Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was famous for its steak and kidney puddings, served from the first week in October throughout the winter months.

London, Monday.

Lord Birkenhead presided to-night at the opening of the pudding season at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, and he had the support of Lady Birkenhead, Mr. Augustine Birrell, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and several other well-known people. Among the old diners there was a little grey-whiskered man nearing his ninetieth year who had frequented the Cheese for sixty years. The one notable absentee was the famous parrot, who is still confined by pneumonia to an upper room.

The old, low-ceilinged room with its small-paned windows and ancient pews lit by candle-light was a scene which but for the costumes of the diners might have been seen in any year of its post-Fire history. But no, there was a change even from last year, for the ladies as well as the men were smoking churchwarden pipes.

Lord Birkenhead made a very appropriate speech, although he profoundly disbelieves that Dr. Johnson had ever sat on the seat on which he was sitting. For a considerable time Johnson was poor and could not frequent taverns, and in the later period of his life he drank nothing but tea.

Lord Birkenhead thought that Johnson’s decision to give up alcohol was a lamentable one, and his excessive use of tea must have accelerated his death from dropsy. It was a warning. As an amateur hygienist the speaker had come to the conclusion that a man who took a reasonable amount of alcohol was more likely to reach a ripe old age than one who risked dropsy by the excessive use of tea. On the whole, however, as Johnson even in his tea age preferred to hear himself speak in a tavern rather than have to listen to others speaking to him at home he was ready to accept the connection between Dr. Johnson and the Cheshire Cheese.

What Mr. Birrell Disputed.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. Augustine Birrell withstood one another about Dr. Johnson’s writing. Sir Arthur thought Johnson a great man but a poor writer. His English was fit for tombstones, not for books. And no one read his books. He knew that Mr. Birrell would dispute this, and Mr. Birrell did.

Mr. Birrell said that some of Johnson’s poems were great poetry. Scott, when he was near his death, recited twenty lines from “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” and Tennyson greatly admired it. He did not like to differ from anyone who knew so much not only about the present world but the world to come as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but he was wrong about Johnson’s writing. He joined with Sir Arthur in his admiration of Johnson as a man.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his speech drew a contrast between the times when the tavern was built and the life of to-day in its idea of a family evening. In Pepys’s day people would converse at a party on all reasonable things. They would have music, and the kitchen-maids would come in and take their part in the singing, and in choosing a maid Pepys used to test her voice. To-day, when people gathered together for a social evening, the host switched on the gramophone or tuned in the wireless and the loud-speaker began, and so to bed.

To-night, however, the party at the Cheshire Cheese had wit and instruction blended, and a group of glee singers sang old English songs, and the very old man with the grey whiskers beat time on the old table. And time seemed to stand still.