The Origin of Clubs.--The Establishment of Coffee-houses.--The
October Club.--The Beef-steak Club.--Of certain other
Clubs.--The Kit-kat Club.--The Romance of the Bowl.--The Toasts
of the Kit-kat.--The Members of the Kit-kat.--A good Wit, and a
bad Architect.--'Well-natured Garth.'--The Poets of the
Kit-kat.--Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax.--Chancellor
Somers.--Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset.--Less celebrated Wits.
I suppose that, long before the building of Babel, man discovered that
he was an associative animal, with the universal motto, '_L'union c'est
la force_;' and that association, to be of any use, requires talk. A
history of celebrated associations, from the building society just
mentioned down to the thousands which are represented by an office, a
secretary, and a brass-plate, in the present day, would give a curious
scheme of the natural tendencies of man; while the story of their
failures--and how many have not failed, sooner or later!--would be a
pretty moral lesson to your anthropolaters who Babelize now-a-days, and
believe there is nothing which a company with capital cannot achieve. I
wonder what object there is, that two men can possibly agree in
desiring, and which it takes more than one to attain, for which an
association of some kind has not been formed at some time or other,
since first the swarthy savage learned that it was necessary to unite to
kill the lion which infested the neighbourhood! Alack for human nature!
I fear by far the larger proportion of the objects of associations would
be found rather evil than good, and, certes, nearly all of them might be
ranged under two heads, according as the passions of hate or desire
found a common object in several hearts. Gain on the one
hand--destruction on the other--have been the chief motives of clubbing
in all time.
A delightful exception is to be found, though--to wit, in associations
for the purpose of talking. I do not refer to parliaments and
philosophical academies, but to those companies which have been formed
for the sole purpose of mutual entertainment by interchange of thought.
Now, will any kind reader oblige me with a derivation of the word
'Club?' I doubt if it is easy to discover. But one thing is certain,
whatever its origin, it is, in its present sense, purely English in idea
and in existence. Dean Trench points this out, and, noting the fact that
no other nation (he might have excepted the Chinese) has any word to
express this kind of association, he has, with very pardonable natural
pride, but unpardonably bad logic, inferred that the English are the
most sociable people in the world. The contrary is true; nay, _was_
true, even in the days of Addison, Swift, Steele--even in the days of
Johnson, Walpole, Selwyn; ay, at all time since we have been a nation.
The fact is, we are not the most sociable, but the most associative
race; and the establishment of clubs is a proof of it. We cannot, and
never could, talk freely, comfortably, and generally, without a company
for talking. Conversation has always been with us as much a business as
railroad-making, or what not. It has always demanded certain
accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work it up to the
proper pitch. 'We all know' we are the cleverest and wittiest people
under the sun; but then our wit has been stereotyped. France has no 'Joe
Miller;' for a bon-mot there, however good, is only appreciated
historically. Our wit is printed, not spoken; our best wits behind an
inkhorn have sometimes been the veriest logs in society. On the
Continent clubs were not called for, because society itself was the
arena of conversation. In this country, on the other hand, a man could
only chat when at his ease; could only be at his ease among those who
agreed with him on the main points of religion and politics, and even
then wanted the aid of a bottle to make him comfortable. Our want of
sociability was the cause of our clubbing, and therefore the word 'club'
is purely English.
This was never so much the case as after the Restoration. Religion and
politics never ran higher than when a monarch, who is said to have died
a papist because he had no religion at all during his life, was brought
back to supplant a furious puritanical Protectorate. Then, indeed, it
was difficult for men of opposite parties to meet without bickering; and
society demanded separate meeting-places for those who differed. The
origin of clubs in this country is to be traced to two causes--the
vehemence of religious and political partisanship, and the establishment
of coffee-houses. These certainly gave the first idea of clubbery. The
taverns which preceded them had given the English a zest for public life
in a small way. 'The Mermaid' was, virtually, a club of wits long before
the first real club was opened, and, like the clubs of the eighteenth
century, it had its presiding geniuses in Shakespeare and Rare Ben.
