Blenheim and the new Queen's Theatre on the Haymarket were products of Vanbrugh's theatrical ego and imagination, and both were criticized as metaphors for the hollow, selfish ambitions of the Junto Whigs, epitomes of style over content: ‘For what could their vast columns, their gilded cornices, their immoderate high roofs avail, when scarce one word in them could be distinctly heard?’33 In the case of the Haymarket theatre, this was a literal flaw in the acoustics, the ‘vast triumphal piece of architecture’ with its highdomed ceiling being excellent for the ‘Swell of a Eunuch's holding Note’34 but hopeless for hearing actors' speaking parts.
Oddly, in view of the theatre's original purpose and acoustics, Congreve and Vanbrugh could not settle on whether to open with a play or an opera. As late as February 1705, Congreve told a friend: ‘I know not when the House will open, nor what we shall begin withal; but I believe no opera. There is nothing settled yet.’35 A Dryden play was considered, to which Garth was asked to write a new prologue. The prologue Garth penned, however, contained a near blasphemous streak of anti-clerical wit, describing the modern theatre as a new temple that should replace the ‘pious pageantry’ of a corrupt Church of England.36 When Vanbrugh and Congreve read this they must have known it would be a red rag to a bull, making a mockery of the Queen's proclaimed reformist purpose in licensing their theatre. They therefore switched back to the plan to open with an opera, with Congreve deciding to write an original libretto in English for an opera entitled Semele, to be set by the very English composer John Eccles.
The Semele libretto, written in spring 1705, is full of sexual desire. It was written at a time when Congreve was infatuated with a new lover—Henrietta, the wife of Congreve's fellow Kit-Cat, Francis Godolphin (Viscount Rialton), and the eldest child of the Duke of Marlborough. Henrietta, a wise old woman of 24, had been married to Francis for seven years, and Congreve had admired her for at least two. Congreve presented Henrietta with a poetic lament on the death of her little brother, the Marquess of Blandford, in 1703, and faced the angry disapproval of Henrietta's mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, after that date—the beginning of a disagreement concerning Henrietta's carelessness of her own reputation that slowly extinguished Henrietta's little remaining affection for her over-controlling mother. At one stage, the Duchess even sent her son-in-law Francis condolences on his wife's infidelity, promising she would never breathe a word to her friends of ‘a proceeding that must appear so strange and monstrous’.37
Henrietta was made a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen and the toast of the Kit-Cat Club on several occasions. After Blenheim, Maynwaring used a Kit-Cat toast to flatter her father, for example:
Godolphin's easy and unpractised air
Gains without Art and Governs without Care
Her conquering race with Various fate surprise
Who 'scape their Arms are Captive to their Eyes.38
But Henrietta also aspired to be thought a literary wit. Her mother observed that Henrietta was seduced by the flattery of literary dedications, giving ‘100 guineas to a very low poet that will tell her she is what she knows she is not’.39 Though Henrietta never published anything, she possessed a share of her mother's frighteningly sharp intelligence and impatience with slow men—including her husband. Congreve therefore seduced Henrietta with his literary reputation, in spite of his lack of noble birth, his gout and semi-blindness that made him seem far older than his 35 years.
The memoirist Lord Chesterfield later described Henrietta's husband Francis as a man of little ambition, who went to the House of Lords only to sleep, whatever minor posts he acquired being thanks to his powerful father and father-in-law. Whether this was fair, it does seem Francis preferred a quiet life, and chose a complaisant attitude towards his wife's barely concealed affair. When Henrietta and Congreve consummated their romance is unknown, but it was soon referenced in several published satires. There must have been a little awkwardness when Congreve and Francis Godolphin met at the Kit-Cat Club, but in general Francis seems to have ignored his cornigerous condition. Attitudes to adultery were changing during this decade, allowing more room for negotiation. The Athenian Mercury published letters from cuckolded readers declaring their forgiveness of wayward wives to be not weakness but a new form of male gallantry. The character Fainall in Congreve's Way of the World overlooks his wife's adultery because it gives him space to conduct his own. Though the historical record tells us nothing about Francis Godolphin having extramarital liaisons, they may merely have been lower profile than his wife's affair with Congreve.
