Beebe, Lucius, 1902-1966

American writer and bon vivant.

Lucius Morris Beebe was born into a wealthy New England family in Wakefield, Mass. in 1902. He attended both Harvard and Yale before joining the New York Herald Tribune in 1929. Beebe was an author, journalist, railroad hobbyist and bon vivant. He died in Hillsborough, Calif. in 1966.

Historical Background

Lucius Beebe (December 9, 1902 Wakefield, Massachusetts - died February 4, 1966 Hillsborough, California) began his literary career at the New York Herald Tribune in 1929, achieved his own column in 1933, and went on to write articles for such periodicals as Town & Country, Gourmet, Playboy, Esquire, Trains, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name a few. Beebe and Charles Clegg (1916-1979), his partner and co-author of half of his thirty-four books, bought their first private car, "The Gold Coast," in the late 1940s. The two lived and traveled aboard "The Gold Coast" from 1948 to 1950; the car is now part of the collection of the California State Railroad Museum. They later purchased another private car, "The Virginia City." They moved to Virginia City, Nevada in 1949, and in 1952 took over publishing and editing the newspaper The Territorial Enterprise, where Samuel Clemens had his roots. Beginning in 1960, they spent part of each year at their home in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, where Beebe died in 1966. His thirty-year career as an author, combined with his eccentric personality, earned him an international reputation. Charles Clegg described Beebe as a "highly civilized nineteenth-century gentleman" possessing an "outrageous personal majesty," known by the world as a "wit and flamboyant gourmet."