An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY at the time we were sailing by, but this was probably only a coincidence. This misfortune threatened to stop our cruise, but following the example of Robinson Crusoe in emergency, I served out a dram all round, and we got the sail in smartly and towed the mast down to Wroxham. We tried to get an old mast at Shreeve's at Buxton, for which he asked £ 20, avowedly under the idea we would rather pay this than lose our sail. We heartily cursed him and got old Press to cut off the broken part and refix the lead on the rest of the mast, and sailed away on the r4th, and never sailed better, though to placate the men I had to buy a new mast at my leisure. On October 5th I resumed triking, having done nothing since 2rst June. My niece Lily was married to Percy Skinner on the 8th, and I lent them the Selborne Cottage for their honeymoon. She died December, r9r5. On the r2th my weight had gone up to r6.3, and at Mainwaring Jones, on the 29th, I met Col. (?) Stokewasser, an old schoolfellow. I saw an abnormally large Scotchman at the Hale on 2nd November, but he was all fat. Tom Gill, the retired prize fighter, who kept the "Hale,'' told me that he had to do with the present Emperor of Germany, having had to get up some sparring to amuse him at Portsmouth. This was 20 years before the war when he told me this, and he then described him as a "cruel beast," who was not satisfied with fair sport, but who insisted on the men going on till they were unduly punished, and also said that he had shot one of his sailors in English waters because he thought the man was going to murder him ! Tom was (and I hope still is) an excellent sportsman, and his house was a rendezvous for young aspirants to pugilistic honours, who trained there. On one occasion three Irish reapers came in, terror– ized old Mrs. Gill, robbed the bar and helped themselves to all they wanted, when to them there appeared Tom and two of his novices. The scene can better be imagined than described, but I understand three battered, toothless and eye-blackened Milesians eventually wound their sad way to the Edgware Road. Took train to St. Alban's, rode back, but a high wind developed into a gale, and it took me 3.20 to do 17 miles, and I was hardly able to move down Barnet Hill.