[Footnote 1: The ‘Kit-Cat’ Club met
at a famous Mutton-Pie house in Shire Lane, by Temple
Bar. The house was kept by Christopher Cat, after
whom his pies were called Kit-Cats. The club originated
in the hospitality of Jacob Tonson, the bookseller,
who, once a week, was host at the house in Shire Lane
to a gathering of writers. In an occasional poem
on the Kit-Cat Club, attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore,
Jacob is read backwards into Bocaj, and we are told
One Night in Seven at this convenient
Seat
Indulgent Bocaj did the Muses treat;
Their Drink was gen’rous Wine and
Kit-Cat’s Pyes their Meat.
Hence did th’ Assembly’s Title
first arise,
And Kit-Cat Wits spring first from Kit-Cat’s
Pyes.
About the year 1700 this gathering of wits produced
a club in which the great Whig chiefs were associated
with foremost Whig writers, Tonson being Secretary.
It was as much literary as political, and its ’toasting
glasses,’ each inscribed with lines to a reigning
beauty, caused Arbuthnot to derive its name from ‘its
pell mell pack of toasts’
‘Of old Cats and young Kits.’
Tonson built a room for the Club at Barn Elms to which
each member gave his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller,
who was himself a member. The pictures were on
a new-sized canvas adapted to the height of the walls,
whence the name ‘kit-cat’ came to be applied
generally to three-quarter length portraits.]
[Footnote 2: The ‘Beef-Steak’ Club,
founded in Queen Anne’s time, first of its name,
took a gridiron for badge, and had cheery Dick Estcourt
the actor for its providore. It met at a tavern
in the Old Jewry that had old repute for broiled steaks
and ’the true British quintessence of malt and
hops.’]
[Footnote 3: The ‘October’ Club was
of a hundred and fifty Tory squires, Parliament men,
who met at the Bell Tavern, in King Street, Westminster,
and there nourished patriotism with October ale.
The portrait of Queen Anne that used to hang in its
Club room is now in the Town Council-chamber at Salisbury.]
[Footnote 4: In Four and Twenty Latin sentences
engraven in marble over the chimney, in the Apollo
or Old Devil Tavern at Temple Bar; that being his
club room.]
* * * *
*
No. 10. Monday, March 12, 1711.
Addison.
’Non aliter
quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit:
si brachia forte remisit,
Atque illum in
praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.’
Virg.
