Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the history of last-century London had come into existence in 1714. The most famous of them either were not yet founded, or lived only as coffee or chocolate houses. There had been literary associations like the "Scriblerus" Club, which was started by Swift, and was finally dissolved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The {74} "Saturday" and "Brothers" Clubs had been political societies, at both of which Swift was all powerful, but they, too, were no more. The "Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic origin and enigmatic name, with all its loyalty to Hanover and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele, Addison, and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and met no more in Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the "Upper Flask" Inn at Hampstead. It had not lived in vain, according to Walpole, who declared that its patriots had saved the country. Within its rooms the evil-omened Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown off his chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was secretary to the club, querulously insisted that the man who would do that would cut a man's throat, and Lord Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson's judgment. If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Tory patriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do the same. The October Club came first into importance in the latest years of Anne, although it had existed since the last decade of the seventeenth century. The stout Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, in narrow, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink October ale, under Dahl's portrait of Queen Anne, and to trouble with their fierce, uncompromising Jacobitism the fluctuating purposes of Harley and the crafty counsels of St. John. The genius of Swift tempered their hot zeal with the cool air of his "advice." Then the wilder spirits seceded, and formed the March Club, which retained all the angry Jacobinism of the parent body, but lost all its importance. There were wilder associations, like the Hell-fire Club, which, under the presidency of the Duke of Wharton, was distinguished for the desperate attempts it made to justify its name. But it was, like its president, short lived and soon forgotten. There are fantastic rumors of a Calves' Head Club, organized in mockery of all kings, and especially of the royal martyrs. It was said by obscure pamphleteers to be founded by John Milton; but whether the body ever had any real existence seems now to be uncertain. {75} [Sidenote: 1714--Coffee-houses]