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.
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