The coffee-houses introduced somewhat more refinement and less
exclusiveness. The oldest of these was the 'Grecian.' 'One Constantine,
a Grecian,' advertised in 'The Intelligencer' of January 23rd, 1664-5,
that 'the right coffee bery or chocolate,' might be had of him 'as cheap
and as good as is anywhere to be had for money,' and soon after began to
sell the said 'coffee bery' in small cups at his own establishment in
Devereux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have news of 'Will's,'
the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here Dryden held forth
with pedantic vanity: and here was laid the first germ of that critical
acumen which has since become a distinguishing feature in English
literature. Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first
sold 'tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the
most knowing, and travellers into those eastern countries;' and thus
established the well-known 'Garraway's,' whither, in Defoe's day,
'foreign banquiers' and even ministers resorted, to drink the said
beverage. 'Robin's,' 'Jonathan's,' and many another, were all opened
about this time, and the rage for coffee-house life became general
throughout the country.
In these places the company was of course of all classes and colours;
but, as the conversation was general, there was naturally at first a
good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of peace and comfort, a man
chose his place of resort according to his political principles; and a
little later there were regular Whig and Tory coffee-houses. Thus, in
Anne's day, 'The Cocoa-nut,' in St. James's Street, was reserved for
Jacobites, while none but Whigs frequented 'The St James's.' Still there
was not sufficient exclusiveness; and as early as in Charles II.'s reign
men of peculiar opinions began to appropriate certain coffee-houses at
certain hours, and to exclude from them all but approved members. Hence
the origin of clubs.
The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed of some hundred
and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country members of Parliament. They met
at the 'Bell,' in King Street, Westminster, that street in which Spenser
starved, and Dryden's brother kept a grocer's shop. A portrait of Queen
Anne, by Dahl, hung in the club-room. This and the Kit-kat, the great
Whig club, were chiefly reserved for politics; but the fashion of
clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed by people of all
fancies. No reader of the 'Spectator' can fail to remember the ridicule
to which this was turned by descriptions of imaginary clubs for which
the qualifications were absurd, and of which the business, on meeting,
was preposterous nonsense of some kind. The idea of such fraternities,
as the Club of Fat Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the Everlasting
Club, the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and others, could only have
been suggested by real clubs almost as ridiculous. The names, too, were
almost as fantastical as those of the taverns in the previous century,
which counted 'The Devil,' and 'The Heaven and Hell,' among their
numbers. Many derived their titles from the standing dishes preferred at
supper, the Beef-steak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie), for
instance.
The Beef-steak Club, still in existence, was one of the most famous
established in Anne's reign. It had at that time less of a political
than a jovial character. Nothing but that excellent British fare, from
which it took its name, was, at first, served at the supper-table. It
was an assemblage of wits of every station, and very jovial were they
supposed to be when the juicy dish had been discussed. Early in the
century, Estcourt, the actor, was made provider to this club, and wore a
golden gridiron as a badge of office, and is thus alluded to in Dr.
King's 'Art of Cookery' (1709):--
'He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes,
May be a fit companion o'er beef-stakes;
His name may be to future times enrolled
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold.'
Estcourt was one of the best mimics of the day, and a keen satirist to
boot; in fact he seems to have owed much of his success on the stage to
his power of imitation, for while his own manner was inferior, he could
at pleasure copy exactly that of any celebrated actor. He _would_ be a
player. At fifteen he ran away from home, and joining a strolling
company, acted Roxana in woman's clothes: his friends pursued him, and,
changing his dress for that of a girl of the time, he tried to escape
them, but in vain. The histrionic youth was captured, and bound
apprentice in London town; the 'seven long years' of which did not cure
him of the itch for acting. But he was too good a wit for the stage, and
amused himself, though not always his audience, by interspersing his
part with his own remarks. The great took him by the hand, and old
Marlborough especially patronized him: he wrote a burlesque of the
Italian operas then beginning to be in vogue; and died in 1712-13.
Estcourt was not the only actor belonging to the Beef-steak, nor even
the only one who had concealed his sex under emergency; Peg Woffington,
who had made as good a boy as he had done a girl, was afterwards a
member of this club.
In later years the beef-steak was cooked in a room at the top of Covent
Garden Theatre, and counted many a celebrated wit among those who sat
around its cheery dish. Wilkes the blasphemer, Churchill, and Lord
Sandwich, were all members of it at the same time. Of the last, Walpole
gives us information in 1763 at the time of Wilkes's duel with Martin in
Hyde Park. He tells us that at the Beef-steak Club Lord Sandwich talked
so profusely, 'that he drove harlequins out of the company.' To the
honour of the club be it added, that his lordship was driven out after
the harlequins, and finally expelled: it is sincerely to be hoped that
Wilkes was sent after his lordship. This club is now represented by one
held behind the Lyceum, with the thoroughly British motto, 'Beef and
Liberty:' the name was happily chosen and therefore imitated. In the
reign of George II. we meet with a 'Rump-steak, or Liberty Club;' and
somehow steaks and liberty seem to be the two ideas most intimately
associated in the Britannic mind. Can any one explain it?
