CHAPTER IX.

RACING PAR EXCELLENCE.

A VISIT I once paid to Castle Donington had initiated me into many of the mysteries of racing of which I had hitherto been in profound ignorance. I had learnt that heavy plungers often deputed minor satellites to bet according to instructions, and had witnessed “private” trials—which it was well known were being watched—where ruses were resorted to that would have impressed the most sceptical by their realism. I had seen a “favourite” pulled up, and within half a minute a blood-stained pocket-handkerchief hurriedly smuggled into the rider’s pocket; I had witnessed a horse backed for thousands go lame without apparent cause a week before a race, and hobble through the village as if on its way to the knacker’s, and I marvelled—till I gradually became more enlightened—at the profound acumen of those in authority who could bring such invalids to the post in the best of health and spirits.

I also made the acquaintance of numerous shining lights of the Turf, some that blazed with universally admitted lustre, and some that emitted a shady, indescribable glimmer apt to mislead the wayfarer.

Amongst the former none held a more honourable position, or was a greater favourite, than Mr. George Payne. A man of likes and dislikes, he had apparently taken a fancy to me and often gave me hints that sturdier recipients would have converted into thousands.

Mr. George Payne, although at this period close upon sixty, was the centre of every fashionable gathering that met for racing or card playing; a favourite of the highest in the land, he had come direct from Norfolk to Nice in company with the chief actor in a notorious drama enacted many years later, and no man had raised his voice with greater indignation when, _nolens volens_, he found himself in the very centre of the unsavoury vortex, “By —, sir! By —, sir!”—an invariable adjunct—“D— scoundrel!” dominating considerably amid the numerous _pourparlers_ that ensued.

As a card player his stakes were simply appalling, and it is a well-known fact that on one occasion he won £30,000 from the late Lord Londesborough, who immediately afterwards hurried off to be married. £100 a game was to him a normal stake, and any aspirant attempting to “cut in” at the table who was not prepared to have an extra hundred on the game was “By —, sir’d!” _ad infinitum_ for depriving a better man of the seat.

Opinions on that remarkable meteor—Henry Plantagenet Hastings—who first came into public notice at the Newmarket Spring Meeting of ’62, will always differ. By those who knew him intimately he will be remembered as a weak, amiable, and generous youngster, terribly handicapped by a colossal rent roll, a splendid pedigree, a generous, impulsive disposition, and an entire ignorance of the value of money. To the present generation, who have only heard of his escapades, he will appear as a reckless, unprincipled reprobate, preferring low company to that of his equals, incapable of restraining his passions in pursuit of the object of the moment, and sacrificing anything and anybody for their attainment. Barely had he left Oxford than he became the target of that sporting world that pursued him to his grave, and was swindled out of £13,500 for a “screw” that ended his days in a cab; after which he settled down to racing as a serious occupation, and had fifty horses in training; thence (1862) to 1867 he won the Cambridgeshire, the Grand Prix, the Goodwood Cup, and a host of minor races, besides such a colossal sum as close upon £80,000 on Lecturer in the Cesarewitch of ’66.

But although the fates had apparently condoned his infringement of the Tenth Commandment in ’64, Nemesis was even then on his track, and it would seem that the colt foaled about the very time he was exploiting the structural merits of Vere Street was to be the humble instrument in the hands of Providence for the ruin of the wicked Marquis.

It is needless here to repeat the threadbare story that once interested people of how the most beautiful woman of her day stepped out of a brougham one fine morning at the Oxford Street entrance to a linen-draper’s, and emerged from another door in the vicinity of Vere Street with the Marquis’s boon companion, Fred Granville. Suffice for our reminiscences, that if all this had not occurred in ’64, there would probably have been no “Hermit’s year” in ’67; that Captain Machell would not have commenced his career by netting £80,000 over the event, and that poor Hastings would never have lost and paid the 103,000 sovereigns he