must have been temperate in their eating and
drinking, for it was a rule that the dinners should
cost only eighteenpence a head, exclusive of
liquor, and the members were not expected to
order more than a pint of wine. At first, the
dinners consisted simply of fish and pudding;
but, on the members removing to the King's
Arms, " they began to have a little meat," says
a contemporary account. It would almost seem
as if we were reading of a set of anchorites.
Later in the century, however, we hear of more
luxurious entertainments, consisting of turkey,
calves' heads, tongue and udder, venison, turtle,
plum-pudding, &c.; and for a long time a custom
prevailed of admitting as honorary members any
one who sent the club a buck or other choice
delicacy—a habit hardly consistent with the
dignity either of philosophers or gentlemen, and,
on that ground, afterwards abolished. An anecdote
is told of these learned thinkers, which
shows that they were not superior to the
superstitions of the vulgar and ignorant. One of
them, entering the Mitre Tavern in Fleet-street,
where the club then met (the same house which
Dr. Johnson frequented), and finding twelve
others already at table, retreated and dined by
himself, in order to avert the evil consequences
supposed to result from thirteen dining
together—the death of one of the number within
a year of the occurrence. A minute of this
circumstance was said to be on record in the
club papers; but Mr. Timbs affirms that "no
such statement is now to be found entered,'
and that, "curiously enough, thirteen is a very
usual number at these dinners." The philosophers,
it seems, could be gallant as well as
superstitious. On one occasion, a very pretty
girl was seen looking out of an upper window on
the opposite side of the street. The members
were dining at the time, but one after another
got up from the table, and went to the window
to gaze at the fair watcher. The Hon. Henry
Cavendish, who was noted for his eccentricity,
thought his companions were looking at the
moon; but when he discovered how the case
stood, he turned away in contemptuous indignation,
with the scornful monosyllable "Pshaw!"

The Cocoa-Tree Club, in St. James's-street,
arose out of a Tory chocolate-house of Queen
Anne's days. It assumed the higher form of a
club in 1746; and sixteen years afterwards we
find Gibbon, of the Decline and Fall, a member.
Several members of Parliament and persons
high in office belonged to this club, which, it
used to be said, exercised a very important
influence on the course of politics. In these days,
members of Parliament bribe; a hundred years
ago they were bribed.* The Cocoa-Tree
gentlemen were not above taking their
banknotes for two or three hundred pounds each,
when the Ministry, being hard-pushed, were
obliged to resort to this device; and the

* The Conductor of this Journal believes the
briber to be, in most cases, quite ready to be bribed.

peace of Fontainebleau is alleged to have cost
the Government twenty-five thousand pounds.
Gambling also went on to a fearful extent at the
Cocoa-Tree. Horace Walpolc relates, in 1780,
that a Mr. O'Birne, an Irishman, won a hundred
thousand pounds of a young Mr. Harvey. " You
can never pay me," said O'Birne. " I can,"
replied the young fellow; " my estate will sell for
the debt." "No," said the Irishman, "I will
win ten thousand—you shall throw for the odd
ninety." They did, and Harvey won. At most
of the fashionable clubs of the last century
gaming was carried on in the most reckless
manner. In the club-book of Almack's there is
this note:—" Mr. Thynne, having won only
twelve thousand guineas during the last two
months, retired in disgust, March 21st, 1772."
To lose twenty thousand pounds in one evening
was not unusual. Generally, ten thousand
pounds in specie lay on the table. A curious
account is given of the way in which these
desperate gamblers equipped themselves for the
sport. They took off their embroidered coats,
put on frieze garments, protected their lace
ruffles with pieces of leather, shaded their eyes
with broad-brimmed straw hats adorned with
flowers and ribbons, and wore masks "to
conceal their emotions "! There is something
singularly dramatic, and even terrible, in that last
provision—something suggestive of the white
cap at executions. Behind those masks, what
fever of suspense, what ferocity of exultation,
what gloom of despair, must oftentimes have
lurked! That suicide was not an unfrequent
result of such high play can hardly be wondered
at. Lord Mountford, a member of White's,
where the gambling was fearful, got so involved
that he determined to ask for a Government
appointment; failing which, he would take his
own life. He did fail, and, after asking several
persons what was the easiest mode of dying,
invited some friends to dinner on New Year's-day,
and the evening before supped at White's, where
he played at whist until one o'clock in the morn-
ing. A fellow-member drank to him a happy
new year; "he clapped his hand strangely to his
eyes." In the morning he sent for a lawyer and
three witnesses, made his will with great
deliberation, and then asked the lawyer if it would
stand good, though a man were to shoot himself?
The answer being Yes, he said, "Pray stay while
I step into the next room," and, retiring, shot
himself dead. According to Walpole, three
brothers, members of White's, contracted a debt of
seventy thousand pounds, while Lord Foley's
two sons borrowed money so enormously that
the interest alone amounted to eighteen thousand
pounds a year. The same vivacious chronicler
of the manners of his time gives an almost
incredible account of Fox's love of play and
dissipation. In the debate on the Thirty-nine
Articles, February 6th, 1772, he spoke very
indifferently; and Walpole says this was not
surprising under the circumstances. "He had sat
up playing at hazard at Almack's from Tuesday