Other clubs there were under Anne,--political, critical, and
hilarious--but the palm is undoubtedly carried off by the glorious
Kit-kat.
It is not every eating-house that is immortalized by a Pope, though
Tennyson has sung 'The Cock' with its 'plump head-waiter,' who, by the
way, was mightily offended by the Laureate's verses--or pretended to be
so--and thought it 'a great liberty of Mr. ----, Mr. ----, what is his
name? to put respectable private characters into his books.' Pope, or
some say Arbuthnot, explained the etymology of this club's extraordinary
title:--
'Whence deathless Kit-kat took its name,
Few critics can unriddle:
Some say from pastrycook it came,
And some from Cat and Fiddle.
'From no trim beaux its name it boasts,
Grey statesmen or green wits;
But from the pell-mell pack of toasts
Of old cats and young kits.'
Probably enough the title was hit on a hap-hazard, and retained because
it was singular, but as it has given a poet a theme, and a painter a
name for pictures of a peculiar size, its etymology has become
important. Some say that the pastry cook in Shire Lane, at whose house
it was held, was named Christopher Katt. Some one or other was certainly
celebrated for the manufacture of that forgotten delicacy, a mutton-pie,
which acquired the name of a Kit-kat.
'A Kit-kat is a supper for a lord,'
says a comedy of 1700, and certes it afforded at this club evening
nourishment for many a celebrated noble profligate of the day. The
supposed sign of the Cat and Fiddle (Kitt), gave another solution, but
after all, Pope's may be satisfactorily received.
The Kit-kat was, _par excellence_, the Whig Club of Queen Anne's time:
it was established at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was
then composed of thirty-nine members, among whom were the Dukes of
Marlborough, Devonshire, Grafton, Richmond, and Somerset. In later days
it numbered the greatest wits of the age, of whom anon.
This club was celebrated more than any for its _toasts_.
Now, if men must drink--and sure the vine was given us for use, I do not
say for abuse--they had better make it an occasion of friendly
intercourse; nothing can be more degraded than the solitary
sanctimonious toping in which certain of our northern brethren are known
to indulge. They had better give to the quaffing of that rich gift, sent
to be a medicine for the mind, to raise us above the perpetual
contemplation of worldly ills, as much of romance and elegance as
possible. It is the opener of the heart, the awakener of nobler feelings
of generosity and love, the banisher of all that is narrow, and sordid,
and selfish; the herald of all that is exalted in man. No wonder that
the Greeks made a god of Bacchus, that the Hindu worshipped the mellow
Soma, and that there has been scarce a poet who has not sung its praise.
There was some beauty in the feasts of the Greeks, when the goblet was
really wreathed with flowers; and even the German student, dirty and
drunken as he may be, removes half the stain from his orgies with the
rich harmony of his songs, and the hearty good-fellowship of his toasts.
We drink still, perhaps we shall always drink till the end of time, but
all the romance of the bowl is gone; the last trace of its beauty went
with the frigid abandonment of the toast.
There was some excuse for wine when it brought out that now forgotten
expression of good-will. Many a feud was reconciled in the clinking of
glasses; just as many another was begun when the cup was drained too
deeply. The first quarter of the last century saw the end of all the
social glories of the wassail in this country, and though men drank as
much fifty years later, all its poetry and romance had then disappeared.
It was still, however, the custom at that period to call on the name of
some fair maiden, and sing her praises over the cup as it passed. It was
a point of honour for all the company to join the health. Some beauties
became celebrated for the number of their toasts; some even standing
toasts among certain sets. In the Kit-kat Club the custom was carried
out by rule, and every member was compelled to name a beauty, whose
claims to the honour were then discussed, and if her name was approved,
a separate bowl was consecrated to her, and verses to her honour
engraved on it. Some of the most celebrated toasts had even their
portraits hung in the club-room, and it was no slight distinction to be
the favourite of the Kit-kat. When only eight years old, Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu enjoyed this privilege. Her father, the Lord Dorchester,
afterwards Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, in a fit of caprice, proposed 'the
pretty little child' as his toast. The other members, who had never seen
her, objected; the Peer sent for her, and there could no longer be any
question. The forward little girl was handed from knee to knee, petted,
probably, by Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Garth, and many another famous
wit. Another celebrated toast of the Kit-kat, mentioned by Walpole, was
Lady Molyneux, who, he says, died smoking a pipe.
