During the reign of George II. Barn Elms was the scene of many a merry entertainment, in which the great musician Handel sometimes took part, for it was tenanted by the famous Master of Revels at the {194} English court, Count Heidegger, who was noted for his skill in improvising startling effects. He was succeeded on his death by the wealthy banker Sir Richard Hoare, and in the early nineteenth century it was the home of the editor of the _Weekly Political Register_, William Cobbett, who was aptly called the Ishmael of politics, for his hand was often against every other member of his own party. Somewhat later Barn Elms was rented by Sir Lancelot Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor of England, who was a noted swimmer and keenly interested in river sports. At his hospitable table were several times entertained the crews of the Oxford and Cambridge boats on the evenings of the annual race, that was rowed for the first time from Putney to Mortlake in 1848, the earlier contests having taken place on another course. The historic Barn Elms house has long since ceased to be, but the smaller residence attached to it, which was known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as Queen Elizabeth's Dairy, is still standing. In it lived for many years, and died in 1735, the eminent bookseller Jacob Tonson, founder of the famous Kit Cat Club, to which belonged all the chief literary men of the day, including Sir Robert Walpole, Congreve, Dryden, Steele, and Addison, for whose accommodation Tonson added a gallery to his house which was hung with their portraits, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was then court painter. On the death of the owner the gallery was pulled down, and the portraits were {195} removed to the seat of his family at Bayfordbury, but the surroundings of the meeting-place of the Club are even now much what they were in the eighteenth century. [Sidenote: Barnes]