72 For example, in his first letter to the young Alexander Pope.
73 Harry M. Geduld, Prince of Publishers: A Study of the Work and Career of Jacob Tonson (Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1969), p. 102.
74 Dedication in the 2nd edition of The Drummer (1722) ‘To Mr Congreve’ in Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), pp. 505ff.
75 Edward (Ned) Ward, The History of the London Clubs (1709).
76 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, 4 vols (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 1, To the Earl of Manchester in Paris, 25 December 1699.
77 Ibid.
78 Michael Foss, The Age of Patronage: The Arts in England 1660–1750 (Ithaca, NY, 1972), pp. 190–1.
79 Jonathan Swift, ‘Vanbrug's House’ (1703 and revised 1708–9) and ‘The History of Vanbrug's House’ (1706). The former describes the house as ‘a Thing resembling a Goose Pie’. Circulated in MSS before being printed in Jonathan Swift, Meditations upon a Broomstick and Somewhat Beside (1710).
80 Emmett L. Avery, Congreve's Plays on the Eighteenth-Century Stage (New York, 1951), p. 31.
81 Ibid. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an estimated 20,000 British captives were seized at sea by North African corsairs and held in Barbary (Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunisia). There was a nationwide drive to raise funds for such captives' redemption in the 1670s, in which Addison's father had actively participated. Now a second fundraiser was underway, mostly through parish churches, prompted by accounts of horrors in captivity. The English public donated £16,500 (some £2 million today) between 1700 and 1705, to which this one theatrical charity event contributed around £250.
82 Brean Hammond (ed.), John Vanbrugh: The Relapse and Other Plays (Oxford, 2004), p. xiv.
83 Some have unkindly seen Congreve's career as a case study in how material comforts can dull a great talent, tracing an inverse correlation between his income and literary output. For example, Michael Foss, The Age of Patronage: The Arts in England 1660–1750 (Ithaca, NY, 1972), p. 159: ‘Between 1693 and 1695, being as yet unrewarded, he wrote three plays; between 1695 and 1700, and now in possession of one post, he wrote two more; between 1700 and 1714, with the comfortable income of two posts, he wrote two masques and a few occasional pieces; and from 1714 to his death, while enjoying the large salary of Secretary to Jamaica, he wrote nothing of any value at all.’
VI THE EUROPEANS
1 Though stepfather and stepson were political allies, they were not close friends and sometimes competed. When Montagu's patronage helped Sir Isaac Newton, the uncle of Montagu's long-standing mistress, become Master of the Mint, for example, Vanbrugh, who was grooming Manchester as a future patron for himself, was quick to send Manchester this news and wistfully contrast Newton's promotion to his own lack of support: ‘Pour moi, je suis tout comme j'étais.’ William Drogo Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne (London, 1864), vol. 2, p. 55.
2 Dedication in the 2nd edition of The Drummer (1722) ‘To Mr Congreve’ in Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), pp. 505ff.
3 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 2, no. 255, Saturday, 22 December 1711, by Addison.
4 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 5, Addison to Somers, 1699.
5 Ibid., no. 4, Addison to Congreve, August 1699.
6 Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698 (1699), p. 7.
7 D. B. Horn, The British Diplomatic Service 1689–1789 (Oxford, 1961), p. 141. HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 3, The Prior Papers, Vernon to Prior, 11 April 1699.
8 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, 4 vols (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 1, Vanbrugh to the Earl of Manchester, 25 December 1699.
9 Toast by Addison, c. 1703.
10 Bodleian SC.25, 427 MS Montagu, d.I, f.99, Prior to Montagu, 9 August 1698.
11 Matthew Prior, Poems on Several Occasions (1718), ‘To Chloe, Jealous’.
12 HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 3, The Prior Papers, Prior to Montagu, 20 May (NS) 1699.
13 Ibid., Prior to Montagu, 21 May (NS) 1698.
14 Ibid., Prior to Montagu, 1 April (NS) 1699.
15 Charles Montagu, ‘The Man of Honour’ in Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register (1719–20).
16 Add MS 7,121, Letters to Lord Halifax (1706ff.), f.47, Matthew Prior to Charles Montagu, 30 August (NS) 1698; C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), p. 104.
