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HISTORY
British ‘Beefsteak’ Clubs and the Birth of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks
‘Henry’ Rich & foundation of Society (Bro. Walter Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks (London, London, Bradbury, Evans and Co.1871), p. 2).
11 January 1735 ‘is probably 1735-36. It would seem likely that the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks (SSBS) was instituted 6/12/1735 and formalized at the meeting of 11/1/1735/36 when any provisional rules made the month before were amended and restated’ (Paulson, Hogarth, ii, pp. 398-99); ‘That it was a close-knit group is evident from an examination of members’ wills. The names of beneficiaries, witnesses, and executors are frequently those of other members (though Hogarth’s name does not so appear (p. 61); ‘Those members who were actors at Covent Garden appear to have given up membership if they moved to Drury Lane. They are not listed as rejoining’ (p. 399).
There were many clubs based on the romance of the ‘english beef steak’ from at least the time of Queen Anne onwards. One early club was called the “Beef-Stake Club” (also written “Beef-Steak Clubb, Beef-Steak Club”, and even, though likely gratuitously, “Honourable Beef Steak Club”) and seems to have been was founded “somewhat before 1705” and used a ‘gridiron’ symbol as its badge (Robert J. Allen The Clubs of Augustan London 1933 Harvard, pps. 137-145). This club may or may not have been the same “Beefsteak Club” which is mentioned in some places without citation as having been founded in 1709. Allen, speaking of a reference to a “Beef-Stake” club in a theatre satire and printed in 1718 states that a Beef-Stake Club associated with someone known as Nanny Richards could be either the same or an imitation of that Beef-Stake Club said to have been existing in 1705. Another club dedicated to the beefsteak was the “Rump-Steak Club” which Allen (The Clubs of Augustan London 1933) says is the same club as “The Patriots Club” which we know was in existence in 1734 when a compilation of its toasts were published. Thomas Sheridan is said to have been the founder of the Beefsteak Club which in Dublin (in 1748 according to Arnold, 1871, p.1, or 1753 according to Allen, 1933). There was a “Liberty Beef Steak Club” the purpose of which was at least partly to show solidarity with the radical John Wilkes MP. They met at Appleby’s Tavern in Parliament Street for an unknown duration after Wilkes’ return exile in France in 1768 (Beef and Liberty, Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation by Ben Rogers, p.137, Vintage, London 2004. Cambridge Chronicle, 14 April 1770. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008). The “Beefsteak Club” which still meets today in Irving Street was founded in 1876.
It is easy to confuse the various societies of beef eating tradition. For example, as has already been mentioned above one early “Beef-Stake Club” used the Gridiron as its badge, as has of course the SSBS always done. This same Beef-Stake Club from the first decade of the eighteenth century gave a small gridiron badge to be worn by its member Richard Estcourt in gratitude for his services to their club. This is described as having the motto “Beef and Liberty” on it as does the Sublime Society President’s badge (see image below) which is also in the form of a gridiron. This badge of the President of the SSBS is round and silver (Estcourt’s is described alternately as gilt or silver) and suspended from the neck by a silk ribbon (that of the Beef-Stake Club is said by some sources to have been a neckbadge and by other to have been pinned to the coat) and orange in colour (Timbs, John, Clubs and Club Life in London, London 1872, p.122) whereas the ribbon of the Beef-Stake Club’s badge is described in some places as green and sometimes red silk. (Robert J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London, Cambridge, Mass., 1933, pp. 137-45). In the Twentieth century the ribbon of the Sublime Society became that same ‘buff’ hue of which the Sublime Society’s waistcoat has always been. Allen (1933) and Timbs (1872) also record that some antiquarians have even confused the SSBS for some kind of continuation of Estcourt’s Beef-Stake Club. A more common source of confusion is the fact that use of the term ‘Beef-Steak Club’ to mean Sublime Society of Beef Steaks by commentators is no recent development, for example The Connoisseur, Issue 29, 6 June 1754 quoted below or Ben Rogers who in, 2004, Beef and Liberty, Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation who uses “Beefsteak Club” and Sublime Society of Beef Steaks interchangeably despite also discussing clubs known only by the name Beefsteak Club in the same chapter (pps. 80-84). Even Timbs (1872), who correctly states that presumptions of connection between Estcourt’s Beef-Stake Club and the Sublime Society is false, can not be said to be entirely clear devoting nearly have of his chapter entitled “The Beef-Steak Society” the Beef-Stake Club.
A concise overview of traditional clubs whose theme is the celebration of eating beef, reliable at time of writing, can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Club.
