In the Spectator, No. 9, March 10, 1710-11, we read: "The Beef-steak and October Clubs are neither of them averse to eating or drinking, if we may form a judgment of them from their respective titles." This passage refers to the Beef-steak Club, founded in the reign of Queen Anne; and, it is believed, the earliest Club with that name. Dr. King, in his Art of Cookery, humbly inscribed to the Beef-steak Club, 1709, has these lines:

Estcourt, the actor, was made Providore of the Club; and for a mark of distinction wore their badge, which was a small gridiron of gold, hung about his neck with a green silk ribbon. Such is the account given by Chetwood, in his History of the Stage, 1749; to which he adds: "this Club was composed of the chief wits and great men of the nation." The gridiron, it will be seen hereafter, was assumed as its badge, by the "Society of Beef-steaks, established a few years later: they call themselves 'the Steaks,' and abhor the notion of being thought a Club." Though the National Review, heretical as it may appear, cannot consent to dissever the Society from the earlier Beef-steak Club; which, however, would imply that Rich and Lambert were not the founders of the Society, although so circumstantially shown to be. Still, the stubbornness of facts must prevail.

Dick Estcourt was beloved by Steele, who thus introduces him in the Spectator, No. 358: "The best man that I know of for heightening the real gaiety of a company is Estcourt, whose jovial humour diffuses itself from the highest person at an entertainment to the meanest waiter. Merry tales, accompanied with apt gestures and lively representations of circumstances and persons, beguile the gravest mind into a consent to be as humorous as himself. Add to this, that when a man is in his good graces, he has a mimicry that does not debase the person he represents, but which, taken from the gravity of the character, adds to the agreeableness of it."

Then, in the Spectator, No. 264, we find a letter from Sir Roger de Coverley, from Coverley, "To Mr. Estcourt, at his House in Covent Garden," addressing him as "Old Comical One," and acknowledging "the hogsheads of neat port came safe," and hoping next term to help fill Estcourt's Bumper "with our people of the Club." The Bumper was the tavern in Covent Garden, which Estcourt opened about a year before his death. In this quality Parnell speaks of him in the beginning of one of his poems:—

The Spectator delivers this merited eulogy of the player, just prior to his benefit at the theatre: "This pleasant fellow gives one some idea of the ancient Pantomime, who is said to have given the audience in dumb-show, an exact idea of any character or passion, or an intelligible relation of any public occurrence, with no other expression than that of his looks and gestures. If all who have been obliged to these talents in Estcourt will be at Love for Love to-morrow night, they will but pay him what they owe him, at so easy a rate as being present at a play which nobody would omit seeing, that had, or had not, ever seen it before."

Then, in the Spectator, No. 468, August 27, 1712, with what touching pathos does Steele record the last exit of this choice spirit: "I am very sorry that I have at present a circumstance before me which is of very great importance to all who have a relish for gaiety, wit, mirth, or humour: I mean the death of poor Dick Estcourt. I have been obliged to him for so many hours of jollity, that it is but a small recompense, though all I can give him, to pass a moment or two in sadness for the loss of so agreeable a man.... Poor Estcourt! Let the vain and proud be at rest, thou wilt no more disturb their admiration of their dear selves; and thou art no longer to drudge in raising the mirth of stupids, who know nothing of thy merit, for thy maintenance." Having spoken of him "as a companion and a man qualified for conversation,"—his fortune exposing him to an obsequiousness towards the worst sort of company, but his excellent qualities rendering him capable of making the best figure in the most refined, and then having told of his maintaining "his good humour with a countenance or a language so delightful, without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving the distance his circumstances obliged him to,"—Steele concludes with, "I say, I have seen him do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I hint at will read this, without giving him some sorrow for their abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory, that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on——" We agree with Leigh Hunt that Steele's "overfineness of nature was never more beautifully evinced in any part of his writings than in this testimony to the merits of poor Dick Estcourt."

