The Wits and Beaux of Society Part 9

Now, will any kind reader oblige me with a derivation of the word 'Club?' I doubt if it is easy to discover. But one thing is certain, whatever its origin, it is, in its present sense, purely English in idea and in existence. Dean Trench points this out, and, noting the fact that no other nation (he might have excepted the Chinese) has any word to express this kind of a.s.sociation, he has, with very pardonable natural pride, but unpardonably bad logic, inferred that the English are the most sociable people in the world. The contrary is true; nay, _was_ true, even in the days of Addison, Swift, Steele--even in the days of Johnson, Walpole, Selwyn; ay, at all time since we have been a nation.

The fact is, we are not the most sociable, but the most a.s.sociative race; and the establishment of clubs is a proof of it. We cannot, and never could, talk freely, comfortably, and generally, without a company for talking. Conversation has always been with us as much a business as railroad-making, or what not. It has always demanded certain accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work it up to the proper pitch. 'We all know' we are the cleverest and wittiest people under the sun; but then our wit has been stereotyped. France has no 'Joe Miller;' for a bon-mot there, however good, is only appreciated historically. Our wit is printed, not spoken; our best wits behind an inkhorn have sometimes been the veriest logs in society. On the Continent clubs were not called for, because society itself was the arena of conversation. In this country, on the other hand, a man could only chat when at his ease; could only be at his ease among those who agreed with him on the main points of religion and politics, and even then wanted the aid of a bottle to make him comfortable. Our want of sociability was the cause of our clubbing, and therefore the word 'club'

is purely English.

This was never so much the case as after the Restoration. Religion and politics never ran higher than when a monarch, who is said to have died a papist because he had no religion at all during his life, was brought back to supplant a furious puritanical Protectorate. Then, indeed, it was difficult for men of opposite parties to meet without bickering; and society demanded separate meeting-places for those who differed. The origin of clubs in this country is to be traced to two causes--the vehemence of religious and political partisanship, and the establishment of coffee-houses. These certainly gave the first idea of clubbery. The taverns which preceded them had given the English a zest for public life in a small way. 'The Mermaid' was, virtually, a club of wits long before the first real club was opened, and, like the clubs of the eighteenth century, it had its presiding geniuses in Shakespeare and Rare Ben.

The coffee-houses introduced somewhat more refinement and less exclusiveness. The oldest of these was the 'Grecian.' 'One Constantine, a Grecian,' advertised in 'The Intelligencer' of January 23rd, 1664-5, that 'the right coffee bery or chocolate,' might be had of him 'as cheap and as good as is anywhere to be had for money,' and soon after began to sell the said 'coffee bery' in small cups at his own establishment in Devereux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have news of 'Will's,'

the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity: and here was laid the first germ of that critical ac.u.men which has since become a distinguishing feature in English literature. Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold 'tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing, and travellers into those eastern countries;' and thus established the well-known 'Garraway's,' whither, in Defoe's day, 'foreign banquiers' and even ministers resorted, to drink the said beverage. 'Robin's,' 'Jonathan's,' and many another, were all opened about this time, and the rage for coffee-house life became general throughout the country.

In these places the company was of course of all cla.s.ses and colours; but, as the conversation was general, there was naturally at first a good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of peace and comfort, a man chose his place of resort according to his political principles; and a little later there were regular Whig and Tory coffee-houses. Thus, in Anne's day, 'The Cocoa-nut,' in St. James's Street, was reserved for Jacobites, while none but Whigs frequented 'The St James's.' Still there was not sufficient exclusiveness; and as early as in Charles II.'s reign men of peculiar opinions began to appropriate certain coffee-houses at certain hours, and to exclude from them all but approved members. Hence the origin of clubs.

The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed of some hundred and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country members of Parliament. They met at the 'Bell,' in King Street, Westminster, that street in which Spenser starved, and Dryden's brother kept a grocer's shop. A portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, hung in the club-room. This and the Kit-kat, the great Whig club, were chiefly reserved for politics; but the fashion of clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed by people of all fancies. No reader of the 'Spectator' can fail to remember the ridicule to which this was turned by descriptions of imaginary clubs for which the qualifications were absurd, and of which the business, on meeting, was preposterous nonsense of some kind. The idea of such fraternities, as the Club of Fat Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the Everlasting Club, the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and others, could only have been suggested by real clubs almost as ridiculous. The names, too, were almost as fantastical as those of the taverns in the previous century, which counted 'The Devil,' and 'The Heaven and h.e.l.l,' among their numbers. Many derived their t.i.tles from the standing dishes preferred at supper, the Beef-steak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie), for instance.

