Later in the season some Hebrews of imitative dispositions aspired to emulate the bloods, but although their get-ups were irreproachable, the fraud was detected, and the jackdaws ruthlessly suppressed.
It is painful to remember the numerous edifices that toppled, and the many good men that “went under” in the inevitable crash that ensued, and picturing in one’s mind the huge table and the fifteen or twenty players that congregated nightly around the board in the various clubs—winners and losers and lookers-on—a lump rises in one’s throat as one remembers how few are left! Carlyon and Augustus Webster, Jauncey, Cootie Hutchinson, Sam Bachelor, Lord Milltown, Crock Vansittart, La Touche, Hastings, De Hoghton, Tom Naghten, Sir George O’Donnel, Dick Clayton, Gus Anson, Freddy Granville, George Lawrence, Jimmy Jop, Jim Coleman, and a host of others, all good men and true, and all long since swept away into the inevitable dust-bin.
Not to have known Jinks was not in itself a reproach, but not to have known Jonas Hunt in the long-ago sixties was to have admitted that one was without the pale of Society, or certainly that section of it which gambled, raced, and drank all day and all night, if circumstances permitted. A fine horseman of iron nerve and unbounded assurance, he had ridden in the Balaclava charge before he was out of his teens, and on retiring from the service a few years later, developed into one of the best gentleman riders ever seen in England or France.
In a chronic state of impecuniosity—as he insisted on asserting—he never omitted to add that a good knife and fork was always ready at home. Jonas had certainly run through pretty well all he had had, but still he always possessed an income.
Always ready to gamble, and always cheery, Jonas, as may be supposed, was popular with a certain set, and if he had a fault it was a forgetfulness in regard to the settlement of small scores, which by some was attributed to the excitement when he rode in the “six hundred,” and by others to various causes not sufficiently interesting to enumerate. Brave as a lion, he had actually been recommended for the Victoria Cross—in those days less lavishly awarded than now—and as he was quite ready to “go out” on the slightest provocation, timid natures preferred to put up with eccentricities arising out of his forgetfulness rather than risk a daylight meeting at twelve yards rise.
Whilst riding in France his performances were a revelation to his foreign critics, and when on one occasion his bridle broke and he steered his mount to victory with his whip, he received such an ovation at Chantilly as seldom falls to the lot of a perfidious Briton.
On one occasion, Jonas, who had allowed a comparative stranger to leave the table without settling, was met by the indignant creditor a few days later and reminded of his obligation; but Jonas, in no way disconcerted, let the amazed punter understand that such a demand was highly ungentlemanly and insulting, offering as an alternative to retire with him forthwith and fight it out with either pistols or fists.
In the duel between Dillon, a gentleman rider, and the Duc de Grammont-Caderousse, which created such an unjust scandal in the sixties, Jonas, as might have been expected, was the former’s second. Neither man had ever had a rapier in his hand before, and when on the following morning both began slashing and thrusting, and Dillon was run through the heart, a clamour arose as to the butchery of an Englishman by an expert swordsman; all which was bosh. Had de Grammont been anything but the veriest tyro, the regrettable incident could not have occurred.
It was subsequent to the various thrilling incidents we have narrated that Jonas selected Brighton as his headquarters.
Jinks’ Club was not located in a palatial mansion, nor did it even present the modest exterior of the local Union Club; as a fact, it was limited in its dimensions, and consisted of two rooms in an unpretentious house in Ship Street.