Kit-Cat Club, The

by Field, Ophelia

  Vanbrugh became Clare's architect as early as October 1714, having turned back to the Kit-Cat Club to find employers as soon as George's reluctance to patronize palatial architecture became evident. Vanbrugh sold Clare a house called Chargate on land Vanbrugh had acquired in 1709–10 at Esher in Surrey. The architect had first built Chargate as a property development project at a time when he complained to his Kit-Cat friends that the Duchess of Marlborough was trying to bankrupt him by pursuing various disputes over the costs of Blenheim. Now Vanbrugh started building a more stately home on the same Surrey land, to be named ‘Claremont’ after its new owner. Clare also employed Vanbrugh to refit his London home in Lincoln's Inn Fields (formerly Somers' home, Powys House, which had been almost destroyed in the Whig arson attack against the French Envoy in 1713) and, on one of his northern estates, Nottingham Castle. Clare's architectural ambitions—particularly at Claremont—accounted for ‘a sizeable portion’ of his early debt.17 After the Duchess of Marlborough's hawk-eyed accountancy, Vanbrugh must have been overjoyed to find such an extravagant and malleable patron.

  Clare was a notorious hypochondriac who surrounded himself with physicians, making Dr Garth one of his favourite Kit-Cat friends. In 1715, Garth was knighted and appointed King's Physician in Ordinary, as well as Physician General to the Armed Forces, and though outsiders might have assumed these honours were thanks to Garth's friendship with the Marlboroughs, a thank-you letter from ‘Sir Samuel Garth’ makes clear that he also owed them to Clare.18

  Garth's indebtedness to Clare is further shown by his poem Claremont, published by Tonson in May 1715. After The Dispensary, this was Garth's most important poetic production. In it, he contrasted the generally mercenary nature of English literary patronage (‘None ever can without Admirers live, / Who have a Pension or a Place to give’) and the Whig tendency to pretension (the way a nobleman's piece of doggerel gets ‘Horaced up’) with his own sincere intention to acknowledge a deserving and generous patron in Clare. Garth describes Clare as:

  The Man who's honest, open, and a Friend,

  Glad to oblige, uneasy to offend:

  Forgiving others, to himself severe;

  Though earnest, easy; civil, yet sincere.

  In a private letter sometime after writing Claremont, Garth thanked Clare for a surprise gift of 100 guineas: ‘Though I can never overvalue the least friendship of yours, you are resolved to overvalue the greatest service of mine.’19

  Steele was the third Kit-Cat to turn to Clare, hoping to find a reliable source of future support and an electoral patron whose influence could return him to the House of Commons. The coincidence of Garth's, Vanbrugh's and Steele's appeals to Clare's patronage in 1714 would certainly be explained if Clare had assumed Tonson's leading role within the Kit-Cat. Yet Steele felt no obligation to offer flattery to Clare, since the Whigs, by his reckoning, still owed him their favour in return for past sufferings. In one publication, Steele boldly declared to Clare: ‘His Lordship and many others may perhaps have done more for the House of Hanover than I have; but I am the only man in his Majesty's dominions who did all he could.’20

  Despite the anonymous £3,000 grant six months earlier, Steele was in debt again to the tune of £3,618 (over £445,000 today) by October 1714. He nonetheless leased a new house at 26 St James's Street. To help pay for it, Steele published two new works that month. The first, An Apology for Himself and His Writings…, was a self-justifying account of his martyrdom to the Whig cause, dedicated to Walpole. The second was a more commercial venture, at Tonson's suggestion: The Ladies' Library. This was an anthology of morally improving reading material for young women, the realization of a project started by Mr Spectator in 1711. Tonson advertised the three-volume set as a good ‘New Year's Gift’, and it proved a winter bestseller, including two editions in France.21 There were two dedicatees. One was Steele's wife, to whom he said: ‘I owe to you that for my sake you have overlooked the Prospect of living in Pomp and Plenty.’ The second dedicatee, Juliana, Countess of Burlington, was a former toast of the 1690s. Now, mother of six daughters, this Whig matron was the ideal patroness for The Ladies' Library.

