lived in the most expensive manner, but quickly tiring of rural life
decided to return to the Continent. While he was still hesitating as to
his exact place of destination, some friends, with whom he was dining,
and who had heard that he was intending to go abroad, made inquiry of
him whither he was going. He hastily answered: "To Jerusalem." Upon
this, certain that he had no such intention, they offered to wager
him any sum he did not reach that city. As a result of this, in spite
of the fact that he originally had not the faintest idea of such an
expedition, he was so much stimulated by the offers made him that he
accepted bets to the amount of £15,000, and at once made preparations
for his journey. A few days later he set out, and having accomplished
what was then an adventurous journey, eventually returned to Dublin
within the appointed time, and in due course claimed and received
from his astonished antagonists the reward of his most unexpected
performance.
After staying some time in Dublin, Whalley again went to Paris, and was
witness to the very interesting scenes which occurred in the early part
of the Revolution in France. He remained in Paris till after the return
of the King from Varennes; and, when it became no longer safe for a
subject of the King of Great Britain to remain in France, he returned
to Ireland.
Being of a very active disposition, Whalley made constant trips to
England, where he frequented the gaming-houses in London, Newmarket,
and Brighton, and soon dissipated a large part of his remaining
fortune. He then retired to the Isle of Man, where he employed himself
in cultivating and improving an estate he possessed there, and in
educating his children. He at the same time drew up memoirs of his own
life, which were discovered a few years ago and published under the
title of _Memoirs of Buck Whalley_.
Another sporting character well known in Ireland was the celebrated
Buck English, who spent the latter part of his life in litigious
turmoil, and was a man who experienced infinite vicissitudes of
fortune. Born to a large estate, the earlier part of his life was spent
in scenes of the most unbounded dissipation; but these were curtailed
when he got into the hands of a litigious attorney, who, for years,
kept him out of his property. Mr. English was tried for his life,
for the murder of Mr. Powell, and was with difficulty acquitted, and
escaped narrowly from being torn to pieces by the mob in Cork. Previous
to this, he threw a waiter out of a window, and desired him to be
"charged in the bill!" In his career, he fought two duels with swords,
in the streets of Dublin; was a Member of Parliament, and an excellent
speaker; was thrown into a loathsome prison for debt, where his
constitution was totally destroyed. He died almost immediately after
his liberation, just as he recovered his fortune.
In October 1791, at the Curragh Meeting in Ireland, Mr. Wilde, a
sporting gentleman, made bets to the amount of two thousand guineas,
to ride against time, viz., one hundred and twenty-seven English miles
in nine hours. On the 6th of October he started in a valley, near the
Curragh course, where two miles were measured in a circular direction;
each time he encompassed the course it was regularly marked. During the
interval of changing horses, he refreshed himself with a mouthful of
brandy and water, and was no more than six hours and twenty-one minutes
in completing the one hundred and twenty-seven miles; of course he had
two hours and thirty-nine minutes to spare.
Mr. Wilde had no more than ten horses, but they were all thoroughbreds
from the stud of Mr. Daly.
Whilst on horse-back, without allowing anything for changing of horses,
he rode at the rate of twenty miles an hour for six hours. He was so
little fatigued with this extraordinary performance, that he was at the
Turf Club-house in Kildare the same evening.
The Right Honourable Thomas Conolly also rode for a wager of five
hundred guineas on the Curragh. He was allowed two hours to ride forty
miles with any ten hunters of his own. He with ease rode forty-two
miles in an hour and forty-four minutes on eight hunters.
At this time much money was wagered both in Ireland and England upon
the leaping powers of the horse, and occasionally the methods employed
were none too honourable.
A young sportsman, for instance, having boasted of the powers of a
recently purchased hunter which he offered to back at jumping against
any horse in the world, a friend ridiculed the idea, and said he had
a blind hunter that should leap over what the other would not. A wager
to no inconsiderable amount was the consequence, and day and place
appointed. The time having arrived, both parties appeared on the ground
with their nags; when laying down a straw at some distance, the friend
put his horse forward, and at the word "over" the blind hunter made a
famous leap; while neither whip nor spur could induce the other to rise
at all.
