Part 26

One evening he met a young tradesman at a house in Leicester Fields to have an hour's play, for which he gave a banker's draft, but requested to have his revenge in a few more throws, when he soon regained what he had lost and as much in addition. It now being past three in the morning, England proposed that they should retire; but the tradesman, suspecting himself tricked, refused payment of what he had lost. England then tripped up his heels, rolled him in the carpet, took a case-knife from the sideboard, flourished it over the young man, and at last cut off his long hair close to the scalp. Dreading worse treatment, he gave a cheque for the amount and wished England good morning.

England fought a duel at Cranford Bridge in 1784, with Mr. Le Roule, a brewer, from Kingston: from him England had won a large sum, for which a bond had been given, and which, not being paid, led to the duel, in which Le Roule was killed. England fled to Paris and was outlawed; it is reported that early in the Revolution he furnished some useful intelligence to our army in the campaign in Flanders, for which he was remunerated by the British Cabinet. While in France he was several times imprisoned, and once ordered to the guillotine, but pardoned through the exertion and influence of one of the Convention, who also procured for him a passport for home. After an absence of twelve years, he was tried for the duel, found guilty of manslaughter, fined one shilling, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. Subsequent to his release he passed the remainder of his life at his house in Leicester Square, where he lived to the age of eighty. His end was an awful one: on being called to dinner, he was found lying dead on his sofa.

Brighton Races, Thirty Years Since.

Brighton Races, like most other Brighton amusements, took their rise from the patronage of George IV. Those of Lewes were of earlier origin and greater pretension, until the Prince began to run his horses and lose his money on the Brighton course, which then attracted some of the best horses and some of the most celebrated sportsmen in the kingdom. Of the races at this period the following sketch is given by Mr. Thomas Raikes, in his Diary:—

"1836.—Last week died Lord George Germaine, brother to the Duke of Dorset; they were both in their youth great friends to the late King, when Prince of Wales, fond of the turf, and, with the late Delme Radcliffe, the three best gentlemen riders at the once-famed Bibury Races, which are now replaced by those at Heaton Park. They were all three little men, light weights, and, when dressed in their jackets and caps, would rival Buckle and Chiffney. In those days, the Prince made Brighton and Lewes Races the gayest scene of the year in England. The Pavilion was full of guests; the Steine was crowded with all the rank and fashion from London during that week; the best horses were brought from Newmarket and the North, to run at these races, on which immense sums were depending; and the course was graced by the handsomest equipages. The 'legs' and betters, who had arrived in shoals, used all to assemble on the Steine at an early hour to commence their operations on the first day, and the buzz was tremendous, till Lord Foley and Mellish, the two great confederates of that day, would approach the ring, and then a sudden silence ensued; to await the opening of their betting-books. They would come on perhaps smiling, but mysterious, without making any demonstration; at last, Mr. Jerry Cloves would say, 'Come, Mr. Mellish, will you light the candle, and set us a-going?' Then, if the master of Buckle would say, 'I'll take three to one about Sir Solomon,' the whole pack opened, and the air resounded with every shade of odds and betting. About half-an-hour before the signal of departure for the hill, the Prince himself would make his appearance in the crowd—I think I see him now, in a green jacket, a white hat, and tight nankeen pantaloons, and shoes, distinguished by his high-bred manner and handsome person; he was generally accompanied by the late Duke of Bedford, Lord Jersey, Charles Wyndham, Shelley, Brummel, M. Day, Churchill, and, oh! extraordinary anomaly, the little old Jew Travis, who, like the dwarf of old, followed in the train of royalty. The Downs were covered with every species of conveyance, and the Prince's German wagon (so were barouches called when first introduced at that time) and six bay horses, the coachman on the box being replaced by Sir John Lade, issued out of the gates of the Pavilion, and, gliding up the green ascent, was stationed close to the great stand, where it remained the centre of attraction for the day. At dinner-time the Pavilion was resplendent with lights, and a sumptuous banquet was served to a large party; while those who were not included in that invitation found a dinner with every luxury at the Club-house on the Steine, kept by Ragget during the season, for the different members of White's and Brookes's who chose to frequent it, and where the cards and dice from St. James's Street were not forgotten. Where are the actors in all those gay scenes now?"

The period to which this lively sketch refers was from 1800 to 1820. Soon after this, George the Fourth began to live a more secluded life, and though his horses ran at Brighton Races, the King never made his appearance there, and the meet began to decline.

