As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning Walk from London to Kew,' in 1816, gives an account of his visit to it.
'A lane,' he says, 'brought me to Barn Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker, of London. The family were not at home, but on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great naïveté, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Kat Club as accustomed to assemble here, but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, and I was told that no such club was held there; but perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the club that assembles at the public-house on the common.... One of them exclaimed: "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room." "Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested, then, to be shown to this room, distinguished by so high an appellation, when I was conducted across a detached garden and brought to a handsome erection in the architectural style of the early part of the last century, evidently the establishment of the Kit-Kat Club! ... The man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and showed me the once elegant hall filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and accumulated rubbish. On the right the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house. The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, presenting pendant cobwebs that hung from the lofty ceiling, and which seemed to be deserted even by the spiders.... I ascended the staircase; here I found the Kit-Kat Club-room nearly as it existed in its days of service. It was about 18 feet high, 40 feet long, and 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the day, but the whole was tumbling to pieces from the effects of the dry rot.... The marks and sizes [of the portraits] were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guide of the hanger.... On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the hall below ... he told me that his master intended to pull [the room] down.... Mr. Tonson's house had a few years since been taken down.'
In 'A Pilgrimage from London to Woolstrope,' communicated to the Monthly Magazine of June, 1818, the then home of the Kit-Kat Club pictures is thus referred to: 'I reached Hartingfordbury, and the magnificent seat of Wm. Baker, Esq.... Here I paid my homage to the forty-two portraits of the Kit Kat Club, and found myself in a splendid apartment. They [the portraits] are all in as fine a condition as though they had been painted but last year. I regretted, however, that the characteristic features are lost or disguised by the enormous perukes which disfigured the human countenance in their age. The whole looked like a wiggery, and the portrait of Tonson in his velvet cap was the only relief afforded by the entire assemblage.'
But even the Kit-Kat Club in time
'Descended from its high politic flavour,
Down to a sentimental toasting savour.'
Byron improved.
The club was invaded by a spirit of gallantry. When a number of fashionable gentlemen meet, politics are all very well for a time; horses will afford the next subject of entertainment, but the women must come in in the end. And so the members of the Kit-Kat Club established the custom of every year electing some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year the members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a diamond on the club glasses, or a separate bowl was dedicated to her worship, and the lines engraved thereon. Some of the most celebrated of the toasts had their pictures hung up in the club-room. How Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when only eight years old, was introduced and declared the beauty of the year, has often been told. Of course, to our more refined ideas of propriety the conduct of her father, the Duke of Kingston, in thus thrusting his infant daughter into the society of his roistering boon-companions, cannot but appear as highly reprehensible. Among the more celebrated of the toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough: Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, generally known as the Little Whig, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, and the niece of Sir Isaac Newton were two others. Others were the Duchesses of Bolton, St. Albans, Richmond and Beaufort; also Lady Molyneux, who, Walpole says, died smoking a pipe.
We will conclude our account of this club with a few stray notes.
Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no uncommon hour for the club to break up. Addison and Steele usually got drunk, so did Dr. Garth, the poet laureate of the club, wherefore a Tory lampooner said that at this club the youth of Anne's reign learned
'To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.'
When Tonson had gone to live at Barn Elms, the members generally held their meetings at his house. In the summer they would resort to the Upper Flask tavern, near Hampstead Heath; but this practice did not continue long: there was too much difficulty in getting home after strong potations. The Upper Flask eventually became a private house, and was occupied by George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, till his death. The Kit-Kat Club died out before the year 1727, and we now take leave of it.