The incident is recorded in this place as illustrating better than any mere verbal description the exiguous nature of the main passages of the Cheshire Cheese. The bar in the passage has been disestablished this many a year. It was a sort of glass case with barely room for two barmaids, a beer-engine, and some shelves of bottles. Sala called it “the bird-cage,” and the name stuck to the structure ever after. In recent years the Cheshire Cheese has attracted a considerable clientele on a claim that it was the favourite Fleet Street resort of Dr. Johnson. Mr. Seymour Lucas, the Royal Academician, indeed, adopted the theory without any exhaustive inquiry, and painted a picture in which the Great Bear is depicted “taking his ease” in this inn. There are some things which we may not know about the author of “Rasselas,” but among them, most assuredly, cannot be numbered the houses of entertainment which he frequented. Boswell followed old man Johnson about to all his “pubs,” and the fact that there is no mention in Boswell’s “Life” of his hero having visited the “Cheese” is evidence presumptive that he never _did_ visit it. In his time the tavern in Wine Office Court was the nightly resort of the respectable tradesmen of Fleet Street who still lived above their shops—the last sort of company upon which the Doctor would think of intruding. But if the Johnson legend must be dismissed as mythical, the chops, steaks, beefsteak puddings, and stewed cheeses, were substantial and indisputable. Godfrey Turner wrote in one of the Christmas annuals, then in great favour, a description of a meal at the Cheshire Cheese. The thing was wonderfully well done, and gave considerable umbrage to the proprietor, and to some of the literary gentlemen whom the writer introduced. The waiter in the room downstairs was one Tom Brown, who used to drive up from his place in the suburbs in a smart dogcart. William, who had no other name, was a short red-haired man with (appropriately enough) mutton-chop whiskers, very prominent teeth, a pink-and-white complexion, and a perennial sheep-like smile. Diners gave him their orders with minute particularity, assured that he would communicate their wishes to the cook, which William never did. This is the sort of thing that would happen: FIRST CUSTOMER: “A mutton chop very well done, please, waiter.” WILLIAM: “Well done, sir? Yessir.” SECOND CUSTOMER: “Underdone chop, William.” WILLIAM: “Chop underdone, sir? Very good, sir.” [_Exit_ WILLIAM. WILLIAM (_heard without_): “Cook, two muts down together, cook!”