Congreve remained a lodger with the Porters, while the Countess lived with her husband and young children at the Lord Treasurer's house at the corner of St James's Palace, yet Henrietta spent so many hours with Congreve and his friends that the Duchess of Marlborough would later adopt her granddaughter Harriet on grounds of Henrietta's neglect. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu confessed some jealousy when Henrietta began to monopolize her friend and mentor Congreve, and Bracey may also have felt displaced. The actress continued to work with Congreve at the Queen's Theatre, seeing him almost daily during the London seasons of 1704–6.
Congreve once explained that he was not a man to turn every feeling into a poem: ‘I feel sensibly and silently for those whom I love.’40 Nor do private love letters survive between the Countess and Congreve to further characterize their attraction to one another. It was, however, an affair that would last for the rest of Congreve's life, and would haunt Henrietta long after his death.
Unfortunately, for all the passion of Congreve's Semele libretto, Eccles' static score did nothing to stir the blood, and Congreve agreed the opera should not open the new theatre. Instead, after further delays and changes of plan, the Queen's Theatre opened, on 9 April 1705, with Jakob Greber's Italian pastoral opera, The Loves of Ergasto.
The Kit-Cat subscribers would have filled their private side-boxes for this opening night, though Congreve, Vanbrugh and Tonson had some trouble mustering their members, as many of the army officers were setting sail for the Continental battlefields,41 while the peers and MPs were headed to their estates and constituencies. Various sources state that the Club met to dine at the Queen's Arms in Pall Mall, just around the corner from the Haymarket, before the performance. Most of the audience entered the gallery through a small door in Maiden Lane, on the west side of the theatre, but the Kit-Cats and other subscribers could enter through a ‘patrons’ entrance' to the north of the auditorium. The start of a performance was delayed for the Club's arrival.
Ergasto was a disaster. It was sung in Italian, by singers procured by Lord Manchester in Venice, but one audience member remarked that these singers were ‘the worst that e're came from thence’.42 Some felt the managers had lost their nerve in starting with an Italian opera instead of ‘a good new English opera’.43 Tonson published a version of the libretto ready for its first night, like a programme, in which the Italian was innovatively translated into English on the opposing pages. A Tory satirist, parodying this bilingual libretto, reprinted the opera's prologue with a prose paraphrase on the reverse that gave the prologue a Collierite gloss. Its author mocked the Kit-cat writer-managers for hubristically fancying themselves ‘Creators, Givers of Being and God Almighties’.44 Similarly, Charles Leslie's Tory Rehearsal included several swipes against the Queen's Theatre: ‘The Kit-Cat Club is now grown Famous and Notorious all over the Kingdom. And they have built a Temple for their Dagon: the new Playhouse in the Hay-Market.’45
Like the Temple of Dagon, the god worshipped by the Philistines, failure soon literally brought down the Kit-Cat theatre's ceiling. Although the theatre had been built for a mass audience rather than for the elite few, Congreve perversely penned a scathing Epilogue to Ergasto, snobbishly attacking the audience for demanding vulgar novelties and promising (with dangerous disregard for the Queen's licence) future performances with more ‘bold strokes’ of satire and smut. The rest of the season contained few novelties and no bold strokes. Apart from a couple of ne
w plays by a Mrs Pix, probably performed thanks to Congreve's influence since he often promoted female authors, the rest of the performances were revivals.46 Located some way west of the traditional theatre district and a dangerously long distance to expect ladies and gentlemen in silk shoes to walk comfortably for an evening's entertainment, the Queen's Theatre audience numbers quickly dropped off. The half-empty seating had a depressive effect and the theatre ran into almost immediate financial trouble. Vanbrugh therefore agreed to make alterations to the auditorium, transforming the theatre back from an opera-house into a playhouse by lowering and flattening the roof. As a result, the beautiful ceiling depicting Anne and the Muses was destroyed. As the foundations of Blenheim started to rise, Vanbrugh's workmen hacked the Queen's image from the sky, and the Kit-Cat Club concluded, with regret, that the English were not yet ready for opera.
