London Club Life. John Timbs

Your charms to brighten glory here advance:

       The stubborn Britons own your beauty's claim,

       And with their native toasts enrol your name.

      To Mrs. Barton.

      Beauty and wit strove, each in vain,

       To vanquish Bacchus and his train;

       But Barton with successful charms,

       From both their quivers drew her arms.

       The roving God his sway resigns,

       And awfully submits his vines.

      In Spence's Anecdotes (note) is the following additional account of the Club: "You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club," says Pope to Spence. "The master of the house where the club met was Christopher Katt; Tonson was secretary. The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkeley were entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just going to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man who would do that, would cut a man's throat. So that he had the good and the forms of the society much at heart. The paper was all in Lord Halifax's handwriting of a subscription of four hundred guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, and was dated 1709, soon after they broke up. Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney, were of it; so was Lord Dorset and the present Duke. Manwaring, whom we hear nothing of now, was the ruling man in all conversations; indeed, what he wrote had very little merit in it. Lord Stanhope and the Earl of Essex were also members. Jacob has his own, and all their pictures, by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Each member gave his, and he is going to build a room for them at Barn Elms."

      It is from the size at which these portraits were taken (a three-quarter length), 36 by 28 inches, that the word Kit-Kat came to be applied to pictures. Tonson had the room built at Barn Elms; but the apartment not being sufficiently large to receive half-length pictures, a shorter canvas was adopted. In 1817, the Club-room was standing, but the pictures had long been removed; soon after, the room was united to a barn, to form a riding-house.

      In summer the Club met at the Upper Flask, Hampstead Heath, then a gay resort, with its races, ruffles, and private marriages.

      The pictures passed to Richard Tonson, the descendant of the old bookseller, who resided at Water-Oakley, on the banks of the Thames: he added a room to his villa, and here the portraits were hung. On his death the pictures were bequeathed to Mr. Baker, of Bayfordbury, the representative of the Tonson family: all of them were included in the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester and some in the International Exhibition of 1862.

      The political significance of the Club was such that Walpole records that though the Club was generally mentioned as "a set of wits," they were in reality the patriots that saved Britain. According to Pope and Tonson, Garth, Vanbrugh, and Congreve were the three most honest-hearted, real good men of the poetical members of the Club.

      There were odd scenes and incidents occasionally at the club meetings. Sir Samuel Garth, physician to George I., was a witty member, and wrote some of the inscriptions for the toasting-glasses. Coming one night to the club, Garth declared he must soon be gone, having many patients to attend; but some good wine being produced, he forgot them. Sir Richard Steele was of the party, and reminding him of the visits he had to pay, Garth immediately pulled out his list, which numbered fifteen, and said, "It's no great matter whether I see them to-night, or not, for nine of them have such bad constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't save them; and the other six have such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't kill them."

      Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, accompanied Steele and Addison to one of the Whig celebrations by the Club of King William's anniversary; when Steele had the double duty of celebrating the day and drinking his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, he being hardly warmed by that time. Steele was not fit for it. So, John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, being in the house, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand, to drink off to the immortal memory, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next Bishop Hoadley, whispered him, "Do laugh: it is humanity to laugh." By-and-by, Steele being too much in the same condition as the hatter, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would satisfy him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him upstairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them downstairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed. Next morning Steele sent the indulgent bishop this couplet:

      "Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,

       All faults he pardons, though he none commits."

      Mr. Knight successfully defends Tonson from Ward's satire, and nobly stands forth for the bookseller who identified himself with Milton, by first making Paradise Lost popular, and being the first bookseller who threw open Shakespeare to a reading public. "The statesmen of the Kit-Kat Club," he adds, "lived in social union with the Whig writers who were devoted to the charge of the poetry that opened their road to preferment; the band of orators and wits were naturally hateful to the Tory authors that Harley and Bolingbroke were nursing into the bitter satirists of the weekly sheets. Jacob Tonson naturally came in for a due share of invective. In a poem entitled 'Factions Displayed,' he is ironically introduced as "the Touchstone of all modern wit;" and he is made to vilify the great ones of Barn Elms:

      "'I am the founder of your loved Kit-Kat,

       A club that gave direction to the State:

       'Twas there we first instructed all our youth

       To talk profane, and laugh at sacred truth:

       We taught them how to boast, and rhyme, and bite,

       To sleep away the day, and drink away the night.'"

      Tonson deserved better of posterity.

      THE TATLER'S CLUB

       IN SHIRE-LANE.

       Table of Contents

      Shire-lane, alias Rogue-lane, (which falleth into Fleet-street by Temple Bar,) has lost its old name—it is now called Lower Serle's-place. If the morals of Shire-lane have mended thereby, we must not repine.

      Here lived Sir Charles Sedley; and here his son, the dramatic poet, was born, "neere the Globe." Here, too, lived Elias Ashmole, and here Antony à Wood dined with him: this was at the upper end of the lane. Here, too, was the Trumpet tavern, where Isaac Bickerstaff met his Club. At this house he dated a great number of his papers; and hence he led down the lane, into Fleet-street, the deputation of "Twaddlers" from the country, to Dick's Coffee-house, which we never enter without remembering the glorious humour of Addison and Steele, in the Tatler, No. 86. Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheelbarrow, and other persons of quality, having reached the Tatler's by appointment, and it being settled that they should "adjourn to some public-house, and enter upon business," the precedence was attended with much difficulty; when, upon a false alarm of "fire," all ran down as fast as they could, without order or ceremony, and drew up in the street.

      The Tatler proceeds: "In this order we marched down Sheer-lane, at the upper end of which I lodge. When we came to Temple Bar, Sir Harry and Sir Giles got over, but a run of coaches kept the rest of us on this side of the street; however, we all at last landed, and drew up in very good order before Ben Tooke's shop, who favoured our rallying with great humanity; from whence we proceeded again, until we came to Dick's Coffee-house, where I designed to carry them. Here we were at our old difficulty, and took up the street upon the same ceremony. We proceeded through the entry, and were so necessarily kept in order by the situation, that we were now got into the coffee-house itself, where, as soon as we had arrived, we repeated our civilities to each other; after which we marched up to the high table, which has an ascent to it enclosed in the middle of the room. The whole house was alarmed at this entry, made up of persons of so much state and rusticity."

      The Tatler's Club is immortalized in his No. 132.