An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (which carried him off years later) by spitting blood on 18th June. A memoir of his will be found in Appendix III. After having lived at 4, Craven Terrace for nearly three years, I had the chance of changing on the 3rd July, 1872, into a quaint, little, old house in North Street, Wandsworth, called "Ivy Lodge," and did so. I had known it some time when Micky and Ben Slater, two old members of the Thames Rowing Club, lived there with their mother, a wonderfully well-bred and well-plucked old lady, who had stinted herself after her husband's death to educate and bring up her two sons. She was perhaps the frankest and most pleasant woman I ever knew, most unaffected and kind, and like the other Irishwoman I mentioned before, was a real friend to me and my young wife. The family were much mixed up with Pat Gadsden and bad two grand bull terriers cruelly poisoned by some scoundrel. We practically lived together as a happy family for some time. In the same year (1872) I was professionally concerned for the respondent in a heavy divorce case, which necessitated many journeys to Tynemouth, Newcastle and Shields, and in which several of my old friends were mixed up, and was lucky enough to obtain a withdrawal of the case at the last moment. This was my first big case and bad its humourous side, for a German detective was employed by the other side to watch me and see I did not tamper with their witnesses, and used to keep guard nightly in front of the house where I was staying, totally oblivious of the fact that I got over the garden wall at the back nightly. On the other hand I sent down my old trainer Nat Perry, 1 on whom I could rely to make certain enquiries of a female witness, who had married a miner and received his written report that he had called on her but had been confronted by her husband, who had told him that if he came there again he would " punch -– bloody head off." And so, pithily and sensibly reported, Perry, '' I have not seen him since." Of a very hasty and 1 He also trained for the two Chinneries and others, and un– consciously did me a good turn for having persuaded me to invest £2 at 33 to I on Lozenge for the Cambridgeshire, and here the book– maker (if he ever existed) did uot think it necessary to pay over my winnings. This, therefore, was my first and last bet, for I rightly argued that long odds like this did !J-Ot come off every day.