About 1780 very high play prevailed there. Writing to Mann in February of that year, Horace Walpole says: “Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa-tree (in St. James’s Street), the difference of which amounted to one hundred and fourscore thousand pounds. Mr. O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won one hundred thousand pounds of a young Mr. Harvey of Chigwell, just started into an estate by his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said: ‘You can never pay me.’ ‘I can,’ said the youth; ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ was the reply; ‘I will win ten thousand—you shall throw for the odd ninety.’ They did, and Harvey won.” Though never as fashionable a resort as White’s or Brooks’s, the Cocoa-tree was frequented by many aristocratic sportsmen. Here it was that Sir Harry Vane came after the victory of his famous horse Hambletonian in the great match with Mr. Cookson’s Diamond in 1799. “At the Cocoa-tree,” wrote Horace Walpole in 1770, “Lord Stavordale, not one-and-twenty, lost eleven thousand last Tuesday, but recovered it by one great hand at hazard. He swore a great oath: ‘Now, if I had been playing deep, I might have won millions.’” Sir Robert Macraith had for several years been head-waiter at the Cocoa-tree, where he was known by the appellation of Bob, and at length rose from that humble situation to the rank of Baronet. He was a clever, good-natured, civil fellow, and greatly liked. When he himself succeeded to the business, he was rather puzzled as to what would be the most appropriate name for his house. George Selwyn calling in one morning, he stated the difficulty to him, saying that he was afraid “Bob’s Coffee-house” would sound rather queerly. “Oh no,” said George, “just the thing; for then it will be Bob without, and robbing [Robin] within.” Councillor Dunning and Dr. Brocklesby one evening at the Cocoa-tree were conversing on the superfluities of life, and the needless wants which men in society created for their own discomfort. Selwyn, whose aristocratic notions were such as to look with contempt on occupations of all sorts—on that of a medical man as well as that of a tailor—exclaimed: “Very true, gentlemen; I am myself an example of the justice of your remarks, for I have lived nearly all my life without wanting either a lawyer or a physician.”