Kit-Cat Club

The Kit-Cat Club (sometimes Kit-Kat Club) was an early 18th-century English club in London with strong political and literary associations, committed to the furtherance of Whig objectives, meeting at the Trumpet tavern in London, and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.

The first meetings were held at a tavern in Shire Lane (parallel with Bell Yard and now covered by the Royal Courts of Justice) run by an innkeeper called Christopher Catt. He gave his name to the mutton pies known as "Kit Cats" from which the name of the club is derived.

The club later moved to the Fountain Tavern on The Strand (now the site of Simpson's-in-the-Strand), and latterly into a room especially built for the purpose at Barn Elms, the home of the secretary Jacob Tonson. In summer, the club met at the Upper Flask, Hampstead Heath.

The origin of the name "Kit-Cat Club" is unclear. In 1705 Thomas Hearne wrote: "The Kit Cat Club got its name from Christopher Catling, using a branch of the theopolyism. [Note, a Pudding Pye man.]." Other sources give his surname as Catt (or some variant such as Cat or Katt:) John Timbs ("Club Life of London"), Ophelia Field ("The Kit-Kat Club"), John Macky ("A Journey Through England.")

A nickname for Christopher is "Kit." Christopher Catt was the keeper of a pie-house in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar, where the club originally met. His famous mutton pies ("Kit-Kats") were named after him, and formed a standing dish at meetings of the club; the pie is thus itself sometimes regarded (e.g., by Addison in the Spectator) as the origin of the club's name.

It is possible that the club began at the end of the 17th century as the so-called "Order of the Toast". Indeed, a famous characteristic of the Kit-Kat was its toasting-glasses, used for drinking the healths of the reigning beauties of the day, on which were engraved verses in their praise. If so, one can place the date before 1699, when Elkanah Settle wrote a poem "To the most renowned the President and the rest of the Knights of the most Noble Order of the Toast." It was this very habit of "toasting" that led Dr. Arbuthnot to produce the following epigram, which hints at yet another possible origin of the Club's name:

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