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.” Fox once played cards with Fitzpatrick at Brooks’s from ten o’clock at night till near six o’clock the next morning, a waiter standing by to tell them “whose deal it was,” they being too sleepy to know. The precise circumstances which led to the foundation of the Fox Club are rather obscure, the first recorded dinner having taken place in February 1829, when twenty-three members were present, though “Fox Dinners” seem to have been held previous to that date.