Gibraltar then—as now—was a favourite winter resort, and the “Club House Hotel” opposite the main guard did a roaring trade.
Here Lady Herbert of Lea and her youthful son, the present Lord Pembroke, sojourned for some weeks in the Sixties, and it was to the inquiring turn of mind of the young nobleman’s tutor that Gibraltar was almost indebted for a very promising row.
In one room, it appears, a cantankerous Irishman and his wife were staying, in the next the tutor, and whilst the Irishman positively swore he had one morning seen the prying tutor’s face glued to the fanlight as vehemently did the pedagogue swear on a sack of bibles that he had never glued his nose to a fanlight in his life.
What there was to peep at was not quite clear, for the supposed “object” in any costume was not fair to look upon, and so after mutual recriminations and mutual apologies the affair was hushed up, and expectant Gibraltar was robbed of a lawful excitement.
A fly-leaf that appeared weekly—why, no one could explain—although less original than one might have wished, yet possessing a symbolism that was unquestionable, on one occasion appeared with a verbatim extract from a Spanish paper of the escapades of an adventurer who was exploiting the neighbourhood of Madrid.
Weeks apparently had elapsed before it had caught the eye of our lynx-eyed editor, and one day when Ansaldo invited certain of us to compare a recent resident at his hotel with the description in the very latest “local intelligence” it became apparent to all that a lately departed wayfarer was the redoubtable personage referred to. “By Jove! I lost fifty to him last week at loo, and then gave him a shakedown,” remarked one; and, “D—d if I didn’t lend him my horse to go as far as Cadiz, and it’s not to be back till to-morrow,” added another; and then the local tailor came running down to the Club House, and Ansaldo remembered he had paid his hotel bill by a cheque, and within a week a dozen victims realised that they had assisted in one way or another to make the gentleman’s Mediterranean trip a pleasant one.
But money at the Rock was literally a drug, thanks to the existence of Sacconi, a Genoese grocer. This extraordinary man was everybody’s banker; if one lost at the races it was Sacconi who settled the account; mess bills were paid by Sacconi; fifty—one hundred Isabels—were only to be asked for to be obtained by initialling the amount at the shop.
Apparently indifferent to risk, the astute Italian was, however, working on a certainty. Immediately a regiment was under orders for the Rock, a list of every officer’s “length of tether” was transmitted by Perkins, his London agent, a city knight; whilst, in addition to the value of one’s commission, the impossibility of leaving the Rock without his knowledge, and the “Moorish Castle” frowning on the heights, enabled Sacconi to amass a huge fortune, to marry his daughters to officers of the garrison, and be an honoured guest in after years at the “Convent,” the Governor’s official residence.
But all this was in the days of purchase.
Meeting the ex-Governor, Sir William Codrington, one day in Bond Street on the point of being run over, he jocosely remarked, as I went to his assistance, “Different from Gibraltar, eh?”