GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
Rake, mind on yr name Stephen Fox; that I hope will keep you 
from being wicked. Think on your name, it will even fly in your 
face, and say did your Father do so? Think on his virtues and 
follow y». Love your Brother I charge you Stephen. -I charge you 
all love one another. You have Ennemys enough, make not one 
another so; you will have too many Stephen that will flock about 
you, court you, and fawn upon you, these are your worst Ennemys, 
take care of ys. You Harry having a less fortune, won’t be 
subject to so many temptations, but withstand those you have 
when you grow up take care and avoid ill company, if you don’t 
you are gone... . . Then you’d learn to swear, to drink, to rake 
about, to game, and at last be ruined by those, vou unhappily 
think your friends. Don’t affect, or think it a genteel or a pretty 
thing to be a Rake, for if you are wicked what will your Estate 
signifye. . . . Be humble and obliging to and obey your Trustees 
and though they may have failings never laugh at them, take 
their advice in everything, mind what they say to you; while 
you are at School. . . . W" you come of age don’t be conceited 
or self-sufficient, don’t think above advice, for y you’d want it 
most. . . . I have said all I can think of now. Let me tell you 
when I am gone, it will show you Love or hate me, as you obey, or 
disobey, these my instructions.’ ”’ 
I have left spelling and punctuation, written by a mere boy, as 
they appear in the original. 
The tender mother’s admonitions read strangely when we 
consider the extraordinary upbringing, by him who records them, 
of his favourite son, afterwards the famous Whig statesman, 
Charles James Fox. 
The lad was but fourteen when his father took him from Eton 
to the Continent where he introduced him to undesirable society, 
and supplying him with money for the purpose, during four months 
deliberately taught him to gamble. This was at the period when, 
as Horace Walpole tells us, ‘‘ young men lose five, ten, fifteen, 
thousand pounds in an evening ’’—when the Earl of Carlisle could 
write: ‘‘ The hazard last evening was very deep—Meynell won 
£4,000, Pigot £5,000 ’’—when we learn from Sir George Trevelyan’s 
“« Karly History of Charles James Fox,” that during the years that 
preceded the American war “£5,000 was staked on one card, and 
£70,000 changed hands in a single night.” 
206 
