Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese - Literary Associations

Literary Associations

There are several famous literary figures associated with the place: Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton as well as Dr. Samuel Johnson are all said to have been 'regulars'. However, there is no recorded evidence that Dr Johnson ever visited the pub, only that he lived close by, at 17 Gough Square. At The Johnson Club supper, December 13, 1892, 'an eloquent gentleman, present, an Irish Ex MP, pointed out that when Dr Johnson acted on his famous suggestion "let us take a walk down Fleet Street" the Cheshire Cheese must of necessity have been included among his places of call.'

Charles Dickens had been known to use the establishment frequently, and due to the pub's gloomy charm it is easy to imagine that Dickens modelled some of his darker characters there. The Cheshire Cheese Pub is famously alluded to in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: following Charles Darnay’s acquittal on charges of high treason, Sydney Carton invites him to dine, "drawing his arm through his own" Sydney leads him to Fleet Street "up a covered way, into a tavern … where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine".

The Rhymers' Club was a group of London-based poets, founded in 1890 by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys. Originally not much more than a dining club, it produced anthologies of poetry in 1892 and 1894. They met at the Cheshire Cheese and in the 'Domino Room' of the Café Royal.

According to the Betty Crocker cookbook, both Dickens and Ben Jonson dined on Welsh rarebit at this pub, despite the fact that the latter died almost a century before the dish is first known to have existed.

Boris Pilnyak, a prominent Soviet writer, visited this pub during his stay in London in 1923. He later wrote a story entitled "Staryi syr," ("old cheese" in Russian) a part of which takes place in the Cheshire Cheese Pub. There is a chapter devoted to the Cheshire Cheese and the 'Companions of the Cheshire Cheese' (W.B Yeats' poem 'The Grey Rock'1914) in 'That Irishman: The Life and Times of John O'Connor Power' by Jane Stanford.

A 1680 broadside ballad called A New Ballad of the Midwives Ghost tells a fantastical story of how a midwife haunted the house where she died until she was able to induce the new residents there to dig up the bones of some bastard children she had made away with and buried there. The final lines of the ballad insist upon the veracity of the tale and even that the children's bones may be seen for proof displayed at the Cheshire Cheese.