LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 Jjjjjjfcjg B 
 
 f9S. 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 DUNCAN AND 
 
 FREDRIKA BRENT
 
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 PREFACE 
 
 DISHOP BURNETT'S narrative of the re- 
 markable passages in the life of the very 
 celebrated Earl of Rochester has been greatly 
 valued, not only as an elegant composition, but as a 
 lesson of instruction to all mankind. The latter of 
 these honours, to a certain extent, I may venture to 
 claim as the result of this sketch — at all events such 
 is, in part, its design ; and as no subject is so 
 interesting to man as man, I have a good theme for 
 my pen, inasmuch as there is one present to my 
 mind whose equal, as a private English gentleman, 
 the world never before saw, neither is it, for some 
 reasons, desirable the world should ever again see. 
 My only fear is, that I may be deficient in strength 
 of pencil to draw the picture to the life, and to 
 represent the anomaly in human nature which 
 the character of the late John Mytton presents ; 
 at one time, an honour to his nature ; at 
 another, a satire on humanity. What more 
 can be done, than to strike the balance with 
 an even hand ? and as the brightness of the
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 sun hides its blemishes, let me hope the greater 
 part of his faults will be lost amidst the virtues 
 with which they are mingled. At all events, 
 my purpose is not to hold up the torch to the 
 failings of my old and never-forsaken friend — my 
 chief object being to account for them, and leave 
 his virtues to speak for themselves. I owe 
 him pity on the score of human nature ; he 
 claims it by his own acts and deeds ; and, above 
 all, by one act of Him to whose will all 
 men must bow, and by whom all men's deeds 
 will be weighed. Let not the lash of censure, 
 then, fall too heavy upon one who himself 
 carried charity to excess ! Let the greatness 
 of his fall be unto him as a shield ; let it be 
 remembered he died in a prison, an epitome 
 of human misery ! A glance over his history, 
 however, may not be unprofitable ; it will 
 " point a moral," if it do not " adorn a 
 tale." 
 
 But it may be objected that I am not the person 
 fitted to perform this task ; for, " where is the man," 
 says Johnson, " who can confine himself to the 
 exact balance of justice when his own feelings are 
 unwittingly thrown into the scale ? " It is true my 
 regard for the late Mr. Mytton was won and 
 secured by many sterling acts of kindness and
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 friendship ; and it is also true, that friendship is 
 not always the sequel of obligation. I am proud 
 to assert I do not come within this exception ; and 
 pledging myself to saying nothing that is false, 
 rather than all that is true, I think I can produce 
 these two results : — First, I shall unload the 
 memory of a man I shall never be ashamed to call 
 my friend, of several weighty imputations which now 
 rest upon it unjustly ; and secondly, I shall show, 
 that the boldest efforts of the human imagination 
 cannot much exceed the romance of real life. 
 
 NIMROD 
 
 Calais, 1835
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Pedigree of Mr. Mytton — His original name — His 
 contest for the county of Salop — His ancestor 
 Thomas Mytton — Halston described — Extent 
 of Mr. Mytton's property, and its various situ- 
 ations — His education — Why called Mango — 
 Enters the army — His doings at Calais when in 
 the 7th Hussars — His first marriage — His sister, 
 her character — His person and mind described 
 — His pugnacious disposition — His dress — His 
 method of following wildfowl — His feats in 
 riding the road, and his walking — His powers 
 of digestion — His daring exploits, putting his 
 life to hazard — Upsets a friend in a gig — His 
 wonderful escapes in carriages — His indifference 
 to pain — Is taken for a tailor with Lord Derby's 
 hounds — His treatment of a Jew money-lender 
 — His extraordinary frolics with his chaplain, 
 his doctor, a bear, a horse-dealer, a filly in 
 training, dogs, foxes, &c. — An evening at 
 Halston — His contest with a ferocious dog — His 
 reason for selling an old family estate — His 
 general character — His establishment at Halston 
 — Amount of his expenditure — His fox-hounds,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 his racing establishment, his game preserves, 
 his cellars, and his wardrobe — " Light come, 
 light go" — His gambling — Only one John 
 Mytton — His bill for pheasants, &c. — The 
 Halston Chaplain, his character, his death. 
 
 PART II 55 
 
 With whom compared — His amours — His popularity, 
 and its rapid decline — His excessive drinking, 
 and its influence on his character and health — 
 His toilette — His generous conduct towards his 
 mother — His philanthropy carried to excess — 
 His talents — His last contest for the borough of 
 Shrewsbury — A capital electioneering squib 
 relating to the same — His politics — His farming 
 — His timber — His planting — Asa sportsman — 
 As a horseman — His shooting — His racing — 
 His race-horse Euphrates — His cups — His start 
 and progress on the Turf — His handsome 
 conduct towards his jockey — His second 
 marriage — His conduct in the marriage state — 
 As a husband, and a father — His autograph. 
 
 PART III 119 
 
 The breaking up of his establishment at Halston — 
 His arrival at Calais, and his extraordinary 
 proceedings whilst there — Nearly loses his life 
 by setting fire to his shirt to frighten away the 
 hiccup — His mind becomes disordered by his
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 sufferings — Extraordinary scenes witnessed by 
 his attendants — Drinks eau de Cologne — Gets 
 better and goes into the country with the Author 
 — Gets quite well, but relapses into his habits of 
 dissipation — Is removed to England, and hence 
 his death warrant — Visits Halston, and thrown 
 into Shrewsbury jail — His conduct there, and his 
 former relation to the jailer — Removed to the 
 King's Bench— Released, and returns to Calais 
 with a female — His extraordinary self-intro- 
 duction to her — Their arrival together at Calais 
 — His most extraordinary proceedings whilst 
 there — His return to England — His melancholy 
 death in the Bench — His funeral — His will — 
 Reflections on the same by the Author — His 
 Epitaph by ditto. 
 
 PART IV 175 
 
 The Author's allusion to a second edition of Mr. 
 Mytton's Life — By whom some of the addi- 
 tional anecdotes have been furnished to him — 
 Mr. Mytton's extraordinary feats on horseback 
 — His frolics — With waggon horses — With a 
 bag fox — With skates — With rats on the ice — 
 With herons — With a badger — With foxes in 
 the bar of an inn at his election for the county 
 of Salop — With a broken-kneed horse, and an 
 old woman — With a flannel petticoat — With 
 his chaplain on his road to church — -With a 
 horse-breaker — With a Shrewsbury tradesman 
 — His row at a hell — His extraordinary shooting
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 with a rifle — Extraordinary performances after 
 hounds — Swimming the river Severn, &c. — 
 Marvellous exploit in a tandem by moonlight 
 — Ditto in a gig with the Author — His gig 
 carried over Halston lodge gate — A parallel 
 instance to it at Wrexham — Sale of sporting 
 implements at Halston — Heron shooting — The 
 Shavington Day ; " Now for the honour of 
 Shropshire ! " — Description of the racing stakes 
 at ditto — Number of the stakes and plates won 
 — Monody on his death, by Tom Moody.
 
 LIST OF THE PLATES 
 
 NO PAGE 
 
 Title, i. — "Well done, Neck or Nothing; you 
 
 are not a bad one to breed from " . 188 
 2. — A Nick, or the nearest way home . 6 
 
 3. — Wild duck shooting .... 17 
 4. — "What! never upset in a gig ?" . . 21 
 5. — " I wonder whether he is a good timber- 
 jumper ! " . . . . .22 
 6. — The "Meet" with Lord Derby's stag- 
 hounds ..... 25 
 7. — " Stand and deliver " . . . .26 
 8. — "Tally ho! Tally ho !" a new hunter . 27 
 9. — The Oaks filly ..... 30 
 10, — " Light come, light go " ... 42 
 n. — On Baronet clears nine yards of water . 82 
 
 12 "D — n this hiccup !" . . . . 127 
 
 13. — A h — 11 of a row in a hell. Mytton 
 
 shows fight . . . . .186 
 
 14. — Swims the Severn at Uppington Ferry . 188 
 15. — How to cross a country comfortably 
 
 after dinner . . . . .190 
 
 16. — Heron shooting: a cooler after a big 
 
 drink ...... 197 
 
 xiii
 
 xiv LIST OF THE PLATES 
 
 No. 
 Title. 17. — "A Squire trap, by Jove! A little 
 more and I should have done it " . 
 18. — "Now for the honour of Shropshire." 
 The Shavington Day; a trial of 
 rival packs, and consequently of 
 rival horsemen
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 OF THE LATE 
 
 JOHN MYTTON, Esq. 
 
 OF HALSTON, SHROPSHIRE 
 
 FORMERLY M.P. FOR SHREWSBURY; HIGH SHERIFF FOR THE 
 
 COUNTIES OF SALOP AND MERIONETH, AND MAJOR OF 
 
 THE NORTH SHROPSHIRE YEOMANRY CAVALRY 
 
 PART I 
 
 " Ubi plura nitent." — Hor. 
 
 T T may be unnecessary, perhaps, to go beyond^w 
 centuries back for the pedigree of John Mytton. 
 No one, I believe, ever doubted his being quite 
 thoroughbred. In fact, no half-bred one could 
 have done much more than half what he did in the 
 space of his short life ; but, as I have before said 
 of him, " nil •violentum est perpetuum " — " 'tis the 
 pace that kills," and he was no exception to the 
 rule. It having, however, been stated in the news- 
 paper accounts of his decease, that he had repre- 
 sented the ancient borough of Shrewsbury in Par- 
 i
 
 2 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 liament, I shall merely show that, if the ancient 
 relation of his family to a town of which their 
 ancestors had been inhabitants and burgesses upwards 
 of five centuries — in addition to their ample estates 
 in its immediate neighbourhood — still goes for any 
 thing, who had a better right to the honour than he 
 had ? Looking back into the history of Shrews- 
 bury, we find the borough to have been thus 
 represented : — 
 
 A. D. 1373 (reign of Edward III.). Reginold 
 de Mutton (Mutton was the original 
 name) and Richard de Pontesbury, 
 members. 
 
 1377. Reginold de Mutton and William de 
 Longenolne, members. 
 
 1472. Thomas Mutton and John Hord, members. 
 
 1 49 1. William Mutton and Lawrence Hosyer, 
 members. 
 
 1520. Edmund Cole and Adam Mutton, members. 
 
 1 529. Adam Mutton and Robert Dudley, members. 
 
 1554. Thomas Mytton (now first so called) and 
 Nicholas Purcell, members. 
 
 1690. Richard Mytton and Hon, Andrew New- 
 port, members. 
 
 1 698. Richard Mytton and John Kynaston, members. 
 
 1701. Ditto ditto ditto. 
 
 1702. Ditto ditto ditto.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 3 
 
 1705. Richard MyttonandJohnKynaston, members. 
 1 710. Ditto and EdwardCresset,Esq., ditto. 1 
 1734. John Mytton, grandfather to the subject of 
 this memoir, stood a severe contest for 
 the Borough, but was defeated by Sir 
 Richard Corbet, Bart., and William 
 Kynaston, Esq. ; and the late John 
 Mytton, Esq., was elected member, 
 January 14, 18 19, having been opposed 
 by Panton Corbet, Esq., who soon 
 resigned the contest. Numbers — Mytton, 
 384; Corbet, 287. 
 
 In so highly an aristocratic county as Shropshire, 
 and one celebrated for its electioneering contentions, 
 these extracts may be sufficient to exhibit the 
 parliamentary pretensions of this ancient family, and 
 of my late departed friend. 
 
 In 1 480, Thomas Mytton was high sheriff for 
 Shropshire, and apprehended the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham, who had rebelled against Richard the Third, 
 and conducted him to Salisbury, where, as his historian 
 
 1 This election was the result of a very severe contest. 
 The following was the final state of the poll: — Mytton, 
 224; Edward Cresset (ancestor of Cresset Pelham, Esq., 
 late M.P. for the county), 222 ; Thomas Jones (ancestor 
 of Sir Tyrwhitt Jones, Bart.), 177 ; Sir Edward Leighton, 
 Bart., 131
 
 4 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 relates, he was instantly tried, condemned, and exe- 
 cuted according to the summary method practised in 
 those ages. His reward for this very important 
 service is recorded in the Harleian MSS., No. 
 433 ; in which is an abstract of the Letters Patent, 
 whereby " King Richard the Third grants to his 
 trusty and well-beloved Squire, Thomas Mytton, 
 and to his heirs male, the Castle and Lordship of 
 Cawes, and all appurtenances thereto, amounting 
 to the value of fifty pounds, and late belonging to 
 our rebel and traitor, the late Duke of Bucking- 
 ham." This Thomas Mytton married one of the 
 daughters of Sir John Burgh, and was an immediate 
 ancestor of the subject of this memoir. 
 
 As has been shown, the first conspicuous ancestor 
 of this family was, Reginold de Mutton, of Weston 
 Lizard, Shropshire, now represented through the 
 Wilbrahams and Newports by the present Earl of 
 Bradford; and it is in 1549 that we first find it 
 seated at Halston, when Sir Robert Townsend is 
 stated to have rented Mr. Mytton's large mansion 
 at Cotow, he — Mr. Mytton — having removed to 
 his more recent purchase at Halston — or, as it 
 was then called, Holy Stone, much celebrated in 
 history as the scene of bloody deeds in the reign of 
 the first Richard. At this ancient mansion there 
 was a preceptory of Knights Templars, and after-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 5 
 
 wards of the Knights Hospitallers, under a grant 
 from Queen Elizabeth (who confirmed the aliena- 
 tion of the property from the Knights of St. John 
 of Jerusalem, to whom it was given by an Earl of 
 Arundel who possessed it after the Norman 
 conquest), when purchased, or rather exchanged 
 for, by Edward Mytton of Habberley. There was 
 also formerly an abbey in the village of Halston, 
 taken down more than a century ago ; but there is 
 the church or chapel of Halston now standing on 
 the domain, exempt from Episcopal jurisdiction, 
 and without any other revenue than what the 
 Chaplain may be allowed by the owner of it. 
 
 Having described ancient, I proceed to modern 
 Halston ; and, unless very fastidious indeed, my 
 readers will agree with me in thinking that it ought 
 to satisfy the desires of every moderate man. In 
 the first place, its location is good. Away from 
 any great road, it is within easy reach of two — the 
 London and Holyhead, and the Shrewsbury and 
 Chester — without being subjected to the incon- 
 venience of either ; and the lodge-gates open upon 
 an excellent cross turnpike-road, leading from 
 Oswestry to Ellesmere — distant, three miles from 
 the former town and five from the latter. Being 
 situated on a flat, the domain is deprived of some of 
 the advantages the extremely beautiful country by
 
 6 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 which it is surrounded affords, but still the tout 
 ensemble is good. In the front of the mansion is 
 a lawn of about sixty acres of prettily diversified 
 grass-land, and behind it is a tastily laid-out flower 
 garden, contiguous to a fine tract of meadow land 
 separated from it by a deeply sunken fence ; and a 
 noble sheet of water, with the old family chapel at 
 the head of it, gives a good finish to the landscape. 
 When I say that the oak is the weed of that part of 
 our island, I scarcely need add that, in a domain of 
 such antiquity as Halston, it is — I fear I must 
 write was — to be seen in its full majesty of form ; 
 and no estate in the county could produce finer oaks 
 than those which adorned the Halston woods. I 
 can indeed speak to the fact of one which was cut 
 down, about eight years back, containing ten tons 
 of timber, without top or lop ! The plantations 
 also, all made by the late Mr. Mytton and to the 
 extent of three miles, nearly encircle the domain, 
 and afford shelter to the superfluity of game which 
 it was his ambition to possess. 
 
 The mansion house, without pretensions 
 to magnificence, is replete with every comfort 
 and convenience for a country gentleman's 
 establishment ; and is much more commodious 
 than it appears to be, from the offices being 
 for the most part detached. It contains
 
 >5
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 7 
 
 a hall in which there was a billiard table, with a 
 library on one side and Mr. Mytton's dressing- 
 room on the other ; and an excellent dining- and 
 two drawing-rooms, connected with each other 
 by double doors, complete the down-stairs suite. 
 There also was — oh ! I write that word with 
 sorrow — a small but excellent collection of pictures, 
 which the catalogue of them showed had been 
 collected with great care, as ornaments to these, 
 now naked, walls ; and a thousand guineas were 
 offered, in my presence, for one of them, 1 but 
 nobly refused by the owner of it. The gardens 
 are most excellent, and, to complete the sketch of 
 this, to me, sort of earthly paradise, there is in the 
 grounds surrounding the house, not only a rookery, 
 but a heronry — very rare in that part of the world 
 — and every description of shooting and fishing 
 that the follower of such sports could require. 
 The surrounding country is also quite upon a par 
 with the "provincials " — if not better than most — 
 for either fox-hounds or harriers. 
 
 The property of the late Mr. Mytton has been a 
 good dealexaggerated, both as regards the annual value 
 of his estates and the sum accumulated in his minority, 
 which was to the extent of seventeen years. I have 
 good reason to believe that the former (though it 
 1 Joseph escaping from Potiphar's wife.
 
 8 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 increased afterwards) was under ten thousand a year, 
 and that the latter amounted to about ^60,000. 
 Independently of the Halston and Habberly estates, 
 which are in entail, there were three other properties 
 in Shropshire, and one in North Wales of about 
 ^800 per annum, with a manor and right of free 
 warren, each very rare in the Principality, and the 
 latter very rare everywhere ; but, alas, they are lost 
 in the general wreck. The Welch domain will be 
 described when I touch on the subject of shooting. 
 
 Having done with the mansion, we will now 
 proceed to the proprietor of it, who, being born on 
 the 30th of Sept. 1796, was left fatherless before 
 he was two years old ; and, as if there was a 
 disposition in his predecessors to drop into an early 
 grave, neither his great grandfather nor his grand- 
 father lived to see a son come of age. As I can 
 only just remember the father of the late Mr. 
 Mytton, I am unable to estimate, in this in- 
 dividual instance, the loss of a father to a son, 
 in his infant state ; but in most cases, with 
 heirs to large estates, it is irreparable. It is 
 written of the Gracchi, that they were educated 
 " non tarn in gremio quam in sermone mains" ; l 
 
 1 It is difficult to render this passage literally ; but it 
 implies that the Gracchi were not only nursed, but in 
 part educated, by their mother.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 9 
 
 and, although it is not every mother that is a 
 Sempronia, their history informs us they were very 
 little the better for it, if not a great deal the worse. 
 We cannot marvel at this. When the plant is 
 young and tender a gentle force will incline it to 
 whichsoever way we may wish, but ere it has even 
 attained its full growth it very unwillingly bends to 
 our hand, and thus is it with human kind. The 
 excessive tenderness of a fond mother is no match 
 for the wayward temper of a darling boy, and how 
 often is his ruin to be traced to this source ! In 
 the weakness of her affection she is unable to say 
 " no " ; and she only finds out when it is too late, 
 that the object of her affection will neither bridle 
 his passions nor restrain his actions at her bidding ; 
 nor indeed, as was unfortunately the case with the 
 memorable subject of this memoir, at that of any 
 other human being. But was not such always the 
 case ? The Lacedaemonian lawgiver, at all events, 
 was of this opinion, when he ordered the two 
 hounds to be brought into court to illustrate his 
 argument in favour of moral restraint. One took 
 after a hare and the other ran to his dinner, as each 
 had, in his youth, been instructed to do. "There," 
 said the Spartan, " is the effect of early discipline ; 
 those animals were whelps of the same litter, but the 
 difference of education has made one a good hound, 
 that seldom misses his game, whereas his brother
 
 io LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 is a cur, fit for nothing but to lick the dishes." 
 And thus it is in the stable : — 
 
 " Fingit equum tenera docilem cervice magister 
 Ire viam, quam monstrat eques " — 
 
 writes Horace, when he shows that the temper of 
 the horse depends upon his treatment when a colt. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that, 
 before he was ten years old, Master Mytton was 
 as finished a Pickle as the fondest mother and his 
 own will could possibly have made him. Indeed 
 his neighbour, Sir Richard Puleston, with a felicity 
 of expression peculiarly his own, christened him 
 Mango, the king of the Pickles, and he proved 
 his title to the honour even to the end of his life. 
 But Master Mytton was withal a wonderful 
 favourite in his neighbourhood, because all his 
 actions were tempered with kindness, as indeed they 
 were to his very last hour. But how am I to 
 describe the whole career of his infant state, his 
 scholastic progress, and his academical honours ? 
 Why the task is performed in a few words. 
 He was expelled Westminster 1 and Harrow ; 
 knocked down his private tutor in Berkshire, in 
 whose hands he was afterwards placed ; was 
 entered on the books of both universities, but did 
 1 Here he spent ^800 a year, exactly double his allowance.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON n 
 
 not matriculate at either, and the only outward and 
 visible sign of his ever intending to do so, was his 
 ordering three pipes of Port wine to be sent 
 addressed to him at Cambridge. At the age of 
 eighteen, however, he went a tour on the Continent 
 by way of something like " the Finish " ; and then 
 returned to Halston, and his harriers which he had 
 kept when he was a child. 
 
 But we will now look on him when a man ! 
 As the proud recollections of the Roman fathers 
 often disturbed the dreams of their sons, it is 
 possible that our hero, although I never heard him 
 speak of him, might have cherished the recollection 
 of the renowned General Mytton, and wished to 
 signalize himself as he had done, in arms. Be this 
 as it may, at the age of nineteen, he entered, as a 
 Cornet, the 7th Hussars, and joined them in 
 France, with the army of occupation. But as by 
 this time all fighting was at end, Cornet Mytton 
 made himself signal in sundry other ways. A 
 heavy purse and an open hand are by no means 
 necessary qualifications in a soldier ; and it was 
 very unlikely that he, above all men, having only a 
 few months to wait for being in full possession of 
 his property, should keep without the magic 
 circle, and not enter into all kinds of youthful 
 mischief. Some of his feats were of a nearly
 
 12 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 harmless nature, such as his racing exploits — him- 
 self the jockey ; his borrowing ,£3,000 of a banker 
 at St. Omer, one day, and losing half of it the 
 next at a rascally E. O. table, which he de- 
 molished to atoms as some satisfaction for his loss ; 
 but his doings at Calais at this period were of a 
 more serious nature. He lost the immense sum of 
 sixteen thousand Napoleons to a certain Captain, at 
 billiards, which sum he could not then pay. But 
 the score was wiped off in a more agreeable manner. 
 It being suspected to have been a cross, which no 
 doubt it was, the Colonel of his regiment, the 
 Marquess of Anglesea, then Earl of Uxbridge, 
 forbad his paying the money, and with any other 
 man but John Mytton, such authority would have 
 been conclusive. He, however, afterwards entered 
 into correspondence with his opponent, which led 
 to the publication of pamphlets and placards ; but a 
 late transaction, in which that person's conduct has 
 been implicated, proved how right Lord Anglesea 
 was in his decision, and how wrong the victim 
 was in ever holding a communication with his 
 destroyer. 
 
 Quitting the army, and in his twenty-third year, 
 he entered, for the first time, into the marriage 
 state, and his wedding was thus announced in the 
 Shrewsbury papers : —
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 13 
 
 "On the 2 1 st May, 181 8, at St George's 
 Hanover-square, by the Rev. William Douglas, 
 Prebend of Westminster, John Mytton, of 
 Halston, in this county, Esq., to Harriet Emma 
 Jones, eldest daughter of the late Sir Tyrwhitt 
 Jones, Bart., of Stanley-hall, in this county, and 
 sister to the present Sir Tyrwhitt Jones, Bart. 
 The bridegroom was attended by the Earl of 
 Uxbridge, the Earl of Denbigh, Sir Watkin 
 Williams Wynn, Bart., Colonel Sir Edward 
 Kerrison, &c. &c. After the ceremony they 
 returned to the house of Lady Jones, in New 
 Norfolk-street, where a most elegant breakfast was 
 provided ; and from thence the happy couple imme- 
 diately left London for the seat of the Duke of 
 Marlborough, at Blenheim. Among the company 
 present were the Duchess of Marlborough and Lady 
 Caroline Churchill, Sir John and Lady Dashwood 
 and Miss Dashwood, Sir Edward and Lady 
 Kerrison, Lord and Lady Say and Sele and Miss 
 Twisleton, General and Mrs. Gascoyne and Miss 
 Gascoyne, the Marquess of Blandford and Lord 
 Charles Churchill, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Leigh, Sir 
 Tyrwhitt Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Patton Bold and the 
 Misses Bold, and many other persons of distinction." 
 
 The issue of this marriage was only one daughter, 
 at present alive, and residing with Mrs. Corbet, of
 
 14 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Sundorne-castle, Shropshire, widow of the ever to 
 be revered John Corbet, who so many years hunted 
 Warwickshire. Mrs. Mytton, whose state of health 
 was always delicate, died a few years after her 
 marriage. Mr. Mytton had but one sister, who 
 was married to John Hesketh Lethbridge, Esq., 
 eldest son of Sir Thomas Lethbridge, Bart., in 
 March, 1 817, and she ceased to exist in the same 
 month of the year 1826, leaving two sons and four 
 daughters. She was not only truly elegant in her 
 person, but very highly accomplished, and of a 
 singularly mild and amiable disposition ; and those 
 who wish for a confirmation of the eulogium I 
 have passed upon her, may satisfy themselves by 
 referring to the " Gentleman's Magazine," for 
 October, 1826, page 357; where her character is 
 very faithfully sketched in some lines from the pen 
 of a female friend, a niece to the present Bishop of 
 Norwich. Mytton had a great respect for this 
 amiable sister, but would never take her advice, nor 
 indeed that of any living soul. 
 