The Beef-steak Club, still in existence, was one of the most famous established in Anne's reign. It had at that time less of a political than a jovial character. Nothing but that excellent British fare, from which it took its name, was, at first, served at the supper-table. It was an a.s.semblage of wits of every station, and very jovial were they supposed to be when the juicy dish had been discussed. Early in the century, Estcourt, the actor, was made provider to this club, and wore a golden gridiron as a badge of office, and is thus alluded to in Dr.

King's 'Art of Cookery' (1709):--

'He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes, May be a fit companion o'er beef-stakes; His name may be to future times enrolled In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold.'

Estcourt was one of the best mimics of the day, and a keen satirist to boot; in fact he seems to have owed much of his success on the stage to his power of imitation, for while his own manner was inferior, he could at pleasure copy exactly that of any celebrated actor. He _would_ be a player. At fifteen he ran away from home, and joining a strolling company, acted Roxana in woman's clothes: his friends pursued him, and, changing his dress for that of a girl of the time, he tried to escape them, but in vain. The histrionic youth was captured, and bound apprentice in London town; the 'seven long years' of which did not cure him of the itch for acting. But he was too good a wit for the stage, and amused himself, though not always his audience, by interspersing his part with his own remarks. The great took him by the hand, and old Marlborough especially patronized him: he wrote a burlesque of the Italian operas then beginning to be in vogue; and died in 1712-13.

Estcourt was not the only actor belonging to the Beef-steak, nor even the only one who had concealed his s.e.x under emergency; Peg Woffington, who had made as good a boy as he had done a girl, was afterwards a member of this club.

In later years the beef-steak was cooked in a room at the top of Covent Garden Theatre, and counted many a celebrated wit among those who sat around its cheery dish. Wilkes the blasphemer, Churchill, and Lord Sandwich, were all members of it at the same time. Of the last, Walpole gives us information in 1763 at the time of Wilkes's duel with Martin in Hyde Park. He tells us that at the Beef-steak Club Lord Sandwich talked so profusely, 'that he drove harlequins out of the company.' To the honour of the club be it added, that his lordship was driven out after the harlequins, and finally expelled: it is sincerely to be hoped that Wilkes was sent after his lordship. This club is now represented by one held behind the Lyceum, with the thoroughly British motto, 'Beef and Liberty:' the name was happily chosen and therefore imitated. In the reign of George II. we meet with a 'Rump-steak, or Liberty Club;' and somehow steaks and liberty seem to be the two ideas most intimately a.s.sociated in the Britannic mind. Can any one explain it?

Other clubs there were under Anne,--political, critical, and hilarious--but the palm is undoubtedly carried off by the glorious Kit-kat.

It is not every eating-house that is immortalized by a Pope, though Tennyson has sung 'The c.o.c.k' with its 'plump head-waiter,' who, by the way, was mightily offended by the Laureate's verses--or pretended to be so--and thought it 'a great liberty of Mr. ----, Mr. ----, what is his name? to put respectable private characters into his books.' Pope, or some say Arbuthnot, explained the etymology of this club's extraordinary t.i.tle:--

'Whence deathless Kit-kat took its name, Few critics can unriddle: Some say from pastrycook it came, And some from Cat and Fiddle.

'From no trim beaux its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits; But from the pell-mell pack of toasts Of old cats and young kits.'

Probably enough the t.i.tle was. .h.i.t on a hap-hazard, and retained because it was singular, but as it has given a poet a theme, and a painter a name for pictures of a peculiar size, its etymology has become important. Some say that the pastry cook in Shire Lane, at whose house it was held, was named Christopher Katt. Some one or other was certainly celebrated for the manufacture of that forgotten delicacy, a mutton-pie, which acquired the name of a Kit-kat.

'A Kit-kat is a supper for a lord,'

says a comedy of 1700, and certes it afforded at this club evening nourishment for many a celebrated n.o.ble profligate of the day. The supposed sign of the Cat and Fiddle (Kitt), gave another solution, but after all, Pope's may be satisfactorily received.

