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 noble 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.
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