 Both in person, and in mind, the gifts of 
 nature were amply bestowed upon the late 
 Mr. Mytton. In fact, he possessed what 
 are called the animal faculties to a degree 
 seldom witnessed, and had he been commonly 
 temperate in his mode of living, he might,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 15 
 
 barring accidental death, have attained a very 
 advanced age. The biceps muscle of his arm was 
 larger than that of Jackson's, the celebrated 
 pugilist's, and those of every other part of his body 
 were equally exuberant and powerful. Unfortun- 
 ately, however, for himself, and often so for his 
 companions, he was, like Cleanthes of old, proud of 
 displaying his strength ; but fortunately for mankind 
 he would not, like Cleanthes, be instructed in the 
 art of boxing, or he would have been still more for- 
 midable with his fists. As it was, in a " turn up," 
 he was, what is called, a very awkward customer, 
 and when he could get at him he knocked down his 
 man as if he had been a nine-pin. But he was 
 nearly ignorant of the science of self-defence, and, 
 as I have already observed, never attempted to 
 attain it. His bull-dog courage, however, added 
 to his tremendous blow, enabled him to beat any 
 ordinary man ; and so well was his prowess known, 
 that few ventured to encounter him. He had not a 
 handsome face, but by no means an unpleasing 
 countenance ; and, without having practised the 
 graces, the air and character of the gentleman were 
 strongly impressed on his carriage. His shoulders 
 were finely formed, with a very expanded chest 
 — height, about five feet nine inches ; weight, 
 varying in the last twelve years of his life from 
 eleven to thirteen stone.
 
 1 6 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 I should think the best battle he ever fought was 
 in 1826, with a countryman — a Welch miner — 
 who offended him by holloaing the harriers of 
 Mr. Nicholls, of Crumpwell, near Oswestry, to a 
 fresh hare, when they were on the scent of the 
 hunted one, and on the point of killing her after an 
 extraordinary run. The miner told him he would 
 find him " a tough un," which he did ; but after 
 twenty rounds he cried, " hold hard, enough" 
 And now appears Mytton in his true character. 
 The hunted hare being eventually killed, he gave 
 the miner ten shillings, told him to go to Halston 
 and get " another bellyfull," and to order the hare 
 to be cooked for dinner that day. 
 
 Never was constitution so murdered as Mr. 
 Mytton's was ; for, what but one of adamant could 
 have withstood the shocks, independent of wine, to 
 which it was almost daily exposed ? His dress 
 alone would have caused the death of nine hundred 
 of a thousand men who passed one part of the day 
 and night in a state of luxury and warmth. We 
 will take him from the sole of his shoe to the 
 crown of his hat. He never wore any but the 
 thinnest and finest silk stockings, with very thin 
 boots or shoes, so that in winter he rarely had dry 
 feet. To flannel he was a stranger, since 
 he left off his petticoats. Even his hunting
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 17 
 
 breeches were without lining ; he wore one small 
 waistcoat, always open in the front from about the 
 second of the lower buttons ; and about home he 
 was as often without his hat as with one. His 
 winter shooting gear was a light jacket, white linen 
 trousers, without lining or drawers, of which he 
 knew not the use ; and in frost and snow he waded 
 through all water that came in his way. Nor is 
 this all. He would sometimes strip to his shirt to 
 follow wild-fowl in hard weather, and once actually 
 laid himself down on the snow in his shirt only to 
 wait their arrival at dusk. But Dame Nature took 
 offence at this, and chastised him rather severely for 
 his daring. On one occasion, however, he out- 
 heroded Herod, for he followed some ducks " in 
 puris naturalibus " — anglice, stark-naked — on the 
 ice, 1 and escaped with perfect impunity. He was 
 the only man I ever knew who I think, at one time 
 of his life, might have stood some chance of 
 performing the grand Osbaldeston match over 
 Newmarket, from the ease with which he per- 
 formed immense distances on the road on his 
 hacks. When his hounds hunted the Albrighton 
 country (Staffordshire) he used to ride, several 
 times in the week, to covers nearly fifty miles 
 
 1 This occurred at Woodhouse, the seat of his uncle, 
 who related the story to me in London, the circumstance 
 having occurred since I last visited Shropshire. 
 2
 
 1 8 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 distant from Halston, and return thither to his dinner. 
 Indeed he has been known to do it for some days 
 successively. Neither could any man I ever met 
 in the field walk through the day with him, at his 
 pace. I saw him, on his own moors in Merioneth- 
 shire, completely knock up two keepers (who ac- 
 companied him alternately), being the whole day 
 bare-headed under a hot sun. (One of these keepers 
 — whom I procured for him in Cheshire — was rather 
 a crack walker, and a noted man with his fists.) 
 He had the stomach of an ostrich before it was 
 debilitated by wine, and even against that it stood 
 nearly proof to the last, but it appears he once met 
 with his match. Himself and a friend left London 
 together with eighteen pounds of filbert-nuts in his 
 carriage, and they devoured them all before they ar- 
 rived at Halston. To use his own words, they sat up 
 to their knees in nut-shells. But it was often alarming 
 to witness the quantity of dry nuts he would eat, with 
 the quantity of port wine which he would drink ; and 
 on my once telling him at his own table that the 
 ill-assorted mixture caused the death of a school- 
 fellow of mine, 1 he carried a dish of filberts 
 
 1 When mentioning this fact, I was quite unconscious 
 that General Williams, who was present, was brother to 
 the youth I alluded to. " You are speaking of a brother 
 of mine," said the General. " Volat irrevocabile 
 verbum ; " I had nothing left but to apologize.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 19 
 
 into the drawing-room with him, for the purpose 
 of " clearing decks," as he said. Among other 
 peculiarities, he never carried a pocket-handker- 
 chief, for he never had occasion for the use of 
 one ; he very rarely wore gloves, for his hands 
 were never cold ; and although he never wore a 
 watch, he always knew the hour. 
 
 On the subject of nuts, the following anecdote 
 has been handed to me by a gentleman who 
 vouched for the truth of it. Mytton, in his 
 prosperity, was a great favourite of the shopkeepers 
 of Shrewsbury and Oswestry, and among others, 
 of a sporting hair-dresser of the former place, to 
 whom he often gave a day's shooting. This 
 person was his chief purveyor of filberts, and 
 having an unlimited order for the purchase of 
 them, declared that, in one season, he sent to 
 Halston as many as two cart-loads of them ! As 
 may be supposed, in return for pheasants and hares, 
 the house or shop of Monsieur le Perruquier was 
 now and then the scene of a " lark." Entering 
 it one evening, he asked what he could have to 
 drink ? but before an answer could be given 
 him, he snatched up a pint bottle of lavender 
 water, and, knocking off the head of it, drank 
 it off at a draught — saying, " It was a good pre- 
 servative against the bad effects of night air." I
 
 2o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 shall presently show that this was not his last 
 performance upon this stage. 
 
 That John Mytton saw his thirty-eighth year, 
 must be attributed either to the good genius that 
 accompanied him, or to the signal interposition of 
 Providence, for scarcely a day passed over his 
 head in which he did not put his life to the hazard. 
 Some of his escapes, indeed, border closely on 
 the miraculous, but it would fill a volume were I 
 to enumerate them. How often has he been 
 run away with by horses, in gigs ! How often 
 struggling in deep water, without being able to 
 swim ! How was it that he did not get torn to 
 pieces in the countless street-broils in which he was 
 engaged ; * and lastly, how did he avoid being shot 
 in a duel ? The latter question is soon answered — 
 he never fought one. In fact, he was always con- 
 sidered somewhat of a man of license in society, and 
 although no one doubted his standing fire, if called 
 upon, it is my firm persuasion nothing would have 
 induced him to have aimed at a man to destroy him. 
 
 1 In the literal sense of the term, he was once nearly 
 divided into two John Myttons, at a race meeting in 
 Lancashire, for which offence — as well as an attempt to 
 rob him — one man was transported. One party of thieves 
 wanted to pull him into a house and the other out of it, so 
 between both he was nearer being quartered than divided, 
 and nothing but the great strength of his frame saved him.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 21 
 
 In the saddle, too, he ran prodigious risks for his 
 life, not only by riding at apparently impracticable 
 fences, with hounds, but in falling from his horses 
 when intoxicated. For the former of these acts 
 he was for many years so notorious, that it was a 
 common answer to the question — whether a certain 
 sort of fence could be leaped, or whether any man 
 would attempt it ? — that it would do for Mytton. 
 He once actually galloped at full speed over a 
 rabbit-warren, to try whether or not his horse 
 would fall, which of course he did, and rolled 
 over him. This perfect contempt of danger was 
 truly characteristic of himself; but, not content 
 with the possession of it, he endeavoured to im- 
 part it to his friends. As he was one day driving 
 one of them in a gig, who expressed a strong 
 regard for his neck, with a hint that he considered 
 it in some danger, Mytton addressed him thus : 
 — "Was you ever much hurt then, by being 
 upset in a gig ? " " No, thank God," said his 
 companion, "for I never was upset in one." 
 "What!" replied Mytton — "never upset in a 
 gig ? What a d — d slow fellow you must have 
 been all your life ; " and, running his near wheel 
 up the bank, over they both went, fortunately 
 without either being much injured ! 
 
 Shortly after Mr. Mytton attained his majority, he
 
 22 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 gave a horse-dealer, named Clarke, of Meole, in 
 Shropshire, an order to purchase for him some 
 carriage horses. Putting one of them into a gig, 
 tandem, to see, as he expressed himself, " whether 
 he would make a good leader," he asked the 
 dealer, who sat beside him, if he thought he <was 
 a good timber-jumper ? On the dealer expressing 
 a doubt, Mytton exclaimed, " Then we'll try 
 him " ; and a closed turnpike-gate (at Hanwood) 
 being before him, he gave the horse his head, and 
 a flanker with his whip at the same moment, when 
 he cleared the gate in beautiful style, leaving 
 Mytton and the dealer, and the other horse, all on 
 the nether side of the gate ; and fortunately all alive, 
 although the gig was much injured. He once 
 had a horse that would rear up in his gig, at the 
 word of command, until the hinder part of it 
 absolutely touched the ground ; and, although he 
 was much given to display this dangerous accom- 
 plishment, no accident was the result. 
 
 I was myself once passing through the town 
 of Oswestry, only two hours too late to have 
 witnessed a most singular performance of a 
 team of coach horses of his, which he had 
 been exercising in a break. Finding they 
 had gotten the better of him, he contrived to 
 quit the carriage without injury, and the

 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 23 
 
 horses being at liberty, ran at full speed into the 
 town of Oswestry. Unfortunately a gateway pre- 
 sented itself, into which they dashed, and now for 
 the finish. The said gateway led into a parallel 
 street, but, narrowing as it lengthened, there was, 
 towards the further end of it, room for the horses 
 but not for the carriage to pass. The consequence 
 was, the four horses, breaking all their harness by 
 the shock, tumbled head over heels into the street, 
 and strange to say, not one of them was killed. 
 So much for his exploits in harness. 
 
 Perhaps the most awful accident that ever 
 happened to this most extraordinary man, was 
 on his return, after dark, from a race-course, 
 in his travelling carriage and four. The post- 
 boys mistook an old road, which had been 
 stopped up, for the right one ; and entered it, 
 down hill too, at the rate of fourteen miles in 
 the hour, when they came suddenly in contact 
 with some fallen trees, which were placed across 
 it as a barrier. The force of the shock may 
 be imagined ; the carriage was broken to 
 pieces ; the servant was pitched from his seat 
 to a very considerable distance, sustaining a frac- 
 ture of the skull from the fall ; and Mytton was 
 a good deal hurt — any other man, perhaps, would 
 have been killed, as he was fast asleep at the
 
 24 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 time. The fate of the horses and the boys I do 
 not at this moment recollect ; but the servant — 
 who by good conduct was promoted by degrees to 
 the post of valet de chambre to Mr. M. from being 
 a boy in my stable — has, I fear, never recovered 
 from the effects of this dire mishap. 
 
 But Mr. Mytton appeared, at least wished to 
 be supposed to be, indifferent to pain. A very 
 few days after he had had so bad a fall with his 
 own hounds as to occasion the dislocation of 
 three ribs, and was otherwise much bruised, a 
 friend in Wales, unconscious of his accident, sent 
 him a fox in a bag, with a hint that, if turned 
 out on the morrow, he would be sure to afford 
 sport, as he was only just caught. "To-morrow, 
 then," said Mytton, " will we run him " ; and 
 although he was lifted upon his horse, having his 
 body swathed with rollers, and also writhing with 
 pain, he took the lead of all the field, upon a horse 
 he called " The Devil," and was never headed 
 by any man, till he killed his fox, at the end of 
 a capital hour's run. He was very near fainting 
 from the severity of this trial ; but I remember 
 his telling me, he ivould not have been seen to faint ', 
 for ten thousand pounds. 
 
 Upon another somewhatsimilar occasion, he showed
 
 1 
 
 Si 
 
 .1 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 ^
 
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 25 
 
 his disregard of pain. He was on his return from 
 the field, with two of his ribs displaced, and 
 evidently suffering much from a fall. To enable 
 him to cut off an angle, he got into a fold-yard, 
 but could not get out of it unless by riding over 
 some high rails, which he did, in that state. 
 
 In the hilarity of high animal spirits he per- 
 formed some feats that were ludicrous, and others 
 that were painful to witness. Amongst the 
 former was his appearance with Lord Derby's 
 stag-hounds, when he was taken for a London 
 tailor. Happening to be in town in the hunt- 
 ing season, he had a desire to see those cele- 
 brated hounds, and Tilbury sent out a horse for 
 the purpose. On his arrival at the place of meet- 
 ing in a cab, which he had driven at an awful rate, 
 he attracted the notice of the throng, to all of 
 whom, save one, he was a stranger. " What a buck 
 he is ! " said one. "Who the d — 1 is he?" said 
 another. "He is a tailor from London" said 
 several, all of which remarks were carefully re- 
 echoed to him by his friend. Mytton said nothing, 
 but the tables were soon turned when Lord Derby's 
 carriage drove up. "What, Mytton!" ex- 
 claimed Lord Stanley, 1 "who would have 
 thought of seeing you here " — putting out his 
 1 Now Earl of Derby.
 
 26 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 hand to welcome him. " Why, to tell you the 
 truth, Stanley," said Mytton, " I have ridden over 
 many a good fellow in my own country, but I 
 never rode over a Cockney, and I am come here 
 to-day for that sole purpose." 
 
 His treatment of a London Jew money-lender 
 was not amiss. Being wearied by delay, he 
 hired two coal-heavers to knock at his door every 
 second hour throughout the night, until the money 
 was forthcoming. But this anecdote furnishes a 
 painful recollection on the subject of money-lend- 
 ing. A few years back he borrowed ten thousand 
 pounds on an annuity at high interest, and lent 
 nine of it to a friend who has never been seen 
 in Europe since ! This, although a type of the 
 man, is no matter for joking ; but the following 
 may be looked upon as frolics. He had a parson 
 and a doctor dining with him one evening at 
 Halston, and at a certain hour of the night they 
 mounted their horses to return to their homes. 
 Having a carter's frock, and a brace of pistols 
 loaded with blank cartridges, at hand, Mytton 
 mounted a hack, and by a circuitous route 
 headed and met them on the road, when letting fly 
 both barrels at them, and calling to them to 
 " stand and deliver," he declared they never rode 
 half so fast in their lives as they did from that
 
 I
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 27 
 
 place to Oswestry, with himself at their heels. 
 On another occasion he was told that the late 
 George Underhill, the celebrated Shropshire 
 horse-dealer, was in his house, on his road from 
 Chester fair. Sending for him into his dining- 
 room, he made him excessively drunk and put him 
 to bed with two bull-dogs and a bear ! He once 
 rode this bear into his drawing-room, in full hunt- 
 ing costume. The animal carried him very quietly 
 for a certain time ; but on being pricked by the 
 spur he bit his rider through the calf of his leg, 
 inflicting a severe wound. The mention of this 
 bear reminds me of another amusing anecdote. 
 Having sent one of his stable boys with a hack to 
 meet a friend who was coming by a coach, the 
 latter exclaimed, on riding into the Halston stable- 
 yard, " Ah ! bruin ! " — alluding to the bear, " Oh 
 yes, sir," observed the lad, " we always brews 
 twice a week at Halston." What I am now going 
 to relate I know not how to define, for in most 
 people's opinion it rather exceeds a joke. As we 
 were eating some supper one night in the coffee- 
 room of the hotel at Chester, during the race week, 
 a gentleman, who was a stranger to us all, was 
 standing with his back to the fire, talking very 
 loudly, having drunk too much wine. " I'll stop 
 him," said Mytton ; and getting behind him unper- 
 ceived, put a red-hot coal into his pocket.
 
 28 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 But I have a better, inasmuch as it was a more 
 harmless, joke, to relate with respect to George 
 Underhill, the horse-dealer. He rode over one 
 day to Halston, to dun Mr. Mytton for his 
 demand upon him, which, 1 believe, was rather a 
 large one. After having been made comfortable 
 in the steward's room, Mytton addressed him thus : 
 "Well, George, here (handing him a letter) is 
 an order for all your money. Call on this 
 gentleman, as you pass through Shrewsbury, and 
 he will give it to you in fully Now this gentle- 
 man — also a hanker — was one of the governors of 
 the Lunatic Asylum, and the order for payment 
 ran thus : 
 
 Halston. 
 Sir, 
 
 Admit the bearer, George Underhill, 
 into the Lunatic Asylum. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 John Mytton. 
 
 The mention of the trick he paid the Jew 
 money-lender bears a resemblance to one he paid 
 a toll - keeper near his own house, who had 
 demanded and received double toll from him 
 on the score of its being past twelve o'clock 
 at night, whereas it was only just eleven, and 
 it had been once before paid during the
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 29 
 
 day. Although it was a bitter cold night, Mytton 
 waited till the toll-keeper was warm in his bed, 
 and then repassed the gate, of course without 
 paying toll. Nor did the frolic end here. No 
 sooner was the fellow once more in bed, than the 
 word " Gate " again resounded in his ears ; and 
 finding out whom he had to deal with, he gladly 
 returned the money, and enjoyed the rest of the 
 night in repose. 
 
 The history of this bear may not be unworthy 
 of notice. Mytton purchased her (it was a female 
 bear) when very young, together with a monkey, 
 from a strolling showman who was passing through 
 Ellesmere, a town five miles distant from Halston, 
 for the sum of thirty-five pounds for the two. 
 Having been upwards of seven years in his posses- 
 sion and handled at an early age, the former was 
 tolerably tracticable for an animal so naturally savage ; 
 but she was not to be trifled with by strangers. It 
 was indeed in consequence of her injuring one 
 of the servants of the establishment that Mytton 
 ordered her to be put to death, which, as fire-arms 
 were not resorted to, was said to have been a very 
 difficult undertaking. In self-defence she severely 
 wounded one of her assailants. 
 
 The death of the monkey was quite in character
 
 30 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 with his life — bordering strongly on the ludicrous. 
 Like his master, Jacko was fond of his bottle, and 
 mistaking a jar of Day and Martin's blacking for 
 something of a more vinuous quality, he drank so 
 freely of it as to produce an illness which deprived 
 him of his eye-sight, and eventually caused his 
 death. Many of his exploits have been related to 
 me, such as his performance, after hounds, on the 
 horse called The Devil, but as I have no personal 
 knowledge of them, I am unwilling to give them 
 publicity. They bear too close a resemblance to 
 some old Joe Miller stories of the same amusing 
 animal. 
 
 It is said of Napoleon, that he wished to banish 
 the word "impossible " from the French Dictionary. 
 Mytton must have had some such desire ; for he 
 once told me, at Halston, that he had a filly in 
 his racing stable which should win the Oaks (she 
 was named in those stakes), and afterwards she 
 herself should put them into his pocket. On my 
 ridiculing the idea, he said — " Why not ? She 
 will now put both her hind feet into my pockets, 
 and why not her mouth ? " I accompanied him to 
 the stable, and to my horror witnessed the latter 
 exhibition. Mytton laid himself down at full 
 length under her belly, with his bare head 
 between her heels, and first taking up one foot
 
 l.5l
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 31 
 
 and then the other, placed them both in the pockets 
 of his dressing gown. William Dilly, his trainer, 
 witnessed all this as well as myself; but on his 
 attempting to take liberties with a horse called 
 Oswestry, in the next box, who was of a very 
 different temper, his worthy servant thus addressed 
 him. " You will do that once too often, sir, with 
 this horse ; and, good-tempered as she is, should 
 your Oaks filly become alarmed, she will surely 
 knock out your brains." " Good advice, Mr. 
 Dilly," said I, as I turned away from the awful 
 scene ; " but you may spare your breath ; John 
 Mytton will be John Mytton ; he heareth not 
 the voice of the charmer, charm he never so 
 wisely, and, like Homer's divinities, is always in 
 mischief." 
 
 But I must not do, as Homer did by his heroes, 
 make mine a savage. And yet how are we to 
 define some of the darings and doings of this 
 extraordinary man ! For example, the following 
 description of an evening at Halston is given by 
 me in the Sporting Magazine just ten years back, 
 and, strange enough, to a very day from the present 
 writing. After describing a display of young 
 foxes which were brought into the dinner-room 
 for inspection, I thus proceed : — " We were 
 now offered the company of the bear, but to a
 
 32 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 man declined the honour. By way of a finish, 
 however, we had one turn-up between a Spanish 
 bull-dog and an animal called Blood — a cross 
 between a Spanish bull-dog and an English mastiff; 
 when our host, thinking that Blood was getting 
 bloody, and might kill the other dog, ran at him and 
 pinned him by the nose ; and although weighing 
 more than seventy pounds, he raised him from the 
 ground with his teeth, holding him suspended for 
 at least a minute, without the smallest assistance 
 from his hands." Neither is this a solitary instance 
 of his contest with ferocious dogs. Returning 
 from hunting one day, he, with some others, called 
 to lunch at a farm-house called the Berries, near 
 Whitchurch, where there was a very large and 
 savage dog chained in the yard. " Pray don't 
 go near him, Mr. Mytton," said his owner, " for 
 he will tear you in pieces if you do." This was 
 enough for Mytton ; so pulling a silk handkerchief 
 out of the pocket of a friend, and lapping it 
 around his left hand, he advanced with it ex- 
 tended towards the dog, who immediately seized it 
 with his mouth. Reader — I fancy I see you 
 shudder ! But don't be alarmed ; and when you 
 hear the sequel perhaps you will think that the 
 dog might have been the greater sufferer of the 
 two, provided blood had been drawn. Catching 
 him by the back of the neck, however, with
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 33 
 
 his right hand, Mytton instantly pinned the animal 
 by the nose with his teeth ; and getting the other 
 hand at liberty, so pummelled his opponent that he 
 had scarcely any life left in him. As might be 
 expected, the dog never afterwards liked the look 
 of his brother bull-dog or even a red coat, but 
 slunk into his kennel on the approach of either one 
 or the other. 
 
 The terms good-natured and good-tempered are 
 very often confounded by being indiscriminately 
 applied to the same person or animal, whereas they 
 admit of no inconsiderable distinction ; and we 
 have a striking instance here. Mytton, by nature, 
 was kind and beneficent to a degree very rarely 
 witnessed. I will not go so far as to say — what 
 Crabbe's son says of him — that " no sympathy was 
 like his," yet, with a pretended insensibility to the 
 common sympathies of our nature, he never saw 
 misery that he did not wish to relieve it. The 
 conflicting elements of his character, or, more 
 properly speaking, some parts of his conduct, may 
 appear to give the lie to this ; yet all who knew 
 the man know that I have spoken the truth, and 
 the tears of the multitude that were shed at his grave 
 place it beyond dispute. In his temper he was 
 sudden and violent, and, like Achilles, impatient of 
 restraint ; yet his wrath endured but the twinkling of 
 3
 
 34 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 an eye, and in forgiveness of injuries he had no 
 equal within my knowledge of mankind. What a 
 paradox then is here ! With all his native good- 
 ness of heart, he appeared to wish to make the 
 world believe he cared no more than Dionysius 
 for the gods what the world thought or said of 
 him ; and, although his good sense must have 
 convinced him that there is a profligacy of spirit 
 in defying the rules of decorum, he oftentimes 
 acted as if he considered every law, human or 
 divine, of little worth. But, I say again — what a 
 paradox is here ! The man who had no " regard 
 to his good name," has left a good name behind 
 him that will be remembered and cherished in 
 Shropshire for many, many, years to come — and 
 for deeds that would have done honour to an 
 apostle. When I say that he was charitable to the 
 poor, and gave them two bushels of wheat a week 
 the year round, I give him credit for little more 
 than might be expected from a man of his means, 
 and of a nature generous to prodigality ; but I have 
 reason to believe no one knew half the extent of his 
 beneficent acts. 'Tis said of charity, that it admits 
 of no error but excess ; and to excess did he often 
 carry it, as I shall presently have occasion to show. 
 In fact, he was as extravagant in his virtues as in his 
 vices — or, I would rather say, in his failings. The 
 perfection of man's moral nature is said to be forgive-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 35 
 
 ness of injuries, but Mytton went a point beyond 
 this. Even that hard injunction of the gospel, to 
 love an enemy — the characteristic of a religion not 
 of man but of God, and, as the author of the 
 Adventurer observes, " could have been delivered 
 as a precept only," for society could not exist 
 under its practice — was no paradox with him, as I 
 shall produce several instances to prove. 
 