The Kit-kat was, _par excellence_, the Whig Club of Queen Anne's time: it was established at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was then composed of thirty-nine members, among whom were the Dukes of Marlborough, Devonshire, Grafton, Richmond, and Somerset. In later days it numbered the greatest wits of the age, of whom anon.

This club was celebrated more than any for its _toasts_.

Now, if men must drink--and sure the vine was given us for use, I do not say for abuse--they had better make it an occasion of friendly intercourse; nothing can be more degraded than the solitary sanctimonious toping in which certain of our northern brethren are known to indulge. They had better give to the quaffing of that rich gift, sent to be a medicine for the mind, to raise us above the perpetual contemplation of worldly ills, as much of romance and elegance as possible. It is the opener of the heart, the awakener of n.o.bler feelings of generosity and love, the banisher of all that is narrow, and sordid, and selfish; the herald of all that is exalted in man. No wonder that the Greeks made a G.o.d of Bacchus, that the Hindu worshipped the mellow Soma, and that there has been scarce a poet who has not sung its praise.

There was some beauty in the feasts of the Greeks, when the goblet was really wreathed with flowers; and even the German student, dirty and drunken as he may be, removes half the stain from his orgies with the rich harmony of his songs, and the hearty good-fellowship of his toasts.

We drink still, perhaps we shall always drink till the end of time, but all the romance of the bowl is gone; the last trace of its beauty went with the frigid abandonment of the toast.

There was some excuse for wine when it brought out that now forgotten expression of good-will. Many a feud was reconciled in the clinking of gla.s.ses; just as many another was begun when the cup was drained too deeply. The first quarter of the last century saw the end of all the social glories of the wa.s.sail in this country, and though men drank as much fifty years later, all its poetry and romance had then disappeared.

It was still, however, the custom at that period to call on the name of some fair maiden, and sing her praises over the cup as it pa.s.sed. It was a point of honour for all the company to join the health. Some beauties became celebrated for the number of their toasts; some even standing toasts among certain sets. In the Kit-kat Club the custom was carried out by rule, and every member was compelled to name a beauty, whose claims to the honour were then discussed, and if her name was approved, a separate bowl was consecrated to her, and verses to her honour engraved on it. Some of the most celebrated toasts had even their portraits hung in the club-room, and it was no slight distinction to be the favourite of the Kit-kat. When only eight years old, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu enjoyed this privilege. Her father, the Lord Dorchester, afterwards Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, in a fit of caprice, proposed 'the pretty little child' as his toast. The other members, who had never seen her, objected; the Peer sent for her, and there could no longer be any question. The forward little girl was handed from knee to knee, petted, probably, by Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Garth, and many another famous wit. Another celebrated toast of the Kit-kat, mentioned by Walpole, was Lady Molyneux, who, he says, died smoking a pipe.

This club was no less celebrated for its portraits than for the ladies it honoured. They, the portraits, were all painted by Kneller, and all of one size, which thence got the name of Kit-kat; they were hung round the club-room. Jacob Tonson, the publisher, was secretary to the club.

Defoe tells us the Kit-kat held the first rank among the clubs of the early part of the last century, and certainly the names of its members comprise as many wits as we could expect to find collected in one society.

Addison must have been past forty when he became a member of the Kit-kat. His 'Cato' had won him the general applause of the Whig party, who could not allow so fine a writer to slip from among them. He had long, too, played the courtier, and was 'quite a gentleman.' A place among the exclusives of the Kit-kat was only the just reward of such attainments, and he had it. I shall not be asked to give a notice of a man so universally known, and one who ranks rather with the humorists than the wits. It will suffice to say, that it was not till _after_ the publication of the 'Spectator,' and some time after, that he joined our society.

Congreve I have chosen out of this set for a separate life, for this man happens to present a very average sample of all their peculiarities.

Congreve was a literary man, a poet, a wit, a beau, and--what unhappily is quite as much to the purpose--a profligate. The only point he, therefore, wanted in common with most of the members, was a t.i.tle; but few of the t.i.tled members combined as many good and bad qualities of the Kit-kat kind as did William Congreve.