17 HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 3, The Prior Papers, Dorset to Prior, 6 March 1698.
18 Joseph Addison, The Guardian, no. 34, Monday, 20 April 1713 (issue by Steele).
19 Joseph Addison, The Freeholder, no. 1, Friday, 23 December 1715.
20 HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 3, The Prior Papers, Prior to Montagu, 21 May (NS) 1698.
21 Ibid., Prior to Montagu, 10 April (NS) 1698.
22 Prior's commonplace book, Prior MSS, today at Longleat House, quoted in C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), p. 111.
23 BL Add MS 7,121, Letters to Lord Halifax (1706ff.), f.47, Matthew Prior to Charles Montagu, 30 August (NS) 1698; C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), p. 104.
24 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 8, To Dr John Hough, October 1699.
25 Ibid., no. 11, to Montagu, December 1699.
26 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 435, Saturday, 19 July 1712, by Addison.
27 John Macky, Characters of the Court of Queen Anne (1733).
28 Matthew Prior to Earl of Manchester, 12 February 1700, quoted in C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), p. 158.
29 HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 3, The Prior Papers, Earl of Manchester to Prior, 22 May (NS) 1700.
30 C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), p. 151.
31 Susan Spens, George Stepney: Diplomat and Poet (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 188–9: Stepney stayed with the Whig Earl of Macclesfield (2nd Earl, Charles Gerard) at his house, Bushy Park, near to Hampton Court, in mid-August and likely wrote the letter afterwards. A copy can be found in Leibniz's correspondence with Sophia, but the original MS appears to be lost.
32 HMC, Cowper MSS, vol. 2, p. 410, Charles Davenant to Thomas Coke, 10 December 1700.
33 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 18, Addison to Abraham Stanyan, May 1700.
34 John Ingamells (ed.), A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701–1800 (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1997), entry on Dashwood.
35 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 4, p. 877.
36 Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time (1715), p. 234.
37 Charles Davenant, England's Enemies Exposed (1701).
38 BL Add MS 40,060, ‘Votes’.
39 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864–5), part 2, chapter 3.
40 George de Forest Lord et al. (eds), Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse 1660–1714 (New Haven, Conn., 1963–75), vol. 5, p. 430.
41 Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy (London, 1982), p. 18.
42 Spencer Compton, for example, gained the seat of Eye in Suffolk on Cornwallis' orders, and Prior won the borough of East Grinstead in Sussex after nomination by Dorset.
43 Anon., A Kit-Cat C—b Describ'd (1705), original MS at Harvard; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Commonplace Book, formerly of Wortley MS, f.9, quoted in Robert Halsband, Life of Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford, 1956), p. 8.
44 W. A. Speck, The Birth of Britain: A New Nation 1700–1710 (Oxford, 1994), p. 24.
45 John C. Hodges (ed.), William Congreve: Letters and Documents (London, 1964), Congreve to Joe Keally, 26 March 1701.
46 W. A. Speck, The Birth of Britain: A New Nation 1700–1710 (Oxford, 1994), p. 26.
&nb
sp; 47 ‘The fifth parliament of King William: First session—begins 6/2/1701’, The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons, vol. 3 (1742), pp. 127–83.
48 Ibid.
49 Matthew Prior, ‘Song. Set[t] by Mr Abel[l]’ (1701).
50 Mark Noble, A Biographical History of England from the Revolution to the End of George I's Reign; being a continuation of the Rev. J. Granger's work (London, 1806), p. 245, extract from poem by Prior which was a dialogue between Sir Thomas More and the Vicar of Bray.
51 George Stepney to Lord Halifax, 13 August 1701, quoted in C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), pp. 170–1.
52 S. Tufton, The History of Faction, alias Hypocrisy, alias Moderation (1705), pp. 74–5.
53 Jonathan Swift, ‘Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions Between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome’, in Temple Scott (ed.), Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (London, 1897 edn), vol. 5, pp. 379–80.
