The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks
In this modern age, the eating of meat has become a bit of a hot topic in terms of vegetarianism, veganism and even in terms of climate change. The Georgians had no such discussions. Instead, the eating of beef was hugely connected to patriotism and the concept of British manliness. Those ideas are concepts I already knew about, but I didn’t know anything, until recently, about the longest running dining club in England, the Society of Sublime Beefsteaks. This post will be about how the club allied itself with both of these concepts, as well as what we know about how it worked.
The 1700s seems to have been the heyday of the male-only dinner clubs, but the Society of Sublime Beefsteaks was the most popular one. It was founded John Rich, theatre producer and manager of Covent Garden Theatre, in 1735. The club supposedly grew out of meetings over dinner that Rich had with his friend, the painter, George Lambert. At the very beginning, the club would be associated with political discussion and satire. It was Rich who was one of the people behind one of the most popular plays of its time, The Beggar’s Opera. The play was written by John Gay, but produced by John Rich (and certainly helped to make them both rich!). It satirised the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, in the form of gentleman highwayman Macheath. I wrote about the Beggar’s Opera in one of my first blog posts, which you can read here.
From the beginning, membership was capped at 24 members. This has always been a strict rule and was not even broken when the future George IV, when he was still Prince of Wales, asked for permission to become a member. Even he had to wait for an opening in the membership. One of those original founding 24 members was the painter, William Hogarth. It is from one of his paintings, O the Roast Beef of Old England also known as The Gate of Calais, that would be associated with the complex iconography of the society. In this painting, painted after Hogarth was arrested in Calais on an accusation of spying, a rather large joint of beef is being carried to an inn for the consumption of English travellers, with starving French peasants, and a greedy monk (who suspiciously looks rather like Friar Tuck) look on with covetous eyes.
It would seem that the society was linked to anti-continental feeling in the form of eating beef. This is most evident in the motto they used: ‘beef and liberty’, which was worn on the buttons of the member’s uniform of blue tailcoat and buff waistcoat. This uniform is still worn by the club’s current members.
Beef was a good choice, not only because it was seen as a manly dish, but was used in visual propaganda as a patriotic symbol of Britain whilst it was at war with France. This was in direct opposition to the idea of elaborate French food, which was viewed as fancier than was necessary. It certainly helped that John Bull, that British character invented by the Georgians to symbolise all that was British, was often seen eating beef. So it is easy to see why roast beef became the symbol of patriotism during the Georgian period. In the SublimeBeefsteaks hymn sung at meetings, this imagery is connected to British liberty: ‘a nobler fight the Goddess takes/To praise our British Beef in steaks/A joyful theme for Britons free/Happy in Beef and Liberty’.
In reality, beef was usually eaten by men of a certain status, middle class or above, like those who were members of the society. It was just as much about class as it was about patriotism and liberty. In fact, one of the members was the Duke of Norfolk, who was known to eat 15 steaks in just one meal! With the amount of eating and huge amounts of drink also consumed, it’s a miracle that the members lasted very long!
The Society itself has had not just one, but two revivals, first in the 1860s and then again in the twentieth century, but what actually goes off at the dinners is quite secret. All that is known is that the rituals are similar to masonic ones. However, new members are subjected to a rather odd ritual where they have to kiss the beef bone, be blinded and led around by a guide wearing a mitre, with the other members dressed in a similar type of extravagant, and weird, dress.
In modern times, the society meets at the Boisdale Club, which is their third home. After Covent Garden Theatre burnt down in 1808, the society was forced to move to the Lyceum Theatre, continuing their theatre tradition. Despite this, it is thought that the society continues in much the same way as it did back when it was founded by John Rich in 1835.
Whilst not much about the ins and outs of Society of Sublime Beefsteaks, I hope this post has given a sense of what some of the middle and upper class men, who were politically aware, but definitely greedy for food and drink, got up to at a dinner club such as this.
Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, https://www.sublimesocietyofbeefsteaks.com/
Atlas Obscura, A Rare Look Inside Britain’s ‘Sublime Society of Beefsteaks‘, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sublime-society-of-beefsteaks
Ibid
Ibid; Alice Loxton, Uproar: Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London (London: Icon Books, 2024), p. 197
Atlas Obscura, A Rare Look Inside Britain’s ‘Sublime Society of Beefsteaks’
Ibid
Alice Loxton, Uproar: Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London, p. 197
Atlas Obscura, A Rare Look Inside Britain’s ‘Sublime Society of Beefsteaks‘
Nicolai Tolstoy, ‘ The sublime society of beef steaks’, Boisdale, https://www.boisdale.co.uk/magazine/the-sublime-society-of-beef-steaks
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