Gibbon writes to Lord Sheffield in 1773, 'You know Lord Holland is paying Charles Fox's debts. They amount to L140,000.'(125)
(125) Timbs, Club Life in London.
His love of play was desperate. A few evenings before he moved the repeal of the Marriage Act, in February, 1772, he had been at Brompton on two errands,—one to consult Justice Fielding on the penal laws, the other to borrow L10,000, which he brought to town at the hazard of being robbed. He played admirably both at Whist and Piquet,—with such skill, indeed, that by the general admission of Brookes' Club, he might have made four thousand pounds a-year, as they calculated, at these games, if he could have confined himself to them. But his misfortune arose from playing games of chance, particularly at Faro.
After eating and drinking plentifully, he would sit down at the Faro table, and invariably rose a loser. Once, indeed, and once only, he won about eight thousand pounds in the course of a single evening. Part of the money he paid to his creditors, and the remainder he lost almost immediately.
Before he attained his thirtieth year he had completely dissipated everything that he could either command or could procure by the most ruinous expedients. He had even undergone, at times, many of the severest privations incidental to the vicissitudes that attend a gamester's progress; frequently wanting money to defray the common daily wants of the most pressing nature. Topham Beauclerc, who lived much in Fox's society, declared that no man could form an idea of the extremities to which he had been driven to raise money, often losing his last guinea at the Faro table. The very sedan-chairmen, whom he was unable to pay, used to dun him for arrears. In 1781, he might be considered as an extinct volcano,—for the pecuniary aliment that had fed the flame was long consumed. Yet he even then occupied a house or lodgings in St James's Street, close to Brookes', where he passed almost every hour which was not devoted to the House of Commons. Brookes' was then the rallying point or rendezvous of the Opposition, where Faro, Whist, and supper prolonged the night, the principal members of the minority in both Houses met, in order to compare their information, or to concert and mature their parliamentary measures. Great sums were then borrowed of Jews at exorbitant premiums.
His brother Stephen was enormously fat; George Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with Shylocks, as he could give them pounds of flesh.
Walpole, in 1781, walking up St James's Street, saw a cart at Fox's door, with copper and an old chest of drawers, loading. His success at Faro had awakened a host of creditors; but, unless his bank had swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not have yielded a half-penny apiece for each. Epsom too had been unpropitious; and one creditor had actually seized and carried off Fox's goods, which did not seem worth removing. Yet, shortly after this, whom should Walpole find sauntering by his own door but Fox, who came up and talked to him at the coach window, on the Marriage Bill, with as much sang-froid as if he knew nothing of what had happened. Doubtless this indifference was to be attributed quite as much to the callousness of the reckless gambler as to anything that might be called 'philosophy.'
It seems clear that the ruling passion of Fox was partly owing to the lax training of his father, who, by his lavish allowances, not only fostered his propensity to play, but had also been accustomed to give him, when a mere boy, money to amuse himself at the gaming table. According to Chesterfield, the first Lord Holland 'had no fixed principles in religion or morality,' and he censures him to his son for being 'too unwary in ridiculing and exposing them.' He gave full swing to Charles in his youth. 'Let nothing be done,' said his lordship, 'to break his spirit, the world will do that for him.' At his death, in 1774, he left him L154,000 to pay his debts; it was all 'bespoke,' and Fox soon became as deeply pledged as before.(126)
(126) Timbs, ubi supra. There is a mistake in the anecdote respecting Fox's duel with Mr Adam (not Adams), as related by Mr Timbs in his amusing book of the Clubs. The challenge was in consequence of some words uttered by Fox in parliament, and not on account of some remark on Government powder, to which Fox wittily alluded, after the duel, saying—'Egad, Adam, you would have killed me if it had not been Government powder.' See Gilchrist, Ordeals, Millingen, Hist. of Duelling, ii., and Steinmetz, Romance of Duelling, ii.
The following are authentic anecdotes of Fox, as a gambler.