 But to return to his nature. Pythagoras being 
 asked in what man could resemble the Divinity, 
 replied — " in beneficence and truth." Here 
 again we have a paradox. The man who some- 
 times assumed the character of a fiend, and appeared 
 to strive against the native goodness of his heart, 
 answers to that of the Deity ; for inasmuch as 
 his beneficence was unquestionable, so was his 
 veracity unimpeachable. Setting aside jesting, 
 in which none dealt more largely, — in fact, he 
 was a sort of human Silenus, — no man could 
 with more safety be spoken after than Mytton 
 could. I am quite certain nothing could have 
 induced him to have uttered a premeditated 
 untruth, for any unworthy purpose ! and there 
 was a good-humoured and affectionate simplicity 
 about him that rendered him a great favourite 
 in his neighbourhood. Again — he was no back- 
 biter. On the contrary, when he heard the
 
 36 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 " voice of slander rankle on the ear," he always 
 turned the discourse — saying as my Uncle Toby 
 did, when his Corporal was reckoning up all the 
 rascals of his regiment, "we will speak of this 
 another time." In his dealings with the world he 
 was a man of strict honour and probity ; and with- 
 out justifying his extravagance, I may be allowed 
 to say that his chief concern, after the last estates 
 he could sell were disposed of, was not whether 
 he himself might be left destitute, but whether 
 there would be enough to pay his creditors in full. 
 As a master he was kindest of the kind, and a liberal 
 and most considerate landlord. Surely then this 
 man must have been either counterfeiting a nature 
 not his own, 1 or he must have been, to a certain 
 extent and on certain points, a madman ! No doubt, 
 he did the one ; and no doubt he was the other ! 
 
 The worst feature in poor Mytton's disposition, and 
 what may be termed the reigning error of his life was, 
 
 1 The following was related to me by the medical 
 gentleman, at Oswestry (now living), who attended the 
 accouchement of the^fr^ Mrs. Mytton. " Mr. Mytton," 
 said he, "was in the billiard room, when I went to in- 
 form him of the birth. What is it? he inquired. On 
 my telling him it was a girl, he swore he would have it 
 smothered — but, throwing himself on a sofa, gave vent to 
 his feelings inja flood of tears, and his anxiety for the well- 
 doing of his lady would have done honour to any man."
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 37 
 
 not only that he would not bow to reproof, much 
 less kiss the rod, but he would suffer no man either 
 to counsel or advise him. There was, however, 
 none of " obsequium amicos, Veritas odium, parit" 
 that Terence speaks of, about him, for he always 
 received it in good part, being neither flattered nor 
 offended ; but he would not take advice even when 
 given to him by his sincerest friends, and with the 
 purest and most disinterested motives. He always 
 considered it an impeachment of his understanding, 
 generally exclaiming to those who offered it — 
 " What the d — 1 is the use of my having a head 
 on my own shoulders, if I am obliged to make use 
 of yours ? " But, unfortunately, at times his ears 
 were deaf to the voice of reason, as the following 
 anecdote will show : — Previously to the disposal 
 of the first property that he sold, I happened to 
 be at Halston, and was about to accompany him 
 to Lichfield races, where each had horses to run. 
 Just before we set out, his agent, the late Mr. 
 Longueville, of Oswestry, arrived at the house 
 and wished to speak to me. As nearly as I can 
 recollect, the following were his exact words : — 
 " I have reason to believe you can say as much 
 to Mr. Mytton as any man can ; will you have the 
 goodness to tell him you heard me say, that if he 
 will be content to live on ^6,000 per annum, for 
 the next six years, he need not sell the fine old
 
 38 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Shrewsbury estate, that has been so many years 
 in his family, and at the end of that period he shall 
 not owe a guinea to any man." I fancy I see the 
 form and features of my old friend, with the 
 manner in which he received and replied to the 
 flattering proposition, and many others who knew 
 him as well as I did, will also have the picture 
 in their mind's eye. Lolling back in his carriage, 
 which was going at its usual pace, and picking 
 a hole in his chin, as he was always wont to do 
 when any thing particularly occupied his thoughts, 
 he uttered not a syllable for the space of some 
 minutes ; when, suddenly changing his position, 
 as if rousing from a deep reverie, he exclaimed, 
 with vehemence — " You may tell Longueville to 
 keep his advice to himself, for I would not give 
 a d — n to live on six thousand a year" Knowing 
 his regard and esteem for that worthy gentleman, 
 it was in vain to urge the subject any further, 
 for there was that in his manner which convinced 
 me he was not to be persuaded on this point by 
 any man, — no, not though one rose from the dead. 
 Hence is his ruin dated. 
 
 From the serious to the jocular is but a step ; and 
 the mention of this circumstance leads to a joke. A 
 near relation was endeavouring to dissuade him from 
 parting with a certain estate, on the score of its having
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 39 
 
 been so long in the family. " How long ? " 
 inquired Mytton. " Above five hundred years," 
 was the reply. " The devil it has ! " resumed this 
 most extraordinary man ; " then it is high time it 
 should go out of it." 
 
 With a perfect contempt for the splendour of 
 cold-hearted opulence, Mr. Mytton lived very much 
 like a gentleman at Halston, where every thing 
 was in keeping with his fortune and station in life. 
 There was no unnecessary display — two men servants 
 out of livery, and two in livery, being the full 
 complement at the dinner table, nor did he indulge 
 in the luxury of a man cook. Although himself a 
 perfect stranger to the science of economy, his 
 establishment was managed with considerable 
 regularity ; and notwithstanding the consumption of 
 good things in the servants' hall, for the number of 
 stable servants was great, it was not Halston that 
 ruined him. It was that " largeness of heart, even as 
 the sand that is on the sea shore," which Solomon 
 possessed, but unaccompanied by his means as well 
 as by his wisdom, which ruined Mr. Mytton ; 
 added to a lofty pride which disdained the littleness 
 of prudence, and a sort of destroying spirit that ap- 
 peared to run amuck at fortune. By a rough com- 
 putation, and a knowledge of the property he sold, I 
 should set down the sum total expended, at very little
 
 4 o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 less than half a million sterling within the last 
 fifteen years ! ! 
 
 But how would this expenditure be accounted 
 for if something like a schedule of his disbursements 
 were to be called for ? The task would be an 
 Herculean one, but Horace would furnish a 
 commentary upon it. Some persons hunt, says 
 he ; some race, some drink, some do one thing 
 and some another ; but Mytton, in sporting 
 language, was " at all in the ring." His fox- 
 hounds were kept by himself without any 
 subscription, and upon a very extensive scale, with 
 the additional expenses attending hunting two 
 countries. His racing establishment was on a still 
 larger scale, having often had from fifteen to 
 twenty horses in training at the same time, and 
 seldom less than eight. His average number, 
 indeed, of thorough-bred stock at home and from 
 home, including brood mares and young things, 
 was about thirty-six ! His game-preserves were 
 likewise a most severe tax upon his income. Will 
 it be credited that he paid one bill of ^1,500 to a 
 London game dealer, for pheasants and foxes alone ! 
 The formation of three miles of plantation which 
 this game went, in part, to stock, must have cost 
 him an immense sum ; having had, for several years, 
 as many as fifty able-bodied labourers in his employ.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 41 
 
 There is this line somewhere, though I cannot 
 recollect where : 
 
 " Dress drains our cellars dry ; " 
 
 but such was not the case at Halston, and I believe 
 the satire applies to the ladies. It was hard to say, 
 however, which was the better stocked of the two 
 — Mr. Mytton's wardrobe or the Halston cellars. 
 I once counted a hundred and fifty-two pairs of 
 breeches and trousers, with a proportionate accom- 
 paniment of coats, waistcoats, &c, in the former ; 
 and I think. I, on another occasion, described the 
 " hogsheads of ale, standing like soldiers in close 
 column, and wine enough in wood and bottle 
 for a Roman Emperor," in the latter. The 
 clothes he would put on his person, just as they 
 came to his hand, or as his wild fancy prompted 
 him, and I have seen him nearly destroy a 
 new coat at once wearing. His shoes and 
 boots, all London make, and very light, were 
 also destroyed in an equally summary manner, in 
 his long walks over the country, through or over 
 every thing that came in his way. It is impossible 
 even to guess at his annual expense in post-horses ; 
 but every post-boy in England lamented the fall of 
 " Squire Mytton," their very best customer. I 
 have reason to believe that the money he has at 
 various times lost (not at play, for there I
 
 42 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 should say he was borne harmless l ) would have 
 purchased a pretty estate. I am afraid to say what 
 was supposed to have been the amount of bank 
 notes that were one night blown out of his carriage 
 on his road from Doncaster races, but I have 
 reason to believe it was several thousand pounds ! 
 His account of the affair was this : — He had been 
 counting a large quantity of bank notes on the 
 seat of his carriage — in which he was alone — with 
 all the windows down ; and falling asleep, did not 
 awake until the night was far spent — his servant 
 paying the charges on the road. An equinoctial 
 gale having sprung up, carried great part of the 
 notes away on its wings, verifying the proverb of 
 "light come light go." It was always his custom 
 to have a large sum of money in his travelling 
 writing desk, but it was more than usually large 
 at this time, in consequence of his having 
 broken the banks of two well known London 
 Hells on the eve of his departure from London 
 for Doncaster. Like Democritus, however, 
 Mytton laughed at every thing, and always 
 spoke of this as a very good joke. I have seen 
 him, when he has been going a journey, take a lot 
 of bank notes out of his desk, and rolling them into 
 
 1 He was a very dangerous man with a dice-box in his 
 hand. Wine gave him courage, which generally tells at 
 hazard.
 
 
 $
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 43 
 
 a lump, throw them at his servant's head, as if they 
 had been waste paper ; but his chaplain used to say, 
 he always knew what the lump contained, and how 
 far it would carry him — a fact by no means so 
 clear to me. I picked up one of these lumps some 
 years since in the plantations at Halston containing 
 ^37, which had been there some days by its 
 appearance ; and as he never had pockets in his 
 breeches, such occurrences must have been frequent. 
 
 Perhaps there was one cause of expense incurred 
 by John Mytton that is not to be traced to any 
 other man ; but, as Charles the Fifth profanely 
 boasted that " there was only one God and one 
 Charles," surely there never was but one John 
 Mytton. This said John Mytton would 
 never open letters secured by wafers, unless he 
 were acquainted with the hand-writing. Thus 
 were tradesmen's applications unanswered till 
 their patience became exhausted and law pro- 
 ceedings were in consequence resorted to. But 
 he cared no more for writs than he did 
 for any thing else, as they, of course, were 
 sent to his solicitor, and all he knew of 
 them, in his prosperity, was, that he paid 
 for them. So popular, however, was he with 
 the lower orders, that, in his prosperous 
 days, I do not think a bailiff in the four
 
 44 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 surrounding counties would have arrested him, had 
 he been instructed so to do. 
 
 It is impossible to separate the sort of vis 
 comica that attached itself to the various acts 
 of imprudence of my, otherwise, truly nobly- 
 minded friend ; and perhaps the anecdote of 
 the London game-dealer, and his ^1,500 
 bill, is about as amusing as any. On his arrival 
 at Halston, he presented it himself to his 
 debtor ; but it appeared from his subsequent 
 conduct that he little thought it would have 
 been paid, without something like a scrutiny 
 into its merits. Here, however, was John 
 Mytton, " sui generis" again. " Give me a 
 pen and ink," said he, casting his eye over the 
 amount : and, scratching the words, " Right, 
 John Mytton," with his usual expedition, under 
 it, exclaimed, " there, take it to my agent, and get 
 the money." As may be supposed, the joy of 
 this man was excessive, but its out-break was 
 reserved until he saw the agent at Oswestry draw a 
 cheque at sight for the entire sum. It was then no 
 longer to be restrained, and thus did the dealer 
 in dogs, foxes, pheasants, and monkeys, et hoc genus 
 omne, give vent to the noble feelings of his nature. 
 " Oh, my dear sir," said he, " what can I do for 
 you, in return for all this kindness ? " "I have done
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 45 
 
 you no kindness," said the agent ; " the only favour 
 you can confer upon me is, never to let me see or 
 hear of you again." This however did not satisfy 
 the pheasant-merchant, who was anxious, if not to 
 make a display of his gratitude, at all events to 
 propitiate the good will of the agent, and once 
 more addressed him. "Pray, sir," said he, "are 
 you a married gentleman ? " On being answered 
 in the affirmative, the nature of the donation was 
 determined upon. " Then, sir," added he, 
 " allow me to present your lady with a monkey !" 
 Well might the man of law have exclaimed — 
 
 " Quicquid id est timeo Danaos et dona ferentes ; " 
 
 but when he was made acquainted with the nature 
 of the gift, the would-be giver was very soon 
 despatched, and I never heard whether he again 
 made his appearance, on a similar errand, at Halston. 
 
 The next anecdote that presents itself to my mind 
 arose out of my seeing him get out of his carriage at a 
 cover's side and walk to wards hishunter, tomounthim. 
 " There he goes" said Tom Penn ; " he's a lily ain't 
 he. Give him two hundred thousand a year, and I'll 
 bet ahundred he's in debt in foive (five) years." But 
 it is necessary to say who this Tom Penn is, or rather 
 was, for he is also in his grave, having broken his 
 neck in hunting. He was pad-groom to Sir Watkin
 
 46 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Williams Wynn, Bart., much looked up to, and 
 consequently often consulted, for his correct judg- 
 ment of a hunter, by the help of which, although 
 an excellent servant, he was one of the most 
 impudent fellows that ever wore a livery — or 
 perhaps more properly speaking, what is known in 
 the lower world as "a regular cool hand." 
 
 Now a question arises, not unworthy of 
 discussion. Did the late Mr. Mytton really enjoy 
 life amidst all this profusion of expenditure ; and 
 was he, in the best of his days, in a situation 
 that many poor men would covet? This, 
 I think, admits of a doubt. It is true he had 
 most of the requisites for a man of a noble for- 
 tune that Horace granted to his friend Tibullus ; 
 but one thing was wanting — the " artemque 
 fruendi" — the art of enjoying it, to which he, 
 Mytton, was a stranger. Indeed, to a vitiated 
 palate, always calling for fresh gratifications, the 
 wealth of Crcesus might fail in procuring that one 
 thing wanting ; but there was something about my 
 friend that gave one the idea that, to him it was 
 peculiarly denied. There was that about him 
 which resembled the restlessness of the hyena ; and 
 whether in the pursuit of his pastimes, or the 
 gratification of his passions, there was an unsteadi- 
 ness throughout which evidently showed, that,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 47 
 
 beyond the excitement of the passing moment, 
 nothing afforded him sterling pleasure. All those 
 who watched his actions might perceive, that his 
 object was to have a taste of every thing that was 
 alluring and delicious ; and, like the bee, to rove 
 from flower to flower, merely culling a little of the 
 sweets of each. Look, for example, at the various 
 sources of amusement Halston afforded, and the 
 small share of calm enjoyment they appeared to 
 afford the owner of them. What elegant dinners 
 have I seen him sit down to at his own table, with 
 no more appetite to partake of them, than an alder- 
 man has when singing " Non nobis, Domine" — 
 having an hour or two before been eating fat bacon 
 and drinking strong ale at some tenant's or other 
 farm house on his road home from his field pursuits. 
 Again— if he had a good race-horse in his stables 
 he would run him off his legs, nearly to his destruc- 
 tion ; and he served his favourite hunters in the 
 same manner. All this could have been reconciled 
 with youthful enthusiasm, and Welch blood ; but 
 with Mytton it could be only traced to one cause, 
 which grew with his growth, but did not quit him 
 in his manhood, and finally plunged him into the 
 abyss of misery ! 
 
 But if the proprietor of it himself was not satisfied 
 with the resources which Halston afforded, few of his
 
 48 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 friends were so unreasonable as to have looked for 
 amusement and not found it, for indeed the very 
 proprietor of it alone, with his various appendants 
 and his frolics, was a constant source of mirth. A 
 celebrated historian of the Augustan age, however, 
 now presents himself to my view, and wisely 
 reminds me, that decency is a principal virtue in an 
 historian, and that he should preserve the characters 
 of the persons as well as the dignity of the actions 
 of those of which he treats. Heretofore I trust I 
 have written nothing that can be construed into 
 more than an allowable levity of style, inseparable 
 from the chronicling of the sayings and doings of 
 such a character as is before me ; and as one object 
 is to display it in every variety of colour — and the 
 rainbow itself has not more — I must here introduce 
 a description of an evening at Halston from my 
 own pen, published ten years since in the Sporting 
 Magazine. As it commences with an apology 1 
 shall offer none here. 
 
 " • What Cato did, and Addison approved, 
 cannot be wrong,' said a learned and accom- 
 plished gentleman of the last century, when 
 he put a period to a miserable existence. 
 Now as the great essayist here named intro- 
 duced his friend, Sir Roger's chaplain, to the 
 world, perhaps I may be allowed to introduce
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 49 
 
 Mr. Mytton's. He is a very old acquaintance of 
 mine, and I know he will pardon me for doing so. 
 I cannot exactly say he is to his patron what 
 Maecenas was to Augustus, or what Falstaff was to 
 Henry ; but rather what Crispus was to the Roman 
 Emperors. He (Crispus) lived with four of them ; 
 joked with all of them ; and quarrelled with none 
 of them — though their ears were perhaps more 
 tender than their hearts. The Halston Chaplain, 
 however, is entitled to a place in the Sporting 
 Magazine, having given birth to as much sport as 
 ever was seen in a race, a cock-pit, or a fox-chase. 
 In a style peculiarly his own, he says more good 
 things than any other man I ever met with, and by 
 his good humour, and inoffensive jokes, has often 
 made the old Halston welkin ring. 
 
 " The connection between them commenced 
 thus : — Soon after the Chaplain left the University, 
 he resided in the neighbourhood of Halston, and was 
 fixed upon as a sort of friendly preceptor to the 
 heir apparent to the estate, both before, and after, 
 he left Westminster School ; and here, perhaps, 
 one of the best anecdotes has its source. It appears 
 there was some difficulty in persuading the young 
 Squire to go to College ; and when we con- 
 sider a little, our wonder ceases. October is 
 the best month for pheasant-shooting ; Christmas 
 4
 
 5o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 lasts till Easter at Halston ; and hunting, 
 fishing, and shooting, last all the year round. 
 The Chaplain, however, was employed to 
 use all his eloquence to induce him to 
 go, and the following dialogue passed between 
 them : 
 
 " Chaplain. My good sir, you must go to 
 Oxford : you must, indeed, sir ! 
 
 " Mr. Mytton. I'll see you first. 
 
 " Chaplain. Upon my word, sir, you must 
 go. Every man of fortune ought to go to 
 Christ Church, if only for a term or so. 
 
 " Mr. Mytton. Well, then, if I do go, I will 
 go on the following terms. 
 
 " Chaplain. What are they, sir ? 
 
 " Mr. Mytton. Why — that I never open a 
 book. 
 
 " Chaplain. Not the least occasion — not the 
 smallest I assure you. 
 
 "Mr. Mytton. Very well then, I don'tmind going,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 51 
 
 provided I read nothing but the Racing Calendar, 
 and the Stud Book. 
 
 " Chaplain. Excellent books, sir ; they will do 
 very well indeed. 
 
 " The next amusing anecdote of the Chaplain 
 arose out of the following circumstance : — Going 
 one morning, as usual, to serve the family church 
 at Halston, Mr. Mytton contrived to take his 
 sermon out of his pocket, and substitute in its 
 place the last number of the Sporting Magazine. 
 When the Chaplain had mounted the rostrum, 
 and was preparing to throw off, he found his 
 mistake, and, of course, had nothing to do but 
 to apologise to his hearers for the loss of his 
 sermon, and, * with a well-bred whisper, close 
 the scene.' It is also said of him, that having 
 a tender regard for his patron, and knowing the 
 natural kindness of his disposition, he has always 
 avoided wantonly hurting his feelings ; so that, 
 on some occasions, when it has been his inten- 
 tion to preach a sermon, which, to use his own 
 words, he feared might ' hit him hard,' he has 
 been prepared with another, ' in case the Squire 
 should be in church.' 
 
 " There is another story of the Chaplain, which,
 
 52 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 though it has been before recorded in the Sporting 
 Magazine, yet it was not placed to his credit, 
 but to him alone is it due. About five years 
 back, he applied to his Diocesan to give him 
 a living, and the Bishop promised him the first 
 that was vacant. Having a pretty private fortune 
 of his own, and not aspiring to a mitre, the 
 Chaplain took the liberty of requesting that his 
 Lordship would not send him into the Welch 
 mountains, but give him an English living. The 
 Bishop, knowing him to be a thorough - bred 
 Welchman (and, indeed, no one could take him 
 for a half-bred one), demanded him hia reasons 
 for such a request? 'Why, my Lord,' said the 
 Chaplain, ' my wife does not speak Welch.' — 
 * Your wife, sir ! ' said his Diocesan, ' what has 
 your wife to do with it ? She does not preach, 
 does she ! ' — ' No, my Lord,' said the Chaplain, 
 ' but she lectures ! ' The Bishop, as may be 
 expected, took all this in good part, and the 
 Chaplain was soon afterwards exalted to a living 
 in the wildest part of the Welch mountains. 
 
 " No man was ever more free from guile than the 
 
 Chaplain of Halston, and Rector of . Indeed, 
 
 some of his intimate friends have doubted whether he 
 has enough of this subtle art to enable him to go 
 through the world with eclat. Being once on a visit
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 53 
 
 at an old lady's house, who prided herself on the 
 excellence of her cook, he was requested to carve 
 the bottom dish. On being asked to help the 
 old lady herself, he addressed her thus : — * Pray, 
 madam, how do you like it ? Here is some very 
 much done, — some very little done, — and some not 
 done at all. 1 On another occasion he was dining 
 with an old gentleman in Gloucestershire, who 
 plumed himself on the celebrity of his ale. On 
 hearing that the chaplain was a Welchman, and 
 reckoned a good judge, he ordered a fresh cask to 
 be tapped, and pledged him in a bumper of it after 
 his cheese. No encomium being passed on it, the 
 old gentleman ventured to ask him how he liked 
 his ale ? — ' Why, sir,' said the chaplain, ' tve 
 should call it very good small beer in Wales. 1 
 
 " I have before observed, that the Halston 
 chaplain can neither be compared to Maecenas, 
 nor to FalstafF — being completely ' sui generis. 1 
 Some years since, however, he put me in mind of 
 a scene between the latter and his prince. We had 
 had rather a hard night at Halston, and our host 
 was taking a nap, at full length, on the sofa. 
 After looking at him for some time, his old 
 preceptor broke out into the following soliloquy : 
 1 Only think, sir, what the Squire, with his abilities, 
 might have been, and only see what he is ! *
 
 54 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 " On Sunday last, as is his usual custom after 
 the duties of the morning, the chaplain entered 
 upon those of the evening, and took his place 
 behind the beef. Here, Lord Chesterfield him- 
 self never displayed a better grace ; for amid the 
 blaze and radiance of nine gold and three silver 
 cups — the fruits of some well-contested races — 
 his rosy face outshone them all ; and it may be 
 said of him, without offence to any one, that he 
 is equally orthodox in the bottle as in the wood — 
 being a Christian at all times, and one of the best- 
 natured parsons in the universe." 
 
 Alas ! the chaplain did not long survive his 
 friend and patron ; and it is generally believed, 
 that his accumulated distresses, his fallen state, 
 and his miserable end, accelerated his own death. 
 At all events, I am informed that the words 
 " poor Mytton " were nearly the last he uttered.
 
 PART II 
 
 "\ X7ITH what extraordinary characters of ancient 
 and modern times would John Mytton stand 
 a comparison ? With Nero ? Yes ; for Nero fiddled 
 whilst Rome was burning, and Mytton would have 
 laughed had he seen Halston in flames. But 
 Nero murdered his mother, and Mytton made a 
 noble provision for his. 1 With Timon of Athens ? 
 Yes, as a spendthrift ; but the one hated, and the 
 other was kind to, all mankind. With Napoleon 
 Bonaparte ? Yes, for his historian says of him — 
 " Extreme agitation was the basis of his exist- 
 ence ; motion was his repose ; he lived in a 
 hurricane, and fattened on anxiety and care." 
 But one drank coffee seven times a day, and 
 the other drank as many bottles of port wine ! ! 
 With the poet Byron ? Yes, inasmuch as each 
 was at Harrow school, and each fought eight 
 pitched battles during the time he remained there. 
 With Savage — immortalized by his biographer, 
 Johnson ? Yes, as far as each had a distinct- 
 ive mark of genius and originality, which ranks 
 
 1 He added £500 per annum to her jointure. 
 55
 
 56 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 high amongst the qualities of the human mind, and 
 each was very deficient in the to Trpiirov. But 
 one was chiefly known by his poverty, his mis- 
 fortunes, and his wit ; the other inherited riches, 
 and might have set fortune's malice at defiance. 
 
 The strongest resemblance I can select, is 
 between the characters of the celebrated Earl 
 of Rochester and the subject of this memoir ; 
 although in the points on which they differ, the 
 balance is favourable to the latter. Let us select 
 the most prominent features and see how far they 
 tally, and in what they differ : — 
 
 Rochester's person was well shaped, and no 
 man showed more good breeding, in society. 
 Ditto John Mytton. 
 
 Rochester thought his constitution was so 
 strong, that nothing could hurt it. Ditto John 
 Mytton. 
 
