ATTITUDE TO HIS PARENTS. 119 



opponent, that, as if conscious of his own incapacity, 

 he never sported silk again. Then, also, his per- 

 formance as a starter, so much talked of at the time, 

 was not a grand success. The wonder is, and ever 

 will be, that he should have undertaken to teach 

 the starter his duties, without knowing anything 

 whatever of them himself. But these, if failings, 

 were but foibles that anyone may be guilty of with- 

 out reproach. 



In his family and social relations he betrayed 

 certain idiosyncrasies not usually regarded as the 

 complement of a noble mind. The Duchess of Port- 

 land was buried, I think, on the Monday in Doncaster 

 race-week. On this occasion Lord George, writing 

 to his trainer, said : ' As my mother will be buried 

 before the races, the event will make no difference to 

 the running of my horses, so take them as before 

 arranged.' In being prompted to this course, it is, 

 perhaps, difficult to discern the existence of the 

 tender susceptibilities of a mother's favourite son, 

 in respecting the memory of the loved parent from 

 whom he derived the greater portion, if not the whole, 

 of his income. ISTor will it be said there was greater 

 evidence of filial respect in his conduct to his father, 

 in keeping horses and running them in fictitious 

 names, after he had solemnly declared that he had 

 sold them to his ducal friend. 



In his early life, we shall find an example of how 

 he studied etiquette and those rules of good breeding 



