Each member paid 5s. for his dinner, and 10s. 6d. for his guest. The entrance fee was £26 5s. until 1849, when it was reduced to £10 10s., and there were generally two annual whips of £5 each.
After the destruction of Covent Garden Theatre, where it had met for seventy years, the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks migrated to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained till the building of the Lyceum Theatre in 1809, in a special room of which it took up its abode till 1830, when the Lyceum also was burnt down.
After this it adjourned to the Lyceum Tavern, in the Strand, and thence returned to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained until 1838, when a suite of rooms was built for it under the new roof of the Lyceum. The original gridiron, dug out of the ruins of Covent Garden and the Lyceum, formed the centre ornament of the dining-room ceiling. The entire room and ceiling were in Gothic architecture, and the walls were hung with paintings and engravings of past and present members, the former the work of Brother Lonsdale. Folding-doors, the entire width of the room, connected it with an anteroom. When the doors were opened on the announcement of dinner, an enormous grating in the form of a gridiron, through which the fire was seen and the steaks handed, afforded members a view of the kitchen.
There was no blackballing, but every would-be member had to be invited at least twice as a guest, in order that his qualifications might be ascertained, and then, if he were put up, he was certain to be elected. As a matter of fact, the formality of a ballot was gone through, though there were no rejections.
When a new member was initiated, he and the visitors were requested after dinner to withdraw to an anteroom, where port and punch were provided for them.
The newly-elected member was then brought in blindfolded, accompanied on his right by the Bishop with his mitre on, and holding the volume in which the oath of allegiance to the rules of the society was inscribed, while on his left stood some other member holding the sword of state. Behind were the halberdiers. These were all decked out in the most incongruous and absurd dresses—in all probability originally obtained from Covent Garden Theatre.
“The charge” was then delivered by the Recorder. In it he dwelt on the solemnity of the obligations the new member was about to take on himself. He was made to understand, in tones alternately serious and gay, the true brotherly spirit of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks; that while a perfect equality existed among the Brethren, such equality never should be permitted to degenerate into undue familiarity; that while badinage was encouraged in the freest sense of the word, such badinage must never approach to a personality; and that good fellowship must be united with good breeding. Above all, attention was drawn to the Horatian motto over the chimney-piece, and the aspirant was warned that ignominious expulsion was the fate of him who carried beyond those walls words uttered there in friendship’s confidence.
That done, the following oath, dating from the origin of the society, was administered:
OATH.
YOU SHALL ATTEND DULY,