Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [10]
London life was not without its pitfalls. Neither his fondness for female company nor his penchant for gambling had deserted John Law on his journey south. Gambling provided his entrée to society, women a refuge from its demands and disappointments. Both were to lead him astray. At some point after his arrival in London he was joined in his lodgings by his mistress, a Mrs. Lawrence. Little is known of the woman who was to play a crucial part in his future career. What were her circumstances? Who kept whom? Perhaps they met in Duke Humphrey’s Walk, St. James’s Park, “a rare place for a woman who is rich enough to furnish herself with a gallant that will stick close, if she will allow him good clothes, three meals a day and a little money for usquebaugh [whisky].” In which case she probably provided for Law, who though reasonably affluent, did not have the means to support an expensive mistress.
He also encountered many of London’s most illustrious inhabitants. Although documentary evidence of this period of his life is sparse, among his probable acquaintances was Thomas Neale, the seedy Master of the Mint and Groom Porter to the King, and a keen property speculator. As part of his royal responsibilities Neale provided the cards, dice, and other gambling equipment for the royal palaces, settled squabbles at the card table, and licensed and supervised gaming houses. He was not well suited to the role. Neale was a compulsive gambler who is said to have run through two fortunes at cards. Like Neale, Law quickly discovered the seamier side of London. The prevailing passion for gambling had created an entire social group, of gamesters whose fortunes depended on the roll of the dice or the cut of a pack. It was a life “subject to more revolutions than a weathercock” in which, according to Ward, most “die intestate, and go as poor out of the world as they came into it.” At Christmas Neale was allowed to keep an open gaming table, a chaotic and disorderly scrum where “Curses were as profusely scattered as lies among travellers . . . money was tossed about as if a useless commodity . . . every man changed countenance according to the fortune of the cast, and some of them . . . in half an hour showed all the passions incident to human nature.” Already drawn to gambling in Edinburgh, Law was mesmerized by this frenetic, dangerous existence. Mingling with aristocrats and opportunists, he joined in high-rolling games of hazard, brag, primero, and basset—and predictably found himself dogged by ill fortune. Bad luck and bad company took rapid toll. By early 1692, before his twenty-first birthday, Law’s inheritance was exhausted and debts had mounted. Incarceration in a debtor’s prison loomed, unless he could raise money. He had no option but to ask his mother to sell the Lauriston estate.
Jean Law now knew that her son was continuing his life of recklessness, but she did not despair. With keen business acumen she used her own well-managed legacy from her husband to buy the tenancy of the estates from her son and could congratulate herself that his reputation was salvaged, debtor’s prison avoided, and her husband’s money preserved.
The episode marked a turning point in Law’s approach to gambling. Always intensely proud and private, he must have hated having to ask his mother for help. He began to see how easily he, like Neale, could lose all he possessed at the tables. And unlike Neale, he had no lucrative royal position with which to rebuild his fortune. At the same time abstention from gambling was impossible. The pastime was almost de rigueur in polite society and provided a sociable young man such as Law with an easy way to infiltrate the glamorous