After the fire at Covent Garden, the Sublime Society were re-established at the Bedford, where they met until Mr. Arnold had fitted up apartments for their reception in the English Opera House. The Steaks continued to meet here until the destruction of the Theatre by fire, in 1830; after which they returned to the Bedford; and, upon the re-building of the Lyceum Theatre, a dining-room was again provided for them. "The room they dine in," says Mr. Cunningham, "a little Escurial in itself, is most appropriately fitted up--the doors, wainscoting, and roof, of good old English oak, ornamented with gridirons as thick as Henry the Seventh's Chapel with the portcullis of the founder. Everything assumes the shape, or is distinguished by the representation, of their emblematic implement, the gridiron. The cook is seen at his office through the bars of a spacious gridiron, and the original gridiron of the Society, (the survivor of two terrific fires) holds a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. Every member has the power of inviting a friend." The portraits of several worthies of the Sublime Society were painted: one brother "hangs in chain," as Arnold remarked in alluding to the civic chain in which he is represented; it was in allusion to the toga in which he is painted, that Brougham, being asked whether he thought it a likeness, remarked that it could not fail of being like him, "there was so much of the _fur_ (thief) about it."
The author of the _Clubs of London_, who was a member of the Sublime Society, describes a right in favouring them, "a brotherhood, a sentiment of equality. How you would laugh to see the junior member emerging from the cellar, with half-a-dozen bottles in a basket! I have seen Brougham employed in this honourable diplomacy, and executing it with the correctness of a butler. The Duke of Leinster, in his turn, took the same duty.
"With regard to Brougham, at first sight you would not set him down as having a natural and prompt alacrity for the style of humour that prevails amongst us. But Brougham is an excellent member, and is a remarkable instance of the peculiar influences of this peculiar Society on the human character. We took him just as the schools of philosophy, the bar, the senate, had made him. Literary, forensic, and parliamentary habits are most intractable materials, you will say, to make a member of the Steaks, yet no man has imbibed more of its spirit, and he enters its occasional gladiatorship with the greatest glee."