This club was no less celebrated for its portraits than for the ladies
it honoured. They, the portraits, were all painted by Kneller, and all
of one size, which thence got the name of Kit-kat; they were hung round
the club-room. Jacob Tonson, the publisher, was secretary to the club.
Defoe tells us the Kit-kat held the first rank among the clubs of the
early part of the last century, and certainly the names of its members
comprise as many wits as we could expect to find collected in one
society.
Addison must have been past forty when he became a member of the
Kit-kat. His 'Cato' had won him the general applause of the Whig party,
who could not allow so fine a writer to slip from among them. He had
long, too, played the courtier, and was 'quite a gentleman.' A place
among the exclusives of the Kit-kat was only the just reward of such
attainments, and he had it. I shall not be asked to give a notice of a
man so universally known, and one who ranks rather with the humorists
than the wits. It will suffice to say, that it was not till _after_ the
publication of the 'Spectator,' and some time after, that he joined our
society.
Congreve I have chosen out of this set for a separate life, for this man
happens to present a very average sample of all their peculiarities.
Congreve was a literary man, a poet, a wit, a beau, and--what unhappily
is quite as much to the purpose--a profligate. The only point he,
therefore, wanted in common with most of the members, was a title; but
few of the titled members combined as many good and bad qualities of the
Kit-kat kind as did William Congreve.
Another dramatist, whose name seems to be inseparable from Congreve's,
was that mixture of bad and good taste--Vanbrugh. The author of 'The
Relapse,' the most licentious play ever acted;--the builder of Blenheim,
the ugliest house ever erected, was a man of good family, and Walpole
counts him among those who 'wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in
the best company.' We doubt the logic of this; but if it hold, how is it
that Van wrote plays which the best company, even at that age,
condemned, and neither good nor bad company can read in the present day
without being shocked? If the conversation of the Kit-kat was anything
like that in this member's comedies, it must have been highly edifying.
However, I have no doubt Vanbrugh passed for a gentleman, whatever his
conversation, and he was certainly a wit, and apparently somewhat less
licentious in his morals than the rest. Yet what Pope said of his
literature may be said, too, of some acts of his life:--
'How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit.'
And his quarrel with 'Queen Sarah' of Marlborough, though the duchess
was by no means the most agreeable woman in the world to deal with, is
not much to Van's honour. When the nation voted half a million to build
that hideous mass of stone, the irregular and unsightly piling of which
caused Walpole to say that the architect 'had emptied quarries, rather
than built houses,' and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for the
builder--
'Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee,'
Sarah haggled over 'seven-pence halfpenny a bushel;' Van retorted by
calling her 'stupid and troublesome,' and 'that wicked woman of
Marlborough,' and after the Duke's death, wrote that the Duke had left
her 'twelve thousand pounds a-year to keep herself clean and go to law.'
Whether she employed any portion of it on the former object we do not
pretend to say, but she certainly spent as much as a miser could on
litigation, Van himself being one of the unfortunates she attacked in
this way.
The events of Vanbrugh's life were varied. He began life in the army,
but in 1697 gave the stage 'The Relapse.' It was sufficiently
successful to induce him to follow it up with the 'Provoked Wife,' one
of the wittiest pieces produced in those days. Charles, Earl of
Carlisle, Deputy Earl Marshal, for whom he built Castle Howard, made
him Clarencieux King-at-arms in 1704, and he was knighted by George
I., 9th of September, 1714. In 1705 he joined Congreve in the
management of the Haymarket, which he himself built. George I. made
him Comptroller-general of the royal works. He had even an experience
of the Bastille, where he was confined for sketching fortifications in
France. He died in 1726, with the reputation of a good wit, and a bad
architect. His conversation was, certainly, as light as his buildings
were heavy.
