Kit-Cat Club, The
Page 53
84 John Loftis (ed.), Richard Steele's ‘The Theatre’ (Oxford, 1962), no. 11, Saturday, 6 February 1720.
85 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 2, no. 226, Monday, 19 November 1711, by Steele.
86 Ibid., vol. 1, no. 83, Tuesday, 5 June 1711, by Addison.
87 Michael Foss, The Age of Patronage: The Arts in England 1660–1750 (Ithaca, NY, 1972), p. 150.
88 John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997), p. 42.
89 NPG, Tonson Papers, Philip Lempriere to William Baker, 13 February 1777.
90 It is unlikely Kneller worked unpaid on the series. Though he was an unwavering Whig and old friend of Tonson's, grateful to the publisher for having boosted his early reputation by including a poetic tribute to his talent in the 1694 Miscellany, Kneller was notoriously businesslike about his art.
91 Tonson may not have had a special clubroom for the pictures at Barn Elms, though he talked of his intention to build one, perhaps inspired by Dorset's portrait-lined parlour at Knole. Edmond Malone's statement that the Kit-cat canvases' size was determined by the height of the ceiling in Tonson's clubroom is therefore misleading. At least two of the less than half-length paintings predate the leasing of the Barn Elms property in 1703.
92 Anon., A Kit-Cat C—b Describ'd (1705), original MS at Harvard.
93 This painting was completed in 1709. It should not be confused with Kneller's first portrait of Congreve, painted at Tonson's request in 1695. This 1695 portrait was the one that looked most like him, according to his lover Henrietta Churchill. After Congreve's death, she requested that Jacob Junior exchange this portrait for ‘an original one of Sir Godfrey Kneller just the same size of the Kit-Cat ones’ since ‘I know 'tis only the set of those pictures [the Kit-Cat series] that your uncle values and not [the one which] I would give the world for’. Henrietta got her swap, since Jacob Junior later hung a Kneller self-portrait among the Kit-Cats in his Barn Elms clubroom. NPG, Tonson Papers, Registered Packets 3193–3235, typed transcript of the letter of 1729.
94 John C. Hodges (ed.), William Congreve: Letters and Documents (London, 1964), Congreve to Joe Keally, 29 January 1708.
95 Ibid., Congreve to Joe Keally, 9 October 1708; Congreve to Joe Keally, 14 October 1704.
96 John Macky quoted in G. E. Cokayne (ed.), The Complete Peerage (London, 1936), entry on Charles Mohun, Baron Mohun of Okehampton.
97 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 26, Steele to Joseph Keally, 7 October 1708.
98 Brian Masters, The Dukes (London, 2001), p. 88.
99 Jonathan Swift, Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne from ‘Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky Esq.’ (1733).
100 Stowe MS 751, f.142.
101 This dates the painting to later than March 1704, making Vanbrugh past forty.
102 The other important reason why Kneller was not a Kit-Cat was that the Club never patronized the visual arts. Under William and Mary, painters, especially Huguenot painters, were well supported by the Court and by the English aristocracy, often through commissions of ceiling or other decorative paintings. The Club therefore did not need to subsidize this side of the arts—at least not beyond the commissioning of this single series of portraits. Vanbrugh was an anomaly because he joined as a playwright and changed career mid-life, but no other artists or architects were members. Indeed, not until the later eighteenth century were clubs of fine artists formed on the Kit-Cat model. The only contemporary example was the Rose and Crown Club, which met between 1704 and 1720 and exhibited artworks, accompanied by drinks and music. These so-called ‘Rose Coronians’ included several Whigs, like Sir James Thornhill and John Rysbrack, who received commissions from individual Kit-Cats over the years, but not Kneller.
103 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (London, 1879 edn), p. 291 n. 1.
XVI THE CRISIS
1 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (1761–71).
2 Edward (Ned) Ward, The Secret History of Clubs (1709).
3 Joseph Addison to Mr Wortley, 21 July 1711, and Joseph Addison to Joshua Dawson, 28 February 1712, quoted in Herbert Wood, ‘Addison's Connexion with Ireland’, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Journal, 5th series, 14 (1904), pp. 133–58.
4 Ibid.
5 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 1, no. 125, Tuesday, 24 July 1711, by Addison.
6 Ibid., vol. 2, no. 126, Wednesday, 25 July 1711, by Addison; vol. 1, no. 16, Monday, 19 March 1711, by Addison.
7 Temple Scott (ed.), The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (London, 1897 edn), vol. 1, p. 7.
8 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 2, no. 152, Friday, 24 August 1711, by Steele.
9 Daniel Defoe, An Essay on Plain Exposition of that Difficult Phrase, a Good Peace (1711).
10 Jonathan Swift, Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne from ‘Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky Esq.’ (1733).
11 Matthew Prior, ‘The Conversation: A Tale’ (1721).
12 HMC, Bath MSS, vol. 1, p. 217, Queen Anne to the Earl of Oxford, 11 November 1711.
13 Henry St John to Matthew Prior, 10 September 1712, quoted in Theophilus Cibber, The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1753).
