When the latter reached the White Swan he countermanded the horses, saying he would not start till night, considering that it would be safer to travel along the dangerous portion of the route by night, when Napoleon’s spies would be less likely to be on the alert, and remained in the inn writing and burning papers. At seven o’clock he dismissed his guard, and ordered the horses to be ready at nine. He stood outside the inn, watching his portmanteau being replaced in the carriage, stepped round to the heads of the horses, and disappeared for ever.
After Bathurst’s disappearance had been realized—which was not for some time—every effort was made to discover what had become of him. The next morning the river was dragged, outhouses, woods, marshes, ditches were examined, but not a trace could be found; nor was any trace ever found, except that nearly three weeks later—December 16—two poor women, gathering sticks in a wood, found a pair of breeches which were unquestionably Bathurst’s. In the pocket was a paper with writing on it. Two bullet-holes were in the breeches, but no traces of blood about them, which could hardly have been the case had the bullets struck a man wearing them. The paper was a half-finished letter to Mrs. Bathurst, scratched in pencil, stating that he was afraid he would never reach England, and that his ruin would be the work of Count d’Entraigues. Large rewards were offered—£1,000 by the English Government, another £1,000 by the family, and an additional 100 Friedrichs d’or by Prince Frederick of Prussia; but all was in vain, and from that day to this the fate of Mr. Bathurst remains a mystery.[[4]]
[4]. In December 1910, some woodcutters in the forest of Quitznow, near the spot where the breeches were found, discovered a skeleton which may have been that of Bathurst.
No account of Brooks’s and its history would be complete without some mention of the Fox Club—a club within a club which holds its meetings in the club-house three or four times in the course of the Parliamentary session, and whose object is to keep alive the memory of probably the most distinguished, and certainly the most popular, member who has ever belonged to Brooks’s—Charles James Fox.
Owing to Fox’s love of play, some of his best friends, who would appear to have been inspired by extraordinary affection, were half-ruined in annuities, given by them as securities for him to the Jews. Annuities of Fox and his society to the value of £500,000 a year were at one time advertised to be sold. Walpole wondered what Fox would do when he had sold the estates of all his friends.
He once sat at hazard at Almack’s from Tuesday evening, the 4th, till five in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 5th. An hour before he had recovered £12,000 that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o’clock, he had ended by losing £11,000. On the Thursday (February 6, 1772) he made a speech on the Thirty-nine Articles, in which one is hardly surprised to hear that he did not shine. That evening he dined at half-past eleven at night, and went to White’s, where he drank till seven the next morning; thence to Almack’s, where he won £6,000; and between three and four in the afternoon he set out for Newmarket. Well for him that there was no Nonconformist conscience in those days!
Fox during a late club-sitting once sketched out an idea for a kind of new profession, “which was going from horse-race to horse-race, and so by knowing the value and speed of all the horses in England to acquire a certain fortune.”
As a youth Fox had received a very lax training from his father, who gave him a large allowance and condoned his extravagances. “Let nothing be done,” said his lordship, “to break his spirit; the world will do that for him.” At his death, in 1774, he left him £154,000 to pay his debts; it was all hypothecated, and Fox soon became as deeply involved as before.
The chronicle of Fox’s financial vicissitudes makes sorry reading—at one time with thousands in his pocket, at another without a shilling to pay his chairmen.
After a run of good luck, Fox would generally make some attempt to liquidate the more pressing of his many liabilities; and on one occasion, when Fortune had been propitious, remembering a long-standing gambling debt which he owed to Sir John Lade, he sent a complimentary card to the latter expressing his desire to discharge the claim. Sir John no sooner saw the money than he called for pen and ink, and began to make some calculations. “What now?” cried Fox. “Only calculating the interest,” replied the other. “Are you so?” coolly rejoined Charles James, and pocketed the cash, adding: “I thought it was a debt of honour. As you seem to consider it a trading debt, and as I make it an invariable rule to pay my Jew creditors last, you must wait a little longer for your money.”