A very sporting bet was decided in the most fashionable part of London
in 1792. On the 24th of February in that year was accomplished the
feat of leaping over the high wall of Hyde Park from Park Lane. A bet
of five hundred guineas was reported to have been laid between a Royal
personage and Mr. Bingham, that the latter's Irish-bred brown mare
should leap over the wall of Hyde Park, opposite Grosvenor Place, which
wall was six feet and a half high on the inside, and eight on the out.
Mr. Bingham having sold his mare to Mr. Jones, the bet, of course,
became void. Mr. Jones offered bets to any amount that the mare should
do it, but his offers were not accepted. Mr. Bingham, to show the
possibility of its being done, led his beautiful bay horse, Deserter,
to the same place, who performed this standing leap twice without
any difficulty, except that, in returning, his hind feet brushed the
bricks off the top of the wall. As the height from which he was to
descend into the road was so considerable, he was received on a bed
of long dung. The Duke of York, Prince William of Gloucester, the Earl
of Derby, and a number of the nobility joined the vast concourse of
impatient spectators, who were pretty well tired out before the jumping
began.
Another remarkable feat was the leap over a dinner-table with dishes,
decanters, and lighted candelabra, performed by Mr. Manning, a sporting
farmer, on a barebacked steed in the Rochester Room at the White Hart
Inn, at Aylesbury, during the steeplechases in 1851.
Wagers entailing considerable risk and endurance were popular in the
past. Two gentlemen at a coffee-house near Temple Bar once made an
extraordinary bet of this nature. One of them was to jump into seven
feet of water, with his clothes on, and to entirely undress himself in
the water, which he did within the appointed time.
The present writer, when an undergraduate at Cambridge, witnessed a
somewhat similar exploit performed in the Cam on a particularly cold
winter's day.
On this occasion, however, the undergraduate, a man of herculean frame,
who had wagered that he would undress in the water, was allowed to
cancel his bet after he had discarded everything but one sock. As he
appeared to be much exhausted, all bets were declared off by mutual
consent. The layer of the wager was in a terrible state on leaving the
water, but entirely recovered the next day.
Those fond of shooting frequently wagered on their powers as shots.
In 1800 the celebrated Colonel Thornton made a bet that he killed 400
head of game at 400 shots. The result was, he bagged 417 head of game
(consisting of partridges, pheasants, hares, snipes, and woodcocks) at
411 shots. Amongst these were a black wild duck and a white pheasant
cock; and at the last point he killed a brace of cock pheasants, one
with each barrel. On the leg of the last killed (an amazing fine bird)
was found a ring, proving that he had been taken by Colonel Thornton
when hawking, and turned loose again in 1792.
Colonel Thornton could not bear to hear that any one had outdone him
at anything. On one occasion a foreigner was boasting of the sporting
powers of the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X., and asserted that
the Prince in question was, without doubt, considered the greatest shot
in Europe. On hearing this the Colonel looked highly offended, when the
foreign sportsman added, "except Colonel _Tornton_" (thus pronounced),
"who is acknowledged to be the longest shot in the world." There was a
great deal of bitter-sweet in this, but the Colonel wisely interpreted
the phrase in a sense complimentary to himself.
Colonel Thornton, though his name has come down to us as a great
sporting character, was not by any means universally popular in his own
day. Notwithstanding that he was of quite respectable descent, and had
inherited a comfortable fortune, he was never on familiar terms with
the aristocratic sportsmen of his age, with whom it was his darling
passion to be able to associate. A well-known member of the Jockey
Club, when the Colonel's name was mentioned, once said: "Oh! Thornton,
never let us hear that fellow named; we don't know him."
The Colonel provoked much ridicule by his overwhelming ambition to
excel everybody in everything--a notable instance of which was his
taking Thornville Royal, a palatial house of which his family and
suite could only occupy one corner, his means being inadequate to keep
up the house and domain in proper style. Incapable of restraining an
innate tendency to exaggeration, Colonel Thornton was known to many as
"Lying Thornton," a nickname which was in some degree justified by the
palpably mendacious accounts of his exploits, which his craving for
notoriety prompted him to disseminate. His conceit was gigantic. He
once actually sent an apology for not being present at a Royal Levee,
which absurd conduct caused a great personage many a hearty laugh.