 " Rochester," says Bishop Burnet, " had a 
 violent love of pleasure, and a disposition to 
 extravagant mirth ; the one involved him in great 
 sensuality ; the other led him to many odd adven- 
 tures and frolics, in which he was often in hazard 
 of his life." Ditto John Mytton.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 57 
 
 Rochester was turned loose into the world at a 
 very early age, and so was John Mytton. The 
 one entered the navy, the other the Seventh 
 Hussars. 
 
 Rochester distinguished himself in an engage- 
 ment. Mytton was never in one. 
 
 Rochester once made himself a mountebank. 
 Mytton was always more or less one. 
 
 Rochester was drunk, for five years continually. 
 Mytton beat him by seven. 1 
 
 Rochester " pursued low amours, in mean dis- 
 guises." Mytton, in propria persona, seldom 
 pursued any other. 
 
 Rochester slunk away from his friend in a 
 street-row. Mytton rather would have remained 
 to have been pummelled to death. 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham left it on record that 
 
 1 I am sorry to say one of his oldest friends, and a 
 regular " pot-companion," made an affidavit — to serve 
 a certain purpose — that he (Mytton) had been drunk 
 for twelve successive years ! I think it would have been 
 better that he had had recourse to the " Non mi recordo."
 
 58 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Rochester refused to fight him. Mytton was 
 never put to that test. 
 
 Rochester wrote libels, in which he did not 
 stick to truth. Mytton never said illnatured things, 
 much less published them. 
 
 Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his 
 colloquial wit. Mytton was deaf, and therefore 
 could not shine in conversation. He dealt, chiefly, 
 in practical jokes. 
 
 Rochester is mentioned by Wood as the 
 best scholar of all the nobility. Mytton might 
 have harangued an Athenian mob, if he had 
 gone steadily through Harrow, or Westminster 
 school. 
 
 Burnet says, " Rochester played many wild 
 frolics which it is not for his honour that we 
 should remember." Ditto John Mytton. 
 
 Burnet " touched as tenderly as occasion 
 would bear " Rochester's faults. Mytton's 
 spiritual adviser never touched his at all, if he 
 could avoid it. 
 
 The good Bishop tells us Dr. Balfour "drew
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 59 
 
 Rochester to read such books as were most likely 
 to bring him back to love learning and study." 
 Mytton's tutor recommended the Racing Calendar 
 and the Stud Book ; nevertheless he was well read in 
 the classics, though perhaps not so well as Rochester 
 was. The natural talent of each was excellent ; 
 each was generous and kind-hearted ; and " video 
 meliora proboque ; deteriora sequor" " I see what is 
 better and approve it ; but follow what is worse," 
 would have been a suitable motto for both. But 
 Rochester was profane, which Mytton never was. 
 
 But I must draw this parallel to a close. 
 Rochester was charitable to the poor and kind to 
 his servants, and so was Mytton — perhaps to a still 
 greater degree. 
 
 Rochester made himself mad with drink. — Ditto 
 John Mytton. Was not the best of husbands. — 
 Ditto John Mytton. Trusted to a death-bed re- 
 pentance. — Ditto John Mytton. Promised to 
 amend his life if he recovered from his severe 
 illness. So did old Nick — at least so the story 
 goes ; but John Mytton never promised what he 
 did not think he should perform. The one 
 exhausted his life at the age of thirty-three, and 
 the other of thirty-eight ; and although both en- 
 tered the vineyard at nearly the eleventh hour — for
 
 6o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 sackcloth and ashes suited neither of their tastes — 
 they both died in penitence and prayer. 
 
 Mr. Mytton's amours, like Jupiter's, are too 
 numerous for recital, yet having been for the most 
 part of the lowest description, they were chiefly 
 injurious only to himself, and had nothing to do 
 with the heart. But there was this peculiarity in 
 them : — I am quite sure Mr. Mytton never 
 attempted the wife of a friend — no, nor even his 
 mistress ! Each would have been as safe in his 
 hands as the beautiful captive was in those of 
 Scipio, or the wife and daughters of Darius in the 
 tent of Alexander the Great. Indeed I never 
 heard of his laying siege to the virtue of any woman, 
 but if in the market, he was sure to be the best 
 bidder ; and I fear I must own, that he once or twice 
 took it by storm. Some of his offers for capitula- 
 tion, however, were truly ridiculous, though all in 
 character with the man. For example — he once 
 wrote a note to a certain celebrated singer, whom he 
 had only seen for half an hour, at a musical festival, 
 requesting the honour of an interview the next day, 
 and enclosing a cheque at sight, on the Oswestry 
 bank, for five hundred guineas ! The lady — who 
 all the world know would have been quite satisfied 
 with a ten pound note — having luckily never heard 
 either of John Mytton or the Oswestry bank,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 61 
 
 returned the note with its valuable contents. This 
 reminds me of the following lines in a poem called 
 " The Passions," a fair specimen of heterogeneous 
 bathos : — 
 
 " Human appetites how strong, 
 When love exults on fancy's fairy plains, 
 Or hunger views the mutton at the Jlre ! 
 
 His popularity, independently of family associa- 
 tions, and recollection of ages long since gone by ; 
 the dashing personal character, and extreme and 
 unaffected good humour of the late squire of 
 Halston ; together with his fox-hounds, his race- 
 horses, his game, his wine, his ale, and many other 
 things besides, rendered him extremely popular in 
 Shropshire ; and if he had but been possessed of a 
 fair share of the to 7rpe7rov, so much esteemed by 
 the ancients, and so expressive of that exterior 
 propriety of conduct, in the common intercourse 
 of life, which the world is very unwilling to 
 dispense with, he might have represented the 
 County of Salop in parliament as long as he liked 
 to have done so ; it being the general opinion, 
 that almost all the independent freeholders would 
 have supported him. But this is the class of 
 all others who dislike seeing a gentleman sink 
 in the social scale ? and when I was last in 
 Shropshire, I was sorry to find my old friend's
 
 62 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 popularity was on the wane. His honour and his 
 honesty were still unsullied ; his heart was as kind 
 as it ever had been ; but the nearly constant state 
 of intoxication in which he lived, was, I could 
 perceive, become somewhat insufferable to his oldest 
 friends. Neither was this the worst. His 
 associating himself with a late well-known sporting 
 character, immeasurably inferior to himself in every 
 possible point of view, gave the finishing blow, and 
 who can wonder at it ? for it must have been not 
 only repulsive to good taste but extremely mortify- 
 ing to his friends to see Mr. Mytton of Halston, 
 with his natural talents and accomplishments, to 
 say nothing of his connections, making a bosom 
 friend of a man who had once filled the honourable 
 post of a waterman to a hackney-coach stand ! 
 But there are moral as well as fabulous Actaeons 
 in this world, who are surely devoured by objects 
 of their own choosing, and here we have an 
 instance of it. In what way however can we 
 account for a mind that had tasted the learning 
 and elegance of Athens and Rome finding itself at 
 ease in such an unsuitable association ? Why only 
 by its being reduced to a state of perfect apathy and 
 imbecility by the repetition of vicious and debili- 
 tating indulgences. 
 
 There is but one excuse for a man being almost
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 63 
 
 perpetually intoxicated and prostituting the reason 
 of the man to the appetite of the brute ; and that 
 is — the attempt to divert grief which he has found 
 it impossible to subdue. As a balm for wounds 
 which can never heal, or under the accumulated 
 pressure of pecuniary difficulties, the bottle will be 
 resorted to so long as the world shall stand, and 
 who can condemn the wretch that tries the 
 experiment ? But the subject of this memoir had 
 not such excuses to plead for his excess in drinking, 
 neither will I endeavour to find them for him. 
 It was, however, to him the Circean cup — the 
 bane of his respectability, his health, his happiness, 
 and every thing that was dear to him as a man and 
 a gentleman ; and can this be marvelled at ? It 
 is written of Hercules, that he acquired his immense 
 strength by feeding on the marrow of lions, and 
 how powerful must have been the stimulus of the 
 almost unheard-of quantity of from four to six bottles 
 of port wine daily, on that volcanic excitability of 
 mind, which was, not only by nature, Mr. Mytton's, 
 but which had been acted upon, and increased, by 
 a severe affection of the brain, at an early period of 
 life ! Thus, then, although I offer no excuse for his 
 drinking, his drinking — for men are tried by wine, 
 says the proverb, as metals are by lire — furnishes 
 excuses, I should rather have said apologies, for his 
 conduct, inasmuch as his reason was, to a certain
 
 64 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 extent, lost in delirium, caused by the fumes of 
 wine, on an already somewhat distempered brain. 
 Many of his acts were not the acts of John Mytton 
 but of a man mad, half by nature, and half by iv'ine, 
 and I think his best and dearest friends are 
 decidedly of my opinion. 
 
 From this account of its Host, it may be 
 supposed that Halston was a scene of general 
 dissipation and riot. By no means. In short, I 
 cannot bring to my recollection a single instance of 
 being one of what may be termed a drunken party, 
 during my frequent visits to the house. But this is 
 accounted for in more ways than one. The host 
 had always the start of his friends, in the first 
 place ; and in the next, long sittings were not 
 in accordance with his restless disposition. In 
 the summer he would jump out of the window, 
 and be off. In the winter, he was anxious to 
 get to the billiard table, which was always lighted 
 up after coffee, for the amusement of himself and his 
 friends, and here he was in his element. How then, 
 it may be asked, did he consume that quantity of port 
 wine ? Why this question is easily answered. He 
 shaved with a bottle of it on his toilet ; he worked 
 steadily at it throughout the day, by a glass or two at 
 a time, and at least a bottle with his luncheon ; and 
 the after dinner and after supper work — not losing
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 65 
 
 sight of it in the billiard room — completed the 
 Herculean task. No wonder, then, that Alexander 
 the Great has been called "a fool to him," in 
 his Bacchanalian feats, at all events he would have 
 been a good playfellow for him at Persepolis ; or that 
 — as Cicero said of Piso — " his breath smelt like 
 a vintner's vault." He is, however, a memorable 
 example of the comparatively harmless effects of 
 very good wine, which he always had, and 
 just of a proper age — about eight years old — 
 for, assisted by exercise, such as he took, it 
 was many years before it injured him. But alas — 
 wine at length lost its charms. Brandy — which he 
 was a stranger to when I was last at Halston — was 
 substituted, and the constitution of John Mytton, 
 perhaps the hardest ever bestowed upon man, was not 
 proof against that. 1 
 
 But away, for a moment, with all recollection of his 
 ill-doings, and let us move onwards towards his good 
 ones — for it is a loss to mankind when good actions 
 are forgotten. Be assured, reader — whoever you may 
 
 1 It would be absurd to offer apology for these remarks, 
 after the inquest on the body of my departed friend, 
 which went the round of the Newspapers. Besides my 
 object being to rescue his memory from imputations that 
 lie against it, and, in some cases not unjustly, it is in mercy 
 — a dreadful alternative I admit — that I exhibit him to 
 the world as both a drunkard and a madman. 
 5
 
 66 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 be — that if all the kind, good, and charitable acts 
 which poor drunken, mad, John Mytton performed, 
 were placed in counterpoise to his bad ones, it 
 would be more than man dared do to say which 
 side might kick the beam. At all events, like 
 charity, they would weigh heavily to his credit ; 
 and it is consoling to his friends to reflect, that 
 although great part of that fine property he once 
 possessed has passed away to others, and the too 
 liberal possessor of it is in his grave, those deeds still 
 remain nvith him. Man, it is true, is naturally a 
 beneficent creature ; but be the benefit he confers 
 never so great, the manner of conferring it is the 
 noblest part, and in allusion to my friend, let me 
 illustrate this by one simple fact : — 
 
 When Mr. Mytton was at Calais, only a few 
 months before his death, he chanced to be in a 
 silversmith's shop, when a French soldier entered 
 it, with a watch in his hand, which he said he 
 wished to dispose of for the benefit of a sick 
 comrade, who wanted some further comforts than 
 a barrack afforded. On the silversmith objecting 
 to the price demanded, Mr. Mytton threw down the 
 money, and took up the watch. " Merciez, 1 Mon- 
 sieur," said the soldier, and something else besides, ex- 
 pressive of his grateful feelings. " Take this to your 
 
 1 Short for — -je -vous remerciez.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 67 
 
 comrade also," said Mytton, placing the watch in 
 his hand. " Ah Monsieur Anglais ! " exclaimed 
 the man — " Que vous dirai-je ? " 1 
 
 Mytton replied, " Rien." 2 Remember, reader ! 
 this was not in his golden days, when money was 
 as dross ; it was one of the last acts of a noble 
 soul, performed out of almost the last of the wreck 
 of a splendid income. 
 
 The sentimental Sterne would have made a 
 pathetic story out of this little incident, whereas 
 I shall leave it to speak for itself; but Mytton 
 felt what Sterne only made others feel, neither 
 does the difference between them rest here. 
 The one is said to have whined over a dead 
 ass, and starved a living mother. The other 
 would have laughed at the dead donkey — 
 perhaps have ridden him to death — but he 
 settled a handsome annuity on his mother ! 
 Such instances, however, are of very ancient 
 date ; Aristides practised what Cato only 
 preached. 
 
 Another instance of his excessive philanthropy 
 and over-generous all-forgiving temper occurs to me 
 at this moment, which I may here introduce, though 
 1 What shall I say to you ? 2 Nothing.
 
 68 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 perhaps not without somewhat retrograding in my 
 arrangement. 
 
 As I was passing through Shrewsbury, some 
 years back, on my road to Halston, I saw a servant 
 of his in the town, and asked him if he had accom- 
 panied his master. " I have left Mr. Mytton's 
 service, sir," said the man. " How so ? " observed 
 I, with surprise, knowing him to have been a 
 favourite servant. His answer was, that in an evil 
 hour he had been induced to alter a figure in a bill 
 of Mr. Lucas, the Veterinary-surgeon, at Atherstone, 
 who had attended one of his master's horses, 
 and it having been discovered by the agent, he 
 had been discharged. The morning after I arrived 
 at Halston, I was told there was a person wanted 
 to speak with me in the stable-yard, and there 
 stood John, with a very sorrowful countenance. 
 His object was to induce me to intercede for him 
 with his master, and just as I was in the act of 
 discussing the point, Mr. Mytton made his appear- 
 ance. John protested it was the only instance of 
 his dishonesty (and indeed the man bore an 
 excellent character, having lived nine years previ- 
 ously with a clergyman in Shropshire) ; and that 
 he should not have thought of committing it but for 
 a certain ostler on the road, who persuaded him to 
 it ; and was about to proceed in the same suppli-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 69 
 
 eating manner, when Mytton seized him by the 
 collar, and giving him one of his horse-like kicks, 
 told him to go into the servants' hall, and put on 
 his livery again ! John cared nothing for the 
 kick ; but on a very strong remonstrance from the 
 agent — who indeed went so far as to say, he 
 should throw up his agency if such conduct were 
 passed over — John was once more drafted from 
 Halston servants' hall. 
 
 I conceive no one knew the limits of Mr. 
 Mytton's natural talents. No doubt they were 
 excellent ; and if instead of having been prostrated 
 to the excess of wine, and its concomitant dissipa- 
 tion, they had been cultivated and improved to the 
 utmost, they might have enabled him to have cut 
 a figure in the senate or as a scholar. He read 
 with unusual rapidity, and evidently retained what 
 he did read ; for his literary acquisitions were 
 surprising, considering the life of tumult he had led. 
 He had always a quotation at hand from a Greek 
 or Latin author, and there was a conscious feeling 
 of ability about him, which he was somewhat 
 wont to display. But, what says the poet ? 
 " Without a genius learning soars in vain, 
 
 And without learning, genius sinks again ; 
 
 Their force united crowns the sprightly reign ; " 
 
 and here was this union wanting. He also wrote his
 
 70 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 letters — to use a sporting figure — at the rate of 
 twenty miles in the hour — generally at his dinner 
 table, sending them out by his butler to be sealed, 
 and very often to be directed, for he never had 
 a secret in his life ; and the letters he received 
 remained for general inspection. I regret not 
 having one of them to transcribe, but his off-hand 
 addresses to his constituents, during his first contest 
 for Shrewsbury in 1819, were particularly neat and 
 appropriate, and were sent to the press before the 
 ink with which they were written was dry. How 
 much then is it to be lamented, that a man who had 
 such resources for spending his life in the pleasantest, 
 as well as the most honourable occupations, 'should 
 have thus abused his mental powers, and subjected 
 himself to misery of any kind beyond that which 
 is common to all ; and that repose and retirement, 
 the secret wish of mankind, should by him have 
 been considered valueless, if not irksome. 
 
 By the way, it is in my power to produce some 
 specimens of Mr. Mytton's off-hand style of writ- 
 ing, in two of his addresses to the Freeholders of 
 Salop, on his last unsuccessful attempt to become 
 one of their representatives, in 1 83 1 ; but they fall 
 far short of the others both in matter and style. 
 In fact they bear evidence of a mind in decay, and 
 sinking with the general wreck.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 71 
 
 ADDRESS (No. 1). 
 
 Mr. Mytton's first address to the Freeholders of 
 Shropshire. — 183 1. 
 
 "To the Freeholders of the County of Salop. 
 
 " Gentlemen, — Domestic affliction of no slight 
 or common nature has latterly limited my inter- 
 course with you. My wishes for the prosperity 
 of my native county have ever in absence held 
 their usual sway. — Having once had the honour 
 of representing your County Town in Parlia- 
 ment ; feeling that various avocations precluded 
 the conscientious performance of my duty to 
 my Constituents, I declined the Representation at 
 the dissolution of that Parliament. I have now 
 no wife — no family — no hounds — no horses — 
 (some will say, no steadiness of purpose) — but 
 feeling that I can devote myself to your service, 
 should you honour me with your support and 
 confidence, I venture to offer myself to your 
 notice as a Candidate for the County, totally 
 unshackled by prejudice or otherwise, and a 
 strenuous advocate for Reform. 
 
 " Relying upon the strength of the cause I shall 
 advocate, I throw myself upon your favour, and shall
 
 72 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 assuredly take the sense of the county. I shall 
 look to the vote of every Independent Freeholder, 
 without making further professions. 
 
 " Your faithful friend and servant, 
 
 "JOHN MYTTON. 
 
 « *^* p ecu li ar private business may prevent my 
 personal attendance, but I look upon it as a 
 favourable omen — knowing that when absent you 
 are best remembered. 
 
 "May 4th, 1831." 
 
 ADDRESS (No. 2). 
 
 " Friends ! Men of Salop, 
 
 " In declining longer to continue the unequal 
 contest in which I am embarked, I trust you will 
 not consider my word forfeited. I have (and I 
 trust with your approbation), come forward to 
 assert the rights of freemen, and to break the bonds 
 of tyranny asunder ! 
 
 " Show yourselves the Proud Salopians !
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 73 
 
 " Gentlemen, — I pledge myself to come forward 
 at the next Election for this great County, which 
 I have already shaken to its foundation by my 
 attempt to assert its independence, which shall 
 be maintained with the vigour of a tiger, and the 
 courage of the lion ! Let your voice, as the Falls 
 of Niagara, rush in force, and with the greatest 
 velocity bear the fragile barks of corruption (which 
 of necessity must be destroyed) to some land, 
 perhaps at present unknown, but let them not be 
 borne to the shores of Britain. 
 
 " I have asked no advice, — much has been 
 offered, and maturely weighed, during this contest ; 
 but, Gentlemen, did I not feel myself capable upon 
 reflection, of duly considering any subject which 
 may fall under my notice, I should feel myself 
 unworthy of looking for your approval. I came 
 forth uncalled for, unprotected by any great 
 interest ; I retire from this contest in confidence of 
 victory in future ; I adopt one line of conduct, and 
 from that I will not swerve. 
 
 " My thanks for the Unbought Votes of nearly 
 Four Hundred Honest Men, are gratefully ten- 
 dered to them ; — the cause of Freedom in our 
 devoted County will assume a brighter complexion. 
 
 " Gentlemen, - You will find me at my Post, the first
 
 74 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 moment that a Reformed Parliament will allow it. 
 My reception among you has, indeed, been proud ; 
 I beg to thank you for that exhibition of sincerely 
 popular feeling in my favour, so strongly and so 
 universally evinced. 
 
 " I tender my best thanks to the Ladies, for the 
 smiles I have witnessed. Let me now intreat of 
 you to allow the proceedings of Monday, to pass 
 without riot or disturbance, as it would only entail 
 disgrace upon the cause I advocate. 
 
 " I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 " Your Servant, 
 
 "JOHN MYTTON. 
 
 "Shrewsbury, May 14th, 1831." 
 
 Nor are the two following squibs by any means 
 amiss. But Mr. Mytton's chance to represent his 
 native county was slight indeed, having only polled 
 311 votes, the "proud Salopians," much to 
 their credit, not by any means approving of the 
 degrading association with which they perceived 
 him to be leagued. There was a time, as I have 
 before expressed myself, when he would have cut a 
 very different figure at the poll.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 75 
 
 Squib (No. I). 
 
 « MYTTON AND BEARDSWORTH. 
 
 "An Electioneering Squib. 
 
 " Arrived last week in this Town, an old broken- 
 down Racer, from the ' Union Repository,' 
 Birmingham, with two Black Legs, fresh fired and 
 blistered. He is attended by an old Groom, 
 grown grey in the Service, who has jockied him, 
 unbridled, through many unlucky courses, and 
 who, having lately considerably lightened his 
 Weight, flatters himself he will Reform his 
 style of running. The old Horse starts for the 
 County Stakes this week ; to be run for on the 
 Quarry Course. The odds are 500 to 1 against 
 him; nevertheless the Brums, (i.e., Brummagems) 
 are in high spirits, he being backed by a few 
 respectable branches of the MoB-ility here. 
 Gentlemen are recommended not to go too near 
 the Horse, he being vicious and apt to kick. It 
 is understood, that should he not win, the Pro- 
 prietor will take the Horse back with him to 
 Birmingham, thinking to work him in a Slow 
 Coach and ' black jobs,' until he is fit for the 
 nacker. 
 
 " Shrewsbury, May 9th, 1831."
 
 76 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Squib (No. 2). 
 
 " A Reform Candidate's Speech." 
 
 " Yes ! gentlemen, upon my soul, 
 
 I thank you much for what you've done ; 
 Though at the bottom of the Poll, 
 I've too much ' Bottom ' yet to run. 
 
 " I told you all, when first I came, 
 
 You'd not find me the man to shirk ; — 
 To play on — now I've lost the game, 
 Does seem like devilish up-HiLL work. 1 
 
 " ' Reform's ' my vessel, mann'd by Brums, 
 Who hoist me for their ' Union Jack ' ; 
 She'll fight till Captain Beardsworth comes 
 To steer her on some other tack. 
 
 " Yes ! he has nail'd me to the mast, 
 Without a rag of canvass going ; 
 And though we are capsiz'd at last, 
 
 The Captain ' rais'd the wind ' that's blow- 
 ing."2 
 
 1 Sir Rowland Hill, Bart., was the successful candidate. 
 
 2 It is said that Beardsworth appeared on the hustings 
 with a bank note, of large amount, pinned on his breast.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 77 
 
 It is a great accomplishment to be able to tell 
 a story well, but here Mr. Mytton did not succeed 
 In the first place, his sense of hearing was deficient, 
 a great disadvantage in society. In the next, 
 it was often difficult to determine whether he 
 were in earnest or in jest, so fond was he of acting 
 a part in the comedy of life. Again — he was 
 very epigrammatic in his discourse, his sentences 
 containing few words, and often leaving his hearers 
 to guess what he really meant. All, however, was 
 in the essence of good humour ; and a more in- 
 offensive companion, in the strict acceptation of that 
 term, no man with his flow of spirits could possibly 
 be. If in the moment of convivial mirth he let 
 slip a word which he feared might wound the feel- 
 ings of any person, he instantly made reparation, 
 nor would he rest satisfied until it was fully 
 acknowledged and atoned for. It is warmth of 
 heart like this that distinguishes the friend from 
 the companion and assimilates friendship to love. 
 As to his politics, although he once was in 
 Parliament, it would be absurd in me to attempt 
 to decide what they were, for, during all the years 
 I was acquainted with him, I never once heard him 
 give an opinion upon the subject. It always struck 
 me as not one of the maddest of his own acts, 
 but certainly of his friends who encouraged him, to 
 spend ten thousand pounds to obtain a seat in Par-
 
 78 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Hament, in which he is said to have only sat half 
 an hour, and to the duties of which he was by 
 nature and habits utterly unfitted. I have reason, 
 however, to believe — for I never interrogated him 
 — he was what is termed a church and king man — 
 in other words, at that period, a tory. But on 
 this subject he was also full of his jokes. For 
 example : — He had a famous race horse called 
 Anti-radical ; " but," said he when speaking of 
 him, " I always call him Radical when he runs 
 at Manchester." 
 
 Without appearing to care about it, or ever boast- 
 ing of his success, Mr. Mytton was the best farmer 
 in his part of the county, occupying between three 
 and four hundred acres of land. Strange to say, at 
 one of the Shropshire Agricultural meetings, he 
 gained every prize for clean crops of grain, save one, 
 a field of barley, his claim for which was rejected 
 from a cause highly typical of the man. // <was 
 found to contain " wild oats ! " As may be supposed, 
 the report of the judge was the subject of much 
 merriment to the company. His planting, as I be- 
 fore observed, was on a still larger scale, his object 
 having been two-fold : — First, to replace the fine 
 old timber, which he must have been aware would 
 one day or other, fall under the axe ; and, secondly, 
 to form cover for the game, which, of course, he was
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 79 
 
 resolved should exceed that of any other man in 
 the country, and no doubt it did. 
 