  Juliana's son, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, is one of those generally believed to be among the post-1714 generation of new Kit-cat members—members who were unborn or infants when Tonson and Somers first drank together in Temple Bar after the Glorious Revolution. When Steele dedicated The Ladies' Library to Burlington's mother, the 19-year-old Earl was on his Grand Tour, from which he would return an ardent supporter and importer of Italian, neo-Palladian taste. Burlington became an erudite connoisseur and munificent patron of the arts, distinguished by his ‘Love of Letters and Men of Learning’,22 so his inclusion among the Kit-Cats is logical. He was certainly an heir of the Club's thinking, in the sense of importing European models with the goal of reforming English style. The lack of documentation concerning Burlington's active participation in the Club, however, suggests he may have joined only to gratify Somers, who was his guardian, and Carlisle, Shannon and Harry Boyle, who were his kinsmen.

  Henry Clinton, 7th Earl of Lincoln—Clare's cousin and brotherin-law—was also among the final cadre of Kit-Cats. Clare and Lincoln's double portrait was the last picture painted in the Kit-Cat series,23 in which Clare pours wine into Kit-Cat-style glasses and in which a folly built by Vanbrugh at Claremont, the Belvedere Tower, stands in the background—emblems of the Club's importance to the two sitters.

  Another of the final Kit-Cat generation was Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon. Huntingdon was only 18 and still enrolled as a student at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1714. He left without a degree but with a reputation as a wit—known to his kinsman Congreve, for example, who had been a close friend of the 8th Earl until 1705. Like Burlington, Huntingdon was admitted to the Club on his return from a Grand Tour. In Huntingdon's case, the Club's bet on who would be a leading light of the next aristocratic generation proved misplaced. Despite his talent at languages, Huntingdon hardly opened his mouth in the House of Lords and only made one appearance in any public capacity. Huntingdon's wife, Lady Selina, perhaps gave her husband the most accurate biography when she inscribed on his tomb that ‘though he was capable of excelling in every form of public life, he chose to appear in none’.24

  Kit-Cat efforts to train young men in the language and mentality of public administration and cultural patronage, if only by letting them associate and converse with more famous and powerful men, may have failed in Huntingdon's case, but they succeeded brilliantly with Walpole. Walpole had cut his teeth on the Kit-Cats' battles against the Tories for the past decade. He had been appointed Paymaster General to the Armed Forces following George's accession, but, although this post was lucrative, it did not bring Walpole the power he desired. Now, in clubbable middle age, Walpole was ready to assume what he viewed as his rightful place. He would do this by means of his leadership in the Commons and friendship with Townshend and Stanhope, the two Secretaries of State (the bond between Walpole and Townshend having been sealed by Townshend's marriage to Walpole's sister, Dolly, in 1713).

  Walpole moved his main London residence to Orford House, beside the Thames in Chelsea, and gave Vanbrugh a healthy budget to refurbish it. At his Norfolk seat of Houghton, Walpole continued to host two annual house parties: one in the spring for select friends and colleagues, and another in the shooting season, which later developed into an institution named ‘The Congress’, lasting six to eight weeks.25 To some extent, Walpole's house parties replaced the Kit-Cat Club's political and social functions. Yet Walpole had little interest in patronage of literature beyond what could serve as direct government propaganda, and was sceptical of the Junto's gifting of government places to writers. He believed writers ‘were guided by principles inadmissible to practical life’ and therefore should be kept away from it.26 Walpole nonetheless helped Steele, whom he regarded as a Whig activist rather than author, to re-enter Parliament at the spring 1715 general election. At Walpole's urg
ing, Clare offered Steele a seat he controlled, representing Boroughbridge, eight miles north of York. Steele's stalling before accepting the offer, and the careful wording of his acceptance, show how desperately Steele longed to be free from such pacts with patrons: ‘I know I shall express my Gratitude to you in the best manner by behaving myself with strict integrity,’ Steele told Clare, knowing what Clare really hoped to buy was his strict obedience.27

  Clare's agents handed out bribes to electors, and threatened tenants with eviction if they did not vote for Steele—£400 (over £47,000 today) was spent on such fixing. Steele also borrowed £1,100 in January 1715 which, combined with the £500 bounty from the King, gave him the cash to finish the job for himself. Steele bought votes by providing free wine and spirits for the Boroughbridge burgesses, writing home on 27 January that he was ‘among Dancing, Singings, Hooping, Hallooing and Drinking’.28