The Colonel's extravagance, and the lawsuits in which he indulged,
often reduced him to great straits for ready money. Nevertheless,
he was always possessed of considerable property. Colonel Thornton
undoubtedly deserves to be remembered as a sportsman, though his
reputation as such would have been greater had he not sought to excel
all men in bodily activity and physical exertion, as well as eclipse
them in the extent and variety of land and water sports, which was
naturally an impossible feat.
Much given to litigation in life. Colonel Thornton gave the lawyers
employment even after his death. By his will he bequeathed all his
remaining property to an illegitimate daughter by Priscilla Druins,
leaving his wife, Mrs. Thornton, nothing, and his son by her only £100.
The will was disputed by the lawyers both in France and England. In
the English Courts it was decided that the Colonel had never ceased to
be a British subject, and that, therefore, the will must be valid. The
French Court, passing a contrary judgment, decreed that the Colonel had
petitioned in 1817, and obtained a complete naturalisation; that his
real domicile being therefore in France, the will must be decided by
its laws; and that the property having been willed to a child born in
adultery, and otherwise contrary to the laws of France, the will was
null and void; and they adjudged accordingly, with costs in favour of
Mrs. Thornton, the lawful wife. The Colonel's real property appeared to
be very little. He inhabited the Château de Chambord only as a tenant,
but he had purchased the domain of Pont le Roi, and the vendors sued
the Colonel's legatees for the purchase money.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century long-distance matches continued
to be in vogue. The distance between Burton, on the Humber, and
Bishopsgate, in the City of London, one hundred and seventy-two miles,
was covered in something like eight hours and a half by a sportsman in
1802, who had bet that, with the fourteen horses allowed him, he would
accomplish the journey in ten hours.
In April 1806 a very singular bet, or agreement, was made at Brighton
between Lieutenant-General Lennox and Henry Hunter, Esq. The former,
after some remarks on the prevalent winds at Brighton, proposed to give
to the latter, during the space of twenty-eight days, whenever the wind
blew from the south-west, one guinea per diem, provided the other would
forfeit to him the same sum, during the same period, every day that
the wind should blow from the north-east, which proposal was instantly
accepted. For the ensuing thirteen days the wind lay mostly in the
south-west quarter, upon which Mr. Hunter remarked that, in spite
of south-west gales not being to every one's taste, this was merely
another proof of the old adage that "It is an ill wind that blows
nobody good."
In 1807, Captain Bennet, of the Loyal Ongar Hundred Volunteers, engaged
to trundle a hoop from Whitechapel Church to Ongar, in Essex, in three
hours and a half, a distance of twenty-two miles, for the wager of one
hundred guineas.
He started on Saturday morning, November 21, precisely at six o'clock,
with the wind very much in his favour, and the odds about two to one
against him. Notwithstanding the early hour, the singularity of the
match brought together a numerous assemblage. The hoop used by Captain
Bennet on the occasion was heavier than those trundled by boys in
general, and was selected by him conformably to the terms of the wager.
The first ten miles Captain Bennet performed in one hour and twenty
minutes, which changed the odds considerably in his favour.
He accomplished the whole distance considerably within the given time,
as the Ongar coachman met him only five miles and a half from Ongar,
when he had a full hour in hand.
A cruel wager was the following, made in December of the same year,
when a Mr. Arnold, a sporting man who resided at Pentonville, bet Mr.
Mawbey, a factor of the Fulham Road, twenty guineas that the former did
not produce a dog, which should be thrown over Westminster Bridge at
dark, and find its way home again in six hours, as proposed by Arnold.
The inhuman experiment was tried in the evening, when a spaniel bitch,
the property of a groom in Tottenham Court Road, was produced and
thrown over from the centre of the bridge. The dog arrived at the house
of her master in two hours after the experiment had been made.
Little consideration was shown for animals in those days.
