Another celebrated faro bank at Brooks’s was that kept by Lord Cholmondeley, Mr Thompson of Grosvenor Square, Tom Stepney, and a fourth. It ruined half the town; and a Mr Paul, who had come home with a fortune from India, punting against the bank, lost ninety thousand pounds in one night, and at once went Eastward Ho! to make another. Lord Cholmondeley and Mr Thompson realised between three and four hundred thousand pounds apiece; but Stepney so frequently played against his partners that what he won on one side he lost on the other, with the result that his gains were inconsiderable.
Foreigners were made honorary members of the clubs. The Duke of Orleans (“Vile Égalité,” Lady Sarah Bunbury wrote him down) carried off vast sums. During the visit of the Allied Sovereigns, Blücher, an inveterate gambler, lost twenty thousand pounds. Count Montrond, on the other hand, was a winner. “Who the deuce is this Montrond?” the Duke of York asked Upton. “They say, sir, that he is the most agreeable scoundrel and the greatest reprobate in France.” “Is he, by Jove?” cried the Duke. “Then let us ask him to dinner immediately.” Montrond was a witty fellow, and one of his bon mots has been handed down. The Bailli de Ferretti was always dressed in knee-breeches, with a cocked hat and a Court sword, the slender proportions of which resembled those of his legs. “Do tell me, my dear Bailli,” said Montrond one day, “have you got three legs or three swords?”
Englishmen were not backward in playing abroad, and they assembled in great numbers at the Salon des Étrangers in Paris during the stay of the army of occupation after Waterloo. Gronow gives a long list of habitués: Henry Baring, Tom Sowerby, Henry Broadwood, Bob Arnold, Steer, Colonel Sowerby, were the most reckless plungers. Lord Thanet, who had an income of fifty thousand pounds, lost every penny he had at the salon. He would not stop playing when the public tables closed, and used to invite those present to remain and play hazard or écarté. One night he lost a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. His friends told him he had most probably been cheated. “Then,” he said with great coolness, “I consider myself lucky not to have lost twice as much.”
Prominent among gamblers, and as such deserving of special mention, was William Douglas, Earl of March and Ruglen, afterwards fourth and last Duke of Queensberry.[14] Even making liberal allowance for the spirit of the age and for the state of morality in the days when he was young, he was one of the worst men of his generation; and his rank and wealth made his vices only more notorious. He was the “Degenerate Douglas” of Wordsworth’s muse, and Burns damned him in verse for all time:
“How shall I sing Drumlanrig’s Grace,
Discarded remnant of a race
Once great in martial story?
His forebears’ virtues all contrasted,
The very name of Douglas blasted—