 As a general sportsman few made themselves 
 more conspicuous than Mr. Mytton did. He was 
 many years a master of fox-hounds, (having kept 
 a pack of harriers from his boyhood,) but his fox- 
 hounds were not of a very high character. In fact 
 to produce perfection in a kennel requires qualities 
 the very reverse of his — namely, circumspection, 
 perseverance, and patience. The establishment, as 
 might be expected with himself at the head of it, 
 was on a fully competent scale ; consisting of two 
 distinct packs of hounds, and from twenty-five to 
 twenty-eight horses. On Mr. Cresset Pelham 
 relinquishing them, in 18 17, he commenced hunt- 
 ing the Shropshire and Shiffnal (now called 
 Albrighton) countries, five days a week ; and con- 
 tinued to do so, with a fare share of sport, until 
 the close of the season 1821 inclusive — making 
 five seasons in all. His huntsman was John 
 Crags (killed by a fall from his horse), and 
 assisted by Edward Bates, son of Sir Richard 
 Puleston's huntsman of that name, and Richard 
 Jones, both very excellent horsemen and good 
 men in their places. Mr. Mytton subsequently 
 purchased another pack of fox-hounds, from 
 Mr. Newman, of Hornchurch, Essex, which he
 
 80 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 hunted himself, about Halston, for several successive 
 'years, making up, by foxes purchased in London, 
 for the confined country to which he was restricted. 
 
 As a horseman I need say little of Mr. Mytton, 
 his merits having been proclaimed in every country 
 in which he had hunted. In fact, taking him at 
 every thing, he had not many equals and very 
 few superiors in the saddle, for he could ride over 
 a course as well as over a country. His pro- 
 digious strength was of great service to his horses, 
 in proof of which they very seldom tired with 
 him ; and, making allowance for the seemingly 
 impracticable fences he would ride at, he got but 
 few falls. Considering his hard usage of them 
 also, he was fortunate in his stud, several of his 
 horses lasting many seasons ; and his famous little 
 one-eyed horse, Baronet, carried him nine seasons 
 with hounds, after he had used him as a charger 
 in the Hussars ! Having, however, mentioned 
 this gallant animal in connection with his hard 
 riding master in my " Crack Riders of England," 
 I will here quote what I there said of both. In 
 speaking of the master, I say, " There x is no man 
 better entitled to a place amongst hard, aye, desperate 
 riders to hounds than Mr. Mytton is, and a welter 
 weight too. But how is it that he can come under 
 1 Vol. VII. page 89, New Sporting Magazine.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 8x 
 
 the latter denomination, who, ten or twelve years 
 back, was riding amongst the gentleman jockies 
 under twelve stone ? The question is best answered 
 by the fact of his having been, by the aid of excess 
 in good living, upwards of fifteen, with his saddle, 
 for some years past ; and I think Sir Bellingham 
 Graham will confirm the truth of my assertion, 
 that he was nothing short of that weight, on his 
 capital Hit-or-Miss mare, when he so distinguished 
 himself in that famous run with his, Sir B.'s 
 hounds, of an hour and forty minutes, from Babins- 
 wood, in Shropshire. But it has not been in this 
 run, nor in that run, in one country or in another 
 country, that Mytton has made himself signal ; 
 and yet I might hazard an imputation on my 
 veracity were I to recount all the extraordinary 
 deeds of this most extraordinary man, in various 
 situations with hounds. Indeed, adding the hazards 
 for his neck that he has encountered in the field to 
 those to which he has subjected himself elsewhere, 
 the most extraordinary thing after all is, that he is 
 at this moment in existence. However, confining 
 my remarks to his riding, I am bound to pronounce 
 him one of the most daring horsemen that ever 
 came under my eye ; and I must likewise add, 
 that, all things considered, he has had fewer falls, 
 and tired fewer horses in chase, than his larking and 
 desperate system of crossing countries would warrant 
 6
 
 82 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 the expectation of. But this has been attribut- 
 able to the immense muscular powers of the man ; 
 to a sort of iron grasp by which he holds his 
 horses in his hand at all times, and upon all 
 occasions, which, let your slack-rein gentlemen 
 say what they may, is no small support to a horse 
 going his (Mytton's) pace over a country, and 
 particularly over the uneven surface, the deep 
 ditches, and blind grips of his own county, Shrop- 
 shire. Indeed, when I last met him, I asked him 
 whether it had ever been his fate so to tire a 
 hunter as not to be able to ride him home, when he 
 declared he never recollected having done so. As 
 to the height and width of fences which have 
 been ridden over by him, I repeat I am afraid 
 to recapitulate them ; but I have very respect- 
 able attestation to my having once measured a 
 brook x that he rode his famous one-eyed horse, 
 Baronet, over, in cold blood, in my presence, and 
 found it to exceed, by some inches, nine yards from 
 hind-foot to hind-foot ! But far from pleasing 
 reflections are the result of looking back upon these 
 brilliant feats of horsemanship, rarely excelled by 
 any one. On the contrary, we cannot help lament- 
 ing that a person so gifted to shine in the field, 
 as Mr. Mytton proved himself to be, should not 
 have taken more care to preserve, unimpaired, the 
 1 The Perry, which uns through the Halston estate.
 
 4 
 
 V 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 I
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 83 
 
 almost unequalled natural powers which he pos- 
 sessed, — so essential to the figure he made." 
 
 Nothing need be better than the shooting at 
 Halston was — every species of game having 
 abounded, as the following facts will prove. The 
 average annual slaughter was — twelve hundred brace 
 of pheasants ; from fifteen hundred to two thousand 
 hares ; partridges out of number ! There was also 
 a good deal of wild fowl, and very excellent fishing. 
 Mr. Mytton always made a point of killing fifty 
 brace of partridges the first day of the season with 
 his own gun ; and I was once at Halston when he 
 killed that number further on in the year. A neigh- 
 bouring gentleman had betted him fifty guineas against 
 the performance ; but paid forfeit over night. This, 
 however, did not satisfy the Squire. His fame as a 
 shot was called in question, so he went forth with his 
 keepers and performed the task in about six hours ! 
 
 Barring Scotland, few gentlemen had better 
 moors than Mr. Mytton had ; and when I say that 
 the annual income of his Merionethshire estate, 
 on which they were, was ^*8oo, and that it con- 
 sisted of little less than sheep walk, its great 
 extent may be imagined, and consequently the 
 extent of the moors. Thirty brace of grouse, 
 was the average daily amount bagged during
 
 S 4 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 his annual visit to Mowddy, — or Mouthy, as it is 
 pronounced, — where he had comfortable accom- 
 modations for himself and three or four friends. 
 The right of Free Warren likewise gave him liberty 
 over his neighbours' property, to a certain extent, 
 and Mowddy itself is one of the few manors to 
 be found in North Wales. The fishing here is 
 likewise of the first description, and the mountain 
 scenery not to be surpassed in the Principality. 
 But, alas ! although the mountains will stand fast till 
 time shall be no more, this ancient patrimony has 
 passed into other hands. It is to be hoped, 
 however, that one day or another it may be 
 redeemed. 
 
 But to return for a moment to Halston, and the 
 feats of the trigger of the late owner of it and his 
 friends. Amongst them, the two following may 
 not very easily be exceeded. His brother-in-law, 
 Mr. Walter Giffard, of Chillington, Staffordshire, 
 now master of the Albrighton fox-hounds, and 
 himself, took the field at eleven o'clock in the 
 forenoon of a short and dirty winter's day, and 
 between that hour and the dinner hour they bagged 
 six hundred head of game from their own guns ! 
 On another occasion, an intimate friend of his 
 and mine, together with himself, killed a head of 
 game every three minutes for five successive hours ! I
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 85 
 
 state this "in verbo sacerdotis" so that the fact 
 may be relied upon, but I withhold the reverend 
 slaughterer's name. 
 
 It always appeared to me, however, that racing 
 was more Mr. Mytton's passion than either shoot- 
 ing or hunting — and could he have been divested of 
 that destroying spirit which accompanied him, he 
 might have cut a very conspicuous figure on what 
 may be called the country turf. He had the 
 courage to purchase good horses, — for example, he 
 gave three thousand guineas for Longwaist, — and 
 his never failing memory enabled him to measure 
 their ability by that of others in a manner 
 that turned to his account. Previously, indeed, 
 to the loss of his trainer and rider, William 
 Dunn, who was killed by a fall in riding one of his 
 horses at Chester, he had his full share of success ; 
 but it appeared to forsake him gradually after 
 that period. The fact was, Dunn was not only 
 an excellent trainer and rider, but he had some 
 power over his master to restrain his running 
 his horses to a stand-still, which he would do if 
 left to his own discretion, and more for the 
 sake of showing sport than from desire to 
 win money. The sideboard at Halston exhibited 
 thirteen gold cups, besides two silver ones, several 
 of which were the trophies of one horse — the
 
 86 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 celebrated Euphrates, who, like one of the old 
 sort, now become very scarce, continued running 
 and winning to his thirteenth year ! The expenses 
 of his stud, however, must have been enormous, not 
 only by consequence of its number, but his subscrip- 
 tions to stakes amounted to an immense annual sum. 
 He seldom refused to subscribe to any that were 
 put before him, and the name of "John Mytton " 
 often appeared as many as six times to the same. 
 Of the science of breeding race horses he knew 
 little or nothing ; and the richness of the land at 
 Halston proved a fatal obstacle to success. 
 
 His good nature and kind heartedness accom- 
 panied him everywhere, and particularly to the 
 race-courses. He often started his horses without 
 a prospect of their winning, for the purpose of 
 affording sport — overruling the objections of his 
 trainer, by saying — " 'Tis a pity the country 
 people should come so far from home and not 
 have some fun." * In fact, that class of persons 
 always built on diversion when " Squire Mytton's " 
 horses were on the turf, and consequently, with 
 them, the popularity of their owner had no bounds. 
 
 1 Some years since, at Chester, he actually went to his 
 stable and fetched a horse down to the course himself, 
 which his trainer had not prepared to run, and, mount- 
 ing his jockey at the post, won the prize contended for.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 87 
 
 " Which is he\" they would cry out to one of 
 their friends that knew him. " That's he — that's 
 Mytton" the friend would reply. "Dang it" — 
 you would hear a Staffordshire potter or a Walsall 
 nailer exclaim — " ha looks loike agood'un ; they tells 
 me he can fo'ight nation well." 
 
 Before he became too heavy, my friend occa- 
 sionally rode among the gentlemen jockies l of the 
 day ; and here " John Mytton " appeared again, for 
 strange to say, he did not like to see an intimate 
 friend win, although he himself could not win. 
 I had a rare specimen of this unaccountable frolic 
 in my own person once, when riding in the same 
 race with him at Lichfield. He knew he himself 
 had no chance to win, but was determined I should 
 not ; and, by making several runs at my horse, caused 
 him to break away with me in the race, and the 
 little chance I had was lost by it. I say " the little 
 chance," because, although I defeated seven of eight 
 horses that started against me, by at least twenty 
 lengths, the ninth came up and won cleverly at the 
 last. This proved to be the famous Habberley, 
 who was instantly purchased by Mr. Mytton, for 
 two hundred guineas, but who had never started 
 or been heard of before that day. He was 
 
 1 Mr. Mytton's colours were green and white with a 
 black cap.
 
 88 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 called and entered as a cocktail, but, as his subse- 
 quent running proved, Eclipse was not more 
 thorough-bred than he was ; and no doubt the 
 original owners of him knew it. 
 
 Let us here take a cursory review of his start 
 and progress on the turf. It appears that he 
 entered upon its fascinations at the earliest pos- 
 sible opportunity — viz., on attaining his majority, in 
 1817. In the book calendar of that year there 
 are three horses attached to the name of "John 
 Mytton, Esq.," the names of two of which, 
 "Hazard" and "Neck or Nothing," are highly 
 characteristic of the man, and especially so, at the 
 commencement of his perilous career on this slippery 
 ground. 
 
 He made his debut at Oswestry on the 23rd of 
 September, of the said year, on which day both 
 the above named horses ran (Neck or Nothing 
 breaking down) ; also a third, called Langolee, an 
 Irish horse, purchased by him when in France, and 
 which lasted him many years as a whipper-in's 
 horse, and also was used in the stud, to get hunters. 
 
 In the following year, 18 18, his name appears in 
 the Calendar as owner of the following horses, 
 Langolee, Leopold, Pranks, and Jupiter.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 89 
 
 Langolee walked over for a hunter stakes 
 and beat Mr. Jones's Kill Devil in a match at 
 Shrewsbury, in September, which was his blooding 
 of success on the turf. This year his horses 
 ran at Oswestry (where "Captain Mytton " 
 gave ^50 to be run for by members of the 
 Oswestry Yeomanry Cavalry), at Wrexham, 
 Holywell Hunt, and Tarporley Hunt, over the 
 new course on Delamere Forest. 
 
 In 1 8 19 he had Jupiter, Sybil, Tamborine by 
 Cervantes, Dot-and-go-one, Tattoo, Anti- Radical, 
 Fox-Huntress by Sultan, and Single-peeper, in his 
 racing stable ; during which year, however, he 
 experienced the want of success peculiar to most 
 young turfites. 
 
 In 1820 his string of horses was consider- 
 ably lengthened. In addition to Anti-Radical 
 and Leopold, he had gr. f. by Fitzjames, 
 Mandeville, Theodore Majocchi (late Handel), 
 Halston by Langton, Claudius, Chance, The Pol- 
 acca, George the Third, Brunette, Paul Potter, 
 and Victorine. 
 
 Anti-Radical won him some good stakes at 
 Chester, Warwick, Lichfield, Oswestry, Tarpor- 
 ley, and the gold cup at Manchester.
 
 9 o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Mandeville won the gold cup at Nantwich and 
 Nottingham, also 100 gs. at Manchester. 
 
 Halston won four stakes, value ^200. 
 
 1 82 1. Victorine, b. c. by Aladdin, Paul 
 Potter, The Chancellor, Halston, Doctor, Anti- 
 Radical, The Ruler, Vade - mecum, George 
 the Third, Shrewsbury, Hudibras, Queen 
 Caroline, Habberley, Single-peeper, Mandeville, 
 Claudius, Theodore Majocchi were in his racing 
 stable. 
 
 Halston won the gold cup at Nottingham, also 
 stakes at Worcester and Chester, value 135 gs. 
 
 Anti- Radical again carried off the gold cup 
 at Manchester, also the Palatine stakes and 
 the gold cup at Burton, and Habberley, then 
 called Acastus, said to be by Shuttlecock 
 dam by Gayman, gleaned some good things 
 at the Anson Hunt, Manchester, Hereford, and 
 Shrewsbury. 
 
 Mandeville also won four times, the stakes 
 amounting to about 200 gs. 
 
 Claudius won the gold cup at Cheltenham.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 91 
 
 1822. He had Claudius, Mallet, Habberley, 
 Nettle, The Ruler, Enterprise, Queen Caroline, 
 Halston, Mandeville, Theodore Majocchi, Anti- 
 Radical, Circe, Vade-mecum, Banker, two br. c.'s 
 by Filho da Puta, Jovial, ch. m. by Milo, ch. g. 
 by Young Alexander, Paradigm. 
 
 Habberley won the Billesden Coplow stakes at 
 Croxton-park, the Half-bred stakes at Chester and 
 Manchester, 40 gs. at Shrewsbury, and 80 gs. at 
 Oswestry. 
 
 The Ruler, by Rubens, won the Sherwood 
 stakes at Nottingham and ^60 at Manchester. 
 He was induced, by a flattering account given him 
 by the owner, of a trial, to give five hundred 
 guineas for this colt at two years old, worth about 
 as many shillings. 
 
 Halston started ten times and only won ^50 
 at Oswestry. Mandeville won 65 gs. at 
 Nantwich. Anti- Radical 60 gs. at Cheltenham. 
 Banker, by Smolensko, after he became Mr. 
 Mytton's property (having been purchased this 
 year of Mr. Charlton, with whom he had won the 
 cup at Winchester), won the cup at Abingdon 
 and 70 gs. at Shrewsbury. One of the Filho 
 colts won 75 gs. at Lichfield. Jovial, by Go-
 
 92 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 lumpus, won the Cocked Hat stakes at Shrewsbury. 
 The ch. mare, by Milo, the silver cup at Oswestry. 
 The gelding, by Young Alexander, the Cocked 
 Hat stakes at Oswestry. And Paradigm, by 
 Partisan, the Wellington stakes at Basingstoke. 
 
 1823. We find Habberley, Banker, Enterprise, 
 Whittington, Euphrates (purchased of Mr. J. 
 Dilly), Libertine, Ostrich, Clansman, Paradigm, 
 Anti- Radical, br. c. by Bustard, Sir William 
 (purchased of Mr. Beardsworth ) , Cae Avon, The 
 Devil, placed after his name. 
 
 Habberley won the Bosworth stakes at 
 the Anson Hunt at Lichfield. Banker won 
 j£6o at Buxton. Whittington, by Filho, 
 won ^235 at Chester, Shrewsbury, Walsall, 
 and Stafford. Euphrates, then seven years 
 old, by Quiz, won the King's plate at Chester 
 and the gold cup at Worcester. Ostrich, by 
 Bustard (son of Castrel), won 183 gs. in two 
 sums at Knutsford and Warwick ; and the colt 
 by Bustard won £<)0 in two sums at Oswestry and 
 Holywell. 
 
 1824. He had Habberley, Euphrates, Ostrich, 
 Oswestry, Berghill, Comte d'Artois, Whittington, 
 and Ludford.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 93 
 
 Euphrates won the gold cups at Cheltenham and 
 Lichfield, and the Oxfordshire stakes at Oxford. 
 
 Oswestry, by Filho, won _^*ioo at the Pottery, 
 j£*75 at Buxton, and the Mostyn and the Halkin 
 stakes at Holywell. Berghill, by Bustard, won 
 the Ludford stakes and £i$o in three sums 
 at Ludlow, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham. Comte 
 d'Artois, by Bourbon, won £70 and the gold cup 
 at Worcester, the gold cup at Hereford, and the 
 Hawarden-castle stakes at Holywell. Whittington 
 won the gold cup at Oswestry, the gold cup at 
 Wrexham, another at Stafford, and ^345 in 
 different sums ; while Ludford, by Manfred, won 
 ^50 at Holywell. 
 
 1825. Elizabeth, Cara Sposa (late Miss Fylde 
 ner), Ludford, Oswestry, Comte d'Artois, Louisa, 
 b. c. by Amadis, Euphrates, Comrade, b. f. by Blu- 
 cher, b. f. by Cannon Ball, b. f. by Ambo, Flexible. 
 
 Ludford won 100 gs. at Oswestry and 
 Holywell. Oswestry won the gold cup at 
 Shrewsbury and ^*55 at Burton. Comte 
 d'Artois ^*6o at Shrewsbury. Louisa, by Or- 
 ville, ^225 at Chester, 70 gs. at Nottingham, and 
 100 gs. at Derby. Euphrates won the gold cups 
 at Newton, Worcester, Lichfield, Wolverhampton,
 
 94 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 and Oswestry, also ^50 at the latter place. 
 Comrade, by Partisan, won 60 gs. at the Pottery. 
 The Blucher filly ^225 at Holywell and ^50 at 
 Wenlock. The Cannon Ball filly ^50 at 
 Oswestry. Flexible, by Whalebone, £120 at 
 Shrewsbury, ^50 at Oswestry, £2 10 at Holywell ; 
 a pretty good year's work. 
 
 1826. Flexible, Whittington, Fisherman, Eu- 
 phrates, Balloon, Longwaist, Bowsprit, Louisa, 
 Ashbourn, ch. c. by Sam, b. c. by Amadis, 
 Harriette Wilson, Lark, and Comrade. 
 
 Flexible won the Darlington cup at Wolver- 
 hampton and £70 at Cheltenham. Whittington 
 £60 at Chester. Euphrates carried off the gold 
 cup at Lichfield, the gold cup and^o at Oswestry, 
 the King's plate and ^70 at Chester. Longwaist, 
 by Whalebone, won the gold cups at Newton, 
 Buxton, Worcester, and Warwick, also ^40 at 
 Chester. Bowsprit, by Rainbow, won £50 at 
 Ludlow. Ashbourn, by Cheshire Cheese, ^*6o 
 at Oswestry. Colt by Amadis, £2^0 at Notting- 
 ham ; and Harriette Wilson, by Manfred, ^40 at 
 Shrewsbury. 
 
 1827. Fisherman, Flexible, Lechmcre, Elles- 
 mere, Halston, Euphrates, Mexican, Lark.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 95 
 
 Ellesmere, by Filho, is the first winner of the 
 above lot, viz. of ^125 at Nottingham. Halston 
 won ^275 at Chester, ^175 at Ludlow, and the 
 Chillington stakes at Wolverhampton. Euphrates 
 won the gold cup and ^50 at Oswestry, and the 
 King's plate at Lichfield. Lark, by Rubens, ^55 
 at Nottingham. 
 
 1828. Spruce, Hedgford, Euphrates, Halston, 
 b. c. by Master Henry, The Crofts, br. f. by 
 Filho. 
 
 Spruce, by Skim, won ^100 at the Anson Hunt. 
 Hedgford, by Filho or Magistrate, the cup and £$0 
 at Chester and^/^o at Nottingham. Euphrates won 
 the cups at Ludlow, Worcester, Oswestry, and 
 Wrexham, also the King's plate at Chester. 
 Halston, the Palatine stakes at Chester, 100 gs. at 
 Newton, 75 gs. at Worcester, 200 gs. at Burton, 
 the Avon stakes at Warwick, 155 gs. at Oswestry, 
 the Taffy and Pengwern stakes at Holywell. 
 
 1829. The numbers were considerably reduced. 
 Brown filly by Filho, The Crofts, Halston, 
 Hedgford and Euphrates, being the whole of the 
 horses he had in training. 
 
 The Crofts, by Whalebone, won ^125 at Oswestry
 
 96 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 and ^50 at Wrexham. Halston, the Tradesmen's 
 cup at Chester, the cup at Knutsford, ^350, 
 the Pengwern stakes, and ^*i 1 5 at Holywell. 
 Hedgford, ^63 at Chester. Euphrates, the gold 
 cups at Ludlow and Wolverhampton and the King's 
 plate at Lichfield. 
 
 1830. This year brings us to a close, Halston 
 and Hedgford being the only race horses he had 
 left. The former winning ^50 at Holywell, and 
 the latter the Cheshire stakes at Chester, ^1 10 at 
 Newcastle, and £$0 at Wrexham. 
 
 I find I must here retrace my steps a little — 
 and this for two reasons. First, I shall follow the 
 good example set by himself in bearing testimony 
 to the worth of a good servant ; and secondly, 
 shall transcribe a letter of his own, which sets 
 forth the writer of it in his true character. It 
 will be recollected I asserted that Mr. Mytton's 
 success on the turf somewhat declined after the 
 death of his trainer and rider, William Dunn. 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that I intend 
 in the least degree to disparage the good conduct 
 or abilities of his subsequent trainers or riders, 
 but to impute it to that " tide," as Shakespeare 
 calls it, in every man's affairs, wherein fortune has a 
 share, which, despite of every thing and every body,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 97 
 
 will now and then set against him. I have good 
 reason to believe that Mr. William Dilly and my 
 old servant, Thomas Horsley, did all that could be 
 done for Mr. Mytton as trainers of his horses ; and 
 the fair ability of his jockey, Whitehouse, is very 
 generally acknowledged. His master's opinion of 
 him, however, is here unhesitatedly given in one 
 of the prettiest letters — if I may use such an epithet 
 — that I ever perused. 
 
 " To the Editor of the Salopian Journal. 
 "Sir, 
 " Having lately heard it asserted, as the general 
 opinion, that the defeat of my celebrated horse, 
 Longwaist, may be attributed to the dishonesty 
 of his rider, I feel called upon, as his owner, to 
 express my most firm and unshaken confidence 
 in his integrity, till now unimpeached, and in truth 
 unimpeachable. 
 
 " Nothing but anxiety to rescue the fame and 
 character of a highly valued servant, and deservedly 
 admired rider, would induce me to trespass on your 
 valuable columns ; but feeling that the character of 
 Whitehouse is as unspotted, and as valuable to 
 himself as that of the highest of our nobles is to 
 him, I cannot resist making my confidence in his 
 worth and integrity thus public : — 
 7
 
 98 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 'Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, 
 nothing ; 
 Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands: 
 But he that filches from me my good name, 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
 But makes me poor indeed.' 
 
 " I am, Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " John Mytton. 1 
 " Halston." 
 
 As a pendant to the above I may here introduce 
 the following tickler that he wrote to the Editor of the 
 Old Sporting Magazine in the spring of 183 1, in 
 answer to some observations that had been made 
 about Mr. Beardsworth and the horse Birmingham. 
 
 "GUY STAKES AT WARWICK. 
 " Sir, 
 " If there is one thing more absolutely requisite than 
 another in a letter which is intended for the public 
 
 1 The following is a copy of his Autograph — strongly 
 indicative of the rapidity with which he used his pen on 
 all common occasions.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 99 
 
 eye, it is accuracy ; or, to speak more plainly, 
 Truth — a qualification that your Correspondent, 
 The Young Forester, has in your Magazine 
 of this month (February) unhappily over- 
 looked. 
 