Another member, almost as well known in his day, was Sir Samuel Garth,
the physician, 'well-natured Garth,' as Pope called him. He won his fame
by his satire on the apothecaries in the shape of a poem called 'The
Dispensary.' When delivering the funeral oration over Dryden's body,
which had been so long unburied that its odour began to be disagreeable,
he mounted a tub, the top of which fell through and left the doctor in
rather an awkward position. He gained admission to the Kit-kat in
consequence of a vehement eulogy on King William which he had introduced
into his Harveian oration in 1697.[13] It was Garth, too, who
extemporized most of the verses which were inscribed on the
toasting-glasses of their club, so that he may, _par excellence_, be
considered the Kit-kat poet. He was the physician and friend of
Marlborough, with whose sword he was knighted by George I., who made him
his physician in ordinary. Garth was a very jovial man, and, some say,
not a very religious one. Pope said he was as good a Christian as ever
lived, 'without knowing it.' He certainly had no affectation of piety,
and if charitable and good-natured acts could take a man to heaven, he
deserved to go there. He had his doubts about faith, and is said to have
died a Romanist. This he did in 1719, and the poor and the Kit-kat must
both have felt his loss. He was perhaps more of a wit than a poet,
although he has been classed at times with Gray and Prior; he can
scarcely take the same rank as other verse-making doctors, such as
Akenside, Darwin, and Armstrong. He seems to have been an active,
healthy man--perhaps too much so for a poet--for it is on record that he
ran a match in the Mall with the Duke of Grafton, and beat him. He was
fond, too, of a hard frost, and had a regular speech to introduce on
that subject: 'Yes, sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, sir--very
wholesome weather, sir--kills trees, sir--very good for man, sir.'
Old Marlborough had another intimate friend at the club, who was
probably one of its earliest members. This was Arthur Maynwaring, a
poet, too, in a way, but more celebrated at this time for his _liaison_
with Mrs. Oldfield, the famous but disreputable actress, with whom he
fell in love when he was forty years old, and whom he instructed in the
niceties of elocution, making her rehearse her parts to him in private.
Maynwaring was born in 1668, educated at Oxford, and destined for the
bar, for which he studied. He began life as a vehement Jacobite, and
even supported that party in sundry pieces; but like some others, he was
easily converted, when, on coming to town, he found it more fashionable
to be a Whig. He held two or three posts under the Government, whose
cause he now espoused: had the honour of the dedication of 'The Tatler'
to him by Steele, and died suddenly in 1712. He divided his fortune
between his sister and his mistress, Mrs. Oldfield, and his son by the
latter. Mrs. Oldfield must have grown rich in her sinful career, for she
could afford, when ill, to refuse to take her salary from the theatre,
though entitled to it. She acted best in Vanbrugh's 'Provoked Husband,'
so well, in fact, that the manager gave her an extra fifty pounds by way
of acknowledgment.
Poetising seems to have been as much a polite accomplishment of that age
as letter-writing was of a later, and a smattering of science is of the
present day. Gentlemen tried to be poets, and poets gentlemen. The
consequence was, that both made fools of themselves. Among the
poetasters who belonged to the Kit-kat, we must mention Walsh, a country
gentleman, member of Parliament, and very tolerable scholar. He dabbled
in odes, elegies, epitaphs, and all that small fry of the muse which was
then so plentiful. He wrote critical essays on Virgil, in which he tried
to make out that the shepherds in the days of the Roman poet were very
well-bred gentlemen of good education! He was a devoted admirer and
friend of Dryden, and he encouraged Pope in his earlier career so kindly
that the little viper actually praised him! Walsh died somewhere about
1709 in middle life.
We have not nearly done with the poets of the Kit-kat. A still smaller
one than Walsh was Stepney, who, like Garth, had begun life as a violent
Tory and turned coat when he found his interest lay the other way. He
was well repaid, for from 1692 to 1706 he was sent on no less than eight
diplomatic missions, chiefly to German courts. He owed this preferment
to the good luck of having been a schoolfellow of Charles Montagu,
afterwards Earl of Halifax. He died about 1707, and had as grand a
monument and epitaph in Westminster Abbey as if he had been a Milton or
Dryden.
When you meet a dog trotting along the road, you naturally expect that
his master is not far off. In the same way, where you find a poet, still
more a poetaster, there you may feel certain you will light upon a
patron. The Kit-kat was made up of Mæcenases and their humble servants;
and in the same club with Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the minor
poets, we are not at all surprised to find Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke
of Somerset, Halifax, and Somers.
Halifax was, _par excellence_, the Mæcenas of his day, and Pope
described him admirably in the character of Bufo:--
'Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill;
_Fed with soft dedication_ all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.'
