Beef And Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation

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Meetings were held every Saturday between November and June. All members were required to wear the society's uniform – a blue coat and buff waistcoat with brass buttons. The buttons bore a gridiron motif and the words "Beef and liberty". The steaks were served on hot pewter plates, with onions and baked potatoes, and were accompanied by port or porter. The only second course offered was toasted cheese. After dinner, the tablecloth was removed, the cook collected the money, and the rest of the evening was given up to noisy revelry. [10]

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Thompson, Charles Willis, "Thirty Years of Gridiron Club Dinners", The New York Times, 24 October 1915, p. SM16The oldest dining club in Australia is the Melbourne Beefsteak Club, established in May 1886, [21] when merchant John Deegan, [22] City Councillor William Ievers, [23] solicitor James Maloney and manufacturer Frank Stuart [24] gathered with friends for regular lunches. [25] Their motto was "Beefsteak and Brotherhood", and the membership was made up of gentlemen from business, the professions, and academia. [26] It held its 300th dinner on 14 October 1916 [27] and its 400th on 11 August 1928, in the Hotel Windsor. [28] [29] "Leadership in War", the speech that General Sir John Monash gave to the Club on 30 March 1926, was included in a 2004 collection entitled The Speeches that Made Australia. [30] Successors to the Sublime Society [ edit ] Dining room at the Lyceum, used by the Sublime Society and later by Henry Irving. The kitchen is at the rear, beyond the gridiron-shaped grating. Irving's dinners and the present Sublime Society [ edit ] Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher; Keay, Julia; Keay, John (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5. 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." [40] 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. [41] See also [ edit ] In the early 18th Century a number of Beef Steak Clubs began to spring up in London. They were part members’ club, part secret society and all based around the wonder and marvel of beef steaks. The most famous of these, The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, was formed by John Rich, the harlequin and machinist (now more prosaically known as a ‘manager’) at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. The club was frequented by actors, artists, men of wit and song, noblemen, royalty, statesmen and great soldiers. So stringent were the entry requirements that even the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) was merely placed on the waiting list.

Beef and Liberty : Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation Beef and Liberty : Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation

Elliot, William Gerald (1898). Amateur Clubs and Actors. London: E. Arnold. p. 127. OCLC 1388732. Forty Thieves Beefsteak Club. 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. The Sublime Society was revived in 1966 and holds many of the original Society's relics in safe keeping. Its membership includes lineal descendants from the nineteenth century membership, and it adheres to the Society's early rules and customs. [1]Other "Beefsteak Clubs" included one in Dublin from 1749, for performers and politicians, and several in London and elsewhere. Many used the gridiron as their symbol, and some are even named after it, including the Gridiron Club of Washington, D.C., US. In 1876, a Beefsteak Club was formed that became an essential after-theatre club for the bohemian theatre set, including W. S. Gilbert, and still meets in Irving Street. Patrons considered themselves to be down-to-earth men of the people and would attend wearing simple clothes and rugged leather boots. They were said to embody the British spirit and saw beef as the sustenance of the nation (unlike France’s “soup meager, frogs and sallads”). Members wore a ring with a picture of a gridiron and the words ‘Beef & Liberty’. They were in stark contrast to the flamboyant and effeminate Macaroni Club, formed by rich young men freshly returned from the Grand Tour, who became associated with outrageous costumes and foreign food. Hollingshead, John (1903). Good Old Gaiety: An Historiette & Remembrance. London: Gaiety Theatre Co. OCLC 1684298.