, impressed with my interest in the old associations, asked if I would care to see the house in which Johnson lived. It was near at hand, but he said emphatically, "You'll have to hurry for they are tearing it down at this minute." Hurry we did and arrived in time to see the dismantling of the last row of windows.
Ye Olde Cheese is too good a source of revenue for it to be destroyed, and the prospects are that for years to come Americans will flock there to exclaim over the high paneled walls and the sanded floors. The tables still stand between high-backed benches, over which the newspapers are hung, as they were in Johnson's day. The old grill is on the second floor, and over its gleaming coals innumerable kidneys and chops have been brought to culinary perfection. Beefsteak pudding, which is served on Wednesdays, with all the pomp and ceremony of ancient days, is an attraction that fills the tables and sends away dozens of envious men and women, who can get no more than a sniff of the Old English dish, as it is borne in triumph through the rooms. Other days have their specialities, but it is the beefsteak pudding that is the favorite, and if you delay your arrival, the prospects are, you will have to be satisfied with a kidney or a chop, for not a scrap of pie is ever left.