Kit Kat Club

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Kit Kat Club. An early 18th-cent. London dining club which took its name from Christopher Cat, who kept the tavern in which it first met. Although not a political club, its members were prominent in the Whig Party and as well as the writers Congreve, Addison, and Pope, and artists Vanbrugh and Kneller, included Robert Walpole, Newcastle, and John Churchill (Marlborough). Kneller was commissioned to paint portraits of the members. All but one of the 42 pictures, now in the National Portrait Gallery, measure 36 inches by 28 inches and the term kit-cat came to refer to a canvas or portrait of this size.

June Cochrane