Colonel Mellish.

The star of the race-course of modern times was the late Colonel Mellish, certainly the cleverest man of his day, as regards the science and practice of the turf. No one could match (i.e., make matches) with him, nor could anyone excel him in handicapping horses in a race. But, indeed, nihil erat quod non tetigit non ornavit. He beat Lord Frederick Bentinck in a foot-race over Newmarket Heath. He was a clever painter, a fine horseman, a brave soldier, a scientific farmer, and an exquisite coachman. But—as his friends said of him—not content with being the second-best man of his day, he would be the first, which was fatal to his fortune and his fame. It, however, delighted us to see him in public, in the meridian of his almost unequalled popularity, and the impression he made upon us remains. We remember even the style of his dress, peculiar for its lightness of hue—his neat white hat, white trousers, white silk stockings, ay, and we may add, his white but handsome face. There was nothing black about him but his hair and his mustachios, which he wore by virtue of his commission, and which to him were an ornament. The like of his style of coming on the race-course at Newmarket was never witnessed there before him nor since. He drove his barouche himself, drawn by four beautiful white horses, with two outriders on matches to them, ridden in harness bridles. In his rear was a saddle-horse groom, leading a thorough-bred hack, and at the rubbing-post on the heath was another groom—all in crimson liveries—waiting with a second hack. But we marvel when we think of his establishment. We remember him with thirty-eight race-horses in training, seventeen coach-horses, twelve hunters in Leicestershire, four chargers at Brighton, and not a few hacks! But the worst is yet to come. By his racing speculations he was a gainer, his judgment pulling him through; but when we heard that he would play to the extent of 40,000l. at a sitting—yes, he once staked that sum on a throw—we were not surprised that the domain of Blythe passed into other hands; and that the once accomplished owner of it became the tenant of a premature grave. "The bowl of pleasure," says Johnson, "is poisoned by reflection on the cost," and here it was drunk to the dregs. Colonel Mellish ended his days, not in poverty, for he acquired a competency with his lady, but in a small house within sight of the mansion that had been the pride of his ancestors and himself. As, however, the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, Colonel Mellish was not without consolation. He never wronged anyone but himself; and, as an owner of race-horses, and a bettor, his character was without spot.—Nimrod.

Doncaster Eccentrics.

Among the visitors to Doncaster race-course are many of the lower grade, some of whom have contrived to get hanged. Such was the case some half-century since with Daniel Dawson, who employed himself, or was employed by others, in poisoning with arsenic the drinking-water of horses whose success in the future race was not desirable to Daniel or his patrons. Several steeds perished in this way at the hands of Daniel, in the north as well as at Newmarket. Ultimately a case from the latter locality was proved against him, through the treachery of a confederate, and Daniel suffered for it at Cambridge. Had he been a martyr in a good cause, he could not have died with more becomingness. Daniel complained of no one, did not even reproach himself; and expressed his satisfactory conviction that he "should certainly ascend to Heaven from the drop." Brutal as his offence was, it seems ill-measured justice that takes a man's life for that of a beast.

Dawson is beyond our own recollection; but we can remember a more singular and a much more honest fellow, whose appearance on the Doncaster course was as confidently looked for, and as ardently desired, as that of any of the Lords Lieutenant of the various Ridings. We allude to the once famous Jemmy Hirst, the Rawcliffe tanner, whose last of about fifty visits to the "Sillinger" and "Coop" contests was made when he was hard upon ninety years of age. When Jemmy retired from the tanning business with means to set up as a gentleman, the first object he purchased was not a carriage, but a coffin, depositing therein some of the means whereby he kept himself alive, namely, his provisions. The walls of the room in which this lugubrious sideboard was erected were hung round with all sorts of rusty agricultural implements. This lord of a strange household retained a valet and a female "general servant." His stud consisted of mules, dogs, and a bull; mounted on which he is said to have hunted with the Badsworth hounds. His most familiar friends were a tame fox and otter. He certainly rode the bull when he went out shooting, and was then accompanied by pigs as pointers. In fair-time Hirst used to take this bull and a couple of its fellows to be baited, sitting proudly by himself while his valet went about collecting the "coppers." His waistcoat was a glossy garment made of the neck feathers of the drake, from the pocket of which he would issue his own bank-notes, bearing responsibilities of payment to the amount of "Five half-pence."

