SOME CURIOUS FISH OF THE SIXTIES.
SIR Henry De Hoghton, a wealthy baronet who was above the horizon in the
Sixties, though possessed of a fine estate and a palatial residence,
preferred the hand-to-mouth existence of an hotel, and lived at
Meurigy’s, now the supper-house yclept the Chatham. Never visible to the
naked eye by day, he wandered into the Raleigh about midnight, and
casting furtive glances in various directions, would settle down without
a word. To punters he was a very oasis in a dry land, for, although the
very worst écarté player in Christendom, no stakes were too high for him,
and after losing a game or two his proposals were literally appalling.
To ask him to play was the signal for his abrupt departure; to ignore his
presence was tantamount to £100 a game within twenty minutes.
Fred Granville, who about this period was considerably out of his depth,
had a peculiar experience with him. On one occasion, having lost to the
eccentric baronet some £3,000, De Hoghton, who evidently knew that a
settlement was precarious, said, “Why don’t you go to ‘Jellybelly’?”
What occurred at the suggested interview it is difficult to arrive at,
but within the week it was generally known that De Hoghton financed the
Hebrew money-lender, and by such disinterested advice as above was
invariably paid, leaving the onus of recovery to the astute Bob Morris.
Another drunken baronet who lived in Eaton Square, and had married an
houri of a very inferior type, had for his chief hobby the surrounding
himself with pugilists and comic singers.
Living entirely on the ground floor, the drawing-room, which was
carpetless, was got up like a cockpit. Here nightly orgies were held, to
the annoyance of every one within hearing, and when too much port—with
which the cellars were filled—had done its duty, rows were not infrequent
between this disreputable couple. On one occasion I can recollect her
drunken ladyship—very lightly clad—ordering a powdered six-foot flunkey
to put out the lights instantly, and her drunken spouse’s rejoinder, “If
you dare to touch a candle, you leave my house this moment.” After which
a domestic scrimmage and a stampede ensued, and, seizing hats and coats,
the guests hurriedly departed.
An eccentric old lady who died about this time left her large fortune to
a distant relative on the condition that she was never to be put below
earth.
To obviate the slightest risk of losing the legacy, the astute recipient
immediately purchased a house in London, and with all the pomp worthy of
the occasion, placed the mass of corruption, securely boxed, on the roof,
after which it was soldered on to the leads and encased in a glass shade.
The eyesore has long disappeared, but twenty years ago it was an object
of interest to strollers in Kensington Gardens.
Ned Deering was a well-known figure in Pall Mall in the long-ago Sixties.
The heir to one of the oldest baronetcies in the kingdom, he distorted
his handsome features by wearing his hair down to his shoulders in
imitation of Charles I. (of blessed memory), whom he imagined he
resembled.
Eccentric to a degree, he married a few years later the lady known to
posterity as Mrs. Bernard Beere, and great was the consternation in Kent
lest a “small Beer” might eventually be enrolled in their local patrician
ranks; but the scare was short-lived, and Ned, who meanwhile had turned
Papist—as he would have turned Mohammedan had he lived in Morocco—died in
a picturesque cottage with garden in front in Jermyn Street, imbibing
buckets of champagne to the last, and with the encouraging assurance of a
sure and joyful resurrection. The spot is now represented by the back
entrance of the Criterion Theatre. No more amusing companion existed
than Ned Deering, when the spirit moved him.
Amongst military characters, Lord Mark Kerr must assuredly be given the
palm. Of overwhelming family interest, he ruled the 13th Somersetshire
Light Infantry as a veritable despot. Mad as any March hare, he
frequently appeared on parade with his shako reverse-ways on his head,
and if his eagle-eye spotted some awkward-looking recruit, he would
paralyse him by, “Ha! you come from Bath, eh? I suppose you consider
yourself a Bath brick? But I consider you a Bath—” In the mess, too, he
was equally harmlessly autocratic, and no officer was expected to take
his seat till Lord Mark had said, “Be seated, gentlemen.” But there was
no vice in this eccentric branch of the house of Lothian. Whether he
would have been tolerated in these later days is another affair.
Major Francis, who was on the Smoking Room Committee of the Turf Club,
was an admitted authority on cigars. Small in stature, the little man
carried a cigar-case in every pocket of his numerous coats; not a cigar
entered the docks but was sampled as a labour of love for the large
importers by this unquestionable expert. And often have I accompanied
him to St. Mary Axe, where box after box has been opened, and cigar after
cigar lighted for our delectation, only to be laid aside after one whiff
as we passed on to other brands. “But what becomes of all these wasted
samples?” I inquired of Mr. Dodswell. “They’re not wasted,” he replied;
“they become ‘Regalia Britannicas,’ such as these,” and he handed me a
gilt-edged box of the most approved pattern that might well deceive any
but an expert.
