"lFllmto^' 179 



the hunting-field, he was also one of the best gentlemen 

 jockeys of his day. When he and Mr Richard 

 Tattersall went on a tour together through Germany, 

 Apperley, though then fifty years of age, wasted from 

 eleven stone seven pounds to ten stone three pounds, in 

 order to ride for the gold cup at Dobberau, which he 

 won on Wildfire ; and when he had the honour of being 

 presented in his cap and jacket to the Grand Duchess of 

 Mecklenburg as the hero of the meeting, he, with 

 chivalrous gallantry, begged her to accept the cup. She 

 graciously received the gift, invited the bold horseman 

 to dinner, and before he left the country made him a 

 present of an exact facsimile of the trophy he had won. 

 It was a curious interchange of courtesies, savouring more 

 of the days of chivalry than of our own prosaic times, but 

 it is significant of the favourable impression created b}- 

 the handsome Englishman. 



' Nimrod,' however, was of an improvident nature: 

 he soon found that Bilton Hall was too expensive a 

 place to be kept up on his precarious income, and in 

 1808 he migrated to Bitterley Court, Salop, where he 

 was content with a more modest establishment. About 

 this time, too, he became a Captain in the Notts 

 Militia. Handicapped by his early marriage and his 

 increasing family, he was at his wits' end to know how 

 to support himself and those dependent on him. He 

 had left Shropshire and was at Brewood in Staffordshire, 

 when he bethought himself of trying his hand at author- 

 ship. He commenced a book on fox-hunting, a subject 

 on which he justly thought himself well qualified to 

 write, and showed the first few chapters to a friend, 

 whose advice to him was to abandon the idea, as a book 

 on the lines he proposed would have no chance of 



