It was an old custom at theatres to have a Beef-steak Club that met every Saturday, and to which authors and wits were invited. In 1749 Mr. Sheridan, the manager, founded one at Dublin. There were fifty or sixty members, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, and no performer was admitted but witty Peg Woffington, who wore man’s dress, and was president for a whole season.[319]
A Beef-steak Society was founded in 1735 by John Rich, the great harlequin, and manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and George Lambert, the scene-painter.[320] Lambert, being much visited by authors, wits, and noblemen, whilst painting, and being too hurried to go to a tavern, used to have a steak cooked in the room, inviting his guests to share his snug and savoury but hurried meal. The fun of these accidental and impromptu dinners led to a club being started, which afterwards moved to a more convenient room in the theatre. After many years the place of meeting was changed to the Shakspere Tavern, where Mr. Lambert’s portrait, painted by Hudson, Reynolds’s pompous master, was one of the decorations of the club-room.[321] They then returned to the theatre, but being burned out in 1812, adjourned to the Bedford. Lambert was the merriest of fellows, yet without buffoonery or coarseness. His manners were most engaging, he was social with his equals, and perfectly easy with richer men.[322] He was also a great leader of fun at old Slaughter’s artist-club.
The club throve down to about 1869, when it was dissolved; steaks were perennial as a dish, whatever the wit may have been, to the last. Twenty-four noblemen and gentlemen, each of whom might bring a friend, partook of a five o’clock dinner of steaks in a room of their own behind the scenes at the Lyceum Theatre every Saturday from November till June. They called themselves “The Steaks,” disclaimed the name of “Club,” and dedicated their hours to “Beef and Liberty,” as their ancestors did in the anti-Walpole days.[323]
Their room was a little typical Escurial. The doors, wainscot, and floor, were of stout oak, emblazoned with gridirons, like a chapel of St. Laurence. The cook was seen at his office through the bars of a vast gridiron, and the original gridiron of the society (the survivor of two terrific fires) held a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. This club descended lineally from Wilkes’s and from Lambert’s. To the end there was Attic salt enough to sprinkle over “the Steaks,” and to justify the old epicure’s lines to the club:—
“He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes,
May be a fit companion o’er beef-steaks;
His name may be to future times enrolled
In Estcourt’s book, whose gridiron’s framed of gold.”[324]
Its gridiron and other treasures were sold by auction, and fetched fabulous prices.
Dr. William King, the author of the above quoted verses, was an indolent, wrong-headed genius. Some three years after the Restoration he took part against the irascible Bentley in the dispute about the Epistles of Phalaris, satirised Sir Hans Sloane, and supported Sacheverell. He wrote The Art of Cookery, Dialogues of the Dead, The Art of Love, and Greek Mythology for Schools. Recklessly throwing up his Irish Government appointment, he came to London. There Swift got him appointed manager of the Gazette; but being idle, and fond of the bottle, he resigned his office in six months, and went to live at a friend’s house in the garden grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall. He died in 1712, in lodgings opposite Somerset House, procured for him by his relation, Lord Clarendon. He was buried in the north cloisters of Westminster Abbey, close to his master, Dr. Knipe, to whom he had dedicated his School Mythology.
Mr. T. P. Cooke obtained some of his early triumphs at the Lyceum as Frankenstein, and at the Adelphi as Long Tom Coffin. His serious pantomime in the fantastic monster of Mrs. Shelley’s novel is said to have been highly poetical. He made his début in 1804, at the Royalty Theatre, and soon afterwards left Astley’s to join Laurent, the manager of the Lyceum. This best of stage seamen since Bannister’s time was born in 1780, and died only recently.
Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris had the Lyceum in 1847. This fascinating actress was the daughter of Francesco Bartolozzi, the engraver, and was born in 1797. She married the celebrated dancer, Vestris, in 1813, and in 1813 appeared at the King’s Theatre, in Winter’s opera of “Proserpina.” In 1820, after a wild and disgraceful life in Paris, she appeared at Drury Lane as Lilla, Adela, and Artaxerxes, and exhibited the archness, and vivacity of Storace without her grossness. In a burlesque of “Don Giovanni,” as “Paul” and as “Apollo,” she was much abused by the critics for her wantonness of manner and dress, but she still won her audiences by her sweet and powerful contralto, and by her songs, “The Light Guitar” and “Rise, gentle Moon.” Harley played Leporello to her under Mr. Elliston’s management. After this she took to “first light comedy” and melodrama, and married Mr. Charles Mathews. The theatre was burnt down in 1830, and rebuilt soon afterwards. Madame Vestris herself died in 1856.
“That little crowded nest” of shops and wild beasts,[325] Exeter Change, stood where Burleigh Street now stands, but extended into the main road, so that the footpath of the north side of the Strand ran directly through it.[326] It was built about 1681,[327] and contained two walks below and two walks above stairs, with shops on each side for sempsters, milliners, hosiers, etc. The builders were very sanguine, but the fame of the New Exchange (now the Adelphi) blighted it from the beginning;[328] the shops next the street alone could be let; the rest lay unoccupied. The Land Bank had rooms here. The body of the poet Gay lay in state in an upper room, afterwards used for auctions. In 1721 a Mr. Normand Corry exhibited here a damask bed, with curtains woven by himself; admission two shillings and sixpence. About 1780 Lord Baltimore’s body lay here in state, preparatory to its interment at Epsom.