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He now proposed that both debt and articles of apprenticeship should be cancelled that the release of the debtor should be the consideration for the freedom of the apprentice. Steele consented, and George Romney became his own master. His prices until he went to London were certainly not high: two guineas for a three-quarter portrait and six for a whole figure on a kit-cat canvas.
A clever dabbler in literature, an honest politician a politician with scruples was as rare in those days as he is now and a man of honour who could drink as much as his friends, the volatile Arthur was, perhaps, best known as the most attractive talker of the famous Kit-Cat Club. The Kit-Cat Club! What a wealth of anecdote doth its name conjure up to the student of the past!
Our Modern celebrated Clubs are founded upon Eating and Drinking, which are Points wherein most Men agree, and in which the Learned and Illiterate, the Dull and the Airy, the Philosopher and the Buffoon, can all of them bear a Part. The 'Kit-Cat' it self is said to have taken its Original from a Mutton-Pye.
That evening we were engaged at the Kit-Cat Club, for though I was opposed to the politics of its members, they admitted me on account of my literary pretensions. Halifax was there, and I commended the poet to his protection. We were very gay, and Halifax favoured us with three new toasts by himself. O Venus! what beauties we made, and what characters we murdered!
The ruse succeeded; the poetical young sprigs came in a band; they enjoyed their pies; and when Tonson proposed a weekly meeting of a similar kind, on the understanding that the poetical young sprigs "would do him the honour to let him have the refusal of all their juvenile products," there was no dissentient voice. And thus the Kit-Cat club came into life.
He admits that by an accident, for which he is not responsible, this beloved scholar, writer and gentleman claimed our country as his birthplace, and even, perhaps, had a 'full appetite to this place of his kindly ingendure, but informs us he was an undeniable contemporary of Addison and Steele, a veritable member of the Kit-Cat Club.
It seems that the Club had its first headquarters in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar, at the establishment of Christopher Cat, a pastrycook who helped to enliven the inner man by delicious meat pies dubbed "Kit-Cats." The Kit-Cat itself is said to have taken its original from a mutton pie.
Its principle place of meeting, however, was at the mansion of Tonson at Barn Elms, where a room was specially built for its accommodation. The dimensions of this room were responsible for the application of the term Kit-Cat to portraits of a definite size.
In October, 1702, he became one of the censors of the College. Garth, being an active and zealous Whig, was a member of the Kit-Cat Club, and, by consequence, familiarly known to all the great men of that denomination.
Never was there so important a synod to the female world as the gods of the Kit-Cat Club. Alas! I am writing for the children of an after age, to whom the very names of those who made the blood of their ancestors leap within their veins will be unknown. What cheek will colour at the name of Carlisle? What hand will tremble as it touches the paper inscribed by that of Brudenel?
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