Sir Henry Irving, the influential director owner of the New Lyceum was the first to revive the memory of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks starting not before 1878 and continuing not after 1905 (his death) to hold revival dinners in the Society’s famous gothic style dining room: “He wanted the Lyceum to have the same educational and intellectual force that Phelps’ theatre had enjoyed in lslington. We do him, I think, a disservice if we assume that his carefully composed first night receptions, his long suppers and conversations in the Beefsteak Room, his grueling schedule of public lectures and debates, the carefully-contrived symposia in The Theatre, were simply a public relations exercise, or a convoluted attempt to achieve respectability for his profession. Cautious by nature, Irving wanted the Lyceum to generate and be in the forefront of political and intellectual debate.” (Irving’s Audience, Annual Lecture of the The Irving Society by John Pick, at http://www.theirvingsociety.org.uk/irving's_Audience.htm). At least some of the room’s original architecture still exists. Other early Beef-steak clubs (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, pp. 1-2; Kensington Davison (ed.), About the House: The Magazine of the Friends of Covent Garden (Christmas, 1971), p. 49). Shelley, Henry C., Inns and Taverns of Old London (1909). Timbs, J., Clubs and Club Life in London (1873). Horne, Colin J., “Notes on Steele and the Beef-Steak Club”, The Review of English Studies, Vol. 21, No. 83 (Jul., 1945), pp. 239-244. Personal Correspondence with the management of The New Lyceum Theatre 2006.
Today the SSBS has met continuously since 1966. Members are still required to wear the blue and buff uniform (of a Regency character) and the constitution of 1735 is adhered to where ever possible with reverence. As many as four nineteenth century members have blood descendants in the current society and many of the early society’s most symbolically charged equipment and symbols (for example the romantically decayed remains of the famous “Gridirion” of 1735 excavated twice from the charred ruins of Steaker homes, the “Sword of State”, “Halberts”, documents, chairs, glasses, rings etc) belong either to current members or to the society. The SSBS leaves such items in safety, keeping less fragile replicas and proxy symbols for its normal meetings in Central London. In 1969, Queen Elizabeth the Second most graciously returned as a gift the ‘gothick’ style “President’s Chair” to the Society (see image below). The chair is currently kept at Whites Club in St James’s whose deeply carved dining table is either the original nineteenth century dining table of the Sublime Society’s or else an old copy of it.
Character of the Early SSBS
Foundation & activities of Society (Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997), 272-75).
‘...composed of the most ingenious artists in the Kingdom... May we not live to see a leg of pork detested as carrion? and a shoulder of mutton avoided as if it were horse-flesh? Our only hopes are in the clergy and in the Beef-steak Club. The former still preserve, and probably will preserve, the rectitude of their appetites; and will do justice to Beef, wherever they find it. The latter, who are composed of the most ingenious artists in the kingdom, meet every Saturday in a noble room at the top of Covent-Garden theatre, and never suffer any dish except Beef-steaks to appear. These, indeed, are most glorious examples: but what alas! are the weak endeavours of a few to oppose the daily inroads of fricassees and soup-maigres?’ (The Connoisseur. By Mr. Town, Critic and Censor-General (London, 1761), i, p. 153 and/or Issue 29, 6 June 1754).
‘"They abhor," writes Mr. Peter Cunningham in 1851, "the notion of being thought a club; they dedicate their hours to "Beef and Liberty," and enjoy a hearty English dinner with hearty English appetites. The room in which they dine, a little Escurial in itself, is most appropriately fitted up—the doors, wainscoting, and roof of good old English oak, being ornamented with gridirons, as thickly as Henry VII.'s chapel with the portcullis of its founder. Everything here assumes the shape, or is distinguished by the representation of their favourite implement—the gridiron. The cook is seen at his office, through the bars of a spacious gridiron, and the original [id est that used by ‘John’ Rich for the grilling of the society’s seminal steaks in 1735 - see image above] gridiron of the society (the survivor of two terrific fires), holds a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. Every member has the right of inviting a friend, and pickles are not allowed till after the third helping.’ (Walter Thornbury, ‘The Strand (northern tributaries): Catherine Street etc.’, Old and New London: Volume 3 (1878), pp. 110-123
‘The Beefsteaks met symbolically behind the scenes of the theatrum mundi, to eat, drink, and joke. Appetite, rather than the fiats of God or the laws of the state, served as the basis for the club’s society’ (Paulson, Hogarth, ii, p. 76). In the 1760s ‘Horace Walpole refers to the Beefsteaks as now being a “weekly club to which both [John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich and Wilkes] belonged, held at the top of Covent Garden Theatre and composed of players and the loosest revelers of the age.”’ (iii, p. 297). Of Captain Charles Morris (elected 1785), the society’s beloved and so-called ‘Bard’, the ‘life and soul’ of the Society in his time: ‘[H]is 78th year... had given him no sign of decay in frame or faculty...His face is still resplendent with cheerfulness.” ... “Die when you will, Charles, you’ll die in your youth.” ’ (Arnold, 1871, p.4).
