SOURCE: Allen, Robert J. “The Kit-Cat Club and the Theatre.” Review of English Studies 7, No. 25 (January 1931): 56-61.

[In the following excerpt, Allen traces the Kit-Cat Club's interest in and patronage of the theater, which included raising £3,000 for the building of London's famous Haymarket Theatre in 1705.]

No select social group was more on the tongues of the Town during the early years of the eighteenth century than the Kit-Cat Club. There were among its number such gallants as Somerset and Manchester, such statesmen as Godolphin and Halifax, such warriors as Marlborough and Sir Richard Temple, and such poets as Walsh, Garth, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Steele, and Addison. Not too far in the background, there lurked always the enigmatic figure of Jacob Tonson, the publisher, whose presence in such a company is the less easily understood the more one abandons oneself to the conflicting contemporary explanations of his connection with the august society. The choicer anecdotes of the members, the famous epigram of Arbuthnot, and the verses written by the Kit-Cat men with diamonds upon their wine glasses have been quoted often enough that the scenes at the club meetings can easily be conjured up.

One phase of the society's activity, however, has been almost completely ignored—namely, its concern with the London stage during the first decade of the century. Although the traces of this interest in the drama are somewhat scattered, they are unmistakable; and the trail itself is worth following.

On April 9, 1705, was opened the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. This important theatrical event was brought about by the competition which had been long in progress between the playhouses of Lincoln's Inn and Drury Lane. In describing the struggles of Betterton's company against their more advantageously situated rivals, Colley Cibber gives the following account of the result:

To recover them therefore, to their due Estimation, a new Project was form'd, of building them a stately Theatre, in the Hay-Market, by Sir John Vanbrugh, for which he rais'd a Subscription of thirty Persons of Quality, at one hundred Pounds each, in Consideration whereof every Subscriber, for his own Life, was to be admitted, to whatever Entertainments should be publickly perform'd there, without farther Payment for his Entrance. Of this Theatre, I saw the first Stone laid, on which was inscrib'd The little Whig, in Honour to a Lady of extraordinary Beauty, then the celebrated Toast, and Pride of that Party.¹

The inscription to the “Little Whig” at once suggests the gallants of the Kit-Cat Club, which at this time numbered approximately thirty; for the Countess of Sunderland, who was so toasted, was a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, himself a Kit-Cat member, and was a favourite among the distinguished Whigs who made up the society.²

The evidence as to the identity of the “thirty persons of quality” mentioned by Cibber is not confined to this tribute to one of the club's toasts. Shortly after the establishment of Vanbrugh's theatre a slender pamphlet appeared under the title, “A Kit-Kat C——b Describ'd.” In drawing a satiric portrait of a typical member of the order, the author remarked:

He Subscribes largely to the Building of the New Playhouse, to shew his Aversion to Prophaneness and Immorality … :

and a little farther on:

He … imagines no ane [sic] will doubt his Conversion from a Gentleman of Indifferent Abilities into a States-Man, after he has been a Principal Contributor towards the Transforming a Stable into a Theatre.³

The connection between the club and the new playhouse is here plain enough.

Even more definite in asserting the relation is Charles Leslie's Rehearsal of May 12, 1705. After an introductory thrust at the opposition of the Whig Party toward the established Church, the Tory journalist points to the activities of the club by way of illustration.

The Kit-Cat Clubb is now grown Famous and Notorious, all over the Kingdom. And they have Built a Temple for their Dagon, the new Play-House in the Hay-Market. The Foundation was laid with great Solemnity, by a Noble Babe of Grace. And over or under the Foundation Stone is a Plate of Silver, on which is Graven Kit Cat on the one side, and Little Whigg on the other. … And there was such Zeal shew'd, and all Purses open to carry on this Work, that it was almost as soon Finish'd as Begun.⁴

In concluding his attack, Leslie quotes from the “Prologue Spoken at the First Opening of the Queen's New Theatre in the Hay-Market,” which was “said to be Written by Dr. G[ar]th, Chaplain to Kit-Kat, an Open and Profess'd Enemy to all Religion.” This prologue appeared in at least two broadsides during the year 1705. In the margin of one of them, opposite the second verse of the couplet,

More sure Presages from these Walls we find
By Beauty founded, and by Witt design'd,

there is printed the note, “Lady H——— G———n.” The lady in question can easily be identified with the “Lady H. Godolphin”⁵ in whose honour Arthur Maynwaring had inscribed a verse upon a wine-glass at the Kit-Cat Club two years before.

The most graphic bit of information regarding the presence of the members at the Haymarket Theatre is furnished by Thomas Brown's Amusements Serious and Comical, Calculated for the Meridian of London, which has a satiric description of a playhouse. The edition of 1700 does not so much as mention the Kit-Cat Club, but in the revised form which appeared in the third volume of Brown's works in 1707-1708 the following addition was made:

The L——— D——— is known by his Ribbon, and T[om] D[urfey] or some other Impertinent Poet talking Nonsence to him; and the L—————— by sitting on the Kitcat side, and Jacob T[onson] standing Doorkeeper for him. …⁶

The date of the revision is significant. Since the opening of the new theatre, the Kit-Cats had apparently been availing themselves of their privilege of attending the performances on the strength of their subscriptions; and from Brown's remark it seems that a special section of the theatre was regularly allotted to them.

There is evidence, even earlier than this, that the Kit-Cat men were habitués of the theatre. The often quoted passage in the prologue to Burnaby's Reform'd Wife (1700) implies as much, by bidding for their favour in a vague description of their meetings.