His carriage was a sort of palanquin, carried aloft by high wheels, and its peculiarity was that there was not a nail about it. This vehicle was really better known at Doncaster than the stately carriage of Lord Fitzwilliam himself. It was the boast of the proud and dirty gentleman who sat enthroned there, that he had never paid and never would pay any sort of tax to the King; and how he managed to shoot, as he did, without paying a licence, was best known to himself. He was the most popular man on the course, and, unlike very many who began rich and ended poor, Jemmy increased in wealth year by year. He was wont to contrast himself with "the Prince's friend," Col. Mellish, who inherited an immense property, won two Legers in two consecutive years, 1804-5, and finally died almost a pauper. Jemmy had undoubtedly, in his view of things, done better than Col. Mellish; but the tanner, through life, never thought of the welfare but of one human being—that of James Hirst. He was as selfish as the butcher-churchwarden of Doncaster, who ruined the grand old tower of the church by placing a hideous clock face in it, which was so constructed that no one could see the time by it except from the butcher's own door!

We should hardly render Hirst justice, however, if we omitted to state how such a great man departed from this earth. The folding-doors of his old coffin were closed upon him. Eight buxom widows carried his corpse for a honorarium of half-a-crown each. Jemmy had expressed a desire to have eight old maids to undertake this service, bequeathing half-a-guinea to each as hire. But the ladies in question were not forthcoming. So the widows were engaged in their place; but why the fee was lowered we cannot tell, unless it was to pay for the bagpipe and fiddle which headed the procession. All the country round flocked in to do Jemmy honour or to enjoy the holiday; and for many a year afterwards might the sorrowing comment be heard on Doncaster Course,—"Nay, lad! t'Coop-day seems nought-loike wi'out Jemmy!" and the mourners took out his "Fihawpence notes," and compared their own touching respective memories of the departed glory of Doncaster.

At the close of Jemmy's career the wonderfully dressed "swell mob" was busiest if not brightest. The latter was only short-lived. A party of them really dazzled common folk by the splendour of their turn-out, both as regarded themselves and their equipage. People took them for foreign princes, or native nobility returned from foreign climes, and not yet familiarly known to the public. The impression did not last long. The well-dressed, finely-curled, highly scented, richly-jewelled strangers, sauntering among the better known aristocracy, commenced a series of predatory operations which speedily brought them within the fastness of the town gaol. No one who saw them there a day or two later, after seeing them on the course, will ever forget the sight and the strange contrast. Stripped of their finery, closely cropped, and clad in coarse flannel dresses, they might be seen seated at a board, with a hot lump of stony-looking rice before them for a dinner.

Altogether, there was occasionally a very mixed society on and about the course: among the so-to-speak professional habitués, men who made a business of the pursuit there—who were actors rather than spectators, and all of whom have disappeared without leaving a successor in his peculiar line,—we may mention the old Duke of Leeds, redolent of port; the white-faced Duke of Cleveland, "the Jesuit of the Ring;" P. W. Ridsale, ex-footman, then millionaire, finally pauper; blacksmith Richardson, who, shaking his head at "Leeds," would remark of himself, that sobriety alone had saved him from being hanged; Mr. Beardsworth, who had been originally a hackney-coachman, then sporting his crimson liveries; Mr. Crook, who commenced life with a fish-basket; and the well-known son of the ostler at the Black Swan, in York, wearing diamond rings and pins, betting his thousands, and looking as cool the while, as if he not only largely used the waters of Pactolus, but owned half the gold-dust on its banks.

The two extremes of the official men as regarded rank, were, perhaps, Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Gully, the ex-pugilist. The former introduced, at Doncaster, the signal-flag to regulate the "starts," and he founded the Bentinck Fund (with the money subscribed for a testimonial to himself), for the relief of decayed jockeys and trainers. The two men were equals in one respect, the coolness with which they either won or lost. They who remember the year when Petre's Matilda beat Gully's Mameluke, and who witnessed the event and its results, speak yet with a sort of pride of Gully's conduct. He had lost immensely; but he was the first man who appeared in the betting-rooms to pay anyone who had a bet registered against him; and he was the last man to leave, not retiring till he was satisfied that there did not remain a single claimant. He paid away a grand total on that occasion which properly invested, would have set all the poor in Doncaster at ease for ever.—Abridged from the Athenæum, No. 1715.