‘Singing was always from its earliest days, a leading feature in the society, both as regarded its members and their visitors, who were always invited to “assume a virtue if they had it not.”’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 15) ‘Although all badinage was prohibited as regarded guests, practical jokes were sometimes indulged in. (p.18). ‘The love of “chaffing,” which entered so largely into the elements of good fellowship with the Sublime Society was never, under any circumstances, permitted with the visitors. They were treated with the utmost distinction. They were never unduly urged to drink more than might be agreeable to them; one bumper alone in the evening was imperative; but it might be drunk in water .’ (p.17).
Georgian men of letters regarded conversation as an art form of importance and to be said to be ‘qualified’ to converse was no mean compliment. Before (and over lapping with) the Sublime Society, the “Beef Steak Club” had been famed and even eulogised for their excellence of ‘wit’ (Timbs, 1872, p.105-110). ‘...for the further encouragement of wit and pleasantry...there was provided a very voluminous paper book “about as thick as a bale of Dutch linen into which were to be entered every witty saying that should be spoke in the Society”’ (Timbs, 1872, p.108). Accordingly it is no surprise that among the Sublime Society also, in addition to their more famed physical manifestations of high spirits such as pranks, theatrical rituals and symbols, and the humorous punishments they loved to impose on each other, conversational victories of wit that were as clever and subtle as they were joyous and (often) barbed were most highly valued, or so it would seem by what witnesses have chosen as most worth recording. On one occasion, we are told, Garrick stayed very late with the Steaks (at a time when the Steakers still met to lunch rather than to dine) on a day when he was due to play a famous role of his, Ranger, at Drury Lane. “The pit grew restless, the gallery bawled “Manager, Manager!” Garrick had been sent for.... As he came panting into the theatre, “I think, David,” said Ford, one of his anxious pantentees, “considering the stake you and I have in this house, you might pay more attention to the business,” “True, my good friend,” returned Garrick, “but I was thinking of my steak in the other house.’ Henry Brougham (elected 1815), Lord Chancellor of England was also much admired for his virtuosic wordplay. ‘Brougham was putting hypothetically the case of a man convicted of a felony, and duly hanged according to the law; but restored to life by medical appliances: and asked what would be the man’s defence if again brought to trial. “Why,” returned Boland, “it would be for him to plead a cord and satisfaction.” (accord and and satisfaction being a common plea in legal practice.) The same evening were talked over Dean Swift’s ingenious but grotesque puns on the names of antiquity... Bolland remarked that ... it was singular that it should never have occurred to him that among the shades who accost Aeneas... there was a scotchman of the name of Hugh Forbes. Those who had read Virgil had begun to stair. “It is quite plain,” said Bolland: “the ghost exclaims, ‘Olim Euphorbus eram,”’ (Timbs, 1872, p.125-126). The same point is illustrated by the content of numerous songs written and recited by members.
Though near invisible in the written record, it can be assumed that ribaldry, whether verbal or prankish, was also enjoyed by the mischievous Steakers. “In 1743, presumedly as an exercise of this club....Hogarth and his friends played a trick on John Highmore, ... They rigged up an assignation with an attractive young woman who, between courting and bedding, disappeared and was replaced by a black prostitute, whom Highmore discovered when he climbed into bed. The jokers evidently emerged from hiding, ragged him, and commemorated the event by having Hogarth etch a plate showing Highmore’s “discovery” and his tormentors’ glee, complete with an appropriate Latin motto from Ovid. A few copies were printed for private distribution’ (Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, ii, p. 61; cf plate 30).
