Charles James Apperley was born at Plasgronow, Herefordshire, in 1778, and educated at Rugby. His father, a man of literary tastes, who corresponded with Dr. Johnson and read Greek before breakfast, had been tutor and bear-leader on the grand tour to Sir William Watkin Wynn. Young Apperley, who refused to be turned into a scholar, was gazetted cornet in 1798 in Sir W. Wynn's regiment of yeomanry, and served in Ireland during the Rebellion. On his return to England in 1801, he married a Miss Wynn, a cousin of Sir William's, and settled at Hinckley Hall in Leicestershire, where he hoped to add to his income by selling the hunters that he trained. Three years later he moved to Bilton Hall, near Rugby, once the property of Joseph Addison, where he hunted regularly with the Quorn and the Pytchley, till another move took him to Bitterly Court, in Shropshire, where he became intimate with that amazing character John Mytton, of Halston House, whose life and death he was afterwards to record in a book that made both subject and biographer famous. Here we may suppose that Apperley was witness of some of those escapades that are now familiar to every student of sporting literature: the midnight drive across country, when a sunk fence, a deep drain, and two quickset hedges were successfully negotiated; the attempt to leap a turnpike gate with a tandem, when leader and wheeler parted company; and the gallop over a rabbit warren to see whether the horse would fall, which it very naturally did, and rolled upon its rider. It was perhaps just as well for Apperley that he left this too exciting neighbourhood after a few years, and moved to Beaurepaire House, in Hampshire. The loss of money in farming operations brought him into difficulties, and at this time he seems to have conceived the idea of writing a book on hunting. He produced nothing, however, till some years later, when he was persuaded by Pittman, editor of the Sporting Magazine, to become a contributor, and his first article, on "Fox-Hunting in Leicestershire," appeared in 1822. This was followed by accounts of other hunting tours, which proved so popular that the circulation of the magazine was soon trebled. Apperley is said to have received £20 a page for his work,—the highest price ever paid to a journalist at that time,—but apparently this splendid remuneration had to cover his working expenses, which included a stud of hunters. "Nimrod" soon became a celebrity in the sporting world, and masters of hounds trembled at his nod. The news of his arrival in a country set every member of the local hunt in a flutter; the best horses were brought out, and the best covers drawn, in the hope of a favourable notice from the great man.
A NEW HUNTER—TALLYHO! TALLYHO!
In 1830 the Sporting Magazine came to grief, in consequence of the death of the editor, and Apperley, who had borrowed large sums of Pittman, was obliged to take refuge from his creditors at Calais, where he spent the next twelve years. Here, a year later, arrived John Mytton, also a fugitive, having run through a splendid property, and ruined a magnificent constitution by drink, before he was thirty-five. Apperley seems to have done his best for his old friend and comrade, who, having exchanged old port—of which his daily allowance had been from four to six bottles a day—for brandy, was rapidly drinking himself to death. Mytton, who seems to have been practically a madman in his last years, returned to London in 1833, and was promptly thrown into the King's Bench, where he died of delirium tremens in the following year.
MR. RIDGEWAY'S GOOD HEALTH—NOW!