George III. invariably evinced a strong aversion to Fox, the secret of which it is easy to understand. His son, the Prince of Wales, threw himself into the arms of Fox, and this in the most undisguised manner. Fox lodged in St. James's-street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, had a levee of his followers, and of the members of the gaming club, at Brookes's, all his disciples. His bristly black person, and shagged breast quite open, and rarely purified by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen night-gown, and his bushy hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds, and with epicurean good-humour, did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the Crown attend his lessons, and imbibe them.
Fox's 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 ten thousand pounds, which he brought to town at the hazard of being robbed. Fox played admirably both at whist and piquet; with such skill, indeed, that by the general admission of Brookes's Club, he might have made four thousand pounds a year, as they calculated, at those games, if he could have confined himself to them. But his misfortune arose from playing games at chance, particularly at Faro. After eating and drinking plentifully, he sat down to the Faro table, and inevitably 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 away 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 annexed to the vicissitudes that mark 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, affirmed, that no man could form an idea of the extremities to which he had been driven in order to raise money, after losing his last guinea at the Faro table. He was reduced for successive days to such distress, as to borrow money from the waiters of Brookes's. The very chairmen, whom he was unable to pay, used to dun him for their 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 then occupied a house or lodgings in St. James's-street close to Brookes's, where he passed almost every hour which was not devoted to the House of Commons. Brookes's was then the rallying point or rendezvous of the Opposition; where, while 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. Fox called his outward room, where the Jews waited till he rose, the Jerusalem Chamber. 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.
When Fox lodged with his friend Fitzpatrick, at Mackie's, some one remarked that two such inmates would be the ruin of Mackie, the oilman; "No," said George Selwyn; "so far from ruining him, they will make poor Mackie's fortune; for he will have the credit of having the finest pickles in London."
The ruling passion of Fox was partly owing to the lax training of his father, who, by his lavish allowances, fostered his propensity for play. 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." (Selwyn.) At his death, in 1774, he left him £154,000 to pay his debts; it was all bespoke, and Fox soon became as deeply pledged as before.
Walpole, in 1781, walking up St. James's-street, saw a cart and porters 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 sou 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.
It was at the sale of Fox's library in this year that Walpole made the following singular note:—"1781, June 20. Sold by auction, the library of Charles Fox, which had been taken in execution. Amongst the books was Mr. Gibbon's first volume of 'Roman History,' which appeared, by the title-page, to have been given by the author to Mr. Fox, who had written in it the following anecdote:—'The author at Brookes's said there was no salvation for the country till six heads of the principal persons in the administration were laid on the table; eleven days later, the same gentleman accepted the place of Lord of Trade under those very ministers, and has acted with them ever since!' Such was the avidity of bidders for the smallest production of so wonderful a genius, that by the addition of this little record, the book sold for three guineas."
Lord Tankerville assured Mr. Rogers that Fox once played cards with Fitzpatrick at Brookes's from ten o'clock at night till near six o'clock the next afternoon, a waiter standing by to tell them "whose deal it was," they being too sleepy to know. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds; and one of his bond-creditors, who soon heard of his good luck, presented himself, and asked for payment. "Impossible, Sir," replied Fox; "I must first discharge my debts of honour." The bond-creditor remonstrated. "Well, Sir, give me your bond." It was delivered to Fox, who tore it in pieces, and threw them into the fire. "Now, Sir," said Fox, "my debt to you is a debt of honour;" and immediately paid him.
Amidst the wildest excesses of youth, even while the perpetual victim of his passion for play, Fox eagerly cultivated at intervals his taste for letters, especially the Greek and Roman historians and poets; and he found resources in their works, under the most severe depressions occasioned by ill-success at the gaming-table. One morning, after Fox had passed the whole night in company with Topham Beauclerc at faro, the two friends were about to separate. Fox had lost throughout the night, and was in a frame of mind approaching desperation. Beauclerc's anxiety for the consequences which might ensue led him to be early at Fox's lodgings; and on arriving, he inquired, not without apprehension, whether he had risen. The servant replied that Mr. Fox was in the drawing-room, when Beauclerc walked upstairs, and cautiously opened the door, expecting to behold a frantic gamester stretched on the floor, bewailing his losses, or plunged in moody despair; but he was astonished to find him reading a Greek Herodotus. "What would you have me do?" said Fox, "I have lost my last shilling." Upon other occasions, after staking and losing all that he could raise at faro, instead of exclaiming against fortune, or manifesting the agitation natural under such circumstances, he would lay his head on the table, and retain his place, but, exhausted by mental and bodily fatigue, almost immediately fall into a profound sleep.
One night, at Brookes's, Fox made some remark on Government powder, in allusion to something that had happened. Adams considered it a reflection, and sent Fox a challenge. Fox went out, and took his station, giving a full front. Fitzgerald said, "You must stand sideways." Fox said, "Why I am as thick one way as the other,"—"Fire," was given: Adams fired, Fox did not, and when they said he must, he said, "I'll be d—d if I do. I have no quarrel." They then advanced to shake hands. Fox said, "Adams, you'd have killed me if it had not been Government powder." The ball hit him in the groin.
Another celebrated character, who frequented Brookes's in the days of Selwyn, was Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton; and many keen encounters passed between them. Dunning was a short, thick man, with a turn-up nose, a constant shake of the head, and latterly a distressing hectic cough—but a wit of the first water. Though he died at the comparatively early age of fifty-two, he amassed a fortune of £150,000 during twenty-five years' practice at the bar; and lived notwithstanding, so liberally, that his mother, an attorney's widow, some of the wags at Brookes's wickedly recorded, left him in dudgeon on the score of his extravagance, as humorously sketched at a dinner at the lawyer's country-house near Fulham, when the following conversation was represented to have occurred:—