Lord Palmerston defended it manfully before the committee appointed really for its destruction. He said it did a great deal of good—much more good than all the gambling hells of London did harm. Whether his lordship contended that there was no betting carried on at Crockford's I am not prepared to say, but when evidence is given before Parliamentary Committees it is sometimes difficult to understand its exact meaning. Palmerston, however, positively said, without any doubt as to his meaning, that candidates were not elected in order that they might be plucked of every feather they possessed, and that any one who maintained the contrary was slandering one of the most respectable clubs in London. Some men would rather have pulled down St. Paul's than Crockford's.
It was the very perfection of a club, said the statesman, and its principal game was chicken hazard. What could be stronger evidence than that of its usefulness and respectability? At this game they usually lost all they had, of little consequence to those who could not do better with their property, and perhaps the best thing for the country, because when it got into better hands it stood some chance of being applied to more legitimate purposes.
After a while Crockford quarrelled with his partner, and they separated.
Whatever men may say in these days against an institution which flourished in those, ex-Prime Ministers, Dukes, Earls, and ex-Lord Chancellors, as well as future Ministers of State and future Judges, belonged to it, or sought eagerly for admission to its membership. To be under the shadow of the fishmonger was greatness itself.
At the mention of the name of Crockford's a procession of the greatest men of the day passes before my eyes; their name would be legion as to numbers, but an army of devoted patriots I should call them in every other sense, for they were English to the backbone, whether gamblers or saints.
Of course there were some amongst them, as in every large body of men, who were not so desirable to know as you could wish; but they were easy to avoid and at all times an interesting study.
There were wise men and self-deluded fools, manly, well-bred men, and effeminate, conceited coxcombs, who wore stays and did up their back hair, used paint, and daubed their cheeks with violet powder. These men, while they had it, planked down their money with the longest possible odds against them. There was one who was the very opposite to these in the person of old Squire Osbaldistone. True, he had squandered more money than any one had ever seen outside the Bank of England, but he had done it like a gentleman and not like a fool. A real grand man was the old squire, and I enjoyed many a walk with him over Newmarket Heath, listening to his amusing anecdotes, his delightful humour and brilliant wit. His manner was so buoyant that no one could have believed he had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, but he had, without compunction or regret.
The novelist and the painter could artistically describe Squire Osbaldistone. I can only say he was a "fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time." It was in a billiard-room at Leamington where I first met him, and as he was as indifferent a player as you could meet, he thought himself one of the best that ever handled a cue.
I neither played chicken hazard nor any other game, but enjoyed myself in seeing others play, and in picking up crumbs of knowledge which I made good use of in my profession.
The institution was not established for the benefit of science or literature, except that kind of literature which goes by the name of bookmaking. Its founder was a veritable dunce, but he was the cleverest of bookmakers, and made more by it in one night than all the authors of that day in their lives. One hundred thousand pounds in one night was not bad evidence of his calculation of chances and his general knowledge of mankind.