“Hoc Fonte derivata libertas
In Patriam, Populumq: fluxit.”
“From this fam’d Fountain Freedom flow’d,
For Britain’s and the People’s good.”
In this tavern, Law, subsequently famous as the Mississippi schemer, quarrelled with the magnificent and mysterious Beau Wilson; they left the house, adjourned to Bloomsbury Square, and fought a duel, in which the Beau was killed. The Kit Cat Club, in winter, used to meet at this house. This club was first established in an obscure house in Shire Lane; it consisted of thirty-nine distinguished noblemen or gentlemen, zealously attached to the Protestant succession of the house of Hanover. Among the members were the Dukes of Richmond, Devonshire, Marlborough, Somerset, Grafton, Newcastle, and Dorset, the Earls of Sunderland and Manchester, some lords, and Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney; Lord Mohun (implicated in the murder of Mountford the actor, and killed in a duel by the Duke of Hamilton) was also a member.
“The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berwick were entered of it, Jacob [Tonson, the secretary] said he saw they were just going to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man who would do that would cut a man’s throat.”[698]
Tonson, for fulfilling the duties of this honorary office, was presented with the portraits of all the members. After Jacob’s death, his brother Richard removed the pictures to his residence at Water Oakley, near Windsor. A list of them is to be found in Bray’s “History of Surrey,” vol. iii., p. 318. Forty-three of them have been engraved by Faber in mezzotint. The name of the club is said to have been derived from the first landlord, who was called Christopher Cat; he excelled in the making of mutton-pies, which were named after him Kit Cat, and were the standard dish of the club.
“Here did th’ assembly’s title first arise,
And Kit Cat’s wits sprung first from Kit Cat’s pies.”
Next door to the Fountain Tavern lived Charles Lillie, the celebrated snuff-seller of the Spectators and Tatlers, but “he was burnt out when he began to have a reputation in his way.”—(Tatler, xcii.)
The Fountain and Bear is a sign named in the following quaint imprint:—
“A Present for Teeming Women, or Scripture Directions for Women with childe; how to prepare for the hour of Travel. Written first for the private use of a Gentlewoman of quality in the West, and now published for the common good by John Oliver, less than the least of saints. Sold by Mary Rothwell, at the Fountain and Bear, in Cheapside, 1663.”
The Sun and the Moon have been considered as signs of Pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana. Whether or no this conjecture be true, would be difficult to prove, but certain it is that they rank among the oldest and most common signs, not only in England but on the Continent. Early in the sixteenth century the French poet Desiré Arthus wrote in his “Loyaulté Consciencieuse des Taverniers:”—