Kit Kat Club, formed circ 1770, is said to have first met at an obscure house in Shire-lane. The society consisted of thirty-nine distinguished noblemen and gentlemen zealously attached to the House of Hanover; among whom were the Dukes of Somerset, Richmond, Grafton, Devonshire, and Marlborough, and (after the accession of George I) the Duke of Newcastle, the earls of Dorset, Sunderland, Manchester, Wharton, and Kingston; Lords Halifax and Somers; Sir Robert Walpole, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Granville, Addison , Garth, Maynwaring, Stepney, and Walsh.
Ned Ward asserts that the Club derived its singular appelation from a person of the christian name of Christopher, who lived at the sign of the Cat and Fiddle.
Hence the well known epigram "On the Toasts of the Kit-Kat Club" attributed to Pope, but believed to be by Arbuthnot
To understand this epigram the reader must bear in mind that the custom of toasting ladies in regular succession after dinner had only recently been introduced, and that on the toasting glasses of the Kit-Kat club verses were engraved in praise of the ladies to whom the glasses were thus consecrated.
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