Continuing its uphill way a little farther, Heath Street terminates upon the edge of the Heath. The high wall extending some distance along the east side of the street incloses the garden and pleasure-grounds of what was once the Upper Flask Tavern, but is now a private residence so grave and respectable in appearance that no one would suspect the rather rackety reputation of its youth. A line of fine old elm-trees with bulged and warted trunks, interspersed with younger trees, stands in formal row at the side of the house looking to the Heath. In the first period of Hampstead’s popularity as a spa, the Upper Flask was famous for its fine gardens—‘a sort of _petit_ Vauxhall’—on gala nights, for the noble views from its upper windows, its good ales, fine wines, and cosy suppers, a little less severely simple than Sir Roger de Coverley’s. Especially was it famous as the summer meeting-place of the celebrated Kit-Cat Club,[118] a fact eloquent as to the excellence of its cellar and the skill of its _chef_. The club was first held at the Trumpet, at the west side of Shire Lane, St. Clement Danes, and subsequently at the Tavern in King Street, Westminster, near to which lived Christopher Kat, cook and confectioner, who supplied the members with pastry so excellent that, according to Bowyer, they complimented him by giving his name to the club. A wit has preserved in one of the many epigrams it gave rise to another origin for the name, and tells us it arose from the liberal yet somewhat selfish chivalry of the members, who, to add to the number of their toasts, were wont to include all the beauties, and were not fastidious as to the matter of age: ‘Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its name Few critics can unriddle; Some say from pastrycook it came, And some from Cat-and-Fiddle. ‘From no trim beau its name it boasts, Gray statesman, or green wits, But from its pell-mell pack of toasts, Of old Cats and young Kits!’ We know that the club was Whig in politics, and had for its object ‘the Protestant succession of the House of Hanover.’ It was also eminently literary, counting amongst the thirty-nine noblemen and gentlemen of whom it consisted some of the finest scholars, wits, and poets of the day, so that from its commencement in 1700[119] (some writers say 1688) to its close in 1720 it was a power politically and intellectually in the land. Its secretary, Jacob Tonson—‘genial Jacob,’ Pope calls him[120]—one of a family of remarkable printers and publishers, survived the dissolution of the club sixteen years, dying March 24, 1736, at Ledbury in Herefordshire. Kneller painted the portraits of the members, which at the breaking up of the club were given to the secretary, who left them to his great-nephew. [Illustration: _Swift._] In 1833 they were in the possession of William Baker, Esq., of Crayfordbury.[121]