54 John C. Hodges (ed.), William Congreve: Letters and Documents (London, 1964), Congreve to Joe Keally, 7 June 1701.
55 BL Add MS 22,851, f.131, Henry Whistler to Thomas Pitt, 20 December 1701.
VII THE WHIGS GO TO WAR
1 George de Forest Lord et al. (eds), Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse 1660–1714, 7 vols (New Haven, Conn., 1963–75), vol. 7, ‘A Vindication of the Whigs’ (1702). Authors' copy when corrected by Somers and Halifax was then ‘recommended to…their Trusty Secretary Jacob…to Babble it abroad by the Hawkers’.
2 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 25, To Edward Wortley, 9 December 1701.
3 Mary Delariviere Manley, The New Atalantis (1709), vol. 1, p. 188.
4 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 7, Steele to Col. Edmund Revett, nephew of Lord Cutts, 2 September 1701.
5 Richard Steele, Mr Steele's Apology for himself and his writings (1714).
6 Ibid.
7 Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London, paperback edn 1984), p. 134.
8 Charles Davenant, The True Picture of a Modern Whig set forth in a Dialogue between Mr Whiglove and Mr Double (1702).
9 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 5, p. 434, entry on Sir Edward Seymour.
10 Ibid. In 1701, the French ambassador referred to Jack Smith as one of the leading Whigs in the Commons.
11 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 41, Addison to Mr Wood.
12 The Kit-Cats were Stanhope, Topham, Somers and Garth. Abigail Williams, ‘Patronage and Whig Literary Culture in the Early Eighteenth Century’, in David Womersley (ed.), Cultures of Whiggism (Newark, NJ, 2005), p. 162, has suggested that the oration translated by ‘K. C.’ was, in fact, a collaborative translation by several ‘Kit-Cat’ authors, but it was more likely the work of Dr Knightly Chetwode, a Greek scholar of the time and correspondent of Marlborough's.
13 G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (London, 1930).
14 Anon., A Kit-Cat C—b Describ'd (1705), original MS at Harvard.
15 Anon., The Golden Age Revers'd (1703).
16 John Macky, Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky… (1733).
17 Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn, 2 vols (Oxford, 1966 edn), no. 121.
18 Other Kit-Cats who were linked to Marlborough by virtue of military service included: Sir Richard Temple, who was made a colonel of a newly raised foot regiment in February 1702 and distinguished himself at the battles of Venlo and Ruremond, and at the siege of Lille, becoming one of five lieutenantgenerals in Flanders by 1710; and Major John Shrimpton, a client of Wharton's who had fought under William in the 1690s, then joined the same foot regiment as Stanhope and Steele in 1701. Colonel Tidcomb appears to have been the avuncular veteran amongst the Club's soldier-members, already 60 by the time the War of Spanish Succession began.
19 John Methuen to Alexander Stanhope, quoted in Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 5, p. 540.
20 HMC, Report XIV: Appendix, part 9 (1895), pp. 511–12, Speaker Onslow.
21 Having had the honour of carrying news of the victory back to Anne, Shannon forfeited the Queen's good opinion forever by participating in a ‘scandalous episode in St James's Church’ in January 1703. Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 3, entry on Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon (1675–1740) of Shannon Park, Co. Cork.
22 Elizabeth Berry, ‘A Household Account Book of Thomas Wharton 5th Baron Wharton (1648-1715)’, Records of Buckinghamshire, vol. 36 (Aylesbury, 1996), pp. 86–97.
23 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 1, no. 105, Saturday, 30 June 1711, by Addison.
24 NPG, Tonson Papers: The names are Wharton, Carlisle, Manchester, Mohun, Hartington (that is, William Cavendish), Essex, Grafton, Cornwallis, Dormer, Stanyan, Compton, Shrimpton and Garth [and Vandome]. The list of names coincides for the most part with the names of the earliest Kit-Cats listed by Oldmixon.
25 Richard Blackmore, The Kit-Cats, A Poem (1708).
26 John Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in London (London, 1908), p. 51.
VIII KIT-CAT CONNOISSEURS
1 Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), ed. J. M. Robertson (New York, 1964), vol. 1, p. 74.
2 Daniel Defoe, The Review (1713).
3 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 165, Vanbrugh to Jacob Tonson, 12 August 1725.