Ned Ward, in his Secret History of Clubs, first edition, 1709, describes the Beef-steaks, which he coarsely contrasts with "the refined wits of the Kit-Cat." This new Society griliado'd beef eaters first settled their meeting at the sign of the Imperial Phiz, just opposite to a famous conventicle in the Old Jury, a publick-house that has been long eminent for the true British quintessence of malt and hops, and a broiled sliver off the juicy rump of a fat, well-fed bullock.... This noted boozing ken, above all others in the City, was chosen out by the Rump-steak admirers, as the fittest mansion to entertain the Society, and to gratify their appetites with that particular dainty they desired to be distinguished by. [The Club met at the place appointed, and chose for a Prolocutor, an Irish comedian.] No sooner had they confirmed their Hibernian mimic in his honourable post, but to distinguish him from the rest, they made him a Knight of St. Lawrence, and hung a silver (?) gridiron about his neck, as a badge of the dignity they had conferred upon him, that when he sung Pretty Parrot, he might thrum upon the bars of his new instrument, and mimic a haughty Spaniard serenading his Donna with guitar and madrigal. The Zany, as proud of his new fangle as a German mountebank of a prince's medal, when he was thus dignified and distinguished with his culinary symbol hanging before his breast, took the highest post of honour, as his place at the board, where, as soon as seated, there was not a bar in the silver kitchen-stuff that the Society had presented him with, but was presently handled with a theatrical pun, or an Irish witticism.... Orders were dispatched to the superintendent of the kitchen to provide several nice specimens of their Beef-steak cookery, some with the flavour of a shalot or onion; some broil'd, some fry'd, some stew'd, some toasted, and others roasted, that every judicious member of the new erected Club might appeal to his palate, and from thence determine whether the house they had chosen for their rendezvous truly deserved that public fame for their inimitable management of a bovinary sliver, which the world had given them.... When they had moderately supplied their beef stomachs, they were all highly satisfy'd with the choice they had made, and from that time resolved to repeat their meeting once a week in the same place." At the next meeting the constitution and bye-laws of the new little commonwealth were settled; and for the further encouragement of wit and pleasantry throughout the whole Society, 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:" this nearly proved a failure; but Ward gives a taste of the performances by reciting some that had been stolen out of their Journal by a false Brother; here is one:—

ON AN OX.

Ward is very hard upon the Kit-Cat community, and tells us that the Beef-steaks, "like true Britons, to show their resentment in contempt of Kit-Cat pies, very justly gave the preference to a rump-steak, most wisely agreeing that the venerable word, beef, gave a more masculine grace, and sounded better in the title of a true English Club, than either Pies or Kit-Cat; and that a gridiron, which has the honour to be made the badge of a Saint's martyrdom, was a nobler symbol of their Christian integrity, than two or three stars or garters; who learnedly recollecting how great an affinity the word bull has to beef, they thought it very consistent with the constitution of their Society, instead of a Welsh to have a Hibernian secretary. Being thus fixed to the great honour of a little alehouse, next door to the Church, and opposite to the Meeting, they continued to meet for some time; till their fame spreading over all the town, and reaching the ears of the great boys and little boys, as they came in the evening from Merchant Taylors' School, they could not forbear hollowing as they passed the door; and being acquainted with their nights of meeting, they seldom failed, when the divan was sitting, of complimenting their ears with 'Huzza! Beef-steak!'—that they might know from thence, how much they were reverenced for men of learning by the very school-boys."

"But the modest Club," says Ward, "not affecting popularity, and choosing rather to be deaf to all public flatteries, thought it an act of prudence to adjourn from thence into a place of obscurity, where they might feast knuckle-deep in luscious gravy, and enjoy themselves free from the noisy addresses of the young scholastic rabble; so that now, whether they have healed the breach, and are again returned into the Kit-Cat community, from whence it is believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated, or whether, like the Calves' Head Club they remove from place to place, to prevent discovery, I sha'n't presume to determine; but at the present, like Oates's army of pilgrims, in the time of the plot, though they are much talk'd of they are difficult to be found." The "Secret history" concludes with an address to the Club, from which these are specimen lines:

We shall now more closely examine the origin and history of the Sublime Society of the Steaks, which has its pedigree, its ancestry, and its title-deeds. The gridiron of 1735 is the real gridiron on which its first steak was broiled. Henry Rich (Lun, the first Harlequin) was the founder, to whom Garrick thus alludes in a prologue to the Irish experiment of a speaking pantomime:

There is a letter extant, written by Nixon, the treasurer, probably to some artist, granting permission by the Beef-steak Society "to copy the original gridiron, and I have wrote on the other side of this sheet a note to Mr. White, at the Bedford, to introduce you to our room for the purpose making your drawing. The first spare moment I can take from my business shall be employed in making a short statement of the rise and establishment of the Beef-steak Society."

