PREDECESSORS 



'■17 



be convivial. Mr. Jenison was honoured as a live-bottle 

 man ; Lord Cornwallis w^as a great host ; but Lord Bateman, 

 who held the appointment for twenty-five years, disgusted 

 everybody by a 'penurious sterility' and 'personal pomposity.' 

 Lord Jersey put things right again,' and the public got a 

 Master to their mind at the fall of the Coalition, when Lord 

 Sandwich, who used to take a dice-box out hunting with him 

 and gamble with the Duke of Cumberland in the intervals 

 of the chase, was appointed. We are told ' the exhilarating 

 steams ' of roast sirloin and the ' vibrating echo of the cork ' 

 once more inspired the stag-hunter's prowess, and awakened 

 the long seclusion of Swinley. 



And now to come to some of tRe Masters of more modern 

 days, and a few odds and ends I have been able to pick up about 

 them. Lord Maryborough, afterwards Lord Mornington, 

 was William IV. 's Master of the Buckhounds, and had a 

 very fine seat on a horse. He and the horse he rode were a 

 great feature in the Koyal procession, and I have seen an 

 engraving of him leading it on a dappled grey horse which 

 he bought from Mr. Shard, whose classical stag-hunting 

 establishment I have already noticed, for 500 guineas. This 

 is the way to do the thing. 



Mr. Charles Greville does not give a good account of 

 the morals of the Koyal procession in William IV. 's time. 

 ' His household is now so ill-managed,' he writes at the end 

 of the Ascot week of 1833, ' that his grooms were drunk every 

 day, and the only man of them who was sober was killed 

 going home from the races ! ' However, he wrote this in one 

 of his ' video meliora proboque ' moods, when he had been 

 eating and drinking too much, sitting up too late, and not 



' No sportsman now was to the mansion led, 

 No corks were drawn, no social tables spread, 

 'Twas blank and dull till Jersey's cheerful lifi;ht 

 Dispersed the gloom of long incumbent night. 



