When Sterling Crauford died, the Duchess selected as her third husband a youth who might have been her grandson.
I have just mentioned Dick Dunn, the bookmaker. This redoubtable penciller was of Irish nationality, his real name being O’Donoghue. He was an extremely good-looking, well-set-up fellow, and, casually encountered, one would never have believed him capable of the heights and depths of picturesque objurgation to which he rose and sank. But he was really a good-natured chap, with a fund of quaint and characteristic humour. I once attended a smoking-concert promoted at Hampton for a charitable purpose, at which Dick Dunn had been asked to preside. Things went very well until a local celebrity—an octogenarian—was called upon to sing. The old man began to intone a very long ballad in very slow time. The audience were getting tired, and the chairman was getting very fidgety. At last the vocalist gave the chairman his opportunity. He was trolling out a fresh verse commencing with the two lines:
“He went into a barber’s shop,
There for to get him shaved.”
“Well!” roared out Dunn, bringing his hammer sharply down on the table, “what do you suppose he would go in for—to buy onions?”
The audience broke into laughter, and the abashed warbler sat down.
They tell me that the present is an uncommonly bad time for bookmakers. At the Albert and Victoria they are betting with each other—a tame business, and comparable only (as one of the fraternity recently put it to me) to “kissing one’s sister.” The occupation of “Oh, yell, oh!” is gone. But in my early Press days he flourished like a green bay-tree. In the early seventies Steele and Peach of Sheffield were the magnates of the Ring. Steele was a big, heavy-faced, sleepy-looking man. He commenced his commercial career by hawking fish through the streets on a barrow. Peach, who was far smarter in appearance, was of equally low origin. The two leviathans of the Ring were closely related by marriage, and ended up by becoming owners of one of the richest steel-works in Sheffield.
I can well remember Olney of Manchester and Steve Mundell of Durham. Olney was a stout, white-haired, red-faced man, who would have been a little one but for the extra weight in fat he carried. He was grumpy, but straight, and his prices were simply awful. Mundell was known as “the Durham Ox.” He was, as his sobriquet may suggest, a big, beefy man. His Durham acquaintances were very proud of him; and, indeed, he was not half a bad sort. He was fond of coursing, and kept a few greyhounds of his own.
Our old friend the Daily Telegraph, writing about some meeting in a flamboyant style, indulged in an allusion to “the genteel pencillers in the velvet costumes.” This chance allusion was the making of Fred Fraser. He and his brother—who clerked for him—always appeared dressed in brown velvet coats, cord breeches, jack-boots, and sombreros. At one time he ran a few horses, but his favourite sport was fishing, and his record exhibition of objurgation was given in connection with the pursuit of this comparatively innocent pastime. This was at Staines. He had left his line in the water while he went into the town. During his absence a friend fastened a dried haddock to his hook. On his return, the deluded man saw that he had “got a bite,” and proceeded to “land.” The “air went blue for miles” as the outraged fisherman expressed his opinion of the practical jokers who had tampered with his tackle. Mr. Fraser was, indeed, a gentleman who should have benefited by an extended experience of the silent system; and this he was shortly to have. He was sentenced to a long term for a particularly brutal outrage. And that was the end of “the genteel penciller” so far as Society and the Turf are concerned.
Billy Nicholls of Nottingham was a wealthy man and a “character.” He was a member of the Town Council of his native borough, and a rather good yarn used to be told of his action in this capacity when a certain matter of great local interest was brought up before the Patres Conscripti of Nottingham. The burning question of “the town pump” had come up in another shape. Public opinion was divided as to whether or not a wall should be built round the cemetery; and, as the municipal elections were at hand, the members of the Council were also much “vexed in their righteous minds” as to how they should vote on the recommendation of the committee. It remained for Billy Nicholls to settle the question by a speech which was brief, to the point, and absolutely convincing:
“Muster Mayor, Haldermen, an’ gen’lemen hall,” he said, when he rose in his place, “it’s like this yer: the pore chaps inside can’t get out, and them what’s outside don’t want to get in. So I says, ‘No wall.’”