“His Palace of Fortune” was of the grandest style of architectural beauty.  It was one in which the worshippers of Fortune planked down the last acre of their patrimonial estates to propitiate the fickle goddess in the allurements of the gaming-table.  But how can Fortune herself give two to one on all comers?  Some must lose to pay the winners.

At this palatial abode the most sumptuous repasts were prepared by the most celebrated chefs the world could produce, and were eaten by the most fastidious and expensive gourmands Nature ever created; gamblers of the most distinguished and the most disreputable characters; gentlemen of the latest pattern and the oldest school, the worst of men and the best, sporting politicians and political sportsmen, place-hunters, Ministers, ex-Ministers, scions of old families and ancient pedigrees, as well as men of new families and no pedigrees, who purchased, as we do now, a coat of arms at the Heralds’ tailoring shop, and selected their ancestors in Wardour Street.

Only the wealthy could be members of this club, for only the wealthy could lose money and pay it.  Landscape painters might be guests, but it was only the man who belonged to the landscape who could belong to the body that gambled for it.  Young barristers might visit the place, possibly with an eye to business, but only members of large practice or Judges could be members of this society.

Lord Palmerston defended it manfully before the committee appointed really for its destruction.  He said it did a great deal of good—­much more good than all the gambling hells of London did harm.  Whether his lordship contended that there was no betting carried on at Crockford’s I am not prepared to say, but when evidence is given before Parliamentary Committees it is sometimes difficult to understand its exact meaning.  Palmerston, however, positively said, without any doubt as to his meaning, that candidates were not elected in order that they might be plucked of every feather they possessed, and that any one who maintained the contrary was slandering one of the most respectable clubs in London.  Some men would rather have pulled down St. Paul’s than Crockford’s.

It was the very perfection of a club, said the statesman, and its principal game was chicken hazard.  What could be stronger evidence than that of its usefulness and respectability?  At this game they usually lost all they had, of little consequence to those who could not do better with their property, and perhaps the best thing for the country, because when it got into better hands it stood some chance of being applied to more legitimate purposes.

After a while Crockford quarrelled with his partner, and they separated.

Whatever men may say in these days against an institution which flourished in those, ex-Prime Ministers, Dukes, Earls, and ex-Lord Chancellors, as well as future Ministers of State and future Judges, belonged to it, or sought eagerly for admission to its membership.  To be under the shadow of the fishmonger was greatness itself.