Rich, in 1732, left the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre for Covent Garden, the success of the Beggars' Opera having "made Gay rich and Rich gay." He was accustomed to arrange the comic business and construct the models of tricks for his pantomimes in his private room at Covent Garden. Here resorted men of rank and wit, for Rich's colloquial oddities were much relished. Thither came Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the friend of Pope, and thus commemorated by Swift:

He was then advanced in years, and one afternoon stayed, talking with Rich about his tricks and transformations, and listening to his agreeable talk, until Rich's dinner-hour, two o'clock, had arrived. In all these colloquies with his visitors, whatever their rank, Rich never neglected his art. Upon one occasion, accident having detained the Earl's coach later than usual, he found Rich's chat so agreeable, that he was quite unconscious it was two o'clock in the afternoon; when he observed Rich spreading a cloth, then coaxing his fire into a clear cooking flame, and proceeding, with great gravity, to cook his own beef-steak on his own gridiron. The steak sent up a most inviting incense, and my Lord could not resist Rich's invitation to partake of it. A further supply was sent for; and a bottle or two of good wine from a neighbouring tavern prolonged their enjoyment to a late hour. But so delighted was the old Peer with the entertainment, that, on going away, he proposed renewing it at the same place and hour, on the Saturday following. He was punctual to his engagement, and brought with him three or four friends, "men of wit and pleasure about town," as M. Bouges would call them; and so truly festive was the meeting that it was proposed a Saturday's club should be held there, whilst the town remained full. 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.

However, the origin of the Society is related with a difference. Edwards, in his Anecdotes of Painting, relates that Lambert, many years principal scene-painter at Covent Garden Theatre, received, in his painting-room, persons of rank and talent; where, as he could not leave for dinner, he frequently was content with a steak, which he himself broiled upon the fire in his room. Sometimes the visitors partook of the hasty meal, and out of this practice grew the Beef-steak Society, and the assembling in the painting-room. The members were afterwards accommodated with a room in the playhouse; and when the Theatre was rebuilt, the place of meeting was changed to the Shakespeare Tavern, where was the portrait of Lambert, painted by Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds's master.

In the Connoisseur, June 6th, 1754, we read of the Society, "composed of the most ingenious artists in the Kingdom," meeting "every Saturday in a noble room at the top of Covent Garden Theatre," and never suffering "any diet 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?"

However, the apartments in the theatre appropriated to the Society varied. Thus, we read of a painting-room even with the stage over the kitchen, which was under part of the stage nearest Bow-street. At one period, the Society dined in a small room over the passage of the theatre. The steaks were dressed in the same room, and when they found it too hot, a curtain was drawn between the company and the fire.

We shall now glance at the celebrities who came to the painting-room in the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, and the later locations of the Club, in Covent Garden. To the former came Hogarth and his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, stimulated by their love of the painter's art, and the equally potent charm of conviviality.

Churchill was introduced to the Steaks by his friend Wilkes; but his irregularities were too much for the Society, which was by no means particular; his desertion of his wife brought a hornets' swarm about him, so that he soon resigned, to avoid the disgrace of expulsion. Churchill attributed this flinging of the first stone to Lord Sandwich; he never forgave the peccant Peer, but put him into the pillory of his fierce satire, which has outlived most of his other writings, and here it is:

Churchill, in a letter to Wilkes, says, "Your friends at the Beef-steak inquired after you last Saturday with the greatest zeal, and it gave me no small pleasure that I was the person of whom the inquiry was made." Charles Price was allowed to be one of the most witty of the Society, and it is related that he and Churchill kept the table in a roar.

Formerly, the members wore a blue coat, with red cape and cuffs; buttons with the initials B. S.; and behind the President's chair was placed the Society's halbert, which, with the gridiron, was found among the rubbish after the Covent Garden fire.

Mr. Justice Welsh was frequently chairman at the Beef-steak dinner. Mrs. Nollekens, his daughter, acknowledges that she often dressed a hat for the purpose, with ribbons similar to those worn by the yeomen of the guard. The Justice was a loyal man, but discontinued his membership when Wilkes joined the Society; though the latter was the man at the Steaks.

