His love of play was desperate. A few evenings before he moved the repeal of the Marriage Act, in February, 1772, he had been at Brompton on two errands,--one to consult Justice Fielding on the penal laws, the other to borrow L10,000, which he brought to town at the hazard of being robbed. He played admirably both at Whist and Piquet,--with such skill, indeed, that by the general admission of Brookes' Club, he might have made four thousand pounds a-year, as they calculated, at these games, if he could have confined himself to them. But his misfortune arose from playing games of chance, particularly at Faro. After eating and drinking plentifully, he would sit down at the Faro table, and invariably rose a loser. Once, indeed, and once only, he won about eight thousand pounds in the course of a single evening. Part of the money he paid to his creditors, and the remainder he lost almost immediately. Before he attained his thirtieth year he had completely dissipated everything that he could either command or could procure by the most ruinous expedients. He had even undergone, at times, many of the severest privations incidental to the vicissitudes that attend a gamester's progress; frequently wanting money to defray the common daily wants of the most pressing nature. Topham Beauclerc, who lived much in Fox's society, declared that no man could form an idea of the extremities to which he had been driven to raise money, often losing his last guinea at the Faro table. The very sedan-chairmen, whom he was unable to pay, used to dun him for arrears. In 1781, he might be considered as an extinct volcano,--for the pecuniary aliment that had fed the flame was long consumed. Yet he even then occupied a house or lodgings in St James's Street, close to Brookes', where he passed almost every hour which was not devoted to the House of Commons. Brookes' was then the rallying point or rendezvous of the Opposition, where Faro, Whist, and supper prolonged the night, the principal members of the minority in both Houses met, in order to compare their information, or to concert and mature their parliamentary measures. Great sums were then borrowed of Jews at exorbitant premiums. His brother Stephen was enormously fat; George Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with Shylocks, as he could give them pounds of flesh.