STORIES FOR ALL MOODS.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 12, 4 June 1920, Page 15

STORIES FOR ALL MOODS.

THE KIT-CAT CLUB. The most celebrated of all the clubs of the eighteenth century, the golden age of such associations, was the "Kit-Cat," originally a company of budding wits and po,ets, afterwards one of the most powerful politieal coteries of its time. It took its name from the pastrycook, Christopher Catt, whose shop in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar, was the club's first roeetingplace. The club was fathered by Jacob Tonson, the book-seller — "left-legged Jacob," who later, when his fosterling had become a creature of importance, built a room for the meetings of the club at his house at Barn Elms. For the decoration of this room Sir Godfrey Kneller paint|ed portraits of the members, and as the place was not high enough to take , a half-length they were drawn on a sliorter canvas, thirty-six by twenty-eight inches, just long enough to include a hand ; a size ever since known to artists as "Kit-Cat size." LITERARY TURNPENNIES. Tonson himself was a man of business ability, with enough literary perception to drive a good bargain with his authors, and not enough conscience to prevent his making a good thing out of it. The 18th century bookseller — who united the callings of bookseller and the modern publisher — was a being much lampooned by the writers, who, rightly or wrongly, considered themselves his victims. Contemporary literature is full of more or less scurrilous portraits of them. One biographer (of later date) comments on Tonson and his kind as "a set of heavy, vulgar, and ignorant traders. Notwithstanding their opportunities of associating with the more enlightened orders of the community, they never seeiir to have acquired either information or polish. Jacob Tonson was a happy specimen of the literaiy turnpennies of this day." The Kit-Cat Club was celebrated for its custom of "toasting" ladies after dinner, the "toast" for the year being elected by ballot. Her name was written — usually enshrined in verse — with a diamond on one of the club's drinking glasses. "The hieroglyphic of the diamond- is to show her that her value is imaginary • and that of the glass, to acquaint her that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her."

BUT NOT HIS PIIYSIC. Sir Godfrey Kneller, the immortalizer of the members of the club, was a man of a certain humour, but excessively vain, and of a gross and rather profane wit. Most of his bons mots are not nowadays quotable, but a milder specimen may amuse. The. servants of Dr. Ratcliffe, .his nextdoor neighhour in Great Queen street, were in the habit of purloining many beautiful flowers from his garden to which he used to devote no inconsiderable portion of ius attention.. Exasperated at their frequent depredations, he seait a message to the doctor tlxat I13 must for the future shut up the door into his garden, through which he permitted hin: to have a passage, on account of the ill-conduct of his domestics. The doctor peevishly rejoined : "Tell him he ma.y do qnything with it but paint it." "And I," answered Sir Gcdfrey, "will take anything from the doctor but his physic." Kneller was celebrated— ^to the modern mind imduly so — as a portra.it painter, and the extent of his practice may be gauged by the fact that on his death he left 500 pictures unfinished. One of the most aristocratic of his Kit-Cat sitters was Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, known as "the proud Duke" from his haughty manners. Many stories are told of him, his pride and his exclusiveness, some ef them very entertaining. "MY LORD DUKE IS COMING." "Like a Turkish Bashaw, he made his servants acquainted with his wishes by signs. The country roads through which ho travelled were often cleared by avantcouriers before his approach, in order that he might pass without obstraction or observation 'Get out of the way,' said one of his people to a eountryman who was driving a hog along the path by which the Duke was to pass. 'Why ?' inquired the boor. 'Because my Lord Dulce is coming, *- and he does not like to be looked at,' rejoined the man. The clown, enraged at the imperious manner in which the mandate was urged, exclaimed, 'But I will see him, and my pig shall see him, too!' and seizing the animal by the ears, he held it up before him until his Grace and retinue were gone by." Some remarkable ancedotes, illustrative of the intolerable pride of the Duke of

Somerset, are related by various authorities. His second duchoss once familiarly tapped him on the shoulder with her fan, and when he turned ,?muid with a look of marked displeasure obseived, "My first duchess was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty." The two youngest of his daughfers were accustomed to stand and watch him alternately while he slept in an afternoon. On once occasion Lady Charlotte, feelmg herself fatigued, sat down. The duke waked unexpectedly and expressing his surprise at her disobedience, declared he would remember her want of decorum in his will. He left this daughter £20,000 less than her sister, SHOOT THE RUBBISH. He carried his eccentricities into public Jifer "King George having landed at Greenwicb, the Duke of Somerset was nominated one of the new Privy Council, and restored to the situation of Master of the Horse on September 27th, but threw it up on Octobcr 25th, with singular marks of indignation . Hawing commanded his servants to strip off the Royal and put on the family livery, he sent for a common dust-cart, and directed that all the badges of his office should he thrown into it; he then, followed by all his retinue and the aforesaid vehicle, proceeded to the eourtyard of St. James's Palace, and after ordering the driver to shoot the rulbbish, he stalked back indignantly to Northumberland House, accompanfcd by .the same cavalcade, . in precisely the form in which he had left it." Another illustrious member was John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, perhaps the most striking. of contemporary figures. A more contradictory personality a more notable blend of greatness and pettiness, never trod the stage of politics. Soldier, politician, and courtier, he still made mone^ his one aim in life, and to that c.raving his conflicting actionsmay be traced. Spence, on the authority of Pope, speaks of liim thus "Inconsistent as the Duke of Marlborough 's character may appear, yet it may be accounted for if we gauge ius actions by his reigning passion, which was the love of money. He endeavoured, at the same time, to be well with both Hanover and St. Germains; the plain meaiiing of whicb was only this, that he wanted to seeure tho vast riches he had amassed together, whichever should succeed. He was cairn in the heat- of the battle; and when he was so near being taken prisoner in Flanders he was quite unmoved. A MEAN PASSION. "It is true he was like to lose his life in the. one, and his liberty in the other ; but there was none of his money at stoke in either. This mean passion of that. great man operated very strongly in him in the very beginning of his life, and continued to the very end of it. One day, as he was looking over some papers in his escritoire with Lord Cadogan, he opened one of his drawers, took out a green purse, and tumecl some broad pieces out of it. After- viewing them for some time with a satisfaction that apepared visibly on his face " 'Cadogan,' said he, 'observe these pieces well ! they deserve to be observed ; there are just forty of them; 'tis the very first sum I ever got in niy life, and I have kept it always unbroken, from that time to this day.' This shows how early and how strongly this passion must have been engrafted upon him ; as another littl.e affair, which happened in his last decline at Bath, may serve (among many others) to show how miserably it continued to tbe end. He was playing there with Dean Jones at piquet for sixpence a game, they played a good while, and the Duke left off when winner oi one game. AND HE WALKED DOME. "Some time after he desired the Dean to pay him his sixpence ; the Dean said he had no silver ; the Duke asked it over and over, and at last desired that he would change a guinea to pay it him, because he should want it to pay the chair that carried him home. ~ The Dean, after so much pressing, did at last get cbange.; paid the Duke his sixpence; "observed him a little later leave the room, and declares that (after all the bustle he had made for his sixpence) the Duke actually walked home to save the little expense a chair would have put him to." Full of years and honours, successful in every ambition, ho died at seventy-two, leaving an immense fortune.