To the Steaks Wilkes sent a copy of his infamous Essay on Women, first printed for private circulation; for which Lord Sandwich—Jemmy Twitcher—himself, as we have seen, a member of the Society—moved in the House of the Lords that Wilkes should be taken into custody; a piece of treason as the act of one brother of the Steaks against another, fouler than even the trick of "dirty Kidgell," the parson, who, as a friend of the author, got a copy of the Essay from the printer, and then felt it his duty to denounce the publication; he had been encouraged to inform against Wilkes's Essay by the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry. However, Jemmy Twitcher himself was expelled by the Steaks the same year he assailed Wilkes for the Essay; the grossness and blasphemy of the poem disgusted the Society; and Wilkes never dined there after 1763; yet, when he went to France, they hypocritically made him an honorary member.

Garrick was an honoured member of the Steaks; though he did not affect Clubs. The Society possess a hat and sword which David wore, probably on the night when he stayed so long with the Steaks, and had to play Ranger, at Drury-lane. The pit grew restless, the gallery bawled "Manager, manager!" Garrick had been sent for to Covent Garden, where the Steaks then dined. Carriages blocked up Russell-street, and he had to thread his way between them; as he came panting into the theatre, "I think, David," said Ford, one of the anxious patentees, "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."

Many a reconciliation of parted friends has taken place at this Club. Peake, in his Memoirs of the Colman Family, thus refers to a reconciliation between Garrick and Colman the elder, through the Sublime Society:—

"Whether Mr. Clutterbuck or other friends interfered to reconcile the two dramatists, or whether the considerations of mutual interest may not in a great measure have aided in healing the breach between Colman and Garrick, is not precisely to be determined; but it would appear, from the subjoined short note from Garrick, that Colman must have made some overture to him.

The beef-steaks, arrack punch, and Saturday, all savour very strongly of a visit to the Sublime Society held at that period in Covent Garden Theatre, where many a clever fellow has had his diaphragm disordered, before that time and since. Whoever has had the pleasure to join their convivial board; to witness the never-failing good-humour which predominates there; to listen to the merry songs, and to the sparkling repartee; and to experience the hearty welcome and marked attention paid to visitors, could never have cause to lament, as Garrick has done, a trifling illness the following day. There must have been originally a wise and simple code of laws, which could have held together a convivial meeting for so lengthened a period.

Garrick had no slight tincture of vanity, and was fond of accusing himself, in the Chesterfield phrase, of the cardinal virtues. Having remarked at the Steaks that he had so large a mass of manuscript plays submitted to him, that they were constantly liable to be mislaid, he observed that, unpleasant as it was to reject an author's piece, it was an affront to his feelings if it could not be instantly found; and that for this reason he made a point of ticketing and labelling the play that was to be returned, that it might be forthcoming at a moment. "A fig for your hypocrisy," exclaimed Murphy across the table; "you know, Davy, you mislaid my tragedy two months ago, and I make no doubt you have lost it."—"Yes," replied Garrick; "but you forgot, you ungrateful dog, that I offered you more than its value, for you might have had two manuscript farces in its stead." This is the right paternity of an anecdote often told of other parties.

Jack Richards, a well-known presbyter of the Society, unless when the "fell serjeant," the gout, had arrested him, never absented himself from its board. He was recorder, and there is nothing in comedy equal to his passing sentence on those who had offended against the rules and observances of the Society. Having put on Garrick's hat, he proceeded to inflict a long, wordy harangue upon the culprit, who often endeavoured most unavailingly to stop him. Nor was it possible to see when he meant to stop. But the imperturbable gravity with which Jack performed his office, and the fruitless writhings of the luckless being on whom the shower of his rhetoric was discharged, constituted the amusement of the scene. There was no subject upon which Jack's exuberance of talk failed him; yet, in that stream of talk there was never mingled one drop of malignity, nor of unkind censure upon the erring or unhappy. He would as soon adulterate his glass of port-wine with water, as dash that honest though incessant prattle with one malevolent or ungenerous remark.

William Linley, the brother of Mrs. Sheridan, charmed the Society with his pure, simple English song: in a melody of Arne's, or of Jackson's of Exeter, or a simple air of his father's, he excelled to admiration,—faithful to the characteristic chastity of the style of singing peculiar to the Linley family. Linley had not what is called a fine voice, and port-wine and late nights did not improve his organ; but you forgot the deficiencies of his power, in the spirit and taste of his manner. He wrote a novel in three volumes, which was so schooled by the Steaks that he wrote no more: when the agony of wounded authorship was over, he used to exclaim to his tormentors:—

His merciless Zoilus brought a volume of the work in his pocket, and read a passage of it aloud. Yet, Linley never betrayed the irritable sulkiness of a roasted author, but took the pleasantries that played around him with imperturbable good-humour: he laughed heartily at his own platitudes, and thus the very martyr of the joke became its auxiliary. Linley is said to have furnished Moore, for his Life of Sheridan, with the common-place books in which his brother-in-law was wont to deposit his dramatic sketches, and to bottle up the jokes he had collected for future use; but many pleasantries of Sheridan were deeply engraved on his recollection because they had been practised upon himself, or upon his brother Hozy (as Sheridan called him), who was an unfailing butt, when he was disposed to amuse himself with a practical jest.

