In 1876 the Beefsteak Club was founded by Archibald Stuart Wortley. I was elected one of the original members. As a young man, I appreciated the Beefsteak Club for what it was then—a gay and jolly place, more or less Bohemian. In later bachelor days much of my time in the evenings was spent there, and my constant attendance brought me into contact with many of the most interesting and entertaining men of the day.
Being a one-room club and also restricted to three hundred members (the admittance of visitors being prohibited), it was always unique, the conversation varying according to the different groups sitting side by side at the dinner-table, and the members being selected pretty equally from sailors, soldiers, actors, diplomats, legislators, sporting men, artistic and literary men, and so on.
At one period, Friday nights were especially popular, and I think that was because a member named Craigie (a retired army man) made a point of never missing them. He was a great favourite with all, invariably occupied the same seat, and by report missed only one Friday evening during his membership. I remember that upon entering the Beefsteak Club one Saturday evening, I was shown the chair in which Craigie always sat. The seat was in ribbons.
It seems that on the only occasion that he was absent from his place on a Friday a large stag's head fell plump on to it, piercing it through and through.
What luck for our friend!
It was a 13 pointer, and happened on a Friday night too, so the tables were turned against the old superstition.
Craigie's cheery laugh has, I regret to say, long been missed. Now he is no more, so Friday nights have lost their special interest. The Beefsteak is no longer the same late "sitting up" club, although it still remains delightful, and while we regret the absence of the retired editor of Punch (Sir Francis Burnand), we hail the frequent appearance of his successor (Sir Owen Seaman).
Just before my marriage, I was very much gratified by the extremely kind way in which my friends "clubbed" together and presented me with a handsome canteen of silver (quite an unprecedented occurrence, by the way, in the Beefsteak Club). The presentation on that occasion was made by Comyns Carr, who made one of his very appropriate and humorous speeches. A friend writes to me, "Do you remember in your reply to Carr's speech you started on a quotation from Shakespeare, 'froze up,' and Biron got the book and read the passage? It was the end of 'Much Ado,' where Benedick says, 'a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?... in brief since I do purpose to marry I will think nothing to any purpose the world can say against it,'—a happy quotation. Wit-cracker for Joe Carr was admirably apt." I was also much indebted to my friend Frederick Post for his pains in helping to select the gift.
The premises previous to this were in King William Street, over Toole's Theatre, which was pulled down when the buildings of Charing Cross Hospital were extended. By an odd series of coincidences, all my addresses seem to be either in a King or a William Street, or the two combined. They were—
My Studio William Street, Lowndes Square.
Orleans Club King Street, St. James.
Fielding Club King Street, Covent Garden.
Beefsteak Club King William Street, Strand.
My Insurance Office King Street, City.
Vanity Fair Offices
(at one time) King William Street.