X
THE COMEBACK KITS
Did not I find you out the secret to become Famous by making you Praise one another against the Opinion of the whole Town!? And brought the Club to that Reputation that those who only listen in it are Wits everywhere else. Are not my Lord Clack and Colonel Silent reckoned Wits only for being of it?
‘STATIONER FRECKLE‘ [Jacob Tonson] in
The Quacks, or, Love's the Physician (1705) by Owen Sweeney1
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND FIVE WAS a turning point for the Kit-cat Club, after which the mood and membership shifted to become far more political. A Kit-Cat C—b Describ'd (1705) emphasized that the Club was now much more than an innocent dining or drinking club, being ‘not for diversion, but for business’.2 Another Tory satire identified the shift in the Kit-Cat Club's priorities from arts to politics, saying that its members ‘are fallen off the Design of their first Institution; and from turning Critics upon Wit, are fallen into Criticisms upon Policy; I might say AGENTS in it’.3
Tory satires correctly identified the fact that, following the defeat of the tackers in late 1704, the Club's political leaders were making their individual and collective comebacks. In ‘A New Ballad Writ by Jacob Tonson and Sung at the Kit-Cat Club on the 8th of March, 1704’ (that is, 1705 by our calendar),4 King William's ghost triumphantly sings about the Duchess of Marlborough holding ‘Nanny’ (Anne) in her clutches, while the Whigs plot to regain power in the forthcoming May–June 1705 general election. The ballad is clearly a fiction, maliciously misattributed to Tonson's authorship, yet the specificity of the date—falling on a Thursday—suggests the Club really had met that evening to commemorate the third anniversary of King William's death. Negotiations were certainly underway regarding what concessions the Junto would leverage from the Marlborough–Godolphin ministry over the course of these months. During these negotiations, Lord Godolphin sometimes expressed surprise at the Junto's greater interest in promoting their friends than their family. On the occasion, for example, when Halifax had the choice of protecting Stepney from demotion or promoting one of his Montagu relatives, he opted to protect Stepney. Though Godolphin and Marlborough felt a deep mutual loyalty to one another, such giving of patronage to friends above kinsmen was not what Godolphin would have expected. The Kit-Cat Club was only a particularly large bump in the generally uneven, nepotistic playing field of eighteenth-century power, but it is important to appreciate that the Club's patrons believed themselves meritocrats in the sense of selecting their friends for employments, on the basis of those men's talents, ethics and personal merits, rather than favouring half-wit relations.
The Tackers Vindicated; or, an Answer to the Whigs New Black List (1705) was another Tory satire published in the run-up to the summer election, suggesting that the Kit-Cat membership list should be used by the Tories as a blacklist of enemies to Church and Queen. The Whigs too had their blacklists, and Matthew Prior's name had been on them since his treacherous Commons vote in 1701. Though Prior should in theory have flourished under Anne's first, Tory-dominated administration, the Marlboroughs mistakenly believed he had been responsible for writing anonymous satires against them, and so blocked his preferment at every turn. This misfortune had left Prior stuck in a no-man's-land between the Marlborough–Godolphin ministry and the Kit-Cat friends he had abandoned, writing in June 1703: ‘I had mistaken the path of life proper for me; I was not born a Courtier, being in my temper too passionate and too open in my conversation.’5
It was probably after the distance between Anne's ministry and the Whigs narrowed in late 1704, and after old Lord Dorset, who retained a nostalgic affection for Prior, became so unwell that he could no longer attend Club meetings, that the Kit-Cats felt bold enough to formally expel Prior.6 Another member, the theatre critic Richard Norton, was also banished from the Club in 1705, for having ‘refused to Subscribe’ (presumably to the Queen's Theatre), but more seriously for failing to ‘Advance and Forward their Whiggish elections’.7 Norton had effectively retired from public life by this date, and so was of little more use to the Club.