Another dramatist, whose name seems to be inseparable from Congreve's, was that mixture of bad and good taste--Vanbrugh. The author of 'The Relapse,' the most licentious play ever acted;--the builder of Blenheim, the ugliest house ever erected, was a man of good family, and Walpole counts him among those who 'wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in the best company.' We doubt the logic of this; but if it hold, how is it that Van wrote plays which the best company, even at that age, condemned, and neither good nor bad company can read in the present day without being shocked? If the conversation of the Kit-kat was anything like that in this member's comedies, it must have been highly edifying.

However, I have no doubt Vanbrugh pa.s.sed for a gentleman, whatever his conversation, and he was certainly a wit, and apparently somewhat less licentious in his morals than the rest. Yet what Pope said of his literature may be said, too, of some acts of his life:--

'How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit.'

And his quarrel with 'Queen Sarah' of Marlborough, though the d.u.c.h.ess was by no means the most agreeable woman in the world to deal with, is not much to Van's honour. When the nation voted half a million to build that hideous ma.s.s of stone, the irregular and unsightly piling of which caused Walpole to say that the architect 'had emptied quarries, rather than built houses,' and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for the builder--

'Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee,'

Sarah haggled over 'seven-pence halfpenny a bushel;' Van retorted by calling her 'stupid and troublesome,' and 'that wicked woman of Marlborough,' and after the Duke's death, wrote that the Duke had left her 'twelve thousand pounds a-year to keep herself clean and go to law.'

Whether she employed any portion of it on the former object we do not pretend to say, but she certainly spent as much as a miser could on litigation, Van himself being one of the unfortunates she attacked in this way.

The events of Vanbrugh's life were varied. He began life in the army, but in 1697 gave the stage 'The Relapse.' It was sufficiently successful to induce him to follow it up with the 'Provoked Wife,' one of the wittiest pieces produced in those days. Charles, Earl of Carlisle, Deputy Earl Marshal, for whom he built Castle Howard, made him Clarencieux King-at-arms in 1704, and he was knighted by George I., 9th of September, 1714. In 1705 he joined Congreve in the management of the Haymarket, which he himself built. George I. made him Comptroller-general of the royal works. He had even an experience of the Bastille, where he was confined for sketching fortifications in France. He died in 1726, with the reputation of a good wit, and a bad architect. His conversation was, certainly, as light as his buildings were heavy.

Another member, almost as well known in his day, was Sir Samuel Garth, the physician, 'well-natured Garth,' as Pope called him. He won his fame by his satire on the apothecaries in the shape of a poem called 'The Dispensary.' When delivering the funeral oration over Dryden's body, which had been so long unburied that its odour began to be disagreeable, he mounted a tub, the top of which fell through and left the doctor in rather an awkward position. He gained admission to the Kit-kat in consequence of a vehement eulogy on King William which he had introduced into his Harveian oration in 1697.[13] It was Garth, too, who extemporized most of the verses which were inscribed on the toasting-gla.s.ses of their club, so that he may, _par excellence_, be considered the Kit-kat poet. He was the physician and friend of Marlborough, with whose sword he was knighted by George I., who made him his physician in ordinary. Garth was a very jovial man, and, some say, not a very religious one. Pope said he was as good a Christian as ever lived, 'without knowing it.' He certainly had no affectation of piety, and if charitable and good-natured acts could take a man to heaven, he deserved to go there. He had his doubts about faith, and is said to have died a Romanist. This he did in 1719, and the poor and the Kit-kat must both have felt his loss. He was perhaps more of a wit than a poet, although he has been cla.s.sed at times with Gray and Prior; he can scarcely take the same rank as other verse-making doctors, such as Akenside, Darwin, and Armstrong. He seems to have been an active, healthy man--perhaps too much so for a poet--for it is on record that he ran a match in the Mall with the Duke of Grafton, and beat him. He was fond, too, of a hard frost, and had a regular speech to introduce on that subject: 'Yes, sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, sir--very wholesome weather, sir--kills trees, sir--very good for man, sir.'

Old Marlborough had another intimate friend at the club, who was probably one of its earliest members. This was Arthur Maynwaring, a poet, too, in a way, but more celebrated at this time for his _liaison_ with Mrs. Oldfield, the famous but disreputable actress, with whom he fell in love when he was forty years old, and whom he instructed in the niceties of elocution, making her rehea.r.s.e her parts to him in private.

