In these places the company was of course of all classes and colours; but, as the conversation was general, there was naturally at first a good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of peace and comfort, a man chose his place of resort according to his political principles; and a little later there were regular Whig and Tory coffee-houses.  Thus, in Anne’s day, ‘The Cocoa-nut,’ in St. James’s Street, was reserved for Jacobites, while none but Whigs frequented ‘The St James’s.’  Still there was not sufficient exclusiveness; and as early as in Charles II.’s reign men of peculiar opinions began to appropriate certain coffee-houses at certain hours, and to exclude from them all but approved members.  Hence the origin of clubs.

The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed of some hundred and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country members of Parliament.  They met at the ‘Bell,’ in King Street, Westminster, that street in which Spenser starved, and Dryden’s brother kept a grocer’s shop.  A portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, hung in the club-room.  This and the Kit-kat, the great Whig club, were chiefly reserved for politics; but the fashion of clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed by people of all fancies.  No reader of the ‘Spectator’ can fail to remember the ridicule to which this was turned by descriptions of imaginary clubs for which the qualifications were absurd, and of which the business, on meeting, was preposterous nonsense of some kind.  The idea of such fraternities, as the Club of Fat Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the Everlasting Club, the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and others, could only have been suggested by real clubs almost as ridiculous.  The names, too, were almost as fantastical as those of the taverns in the previous century, which counted ‘The Devil,’ and ‘The Heaven and Hell,’ among their numbers.  Many derived their titles from the standing dishes preferred at supper, the Beef-steak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie), for instance.

The Beef-steak Club, still in existence, was one of the most famous established in Anne’s reign.  It had at that time less of a political than a jovial character.  Nothing but that excellent British fare, from which it took its name, was, at first, served at the supper-table.  It was an assemblage of wits of every station, and very jovial were they supposed to be when 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.’