CROCKFORD'S—"THE HOOKS AND EYES"—DOUGLAS JERROLD.
"Crockford's" has become a mere reminiscence, but worthy, in many respects, of being preserved as part of the history of London. It was historic in many of its associations as well as its incidents, and men who made history as well as those who wrote it met at Crockford's. It was celebrated alike for high play and high company.
As I never had a real passion for gambling, it was to me a place of great enjoyment, for there were some of the celebrated men of the day amongst its invited guests—wits, poets, novelists, playwrights, painters—in fact, all who had distinguished themselves in art or literature, law, science, or learning of any kind were always welcomed.
It was as pleasant a lounge as any in London, not excepting Tattersall's, which has equal claims on my memory. At Crockford's I met Captain H——, a wonderful gamester; he died early, but not too early for his welfare, seeing that all the chances of life are against the gambler. Padwick, too, I knew; he entertained with refined and lavish hospitality. He was one of the winners in the game of life who did not die early. He told good stories and put much interest into them. He knew Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner—a sporting man of the first water, who poisoned John Parsons Cook for the sake of his winnings, and his wife and mother, it was said, for the sake of the insurance on their lives. Padwick knew everybody's deeds and misdeeds who sought to increase his wealth on the turf or at the gaming-table. He was a just and honourable man, but without any sympathy for fools.
Others I could recall by the score, men of character and of no character. Some I knew afterwards professionally, and especially one, who, although convicted of crime, escaped by collusion the sentence justly passed upon him. Another was a man of position without character, whose evil habits destroyed the talent that would have made him famous.
But I need not dwell on the manifold characters and scenes of Crockford's. There has been nothing like it either in its origin or its subsequent history. There will never be anything like it in an age of refinement and laws, which have been wisely passed for the protection of fools.
The founder of this fashionable gambling place was at one time a small fishmonger in either the Strand or Fleet Street, I forget which, and lived there till he removed to St. James's Street, where he became a fisher of men, but never in any other than an honourable way.
"His Palace of Fortune" was of the grandest style of architectural beauty. It was one in which the worshippers of Fortune planked down the last acre of their patrimonial estates to propitiate the fickle goddess in the allurements of the gaming-table. But how can Fortune herself give two to one on all comers? Some must lose to pay the winners.
At this palatial abode the most sumptuous repasts were prepared by the most celebrated chefs the world could produce, and were eaten by the most fastidious and expensive gourmands Nature ever created; gamblers of the most distinguished and the most disreputable characters; gentlemen of the latest pattern and the oldest school, the worst of men and the best, sporting politicians and political sportsmen, place-hunters, Ministers, ex-Ministers, scions of old families and ancient pedigrees, as well as men of new families and no pedigrees, who purchased, as we do now, a coat of arms at the Heralds' tailoring shop, and selected their ancestors in Wardour Street.
Only the wealthy could be members of this club, for only the wealthy could lose money and pay it. Landscape painters might be guests, but it was only the man who belonged to the landscape who could belong to the body that gambled for it. Young barristers might visit the place, possibly with an eye to business, but only members of large practice or Judges could be members of this society.