BATTERSBY PERSISTS 203 



and Mr Ernest Willoughby never even heard of Mr 

 Battersby ! " 



The solemnity with which these strictures of Baily's 

 were given was perhaps one of the best points of the whole 

 performance, which was wound up by the following 

 supplementary circular : 



Mr JOSEPH RAWLINSON BATTERSBV regrets to say that, 

 owing to domestic affliction, he has been prevented from coming 

 to York as announced by him. 



For the above reason he did not go to Yarm, and he fears that, 

 in the cares and anxieties to which he has been subjected, he may 

 have suffered some of his letters addressed there to be returned 

 to the writers. 



He has heard that Mr Arthur Yates and Mr Ernest Willoughby 

 deny all knowledge of him. So be it : The infant, budding into 

 adolescence, shakes off the hand that has guided its hitherto 

 tottering steps ; and it is thus that they, mounted on their now 

 perfect horses, repudiate J. R. B. 



Were he so disposed, proof would not be wanting ; such proof 

 he scorns to give. 



A time will come when Yorkshire gentlemen will see him flitting, 

 meteor -like, through the fastest run, and gazing from afar, they 

 will confess that his own intrinsic merit is a recommendation all- 

 sufficient for Joseph Rawlinson Battersby. 

 A. P. HARDCASTLE, Printer, Cheltenham. 



These circulars were posted in Cheltenham and created 

 additional sensation. That they persisted as against 

 Mr Willoughby and Mr Arthur Yates was the most re- 

 markable part of them, and the friends of those gentlemen 

 more than half believed the impeachment. 



It was long before it became known that Battersby 

 was not genuine business, and then the late Major Fife 

 Cookson, who at the time was a cavalry subaltern, 

 stationed at York, was charged with being the author of 

 the circulars. He did not deny the impeachment very 

 strenuously, and for many years he had the reputation of 

 having perpetrated this jest ; but it was I who write who 

 did it, and even carried it further at one period by challeng- 

 ing Galvayne to a public match at horse-breaking and 

 taming. This challenge was issued by letter in The 



