en the juicy dish had been discussed. Early in the
century, Estcourt, the actor, was made provider to this club, and wore a
golden gridiron as a badge of office, and is thus alluded to in Dr.
King's 'Art of Cookery' (1709):--

'He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes,
May be a fit companion o'er beef-stakes;
His name may be to future times enrolled
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold.'

Estcourt was one of the best mimics of the day, and a keen satirist to
boot; in fact he seems to have owed much of his success on the stage to
his power of imitation, for while his own manner was inferior, he could
at pleasure copy exactly that of any celebrated actor. He _would_ be a
player. At fifteen he ran away from home, and joining a strolling
company, acted Roxana in woman's clothes: his friends pursued him, and,
changing his dress for that of a girl of the time, he tried to escape
them, but in vain. The histrionic youth was captured, and bound
apprentice in London town; the 'seven long years' of which did not cure
him of the itch for acting. But he was too good a wit for the stage, and
amused himself, though not always his audience, by interspersing his
part with his own remarks. The great took him by the hand, and old
Marlborough especially patronized him: he wrote a burlesque of the
Italian operas then beginning to be in vogue; and died in 1712-13.
Estcourt was not the only actor belonging to the Beef-steak, nor even
the only one who had concealed his sex under emergency; Peg Woffington,
who had made as good a boy as he had done a girl, was afterwards a
member of this club.

In later years the beef-steak was cooked in a room at the top of Covent
Garden Theatre, and counted many a celebrated wit among those who sat
around its cheery dish. Wilkes the blasphemer, Churchill, and Lord
Sandwich, were all members of it at the same time. Of the last, Walpole
gives us information in 1763 at the time of Wilkes's duel with Martin in
Hyde Park. He tells us that at the Beef-steak Club Lord Sandwich talked
so profusely, 'that he drove harlequins out of the company.' To the
honour of the club be it added, that his lordship was driven out after
the harlequins, and finally expelled: it is sincerely to be hoped that
Wilkes was sent after his lordship. This club is now represented by one
held behind the Lyceum, with the thoroughly British motto, 'Beef and
Liberty:' the name was happily chosen and therefore