Another excellent brother was Dick Wilson, whose volcanic complexion had for many years been assuming deeper and deeper tints of carnation over the port-wine of the Society. Dick was a wealthy solicitor, and many years Lord Eldon's "port-wine-loving secretary." His fortunes were very singular. He was first steward and solicitor, and afterwards residuary legatee, of Lord Chedworth. He is said to have owed the favour of this eccentric nobleman to the legal acumen he displayed at a Richmond water-party. A pleasant lawn, under a spreading beech-tree in one of Mr. Cambridge's meadows, was selected for the dinner; but on pulling to the shore, behold a board in the tree proclaiming, "All persons landing and dining here will be prosecuted according to law." Dick Wilson contended that the prohibition clearly applied only to the joint act of "landing and dining" at the particular spot. If the party landed a few yards lower down, and then dined under the tree, only one member of the condition would be broken; which would be no legal infringement, as the prohibition—being of two acts, linked by a copulative—was not severable. This astute argument carried the day. The party dined under Mr. Cambridge's beech-tree, and, it is presumed, were not "prosecuted according to law." At all events, Lord Chedworth, who was one of the diners, was so charmed with Dick's ready application of his law to practice, that he committed to him the management of his large and accumulating property.

Dick stood the fire of the Steaks with good humour; but he was sometimes unmercifully roasted. He had just returned from Paris, when Arnold, with great dexterity, drew him into some Parisian details, with great glee; for Dick was entirely innocent of the French language. Thus, in enumerating the dishes at a French table, he thought the boulevards delicious; when Cobbe called out, "Dick, it was well they did not serve you at the Palais Royal for sauce to your boulevards." The riz de veau he called a rendezvous; and he could not bear partridges served up in shoes; and once, intending to ask for a pheasant, he desired the waiter to bring him a paysanne! Yet, Dick was shrewd: calling one day upon Cobbe at the India House, Dick was left to himself for a few minutes, when he was found by Cobbe, on his return, exploring a map of Asia suspended on the wall: he was measuring the scale of it with compasses, and then applying them to a large tiger, which the artist had introduced as one of the animals of the country. "By heavens, Cobbe," exclaimed Dick, "I should never have believed it! Surely, it must be a mistake. Observe now—here," pointing to the tiger, "here is a tiger that measures two-and-twenty leagues. By heavens, it is scarcely credible."

Another of the noteworthy Steaks was "Old Walsh," commonly called "the Gentle Shepherd:" he began life as a servant of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, and accompanied his natural son, Philip Stanhope, on the grand tour, as valet: after this he was made a Queen's messenger, and subsequently a Commissioner of Customs; he was a good-natured butt for the Society's jokes. Rowland Stephenson, the banker, was another Beef-Steaker, then respected for his clear head and warm heart, years before he became branded as a forger. At the same table was a capitalist of very high character—William Joseph Denison, who sat many years in Parliament for Surrey, and died a millionnaire: he was a man of cultivated tastes, and long enjoyed the circle of the Steaks.

We have seen how the corner-stone of the sublime Society was laid. The gridiron upon which Rich had broiled his solitary steak, being insufficient in a short time for the supernumerary guests, the gridiron was enshrined as one of the tutelary and household emblems of the Club. Fortunately, it escaped the fire which consumed Covent Garden Theatre in 1808, when the valuable stock of wine of the Club shared the fate of the building; but the gridiron was saved. "In that fire, alas!" says the author of The Clubs of London, "perished the original archives of the Society. The lovers of wit and pleasantry have much to deplore in that loss, inasmuch as not only the names of many of the early members are irretrievably gone, but what is more to be regretted, some of their happiest effusions; for it was then customary to register in the weekly records anything of striking excellence that had been hit off in the course of the evening. This, however, is certain, that the Beaf-steaks, from its foundation to the present hour, has been—

"'native to famous wits

Or hospitable.'