118 FAMOUS RACING MEN. 



" And lost a considerable fortune ? " — " I lost a considerable sum 

 of money, certainly." 



'' You lost, I believe, the whole of your patrimony ? " — " My lord, 

 am I bound to answer that question ? And yet 1 do not see why T 

 should not. Yes, sir, 1 lost a considerable part of it." 



" You have been more fortunate since though ? " — " No, my old 

 luck has continued pretty much throughout." 



Sir John Campbell, afterwards the tirst Lord Campbell, one of the 

 bitterest and most sarcastic men of his day, replied on the whole 

 cai;e for the plaintiff in a slashing speech, in which he spoke of 

 " Payne, the professional gamester," accused him of having con- 

 federated with Brooke Grreville to get up this charge against 

 Lord de Ros, and amongst other aspersions on the character of 

 Mr. Payne, used one phrase which especially exasperated that 

 gentleman. Sir John said that "' having started as a dupe, he 

 soon crystallized into something worse." So angry was Greorge 

 Payne at the im])utation conveyed by this phrase that he waited 

 for Sir John for several afternoons in the neighbourhood of West- 

 minster Hall, with a stout horse whip in his hand, with the hrm 

 intention of giving the eminent counsel a sound trouncing. But 

 the shrewd Scotchman got notice of the intended onslaught, and 

 slipping out each afternoon by a back way, allowed sufficient time 

 for Mr. Payne's wrath to cool, when he offered an apology through 

 the medium of Colonel Anson, who was, like Grreville, a sort of 

 general peace-maker, and Mr. Payne at once good-humouredly 

 forgave him. 



Of the card-playing stories in which ^Ir. Payne was conspicuous, 

 there is no end, and we select from those given in the biogra- 

 phical notices of him the following: — Eccivte was about forty years 

 ago the fashionable private game of the day, and many were 

 the merry bouts thereat which Mr. Payne fought out with several 

 distinguished adversaries. It is a tradition of Trimmer's that he 

 and Lord Albert Denison, afterwards the first Lord Londesborough, 

 sat up all night at the famous but now extinguished hostelry, 

 and that when they separated in the morning. Lord Albert, having 

 lost about £130,000, proceeded to the adjoining temple of Hymen 

 at St. George's, Hanover Square, to be married to his first 

 wife, Miss Henrietta Maria Forester, the sister of Lady Chester- 

 field, Mrs. Anson, and Lady Bradford. With the same antagonist, 

 and playing the same game, Mr. Payne once set out from 

 London in a post-chaise to pay a visit to a country house in 

 the New Forest. They played all day, and when night fell a lamp 

 in the roof of the chaise was lighted, and they proceeded to deal 

 and propose without intermission. Mr. Payne was in the midst 

 of a capital run of luck, with £100 staked on each game, when they 

 both became aware that the chaise had stopped, and that the 

 bewildered post-boy, who had lost his way, was tapping lustily 

 with the butt end of his whip at the window of the post-chaise to 