Maynwaring was born in 1668, educated at Oxford, and destined for the bar, for which he studied. He began life as a vehement Jacobite, and even supported that party in sundry pieces; but like some others, he was easily converted, when, on coming to town, he found it more fashionable to be a Whig. He held two or three posts under the Government, whose cause he now espoused: had the honour of the dedication of 'The Tatler'

to him by Steele, and died suddenly in 1712. He divided his fortune between his sister and his mistress, Mrs. Oldfield, and his son by the latter. Mrs. Oldfield must have grown rich in her sinful career, for she could afford, when ill, to refuse to take her salary from the theatre, though ent.i.tled to it. She acted best in Vanbrugh's 'Provoked Husband,'

so well, in fact, that the manager gave her an extra fifty pounds by way of acknowledgment.

Poetising seems to have been as much a polite accomplishment of that age as letter-writing was of a later, and a smattering of science is of the present day. Gentlemen tried to be poets, and poets gentlemen. The consequence was, that both made fools of themselves. Among the poetasters who belonged to the Kit-kat, we must mention Walsh, a country gentleman, member of Parliament, and very tolerable scholar. He dabbled in odes, elegies, epitaphs, and all that small fry of the muse which was then so plentiful. He wrote critical essays on Virgil, in which he tried to make out that the shepherds in the days of the Roman poet were very well-bred gentlemen of good education! He was a devoted admirer and friend of Dryden, and he encouraged Pope in his earlier career so kindly that the little viper actually praised him! Walsh died somewhere about 1709 in middle life.

We have not nearly done with the poets of the Kit-kat. A still smaller one than Walsh was Stepney, who, like Garth, had begun life as a violent Tory and turned coat when he found his interest lay the other way. He was well repaid, for from 1692 to 1706 he was sent on no less than eight diplomatic missions, chiefly to German courts. He owed this preferment to the good luck of having been a schoolfellow of Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax. He died about 1707, and had as grand a monument and epitaph in Westminster Abbey as if he had been a Milton or Dryden.

When you meet a dog trotting along the road, you naturally expect that his master is not far off. In the same way, where you find a poet, still more a poetaster, there you may feel certain you will light upon a patron. The Kit-kat was made up of Maecenases and their humble servants; and in the same club with Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the minor poets, we are not at all surprised to find Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke of Somerset, Halifax, and Somers.

Halifax was, _par excellence_, the Maecenas of his day, and Pope described him admirably in the character of Bufo:--

'Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill, Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill; _Fed with soft dedication_ all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song.'

The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, Smith, and a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on a higher pinnacle; and in return the powerful minister was not forgetful of the douceur which well-tuned verses were accustomed to receive. He himself had tried to be a poet, and in 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the Kit-kat. His lines to a Dowager Countess of ----, are good enough to make us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a specimen:--

'Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style; Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle!

Nature did ne'er so equally divide A female heart 'twixt piety and pride: Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day, And all in order at her toilet lay Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint, At once t'improve the sinner and the saint.'

A Maecenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well spoken of, and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, as well as a clever statesman. Halifax got his earldom and the garter from George I., and died, after enjoying them less than a year, in 1715.

Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was a.s.sociated in the impeachment case in 1701, was a far better man in every respect. His was probably the purest character among those of all the members of the Kit-kat. He was the son of a Worcester attorney, and born in 1652. He was educated at Trinity, Oxford, and rose purely by merit, distinguishing himself at the bar and on the bench, unwearied in his application to business, and an exact and upright judge. At school he was a terribly good boy, keeping to his book in play-hours. Throughout life his habits were simple and regular, and his character unblemished. He slept but little, and in later years had a reader to attend him at waking. With such habits he can scarcely have been a constant attender at the club; and as he died a bachelor, it would be curious to learn what ladies he selected for his toasts. In his latter years his mind was weakened, and he died in 1716 of apoplexy. Walpole calls him 'one of those divine men who, like a chapel in a palace, remained unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly.'

A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire Lane. In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of age, for its owner is past sixty; yet he is dressed in superb fashion; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been diligently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that of any young man present. I do not say it will be repeatable, for the talker belongs to a past age, even coa.r.s.er than that of the Kit-kat. He is Charles Sackville,[14] famous as a companion of the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous--or, rather, infamous--for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his verses, for his patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in early life, when Lord Buckhurst. Rochester called him