On a Saturday evening in August 1808, a crowd of people assembled at
Hyde Park Corner to watch the start of a pony which was, for a stake
of five hundred guineas, matched to start with the Exeter Mail and be
in Exeter first, with or without a rider. A man leading the pony was
at liberty to take a fresh post-horse whenever he liked. The backer of
the pony won the match, for though the odds were against it, the game
little animal arrived at Exeter in very good condition, forty-five
minutes before the Mail reached that city. Several thousands of pounds
were wagered on the result.
It should be added that the pony drank ale during the journey, and
several pints of port in addition.
The distance from London to Exeter is about one hundred and
seventy-four miles.
In 1809 a very extraordinary wager was decided upon the road between
Cambridge and Huntingdon. A gentleman of the former place had betted
a considerable sum of money that he would go, a yard from the ground,
upon stilts, the distance of twelve miles, within the space of four
hours and a half: no stoppage was to be allowed, except merely the
time taken up in exchanging one pair of stilts for another, and even
then his feet were not to touch the ground. He started at the second
milestone from Cambridge in the Huntingdon Road, to go six miles
out and six miles in; the first he performed in one hour and fifty
minutes, and did the distance back in two hours and three minutes, so
that he went the whole in three hours and fifty-three minutes, having
thirty-seven minutes to spare within the time allowed him.
In the winter of 1810-1811 a bet of £500 was made by the Duke of
Richmond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with Sir Edward Crofton
(who afterwards committed suicide), that the latter should not produce
a horse who would leap, in fair Irish sporting style (which allows
just touching with the hind feet), a wall seven feet high. Sir Edward
brought forward a cocktail horse, called Turnip, being got by Turnip, a
thoroughbred son of old Pot8o's (a horse imported, like the celebrated
Diamond, into Ireland by Colonel Hyde), out of a common Irish mare.
On the day appointed, a gate was removed from its place in a very high
park wall, near the Phoenix Park, and, men and stones being ready, was
built up to the required and specified height, in the presence of his
Grace. While this was being expeditiously accomplished by men used to
building up such fences. Turnip was kept walking about, by a common
groom in jacket and cap. When all was ready, and the signal given, over
he went, but had so little run that the Duke, thinking the rider was
going to turn him round and give him a race at it, turned his head at
the moment, and did not see the leap; to reassure him, however, the
horse was put over it again. He was a slow horse, and died afterwards
from the effects of a severe run with the Kildare hounds in an open
country, where, though the fences would in England be reckoned severe,
they were nothing to the walls of Roscommon and Galway.
About 1811 there appears to have been a recrudescence of the craze for
eccentric wagers. A good deal of interest was excited in January of
that year by the strange performance of a soldier in the Guards, who
had betted two guineas that he would mark a cross on every tree in St.
James's Park, that was within his reach, in an hour and ten minutes. He
started at ten o'clock in the morning from the first tree in Birdcage
Walk, and completed his task in three minutes less than the time
allowed him. A great number of bets depended upon the result.
In the same year a French cook, in the employ of Lord Gwydir, wagered
a considerable sum in the neighbourhood of Lincoln, that he could
roll a round piece of wood like a trencher from Grimsthorpe to Bourn,
a distance of nearly four miles, church-steeple road, at one hundred
starts. The bet having been accepted, the Frenchman had a groove formed
round the edge of the wood, and, with the aid of a piece of cord, he
accomplished his task in ninety-nine starts.
In the same year an ostler of the Dragoon Inn, at Harrowgate,
undertook, for a wager of one guinea, to drag a heavy phaeton three
times round the race-course there, being nearly four miles, in six
hours. He started at six in the evening, and at fifteen minutes to nine
he had performed his singular task.
In 1812 Scrope Davis, then a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge,
betted five thousand guineas that he would swim from Eaglehurst, the
seat of Lord Cavan, near Southampton Water, to the Isle of Wight. This
feat, however, he did not attempt, as he received seven hundred and
fifty guineas forfeit from the sporting gentleman with whom he made the
wager.
Scrope Davis was a particularly cultivated man, who for a time
frequented the gaming-table with considerable success. Eventually,
however, like the great majority of gamblers, he found himself with
little to live upon except his Cambridge fellowship. He retired to
Paris and bore his altered fortunes with the greatest philosophy,
whilst occupying himself in writing a diary which has unfortunately
disappeared.