 " In page 247, he says, ' The Stake at War- 
 wick has been awarded to the owner of Cetus, 
 who was second, in consequence of the present 
 owner of Birmingham having refused to pay 
 some paltry ^25 forfeit for a stake at Win- 
 chester, where the horse was engaged in the 
 name of the person whom Mr. Beardsworth 
 bought him of.' — This is notoriously untrue ; 
 and, by the manner in which the writer speaks of 
 the transaction altogether, it is to be feared it is 
 wilfully so. 
 
 " The next paragraph I apprehend too is 
 incorrect ; but which I will not speak so 
 positively about, because I know but little of 
 racing, and therefore am unwilling to compete 
 with so precocious a youth as this appears 
 to be. 
 
 " He says, ' It has long been one of the best ac- 
 knowledged rules of racing, that no horse is entitled 
 to be a winner until all the arrears due for such animal
 
 ioo LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 have been paid up.' — Is he sure of that ? — 
 Where is the rule to be found ? Has he not 
 made a mistake ? and instead of the words 
 'to be a winner,' should he not have said 
 * to start ' ? — This talented gentleman may not 
 see the difference. — Great wits, they say, 
 have short memories — perhaps they are short- 
 sighted too ! — In my humble judgment, there is 
 a great deal of difference. By making use of the 
 word ' start,' you afford the owner an opportunity 
 of paying the stake in arrears if applied for, instead 
 of letting the onus hang over his head till he has 
 defeated his antagonists. 
 
 "And now I would ask, did Sir Mark Wood 
 ' most honourably ' make any application to the 
 Stewards or Clerk of the Course before Birming- 
 ham started at Warwick for the paltry ^25 
 forfeit at Winchester? The Young Forester 
 answers this question partly, asserting, ' he 
 apprized both trainer and master, previously to 
 the race, of the objection he had to make.' Now 
 if he had done so, I should say they (that is, the 
 trainer and master) were not the proper persons to 
 apprise. The Stewards (or at all events the Clerk 
 of the Course) were the proper persons ; but, un- 
 fortunately for The Young Forester's veracity, here 
 is another untruth : Sir Mark Wood did not ' most
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 101 
 
 honourably' apprize Mr. Beardsworth (the owner), 
 previously to the race, of the objection he had to 
 make. 
 
 " ' Save me from my friends,' he says, ' has been 
 the cry through many ages : ' but, instead of Mr. 
 Beardsworth echoing it, I guess the Jockey Club 
 and Sir Mark Wood are more likely to apply it to 
 this doughty genius, and conjure him, if he is 
 determined to attempt to take their part, that he 
 will assert only that which is true. 
 
 " I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 "John Mytton. 
 
 " Halston, Feb. 19, 1831." 
 
 A summary of Mr. Mytton's actual racing 
 career may be comprised in a few words. He 
 had too many horses in the first place, and too 
 many of them not good enough to pay their way. 
 It is evident he was anxious to have good ones 
 in his stables by the prices he gave ; but he bought 
 several, of that sort, after their day was gone by 
 — for example Count d'Artois, Banker, Long- 
 waist, &c. &c. He had however several good 
 winners — old Euphrates at their head ; and 
 Whittington, Oswestry, and Halston were esteemed
 
 102 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 very " smart " horses in the racing world. 
 Indeed it is believed, that, in some hands, they 
 would have been trump cards. As for himself, 
 as a racing man, he was too severe upon his horses ; 
 they rarely came out fresh, after Chester and one 
 or two other places ; and therefore, this fact 
 admitted, he had, I think as much success as he 
 could have expected. He seldom backed his 
 horses to any serious amount ; generally not at all. 
 
 His stables were, as has been before stated, 
 upon Delamere Forest, in Cheshire, and he had 
 at different times for training grooms — William 
 Dunn (also his rider who was killed) ; Maurice 
 Jones, one of the old sort ; William Dilly, and 
 Thomas Horsley. Jones had always one answer 
 to his master's question — " Shall we win this race, 
 Maurice ? " " Well I can't say, indeed, sir ; but 
 / think <we shall be nigh handy, please God." His 
 home stud - groom, Tinkler, was also one of the 
 old sort — a careful nurser of young racing stock, 
 but too fond of green meat to contend with 
 young horses of the present day. Mr. Mytton 
 never bred a good race-horse. 
 
 This anecdote of Maurice Jones reminds me of an- 
 other. I was once on a visit to the late Mr. Bayzand 
 of sporting notoriety, when he received a letter, en-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 103 
 
 closing a bill of expenses for training, from ** old 
 Sadler " as he was called, father to the present 
 Isaac. It contained the following postscript. — " I 
 have had a terrible summer of it ; won nothing ; but 
 by the blessing of God, hope to do better next year." 
 
 When speaking of Mr. Mytton's conduct 
 towards his two wives, a delicate hand is required ; 
 for the mind naturally revolts from retracing, 
 circumstantially, any thing intimately connected 
 with the sacred compact between man and wife ; 
 but — as the reader will perceive — I should fail 
 in my object, in writing this memoir of my 
 departed friend, if I shrank from the arduous 
 and painful task. I need no justification for the 
 performance of it ; I find it, first, in the fact of 
 the notoriety given through the public journals, 
 to the proceedings in Chancery, on the final separ- 
 ation of the late Mr. Mytton from that amiable 
 lady who is now his widow ; and, secondly, in 
 numerous misrepresentations that have gone forth 
 to the world, which, to the utmost of my ability, 
 I shall endeavour to clear up. I wish, however, 
 for one sip of Lethe now, and that my readers 
 could partake with me of the same cup ; for, as in 
 criminal law, good character bears no weight against 
 positive evidence — at least, as regards the verdict 
 returned — so I much fear the numerous virtues of
 
 104 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 my old friend will not here more than balance the 
 account, unless large credit be given him on one 
 score. The follies of mankind are familiar to 
 our view, and we can always find an excuse for 
 them ; but it is difficult to account for that evil 
 principle which prompts a man to give pain to a 
 woman whom in his heart he loves, and whom he 
 has every earthly reason to love. " Sic visum est 
 diis," 'tis the will of the gods, said the ancients — 
 a poor excuse, if not a little blasphemous ; and I 
 should rather lay it to poor human nature, who 
 sometimes exhibits herself in most mysterious 
 guises, as was the case here, accompanied by 
 errors and failings over which — as we are not 
 permitted to command oblivion — delicacy and 
 humanity would fain draw the veil. 
 
 But this painful part of my subject — if my end is 
 to be attained — will not admit of concealment, 
 and the evil must at once be laid bare to our 
 view. I reluctantly admit, that Mr. Mytton's 
 conduct in the marriage state is in great part 
 indefensible, and can only be palliated by a due 
 allowance, which must not be denied him, for that 
 sort of insane delirium under which he so frequently 
 laboured — no matter from what cause — and to 
 which so many of his otherwise unaccountable acts 
 — not the acts of John Mytton, per se — can alone
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 105 
 
 be placed. Delusion is the true character of 
 insanity ; and when I say that great part of his 
 unjustifiable, and, by the world, I fear, hitherto 
 unpardoned, treatment of two of the most exemplary 
 and virtuous women in existence, was jealousy, 
 nothing more need be said to establish this 
 point. What says the poet ? and beautifully has 
 he said it, 
 
 " It is jealousy's peculiar nature 
 To swell small things to great ; nay out of nought 
 To conjure much ; and then to lose it's reason 
 Amid the hideous phantoms it has formed. 
 
 In the case before us, not only the groundlessness, 
 but the unreasonableness of his suspicions were 
 such as could have emanated from no sound mind, 
 which never dreams of effects unconnected with 
 a cause ; and this is nearly the sole mitigation 
 I have to offer for one of the greatest blemishes 
 human nature can sustain. On this point he was 
 mad ; on others, only eccentric ; but — as has 
 been falsely said of wit — "thin partitions do 
 their bounds divide." The fate of each of these 
 ladies, however, has been a hard one. The one 
 dropped into an early grave ; the other would 
 have been torn from him by her friends, had she 
 not made up her mind to abandon him, lest, like
 
 106 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Semele in Jupiter's, she might have found her 
 death in his embraces. 1 
 
 But, setting aside this monomaniasm, what further 
 extenuation have I to offer ? I answer — as regards 
 his second lady — none, save madness. His first 
 and himself were not well assorted. She had been 
 nursed on the lap of refinement and fashion, to which 
 her betrothed was a stranger, and was by consequence 
 ill calculated to be the wife of a rough country squire, 
 who had never been at Almack's in his life, and who 
 had something like a sovereign contempt for all such 
 exclusive association. Nor was this all — and should 
 any young female's eye rest for a moment on this 
 page, let it well observe, that it may well mark, one 
 
 1 So tender is woman's fame, that the very breath of 
 calumny will taint it. It behoves me then to say, 
 that, in their situation as wives, two more correct in 
 their conduct might have been searched for in vain, 
 than the ladies I am now alluding to. Any man but 
 Mr. Mytton would have been proud of exhibiting 
 them in public, but had they lived in the days of 
 Pericles, or even been the wives of the Great Mogul, 
 they could scarcely have been more secluded than they 
 were at Halston. Not even a race ball would he let 
 them be present at, for some years of his life! To 
 what motive but jealousy, or, what is worse, suspicion, 
 could such conduct be attributed. In justice to the deceased 
 husband, however, I must state, that the health of the 
 first Mrs. Mytton was very delicate when she was 
 married, which may account for her premature death.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 107 
 
 rock on which thousands of her sex have split, and 
 which she to whom I am alluding did not steer 
 clear of. The first Mrs. Mytton conducted herself 
 with coldness to her husband' 's old friends and 
 companions, the sons of the native gentry of his 
 neighbourhood, in every respect her equal. To a man 
 of Mytton' s temperament, to whom an old friend 
 was " as the core of the heart, or the apple of his 
 eye," this could not have been without its effect, 
 and on one occasion is said to have drawn tears 
 from him, during a dinner party at his own house ; 
 and from my knowledge of the man, I doubt not 
 the fact. 
 
 There is a readiness to believe ill reports without 
 examination into their truth, and we are often 
 found guilty by those who will not trouble them- 
 selves to look into the accusation. Is all true, 
 then, that has been reported, and credited by too 
 many, of Mr. Mytton's conduct to his first wife ? 
 Certainly not. Fame loves to double, and the 
 world is not only credulous, but loud, and too 
 often scurrilous, in its censure. Not content with 
 the various embellishments of vulgar rumour, abso- 
 lute falsehoods were in general circulation ; and 
 amongst them the following : — He was accused 
 of having thrown her lapdog — curse those lap- 
 dogs, married woman have no business with such
 
 108 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 pests — upon the fire ; but fortunately for the 
 memory of my departed friend, the act that gave 
 rise to the vile report I myself was a witness to. 
 He merely took it up in his arms, threw it half way 
 up to the drawing - room ceiling, and caught it, 
 without injury, on its descent. The butler (who 
 happened to be in the room at the time) called out, 
 " Oh, Mr. Mytton, you'll kill the dog," and the 
 lady screamed and cried ; and on this was the dread- 
 ful charge founded. In the hilarity of high animal 
 spirits, Mytton was much given to practical jokes, 
 as all his friends know. Thus, on the same lady 
 once accompanying him to the kennel, he shut the 
 door upon her for an instant, after he himself had 
 got outside of it, and this was magnified into his 
 wishing, or, I believe, intending, that she might be 
 devoured by his fox-hounds. Again — he threw 
 her into deep water ! Nonsense ; he was never 
 mad enough to do that. He merely, one very 
 hot day, pushed her into the shallow of his lake 
 at Halston, a little over her shoes. All this was, 
 no doubt, wrong by a young lady who had been 
 brought up so tenderly as Miss Jones had been 
 reared, but with a hundred young ladies I could 
 name, who had been differently treated in their 
 childhood, nothing would have been thought 
 of it, beyond a joke. And then we should look 
 at the man. If, independently of his own imme-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 109 
 
 diate connexions, he had a greater regard for one per- 
 son than for any other, I have reason to believe it was 
 for his Halston chaplain, and he was two or three 
 times nearly being the death of him — once absolutely 
 confining him to his bed for several weeks, from the 
 consequences of his having, by way of a "lark," 
 knocked him over some iron railing at his hall door 
 at Halston. Cruelty was not the property — no, not 
 even the excrescence, of his nature ; although, in 
 his practical jokes, I admit he was rough, judging 
 perhaps of other people's corporeal feelings by his 
 own. 1 
 
 I have said he was without excuse for ill conduct 
 to his second wife, and I must again say, why. 
 Not merely is her beauty the weakest of her charms, 
 and her disposition and temper most amiable, but all 
 who knew her will join with me in saying, that if a 
 wife had been selected for Mr. Mytton with a view of 
 reclaiming him, and making him a domestic character 
 and a kind husband, she might have been the woman 
 fixed upon for the experiment. L ike Terence's lover, 
 
 1 How many times have I overheard such remarks as 
 the following, made on Mr. Mytton, by ladies, in my 
 hearing, in distant parts of England — and indeed now 
 and then nearer home. " Oh ! he is a brute ! He threw 
 his wife's dog on the fire and burnt it alive ! He tried 
 to drown her, and wanted his hounds to eat her alive." 
 Pshaw.
 
 no LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 then, he should not only have sworn never to have 
 forsaken, or unkindly treated her, forasmuch as 
 she was the object of his choice, and had been with 
 difficulty obtained; but there was that suitableness 
 of temper (the " conveniunt mores" of the poet), 
 which the one valued so highly, and the other had 
 not, perhaps, met with before. In short, there was 
 every prospect of happiness from this union, and for 
 some years indeed it appeared to be realized ; but 
 whether it was that he once again nursed a vulture 
 to feed on his own heart, or whether it was not in 
 his nature to live comfortably for any length of time 
 with a woman, however suited to his taste, and 
 however dear to his heart, is a question not to be 
 resolved by man. He has, certainly, been exhibited 
 as a pattern of ruffianism in his conduct towards 
 this amiable lady, and as some detail of it has 
 already been before the public, a repetition would 
 be useless, as well as painful to the humanity 
 of my readers. But here comes the paradox. He 
 loved this woman to distraction ; he would have 
 given the apple of his eye for her at any time ; 
 he would have risked twenty lives to have gotten 
 her back again, and obtained her forgiveness ; he 
 raved about her in his madness ; and sent her his 
 dying benediction ! Were those brutal deeds, 
 then, the deeds of the kind-hearted John Mytton — 
 kind to every living soul but the woman whom
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON in 
 
 he loved to distraction ! Oh, no ; they were the 
 deeds of a man visited by the hand of the Almighty, 
 afflicted with a distempered brain, a monomaniac 
 beyond all doubt. Could he, then, like Scylla, 
 have got an Act of Oblivion passed in his favour 
 for this sad stain on his, otherwise, good name, he 
 would perhaps have passed even an earthly tribunal. 
 But how fortunate is it, O man ! — and especially 
 for you who may be the loudest to condemn him 
 — that we have reason to hope there is more 
 mercy in heaven than in this, often too reproachful 
 world. 
 
 But is it possible, it will still be asked, that 
 Mr. Mytton could have really loved either, or 
 both of his amiable wives ? Indeed, reader, he 
 did, and, woman -like, despite of his conduct 
 they both loved him. Neither did they reproach 
 him. He could not complain with the noble 
 bard — 
 
 "Though my many faults defac'd me, 
 Could no other arm be found, 
 Than the one which once embrac'd me, 
 To inflict a cureless wound ? " 
 
 But he might have joined his brother exile in 
 his plaintive song—
 
 ii2 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 "All my faults — perhaps thou knowest, 
 
 All my madness — none can know ; 
 
 All my hopes, wheree'er thou goest, 
 
 Wither — yet with thee they go." 
 
 And I speak from experience on these points. 
 In the fatal illness of his first wife, I obeyed the 
 call of friendship, and went to him at Clifton Hot 
 Wells, where she died, and I can vouch for his 
 sufferings on that occasion. Who that has ever 
 seen him look upon her portrait at Halston, and 
 speak of her afterwards, could doubt the truth of 
 what I have asserted ? And yet, could they both 
 rise from their graves, and were he to meet her 
 again in all her beauty, and with all her charms, 
 as he had met her before on their bridal day, I 
 would not answer for many years of domestic 
 happiness — even with the experience of the past 
 to boot. " What is passion," says my Uncle 
 Toby, " but a wild beast ? " and unless restrained 
 by reason, or subdued by temperance, it is as 
 furious and violent as the brute beast himself. We 
 may throw a gem to a cock or a pearl to a swine, 
 but each would be better pleased with much 
 humbler fare sought for and selected to their wild 
 taste and pleasure ; and I need not apply the moral 
 here. It has been shown beyond a doubt, that 
 it was not in the power of woman — no, nor in the
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 113 
 
 power of himself — to have made John Mytton a 
 good husband ; indeed he ought not to have 
 entered into the marriage state at all. 
 
 We must then still proceed in the catechetical 
 mood. How could any woman venture on Mr. 
 Mytton, as a husband, after the publicity given to 
 the history of his proceedings towards his first 
 wife ? I answer — In the first place, many of the 
 evil reports in circulation were found to be untrue. 
 Secondly, there was a great intimacy, as well as 
 congeniality — if I may apply the word here — 
 between the brothers of his second lady and him- 
 self, who could see nothing but what was congenial 
 in their brother sportsman and friend. Again — 
 Why was Venus (the Egyptian one) represented 
 standing naked, on a lion, but to indicate that love 
 conquers even the fiercest beast ? Here then was the 
 lion in toils. The suing lover was on his very best 
 behaviour during the days of probation, to which I 
 was myself a witness, for he often made my house his 
 home, as it was within two miles of that of the object 
 of his choice. Again, " Credula res amor est." 
 Love believes every thing ; and not only the young 
 lady — and young she was, for, if my memory serves 
 me, she was only in her seventeenth year — but we all 
 believed there was a fair prospect of happiness in the 
 anticipated union. Neither was it suffered to take
 
 ii4 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 place without due consideration. The pros and the 
 cons were nicely weighed and weighed again by the 
 anxious mother, and they appeared nearly to balance 
 the scales. Still it was long before her mind was 
 made up, and in the intimacy of our friendship she 
 put the following home question to me : — " Had 
 you a daughter marriageable," said this amiable lady, 
 and exemplary pattern of a wife and mother, 1 "would 
 you like to see her married to Mr. Mytton ? " I 
 very well remember my answer, which was this : — 
 "In my opinion, Lady Charlotte, Mr. Mytton has no 
 business with a wife at all ; but should he marry your 
 daughter, Caroline, there is a greater prospect of his 
 making a good husband to her, than to any other 
 woman in the whole world." Now not only did 
 my words prove true, but for several years he was a 
 good husband, and had it not been for " the grave 
 of reason " which excess in wine became to him, as 
 indeed it does to most other men, I doubt not he 
 would have continued in the same course. But 
 what an exemplary wife was Miss Caroline Giffard 
 to him! How well did she bear her seclusion from 
 society ; what allowance did she make for his 
 libertine life ; how much did it cost her to estrange 
 her heart from him who had stamped it with its 
 first impression ! " I cannot help loving him with 
 
 1 Lady Charlotte Giffard, sister to the late Earl Courtney, 
 of Powderham Castle, Devon.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 115 
 
 all his faults," said she, to me one evening at 
 Halston, after recounting some of his acts which 
 only a madman would have committed ; and were 
 my life to endure a thousand years, I could never 
 lose my recollection — unless I lost my reason 
 — of that distressing scene. But it is true, 
 thought I, as I listened to the sad tale, what is 
 said of woman — that Heaven is pleased to make 
 distress become her, and dresses her most amiably 
 in tears. 
 
 But independently of conduct towards herself, 
 there were other circumstances which must have 
 been the source of much pain to this amiable 
 lady. Nothing is more precious to a woman's 
 heart than the good name and credit of him she 
 loves. The unfortunate connexion then between 
 Mr. Mytton and the person I have before alluded 
 to, sank deep in that of the lady in question, and 
 well might it have stung her honest pride to the 
 quick. The best of men is not free from human 
 infirmity ; but of all the vices short of what is termed 
 " the great offence," to which a gentleman can be 
 addicted, nothing so far debases and lowers him in 
 the eyes of all who have an interest in his welfare, as 
 his quitting the rank to which he by birth belongs. 
 'Tis the last step to a general dereliction of all gen- 
 tleman-like feelings and a sorry compliment to his
 
 n6 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 former friends. "Tell me with whom you 
 associate," said the sage, " and I'll tell you what 
 you are," was one of the noblest lessons, if not 
 the severest rebuke, ever given to mankind. It 
 is the voice of custom, echoed by the voice of 
 reason. 
 
 I have but little to say of Mr. Mytton as a 
 father, but that little is in his favour. He was 
 very fond of his children, although, as may be 
 expected, he had a peculiar way of showing his 
 affection for them — such as tossing them in the 
 air as he did the lap-dog ; giving view-holloas in 
 their ears at a very tender age, throwing oranges 
 at their heads, and all such practical jokes ; but as 
 the brute said of the eels he was skinning, it was 
 " nothing when they were used to it," and I think 
 his conduct towards them was nearly sans reproche. 
 He often spoke of them in his exile ; and when he 
 came in contact with other persons' children, about 
 the age of his own, a close observer would detect 
 the workings of a strong inward feeling which it was 
 not in his power to conceal. But why should he wish 
 to conceal it ? there is a chord in the breast of a savage 
 that responds to the voice of nature ! John Mytton 
 himself could alone answer this question ; but as a 
 celebrated character in antiquity wished for a window 
 in his breast that every one might see into it, a peep
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 117 
 
 into that of this extraordinary man would have 
 exhibited qualities and virtues which not only the 
 world refused to give him credit for, but which 
 he himself seemed resolved it should not believe 
 he possessed. Strange and unfathomable man ! 
 Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to 
 virtue ; God knows you paid her nothing in that 
 coin ; you seemed determined to make us think 
 you kept no account with her at all !
 
 PART III 
 
 I HAD not seen Mr. Mytton for at least two 
 years previously to my quitting England, but 
 I had heard some unpleasant reports touching his 
 pecuniary affairs ; yet it was not until I read the 
 advertisement in The Times of the sale of all his 
 effects at Halston, that I found his race was run. 
 As the greatness of every man's fall is measured 
 by the height from which he fell, my heart bled as 
 I waded through the melancholy detail of objects 
 so familiar to my mind, so dear to himself, and 
 also associated with brighter days of my own. 
 " Poor fellow," said I, to a mutual friend who 
 was at my side ; " better he had never lived, than 
 to have to taste those bitter moments which in 
 future must be his portion. He who towered 
 like the cedar will now be trampled upon like 
 the bramble, and perhaps neglected by those 
 whom his bounty once fed." What became of 
 him, however, after the sale of his effects at 
 Halston — for every thing was sold except 
 Euphrates, the race-horse — it is not material to 
 inquire ; and I only know that, being in fear of 
 
 119
 
 120 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 arrest by creditors, he sojourned for some time at 
 a small hotel in Richmond, 1 from which place are 
 to be dated circumstances and events deeply affect- 
 ing his future, short, but melancholy term of life. 
 
 On the 5th of November, 1831, during my 
 residence in the town of Calais, I was surprised by 
 a violent knocking at my door, and so unlike what I 
 had ever heard before in that quiet town, that, being 
 at hand, I was induced to open the door myself; 
 when, to my no little astonishment, there stood 
 John Mytton ! " In God's name," said I, " what 
 has brought you to France ? " " Why," he replied, 
 11 just what brought yourself to France; (parodying 
 the old song) three couple of bailiff's were hard at 
 my brush." But what did I see before me ? The 
 active, vigorous, well-shapen John Mytton, whom 
 I had left some years back in Shropshire ? Oh, 
 no ! compared with him, 'twas the " reed shaken 
 by the wind " ; there stood before me, a round- 
 shouldered, decrepid, tottering old-young man, if 
 I may be allowed such a term, and so bloated 
 by drink that I might have exclaimed, with Ovid, 
 
 1 Before going there, I believe he was a good deal at 
 one of the fashionable bachelor hotels in Bond-street, 
 where he might be seen sitting down to dinner, with 
 bailiffs, money-lenders, and ragamuffins of all descriptions, 
 who haunted and followed him wherever he went.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 121 
 
 "Accedant capiti cornua, Bacchus eris." 1 
 
 But there was a worse sight than this. There 
 was a mind, as well as a body in ruins ; the one 
 had partaken of the injury done to the other, and 
 it was at once apparent that all was a wreck. In 
 fact, he was a melancholy spectacle of fallen 
 man — of one, over whom all the storms of life 
 seemed to be engendered in one dark cloud. 
 
