


The
famous Kit
Kat Competition
The
name Kit-Cat Club is obscure in origin. In 1705 Thomas Hearne
wrote: The Kit Cat Club got its Name from Christopher Catling.
[Note, a Pudding Pye man.]
(Kit (= Christopher) Cat (= Catling), the keeper of the 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.
To add yourself to the list of champions all you have to do
is solve this riddle:
What divides into both 2 and 4 with
nothing left over?
Answers on an email please to competition@johnsonsvending.com
