116 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



honour, that he talked about nothing else in his sleep, 

 and even his physicians said that " it was all horses 

 horses with him, by night and by day, to the very- 

 last/' If he liked a racer, he was perfectly lavish as 

 to price ; and when, on his last return to the turf, 

 William Chifney bid up Pucelle, the grandam of 

 Virago, and then a brood mare, to 1,100 guineas, for 

 Lord Darlington, at Lord H. Fitzroy's sale, he 

 received a hint that it was no use going on, as Mr. 

 Delme Ratcliffe had instructions from the King to 

 buy her at any price. Still he was not always able to 

 get all he wanted, even in horseflesh ; and the late 

 Sir Fowell Buxton, for reasons which he never cared 

 to conceal, sturdily refused to listen to his 1,000 

 guineas offer for his park horse John Bull. He had 

 one peculiarity as regards money that he was most 

 liberal with it as long as he did not see it. Cheques 

 he would sign away to any amount ; even 390 for 

 " Pea-Green HaynesV ; dressing-box seemed as no- 

 thing in that form ; but when he had a fifty-pound 

 note in his pocket, it was a bitter pang to him to 

 spend five pounds of it. If he had paid the bills every 

 Saturday night, those Carlton House banquets, which 

 saddened the heart of Komilly as he sat and thought 

 of the haggard and iron-bound fact of distress from 

 Land's End to John o'Groat's ; and the building of 

 the Royal Lodge, which so roused the indignation of 

 the press and the people, and brought down Mr. 

 Whitbread, M.P., in a severe Hampden mood, all 

 the way from the House of Commons to Windsor for 

 a survey would have very soon been discontinued, 

 and peradventure the especial capabilities of Virginia 

 Water would have been still unknown. As it was, 

 these woodland haunts served to delight him when, 

 as a great Edinburgh reviewer wrote to his friend, 

 "he was fat, nervous, and lazy," and " arthritic ty- 

 ranny" had acquired its deadly dominion over his 

 limbs and spirits. 



The year after he returned to the turf (1827), he 



