SEPARATION FROM DANEBURY. 125 



commissioner and one to Lord George on the same 

 subject, but in different terms. To the former he 

 said ! : ' Lay against So and So for me ; he is hors de 

 combat, and won't run;' and to his lordship he said : 

 1 So and So is "well, and I recommend you strongly to 

 back him.' The letters, as a novelist would say, by 

 some unknown, strange, and overpowering agency, 

 found their way into envelopes for which they were 

 not intended, and the treachery complained of was 

 discovered. Now, as I lived at Danebury at the 

 time, if such a thing had occurred, I should most 

 likely have heard something of it ; but I must confess 

 I never did, until reading it many years after in 

 Mr. Rice's misleading book, fc The History of the 

 British Turf I do not impute to the memory of a 

 genial and accomplished writer on other matters, any 

 ill intention beyond that of writing in utter ignorance 

 on a painful matter. 



In sum, the whole story is a fabrication pure and 

 simple from one end of it to the other. That my 

 brother did bet, I admit, and also that for doing so 

 Lord George disliked him very much, and continually 

 pestered my father to get rid of him ; but not only for 

 betting, but for many other visionary misdeeds of 

 which everyone knew he was entirely innocent. But 

 as the accusation was made on the bare word of his 

 lordship, whose statements my father had found out 

 were often of a very ex parte nature, and in this 

 case entirely uncorroborated, my father would not com- 



