The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
Lord Hastings' Melton, which won the Derby. Both horses were trained
in the same stable, at Matt Dawson's, Heath House, Newmarket.
Matt Dawson declared that we had got a Derby horse. I was getting the
boats through the Bab-el-Kebir in the Egyptian war, when I heard that
Rosy Morn had gone a roarer; and I thought it a bad omen for the
expedition.
Lord Marcus and I organised a donkey race to enliven a South Coast
race-meeting. We hired two donkeys apiece, and each bestrode two
steeds, standing on their backs, and rode them over the wooden groynes
that descend the beach at regular intervals.
The curse of race-meetings is the crowd of dubious characters which
infests them. Lord Marcus, travelling by rail to Newmarket, defeated
three of such persons single-handed.
A trio of three-card-trick men tried to bully him into venturing on the
game; whereupon he set about them. Two he knocked out, and the third
piped down. They left that carriage of carnage at the next station,
protesting amid blood and tears that it was occupied by the most
furious devil allowed on earth. He was maligned: there never was a
kinder-hearted man.
Lord Marcus, who is singularly ready with his tongue, upon being asked
whether he thought False Tooth a good name for a horse, said:
"The best, because you can't stop him."
The same relative committed a worse crime at the Club, where a very
deaf member appealed to him to be told what another member was saying
to him.
{532}
"He's wishing you a Happy New 'Ear--and God knows you want one!"
shouted Markie.
One of the most unexpected events in which I ever took part occurred at
Scarborough, where I was staying for the races with Mr. Robert Vyner.
In the same hotel were staying two well-known members of the racing
world, Mr. Dudley Milner and Mr. Johnny Shafto. Vyner and I happened
to enter the large and long room, used for assemblies; when we
perceived Dudley Milner and Johnny Shafto standing at the other end,
and observed that they were arguing together, somewhat heatedly, in
broad Yorkshire. They were disputing, as racing men do at such times,
about weights in an impending handicap.
There was nothing at all in the great room, so far as I remember,
except a sideboard and a dish filled with pats of butter which stood on
the sideboard. I picked up a pat of butter on the end of the ash-plant
I was carrying, and told Vyner that if he would come outside, I would
throw the pat of butter to a surprising distance.
"Why go outside?" said he. "Why not take a shot at those two fellows
who are arguing so busily over there?"
"And so I will," said I.
The pat of butter described a beautiful yellow parabola at high speed
and lighted upon the eye of one of the disputants. The impact doubled
him up, and he thought that the other man had hit him. Drawing his
right fist back very slowly and carefully, he struck his friend full on
the point of the nose. The next moment they were both rolling on the
floor, fighting like cats. My companion and I were laughing so much
that we couldn't separate them; and they finally had to go to bed for a
week to recover themselves of their wounds.
Butter produces various effects, according to its application. I was
one of the guests among a large party at a luncheon, given by an old
gentleman who had a fancy for breeding pugs, which were then the
fashionable breed of dog. On the table opposite to me was a glass bowl
{533} containing a quantity of pats of butter; and as each of the many
pugs in the room came to me, I gave him a pat of butter on the end of a
fork. He gently snuggled it down. After about ten minutes first one
pug and then another began to be audibly unwell. The old gentleman was
so terrified at these alarming symptoms, that he incontinently
dispatched a carriage at speed to fetch the nearest vet That expert,
after a careful diagnosis, reported that "someone must have been
feeding the pugs on butter."
My brother Marcus, travelling by rail with some friends, Mr. Dudley
Milner being of the party, Markie very kindly relieved the tedium of
the journey. Dudley Milner had fallen asleep. Marcus took the ticket
from Milner's pocket. He then woke up Milner, telling him that the
tickets were about to be collected. Milner, after feverishly searching
for his ticket, was forced to the conclusion that he had lost it, and,
finding that he had very little money, begged that someone would lend
him the requisite sum. One and all, with profuse apologies, declared
themselves to be almost penniless; and Milner was nearing despair, when
my brother sympathetically suggested that, as the train approached the
station Milner should hide under the seat, and all would be well.
Thereupon Milner, assisted by several pairs of feet, struggled under
the seat, and his friends screened him with their legs.
The collector appeared, and Marcus gave him all the tickets.
"Here's six tickets for five gentlemen," said the collector.
"Quite correct," said Marcus. "The other gentleman is under the seat.
He prefers travelling like that."
An old friend of mine, Lord Suffield, has recently published his
memoirs. He was an indomitable rider, with a beautiful seat, and one
of the hardest men to hounds in his day. I well remember riding home
with him across country after the hunt with His Majesty's Buckhounds,
when, taking a turn to the right, while I took a turn to the left, he
suddenly disappeared altogether from view. As {534} suddenly he
appeared again on his horse's neck. He speedily got back into the
saddle and went away as if nothing had happened, looking neither to the
right nor left. I turned to find out the cause of his disappearance,
and found that he had come across a deep V-shaped ditch, at the bottom
of which was a very high post and rails. How any man or horse could
have got over it, it is impossible to say. When I spoke to him about
his exploit in the evening, he treated it as a matter of course, and
only said it was "a rather nasty place."
