[8] John Esdaile Widdicomb, from 1819 to 1852 riding-master and conductor of the ring at Astley’s Amphitheatre.
[11] Stickney, a very dashing and graceful rider at Astley’s.
[12] A not uncommon tribute from the gallery at Astley’s to the dash and daring of the heroes of the ring was half-eaten oranges or fragments of orange-peel. Either oranges are less in vogue, or manners are better in the galleries of theatres and circuses in the present day.
[18] The allusion here is to one of Ducrow’s remarkable feats. Entering the ring with the reins in his hands of five horses abreast, and standing on the back of the centre horse, he worked them round the ring at high speed, changing now and then with marvellous dexterity their relative positions, and with his feet always on more than one of them, ending with a foot on each of the extreme two, so that, as described, “the outer and the inner felt the pressure of his toes.”
[44] The value of these Bonds at the time this poem was written was precisely nil.
[49] A fact.
[64] The Yankee substitute for the chapeau de soie.
[97] The Marquis of Waterford,
[99] The fashionable abbreviation for a thousand pounds.
[117] The reference here and in a subsequent verse is to a song very popular at the time:—