Though masked and mute conveyed his true intent,
And told in frolic gestures what he meant;
But now the motley coat and sword of wood,
Require a tongue to make them understood."
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:
"Mordanto fills the trump of fame;
The Christian world his death proclaim;
And prints are crowded with his name.
In journeys he outrides the post;