14 Richard Steele, Mr Steele's Apology for himself and his writings (1714).
15 Jonathan Swift, Preface to The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry (1711).
16 Names listed by Abel Boyer; Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 17 November 1711.
17 Anon., The Kit-Cat Clubs Lamentation for the loss of the Pope, the Devil and the Pretender, that were taken into custody on Saturday last by the Secretary of State. Written by Jacob Door-holder to that Society (1711).
18 John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns of King William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, King George I (1735), part 3, p. 478.
19 Abel Boyer, History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722), pp. 524–5.
20 John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns of King William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, King George I (1735), part 3, p. 479.
21 Vanbrugh explaining the matter in retrospect to the Duke of Newcastle, in Geoffrey Webb and Bonamy Dobrée (eds), The Complete Works of John Vanbrugh, 4 vols (London, 1927–8), vol. 4, no. 98, Vanbrugh to Newcastle, 25 December 1718.
22 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 3, no. 287, Tuesday, 29 January 1712, by Addison.
23 Ibid.
24 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 1, p. 765.
25 According to a 1713 broadside published by Ambrose Philips, the Hanover Club's Secretary, with the names of thirty-one ‘Toasts Elected by the Hanover Club’.
26 Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, 1967), p. 299.
27 John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns of King William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, King George I (1735).
28 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 562, Friday, 2 July 1714, by Addison.
29 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 465, Saturday, 23 August 1712, by Addison.
30 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 5, p. 238, entry on William Pulteney MP.
31 Add MS 72,495, Ralph Bridges to Trumbull, 9 June 1712. Halifax was over-complacent and failed to rally their supporters in sufficient numbers. The Kit-cats who ‘crossed over’ to vote with the Court included his own stepson Manchester and also Dorset, Manchester, Boyle, Grafton and Cornwallis. See Clyve Jones, ‘The Vote in The House of Lords on the Duke of Ormond's “Restraining Orders”, 28 May 1712’, Parliamentary History, vol. 26, part 2 (2007), pp.160–83.
32 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 3, no. 367, Thursday, 1 May 1712, by Addison.
> 33 Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 1 July 1712.
34 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 238, 23 February 1713.
35 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 400, Steele to Mrs Steele, 22 January 1712.
36 Ibid., no. 410, Steele to Mrs Scurlock, 27 September 1712.
37 Ibid., no. 411, Steele to Mrs Scurlock, 25 October 1712.
38 Laurence Whistler, Sir John Vanbrugh, Architect and Dramatist 1664–1726 (New York, 1978), p. 155.
39 He had resorted to this tactic only after failing to pass various libel bills under which the Whig clubs and papers might have been charged with intent to incite a breach of the peace (criminal libel) or causing contempt for the Queen, Church or government (seditious libel).
40 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 445, Thursday, 31 July 1712, by Addison.
41 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 488, Friday, 19 September 1712, by Addison.
42 Ibid., vol. 1, no. 69, Saturday, 19 May 1711, by Addison.
43 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 454, Monday, 11 August 1712, by Steele.
44 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 408, Steele to Mrs Steele, 17 September 1712.
45 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 479, Tuesday, 9 September 1712, by Steele.
46 Ibid.
47 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 416, Mrs Steele to Steele, March 1713?
48 Ibid., no. 419, Steele to Mrs Steele, 22 April 1713.
49 John Dunton, The Night-Walker (1696).
50 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 530, Friday, 7 November 1712, by Addison.
51 Anon., ‘Occasioned by the Late List of Toasts’, NPG, Tonson Papers.
52 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 555, Saturday, 6 December 1712, by Steele.
53 Donald. F. Bond (ed.), The Tatler (Oxford, 1987), Preface to vol. 4; no. 271, Tuesday, 2 January 1710; Richard Steele, Dedication to Joseph Addison, The Tender Husband (1705).
54 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 4, no. 476, Friday, 5 September 1712, by Addison.
55 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 484, Monday, 15 September 1712, by Steele. It appears, however, that Steele did no better than Addison as a parliamentary speaker, blundering so badly over his first speech in the Commons in 1714 that people laughed at him. The Wentworth Papers 1705–1739 (London, 1883), p. 358, Thomas Wentworth to his brother, 2 March 1714.
56 Ibid., vol. 4, no. 535, Thursday, 13 November 1712, by Addison.
57 Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 27 December 1712.
58 Ibid., 26 January 1713.
59 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 238, 23 February 1713.
60 Arthur Maynwaring, ‘An Excellent New Song, Called Mat's Peace, Or, The Downfall of Trade’ (1711).
61 The Tories were as anxious as the French to contain the Habsburg Empire, on the rise ever since its victory over the Turks in 1699, when it gained Hungary and Transylvania, whereas the British Whigs were far less alarmed by the idea of Austrian hegemony. The Whigs formed a group of trustees to support a loan to Emperor Charles VI of Austria (formerly Archduke Charles) during this extra campaign, post-Utrecht. Abel Boyer, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne Digested into Annals (1722), vol. 6, pp. 126–7.
62 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 239, 7 May 1713.
63 Richard Steele quoted in Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, ed. B. R. S. Fone (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1968), p. 249.