 After drinking some wine, he took his leave of 
 me, abruptly, saying he was going in a carriage to 
 Guines, a small town eight miles from Calais, where 
 he had been quartered, when in the Hussars, with 
 the army of occupation ; but, taking me affection- 
 ately by the hand, said, " I shall come to you 
 to-morrow, for I have a great deal to say to you." 
 The morrow came and he himself came, accom- 
 panied by Mr. Vaughton, 2 and I hope neither of us 
 may have occasion to witness such another scene. 
 His pecuniary affairs appeared not to give him a 
 moment's uneasiness. As regarded them, fancy, 
 or something worse, had dressed the future 
 prospect with the gayest colours ; he had seventy 
 
 1 If you had but horns on your head, you would be 
 Bacchus. 
 
 2 A brother sportsman from Warwickshire, at this time 
 residing in France.
 
 122 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 thousand pounds to receive, he said, after all his 
 debts should be paid ; had engaged McDonald, 
 the jockey, to be his trainer and rider of his new 
 stud of race-horses ; and had purchased a capital 
 house in Curzon-street, May-fair, where of course 
 there were a knife and fork for me, and bail for 
 ten thousand pounds ! Neither did he appear 
 to care two pence for what had occurred at 
 Halston. It was to be reinstated in its former 
 splendour, and once more was I to be his guest. 
 It would have been cruel to have undeceived him 
 here. Like the good citizen of Argos, he might 
 have upbraided us for so doing, and exactly in his 
 
 words : — 
 
 " Pol me occidistis, amici, 
 Non servastis," ait, " cui sic extorta voluptas, 
 Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.'' 1 
 
 But the sore was not yet laid bare. A very 
 elegant writer has observed, "there are some 
 strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the 
 soul, that penetrate the vital seat of happiness — 
 and blast it, never again to put forth bud or 
 blossom ; " and this we could perceive was his 
 case. He was writhing under one of them — 
 the madness of wounded affection, and though 
 
 1 It would have been better, my friends, that you should 
 have destroyed me, than to have deprived me of the most 
 agreeable delusion of the human mind.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON r2 3 
 
 vanquished, he would not yield. " I'll have my 
 wife back again, by G — d," said he ; " look at 
 these marks" pointing to a wound on each wrist, 
 which it appeared he had purposely kept from 
 healing; "they handcuffed me; 1 but, so help me 
 G — d, I'll have her yet." Here a violent 
 hysterick affection put an end to the scene ; but it 
 was evident that not only had the " iron entered 
 into his soul," but that the foundation of his happi- 
 ness was sapped, and that, in his then course of life, 
 either his reason or his health must give way. 
 
 One week's experience of his proceedings — for he 
 was never sober throughout the day — confirmed me in 
 the above view of his case, and I thought it my duty 
 to take some precautions. The first step was to inter- 
 rogate his valet, as to what instrument he had in his 
 possession by which he could put an end to what — if 
 he ever suffered himself to take a clear and sober view 
 of it — must have been a barren and cheerless exist- 
 ence ; and the next, to inform his friends of my fears. 
 
 1 He alluded to a desperate attempt he had made to 
 regain possession of his wife, after she had returned to 
 her family at Chillington Hall ; when it was found 
 absolutely necessary for the constables to handcuff him, 
 before they could make themselves secure of his person. 
 It has been stated that he knocked down eight persons 
 in the rencontre. No doubt he went "big with daring 
 determinations," but he was foiled by a good look-out.
 
 124 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Barring his mother, his uncle, Mr. Owen, of 
 Woodhouse, near Shrewsbury (one of his guard- 
 ians), was his nearest relation; to whom I 
 stated my apprehensions that his nephew would 
 either go mad, or die, and very shortly too, and 
 wished for his advice as to how I should act in case 
 my suspicions should prove well grounded. His 
 answer as regarded myself was kind, and that of a 
 gentleman ; but as concerned his nephew it was 
 conclusive. He had never, he said, taken his 
 advice in any one instance, therefore he declined 
 offering it on the occasion on which I sought it, 
 and muchsoever as he lamented the ruin that had 
 befallen him, it was a consolation to him to reflect 
 that he had not in the smallest degree contributed 
 to it. (This letter is dated November 25, 1831, 
 just twenty days after his nephew's arrival at Calais. ) 
 
 It may be easily imagined that the arrival of 
 my old friend at Calais, in the state in which he 
 then appeared, was any thing but what I could 
 have desired. My pen was at that time 
 employed on a very interesting subject, and I 
 knew, from past experience, how many times 
 in the day I should be interrupted by him. But 
 I had shared his prosperity, and I was not going 
 to desert him in his adversity. He did not, how- 
 ever, want for society at Calais. He gave dinners
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 125 
 
 at his hotel ; and as Epicurus's wise man would 
 cultivate friendship, as he would the earth, for ivhat 
 it produces, there were plenty such wise men to 
 be found in Calais. 1 This, however, was not the 
 worst of it. Still wiser men followed him from 
 London, as I shall straightways take occasion 
 to show, as also how fortunately their designs 
 were frustrated. 
 
 Although my house, with its humble fare, was 
 always open to Mr. Mytton, I never made one of his 
 dinner parties ; but one evening, about nine o'clock, 
 he came into my dining room, accompanied by a man, 
 in a rough great coat, whom he introduced as a livery- 
 stable keeper in Edgeware-road, but who, in my eye, 
 had every appearance of a London thief. On hearing 
 Mr. Mytton say something of a draft or bill, I asked 
 this person what was the amount of his demand on 
 Mr. Mytton, when he replied, " under ^100." To 
 cut this story short then, I shall only state, that I 
 cautioned my friend against giving bills in a foreign 
 country, and also requested his old acquaintance, Mr. 
 Longden, then residing at Calais, also to caution him 
 
 1 Here the character of the man appears in its true 
 colour. One gentleman, previously unknown to him, 
 borrowed his coat, with the Anson hunt button on it, — 
 rather unceremoniously, as he said, — to go to a ball. He 
 ordered his valet to line the gentleman's own coat sleeves 
 with fish hooks against he called for it, the next day.
 
 126 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 — for our suspicions were equally aroused — but 
 we were both equally repulsed with " mind your 
 own business," or words to that effect ; and the 
 rascal succeeded, that evening, after he left my 
 house, in getting his signature to a bill for ^200 ! ! 
 And even this was nearly being not the worst of it. 
 A gang of swindlers, of which this fellow was one, 
 were in the town with stamps suitable to ^5,000, 
 for which amount they intended to get him to sign 
 bills, with the promise of remitting him the money 
 for them. 1 
 
 But this was only the commencement of that 
 memorable evening's work. After repairing to the 
 hotel, where the bill was signed, Mr. Mytton and 
 bis friend sallied forth to a " finish," and somewhere 
 about midnight, returned to the hotel, and now 
 comes the climax. 
 
 But, reader, one word with you first. You have 
 heard, no doubt, of many memorable deeds performed 
 by fire. You have read that somebody set fire to 
 Troy, Alexander to Persepolis, Nero to Rome, a 
 baker to London, a rascally Caliph to the treasures of 
 
 1 The payment of this bill was stopped by placards in 
 the streets of London, in which the names of other 
 gentlemen who had been swindled by the same party 
 appeared.
 
 1 
 
 ^
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 127 
 
 Persepolis, and the brave Mucius Scaevola to 
 his own hand and arm to frighten the proud 
 Porsenna into a peace; but did you ever hear 
 of a man setting fire to his own shirt, to frighten 
 away the hiccup ? Such, however, is the climax 
 I have alluded to ; and this was the manner in 
 which it was performed : " D — n this hiccup," 
 said Mytton, as he stood undressed on the floor, 
 apparently in the act of getting into his bed ; 
 " but I'll frighten it away ; " so seizing a lighted 
 candle, applied it to the tail of his shirt, and — 
 it being a cotton one — he was instantly enveloped 
 in flames. 
 
 Now, how was his life saved ? is the next 
 question that might be asked. Why, by the active 
 exertions of his London customer, and of another 
 stout and intrepid young man that happened to 
 be in the room, who jointly threw him down on 
 the ground and tore his shirt from his body, piece- 
 meal. Then, here again comes John Mytton ! 
 
 " The hiccup is gone, by ," said he, and 
 
 reeled, naked, into his bed. 
 
 It is easily to be supposed that the irregular life 
 Mr. Mytton was at this time leading had its due 
 weight with his valet, and, although he had been some 
 four or five years in his service, he had left him that
 
 128 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 night to his fate, and was pursuing his own pleasures 
 in Calais. The following morning however, between 
 the hours of seven and eight, he came to inform me 
 of what his master had done, and wished me to 
 come instantly to see him. " What doctor have you 
 got ? " said I. " None" replied the man. " Send 
 for Dr. Souville immediately," added I, "and I 
 will come to your master as soon as I am dressed." x 
 
 Shall I ever forget the scene this morning 
 presented ? There lay Mr. Mytton, not only 
 shirtless, but sheetless, with the skin of his breast, 
 shoulders, and knees of the same colour with a 
 newly-singed bacon hog. He saluted me, as 
 usual, with a view holloa, but I told him that 
 was no time for joking, and asked him why he 
 committed so silly an act, and one that might very 
 probably be the cause of his death ? — in fact, had the 
 flames caught his body one inch lower down, his 
 intestines would have been burnt and he must have 
 perished ! His answer was — the answer of a 
 madman — that he wished to shoiv me how he could 
 bear pain. The scene closed with the arrival of the 
 doctor, who applied the usual palliatives, but whose 
 
 1 Our eminent English physician, Dr. Bradley, was at 
 this time absent from Calais. Dr. Souville, however, is 
 the principal French physician, and of acknowledged 
 practical ability.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 129 
 
 opinion as to the result, it was then almost useless 
 to ask for. 
 
 Any man but John My tton,. would have tried to 
 have aided the exertions of his doctor, to alleviate 
 sufferings which very shortly became severe, but he 
 absolutely added fuel to the fire. The more he 
 smarted the more he drank, but, like the Spartan 
 boy, he never squeaked. " Can't I bear pain 
 well ? " he would say to me six times in the day, 
 and in truth he did bear it well. But although 
 it sometimes happens that the spirit is willing, 
 whilst the flesh is weak, here the flesh was the 
 stronger of the two, for the mind of the sufferer 
 very soon became affected. I have, however, 
 omitted to mention one act he committed the 
 day after his accident, which, if committed by 
 any other man but himself, would have been 
 evidence to have shown that he was already 
 mad. " Is not going t0 dine with you to- 
 day ? " said he to me. On my answering in 
 the affirmative, he observed, that I might have 
 asked himself to have met him. " It would cost you 
 your life," resumed I ; " you must be stark mad to 
 think of going out in the state you are at present." 
 He gave me one of those looks which generally im- 
 plied mischief, and which were well understood by his 
 friends ; but said nothing more at the moment. Just
 
 i 3 o LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 after we were seated at our dinner, however, in 
 walked John Mytton ; but although he sat out 
 the meal and half an hour besides, he fainted twice, 
 and was glad to return to his bed. But even 
 this is a trifle to what he afterwards did. He had 
 been five weeks in his bed, when he declared he 
 would dine with me on New Year's day. Nothing 
 but the straitwaistcoat would have restrained him, 
 and he came ; and moreover, because there were 
 not four horses to the carriage, to take him back 
 to his hotel — not three hundred yards — he would 
 walk, without even a great coat, but supported by 
 two persons, and although the air was cold and damp 
 he was not a whit the worse for it. What would 
 some people give for such a constitution as his, 
 and how difficult was it even for him to destroy it ! 
 
 Of all the uncertainties of our present state, 
 said Dr. Johnson, the most dreadful and alarming 
 is the uncertain continuance of reason ; and 
 although there may be " a pleasure in madness 
 madmen only know," it is harrowing to the 
 feelings of others to behold it. My prediction 
 respecting Mr. Mytton was fulfilled ; he 
 became to a certain extent deranged in about 
 a fortnight after the burning, and it was 
 quite evident he would very shortly become a 
 maniac. Symptoms at length gave apprehension of
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 131 
 
 his becoming at times dangerous ; the straitwaist- 
 coat was ordered, and the men were in readiness in 
 the house to apply it. "Wait," said I, "and let 
 me try, once more, if I can arouse him to a sense 
 of his situation " ; and entering his chamber alone, 
 the following conversation passed : — 
 
 " Mytton," said I, " I come to tell you that 
 your doctors assure me you will be a corpse in 
 three days, unless you give up drinking brandy." 
 " So much the better," he replied, " I wish 
 to die." " That is not the speech of a man 
 of your good understanding," I observed ; " you 
 may yet see happy days if you will give up 
 drinking brandy. Will you promise me you 
 will give it up ? " He said he would not ; 
 but on my telling him there were men in the 
 house ready to put his person under restraint, 
 he said he would promise to drink only what 
 his doctors might allow him ; and this was all 
 I wanted. The keepers and the waistcoat were 
 dismissed. 
 
 His mind soon experienced the benefit of this 
 wholesome change, but the irritation from the burning 
 brought his life into peril. In fact, Dr. Souville told 
 me he did not expect him to live, apprehending 
 typhus would ensue ; and, as an old Warwickshire
 
 132 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 brother sportsman 1 who saw him said of him, 
 " no other man but Mytton would have survived." 
 He would faint on being moved from his bed 
 to his chair, and he had every symptom of sink- 
 ing nature. Under these circumstances, I had 
 a duty to perform which I did not shrink from, 
 but never should I have dreamt of making 
 public the result, were it not that I consider it 
 honourable to the man, and it cannot fail of 
 being satisfactory to his friends. Sitting opposite 
 to him, then, by the fire-side, I thus, in pain, 
 addressed him. u I think it right to tell you, 
 your life is in danger ; I know you too well not 
 to be convinced that you will not scoff at what 
 I am going to suggest. Would you like to see 
 our clergyman, Mr. Liptrot ? He is a liberal- 
 minded, worthy man, without an atom of humbug 
 about him." " Draw your chair by the side of me," 
 said Mytton. On my placing it on his right, he 
 requested me to place it on his left, and to sit my- 
 self down upon it ; when putting his left hand into 
 mine, he struck his breast violently with his right, 
 and with as much vehemence as in his then weak 
 state he could command, exclaimed — " I never 
 intentionally injured any person in my life, and I 
 hope God will forgive me." These words were 
 followed by a flood of tears ; yet how exactly do 
 1 Mr. Henry Wyatt.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 133 
 
 they resemble those of Manfred to the Abbot of 
 St. Maurice : — 
 
 "I hear thee. This is my reply; whate'er 
 I may have been, or am, doth rest between 
 Heaven and myself — I shall not choose a mortal 
 To be my mediator." 
 
 The offer of sending for the clergyman was declined, 
 but without further remark. 
 
 Cicero says, no man in his sound mind is quite 
 destitute of religion ; and even unsound as poor 
 Mytton's — to a certain extent — always was, I am 
 quite sure he was not destitute of it, although his 
 proud spirit was loth to own a dread of any thing, 
 either human or divine. But supposing he had 
 never owned it to man, we are not to imply that 
 he did not own it to his God ; for although the 
 fall of Solomon is told, we know nothing of his 
 repentance. I shall have occasion, however, to 
 show that the subject of this memoir was a sincere, 
 though perhaps a late penitent, and I rejoice at 
 having it in my power to do so, as I should 
 have been sorry to hear that he " died and made 
 no sign." 
 
 There is a scrap of Latin which has often met my 
 eye, and is as often applied to nations as to individuals,
 
 i 3 4 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 but I cannot say I know the author of it. ** Quos Deus 
 (or quern Jupiter} vult perdere,prius dementat ,-" which 
 is as much as to say, that those persons whom the Al- 
 mighty wishes to destroy, he previously causes to grow 
 mad (which is, I believe, the literal and only meaning 
 of demento,a-word not in use in elegant Latin). I know 
 not on whose authority the conduct of man's Maker is 
 thus, I think, impiously speculated upon ; but should 
 a fiat so dreadful have been really pronounced, let us 
 hope it will plead in favour of some of the acts of poor 
 John Mytton, for which, with a heart like his, nothing 
 short of madness could possibly account or justify. 1 
 
 1 It never before fell to my lot to watch the motions and 
 actions of persons labouring under a temporary aberration 
 of the mind, much more to receive letters from them. 
 Amongst the numerous ones which my poor friend wrote 
 me in that melancholy situation, the following convince 
 me that, however discordant may be the instrument of 
 thought (the brain) at the time — though some keys may 
 jar, there are others which yield the usual tones to the same 
 touch : — 
 
 " Dear Ramrod (for Nimrod), 
 "You shall not stay longer with old Jack Longden 
 in my sitting room, but come up stairs to see a Hero, 
 late Chillington, die the death of a saint." Here 
 was the ruling passion, strong even in madness and in 
 death, for he was very ill at the time. Hero was the 
 name of a famous hunter he bought of me, which he 
 afterwards called Chillington ; and he married a daughter 
 of the ancient house of Chillington. There were as 
 many as half a dozen dashes under some of these words.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 135 
 
 On the morrow of the day on which I had the con- 
 versation with Mr. Mytton on the serious condition in 
 which he then appeared placed, he asked me, as he 
 lay in his bed to get a sheet of paper and write what 
 
 Again, there was the following ; in which the fatal passion 
 for the Circean cup — that cup which, like Nabal's, turned 
 a heart of flesh to a heart of stone — too plainly appears. 
 " Dear Ram., 
 
 " Jam satis terris nivis atque dira* grandinis misit Pater, 
 et, rubente " porto. Here goes a bumper to old Ram." 
 Signed "John Mytton." 
 
 This extraordinary production is dated " the Gallies," 
 and directed thus : — " Fall at a rasper I To Mytton's best 
 friend." The quotation from Horace is worth notice, 
 inasmuch as every word is rightly spelled, the punctuation 
 correct, and the capital " P" in Pater, as in the original. 
 There were six dashes under the word "rubente" and 
 four under "porto," but the inverted commas ceased at 
 " rubente ! " The following postcript was added to it. 
 
 " Nummi si nolo custodi rendere vinctus 
 
 Pracmii num mi (eheus miseri !) restat ahenea turris?" 
 
 " Prison or not to prison — can it be a debt, as it's not 
 self-contracted, non sponte sua, nee voluntate meorum 
 filiorum." Here it appears his Latin is not quite so cor- 
 rect, but healludes to the impression, that he was not aware 
 on what account his liberty was denied him. This last 
 epistle wassucceeded by another thesame day, which shows 
 that the brain became more disturbed. " Dear Ram. H — 1 
 to pay — come here instantly, they are all found out — poison. 
 Ever J. M." I have a hundred such notes, the dates of all 
 which I marked, and I suppose Mr. Roberts, the proprietor 
 of his hotel, had as many. On perusing several of them? 
 I could have exclaimed, with Shakespeare, 
 
 " Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! "
 
 136 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 he dictated. I did so, and it consisted of the 
 following lines : — 
 
 " Condemn'd in youth to meet the grave, 
 I hope to be received above ; 
 Render my soul to Him who gave, 
 My latest breath to you, my love." 
 
 He then requested they might be placed in his view 
 on the door of his chamber (where they remained 
 for a considerable time) ; " and," said he, " when I 
 die, I trust to your sending them to my wife." I told 
 him I would do so ; and had he died at that time, 
 I should certainly have complied with the request. 
 
 It would be both useless and tedious to describe 
 the various scenes that passed in the chamber 
 of my poor friend, who was guarded day and 
 night by three persons at a time, after he re- 
 covered his strength ; but some of these scenes 
 would put the powers of description at defiance. 
 His conversation, for example, with these per- 
 sons, who were English smugglers, was at times 
 ludicrous in the extreme, and highly charac- 
 teristic of the man. 1 Previously to this precaution, 
 
 1 There was nothing that medical skill or humanity 
 could suggest left untried to relieve the sufferings of Mr. 
 Mytton. Several of his friends sat up, or lay on a spare 
 bed the whole night in his room, and of course I took 
 my turn. It happened one night, that I was accom-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 137 
 
 however, rather an awful scene was witnessed by 
 me. A servant from his hotel came to inform me 
 that Mr. Mytton had got six carving knives in his 
 possession, and was by himself in his room. Mr. 
 Vaughton and myself entered it, and such we found 
 to be the case, with the trifling difference that only two 
 of the six were carving knives, the other four being 
 dinner or case knives. He was lying on his bed with 
 the six knives in his hands, when I placed myself at 
 its side, and Mr. Vaughton — a very powerful man — 
 stood at the foot. "Heyday, Squire," said I, " what 
 are you going to do with all thoseknives." "Comeand 
 lay down by my side,"saidhe, "and I'll show you (of 
 
 paniedonmy watch by a waiter from some hotel in London, 
 who was sent over to Mr. Roberts's hotel for the purpose 
 of learning the French language. " Nimrod ! " exclaimed 
 Mr. Mytton ; but I feigned sleep. ' ' Nimrod ! " he repeated, 
 " I want to talk to you ; " but I was still asleep. ' 'Come then, " 
 said he to the waiter, ' ' sit by me, and talk to me. You have 
 heard of my hounds ? " " Your hounds, sir," said the man 
 — a thorough-bred cockney ; " I can't say as I ever did." 
 "Why, you d — d fool, where have you lived all your 
 life ? Did you never hear of Euphrates ? " " I can't say 
 as I did, sir," replied the man. " What ! " said Mytton, 
 "never heard of Euphrates the race-horse! I'll have you 
 smothered to-morrow, by G — d. Get back to your great 
 chair, and go to sleep I " This reminds me of an anecdote, 
 related by Boswell, in his most amusing Life of Dr. Johnson. 
 The Doctor was asked how he liked his attendant (a 
 stranger), who sat up one night with him, in his illness ? 
 " Not at all ; " was his answer. " The fellow is an idiot ; 
 he is also as awkward as a turnspit when first put into 
 the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse."
 
 138 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 course I begged to be excused) ; I have made 
 your fortune and old Vaughton's too — a hundred 
 and fifty thousand pounds apiece for each of you — 
 for I have found out that these knives iv'ill extract 
 fire from fiesh." " Ah," said Mr. Vaughton, 
 " but how much better would they do that if they 
 were warmed at the fire." "To be sure," replied 
 our poor deluded friend ; and giving them into his 
 hands, they were soon put outside the door. Now 
 it will no doubt appear a mystery in what way 
 these knives could have been procured, and well 
 it may. But will it be credited that they had been 
 given to him by his own servant, of whom I had 
 only a few weeks before required possession of 
 every thing — even to his nail-knife — by which a 
 wound to his person could be given. Such, how- 
 ever, was the case ; and it is scarcely necessary 
 to observe, that the man was from that hour 
 forbidden to come near his person, and soon 
 afterwards was discharged. 
 
 The effects of education on first-rate talent shine 
 forth when little expected, as was the case with this 
 extraordinary man, even when his mental aberrations 
 were nearly at their height. In one of his paroxysms 
 he talked eight and forty hours without ceasing, and, 
 as it may be supposed under such violent excitement, 
 a recollection of last year's clouds would not be more
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 139 
 
 difficult than a record of the unconnected jargon 
 which he at that time uttered. But in his calmer 
 moments, when he saw me by his bed-side, 
 he would quote Greek and Latin authors with 
 surprising readiness, and when he found he 
 was incorrect would pause until he recovered 
 the text. In several of these quotations it was 
 beyond doubt apparent, that the bereavement 
 of his family and the desolation of Halston 
 were present to his mind ; for in some particular 
 instances I could not be mistaken. In giving that 
 beautiful passage from Sophocles, wherein (Edipus 
 recommends his children to the care of Creon, 
 I am quite certain he was applying it in his 
 mind to the first-named calamity ; and an epigram 
 from the Greek Anthologia, on the fall of Troy 
 and the death of Hector, which he would very 
 often repeat, had a sympathetic allusion to the 
 ruin at Halston and his own fall. But the following 
 criticism could scarcely have been expected from a 
 mind in ruins. In reply to the numerous messages he 
 would send to the bar of his hotel, some answer was 
 generally to be manufactured, and " master has not 
 got such a thing in the house," was by no means an 
 uncommon one. It happened one day, however, that 
 the attendant in waiting brought him what he had 
 sent him for, but delivered it into his hands with the 
 usual announcement — " Mr. Roberts hasn't got no
 
 140 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 such thing, sir," — he having procured it elsewhere. 
 " Why," said Mytton, looking the man in the 
 face, in my presence, " you are a Greek." " No, 
 
 sir, I ar'n't," he replied. "But I'll be if 
 
 you are not," continued Mytton, "for in Greek 
 two negatives make the affirmative stronger ; " and 
 roared into his ear " ^wpts i/xov ov Svvacr$e iroulv 
 ovSev, says the Bible." The fellow stared, and well 
 he might ; and well indeed might Mr. Mytton's 
 uncle say, as he did in his letter to me, when 
 lamenting his nephew's situation and contrasting it 
 with what it might have been — "Heu, ubi lapsus ! " 
 
 But we will bring this scene to a close. 
 Having reason to believe that, either by his 
 powers of eloquence or by the force of that 
 sympathy in a British sailor for the absence of 
 grog, which is inseparable from his character, 
 and will be a formidable opponent to Temper- 
 ance Societies on the coast, he had prevailed 
 upon one or two of these otherwise honest guardians 
 to procure him spirits by stealth, 1 it was determined 
 by Mrs. Mytton, his mother, — who had for some time 
 been in painful but unremitting attendance on her son 
 — that I should proceed to London and state his case 
 
 1 He would at this time frequently send for eau de 
 Cologne, under the pretext of using it as perfume, or 
 otherwise externally, on his person. We soon, however, 
 by the quantity consumed, ascertained that he drank it !
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 141 
 
 to Dr. Sutherland, as, in fact, we were making 
 no progress towards recovery. The result was 
 two experienced attendants being sent to Calais, 
 by whose skilful treatment an alteration for 
 the better was soon apparent, and their patient 
 able to take his airings in a carriage. It is, 
 however, somewhat singular that the only time that 
 it was found necessary to put my poor friend under 
 absolute personal restraint, was during the time I was 
 absent from him, in London, and on my return — 
 John Mytton like — he spoke of it as a very good joke. 
 
