Directly this window was made, Brummell, then in the heyday of his fashionable prosperity, took possession of it, and, together with his followers, made it a very shrine of fashion and an institution of West End club-life. At that time only a select few dared to sit in it; an ordinary member of the club would as soon have thought of taking his seat on the throne in the House of Lords as of appropriating one of the chairs in the bow-window. Nice questions of etiquette arose in connection with the bow-window, and were duly discussed and settled. Its occupants were so much in evidence to the outside world in St. James’s Street that ladies of their acquaintance could not fail to recognize them in passing. It was decided, after anxious discussion, that no greeting should pass from the bow-window or from any window in the club. As a consequence, the hats of the dandies were doffed to no passers-by. Not a few of the old school resented monopoly of the famous window by Brummell and Lord Alvanley. “Damn the fellows!” said old Colonel Sebright; “they are upstarts, and fit only for the society of tailors.” Brummell made amusing use of his connection with the club. He was reproached by an angry father whose son had gone astray in the Beau’s company. “Really, I did all I could for the young fellow,” said he; “I once gave him my arm all the way from White’s to Watier’s.” Later, when he was coming to the end of his means and of his career in England, some of his friends who had assisted him with loans became importunate. One of these pressed him for the repayment of £500. “I paid you,” said the Beau. “Paid me! When, pray?” “Why, when I was standing at the window at White’s, and said as you passed, ‘How d’you do!’” About 1814 Brummell played much and unsuccessfully at White’s. One night—the fifth of a most relentless run of ill-luck—his friend Pemberton Mills heard him exclaim that he had lost every shilling, and only wished someone would bind him never to play again. “I will,” said Mills, and, taking out a ten-pound note, he offered it to Brummell on condition that he should forfeit a thousand if he played at White’s within a month from that evening. The Beau took it, and for a few days discontinued coming to the club; but about a fortnight after, Mills, happening to go in, found him gambling again. Of course the thousand pounds were forfeited; but his friend, instead of claiming them merely went up to him, and, touching him gently on the shoulder, said: “Well, Brummell, you might at least give me back the ten pounds you had the other evening.”