The portraits of members of the Kit Cat Club [antikvár]

THE CLUBThe kit-cat club was the most famous of the many clubs which grew up in the later I7th and early i8th centuries, where gentlemen would meet in the evenings to discuss politics, literature or the news of the town over a bottle of wine with friends of similar interests and political views. It took shape in the last years of the reign of William III and developed out of the informál meetings of the famous publisher, Jacob Tonson, with Somers and other Whigs somé years earlier. Tonson played a leading part in the organisation of the club, of which he became secretary, and by 1700 it included most of the leading Whigs of the day. The members met at first at a tavern near Temple Bar, kept by Christopher Cat. This tavern was famous for its mutton pies, knowni as 'Kit-Cats', and from these the club took its name. In 1703 Tonson bought a house at Barn Elms, near Putney, where he set aside a special room for the Kit-Cat meetings. A number of glasses were inscribed with the names of the ladies who were the favourite toasts of the club, and with verses com-posed in their honour by the members. The most popular toast of áll was Lady Anne Churchill, Marlborough's daughter and the wife of the Whig Lord Sunderland. She was known as 'the little Whig'. The club met regularly every week during Anne's reign, generally at Barn Elms, but sometimes in London taverns or in the summer at the Flask Inn at Hampstead. After the accession of George I the meetings became less frequent, and ceased altogether about 1720. In 1725 Vanbrugh, the architect and dramatist, was writing to Tonson about the club and its suppers as a memory, and expressing his wish, and that of other former Kit-Cats, to have one meeting that winter, 'not as a club, but old friends that have been of a club, and the best club that ever met/The Kit-Cat Club has been described as the Whig party in its social aspect. It included three of the five Lords who were the acknowledged managers of the Whig party and were known as the Whig Junto; the chief of the Whig courtiers and land-owners; a number of rising young Whig members of Parlia-