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

Congreve's wit quickly made him many friends among his fellow students—several of whom would end up as his fellow Kit-Cats in the years ahead. He went drinking with them in the self-consciously literary taverns and coffee houses of Covent Garden, northwest of the Temple. In that neighbourhood, according to one Kit-Cat poet, lawyers traded their robes for the lace coats of dandies, country girls lost their noses to syphilis, ‘Poets canvass the Affairs of State’, and all classes ‘blend and jostle into Harmony’. 25

In the centre of Covent Garden was Will's Coffee House, where Dryden held court among literati of all political shades. Congreve was probably introduced to this circle by one of the other ageing Restoration dramatists of London: Thomas Southerne or William Wycherley, whom Congreve knew through some cousins. Dryden's court at Will's was imperious: those allowed to take a pinch from his snuffbox comprised his inner circle, while his special chair had a prescribed place by the fire in winter and on the balcony in summer, which he called ‘his winter and his summer seat’. 26 Yet, at the same time, Dryden carried himself with a charming humility that impressed Congreve deeply: Dryden was, Congreve remembered, ‘of all the Men that ever I knew, one of the most Modest’. 27 The next generation of writers would say much the same of Congreve.

Dryden soon declared ‘entire affection’ for Congreve: ‘So much the sweetness of your manners move / We cannot envy you, because we love,’ he wrote. 28 Congreve, in return, said he was ‘as intimately acquainted with Mr Dryden as the great Disproportion in our Years could allow’, concluding quite simply that he ‘loved’ the old man. 29 Congreve showed his Staffordshire manuscript to Dryden, who declared he had never seen ‘such a first play in his life’, but added that ‘it would be a pity to have it miscarry for want of a little assistance’. What the comedy, entitled The Old Batchelor , needed, Dryden declared, was only ‘the fashionable cut of the town’. 30 Though ostensibly a plot of romantic intrigues, the real seduction of the play lies in the enviably quick wit exchanged between its male characters—it is a love letter to the urbane world Congreve must have imagined in his teens and in which he was now becoming accepted. Taking Dryden's suggestions on board, Congreve spent summer 1692 in Derbyshire reworking the text. By Michaelmas, thanks to Dryden's endorsements, Congreve was directing rehearsals of The Old Batchelor at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane.

It was likely during these rehearsals that Congreve fell in love with the woman who would become his muse throughout the next decade: the actress Anne Bracegirdle, or ‘Bracey’. Since adolescence, Bracey had acted under the tutelage of Mr and Mrs Betterton, two experienced members of the United Company, the theatre company based at the Theatre Royal. A brunette with dark sparkling eyes, a blushing complexion and a miraculously perfect set of even white teeth, it was said of Bracey that ‘few Spectators that were not past it could behold her without Desire’. 31 Congreve met her when she was ‘blooming to her Maturity’ 32 and already a star.

It was more respectable to claim infatuation with Bracey than with most actresses, since she was reputed to be as chaste as the virgins she played. She lived with her mother in rented lodgings on Howard Street, where Congreve paid drawing-room visits. If their Northamptonshire family was related to the Staffordshire Bracegirdles, they may even have been distantly related to Congreve. But away from the decorum of Howard Street, backstage at the theatre, Congreve pursued Bracey with fervour, writing her a love poem that lamented her chastity:

Would I were free from this Restraint,

Or else had hopes to win her;

Would she could make of me a Saint,

Or I of her a Sinner. 33

The Old Batchelor opened in March 1693 to a ‘Torrent of Applause’ that would have fulfilled any young writer's most immodest fantasies. 34 The debut was such a success that ‘many persons of Quality cannot have a Seat, all the places having been bespoken many days since’. 35 Jacob Tonson needed no further persuasion to become Congreve's publisher. Tonson printed, then quickly reprinted, the text of The Old Batchelor ; he would thereafter hold exclusive rights to all Congreve's plays.

Around Michaelmas 1693, Tonson moved from above his shop in Chancery Lane to a house at the south side of Fleet Street, near the gate of Inner Temple. Soon after, according to poll tax records, Congreve moved out of Crane Court and became Tonson's lodger at this Fleet Street house. The two men, publisher and author, lived together, along with their several domestic servants, for seven years, until 1700. A later imaginary dialogue, written by a mutual friend of theirs, has Tonson exclaiming to Congreve that during these Fleet Street days, ‘While I partook your wine, your wit and mirth, / I was the happiest creature on God's earth!’ 36

As Congreve's Old Batchelor had its debut on the London stage, 29-year-old John Vanbrugh arrived in the city, in circumstances unlike those of most other ambitious young newcomers. His boat had come from France, where since 1688 Vanbrugh had spent the best part of his twenties, detained without trial and on charges that had been forgotten almost as soon as the key turned in his cell door. The French had arrested Vanbrugh because they had miscalculated the status of his family, believing he would make a valuable bargaining chip to trade for a high-profile French prisoner. Though Vanbrugh's mother did have various noble relations, his late father had been a merchant in Chester, trading in property, lead, grain and Caribbean sugar, and his grandfather was a penniless Flemish refugee. When Vanbrugh's father died soon after the Revolution, Vanbrugh had inherited only a small sum and the burden of responsibility for his numerous siblings.

Some of Vanbrugh's captivity was spent in the Bastille, where his health suffered. Now, in 1693, having been traded for an insignificant Frenchman thanks to his mother's tireless lobbying, he returned to England a free man and, to use his own phrase, as ‘sound as a roach’. 37 Imprisonment was a formative experience for Vanbrugh: it gave him a real appreciation of what arbitrary government could mean, and a violent aversion to boredom. He was determined not to waste another minute of his life.

After his return from France, Vanbrugh stayed in London for only a year before leaving ‘that uneasy theatre of noise’ 38 to join a marine regiment. Purchasing an officer's commission both advanced his social position and promised a secure income. In wartime, however, it was also an act of patriotism: Captain Vanbrugh saw action at a disastrous naval battle and was lucky not to be recaptured by the French. He borrowed some money from a fellow army officer, which he repaid when back in London by writing a play for the Theatre Royal, where his creditor was a patentee. The Relapse opened there in November 1696 and proved an overnight sensation, reviving the sinking fortunes of the United Company and more than repaying Vanbrugh's debt. Its success inevitably introduced Vanbrugh to Tonson and the coveted cultural patrons—like Somers—for whom Tonson acted as gatekeeper and broker. Congreve and Vanbrugh therefore started climbing ‘Jacob's ladder’ to fame and fortune as undeclared rivals, with only three years between their brilliant entrances into the London theatre world and Jacob Tonson's circle of highbrow friends. Soon, however, Tonson would find a solution to make the way less steep for them both: he and his patrons would found the Kit-Cat Club—an institution which would support the two authors throughout the rest of their lives.