SOURCE: Hodges, John C. “Among the Kit-Kats.” In William Congreve, the Man: A Biography from New Sources, pp. 93-108. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1941.

In the following excerpt, Hodges discusses the importance of the Kit-Cat Club to William Congreve, noting that many of the playwright's close relationships with other members endured throughout his life.

I

When Congreve was not at home in the Strand, he was frequently to be found at the country seat of a fellow Kit-Cat.

“The Kit-cat Club, generally mentioned as a set of wits, [were] in reality the patriots that saved Britain.”¹ When Horace Walpole wrote this, he was thinking of the long, persistent fight made by his distinquished father and other members of the club for the principles of the Revolution of 1688. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne, while the Tory ministry vacillated between the House of Hanover and the Pretender...