‘The friendly equality that existed among the members...constituted one of its principal charms. Give and take was the order of the day--...[stinging] things were uttered--the happiest retorts responded. ...Offence was never meant, and rarely taken. ...[If any member’s] temper could not brook the playful ordeal, the Society was not his home, and he and it parted (p. 6).’ All members were expected to humble themselves before their fellow members when required. The society reveled placing members on trial for wrongs “real and imaginary” (Arnold 1871) and forcing humorously demeaning punishments on those found guilty.. Sentences were always of a somewhat childish character. Sir John Hippisley (joined 1808) took an interest on one occasion one occasion in the question of the guilt or innocence of man (named Patch) who ad been found guilty of murder. He visit the man regularly in prison interviewing him for the truth. ‘Patch persisted in asserting his innocence, till wearied with Hippisley’s applications, he assured the Baronet that he would reveal to him’ the truth on the scaffold. Therefore when the day of execution came ‘Sir John mounted the scaffold and was seen for several minutes in close conference with him.’ As a result ‘a simple old woman’ took Sir John for the criminal and on happening upon Sir John in the street some days later cried out “Its Patch, Its Patch; I saw him hanged; heaven deliver me!--and then fainted. When this incident was was first related at the Steaks, a mock inquest was set on foot, to decide whether Sir John was Patch or not, and unanimously decided in the affirmative (Timbs, 1872, p.123-124)’. Sir John ‘quitted the society in consequence, ...[these proceedings raising] ... such a shout of laughter at the Baronet’s expense that he could no longer bear it.’ (Timbs, 1872, p.123)
Thus successful membership of the society has always required a highly developed sense of humour and a highly underdeveloped sense of pride. The society’s love of ‘liberty’ was more a political aspiration than a personal or moral one. That the proceeds of all wagers should have to be paid to the Treasury for the society’s general benefit (rule 8 of the society’s original constitution) is hardly evidence of an individualistic credo and was clearly designed to promote harmony among members as a body. These members could be roguish in their mutual exchanges of mocks and pranks but they could be disapproving of less than chivalrous behaviour too. On abandoning his wife John Churchill (elected 1772) was forced to resign or face the ignominy of expulsion. Even John Wilkes MP, was made unwelcome by the Brotherly disapproval raised by his ‘his infamous Essay on Women’ although he was not expelled and was allowed to assume the usual ‘retired’ status of Honorary Member. As a result he stopped dining with the Steaks in 1763. Brotherly loyalty was also expected however and his chief opponent within the Steaks, Lord Sandwich was fully expelled by the Society for his part in the crisis that contributed to Wilkes’s ostracism. (Timbs, 1872, p.114-115). Except for a time during the third quarter of the nineteenth century the Steakers have always taken great pleasure and pride in enforcing their laws and customs. Timbs (1872, p.121) says that an exception to the rule restricting membership to 24 was made for the Prince of Wales to join in 1785 but Arnold (1871, p.3) expressly acknowledges the existence of this story and denies it saying that it was well known lore within the society that even the heir to the Throne had indeed to wait for a vacancy before he could join.
Although at first the society’s uniform dress of “blue and buff” (coat and waistcoat) was a recognisable reference to the early society’s Whig politics, with time, perhaps as the fame of the society itself grew and eclipsed the attraction of the society’s anti-Tory origins, the particular hues of the costume lost their political meaning. Instead the dining livery of the Steakers joined the society’s other fondly revered “tutelary and household emblems” coming to represent little more than the identity of the society itself and doing so increasingly famously. Indeed for some duration of the early and/or middle nineteenth century the ostentatiously ordinary colour scheme of ‘blue and buff’ became ornamented by red cuffs and collars (Timbs, 1872, p.120 and 114). Of course whether by subliminal predilection or pure coincidence, how can it escape notice that, in the context of nineteenth century dress, the addition of red to their royal blue coats (particularly as often often accompanied by top boots) brought their appearance closer to that of Georgian depictions of of John Bull; after all, Whig or Tory, the society has always been nationalistic. ‘...[T]here is no doubt that the Beefsteak Society was a patriotic, anti-French Association. [Henry] Fielding himself was never a member, but The Roast Beef of Old England was sung at every meeting until the 1760’s when a new member, Theodosius Forrest, composed a special club song, The Song of the Day, which was every bit as patriotic...’.
‘[Of] the original roll of members, ... the majority... had connections with the theatre. In time the club developed strong aristocratic and even royal associations... [b]ut only one of its original members possessed a title... The rest were ... your quintessential, patriotic ‘Freeborn Englishmen’. They included, in addition to the actors, dancers and painters, a lawyer, doctor, owner of a coffee house, sculptor, silversmith, lacemaker, three merchants, and the Warden of Fleet Prison.” (Beef and Liberty, Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation by Ben Rogers, Vintage, London 2004, p.83). ‘[T]he sublime society of Beefsteaks was a delightful gathering of Bohemians of all ranks’ (Melville, The Beaux of the Regency, i, 222).
