60 FAMOUS RACING MEN. 



Curiously enough, extravagant though he was in other respects, 

 ]VIr. Mytton made no great show in his establishment at Halston. 

 There was every comfort but no display, and had he conducted all his 

 affairs with the same regularity and simplicity as his menage at his 

 ancestral seat he would never have run through upwards of half-a- 

 million of money in less than fifteen years as' he did. But it was 

 not difficult to find where the screw was loose in his expenditure. 

 His foxhounds were kept by himself and upon a very extensive 

 scale, with the additional expenses of hunting two countries. His 

 racing establishment was on a still larger scale, for he often had 

 from fifteen to twenty horses in training at the same time, and 

 seldom less than eight. His average number, indeed, of thorough- 

 bred stock at home and from home, including brood mares and 

 yearlings, was about thirty-six, which probably cost him something- 

 like £6,000 a-year. His game preserves, too, were a severe drain 

 upon his income ; for besides such items as £1,500 in one bill to a 

 London dealer for pheasants and foxes alone, there was the forma- 

 tion of miles of plantations which this game went in part to stock, 

 and which he employed a staff of fifty labourers to keep in order. 

 He was a great friend, too, to the tailors, having frequently in his 

 wardrobes as many as a hundred and fifty pairs of breeches and 

 trousers, with a proportionate number of coats and waistcoats. In 

 his cellars there were "hogsheads of ale, standing like soldiers in close 

 column, and wine enough in wood and bottle for a Roman emperor." 

 He made his own malt, and " John Myttox, Licensed Maltster," 

 was painted in large letters over the malt house door. How much 

 he spent on post horses it is impossible to guess ; but almost every 

 post boy in England knew " Squire Mytton " and lamented his fall. 

 He never stayed at an inn without giving the waiter a guinea, and 

 he would never pay a tradesman's bill until he had received a 

 writ. A strange unaccountable creature he was, who though always 

 making a great pretence of " enjoying life," seems really never to 

 have derived enjoyment from anything. 



Mr. Mytton's family associations, his dashing personal character, 

 his extreme and unaffected good humour, the fact that he was a 

 kind master and a considerate landlord, an enthusiastic sportsman, 

 and the most lavishly liberal of hosts, rendered him extremely 

 popular in Shropshire, and if he had been but possessed of even a 

 moderate sense of propriety he might have represented the county 

 of Salop in Parliament as long as he cared to do so. But the nearly 

 constant state of intoxication in which he lived became insufferable 

 to his neighbours of all classes, and even to his oldest friends. 

 And this was not the worst. He fell into the habit of associating 

 with low tyj3es of sporting men, like the unfortunate Lord Barry- 

 more, of Wargrave. This was all the greater pity because his natural 

 talents were excellent ; and if instead of being clouded and debi- 

 litated by the excess of wine and its concomitant dissipation, they 

 had been cultivated and improved to the utmost, they might have 



