In Shire-lane, Temple Bar, is said to have originated the famous Kit-Kat
Club, which consisted of thirty-nine distinguished noblemen and
gentlemen zealously attached to the protestant succession of the house
of Hanover. The club is supposed to have been named from Christopher
Kat, a pastry-cook, who kept the house where the members dined; and who
excelled in making mutton-pies, which were always in the bill of fare,
these pies being called kit-kats. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, was
secretary to the club. “You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club,” says Pope
to Spencer. Sir Richard Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanburgh,
Manwaring, Stepney, and Walpole, belonged to it.
Tonson, whilst secretary, caused the club meetings to be transferred to
a house belonging to himself at Barn Elms, and built a handsome room for
the accommodation of the members. The portrait of each member was
painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; but, the apartment not being
sufficiently large to receive half-length pictures, a shorter canvas was
adopted; and hence the technical term of kit-kat size. Garth wrote the
verses for the toasting-glass of this club, which, as they are preserved
in his works, have immortalized four of the reigning beauties at the
commencement of the last century--Lady Carlisle, Lady Essex, Lady Hyde,
and Lady Wharton.
In 1817, the club-room was standing, and was the property of Mr. Hoare,
the London banker. Sir Richard Phillips visited it at this date, when it
was sadly in decay. It was 18 feet high, and 40 feet long, by 20 wide.
The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the last
century; but the whole was falling to pieces from the effects of
dry-rot. There was the faded cloth-hanging of the walls, whose red
colour once set off the famous portraits of the club that hung around
it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the numbers and names
remained as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger! “Thus,”
says Sir Richard, “was I, as it were, by these still legible names,
brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve,
and Garth, and Dryden, and with many _hereditary_ nobles, remembered
only because they were patrons of those _natural_ nobles!--I read their
names aloud!--I invoked their departed spirits!--I was appalled by the
echo of my own voice! The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in
the windows, and a swallow’s nest in the corner of the ceiling,
proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past
age--that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious
career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will thrill as
mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and therefore incapable
of analysis!”
Not long after this the club-room was united to a barn, to form a
riding-house. The kit-kat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth
century, and about the year 1710, were brought to this spot; but the
club-room was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards. The
paintings were forty-two in number, and were presented by the members to
the elder Tonson, who died in 1736. He left them to his great nephew,
also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. They were then removed
from the building at Barn-Elms, to the house of his brother, at
Water-Oakley, near Windsor; and on his death, to the house of Mr. Baker,
of Hertingfordbury, where they were splendidly lodged, and in fine
preservation. We are not aware if the collection has been dispersed.