However exclusive the society may from time to time have been, it was perhaps its patriotic motto and mission to celebrate the relative liberties and prosperity enjoyed by the British commoner that kept their symbols from distancing them too far from the common man. The members loved to present not only rich gifts but ironically simple ones to the society for their fellows’ enjoyment: a magnificent Couteax de Chase with ornate scabbard of silver may be noted on the one hand whilst on the other a much loved jug of humble stoneware with good humoured scenes of rural life was cherished by the members as the “Niperkin”; or consider the contrast of the splendours of their Gothic dining room from 1838 set against their absolute reverence for the rusted remains of a common gridle or gridiron set into that apartment’s ceiling with the greatest prominence. ‘A sumptuary law, even at this early period of the Society, restricted the bill of fare to beef-steaks, and the beverage to port-wine and punch’ (Timbs, 1872, p.112). Neither is it insignificant that for a cook and servant they chose no fancy French chef but an accomplished British pugilist, Edward Heardson, to look after them. They loved him and he certainly loved them in return. On his death Charles Morris wrote the touching Epitaph on Edward Heardson which argues their paternalistic elitism was of a sincerely loyal, patriotic and earthy kind.
Venues
Covent Garden Theatre (1735-1808)
1746 map of Covent Garden Theatre & surrounding area (Ashton & Mackintosh, Royal Opera House Retrospective 1732-1982, inside front cover); 1792 remodeled Theatre (pp. 103-108); 1732 & 1782 plans (p. 115); 1804 performance for royal family (p. 83).
Covent Garden Playhouse (Hugh Phillips, Mid-Georgian London (London, 1964), pp. 140-41).
MS map of Covent Garden Theatre c. 1760, indicating room where Society met (Kensington Davison (ed.), About the House (Christmas, 1971), p. 51); drawing of exterior after reconstruction by Henry Holland in 1792 (50).
Destroyed by fire 1808.
Bedford Coffee-house (1808-9)
‘After the destruction of Covent Garden Theatre, which for seventy years had been its home, it migrated in 1808 to the Bedford Coffee-house, until the building of the Old Lyceum in 1809 (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 5).
1809-11 proprietor Robert Joy (Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses: A Reference Book of Coffee Houses of the Seventeenth Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1963), p. 115).
Old Lyceum Theatre (1809-30)
‘... it migrated in 1808 to the Bedford Coffee-house, until the building of the Old Lyceum in 1809. There the Society remained until the burning of that Theatre in 1830’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 5).
Lyceum Tavern (1830-32)
‘After this it adjourned to the Lyceum Tavern in the Strand, and thence returned to the Bedford Coffee-house’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 5); ‘Ode’ by Bro. Peake on 7 January 1832 removal from Lyceum Tavern to Bedford Coffee House (pp. 78-80).
Bedford Coffee-house (1832-38)
‘After this it adjourned to the Lyceum Tavern in the Strand, and thence returned to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained until 1838, when a suite of rooms was built for it under the new roof of the Lyceum’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 5).
1813-38 proprietor William White (Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses, p. 115).
New Lyceum Theatre (1838-67)
Bro. Hallett: ‘Anthem on the Opening of the New Beef-Steak Rooms in the Present Lyceum Theatre, November, 1838’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, pp. 143-7).
‘The original gridiron, dug out of the ruins of Covent Garden and the [old] Lyceum, formed the centre ornament of the dining-room ceiling. The entire room and ceiling were in Gothic architecture (see image below), and the walls were hung with paintings and engravings of past and present members, the former the work of Brother Lonsdale. Folding-doors, the entire width of the room, connected it with an anteroom. On the opening of these doors on the announcement of dinner, an enormous grating in the form of a gridiron, through which the fire was seen and the steaks handed, communicated with the kitchen. Over this gridiron were the lines:-
“If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly –”
Here the Sublime Society lived and died on beef-steaks’ (The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 5; frontispiece).
Bro. Charles Morris: ‘Epitaph on Edward Heardson, Many Years Cook to the Beef-Steak Society’ (Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, p. 71).
Paintings by Bro. Lonsdale (p. 94); Bro. Hallett’s ‘Anthem on the Opening of the New Beef-Steak Rooms in the Present Lyceum Theatre, November, 1838’ (pp. 143-47); ‘BUST OF JOHN WILKES – in marble’ (p. 154).
Sir Henry Irving’s “Revival” Dinners, in tribute to the SSBS, post quem 1878, ante quem 1905.
Irish Club, Eaton Square
Beefsteak Club, Irving Street
Boisdale Club, Eccleston Street
The society’s usual meetings are held at Boisdale Club and the President’s chair is kept at Whites Club.