  Steele's undemocratic election did not affect his subsequent diligence as an MP. He updated his constituents by ‘every post’ on Westminster events, a level of direct accountability beyond the norms of his day.29 Steele knew his main debt was to Clare, to whom he dedicated a collection of political writings in June 1715, proclaiming Clare ‘the Refuge of Good Men’.30 The dedication notably omits reference to Clare's personal charms. Sometime after Steele and Clare returned to London, for the opening of George's first Parliament, Clare joined Vanbrugh, Carlisle and Garth (as well as two other non-Kit-Cats, and several ladies including the Duchess of Marlborough) for a daytrip from Whitehall by barge to Barn Elms. One imagines them viewing Tonson's collection of Kneller Kit-Cat portraits, by this time numerous enough to crowd the walls of several rooms. It was one of the last times Vanbrugh and the Duchess of Marlborough socialized together amiably. Vanbrugh had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clare and Marlborough by matchmaking Clare to Marlborough's granddaughter, Harriet, daughter of Congreve's lover Henrietta. Garth was employed to casually mention the girl's virtues to Clare, which needed some eloquence since Harriet was an exception to her generally handsome family. Vanbrugh reported to the Duchess of Marlborough that Clare had ‘a sort of wish (expressed in a very gentle manner) that her bodily perfections had been up to those I described of her mind and understanding’.31 When Clare stated the dowry he expected, the Duchess of Marlborough objected that her granddaughter was not that ugly and refused point blank. Perhaps suspecting Vanbrugh had done a deal to take a cut out of an overpriced dowry, the Duchess broke off negotiations, offending Vanbrugh irreparably—the final straw after their lengthy quarrels over Blenheim.

  The general election, now involving an electorate of over 250,000 (some 50,000 more voters than in the 1690s), was a Whig victory but not a clean sweep. By different estimates, between 316 and 372 Whigs and between 186 and 217 Tories were elected—an almost exact reversal of the 1713 result. The surprisingly high number of Tories showed how uneasy the populace remained about being ruled by a German and the Junto. The Whigs failed to win a majority in the London boroughs despite tight management of the City voters via a special ‘club’ reporting to the Whig ministers.32 Compton was elected Speaker of the House less because of his Kit-Cat membership than because he had served an apprenticeship in chairing the Committee of Privileges and Elections, and because of his Tory family and friends, making him a good cross-party candidate.

  The Kit-Cats celebrated among themselves—a majority was still a majority. Vanbrugh remarked to Clare, who had just received the reconstituted title of Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (and so is called ‘Newcastle’ hereafter), that the new Parliament would be ‘a rare one’, ‘And I find our Friends disposed to make a good use on't: Hang, Whip, Pillory, etc. I wish they could love one another though, but they can't’.33

  Intemperate Tory propaganda during the 1715 election led the King to decide once and for all that the Tories were not a party loyal to his Crown. George was therefore prepared to tolerate the vengeful temper of many Whigs in the spring of 1715—the ‘Hang, Whip, Pillory, etc.’ mentioned by Vanbrugh. Halifax called for clemency for former Tory ‘traitors’, perhaps remembering how narrowly he had avoided choosing, like Somerset, collaboration with Oxford in 1710. Halifax was accordingly ‘very earnest with the great mass of his friends to proceed moderately in the disposal of places, and was very desirous that men of ability and character, though Tories and in with the former ministry, might not be turned out, but continued in full favour’.34

  Halifax was able to take this magnanimous view partly because he had never experienced the Tower like Walpole, or waited long months for redemption from Spanish custody like Stanhope. In April 1715, Stanhope moved to form a ‘Committee of Secrecy’ to investigate those involved in the original secret peace negotiations with France. Walpole was appointed its chairman, being a man with a coolly vindictive streak that must have struck terror into Tory hearts. Bolingbroke had already fled to France, which was regarded as a confession of guilt and led to a parliamentary resolution for his impeachment.