Major Francis created a revolution in the cigars that were supplied at
the Turf, and instead of the “Golden Eagles” such as Dicky Boulton
considered cheap at three shillings apiece, and others assessed as dear
at any price, the finest exports of the Havanas were to be had for less
than half the money.
Every youngster aspiring to importance in those days affected the
possession of countless thousands of two-shilling cigars, and the walls
of a large establishment in Bond Street were covered with boxes bearing
in conspicuous type the various names and designations.
It may be stated, however, that the venture was a “credit” one, which,
whilst pandering to the vanity of the owner, in no way injured the
tradesman, who delicately withdrew any surplus stock where settlement
appeared doubtful.
Lord Alexander Russell—a brother of the Duke of Bedford—when in command
of the Rifle Brigade invariably smoked a short clay when at the head of
his regiment, and Colonel Warden, another eccentric, who commanded the
19th Foot, seldom rose till one or two in the afternoon, and would keep
the whole regiment dangling about the orderly room for hours, to the
amusement of the rest of the camp.
But this was in the days when every regiment was a principality ruled by
a despot, who, twice a year at most, underwent formal inspection by some
amiable old gentleman, who received £600 a year for wearing a cocked hat
as commander of such and such a regiment.
That the state of preparedness that often then existed would hardly meet
the requirements of the present-day alertness may best be exemplified by
what I once assisted at.
The Inspecting General was Sir Percy Douglas, who had expressed the
desire of seeing and hearing that instructive manœuvre, a _feu de joie_.
Proudly did the commanding officer give the requisite command, and with
one accord 800 muzzle-loading barrels pointed defiantly heavenwards; then
pop here, pop there a hundred yards down the line, a charge here and
there exploded.
Every barrel was choked with mutton fat—a favourite recipe against rust
amongst the old warriors of England.
Some startling stories of the mad Marquis of Waterford might be
introduced, if their production were possible. One or two incidents,
however, of the Sixties may not be amiss. Constantly was this privileged
lunatic to be seen walking the Haymarket at breakneck speed, and being
known to every cabman, waterman, and policeman, his antics attracted
little attention. On one occasion he appeared in an exceptionally
dishevelled condition, and a constable remonstrating with him in a
friendly tone, he produced a large knife, and, hacking off what purported
to be a finger, threw it into the street.
His lordship had apparently been exploiting the shambles, and brought
away a blade-bone for possible emergency.
On another occasion he had been annoyed by being overcrowded in a railway
carriage, and retaliated a few days after by appearing at the station
with a chimney-sweep in full canonicals, for whom he purchased a
first-class ticket, and whom he took with him into the carriage. His
lordship and his companion were on this occasion in no way incommoded.
Sir Charles Ross, a wealthy Highland baronet, visited London every season
for exactly fourteen days, accompanied by a gillie. At the old
“Tavistock,” where he invariably stayed, his daily meals consisted of
mutton chops and steaks; his gillie, by express order, was to be given
“anything”—salmon and grouse were good enough for him.
On one occasion he imagined he had dropped a sixpence in the
entrance-hall, and half the staff of the hotel were employed for two
hours at half-a-crown an hour, with express orders to _find_ it.
A substitute was eventually found, and the routine of the establishment
resumed its normal condition.
Some years later his eccentricities assumed a more serious form, and
having nearly frightened an old woman out of her life by suddenly rising
in his birthday suit with his ribs painted black from among furze bushes,
he was placed under restraint, and, I believe, died in a madhouse.
Lord Ernest Bruce, who eventually blossomed into Marquis of Ailesbury,
had a chronic deafness that apparently descended to his sons—“The
Duffer,” long since dead, and the present holder of the title (Henry)—and
it was better than any play to see the father and two sons narrating
anecdotes to one another, with their hands to their respective ears, and
bellowing like fog-horns, and then roaring like rhinoceroses as their
jokes permeated their skulls over the family gatherings that periodically
took place at Boodle’s.
At this time an excellent foreign restaurant had made its appearance in a
side street of Soho, and many of the foreign attachés gave it their
(private) patronage.
A joke that obtained was the scrambling for coppers from the window of a
private room, and it was on one occasion when Baron Spaum was revelling
in the excitement that the crowds became so dense that an appeal from the
landlord necessitated a resort to a ruse.
A suitable (!) person who was dining in the public room kindly consented
to don the Baron’s light overcoat and to scramble coppers that had been
provided as he leisurely left the premises. The deception succeeded
admirably, as the crowd followed the supposed benefactor. The assumption
of the Baron’s coat was also a profound success, at least so all but the
Baron agreed. He never saw his paletot again.
An old member of the Conservative, who was well known during the Sixties
and Seventies, made it an invariable practice to sip brown sherry for two
or three hours every afternoon. So monotonous were the constant
applications to his pocket that he directed the total should be paid in
one instalment before he left.
Fifteen and twenty glasses were the old toper’s average, but on one
occasion when his consumption amounted to twenty-five, he fixed a glazed
eye on the footman, and gurgled out: “Ten probable, eighteen possible,
but twenty-five, _never_!” After which he paid up, and toddled into the
attendant four-wheeler.
