Thatched House,(121) to sup with the ladies, as they call it. These
ladies are Lady Essex and Miss Amyas(?). Richard won last night
1,300 ostensible, besides what he pocketed to keep a corps de
reserve unknown to Brooks. For Brooks lent him 2,300, and then
laments the state of the house. He duns me for three hundred, of
which I am determined to give him but two; as he knows so well where
to get the other hundred, which is that Richard owes me, but seems
determined that I shall not have. Charles is winning more, and the
quinze table is now at its height. I have set down Brooks to be the
completest composition of knave and fool that ever was, to which I
may add liar. You say very true, that I have been in a bank, that I
have lost my money, that I want to get it back; but it is as true
that I shall make no attempt to get it back till my affairs are
quite in another posture from what they are at present; so pray give
me no flings about it, for I lay all the blame upon March, who
should not have contributed to it.

(121) The Thatched House Tavern in St. James's Street stood on the
site of the present Conservative Club. Various well-known clubs were
in the habit of meeting here, notably the Society of Dilettanti
which was formed in 1734, of it Walpole wrote that "the nominal
qualification is having been in Italy and the real one being drunk."

(1775,) Sept. 1, Friday, Richmond.--I have omitted, contrary to my
usual custom, two posts, the writing to you, which being out of
course may perhaps make you at a loss to guess what is become of me.
I am here with Mie Mie, and shall be so for ten or twelve days
longer, and then the weather being cool and the days grown short, I
shall find the evenings too tedious to myself and not very
beneficial to her, which would undoubtedly be with me the first