W. Frederick Cavendish.
Henry M. Brownrigg. recd. H.B.
July 17, 1856.
At one time very large sums changed hands over the whist-table at White’s. One of the most distinguished gamblers was Lord Rivers, known in Paris as Le Wellington des Joueurs. This nobleman, it is said, once lost £3,400 at whist by not remembering that the seven of hearts was in! He played at hazard for the highest stakes that anyone could be got to play, and at one time was supposed to have won nearly £100,000; but all, together with a great deal more, went at Crockford’s.
In earlier days White’s appears to have been an occasional resort of very queer characters indeed. In Hogarth’s gambling scene at White’s we see the highwayman, with the pistols peeping out of his pocket, waiting by the fireside till the heaviest winner takes his departure, in order to recoup himself of his losings. And in the “Beaux’ Stratagem,” Aimwell asks of Gibbet: “Ha’n’t I seen your face at White’s?”
M’Clean, the fashionable highwayman, had a lodging in St. James’s Street, over against White’s; and he was as well known about St. James’s as any gentlemen who lived in that quarter, and who, perhaps, went upon the road, too. When M’Clean was taken, in 1750, Horace Walpole tells us that Lord Mountfort, at the head of half White’s, went the first day; his aunt was crying over him. As soon as they were withdrawn, she said to him, knowing they were of White’s: “My dear, what did the Lords say to you? Have you ever been concerned with any of them?”
Mr. Pelham, the Prime Minister, who had originally been an officer, was a well-known frequenter of the gaming-table at White’s, to which he resorted even when in high office—a habit alluded to in the following lines:
“Or chair’d at White’s, amidst the doctors sit,
Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit.”
General Scott, the father-in-law of George Canning and the Duke of Portland, was known to have won at White’s £200,000, thanks to his notorious sobriety and knowledge of this game. The General possessed a great advantage over his companions by avoiding the excesses which used not unfrequently to muddle their brains. He confined himself to dining off something very light, such as a boiled chicken with toast and water, and in consequence always came to the whist-table with a clear head. Possessing a remarkable memory, with great coolness of judgment, he was able honestly to win the enormous sum of £200,000.