It was during the sixties that Mr. Justice Maule was in the zenith of his
fame. Devoted to his profession, and to the old port of his Inn, no
dinner of his brother benchers would have appeared complete without the
adjunct of his beaming countenance, when, having stowed away three
bottles under his belt, he would “tack” the few yards to his chambers in
Paper Buildings, and hang a man in the morning with the decorum only to
be attained by experience.
It was after one of these festive gatherings that Paper Buildings was
burnt to the ground. The Judge, it appears, was a great reader; whether
he always understood what he read (or did) under given circumstances is
not quite clear, suffice that, having popped into bed and adjusted a vase
conveniently on a chair, he proceeded to place a moderator lamp under his
couch, after which the only reliable evidence obtainable was that the old
gentleman woke with a start to find himself enveloped in flames.
As he himself described it, he thought he was dead and that he had _not_
been carried to Abraham’s bosom. He never, indeed, got over the shock,
and, moderating his partiality for old port, he exhibited more serious
tendencies, and so good came out of evil, and the occupiers of the
present palatial chambers are indebted to Mr. Justice Maule for having
gone to bed tipsy and burnt down the crazy old buildings.
Mr. Justice Maule had a grim humour of his own, and Serjeant Ballantine
used to tell of how on one occasion during the Guildford Assizes a murder
case hinged on the evidence of a child to which the Crown attached
importance, but to which the prisoner vehemently objected.
“Come here, my little girl,” said his lordship. “Now, if you were to
tell a story do you know where you would go to?”
“No, sir,” was the candid reply.
“Neither do I,” was the judicial endorsement; “an excellent answer; swear
the witness.”
But that was before the “shock” that brought him to his senses.
Every Army man in the sixties will remember George Goddard. A cheery
Irishman, full of anecdotage, universally popular, but, alas! with the
proverbial lack of the one thing needful. Appointed by Tod Heatly as one
of his touts, he combined business with pleasure by radiating between the
various regiments and billeting himself on any one he knew at the Raleigh
or Army Clubs.
“Now, Major,” he once said to Gussy Brown after a hilarious mess dinner,
“you see that stain on the floor? I bet you I’ll remove it without
touching it.”
“Impossible,” replied the little man. “I’ll bet a fiver you don’t,” and
before the astonished audience could say “Jack Robinson” the gallant
Gussy had been seized by his spurs and smeared across the floor.
But all this was in the days of practical joking.
Gussy Brown, although the most diminutive of cavalry field officers, was
also the most pompous, and on one occasion when the 4th were invited to a
humdrum dance at Brighton the little man, to show his displeasure, walked
slowly round the room with his “Gibus” under his arm, and making three
stately bows to the astonished hostess slowly left the room.
On the occasion of the Goddard joke, his only remark was, “D— stupid!”
At this period touting for brewers and wine merchants was the curse of
the Army. Every club contained retired colonels and others who
buttonholed one on every occasion. Before a troopship entered the
harbour a tout came on board with the pilot; dining at an Army club, the
man at the next table inquired if your regimental canteen was well
served; indeed, they penetrated the most sacred precincts with the
pertinacity of a sandstorm.
As a cranky old general once exclaimed “D— it, I thought we were safe
when militia men were not eligible; but these touts and store-keepers and
bonnet-shop keepers will make the Rag a den of thieves, by Gad!”
The association of these respective vocations in the old warrior’s mind
was evidently based on the legend that then obtained that when the
captain was inspecting the front rank of the Tower Hamlets the rear rank
was faced about by way of precaution.
Every one who knew Jonas Hunt must have been astonished to read that he
left over £35,000 at his death a few months ago. As brave as a lion, he
would assuredly—had he not been such a rip—have received the Victoria
Cross for his share in the Balaclava charge, and when he sold out two
years later, he was literally without a shilling, and continued in the
same happy condition for twenty years after—not that Jonas stinted
himself in anything, on the contrary, he would plunge to any extent,
dunning you if chance made him your creditor, and forgetting any debt
almost as soon as contracted. A bruiser of no mean class, he invariably
suggested a round if any one had the temerity to remind him.
A highly objectionable individual, whose father was a buggy master in
Calcutta, and actually got a commission in the “Blues” till ordered to
sell out for writing anonymous letters to a celebrated beauty of the
Sixties not long since dead, once had the impudence to remind Jonas of a
debt, and was replied to as follows: “I should have thought it more in
your line to have written anonymously to my wife, but if you prefer to
settle the matter with your fists I am entirely at your disposal.” The
man who procured the retirement of the anonymous letter-writer was at the
time an officer in the Guards, and though still to be seen radiating
between minor restaurants and 100 per cent. bureaus, has nothing left of
his former self but a fly-blown prefix to his name, and even that has
lost its commercial value amongst Hebrew financiers of shady enterprises.