It will be remembered that it was on the occasion of one of the waiters here being convicted on a charge of robbery, that Selwyn remarked: “What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate.” The Thatched House Club, which grew out of the “Thatched House,” where the Dilettanti Society and innumerable other fraternities were wont to foregather, does not stand on the site of the original clubhouse, which was till recently occupied by the Civil Service Club at the corner of King Street; but the name was formerly preserved in “Thatched House Court,” which has long since passed away. [Sidenote: ST. JAMES’S STREET CHOCOLATE HOUSES.] Just as the St. James’s Chocolate House was the resort of the Whigs in the Augustan age so the Tory headquarters were at the “Cocoa Tree,” which was metamorphosed into a club some time in George II.’s reign, and was then noted for high play. There is extant the story of one O’Birne, an Irish gamester, who had won a round £100,000 at the Cocoa Tree from a young man named Harvey. “You can never pay me,” said the Irishman. “I can,” replied Harvey, “my estate will sell for the debt.” “No,” said O’Birne, “I will win ten thousand--you shall throw for the odd ninety,” which, being done, Harvey, who would seem to have hardly deserved his luck, won! Gibbon, and later Byron, belonged to this club, and this reminds me that it was while lodging in St. James’s Street that the latter awoke one morning and found himself famous. An extraordinary medallion portrait under glass commemorates the house (No. 8) in which the author of “Childe Harold” lodged, and it was from here that he set forth to deliver his maiden, and only speech in the House of Lords. Among other interesting residents of St. James’s Street was Charles James Fox; and here Walpole saw his furniture being carried off to satisfy his horde of creditors. To hark back, we find Waller in a house on the west side, and Lord Brouncker, the first President of the Royal Society, living here; Pope at “my lodgings at Mr. Digby’s, next door to ye Golden Bell, on ye second Terras in St. James’s Street;” Wolfe, who wrote from here in 1758 to Pitt, desiring employment in America; and Gibbon, who died 26 years later, at No. 76, now part of the Conservative Club. It was in this street that Dr. Johnson once did some shopping with Boswell; calling at Wirgman’s toy-shop (at No. 69, where Arthur’s is now) “to choose a pair of silver buckles, as those he had were too small.” [Sidenote: KING STREET.]