All Sorts and Conditions of Men Squire Osbakleston
Squire Osbaideston : his Autobiography. Edited, wit-11 Com-
mentary, by E. D. Oaming. Introduction by Sir Theodore Cook. (Lane. t2 2s. net. )
ON -October 10th, 1862, George Osbaldeston, known as " The Squire " to a public which for a generation had recognized him as the greatest sportsman -of his age, finished his auto- biography. He was in his seventy-seventh year. He had refused, he tells us, the most earnest solicitations of his friends to 7/rite a history of his life, but " at last yielded to a far more powerful and influential inducement; viz., the irresistible request of a dear and faithful wife "—formerly Mrs. Williams, a widow. And having finished the autobiography—or the greater portion of it, for he seems to have thought of adding further reminiscences. of his racing career—he presented it to his step-son, John Williams. It then lay for sixty odd years among lumber, and was partially eaten by rats and mice, and now at last, its disordered pages sorted and arranged, and the rat4nawn kwunae annotated, by an industrious and well-read 'editor, it sees the light. Crew more remarkable books of the kind exist. The name of Osbaldeston had been a household word among hunting, racing and other sporting people for so many years that when the autobiography was published serially in the Field, offers of notes and loans of pictures came in from all Parts of the country. The illustrations alone would make this book a fascinating volume.
Osbaldeston's success as-a- sportsman was astonishing. He purposely set himself to excel in any and every sport of the day, and succeeded. His name is one of the greatest in the history of;hunting ; he was a _first-Tate game shot, either with pheas- ants, partridges or snipe, and could put a bullet in the ace of diamonds at thirty •feet with a duelling-pistol. On the Turf he won the Thousand -Guineas and many other races, often riding his own horses ; he was the best steeplechase rider in England, and a first-class whip ; a boxer who, five feet six in height and weighing eleven stone, broke the ribs of Shaw, the Lifeguardsman, six feet and weighing fifteen stone ; a cricketer. who could beat any other at single wicket ; excelling as oars- man, billiard-player and whist-player ; and an amateur at tennis who with a small handicap beat the champion, playing with his hand only. • He was as intensely interested in doing the most difficult and exacting things, either fur nothing or for a bet ; he rode fifty miles in four hours one evening after dinner, merely to present an orchid to a 'pretty girl who had been twitted- by a rival .on her poor bouquet ; and his love of a wager was such that at an advanced age he won a bet of a sovereign that he could not sit in his chair for twenty-four hours without moving. The biography itself, indeed, is a story of betting, and the bets he won or lost, or was called upon to decide, are no less remarkable than the spirit in. which the men who made them tried to win.
A Mr. Cruickshank offered to shoot at 100 pigeons boxed at 100 yards, the Squire's friend, Horatio Ross, betting 30 tot .1 against each shot. • There must have been a catch, for under ordinary pigeon shooting conditions the birds would have been hopelessly out of shot; but Ross does not seem to have suspected a trick of any kind. The match took place in: Cruickshank's groimds, and what Cruickshank did was , _ to'malre up theoof of his stables to look like a pigeon cote, and place a few tame pigeons on it ; then he arranged a board on one side of the trap so that when the string was pulled the pigeon could see only one way,- and would at once catch sight of the pigeon cote. Of course the birds flew towards the pigeon cote, and Cruickshank, standing by the stables at the stipulated • distance of 100 yards from the trap, shot bird after bird as they flew over his head. Ross protested vehemently, but apparently paid up several thousand pounds.
On another occasion, as a test of driving, Osbaldeston betx- his friend Paul Methuen that he would drive any coach on its first stage out of London in as shortn time as its ordinary driver. He won the bet, but it had not occurred to him that Methuen would load the coach.with twenty Lifeguardsmen., Throughout, questions of money and honour were oddly mixed. , " A noble fellow ; always straight ! " said Edward Hayward Budd, the great cricketer and boxer; of the Squire. Yet nothing-is more 'striking in this biography than Osbaldeston's own account of how he deliberately pulled his horse Rush in a particular race, so as to be handicapped lightly in another, how he won, how Lord George Bentinck told him that it was a robbery committed on the public, and how, when he chal- lenged Lord George to their famous dual, he was unable to find a second among his friends. Osbaldeston seems quite unable to understand Lord George's or his friends' point of view in the matter, though, as we know from a conversation related to the late. Lord Chaplin, Osbaldeston's friend George Payne had said to him on the night before the duel Osbaldeston, you and I are very old friends ; you know Bentinek was right ; it was a damned robbery ; and if you kill Lord George to-morrow there will not be a single gentleman in England who will ever speak to you again." This is one of the many stories amplified or told authoritatively for the first time in this volume ; and there is a piquancy in Osbaldes- ton's personal comment, in chronicling Payne's refusal to act as his second, that Payne, knowing Rush was sure to win, had won more money than all of the rest of them put together.
An inspiriting problem for the manuscript hunter remains. The MS. from which this autobiography is printed is a rough draft only, as we can tell from the frequently repeated note in the script " Copied up to this point." Where is the fair 1;x0PY ?
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