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Updated: September 15, 2025
The former society is described with great gusto by Ned Ward, who had for it many more pleasant adjectives than he could find for the Kit-Cat Club. The other society appears to have owed its existence to John Rich, of Covent Garden theatre, and the scene-painter, George Lambert.
The Tory Parliament of 1710 would have passed for a most liberal Parliament in the days of Elizabeth; and there are at present few members of the Conservative Club who would not have been fully qualified to sit with Halifax and Somers at the Kit-cat.
Without his record the fame of that club would have passed away, surviving at best in some sort of hazy companionship with the Kit-Cat, Button's, Will's, and other clubs and assemblies. Never was there a club of which each member was better qualified to take care of his own fame with posterity.
Tonson built a room for the Club at Barn Elms to which each member gave his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was himself a member. The pictures were on a new-sized canvas adopted to the height of the walls, whence the name "Kit-Cat" came to be applied generally to three-quarter length portraits.
But what counted all the glamour of public life compared to the possession of Nance Oldfield and an honoured seat at the festive board of the Kit-Cat Club? Love and conviviality, youth and wit, carried the day, and through the influence of these seductive companions handsome Arthur failed to achieve greatness as a statesman.
Elizabeth Pierrepont Her early taste for reading She learns Latin, and, presently, Italian Encouraged in her literary ambitions by her uncle, William Feilding, and Bishop Bumet Submits to the Bishop a translation of "Encheiridion" of Epictetus An attractve child A "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club Acts as hostess to her father.
More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the contemporary epigram left it: "Whence deathless Kit-Cat took his name, Few critics can unriddle; Some say from pastry-cook it came, And some from Cat and Fiddle.
The most agreeable memory Lady Mary preserved of this formal and cold-blooded sire was that when a member of the Kit-Cat Club he nominated her, then seven years old, as one of the toasts of the year. The child was sent for, and, adorned with her very finest attire, presented to the members. Her health was drunk, and her name engraved, according to custom, on a drinking glass.
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