64 Ibid., p. 250.
65 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 2, no. 237, Saturday, 1 December 1711, by Addison.
66 He also showed it to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and to Alexander Pope. Pope recalled Addison ‘would show his verses to several friends, and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong’. Pope added vainly that Addison ‘did not leave a word unchanged that I made any scruple against in Cato’. Quoted in Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966 edn), no. 174.
67 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 238, 16 April 1713.
68 Richard Steele, Dedication to The Drummer ‘To Mr Congreve’, in Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), pp. 505ff.
69 Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1968 edn), p. 255.
70 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 2, no. 168, Wednesday, 12 September 1711, by Steele.
71 George Sherburn (ed.), The Correspondence of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1956), vol. 1, p. 175.
72 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 175, Pope to Caryll.
73 Ibid.
74 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 239, 7 May 1713. The child she bore was not Maynwaring's, dead only six months earlier, but that of Brigadier-General Charles Churchill, Marlborough's nephew. The boy would grow up to marry Robert Walpole's daughter Mary.
75 F. M. A. de Voltaire, Letters on the English (1778), Letter 18.
76 Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism (1711).
77 Anon., Ingratitude to Mr Pope (1733), pp. 8–9.
78 The Examiner, Friday, 24 April 1703.
79 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 75, Jonathan Swift to Joseph Addison, 13 May 1713.
80 Steele to Jonathan Swift, 19 May 1713, quoted in G. A. Aitken, The Life of Richard Steele (London, 1889), vol. 1, p. 380.
81 HMC, Report VII: Appendix (1879), Copies of Letters of George Berkeley to Sir J. Percival, p. 238, 27 March 1713.
82 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1968 edn), no. 80, Steele to Earl of Oxford, 4 June 1713.
83 Ibid., no. 425, Steele to Mrs Steele, 20 June 1713.
84 Ibid., no. 431, Steele to Mrs Steele, 22 July 1713.
85 Donald F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), vol. 3, no. 394, Monday, 2 June 1712, by Steele.
86 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Englishman: A Political Journal by Richard Steele (Oxford, 1955), no. 1, 6 October 1713.
87 HMC, Portland MSS, vol. 5, p. 338, John Drummond to the Earl of Oxford, 18 September 1713.
88 Kathleen M. Lynch, Jacob Tonson, Kit-Cat Publisher (Knoxville, Tenn., 1971), p. 64.
89 Richard Steele, The Importance of Dunkirk Consider'd: In Defence of the Guardian of August the 7th. In a Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge (1713), p. 76.
90 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Englishman: A Political Journal by Richard Steele (Oxford, 1955), no. 1, 6 October 1713.
91 Walter Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1941), no. 343, Addison to John Hughes, 12 October 1713.
92 Ibid.
93 BL Add MS 5,145A, Steele to Mrs Steele at Bloomsbury Square, October 1713? (Blanchard no. 435).
94 Richard Steele, The Crisis (1714).
95 Add MS 5,145A, Steele to Mrs Steele, 26 January 1714 (Blanchard no. 438).
96 Richard Steele, Mr Steele's Apology for himself and his writings (1714).
97 Ibid.
98 The Examiner, vol. 4, no. 37, Friday, 9 October 1713 to Monday, 12 October 1713.
99 They reunited once or twice in the 1720s, and their relationships would prove an important stimulus to several major literary works: Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) and Pope's Dunciad (1728).
100 John Lacy, The Steeleids: or, the Tryal of Wit (1714).
101 BL Add MS 5,145A, Steele to Mrs Steele, 11 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 440).
102 Ibid., Steele to Mrs Steele, 12 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 441).
103 Quoted in Calhoun Winton, Captain Steele: The Earl
y Career of Richard Steele (Baltimore, Md., 1964), p. 201.
104 William Cobbett (ed.), Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols (1806–20), vol. 6, p. 1267; Abel Boyer, History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722).
105 Richard Steele, Mr Steele's Apology for himself and his writings (1714).
106 Richard Steele, The Case of Richard Steele, Esq… (1714).
107 Basil Williams, Stanhope: A Study in Eighteenth-Century War and Diplomacy (Oxford, 1932), p. 112.
108 Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D. W. Hayton, The House of Commons 1690–1715 (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 5, p. 782, entry on Robert Walpole.
109 J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman (Boston, Mass., 1961), p. 191.
110 Richard Steele, The Case of Richard Steele, Esq… (1714).
111 BL Add MS 5,145A, Steele to Mrs Steele, 19 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 445).
112 It was not the Hanover Club, since the next morning he was still with ‘Wharton and the rest’ and Wharton was not a Hanoverian member. Ibid., Steele to Mrs Steele, 20 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 446).
113 Rae Blanchard (ed.), The Englishman: A Political Journal by Richard Steele (Oxford, 1955), ‘Dedication to General [James] Stanhope’.
114 Add MS 5,145A, Steele to Mrs Steele, probably all in late March 1714 (Blanchard nos. 447–50).
115 Ibid., Steele to Mrs Steele, 30 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 452).
116 Ibid., Steele to Mrs Steele, Easter Sunday, 28 March 1714 (Blanchard no. 451—see also no. 450 reference to ‘the brats’).