The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation. Ophelia Field

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СКАЧАТЬ The Kit-Cats drew from French comedies, architecture and gardening manuals, just as they imported other Continental models from Venice or Vienna, but they aimed to modify all these European imports and so establish a more ‘modern’ and distinctively English brand of neoclassicism. Vanbrugh tried to temper the baroque style, associated as it was with Europe's absolute monarchies, with historical English elements—for example, long Jacobean galleries—and with numerous visual allusions to the Roman republic that the Whigs considered the classical parallel to their constitutional monarchy.

      The question of why the Kit-Cat Club felt such an urgent need to define England's national style is a complex one. There was a sense that pre-Revolutionary elites had been lapdogs to the French, a sense that the large number of immigrants in London and at Court during William's reign had further diluted English identity, a sense that European baroque architecture had left England lagging behind, and a wish, in light of England's rising commercial power, to hold their heads high and build properties exuding new-found national self-confidence. There was no English school of architecture to constrain Vanbrugh, and he was lucky that his Kit-Cat commissioners gave him great imaginative freedom during a time of stylistic transition. The Kit-Cat Club directed him only by endorsing his search for a new, distinctively English style. Perhaps his own sense of coming from a family of recent migrants sharpened his personal passion for this quest.

      One of the most radical, innovative aspects of Castle Howard was its location—that someone should build such a palatial home on a windswept hillside in Yorkshire. Carlisle saw himself as extending the reach of civilization by importing Continental styles he had seen on his travels into the depths of the English countryside, for his neighbours' edification. The project brought direct economic benefits to the local craftsmen it employed, and the emulation of such great Whig houses by more minor nobility and gentry—such as the building of Beningborough by John Bourchier in Yorkshire in 1716—was to have trickle-down economic benefits.

      Castle Howard was also a Whiggish project in the sense that its contents boasted of English trade and manufacture. Its interior was started after 1706, though interior designs had been a part of the house's overall plan from the beginning, with Vanbrugh commissioning Hawksmoor to design the ‘Eating Room’ interior, for example. This was a new way of working, reflecting the fact that a private citizen's private rooms could now make public statements, as only royal palaces' interiors had previously done. Carlisle engaged several London merchants to do the upholstering and make the furniture for his rooms, and collected delftware and other exotic decorative items from the London importers. The house's bedchambers were hung with oriental silk damasks, its dressing rooms with India wallpapers, and the Earl's Grand Cabinet with angora mohair imported by the Turkey Company. The whole house, in other words, became a receptacle for the luxuries of British trade, but with its owner constantly aiming to emphasize that he was a collector and connoisseur, not just a greedy shopper.

      The magnificent building, as it rose, provoked the ire of some smaller Yorkshire landowners, resentful of raised wartime tax ation and of peers like Carlisle who were aligned to the City of London's interests. Had they known the extent to which Carlisle's income had dwindled, and how watchful he had to be of expenditure on building a house financed largely through credit and card winnings, they might have felt less aggrieved.

      Carlisle had the power to bestow heraldic rewards through the College of Arms, and therefore was able to pay Vanbrugh for building Castle Howard by making him a ‘Carlisle Herald’ in June 1703, an appointment from which Vanbrugh was then promoted to the lucrative place of ‘Clarenceux King of Arms’. This required only that Vanbrugh occasionally appear at the College of Arms in ornate costume. A contemporary's reaction to news of the appointment was pragmatic: ‘Now Van can build houses.’²⁰ Suspicions that Carlisle and Vanbrugh were treating the heralds' internal hierarchy with cynical disrespect, however, were confirmed when Vanbrugh later referred to this appointment as ‘a Place I got in jest’.²¹ To Tonson in Amsterdam, Vanbrugh confided that several Kit-Cats had ridiculed his heraldic investiture with their own drunken ceremony. Carlisle's brother-inlaw, neighbour and fellow Kit-Cat, Algernon Capel, 2nd Earl of Essex, had done the honours, said Vanbrugh, ‘with a whole Bowl of wine about my ears instead of half a Spoonful’.²²

      In Amsterdam, Tonson was missing Vanbrugh's company, being stuck instead with that of Addison, recently returned to Holland after his tour of the German Courts. Since Addison would never support himself outside academia solely on the proceeds of Latin translations, Tonson tried to think of a day-job for his author. Reviewing his portfolio of Kit-Cat patrons, Tonson knew that only Somerset was flourishing politically under Anne's Tory-led ministry, and so enquired whether Addison might become an escort and tutor for Somerset's son. When Somerset replied positively, offering a salary of 100 guineas (some £14,000 today), Addison wrote back: ‘As for the Recompense that is proposed to me, I must take the Liberty to assure your Grace that I should not see my account in it but in the hopes that I have to recommend myself to your Grace's favour and approbation.’²³

      Somerset took offence at this hint that he would owe Addison future patronage and that the salary was ungenerous; he withdrew the offer. Addison, never one to offend the rich and powerful intentionally, hurriedly apologized, but it was too late. Tonson, having stuck his neck out for Addison in seeking the favour from Somerset, was unimpressed by how it had been handled. While he appreciated Addison's intellect, Tonson never warmed to Addison as to Congreve and Vanbrugh, and incidents like this help explain why.²⁴

      Addison was tiring of expat society in Holland, focused as it was on purely material, mercantile and military concerns. He complained of being forced to become conversant with the market price for nutmeg and pepper because, ‘since the coming in of the East India fleet, our conversation here runs altogether on Spice’.²⁵ By September 1703, he was back in London after five years of travel. Tonson probably returned on the same ship, bringing a supply of Dutch type that was to improve the appearance of English printed books dramatically, as well as various purchases on behalf of his favourite Kit-Cats: a copy of Palladio's architectural plans for Vanbrugh, ivory mathematical instruments for Halifax, and a set of new linen for Congreve.

      Following Addison's return to London, he rented a garret on the street today known as the Haymarket (thanks to then being the location of one of London's largest stables and hay markets). It neighboured Dr Garth's handsome, fully staffed townhouse on the street's eastern side. Addison's despondency and anxiety about his career and income at this date were understandable. He had given up a safe path in the Church for the ambition of becoming a government servant and writer, but neither of his recent prose publications on Italian tourism or Roman medals was attracting much interest beyond his friends. Somers, Halifax and Manchester remained Addison's nominal patrons, having invested in his European education, but there was no fresh idea of how to employ him since he had blown his chance with Somerset. Addison lived off his small inheritance, conscious of being the eldest yet least settled of his siblings, at 32 the walking embodiment of unfulfilled intellectual potential.

      Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (who had high standards) declared Addison the best company in the world, and Steele, always Addison's biggest fan, asked Congreve to agree that an evening alone with Addison was like ‘the Pleasure of conversing with an intimate Acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their Wit and Nature heightened with Humour, more exquisite and delightful than any other Man ever possessed’.²⁶ Yet Addison had a natural aversion to large gatherings, saying there was ‘no such thing as real conversation between more than two persons’.²⁷ It was less a matter of principle than personality. He described himself, using a metaphor from Congreve's Double Dealer, as a man who could draw a bill СКАЧАТЬ