HOUSES OF GREAT MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 21

HOUSES OF GREAT MEN.

A JOHNSON RESORT. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE. (By ISABEL MAUD PEACOCKE.) To "Ye Old Cheshire Cheese" in Wine Office Court tame Doctor Samuel Johnson to dine daily in the mid-years of the eighteenth century, and the quaint old eating house has carefully preserved its Johnsonian atmosphere to this day. It is still tiny and incommodious; its smoky beamed ceiling is low, its walls panelled in dark wood, its floors strewn with sawdust, old wooden pews, polished and dark with age are drawn up to the long benches which serve as tables. The verv oaken pew in which the doct-or is reputed to have sat day after day to consume his tankard of ale and the famous steak, lark and oyster pudding —the recipe of which is a Cheshire cheese secret, handed down from one generation of cooks to another, even unto this day —is still in use. One only marvels how the good doctor ever squeezed his vast bulk into its narrow confines, and how his neighbours at elbows with him fared, since it is said he was such a gross and slovenly feeder that on one occasion, taking his friend David Garrick to act before some wealthy patron, the poor good-natured doctor was set down to his luncheon well away from the company and behind a screen.

Round the walls of the "Cheshire Cheese" old bits of pewter and china are ranged along the wooden shelves and curious old silhouettes in tarnished frames are hung together with several portraits of Johnson and other celebrities of the time who were jiatrons of the restaurant.

An exceedingly ancient green parrot — it would not require a very great stretch of the imagination to believe it a survival from Johnson's day—sits all day ou top of the low massive oaken door, and monotonously repeats the orders passed on to the army of white-capped cooks in the kitchen beyond. And not far from Ye Old Cheshire Cheese is Gough Square, where at Xo. 17, Johnson lived for ten or twelve years, while he toiled at the task of compiling his famous dictionary. In a Quiet Square. An unpretentious, solid looking house it overlooks the quiet square, as undisturbed by the roaring traffic of busy Fleet Street, scarcely a stone's throw away, as if in the heart of the country. The rooms within are light and airy and solidly furnished in eighteenth century style. There are some rare first editions among the books and a number of mass autographed by the famous bold hand of the learned doctor, and on the walls hang more portraits of him.

Yes, one decides critically, this is the right atmosphere for that vast, portly ghost. One rooiu, in particular, running across the entire width of the house —a wall having been evidently removed to accomplish this as one-half of the room is on a different level to the otherone can imagine having been insisted on by the great scholar as necessary to his bulk and the bulk of his operations. We can picture him pacing heavily from wall to wall of this room—a little incommoded, one would think, by the step in the middle—his hands clasped under his flowing coat-tails, or irritably dropping snuff down his cravat, groping for a word or a definition, or weightily expounding hit views to the respectful Boswell.

On the massive centre table lies an earlv edition of his magnum opus as weighty and learned looking as its compiler; there is a wide-armed oaken chair here, which one feels must have been the favourite chair of Johnson, so 6tout are its legs, so ample its un-cushioned seat, so solid, massive and altogether enduring is its whole structure. We can imagine him in that chair sprawled across that heavy table, writing away for dear life, his wig awry, his cravat ends flying, or else, relaxed after a long spell of work sitting back in it comfortably, churchwarden pipe going, Vest unbuttoned, horn-bowed spectacles pushed up on his forehead, his favourite bread and cheese and beer at his elbow, rather ponderously setting forth his views—was it not he who said that music was "a rather less distasteful noise than any other ?"—to 3 few selected cronies.

Wordsworth's Early Manhood. Near lovely Rydal Water, in the English Lake Country, which might be described as the natural home of the English poets, is a tiny cottage. Dove Cottage, sweetly named. Here Wordsworth spent the years of his early manhood, with Dorothy Wordsworth, his sister, to keep house for him. Dove Cottage is altogether charming and appropriate as the dwelling place of that poet who wrote of sweet and simple English themes in sweet and simple English phrasing, as when he wrote: "She dwelt amid tbe untrodden ways. About the streams of Dove : A maiden there was none to praise. And very few to love."" And this: "And fceautv born of murmurinjj sound. Shall pass into her face."

It is a tiny place of grey stone open- ' ing out upon the quiet country street of a Westmorland village, with ivy twining about its latticed windows and honeysuckle over its deep porch, and behind it is a little tairily-wild garden with tiny winding walks and flower-strewn bankV and a lew sentinel trees walling it in. Within it is furnished in the delicious old-world way which makes such an appropriate setting to a gentle poet like Wordsworth, indeed many of the pieces | uf furniture are the original pieces as ! used by the poet and Dorothy, a black oak gate-legged table and oak settle, a tall book-case with many books, pieces of blue old-fashioned china along the picture rail, portraits on the wall of many of the poet's friends, among them De Quincy and his fair daughters, the original MS of many letters from famous men signed by hands which are long since dust.

There are deep shelves to the tiny casement windows with their diamonded panes, on which stand pots of flowers, or pieces -of brass-ware. Everything is so neat, so tiny, so exquisitely cared for that one is conscious of a faint scent of lavender haunting these little irregular rooms with their uneven bricked floors, their delightfully casual shallow steps up or down from one room to another, their dark little fragrant-smelling cupboards or oaken chests in cunning recesses, and the narrow. steep, winding stairway which leads to the upper rooms. It is all so homely, intimate, fresh and English. One cannot be long in this house without being conscious of the gentle shade of the poet with his slim form and delicately-featured face wt tinp in that deep window-seat, pensive r (jazin" out over that lovely English countrv of lakes and fells and misty moun-tain-tops. or pacin= the tiny garden with a book in his hand, or a rose just washed in a shower" twirled in lui long BcnaitiTe ~