it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he
lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one-half came out
of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets--the sleek,
thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he
called his back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any
amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a
rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it
_in the eating-room_, but to which was added the truly British
exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two
'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered.

This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in
Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterwards
opened a lady's club in the rooms now called Willis's, in King Street,
St. James's; who also owned the famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly
Williams described as having a 'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on
the ladies at supper. In 1778 Brookes--a wine-merchant and money-lender,
whom Tickell, in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox,
partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes in
these lines;--

'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes,
From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill
Is hasty credit, and a distant bill:
Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade:
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid--'

built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, and
thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative skill,
however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he dealt with