Prior's and Norton's emptied seats may have permitted space for Steele's admission to the Kit-Cat Club in the spring of 1705. That season, Steele's play The Tender Husband debuted at Drury Lane only a fortnight after the Queen's Theatre had opened. It was a play about the nature of Englishness, defined by wartime Francophobia. Steele's central characters, the Clerimonts, act with Continental affectation, and the husband lets himself fall prey to excessive Latin jealousies. Order is restored only when the Clerimonts learn to exercise moderation and toleration, traits presented as essentially English. It was a sell-out hit, though Steele made only £13. 5s. 8d. (less than £2,000 today) from its performance.
Steele said he received help with the script from Addison, who gave it ‘many applauded strokes’ and a prologue.8 This is the first firm evidence of Addison and Steele collaborating on a literary work, and the first sign that, after some years, the men had renewed their childhood friendship. Steele addressed the printed dedication of the play to Addison in a way suggesting a desire to fix their friendship as something more ‘inviolable’ in future: ‘My Purpose, in this Application, is only to show the Esteem I have for You, and that I look upon my Intimacy with You as one of the most valuable Enjoyments of my Life.’9
Steele's admission to the Club likely resulted from The Tender Husband's success. Congreve and Vanbrugh badly needed to lure a popular playwright away from Drury Lane, while the Club's political patrons knew of Steele's reputation as a vehement Whig and hoped he would prove a useful party writer. Steele's nomination for membership of the Club was also helped by his improved financial prospects. In April 1705, Steele wrote from his lodgings (above an apothecary's shop near St James's) to his former army patron Lord Cutts, explaining that he was in financial trouble but expecting his problems to be solved by marriage to a Barbados heiress named Margaret Ford Stretch. Mrs Stretch's Barbados estate—including 700 acres of sugar plantation and over 200 slaves—was worth £850 (almost £120,000 today) in annual rents. Steele therefore borrowed £400 (over £56,000 today) from Addison, secured against his fiancée's fortune. One acquaintance commented that ‘Captain Steele may make use of a widow's jointure to advance himself, but he's not a stake to be depended upon.’10
Steele was behaving not only like the fortune-hunting character Captain Clerimont in The Tender Husband, but like a sharp joke in Congreve's Love for Love, where Sir Sampson says he is tickled ‘to see a young spendthrift forced to cling to an old woman for support, like ivy round a dead oak’.11 Mrs Stretch's age and state of health when she married Steele in the spring of 1705 are unknown, but it seems Steele was less than surprised when she died that December. As she had no other surviving male relatives, Steele inherited her entire estate.
In many ways, the question is why Steele was not invited to join the Kit-Cat Club sooner, given his many friends and acquaintance among the members. Tonson (whom one source said had the sole prerogative to convene ‘Chapters’ of the Club to consider changes in membership, as if the Club were an order of knights12) knew Steele well, and Steele's family connection
to the Duke of Ormonde linked him to several other Club members: Tidcomb, another of Ormonde's old clients; William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire's son and Ormonde's kinsman; and Vanbrugh, whose mother had been distantly related to Ormonde.
Steele further counted Maynwaring and Congreve as drinking companions, and had known several other Kit-Cats since Will's Coffee House days. Garth, in particular, was loved by Steele as the embodiment of philanthropy and generosity: ‘[I]t is as common with Garth to supply Indigent Patients with Money for Food as to receive it from Wealthy ones for Physic,’ Steele flattered,13 adding that Garth was only ever present at Kit-Cat dinners with half a mind: ‘[O]ur Mirth is often insipid to You, while You sit absent to what passes amongst us, from your Care of such as languish in Sickness.’14 Another anecdote, however, has Garth coming to the Club one afternoon, saying he had to leave early because he had patients to see, but then getting drunk and forgetting them. When Steele reminded him, the doctor pulled out his list and said: ‘It's no great matter whether I see them tonight 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.’15 Steele also gave Garth the epithet of the ‘Best Natured Man’, adding, ‘You are so universally known for this character that an epistle so directed would find its way to you without your name.’16
Kit-Cat Club, The Page 17
