Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography; Oldfield, Anne, 1683-1730; Theater -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century
It seems that the Club had its first headquarters in Shire Lane, near
Temple Bar, at the establishment of Christopher Cat, a pastrycook
who helped to enliven the inner man by delicious meat pies dubbed
"Kit-Cats." Hence the name of that notable coterie of Whigs which
included Addison and Dick Steele, Congreve and His Grace of
Devonshire.[A]
[Footnote A: Our modern celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and
drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the
learned and illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the
buffoon, can all of them bear a part. The Kit-Cat itself is said to
have taken its original from a mutton pie. The Beef-Steak and October
clubs are neither of them averse to eating and drinking, if we may
form a judgment of them from their respective titles.--ADDISON in the
_Spectator_.]
Maynwaring came of good English stock, and in early life showed the
results of his relationship to the aristocratic house of Cholmondeley
by supporting the lost cause of James II. So fervent an admirer was he
of that apology for royalty that he took up the pen, if not the sword,
in his behalf, and steeped the mightier weapon with satirical ink when
he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The King of Hearts." Rumour paid to
the young author an unintentional compliment by insisting that the
brochure came from the great Mr. Dryden, but that genius denied the
soft impeachment while gracefully praising the unknown writer.
This pursuit of Jacobitism was varied by the study of law--a study
"sometimes relieved with a temporary application to music and
poetry"--and when the disconsolate Arthur had lost his father, and
thereby gained 800 pounds a year, he drowned his sorrows by an almost
exclusive devotion to "society and pleasantry." We are told[A] that on
the ratification of the Peace of Ryswick he went to Paris, where
he was exceedingly well received in consequence of the numerous
introductory letters which had been furnished him from various
quarters. He there contracted an intimacy with Boileau,--
"Whose rash envy would allow
No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre,
That whetstone of the teeth, monotony in wire."
[Footnote A: "Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons comprising the Kit-Cat
Club."]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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