AT TATTERSALL'S.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 575, 23 September 1869, Page 4

AT TATTERSALL'S.

The following sketch is from Chambers' Journal:-^" Here, till yesterday, you might see a boy from Eton, the heir to a great name and a fine estate, backing his opinion to the tune of fifty thousand pounds, with money borrowed at six hundred per cent. Here you may still find a Lincolnshire squire, whose wits are probably worth to him twenty thousand pounds a year, if he chooses to exercise them. Admiral Rous and Sir Joseph Hawley are state pillars in this aristocratic republic. Their word upon a point of honor, or upon a rule of the ring, carries with it all the force of law to thousands, who knew them only as the great twin brethren of the turf. Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston were in their day as popular at Tattersall's aa in the House of Commons ; and it was by mixing with English racing-men that Napoleon is said to have acquired that thorough command over the play of his features which has given him the title, even with diplomatists, of the Sphinx. You can read npthing in the face of a thoroughbred man of the turf except perfect self-possession, shrewd intellect, and a will of iron ; and you may pick those out in the Subscription Room at a glance from the crowd who are . purchasing their experience at the expense of their ancestral oaks, and perhaps of something worse. Here is one of these neopytes of the ring — a companion of princes, the son of a minister of cabinet rank, with the blood of the eastern emperors in his veins. He is booking a bet of 100 to 1 to a youth with the down j still on his cheeks, the son of one of the most illustrious of the Crimean heroes. In the centre of a group of bookmakers and aristocratic legs stands a young man, still, I believe, on the sunny side of thirty, who tells you with the utmost nonchalance that he has just sold an estate to a city-man for three hundred thousand pounds, to square-up his book and to tight the ring. He is the representative j of a long line of mailed barons who fought under the walls of Jerusalem, at Cressy, and at Agincourt — statesmen and warriors who in their time administered government and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu ; and he is flattering himself with the presumptuous hope that in these piping days of peace it is his destiny to add one more exploit to the achievements of his race by breaking the ring. That is one of the allusions of youth on the turf. There are, I believe, two or three grey-bearded members of the Jockey Club who, if put to the rack, would tell us that they began their first book thirty years ago with that impression themselves. Without such wealthy fanatics the bookmakers must soon go to the dogs. Left to themselves, they would eat each other up, like crabs, in a couple of years ; and there would be nothing left of the ring but half-a-dozen leviathan I bookmakers, a crowd of paupers with their note-books and metallic pencils, and the traditions of Tattersall's.