"Walking Stewart."

Early in the year 1821, London lost one of its famous eccentrics, who rejoiced in the above distinction, which, it must be admitted, he had fairly earned. He was one of the lions of the great town, and his ubiquitous nature was thus ingeniously sketched:—

"Who that ever weathered his way over Westminster Bridge has not seen Walking Stewart (his invariable cognomen) sitting in the recess on the brow of the bridge, spencered up to his throat and down to his hips with a sort of garment, planned, it would seem, to stand powder, as became the habit of a military man; his dingy, dusty inexpressibles (truly inexpressibles), his boots travel-stained, black up to his knees—and yet not black neither—but arrant walkers, both of them, or their complexions belied them; his aged, but strongly-marked, manly, air-ripened face, steady as truth; and his large, irregular, dusty hat, that seemed to be of one mind with the boots? We say, who does not thus remember Walking Stewart, sitting, and leaning on his stick, as though he had never walked in his life, but had taken his seat on the bridge at his birth, and had grown old in his sedentary habit? To be sure, this view of him is rather negatived by as strong a remembrance of him in the same spencer and accompaniments of hair-powder and dust, resting on a bench in the Park, with as perfectly an eternal air: nor will the memory let him keep a quiet, constant seat here for ever; recalling him, as she is wont, in his shuffling, slow perambulation of the Strand, or Charing Cross, or Cockspur Street. Where really was he? You saw him on Westminster Bridge, acting his own monument. You went into the Park—he was there! fixed as the gentleman at Charing Cross. You met him, however, at Charing Cross, creeping on like the hour-hand upon a dial, getting rid of his rounds and his time at once! Indeed, his ubiquity appeared enormous, and yet not so enormous as the profundity of his sitting habits. He was a profound sitter. Could the Pythagorean system be entertained, what other would now be tenanted by Walking Stewart? Truly, he seemed always going, like a lot at an auction, and yet always at a stand, like a hackney-coach! Oh, what a walk was his to christen a man by! A slow, lazy, scraping, creeping, gazing pace—a shuffle—a walk in its dotage—a walk at a stand-still—yet was he a pleasant man to meet. We remember his face distinctly, and allowing a little for its northern hardness, it was certainly as wise, as kindly, and as handsome a face as ever crowned the shoulders of a soldier, a scholar and a gentleman.

"Well! Walking Stewart is dead! He will no more be seen niched in Westminster Bridge, or keeping his terms as one of the benchers of St. James's Park, or painting the pavement with moving but uplifted feet. In vain we looked for him 'at the hour when he was wont to walk.' The niche in the bridge is empty of its amiable statue, and as he is gone from this spot he has gone from all, for he was ever all in all! Three persons seemed departed in him. In him there seems to have been a triple death!"

We are tempted "to consecrate a passage" to him, as John Buncle expresses it, from a tiny pamphlet entitled "The Life and Adventures of the celebrated Walking Stewart, including his travels in the East Indies, Turkey, Germany, and America," and the author, "a relative," has contrived to out-do his subject in getting over the ground, for he manages to close his work at the end of the sixteenth page.

John Stewart, or Walking Stewart, was born of two Scotch parents, in 1749, in London, and was in due time sent to Harrow, and thence to the Charter House, where he established himself as a dunce—no bad promise in a boy, we think. He left school and was sent to India, where his character and energies unfolded themselves, as his biographer tells us, for his mind was unshackled by education.

He resolved to amass 3,000l., and then to return to England. No bad resolve. To attain this, he quitted the Company's Service and entered that of Hyder Ally. He now turned soldier, and became a general. Hyder's generals were easily made and unmade. Stewart behaved well and bravely, and paid his regiment without drawbacks, which made him popular. Becoming wounded somehow, and having no great faith in Hyder's surgeons, he begged leave to join the English for medical advice. Hyder gave a Polonius kind of admission, quietly determining to cut the traveller and his journey as short as possible, for his own sake and that of the invalid. Stewart sniffed the intention of Ally, and taking an early opportunity of cutting his company before they could cut him, he popped into a river, literally swam for his life, reached the bank, ran before his hunters like an antelope, and arrived safely at the European forts. He got in breathless, and lived. How he was cured of his wounds is thus told by Colonel Wilks in his Sketches of the South of India:—