Suffice to say, Playfair won the Cambridgeshire for Mr. Gretton in ’72, and it is no exaggeration to add that his taking to racing to the extent he then did suggested the idea—afterwards elaborated—of turning Bass and Co. into a limited liability company.
CHAPTER X.
THE EPIDEMIC OF CARDS.
The Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, at the time of which I am writing, was as crotchety a specimen of the old school as the Peninsular had ever turned out. Clean shaved, with a Waterloo expression of countenance, Sir George Browne was about the last of Wellington’s veterans who held a high command. Despotic and vindictive if thwarted, he had a squabble with the railway companies, and retaliated by vetoing henceforth the transit of troops by rail, and a regiment ordered from Londonderry to Cork did the entire distance by route march. Not that the ordeal was without its advantages, for it enabled British regiments to form their own opinions of Irish hospitality and the numerous good qualities of that much-misunderstood race. Proceeding in detachments of two and three companies, every night found them billeted in the towns or villages through which they passed, and it was no rare occurrence for the landed proprietors to ride out and insist that every officer should stay at the Manor House, and to send supplies of comforts wherewith to regale the men.
Mr. Kavanagh, M.P. for Kilkenny, was a brilliant specimen of a real old Irish gentleman, and though deformed from his birth, could hold his own amongst the best. Without arms, this grand sportsman could ride, drive four horses, and shoot to perfection, and his prowess in Corfu and other distant sporting haunts is remembered to this day.
Riding out to welcome the regiment, no refusal was listened to, and within an hour every officer was comfortably settled at Borris Castle, and the men fared proportionately as well.
But the monotony of these tedious pilgrimages will not bear narration. Suffice it that having landed at Cork we received orders, much to our delight, to proceed direct to Dublin instead of to dismal Templemore.
The craze for punting that we had experienced in London seemed, indeed, to have crossed the Channel, and when the officers had severally been elected honorary members, it was found that the Hibernian United Service Club was the hotbed of about the highest play they had yet encountered. Nightly, with the precision of a chronometer, ten o’clock found the spacious card room crammed to its uttermost limits, and Irish banknotes, varying from one to ten sovereigns in value, were literally stacked a foot high on either side of the table. All through the night these terrible duels continued, and it was no uncommon thing to leave the room and drive like blazes for morning parade at ten. The garrison in this memorable year was an exceptionally “high-play” one, consisting, amongst others, of the 4th and 11th Hussars, 9th Lancers, the Royal Dragoons, Highlanders, and Rifle Brigade, and during that winter fabulous sums were lost by men incapable of meeting their obligations.
The Committee, meanwhile, were roused to action, and peremptory orders were given that the gas was to be turned off punctually at 2 a.m.; but the extinction of the gas was the signal for the appearance of substitutes, and out of some two hundred pockets wax candles were brought forth, and the game proceeded as vigorously as ever.
Further pressure was now applied, and under pain of expulsion members were ordered to quit the card room at the prescribed hour; but even this did not meet the case, and the punters ascended en bloc to the largest bedroom above.
It may be explained that this really delightful club possessed a dozen bedrooms, and on the particular occasion of which we are writing, one was in the occupation of Sir James Jackson, G.C.B., as irritable an old Peninsular veteran as a merciful Providence had spared to the sixties. A cavalry man of the old school, he invariably wore spurs, and no human eye had ever seen him without these useful appendages—a small blue moustache carefully waxed, and a bald head with blue tufts on either side completed the picture of this irritable old warrior who ate his dinner every day in the club, and never spoke to a soul.