When we were in India together, in the suite of the Prince of Wales, he
always preferred riding to going on an elephant. He was a great
yachtsman in his day, and knew as much about handling yachts as any
seaman I have ever met. He was a very good shot, and one of the
greatest friends I have ever had.
{535}
CHAPTER LIV
SPORTING MEMORIES (_Continued_)
II. SHOOTING
There are few kinds of beasts which I have not shot; and among those
few are lions and giraffes.
When I was at Vancouver as a midshipman, I went out after deer upon a
pouring wet day. I fired at a deer; the gun, a muzzle-loader, missed
fire; I set the stock on the ground in order to ram home the charge;
and the gun went off. The bullet cut the button off the top of my cap:
a narrow escape.
I shall never forget the excitement of three of us midshipmen of the
_Clio_, when, being out after tree grouse in the bush, we put up a big
spotted deer. It was close to us, and we killed it; we cut it up, and
tramped the miles back to the ship, laden with the haunches, shoulders
and head. Arriving on board with our clothes soaked with blood, we
were hailed as splendid sportsmen, and for days thereafter the gun-room
feasted upon venison.
When the _Clio_ was off Juan Fernandez in February, 1865, we sent a
party of seamen across to the island to beat up the wild goats towards
the shore. The cliffs are steep-to, and along the face of them winds a
narrow path worn by the goats themselves. The pathway itself is
inclined at a steep angle. I took the cutter and hung off and on,
waiting for the goats. Presently they came down, about thirty of them,
in single file, slipping a good deal, but recovering their footing with
marvellous agility. We fired {536} at the line and knocked over three.
They fell on the rocks below. There was so much seaway that we were
unable to get the boat in. I therefore took a line and swam to shore,
collected the goats, toggled their legs together, secured them with the
line, and they were pulled off to the boat. But when I tried to swim
off, the sea was so rough that the breakers beat me back. I was hurled
against the rocks; all the wind was knocked out of me, and I was much
bruised and cut. A bluejacket swam off with a line, and although he
did not toggle my legs, he and I were hauled off to the boats, like the
goats. We brought all three goats safely on board. One of them was a
billy-goat, the other two nanny-goats, in which there was no sign of
any bullet, so that they must have been carried down with the
billy-goat.
While I was serving in the _Sutlej_ as sub-lieutenant, the chief
engineer, James Roffey, who was a splendid shot, and myself, went upon
hunting expeditions in Vancouver. We took two horses and a couple of
dogs. At night we slept on waterproof sheets under a lean-to shelter
made of branches. We shot many partridge--as these birds are called.
Having treed them, we shot the lower birds first, and so on to the top.
The report of the guns did not disturb them, but if a bird fell from
the upper branches, the rest would take flight. I have shot these
birds in the same way, during recent visits to Canada.
During the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to India in 1870, I
accompanied his Royal Highness upon the great elephant hunt in Ceylon.
For months beforehand the wild elephants had been gradually driven
towards the kraal by an army of native beaters. The kraal is
constructed of huge trunks of trees, lashed together and buttressed,
making a strong stockade. In plan, covering about eight acres, it is
shaped like a square bottle, the neck representing a narrow entrance,
from which the stockade on either side runs at a wide angle, like jaws.
The elephants are driven down the narrowing jaws and through the
entrance, which {537} is closed behind them with a gate made of logs.
Once inside the kraal, the wild animals are tackled by the tame
elephants ridden by mahouts, and are secured with hide ropes to the
trees of the stockade, which is formed of stout timber for the purpose.
Upon the occasion of the Duke's visit, I was in the arena, mounted upon
a tame elephant amid a wild heaving mob of animals. One huge beast
defeated the tame elephants, throwing the whole lot into confusion. He
suddenly charged, knocking over the tame elephant next to me, the
mahout breaking his leg in the fall. Things were looking very ugly,
when someone--against orders--fired and killed the rebel elephant, the
bullet entering his temple.
If the day of the great elephant hunt in India, arranged in honour of
the Prince of Wales, was the hardest run of my life, hanging on to the
back of a swift pad elephant which went through the jungle for fourteen
hours like a runaway locomotive, the hardest day I ever had on foot was
in Ceylon, during the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to that superb
country, in 1870. I have found Irishmen in most places under the sun;
and I found one in Ceylon. His name was Varian, and he was a famous
hunter of elephants. Rogue elephants were his favourite game; he
stalked them on foot; walked up to his quarry and shot it. He was I
think, eventually killed by a rogue elephant. His gun, which had
belonged to Sir Samuel Baker, was a curiosity among hand-cannon. This
formidable engine was so heavy that it was as much as a powerful man
could do to heave it up to his shoulder. The recoil--but I will relate
what kind of recoil it exercised. The gun was a single-bore
muzzle-loader, having two grooves cut within the barrel, into which was
fitted a spherical belted bullet.
We started at three o'clock in the morning, taking with us two native
bearers to carry the guns. The bearers were little men, fragile to all