The Union, which was founded in this century, was a regular gambling-club. It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office, Pall Mall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the Bishop of Winchester.
In the early days of this century the most notorious gambling-club was Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a fishmonger, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But, having made money by betting, 'he gave up,' as a recent writer on 'The Gambling World' says, 'selling soles and salmon, and went in for catching fish, confining his operations to gudgeons and flat-fish'; or, in other words, he established a gambling-house, first by taking over Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won a great deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year and failed. Crockford removed to St. James's Street, where he built the magnificent club-house which bore his name. It was erected at a cost of upwards of £100,000, and, in its vast proportions and palatial decorations, surpassed anything of the kind ever seen in London. To support such an establishment required a large income; yet Crockford made it, for the highest play was encouraged at his card-tables, but especially at the hazard-tables, where Crockford nightly took his stand, prepared for all comers. And he was successful, and became a millionaire. When he died he left £700,000, and he had lost as much in mining and other speculations. His death was hastened, it is said, by excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf. He retired from the management of the club in 1840, and died in 1844. The club was soon after closed, and after a few years' interval was reopened as the Naval, Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into dining-rooms, called the Wellington. Later on it was taken by a joint-stock company as an auction-room, and now it is again a club-house, known as the Devonshire Club.
We referred above to Watier's Club. It was established in 1807, at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, and high play was the chief pursuit of its members. 'Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his 'Curiosities of London,' 'lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves.' But the pace was too fast. The club did not last under its original patronage, and it was then, when it was moribund, taken over by Crockford. At this club, also, macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks's.
One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous gambling is the disreputable company into which it often throws a gentleman.
'That Marquis, who is now familiar grown
With every reprobate about the town....
Now, sad transition! all his lordship's nights
Are passed with blacklegs and with parasites..
The rage of gaming and the circling glass
Eradicate distinction in each class;
For he who scarce a dinner can afford
Is equal in importance with my lord.'
This is just what happened when gambling-hells were openly flourishing in London, and what happens now when gambling-clubs abound, and are almost daily raided by the police, when some actually respectable people are found mixed up with the rascaldom which supports these clubs. A perfect mania seems to have seized the lower orders of our day to gamble; but formerly, for instance, in Walpole's time, in the latter half of the last century, the upper classes were the worst offenders, of which the just-mentioned statesman and epistolary chronicler of small-beer, which, however, by long keeping has acquired a strong and lasting flavour, gives us many proofs. 'Lord Sandwich,' he reports, 'goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [of Cumberland], and, as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his court—and fortune—carries a box and dice in his pocket; and so they throw a main whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every green hill and under every green tree.' Five years later, at a magnificent ball and supper at Bedford House, 'the Duke was playing at hazard with a great heap of gold before him. Somebody said he looked like the prodigal son and the fatted calf both.' Under such circumstances it could not fail that swindlers par excellence sometimes found their way among the royal and noble gamblers. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet who would be hanged. He and a lady, 'dressed foreign, as a Princess of the House of Brandenburg,' cheated Lord Castledurrow (Baron Ashbrook) and Captain Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet at Ranelagh, and addressed him thus: 'Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night. Since then I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore I desire to have no further acquaintance with you.' The Baronet took the money with a respectful bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without further ceremony jumped into the coach. Walpole writes to Mann, in 1750, that 'Jemmy Lumley last week had a party of whist at his own house: the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Bijean, and Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening till twelve next day, Jemmy never winning one rubber, and rising a loser of £2,000.... He fancied himself cheated and would not pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises ... and he promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her sister. As he went to the rendezvous his chaise was stopped, and he was advised by someone not to proceed. But proceed he did, and in the garden he found Mrs. Mackenzy. She asked him whether he was going to pay, and, on his declining to do so, the fair virago took a horsewhip from beneath her hoop, and fell upon him with the utmost vehemence.'
Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefariousness of their devotion to gambling. When a waiter at Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery, George Selwyn said: 'What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate?' Certes, some of the highwaymen in that prison were not such robbers and scoundrels as some of the aristocratic members of those clubs. When, in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake in London, predicted to happen in that year, 'Lady Catherine Pelham,' Walpole tells us, 'Lady James Arundell, and Lord and Lady Galway ... go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are going to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back, I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.' When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion of public terror, possibly caused by their own mismanagement of public affairs, hypocritically and most impertinently ordered a day of fasting and humiliation, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off.
There was one famous gambling-house we find we have not yet mentioned, viz., Shaver's Hall, which occupied the whole of the southern side of Coventry Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane (now Oxenden Street), and derived its name from the barber of Lord Pembroke, who built it out of his earnings. Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down to the south. The place was built about the year 1650, and the tennis-court belonging to it till recently might still be seen in St. James's Street.
II.
WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN.