page_title: Beefsteak Club
section_title: Beefsteak Club, Irving Street
hierarchical_section_title: Beefsteak Club / History / Successors to the Sublime Society / Beefsteak Club, Irving Street
caption_attribution_description: English: Composite of Henry Irving, W. S. Gilbert, Henry Labouchère and F. C. Burnand
context_page_description: Beefsteak Club is the name or nickname of several 18th- and 19th-century male dining clubs in Britain and Australia, that celebrated the beefsteak as a symbol of patriotic and often Whig concepts of liberty and prosperity.
  The first beefsteak club was founded about 1705 in London by the actor Richard Estcourt and others in the arts and politics. This club flourished for less than a decade. The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks was established in 1735 by another performer, John Rich, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where he was then manager, and George Lambert, his scenic artist, with two dozen members of the theatre and arts community. The society became much celebrated, and new members included royalty, statesmen and great soldiers: in 1785, the Prince of Wales joined.
  At the weekly meetings, the members wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat with brass buttons bearing a gridiron motif and the words "Beef and liberty". The steaks and baked potatoes were accompanied by port or porter. After dinner, the evening was given up to noisy revelry. The club met almost continuously until 1867. Sir Henry Irving continued its tradition in the late nineteenth century.
context_section_description: The Beefsteak Club that today has premises at 9 Irving Street, London, was established in 1876.  When it was founded as a successor to the Sublime Society, its members hoped to rent the society's dining room at the Lyceum.  As that room was not available, the club held its first meeting, on 11 March 1876, in rooms above the Folly Theatre (later known as Toole's Theatre) in King William IV Street.  Two features of the club were, and are, that all members and guests sit together at a single long table, and that by tradition the club steward and the waiters are all addressed as "Charles".
  The Beefsteak became an essential after-theatre club for such men as the dramatists F. C. Burnand and W. S. Gilbert, performers Corney Grain, J. L. Toole, John Hare, Henry Irving and W. H. Kendal, and theatre managers and writers Henry Labouchère and Bram Stoker, and their peers.  Restaurant critic Nathaniel Newnham-Davis was also a member around the turn of the 20th century.  The club moved to Green Street, in Mayfair, and, in 1896, to its present address. There were 250 members, some of whom occasionally performed amateur plays for their own amusement and to raise funds for charities.  For example, in 1878, they performed The Forty Thieves, written by members Robert Reece, Gilbert, Burnand, and Henry J. Byron. In 1879 there was a much-reported court case following a fracas on the doorstep of the club between Labouchère and Edward Levy-Lawson, proprietor of The Daily Telegraph. The committee of the club expelled Labouchère, who successfully sought a court ruling that they had no right to do so.
  The club has had at least one prime minister in its ranks: in 1957 the members gave a dinner to Harold Macmillan "to mark the occasion of his becoming Prime Minister, and in recognition of his services to the club as their senior trustee." Who's Who lists 791 men, living and dead, who have been members of the present Beefsteak Club.  As well as men of the theatre, they include politicians such as R. A. Butler, Roy Jenkins and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the writer Evelyn Waugh, poets including John Betjeman, musicians including Edward Elgar and Malcolm Sargent, filmmakers and broadcasters such as Richard Attenborough, Peter Bazalgette, Richard Dimbleby, Barry Humphries and Stephen Fry, and philosophers including A. J. Ayer and A. C. Grayling, as well as figures from other spheres such as Robert Baden-Powell, Osbert Lancaster and Edwin Lutyens.
caption: Early members of the 1876 Beefsteak Club: (top) Henry Irving (l) and W. S. Gilbert; (below) Henry Labouchère (l) and F. C. Burnand
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