42 JOHN BAYNTON STARKEY, ESQ. 



practitioners. Before ever he commenced racing, lie 

 made a lucky hit, as he himself phrased it, in the 

 discovery of a rich friend in the money-lending way 

 of business, as pleasant as he was polite, and as 

 generous as he was obliging, from whom he borrowed 

 £16,000 ; and was equally fortunate in getting rid of 

 the liability through the assistance of another dis- 

 interested member of the same gracious fraternity, as 

 he afterwards expressed himself to me, ' satisfactorily, 

 on my own terms.' These satisfactory terms were 

 more or less the following : The £16,000 he had 

 borrowed, or rather, I should say, had become liable 



for, to a Mr. H . Wishing to pay him off, he 



called on Mr. Padwick with a view of obtaining his 

 assistance in doing so. With the instinct of his craft, 

 the latter soon discovered that, in actual cash, Mr. 

 Starkey had received but little ; and at once offered 



Mr. H his cheque for £12,000 for the bills 



representing Mr. Starkey's debt. With the usual 

 preliminary story that ' he had had to borrow the 

 cash from an unconscionable old rip at a high rate of 

 interest, and would lose money by the transaction if 

 he took off a farthing,' and with well-feigned reluctance 

 to the last, the offer was accepted and the matter 

 ended. Well may Mr. Starkey have exclaimed that 

 ' Mr. Padwick was his friend, for he had saved him 

 £4,000,' for apparently and actually he had done 

 so ; and well may his generous feelings have been 

 awakened, as shown in what followed. 