In 1813 another literary man of sporting tendencies--a Mr. Thacker,
who had been an assistant master at Rugby--undertook at Lincoln, for a
wager of £5, to make two thousand pens in ten hours; this he performed
nearly two hours within the time. It was stipulated that they should
be well made; and a person was appointed umpire who examined every pen
as he made it. The pens were afterwards sold by auction at the Green
Dragon, where the bet had been decided.
In 1814 a somewhat novel wager was decided in a tavern in the City.
Two gentlemen undertook to drink against one another, one to drink
wine, and the other water, glass for glass, and he that gave in was to
be the loser. They drank the contents of a bottle and a half each,
but the wine-drinker was triumphant. The unfortunate water-drinker was
afterwards taken ill, being confined to his bed with an attack of the
gout.
In February 1815 a journeyman baker performed a wonderful feat of
winning a bet of fifty pounds to ten laid him by a gentleman that he
would not stand upon one leg for twelve hours. A square piece of carpet
was nailed in the centre of the room, and the time fixed was three
o'clock in the afternoon, when the baker made his appearance without
shoes, coat, or hat, and proceeded to take up his position upon his
right leg. After standing eight hours and a half, before a great number
of people, the gentleman, seeing the agony which the baker appeared to
be in, offered him one-half of the wager to relinquish the bet; but, to
the great astonishment of the spectators, the man refused, saying he
would have the whole, or at least try for it; the perspiration was then
running off him like rain, but he still persisted, when the bets were
fifty to one against him. Nevertheless he performed what was in its way
a wonderful feat, remaining on the one leg three minutes longer than
the stipulated time, when he was put into a chair, and carried home.
In May of the same year, a novel bet of £500 was laid in a coffee-room
in Bond Street. The wager in question stipulated that a gentleman
should go from London to Dover, and back, in any mode he chose, while
another made a million of dots with a pen and ink upon a sheet of
writing-paper.
In 1826, Lloyd, the celebrated pedestrian, started, on Monday the 19th
March, at eight in the morning, to perform thirty miles _backwards_
in nine successive hours, including stoppages, at Bagshot, Surrey. He
went on during the morning at the rate of four miles an hour, although
the ground was much against him, and finished his task with apparent
ease fourteen minutes within the time. He immediately mounted a friends
horse, and proceeded to Hartford Bridge, where he took up his quarters
for the night, and walked on to Odiham the next morning (Tuesday),
where he undertook to walk twenty miles backwards in five hours and a
half, which, with the advantage of a good road, he again accomplished
seven minutes and a half within his time.
The same year a gentleman made a bet that he would cause all the
bells of a well-frequented tavern in Glasgow to ring at the same
period without touching one of them, or even leaving the room. This
he accomplished by turning the stop-cock of the main gas-pipe, and
involving the whole inmates in instant darkness. In a short period
the clangor of bells rang from every room and box in the house, which
gained him his bet amidst the general laughter and applause even of the
losers.
As the nineteenth century crept on, life grew more strenuous, and
the eccentric wagers, once so popular, went out of fashion; sporting
matches, however, were occasionally made.
In 1831, Squire Osbaldiston, of historic sporting memory, when
forty-four years old and over eleven stone in weight, won a thousand
guineas by riding two hundred miles in eight hours and thirty-nine
minutes, the conditions of the wager stipulating that he should go the
distance in ten hours. No less than twenty-eight horses were utilised
in this historic match.
At 3.15 A.M., July 13, 1809, at Newmarket, Captain Barclay, the famous
pedestrian, successfully ended a walk of a thousand miles in a thousand
successive hours at the rate of a mile in each and every hour. This
great walker had three-quarters of an hour to spare and completed his
task with great ease, 100 to 1 being offered upon him on the last
morning of his walk. About £100,000 depended upon this match, of which
£16,000 was won by Barclay himself.
Seventeen years later Captain Polhill easily accomplished the task of
walking, driving, and riding fifty miles in twenty-four consecutive
hours, the whole distance of a hundred and fifty being negotiated with
five hours to spare.