“One Night in Seven at this convenient seat
    Indulgent Bocaj did the Muses treat;
  Their Drink was gen’rous Wine and Kit-Cat’s Pyes their Meat. 
    Hence did th’ Assembly’s Title first arise,
    And Kit-Cat Wits spring first from Kit-Cat’s Pyes.”

About the year 1700 this gathering of wits produced a club in which the great Whig chiefs were associated with foremost Whig writers, Tonson being secretary.  It was as much literary as political, and its “toasting glasses,” each inscribed with lines to a reigning beauty, caused Arbuthnot to derive its value from “its pell mell pack of toasts.”

  Of old Cats and young Kits.

Tonson built a room for the Club at Barn Elms to which each member gave his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was himself a member.  The pictures were on a new-sized canvas adopted to the height of the walls, whence the name “Kit-Cat” came to be applied generally to three-quarter length portraits.—­HENRY MORLEY’S Notes on the Spectator.]

It is to be supposed that at some time or other the health of Mistress Oldfield was drunk by the Kit-Cats, whose custom of honouring womankind in this bibulous way may have given rise to Pope’s plaintive query: 

  “Say why are beauties prais’d and honoured most,
  The wise man’s passion, and the vain man’s toast? 
  Why deck’d with all that land and sea afford,
  Why Angels call’d, and angel-like adored?”

And if the actress was thus deified or spiritualised, who drained his glass more fervently than did Arthur Maynwaring?  For whatever may have been the faults of this dashing Whig, he had the courage of his sins, and took up his abode with Anne in the full light of day, as though a marriage ceremony were a bagatelle not worth the recollecting.  The world was forgiving, to be sure, nor is it probable that either one of this easily-mated pair suffered any loss of public esteem by the union.  Dukes—­nay, even Duchesses—­were glad to meet Nance, and Royalty allowed her to bask in the sunshine of its gracious approval.  “She was to be seen on the terrace at Windsor, walking with the consorts of dukes, and with countesses, and wives of English barons, and the whole gay group might be heard calling one another by their Christian names.”

No wonder that the women of fashion, none of them saints, loved Oldfield and winked at the elasticity of her moral ethics.  The dear creature was so bright in conversation, so full of espieglerie, and, still more important, she looked so charming in her succession of handsome toilettes, that she could be ever sure of a cordial welcome.  “Flavia,” as Steele calls her, “is ever well-dressed, and always the genteelest woman you meet, but the make of her mind very much contributes to the ornament of her body.  She has the greatest simplicity of manners of any of her sex.  This makes everything look native about her, and her clothes are so exactly