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Updated: May 1, 2025
From no trim beaus its name it boasts, Gray statesmen or green wits; But from this pell-mell pack of toasts Of old Cats and young Kits." Equally undecided is the cause of its origin. Ned Ward, however, had no doubts on that score. That exceedingly frank and coarse historian of the clubs of London attributed the origin of the club to the astuteness of Jacob Tonson the publisher.
Apropos of these writers, among the most famous works of Kneller are the forty-three portraits, painted originally for Tonson, the bookseller, of the members of the Kit Cat club, the social and literary club of the day, which got its name from the chance of its holding its meetings in a house the owner of which bore the unique name of Christopher Cat.
Thereupon Dryden penned the following lines and sent them to Tonson with the message that he who wrote these lines could write more: With leering looks, bull-faced and freckled fair With two left legs, with Judas-colored hair, And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air. These lines wrought the desired effect: Tonson sent the money which Dryden had asked for.
Thus, on the suggestion of Tonson the portraits of the members were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller for the bookseller, but as the walls of the room at Barn Elms were not lofty enough to accommodate full-lengths, the painter reverted to a canvas measuring thirty-six by twenty-eight inches, a size of portrait which preserves the name of Kit-Cat to this day.
Philips was a zealous Whig, and therefore easily found access to Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him anything more than kind words, since he was reduced to translate the "Persian Tales" for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown.
Justice Tonson, the good Lady Jones, and the two virtuous gentlewomen her daughters, nay the great Sir Thomas Truby, knight and baronet, and my young master the Squire who shall one day be lord of this manor. With what magisterial gravity he descants of whipping out the dogs, 'except the sober lap-dog of the good widow Howard, tearing away the children's half-eaten apples, smoothing the dog's ears of the great Bible!
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.
It was as much literary as political, and its 'toasting glasses, each inscribed with lines to a reigning beauty, caused Arbuthnot to derive its name from 'its pell mell pack of toasts' 'Of old Cats and young Kits. 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. No. 10. Monday, March 12, 1711. Addison.
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.
A fourth lays it down as an unquestioned Truth, that a Lady cannot be thoroughly accomplished who has not read The Secret Treaties and Negotiations of Marshal D'Estrades. Mr. Jacob Tonson Jun. is of Opinion, that Bayle's Dictionary might be of very great use to the Ladies, in order to make them general Scholars.
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