4 Nicholas Rowe, ‘The Reconcilement between Jacob Tonson and Mr Congreve’ in the March [1707?] edition of The Muses Mercury. With Steele and Garth among the editors of the paper that carried this poem, and with Tonson having published two of Rowe's recent works, Rowe knew what he was talking about, though he himself was never a Kit-Cat member. Rowe may even have been trying to give his friends a gentle nudge towards a real reconcilement—perhaps resulting from the argument over publishing deals that led to Tonson's rumoured expulsion or resignation from the Kit-Cat Club back in 1704–5.
5 George Stepney to Tonson, 24 March 1703, in The Gentleman's Magazine (July–December 1837), vol. 8, pp. 362–4.
6 Anon. [William Walsh], The Golden Age Restor'd (1703), said that at this date the Jacobites were meeting at their own clubs in London, to rival the Kit-Cats (‘The faithful club assembles at the Vine, / And French intrigues are broached o'er English wine’).
7 Anon., The Golden Age Revers'd (1703).
8 Richard Blackmore, The Kit-Cats, A Poem (1708). Ned Ward also mocks Tonson for the ‘stateliness of his brow’ in his Secret History of Clubs (1709).
9 Vanbrugh to Tonson, quoted in Kathleen M. Lynch (ed.), Jacob Tonson, Kit-Cat Publisher (Knoxville, Tenn., 1971), p. 109.
10 John C. Hodges, William Congreve: Letters and Documents (London, 1964), Congreve to Tonson, 1 July 1703.
11 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 3, Vanbrugh to Tonson, near the Stadthouse in Amsterdam, 15 June 1703.
12 Ibid., Vanbrugh to Tonson, 13 July 1703.
13 Duke of Somerset to Tonson, 22 June 1703, quoted in Edmond Malone (ed.), Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden (London, 1800), p. 532.
14 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, 4 vols (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 3, Vanbrugh to Tonson, 15 July 1703.
15 British Library shelfmark 816m.19, f.34; Osborn MS 15,096, burlesque advertisement re Tonson from 1704, contemporary hand copy.
16 Richard Blackmore, The Kit-Cats, A Poem (1708), but this poem was written ‘some years ago’, and can be dated to before June 1704 because it refers to Tom Browne alive. See Sir Albert Rosenberg, Sir Richard Blackmore: A Poet
and Physician of the Augustan Age (Lincoln, Nebr., 1953), p. 94.
17 Anon., A Kit-Cat C—b Describ'd (1705), original at Harvard.
18 Halifax to Lionel, 7th Earl of Dorset, 11–12 October 1706, quoted in HMC, Mrs Stopford-Sackville's MSS, vol. 1, Sackville I (London, 1904), p. 34.
19 Nicholas Rowe, The Reconcilement between Jacob Tonson and Mr Congreve… (1707).
20 Jonathan Swift quoted in Madeleine Bingham, Masks and Façades: Sir John Vanbrugh, the Man and his Setting (London, 1974), p. 133.
21 Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 168, Vanbrugh to Tonson, 25 October 1725.
22 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 4, Vanbrugh to Tonson, 13 July 1703.
23 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford 1941), no. 37, Addison to Duke of Somerset, June 1703.
24 Addison made other English friends in Holland that summer who proved influential in his later career: James Stanhope, whose regiment was at Marlborough's camp in Maastricht, travelled with him from Rotterdam to Leiden; Addison also became acquainted with Ambrose Philips, a lean young poet who liked to wear red stockings.
25 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 42, Addison to John Wyche (resident in Hamburg), 1703.
26 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), p. 510, Dedication to The Drummer.
27 Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Earl of Orrery and of the Family of the Boyles (1732), p. ix.
28 Joseph Addison tellingly observed: ‘I cannot think that Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, la Fountaine, Bruyere, Bossu or the Daciers would have written so well as they have done, had they not been Friends and Contemporaries.’ See Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 3, no. 409, Thursday, 19 June 1712, by Addison.
29 Richard Blackmore, The Kit-Cats, A Poem (1708).
30 Lytton Strachey, ‘Addison, Joseph’, Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1885). Tonson ‘boasted of paying his court to the great man by giving him excuses for such indulgence’.
Kit-Cat Club, The Page 48
