“Though not many years have elapsed since the time of which I write, the supper table had a very different appearance from what it would present, did the club now exist. Beards were completely unknown, and the rare mustachios were only worn by officers of the Household Brigade, or hussar regiments. Stiff white neckcloths, blue coats and brass buttons, rather short waisted white waistcoats, and tremendously embroidered shirt fronts, with gorgeous studs of great value, were considered the right thing. A late deservedly popular Colonel in the Guards used to give Storr & Mortimer £25 a year, to furnish him with a new set of studs every Saturday night during the London season. “The great foreign diplomatists, Prince Talleyrand, Count Pozzo di Borgo, General Alava, the Duke of Palmella, Prince Esterhazy, the French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Austrian ambassadors, and all persons of distinction and eminence who arrived in England, belonged to Crockford’s as a matter of course; but many rued the day when they became members of that fascinating but dangerous _coterie_. The great Duke himself, always rather a friend of the dandies, did not disdain to appear now and then at this charming club; whilst the late Lord Raglan, Lord Anglesey, Sir Hussey Vivian, and many more of our Peninsula and Waterloo heroes, were constant visitors. The two great novelists of the day, who have since become great statesmen, Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, displayed at that brilliant supper-table, the one his sable, the other his auburn curls; there Horace Twiss made proof of an appetite, and Edward Montague of a thirst, which astonished all beholders; whilst the bitter jests of Sir Joseph Copley, Colonel Armstrong, and John Wilson Croker, and the brilliant wit of Alvanley, were the delight of all present, and their _bon mots_ were the next day retailed all over England. “In the play-room might be heard the clear ringing voice of that agreeable reprobate, Tom Duncombe, as he cheerfully called ‘Seven,’ and the powerful hand of the vigorous Sefton in throwing for a ten. There might be noted the scientific dribbling of a four by ‘King’ Allen, the tremendous backing of nines and fives by Ball Hughes and Auriol, the enormous stakes played for by Lords Lichfield and Chesterfield, George Payne, Sir St Vincent Cotton, D’Orsay, and George Anson, and, above all, the gentlemanly bearing and calm and unmoved demeanour, under losses or gains, of all the men of that generation.