Origins
The origin of the name "Kit-Cat Club" is unclear. In 1705 Thomas Hearne wrote: "The Kit Cat Club got its Name from Christopher Catling. "; i.e., Christopher is abbreviated as "Kit" and Catling as "Cat". Kit Catling was the keeper of a pie-house in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar, where the club originally met.
On the other hand, one of his mutton pies known as a "Kit-Kat", always formed a standing dish at meetings of the club and the pie is thus itself sometimes regarded (e.g., by Addison in the Spectator) as the origin of the club's name.
It is possible that the Club began at the end of the 17th century as the so-called "Order of the Toast". Indeed, a famous characteristic of the Kit-Kat was its toasting-glasses, used for drinking the healths of the reigning beauties of the day, on which were engraved verses in their praise. If so, one can place the date before 1699, when Elkanah Settle wrote a poem "To the most renowned the President and the rest of the Knights of the most Noble Order of the Toast." It was this very habit of "toasting" that led Dr. Arbuthnot to produce the following epigram, which hints at yet another possible origin of the Club's name: "Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name / Few critics can unriddle / Some say from pastrycook it came / And some from Cat and Fiddle. / From no trim beaus its name it boasts / Grey statesmen or green wits / But from the pell-mell pack of toasts / Of old Cats and young Kits."
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