  Another prominent target for Whig vengeance was Matt Prior. When Anne's health was reported to be weakening at the end of 1713, Prior had let Tonson carry warm messages home from France to his former Kit-Cat friends, prompting Halifax to write suggesting that they resume ‘a correspondence about matters which no way concern the State’, such as garden design.35 Prior, seeing such correspondence as his only hope of returning to England after Anne's death, responded positively. The men exchanged a few letters with ‘salading’ seeds enclosed, but Prior stepped off safe ground too quickly by mentioning the Treaty of Utrecht. When Halifax cut this short, Prior sarcastically replied with regard to their gagged, horticultural correspondence: ‘[A] very light friendship may serve to produce a crop of chicory or lettuce.’ Another silence then fell until October 1714, after George's accession. Halifax's brother Sir James Montagu played intermediary on this occasion, telling Prior that Halifax ‘retains a tenderness towards you’ and was willing to help Prior return to England without fear of being prosecuted for treason. Prior took the hint and wrote to Halifax that he hoped their friendship could be renewed and see them to their graves: ‘Has it not been uneasy sometimes to you to have suspended the operation of it?’ he asked. Just over a week later, Prior wrote again from Paris, reflecting: ‘Friendship can no more be forced than Love, and those persons sometimes are the Objects of both…who may least have deserved our Favour.’36

  As if restless until he replaced his old friend's pity with esteem, Prior could not resist trying to clear his name to Halifax, declaring ‘as long as the fourth article either of Ryswick or of Utrecht [guaranteeing the Protestant succession] remain legible, I may as well be thought a Mahumetan as a Jacobite’.37 With tactless speed, Prior also appealed to Halifax for help getting the Treasury to pay out his salary arrears. There was a pause of almost a month before Halifax replied to this, telling Prior they should ‘let all those matters be passed over, and not mentioned any more’.38 As for the salary payments, Halifax refused to intervene.

  Six months after this final known communication with Prior, in May 1715, a bout of pneumonia unexpectedly ended Halifax's life. Politically, this death dashed Tory hopes that George might be won round by Halifax's talk of national reconciliation. It is unknown whether Prior, who had returned quietly to London and was trying to live inconspicuously, attended his old school friend's funeral in Westminster Abbey. Nor is it known whether the Kit-Cats gathered after the funeral, it being a Thursday evening, to toast the memory of one of their most historically important members.

  Faithful in his infidelity, Halifax left his mistress, the former Kit-cat toast Catherine Barton, a great fortune (the Rangership, lodge and household furniture of Bushy Park, the manor of Apscourt, a stock of jewels and £5,000 in cash) ‘as a Token of the Sincere Love, Affection, and Esteem I have long had for her Person, and as a small Recompense for the Pleasure & Happiness I have had in her Conversation’.39

  Halifax's death was the second major loss that season, closely following the d
eath of his great Junto ally since the 1690s, Tom Wharton, on 12 April 1715. A satirical Tory elegy for ‘Lord Whiglove’ described Wharton as a bullying, factious, lewd republican and atheist:

  Religion o'er the Bottle was his Jest,

  And nothing more his Banter than a Priest;

  Yet oft he called on GOD, we must allow,

  But 'twas to Damn him, as he finds e'ernow.

  So Atheists sport with Heaven's avenging Ire,

  Till doomed forever to Infernal Fire.40

  Addison must have been dismayed to find his two greatest patrons had departed the world within a matter of weeks. Somers, enfeebled by ill health, had also withdrawn from politics, leaving the stage clear for a new cast of Whig leaders, and the face of the Kit-Cat Club significantly altered.

  King George's birthday fell on 28 May, two days after Halifax's funeral, and the newly knighted Sir Richard Steele used the opportunity to lift his friends' grieving spirits and advance his own career. He invited ‘a Hundred Gentlemen, and as many Ladies, of leading Taste in Politeness, Wit and Learning’ to subscribe to seats at an evening entertainment in the Great Room of York Buildings. Steele had been ‘at no small expense’ planning this edifying entertainment for some time.41 The small matter of Steele's Commons trial for sedition had intervened to derail the project, but now he revived the venture, calling it the ‘Censorium’ (or ‘Sensorium’).42 The two-and-a-halfhour entertainment mainly consisted of dramatized ‘Incidents of Antiquity’,43 meaning translations from Greek and Latin poetry, performed to newly composed English music, before an actress dressed as Liberty and the jury of the audience, ladies on one side, gentlemen on the other. The Prologue referred to ‘Wit’ and ‘Beauty’—the old sexist divide of the Kit-Cat toasting ritual—as ranged facing one another.44 Steele lit the audience so that they became ‘a more beautiful Scene than any they have ever before been presented with’.45 It was the first major private party at which the Georgian elite gathered to admire itself.