The Kit-Cat Club | Robert J. Allen (essay date 1933)
Robert J. Allen (essay date 1933)
SOURCE: Allen, Robert J. “The Club and the Town: The Kit-Cats and the Toasters.” In The Clubs of Augustan London, pp. 35-54. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933.
[In the excerpt below, Allen provides a detailed history of the Kit-Cat Club, with particular emphasis on the members' engagement in political skirmishes.]
The greatest political society of the day was the Kit-Cat Club. The name of this august assembly has been of enough curiosity to call forth a number of explanations. That most frequently quoted is in the famous “Epigram on the Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club, Anno 1716,” generally attributed to Dr. John Arbuthnot.
Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its Name, Few Criticks can unriddle; Some say from Pastry Cook it came, And some from Cat and Fiddle.
From no trim Beau's its Name it boasts, Grey Statesman,...
[The entire page is 6816 words long]
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