Edmund Kean, always low in his tastes, used to fly the society of men like Lord Byron to come hither and smoke and drink. The dress, the ceremony, and the compulsory good behaviour of respectable society made him silent and melancholy.[148] He used to say that noblemen talked such nonsense about the stage, and that only literary men understood the subject.
The Kit-Cat Club was instituted in 1700, and died away about the year 1720. There were originally thirty-nine members, and they increased gradually to the forty-eight whose portraits Kneller painted for their secretary, Jacob Tonson, Dryden’s bookseller. Their earliest rendezvous was at the house of a pastry-cook, one Christopher Cat, in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar. When he grew wealthier, the club removed with him to the Fountain Tavern in the Strand. The club derived its name from the celebrated mutton pie,[149] which had been christened after its maker.[150] The first members were those Whig patriots who brought about the Revolution and drove out King James. Their object was the encouragement of literature and the fine arts, and the diffusion of loyalty to the House of Hanover. They elected their “toast” for the year by ballot. The lady’s name, when chosen, was written on the club drinking-glasses with a diamond. Among the more celebrated of the members of this club were Kneller, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, Steele, Lord Mohun, the Duke of Wharton, Sir Robert Walpole, the Earl of Burlington, the Earl of Bath, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, the proud Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Newcastle.
In summer the Club met at Tonson’s house at Barn Elms in Surrey, or at the Upper Flask Tavern at Hampstead.[151] There seems to have been always some doubt about the derivation of the name of the club; for an epigram still extant, written either by Pope or Arbuthnot, attributes the name to the fact of the members toasting “old Cats and young kits.” Mr. Defoe mentions the landlord’s name as Christopher Catt,[152] while Ned Ward says that though his name was Christopher, he lived at the sign of the Cat and Fiddle.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was once brought by her father to this club when a child, and made the toast for the year. “Petted, praised, fondled, and fed with sweetmeats,” she used to say in her old age that it was the happiest day of her life![153]
No. 59 is Coutts’s Bank. It was built for Mr. Coutts, in 1768, by the Adam brothers—to whom we are indebted for the Adelphi. The old house of the firm, of the date of Queen Anne, was situated in St. Martin’s Lane. The present house contains some fine marble chimney-pieces of the Cipriani and Bacon school. The dining-room is hung with quaint Chinese subjects on paper, sent to Mr. Coutts by Lord Macartney, while on his embassy to China, in 1792-95. In another room hang portraits of some early friends of this son of Mammon, including Dr. Armstrong, the poet and physician, Fuseli’s friend, by Reynolds. The strong rooms consist of cloistered vaults, wherein the noblemen and rich commoners who bank in the house deposit patents, title-deeds, and plate of fabulous value.
Mr. Coutts was the son of a Dundee merchant. His first wife was a servant, a Lancashire labourer’s offspring. He had three daughters, one of whom became the wife of Sir Francis Burdett, a second Countess of Guilford, and a third Marchioness of Bute. On becoming acquainted with Miss Mellon, and inducing her to leave the stage to avoid perpetual insults, Mr. Coutts bought for her of Sir W. Vane Tempest, a small villa called Holly Lodge, at the foot of Highgate Hill, for which he gave £25,000. His banking-house strong rooms alone cost £10,000 building. The first deposit in the enlarged house was the diamond aigrette that the Grand Signor had placed in Nelson’s hat. Mr. Coutts, though very charitable, was precise and exact. On one occasion, there being a deficit of 2s. 10d. in the day’s accounts, the clerks were detained for hours, or, as is said, all night. One of Coutts’s clerks, who took the western walk, was discovered to be missing with £17,000.[154] Rewards were offered, and the town placarded, but all in vain. The next day, however, the note-case arrived from Southampton. The clerk’s story was, that on his way through Piccadilly, being seized with a stupor, he had got into a coach in order to secure the money. He had remained insensible the whole journey, and had awoke at Southampton. Mr. Coutts gave him a handsome sum from his private purse, but dismissed him.
Coutts’s Bank stands on nearly the centre of the site of the “New Exchange.” When the Adelphi was built in Durham Gardens, Mr. Coutts purchased a vista to prevent his view being interrupted, stipulating that the new street leading to the entrance should face this opening; and on this space, up to the level of the Strand, he built his strong rooms. Some years after, wishing to enlarge them, he erected over the office a counting-house and a set of offices extending from William Street to Robert Street, and threw a stone bridge over William Street to connect the front and back premises.
Mr. Coutts, late in life, married Harriet Mellon, who, after his death, became the wife of the Duke of St. Albans, a descendant of Nell Gwynn, that light-hearted wanton, whom nobody could hate. “Miss Mellon,” says Leigh Hunt, “was arch and agreeable on the stage; she had no genius; but then she had fine eyes and a good-humoured mouth.” The same gay writer describes her when young as bustling about at sea-ports, selling tickets for her benefit-night; but then, says the kindly apologist for everybody, she had been left with a mother to support.[155]
Edmund Kean, the great tragedian, was lodging at 21 Cecil Street when, poor and unknown, he made his first great triumph as Shylock, at Drury Lane; a few days after, his mantelpiece was strewn with bank-notes, and his son Charles was seen sitting on the floor playing with a heap of guineas.[156] This great actor brought the theatre, in sixty-eight nights of 1814, no less than twenty thousand pounds.
The last house on the west side of Cecil Street was inhabited in 1706 by Lord Gray, and in 1721-4 by the Archbishop of York. In the opposite house lived for many years Major-General Sir William Congreve, the inventor of the rockets which bear his name, and a great friend and companion of George IV., to whom he is said to have borne a striking personal resemblance. Sir William was a descendant of Congreve the dramatist; and he was the inventor of a number of successful projects and contrivances, among which may be mentioned the engines employed in dredging the Thames. The east side of Cecil Street is in the Savoy precinct, the west in the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.