The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, Smith, and
a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on a higher pinnacle;
and in return the powerful minister was not forgetful of the douceur
which well-tuned verses were accustomed to receive. He himself had tried
to be a poet, and in 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the
Kit-kat. His lines to a Dowager Countess of ----, are good enough to
make us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a specimen:--
'Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style;
Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle!
Nature did ne'er so equally divide
A female heart 'twixt piety and pride:
Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day,
And all in order at her toilet lay
Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint,
At once t'improve the sinner and the saint.'
A Mæcenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well spoken of,
and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, as well as a clever
statesman. Halifax got his earldom and the garter from George I., and
died, after enjoying them less than a year, in 1715.
Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was associated in the impeachment
case in 1701, was a far better man in every respect. His was probably
the purest character among those of all the members of the Kit-kat. He
was the son of a Worcester attorney, and born in 1652. He was educated
at Trinity, Oxford, and rose purely by merit, distinguishing himself at
the bar and on the bench, unwearied in his application to business, and
an exact and upright judge. At school he was a terribly good boy,
keeping to his book in play-hours. Throughout life his habits were
simple and regular, and his character unblemished. He slept but little,
and in later years had a reader to attend him at waking. With such
habits he can scarcely have been a constant attender at the club; and as
he died a bachelor, it would be curious to learn what ladies he selected
for his toasts. In his latter years his mind was weakened, and he died
in 1716 of apoplexy. Walpole calls him 'one of those divine men who,
like a chapel in a palace, remained unprofaned, while all the rest is
tyranny, corruption, and folly.'
A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire Lane. In
the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of age, for its owner is
past sixty; yet he is dressed in superb fashion; and in an hour or so,
when the bottle has been diligently circulated, his wit will be brighter
and keener than that of any young man present. I do not say it will be
repeatable, for the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that
of the Kit-kat. He is Charles Sackville,[14] famous as a companion of
the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous--or, rather,
infamous--for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his verses, for his
patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in early life, when Lord
Buckhurst. Rochester called him
'The best good man with the worst-natured muse;'
and Pope says he was
'The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning and of knaves in state.'
Our sailors still sing the ballad which he is said to have written on
the eve of the naval engagement between the Duke of York and Admiral
Opdam, which begins--
'To all you ladies now on land
We men at sea indite.'
With a fine classical taste and a courageous spirit, he had in early
days been guilty of as much iniquity as any of Charles's profligate
court. He was one of a band of young libertines who robbed and murdered
a poor tanner on the high-road, and were acquitted, less on account of
the poor excuse they dished up for this act than of their rank and
fashion. Such fine gentlemen could not be hanged for the sake of a mere
workman in those days--no! no! Yet he does not seem to have repented of
this transaction, for soon after he was engaged with Sedley and Ogle in
a series of most indecent acts at the Cock Tavern in Bow-street, where
Sedley, in 'birthday attire,' made a blasphemous oration from the
balcony of the house. In later years he was the pride of the poets:
Dryden and Prior, Wycherley, Hudibras, and Rymer, were all encouraged by
him, and repaid him with praises. Pope and Dr. King were no less
bountiful in their eulogies of this Mæcenas. His conversation was so
much appreciated that gloomy William III. chose him as his companion, as
merry Charles had done before. The famous Irish ballad, which my Uncle
Toby was always humming, 'Lillibullero bullen-a-lah,' but which Percy
attributes to the Marquis of Wharton, another member of the Kit-kat, was
said to have been written by Buckhurst. He retained his wit to the last;
and Congreve, who visited him when he was dying, said, 'Faith, he
stutters more wit than other people have in their best health.' He died
at Bath in 1706.
Buckhurst does not complete the list of conspicuous members of this
club, but the remainder were less celebrated for their wit. There was
the Duke of Kingston, the father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu;
Granville, who imitated Waller, and attempted to make his 'Myra' as
celebrated as the court-poet's Saccharissa, who, by the way, was the
mother of the Earl of Sunderland; the Duke of Devonshire, whom Walpole
calls 'a patriot among the men, a gallant among the ladies,' and who
founded Chatsworth; and other noblemen, chiefly belonging to the latter
part of the seventeenth century, and all devoted to William III., though
they had been bred at the courts of Charles and James.
With such an array of wits, poets, statesmen, and gallants, it can
easily be believed that to be the toast of the Kit-kat was no slight
honour; to be a member of it a still greater one; and to be one of its
most distinguished, as Congreve was, the greatest. Let us now see what
title this conceited beau and poet had to that position.