Often for change the meanest things are good,
Thus tho' the Town all delicates afford,
A Kit-cat is a Supper for a Lord.(7)
But if your Nicer tast resolves to Day,
To have no relish for our Author's Play.
Place some diverting Scene before your Mind,
And think of that, to which you will be kind.
So thus when heavily the moments pass,
Toaster's to Circulate the lazy Glass
By nameing some bright Nymph their draughts refine,
And taste at once the joys of Love and Wine.(8)

Another early indication of the attendance of the Kit-Cats at the theatre appears in a broadside poem entitled The Patentee, which was printed shortly after the death of Dryden. By a general agreement, the leading theatres of London had decided to honour the great dramatist by suspending their activities on the day of his funeral. When, therefore, the mercenary lessee of Dorset-Garden let out that theatre for bear-baiting on May 13, 1700, there was great indignation in theatrical circles. The Patentee was the result. Although the whole of the little satire is of interest to the stage historian, the only passage bearing directly upon the Kit-Cat Club is the following:

Butchers and Bailiffs now the Boxes fill,
Where Ladies Eyes were Instruments to kill,
Where Kit-Cats sate, and Toasters would be seen,
These swoln with Wit, and those with Letch'ry lean.

Thus, in the first years of its existence, the club is linked with the theatre on the occasion of the funeral of the leading contributor to the drama of the preceding generation.

One other link between the Kit-Cat Club and Dryden's funeral is worth noting here, because it seems to have escaped the dramatist's biographers. An unpublished letter from Edward Hinton, at Westminster, to his cousin, the Reverend John Cooper, dated May 14, [1700], states that “Dryden was buried by the Bishop of Rochester at the Abbey on Monday; that the Kit-Cat Club were at the charge of his funeral, which was not great, and that Mr. Montague had engaged to build him a fine monument.”⁹ The letter adds the better known information that “Dr. Garth made a Latin speech, and threw away some words and a great deal of false Latin in praise of the poet.” So varied and inaccurate were the contemporary accounts of Dryden's funeral that such statements are naturally to be viewed with some suspicion. The fact, however, that Montague, Garth, and Tonson, all of whom were Kit-Cat members, are known to have been prominent at the poet's obsequies lends countenance to Hinton's statement.

The club's interest in the theatre did not cease with the building of the Haymarket. When not long after its opening that playhouse turned to the production of opera, for which it was better adapted than for plays, the Kit-Cat Club continued its patronage; and we find Thomas Durfey hopefully dedicating his musical entertainment called “Wonders in the Sun, or the Kingdom of the Birds” (1706), “To the Right Noble, Honourable and Ingenious Patrons of Poetry, Musick, & c., The Celebrated Society of the Kit-Cat-Club.” What may have been a club transaction in the interest of the opera appears in the letters of Vanbrugh to the Earl of Manchester in 1707-1708. Since the Earl, a fellow-member of the society, was travelling in Italy at that time, Vanbrugh commissioned him in behalf of the theatre to employ two or three Italian singers for the coming season, in order to make the most of the tremendous vogue that Valentini was having in London.

That the theatrical activities of the Kit-Cats continued at least to the year 1709 is suggested by the well-known instance of their patronage given subsequently by Pope to Spence. “The paper was all in Lord Hallifax's handwriting,” says Spence, “of a subscription of four hundred guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, and was dated 1709.”¹⁰ The document itself seems to have been lost, and with it all means of discovering the destination of the four hundred guineas. It may, however, have been to this appropriation that Mary Astell referred in the same year when she prefaced her Bart'lemy Fair with a scathingly ironic dedication to the Kit-Cats. The passage is as follows:

They of the club who desire to be more taken notice of, contribute perhaps to the building or repair of a Church, and shew their Value of Religion by the Proportion of their Offerings to the Temple and their Bounty to the Theatre.¹¹

Beyond this point it is difficult to trace the relations between the club and the drama. During “the four last years of the reign of Queen Anne” the party struggle was so bitter and the unanimously Whiggish Kit-Cat Club so loyal to its cause that the energies of the members were bent on politics, probably to the exclusion of theatrical projects. All that is certain is that this group of statesmen, gallants, and wits were responsible for the building of the Haymarket Theatre, that they honoured it frequently with their presence, and that they were the active patrons of certain dramatists. How much the playwrights of the club governed their policies and who were the recipients of their bounty for “good comedies” are questions which cannot be easily answered until the re-appearance of the lost paper described by Pope.

Notes

1. Colley Cibber, Autobiography (1740), pp. 257-258.

2. Two toasts to Lady Sunderland, one anonymous and one by Lord Halifax, appear in the collection of “Verses Written for the Toasting-Glasses of the Kit-Cat Club, in the year 1703,” which are printed in Dryden's Miscellanies, Fifth Part (1716), pp. 60-70.

3. A Kit-Kat c——b Describ'd (1705), pp. 2, 3.

4. Rehearsal No. 41.

5. Lady Henrietta, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, married Francis Godolphin in 1699.

6. Thomas Brown, Works (1707-1708), iii, 41.

7. The reference is, of course, to the favourite dish of the club, the Kit-Cat pies, which were named after their maker, Christopher Cat.

8. Charles Burnaby, The Reform'd Wife (1700), sg. A4.

9. Historical MSS. Commission, Appendix to the Fifth Report, pp. 333, 359-360.

10. Spence's Anecdotes (ed. John Underhill, 1890), p. 110.

11. Mary Astell, Bart'lemy Fair (1709), pp. 12-13.