The money-lenders were most obliging to Fox at the time when he was heir-apparent to the barony of Holland, but the holder of the title had an heir, which destroyed his prospects; whereupon Fox, unperturbed, made it the subject of a joke against his creditors: “My brother Ste’s son is a second Messiah, born for the destruction of the Jews.” He lived on credit for some time, and so notorious was this fact that when he gave a supper-party at his rooms in St James’s Street, close by Brooks’s Club, Tickell addressed verses thereon to Sheridan:
“Derby shall send, if not his plate, his cooks;
And know, I’ve bought the best champagne from Brooks,
From liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill
Is hasty credit and a distant bill;
Who, nursed on clubs, disdains a vulgar trade,
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.”
Lord Holland had already paid his son’s debts on several occasions, and apparently some remonstrance was addressed to the latter.
“In regard to what you say of my father’s feelings, I am sure if you could have known how very miserable you have made me you would not have said it” (Fox wrote in 1773 to Lady Holland, in a letter in which there is the true note of sincerity). “To be loved by you and him has always been (indeed, I am no hypocrite, whatever I may be) the first desire of my life. The reflection that I have behaved ill to you is almost the only painful one I have ever experienced. That my extreme imprudence and dissipation has given both of you uneasiness is what I have long known, and I am sure I may call those who really know me to witness how much that thought has embittered my life. I own I lately began to flatter myself that, particularly with you, and in a great measure with my father, I had regained that sort of confidence which was once the greatest pride of my life; and I am sure I don’t exaggerate when I say that, since I formed those flattering hopes, I have been the happiest being in the universe. I hate to make professions, and yet I think I may venture to say that my conduct in the future shall be such as to satisfy you more than my past. Indeed, indeed, my dear mother, no son ever loved a father and mother as I do. Pray, my dear mother, consider how very miserable you have made me, and pity me. I do not know what to write, so have to leave off writing, but you may be assured that no son ever felt more duty, respect, gratitude, or love than I do for both of you, and that it is in your power, by restoring me to your usual confidence and affection, or depriving me of it, to make me the most unhappy or contented of men.”
Once again Lord Holland took upon himself the settlement of Charles’s debt, and just before his death, in 1774, satisfied his son’s creditors—at a cost of £140,000! Even this was not a sufficient lesson to the young man, who incurred fresh liabilities, to pay which he sold a sinecure place of £2000 a year for life—the Clerkship of the Peels in Ireland, and the superbly decorated mansion and estate at Kingsgate in the Isle of Thanet, both of which had been left him by his father.