 The scene now changes again, and somewhat 
 of a brighter prospect appears. Although Mr. 
 Mytton had every comfort, as well as every 
 convenience at the Royal Hotel in Calais, — 
 the landlord of which, Mr. Roberts, is a person 
 of superior education and conduct, and was 
 much esteemed by his unfortunate guest — yet when it 
 was considered that he had been occupying the same 
 apartments so long, in sickness and in sorrow, it 
 was desirable, on the approach of spring, that he 
 should breathe a purer air, and a chateau was looked 
 for in the neighbouring country. But here arose 
 a difficulty. The few persons who had such things 
 to let were alarmed at the idea of a gentleman and his 
 keepers, and fearing the occupation of them by such 
 tenants might leave a stain on their premises, refused
 
 i 4 2 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 to let them on any terms. What then was to be 
 done ? His removal to England would have been 
 his removal to a prison ; so, at the request 
 of Mrs. Mytton, I consented to hire a chateau 
 and to receive him as an inmate until his 
 recovery was completed. But I went beyond 
 this : I undertook to make a trial of managing 
 him myself, without the aid of his keepers, 
 and the first ten days bade fair for success. He 
 conformed to regular hours ; enjoyed his meals ; 
 did not exceed his bottle of light wine ; was, 
 I thought, never happier in his life, and 
 the recruitment of his health was beyond all 
 expectation. But luckily for all parties, at the 
 request of his mother, who was gone to England, 
 his keepers still remained in Calais to await 
 the issue of the experiment, for at the end of 
 a fortnight he stole away to Calais unobserved ; 
 got at the brandy bottle, and then it was all 
 over with my " brief authority." It was with 
 great difficulty that I could prevail on him to 
 return to dinner for three successive evenings, and on 
 the fourth he was outrageous, threatening to murder 
 a gentleman at table, who had been most kind 
 to him in his illness. It then became necessary to 
 send to Calais for his keepers, and by eight o'clock 
 the next morning, with the advice of his doctors, he 
 was under their care.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 143 
 
 Provision was made for this somewhat anticipated 
 change. The chateau afforded ample accommoda- 
 tion for the whole party ; but as, in all such cases, 
 it is necessary to separate the patient from persons 
 and objects which are sources of mental excitement, 
 Mr. Mytton and his attendants had apartments 
 separate from mine, and which were arranged in 
 the most convenient manner for all purposes of 
 safety. The attendance of these young men 
 acted like a charm upon their patient, who 
 recovered his former serenity on being told that 
 he was again placed under the surveillance of 
 the police for striking a Frenchman in Calais. But 
 let all those whose constitutions are the worse for 
 wear by indulging in midnight revels, and strong 
 drink, and who may take a glance at the Life of 
 John Mytton, mark and digest what I am now 
 about to state. When he left the town of Calais he 
 was gradually recovering his strength of body and 
 mind, but was very feeble on his legs, and could 
 scarcely enter a carriage without assistance. He 
 had not been at this chateau a month, before, by 
 regular living and daily exercise in sea air, he was 
 able to walk six or seven miles in the middle of the 
 day without the slightest fatigue, and to take a walk 
 in the evening besides. His meals were eaten with 
 a relish, and without the aid of Cayenne pepper, to 
 the use of which he before knew no bounds ; and
 
 144 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 his sleep was tranquil and refreshing. Now me- 
 thinks it will be asked — how did he employ his 
 time ? Why, painful but striking is the answer to 
 this question. He to whom the whole world had 
 appeared insufficient to afford pleasure, and who 
 had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in pur- 
 suit of it, was now completely happy in the occupa- 
 tion of picking up sea shells in the morning and 
 washing them in vinegar in the evening ! ! So 
 eager was he in this his favourite pursuit, that he 
 would scarcely finish his dinner before he would 
 enter upon the last-mentioned office, and would 
 absolutely stand for two or three hours at a time 
 brushing shells with a nail brush dipped in vinegar ! 
 They were then laid with great precision in drawers, 
 which he would never suffer any one but himself to 
 open. All this, with the perusal of the Morning 
 Herald, the Age, and the Calais (French) Journals, 
 formed the business of the day. 
 
 It is almost needless for me to state that, at 
 this period, the intellect of my friend was in a 
 state of great imbecility — the consequence of 
 extreme exhaustion, produced by extreme excite- 
 ment. Nevertheless it was the opinion of his 
 attendants, as well as of Drs. Souville and 
 Winder, who saw him two or three times a 
 week, that, by pursuing the plan they were then
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 145 
 
 acting upon, he would in time recover his strength 
 of mind as well as that of his body ; and there also 
 was a chance — as his old friend and neighbour in 
 his own county, Colonel Proctor, then at Boulogne, 
 observed — of his altering his former course of life, 
 from the experience he might have of the benefits 
 arising from temperance and exercise. But alas, 
 poor man, this chance was denied him. At the 
 end of the second month he was, by false repre- 
 sentations made to his mother, once more let loose, 
 and from that hour to the last of his life his poor 
 shattered bark was never out of a sea of troubles. 
 He had nearly been suffocated with brandy on 
 his voyage to London, by the steamer, the day 
 after he left the chateau ; and, as was evident to all 
 parties, so soon as he was caught in England he 
 would be in a jail ! Why then was he taken 
 to England ? and why was his life thus suffered 
 to be sacrificed ? Why, merely to enable him 
 to sign deeds conveying away the last remain- 
 ing acre of his unentailed property, which he 
 could not do when in the situation from 
 which he was taken, and which, it appears, 
 when done, did not secure his person from 
 the griping fangs of the law. He did sign them, 
 however, and his own death warrant by the same 
 act and deed. There might be other reasons for 
 getting him to England, which it may perhaps be
 
 146 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 unsafe for me to commit to paper ; to my mind 
 they were conclusive. 
 
 I shall take but a bird's eye view of his 
 career in England, but, carrying on the alle- 
 gory, we may compare his situation to that of 
 small birds pursued by hawks. Every bailiff 
 in London was on the look out for him ; and, 
 above all places in the world, he went to 
 Halston to avoid them ! Oh, what must have 
 been his feelings on the first view of his deserted 
 hall — the scene of all his former splendour ! They 
 must have somewhat resembled those of " The 
 Last Man," when viewing the capitals of the 
 world, and himself alone left to mourn over 
 them ; but as they are incommunicable by words, 
 I leave them to the imagination and likewise to the 
 sympathy of the reader. 
 
 ("Such a house broke! 
 So noble a master fallen ! All gone ! and not 
 One friend to take his fortune by the arm, 
 And go along with him ; ") 
 
 Let us hope, however, that he was neither 
 sober nor in his senses — at all events, that 
 some respite was in mercy granted to his 
 intellectual faculties, as a guard to his heart, 
 from the assaults of sufferings that might other- 
 wise have been beyond man's nature to endure !
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 147 
 
 But his stay here was short ; he was hurried 
 off to Shrewsbury jail, whence, in the course of 
 time, he was removed to the King's Bench prison, 
 in London. 
 
 Now here again comes " John Mytton " ! 
 During his sojourn in the first-named prison he was 
 visited by several of his old friends, — influential 
 gentlemen in the county — who offered their 
 services in arranging his difficulties, provided 
 he would put his affairs into their trust, but 
 he rejected all their overtures. Either Caesar 
 or nobody he was resolved to be so long as he 
 was above ground, and how exactly did he come 
 under that denomination of persons of whom Horace 
 speaks, 
 
 " Quern neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula 
 terrent ; " 
 
 and how plumply did he give the lie to the adage, 
 that adversity is the school of reform. The toad 
 was ugly and venomous ; but he saw no " precious 
 jewel in his head." 
 
 But there was something savouring of the serio- 
 romantic in Mr. Mytton's being placed in durance, for 
 debt, in the prison of a town with which the deeds of 
 his ancestors were so deeply and brilliantly associated
 
 148 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 — in a town in which his word would but a 
 short time before have been good for ten 
 thousand pounds, and in which he once sat high 
 in the people's hearts ; and also in relation to the 
 altered situation in which he himself once 
 stood towards the keeper of that prison. The 
 governorship becoming vacant, the contest for it 
 was a severe one, and it was solely by the influence 
 and exertions of Mr. Mytton that the present 
 person, Mr. Griffiths, fills it. He, however, not 
 only has done credit but honour to his benefactor's 
 choice, — as no man in Shrewsbury is, I believe, 
 more respected than he is, neither can any man 
 exceed him in the various and arduous duties he 
 has to perform, tempering mercy with justice ; and 
 although Shakespeare says, " seldom when the 
 steeled gaoler is the friend of man," Mr. Griffiths 
 was unceasing in his kind attention to his 
 patron, now become his prisoner. Indeed Mr. 
 Mytton not only acknowledged this to me, but 
 told me he was very comfortable in Shrewsbury 
 gaol ! 
 
 On a writ of certiorari being executed, my poor 
 degraded friend was conveyed to London in the cus- 
 tody of Mr. Griffiths, and transferred to that of the 
 Marshal of the King's Bench, where I saw him for 
 the first time since he left the chateau in France.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 149 
 
 But what a change for the worse was here ! He 
 was the same bloated, unhealthy-looking, son of 
 Bacchus that he appeared on his arrival in Calais, 
 and he had a leg in a state nearly approaching 
 mortification. In fact, his surgeon told me he 
 would owe his life — at all events the preservation 
 of his leg — solely to the kindness of a fellow 
 prisoner, who prevented his drinking spirits, and 
 such no doubt was the case. 
 
 I am not able to say how long he remained 
 in the Bench, but on his exit John Mytton — 
 unus ex omnibus — appears again ; but to what 
 account shall we place the act I am about 
 to mention, for it appears to me to want a 
 name ? It is not, however, without a plea. 
 The heart of man has been elegantly compared to 
 a creeping plant, which withers unless it have 
 something around which it can entwine ; but 
 towards what a frail trellage did that of this 
 extraordinary man yearn for its support ! Walking 
 one day over Westminster- bridge, the following 
 dialogue occurred between himself and a female of 
 a class which the reader will not be at a loss to 
 name, but on whom he had never before set his 
 eyes. 
 
 Mr. Mytton. " How do ye do ? "
 
 150 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 The Female. " Very well, I thank ye ; how do 
 you do ? " 
 
 Mr. Mytton. " Where are you going ? " 
 
 The Female. "I don't know." 
 
 Mr. Mytton. " Then come and live with me ? 
 I'll settle ^500 a year upon you." 
 
 Here was no law's delay ; no worm in the bud ; 
 no concealment feeding on the damask cheek, but 
 love at first sight, if any love there was ! The 
 bargain being struck, the broomstick jumped over, 
 the happy couple soon afterwards arrived at Calais, 
 at the Crown Hotel ; Mr. Roberts, under such 
 circumstances, being compelled to decline the 
 honour of their company. But the strangest part 
 of the affair is to come. This young woman, 
 then only in her twentieth year, whom no 
 doubt some scoundrel had seduced and aban- 
 doned, was not only possessed of considerable 
 personal charms, but proved to be very respectably 
 connected, 1 and conducted herself towards her pro- 
 
 1 The late Lord Arundel, who was at this time sojourning 
 at the Royal Hotel, on his road to Italy, confirmed to me 
 the respectability of her connexions on hearing their 
 names mentioned.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 151 
 
 tector so much better than could be expected, 
 considering whence she was imported, and that 
 his lusty love had gone " in quest of beauty " and 
 not " in search of virtue," that I saw a letter to 
 her from his mother acknowledging her kindness 
 towards her son. But wife or mistress made no 
 difference with Mytton. If he were not, generally 
 speaking, a madman to a certain extent, on the 
 subject of a woman — and, above all, of a ivoman he 
 loved — he was a monomaniac, and some extra- 
 ordinary scenes were the fruits of this extraordinary 
 connexion. The green - eyed monster played his 
 part as usual, and at times a nod or a look was 
 suspicion strong as holy writ. 
 
 I must hark back here for a moment. On the 
 morrow after Mr. Mytton arrived from London, 
 he was arrested for £2$ at the suit of the holder 
 of one bill out of four for ^"25 each, which he 
 had been most improperly induced to accept in 
 favour of a person resident in Calais, who had not 
 the slightest claim upon his liberality, and conveyed 
 to the prison of the town. His solicitor being 
 then with him, there was no difficulty in releasing 
 him to the extent of that individual sum, but it 
 was considered expedient to detain him in 
 custody until it could be ascertained what was 
 become of the three other bills ; when it
 
 152 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 was at length agreed that two of them should be 
 given up, and that his liability only extended to 
 ^50. Here then will appear the character of 
 the kind-hearted John Mytton, in its true light. 
 Almost any man but himself would have been 
 outrageous at this breach of confidence and good 
 feeling, but not so John Mytton. The first step 
 he took after his release from the prison, was to 
 call upon the person who had caused him to be thus 
 disgraced, and to walk arm in arm with him on 
 the market-place — lest, as he said, the affair might 
 injure his character in the town, he being a pro- 
 fessional man. Reader ; I'll bar you from one 
 book, and one book alone ; you shall then search 
 the pages of ancient and modern history, and I 
 challenge you to produce me a nobler instance of a 
 nobler heart than the one I have now given you. 
 The power of bearing and forbearing, which con- 
 stituted Epictetus's wise man, comes, perhaps, next 
 to it in theory. 
 
 But the storm soon gathers again. After sojourn- 
 ing a certain time at the Crown Hotel, in Calais, with 
 a score to his name of a thousand francs, he came to 
 my house in the country to inform me he should go 
 to England on the morrow. It was in vain that I told 
 him he could not do so without first paying his bill, 
 which I knew he had not, at that time, the means of
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 153 
 
 doing. He, however, put himself into the 
 Boulogne coach the next afternoon, meaning to 
 embark from that town — having, perhaps fortun- 
 ately, informed the barber who shaved him of his 
 intentions, which intentions the barber of course 
 conveyed instanter to the landlord — and the 
 following day found him in Boulogne jail. Also 
 luckily for him, his agent arrived the same day, 
 but his creditor had previously agreed to release 
 him, on an undertaking from Mr. Roberts, of the 
 Royal Hotel, and myself to bring him back to 
 Calais. The distraining landlord has since paid 
 the debt of nature ; but he was quite free from 
 blame with regard to the steps he pursued ; and 
 Mr. Mytton was kind as usual to him on his 
 return. 
 
 Shortly after this, Mr. Mytton and his chere 
 amie took their departure for Lisle ; but what they 
 did at Lisle I did not trouble myself to inquire. 
 Their return to Calais, however, forms another 
 interesting scene in this — I know not what to 
 call it, but perhaps the ancient Greeks would have 
 called it — Spafia tov (3iov, or comedy of life. Just 
 as I was sitting down to dinner one evening of a 
 very hot day in August, I espied a person at the 
 bottom of my avenue, approaching my house 
 on foot. " Is it possible," said I, " that person
 
 i54 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 can be Mytton ? " Mytton, however, it was ; 
 and shall I ever forget the state he was in — 
 shirtless, waistcoatless, neckclothless, with his 
 trousers and coat stained with blood, as well as 
 in a state of very great exhaustion from fatigue ? 
 Now then for his account of himself. He had 
 set forward, it appeared, in a diligence from Lisle 
 to Calais, but had quarrelled with Susan (his 
 chere amie's name) at St. Omer, and refused to 
 proceed in her company any further. When she 
 left him behind at St. Omer to proceed to Calais, 
 he had nearly four napoleons in his pocket ; but 
 getting into a street-row in that town, he had been 
 well licked and robbed 1 of all save three Belgic 
 sous. With this small sum he started to walk to 
 Calais, twenty - seven long miles, and under a 
 burning sun ; but becoming dead beat before the 
 sun set, he put up at a small public - house, or 
 cabaret, by the road side, and the account he gave 
 of his proceedings in it, was a most ludicrous one. 
 He wheedled the old woman, he said, out of some 
 supper ; but then what was to be done for some- 
 thing to drink ? " Why," continued he, " I can leave 
 part of my clothes in pawn in the morning, so got 
 two glasses of gin and water, gin being cheaper than 
 brandy." On refreshing himself at my house, and 
 
 1 I should rather say he had lost this money out of his 
 pocket.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 155 
 
 putting his person into something like a decent 
 condition, he walked into Calais, and made it up 
 with Susan. 
 
 The comedy is now at end — at least for the 
 present — and something very like a tragedy 
 succeeds to it. Poor Mytton was, a few days 
 after, again arrested for ^200, being the amount 
 of the score he had run up at a certain French 
 hotel in London, where himself and his partner 
 had been sojourning after the bargain had been 
 struck on the bridge, and from whence he had 
 been obliged to bolt in a hurry, as the bailiffs were 
 in the house in pursuit of him. But the landlord, 
 being a Frenchman, had recourse to the privileges 
 of a Frenchman, and I once more was pained by 
 seeing my friend looking through the bars of a 
 French prison window. Here he was suffered to 
 remain — the why and the wherefore can only be 
 answered by his solicitors in London, as the sale of 
 his estates had been completed — for fourteen days ; 
 on the thirteenth day, I thought it my duty to 
 inform his mother of his situation ; and in four 
 days from the date of my letter she was in Calais. 
 It would be painful to me to relate, as well as to 
 my readers to be made acquainted with, a detail 
 of the acts and deeds of this unhappy man during 
 the rest of the time he spent in Calais, where
 
 156 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 his mother remained to protect him as far as it was 
 in her power to do so. But it was brandy, brandy, 
 brandy, morning, noon, and night, which of course 
 drove him to madness ; and a disposition to insult 
 the French people, made it necessary to remove 
 him. England was again determined upon, where 
 not only a prison, but the grave, yawned to receive 
 him, and in a prison he died. Thus fell John 
 Mytton — by nature, what God must have in- 
 tended every man should be ; by education, or, 
 rather, from the want of proper education, nearly 
 at last what man should not be. The seed was 
 good ; but it fell among thorns and was choked. 
 
 So soon as I was informed that Mr. Mytton was 
 once more within the walls of the King's Bench 
 Prison, I felt assured he would never quit them but 
 on his bier, neither did he. But as the poet says — 
 
 " Better to sink beneath the shock, 
 Than moulder piece-meal on the rock ; " 
 
 and I was happy when I heard the fatal subpoena 
 had arrived, for adversity had exhausted her 
 phial, and it was evident that, with the excep- 
 tion of the unsubdued affection of his mother, 
 there was, for him, no balm in Gilead. It 
 appeared that in about three weeks after his 
 incarceration, he was seized with paralysis of the
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 157 
 
 extremities, which bade defiance to the treatment 
 of Doctor Maton and Mr. Brodie, who indeed 
 from the first considered it a case without hopes. 
 It may be, however, a consolation to those who 
 had a regard for him, to learn that his sufferings 
 were not severe ; that his mother was by his bed- 
 side at the last, and that as he had been conversing 
 rationally with his medical attendants within half an 
 hour of his decease, his life must have departed like 
 the flickering flame of a lamp which goes out by 
 the last crackle. But it is astounding to think, 
 from the rapidity with which his lamp of life must 
 have burned, that he lived to complete his thirty- 
 eighth year. As I said of him before, Nil violentum 
 est perpeluum ; Phaeton's car went but a day ! 
 
 A brother sportsman and a brother prisoner 
 (well known at Melton Mowbray) who, as I 
 have before mentioned, had been extremely kind 
 to my poor friend during his first and second 
 incarceration, and who was a constant attendant 
 on his sick bed, wrote me — unsolicited — some 
 interesting particulars relating to his illness and the 
 last scenes of his eventful life, which it gives me 
 pleasure to make known. The " virtue of suffering 
 well," which Johnson allowed to Savage, could by 
 no one be denied to Mytton, whose bearing and 
 forbearing, as I have before shown, are per-
 
 158 LTFE OF MYTTON 
 
 haps not exceeded by any man's ; but in the 
 opinion of his friend he took much to heart this 
 second confinement in the King's Bench, although 
 his proud spirit would not suffer him to acknow- 
 ledge it ; and he thought it hastened his end. As 
 to his dying in peace with all mankind, how could 
 he die otherwise who never attempted to revenge 
 himself on any human being, but who — though 
 his communication was not " Yea, yea, or nay, 
 nay" — so far from demanding the eye for the 
 eye, and the tooth for the tooth, would have 
 actually given his cloak to him who stole his 
 coat — whose heart was as warm as those of half 
 the world are cold ; and whose warmth of heart 
 had brought him into the prison in which he 
 died ! And how did he die ? — As he appeared 
 to live — in dread of nothing human or divine ? 
 Certainly not ; although it may, tauntingly, be said, 
 he trusted to the delusive support of a death- 
 bed repentance. Let no man, however, venture to 
 pronounce sentence here, but leave it to that bar 
 at which justice will be tempered with mercy ; 
 where, unless I formed a very erroneous opinion 
 of the late Mr. Mytton — and who had a much 
 more intimate knowledge of him than myself? — 
 and a still more mistaken one of the attributes 
 of Him by whom he will be judged, he will 
 find acceptance before many who have carried
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 159 
 
 a much fairer face to the world. Few receive 
 the white garment and carry it without a stain 
 before the judgment-seat. John Mytton certainly 
 did not : it was soiled and stained with the 
 impurities of our nature — with even more than 
 can be placed to that account — and the world 
 has no proof that they were attempted to be 
 washed out by his tears ; but I appeal to my own 
 experience of him — to that of his brother prisoner 
 and friend who attended him in his last days — in 
 the hour indeed when the heart knows no guile, 
 and in which the tongue seldom hazards an 
 untruth, whether he did not then own to man, 
 what he had previously only owned to his God. 
 Although it appears he did not consider his life 
 in imminent danger, he had the church service 
 read to him nearly every day, and more particu- 
 larly on Good Friday, when he held a long 
 conversation with his brother prisoner on the 
 sacrament, but which, although he expressed 
 himself very properly in his allusions to it, it does 
 not appear he partook of. Of both his wives he 
 spoke in the tenderest terms of affection, as also of 
 his children by each, and expressed a strong desire to 
 see his present wife and all his children together — but 
 alas ! that wish was a vain one. Immediately after 
 his decease, a cast was taken of his features by the 
 celebrated phrenologist, M. Deville, in the Strand, at
 
 160 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 the express request of his mother, in which /'/ It said 
 the character of the man is very clearly developed. 
 
 The first public notice of his decease that reached 
 this country was contained in a very neatly written 
 paragraph in the Globe, in which the following 
 short, but just character was given him : — " His 
 princely magnificence and eccentric gaieties 
 obtained him great notoriety in the sporting and 
 gay circles, both in England and on the Continent. 
 His failings, which leaned to virtue's side, greatly 
 reduced him, and he has left numerous friends to 
 lament the melancholy fact of his dying in a prison, 
 which, contrasted with his former splendour, 
 furnishes a striking illustration of the mutability 
 of mundane affairs." This account went the 
 round of the papers, with the exception of Bell's 
 Life in London, which inadvertently stated that 
 he had spent the fortunes of two wives, but which 
 the editor immediately contradicted on my author- 
 ity. That of his first, which was ten thousand 
 pounds, was settled on his only daughter by her ; 
 what his second wife's fortune was, I never heard, 
 but whatever it might have been, I have reason 
 to believe it remains for the benefit of his younger 
 children. 
 
 It is too much the practice of the world — at least so
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 161 
 
 says the satire — to adore the rising sun, and to con- 
 demn him when going down ; but neither errors 
 nor crimes (if such, reader, you will have them) 
 nor adversity, could chill the grateful recollection 
 of the splendour that had once illumined Halston, 
 and of the many, otherwise, perhaps, sad hearts 
 which had been warmed by its genial rays. But 
 even independent of this, there was a tenderness 
 and compassion of nature in both the sayings and 
 doings of poor John Mytton, which had fixed him 
 firmly in the hearts and affections of the people 
 within many miles of his house, and there he 
 remained fixed to the last. In proof of this, his 
 funeral excited very general, indeed, I might say, 
 almost unequalled sympathy. The amazing number 
 of three thousand persons were present at it — several 
 appearing unable to stifle their feelings, and only 
 obtaining relief by their tears. And what brought 
 together this assemblage of persons of all conditions, 
 even to the poorest ? Not, as Shakespeare says, to 
 
 " tender down 
 
 Their services to Lord Timon ; his large fortune, 
 Upon his good and gracious nature hanging." 
 
 No — but to shed a tear on the bier of a man whose 
 " large fortune " and whose " gracious nature " were 
 no more ; of a man who had died in a jail ; of one
 
 1 62 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 who, with "all his imperfections on his head," 
 would never die in their hearts or memory ! But 
 no more of this. The subject is too painful to 
 dwell on ; and I should be untrue to myself if I did 
 not admit, that my own tears would have mingled 
 with those shed over the grave of John Mytton, 
 and that they have more than once mingled with 
 the ink which has traced his devious course and 
 marked his miserable end. 
 
 The following account of the funeral appeared in 
 the Shrewsbury Chronicle : — 
 
 "FUNERAL OF 
 THE LATE JOHN MYTTON, Esq. 
 
 " We last week announced the death of this 
 gentleman. His body was conveyed from London, 
 where he expired, to this town, with all solemnity. 
 On passing through the town, many of the shops 
 were closed ; and crowds assembled to take a last 
 look on his bier, and pay the homage of a sigh 
 to the memory of John Mytton. We rejoice to 
 say that, before his death the consolations of 
 religion had been eagerly resorted to, and afforded 
 him both comfort under affliction, and hope in the 
 prospect of eternity.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON T63 
 
 "A hearse with four horses (driven by an 
 attached servant of the deceased), a mourning 
 coach and four, and another carriage formed the 
 melancholy cavalcade through Shrewsbury. On 
 the road to Oswestry, every mark of respect was 
 paid ; and at the Queen's Head, the corpse was 
 met by a detachment of the North Shropshire 
 Cavalry (of which regiment the deceased was 
 Major) who escorted them to the vault in the 
 Chapel of Halston, where the remains were de- 
 posited at three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. 
 The procession was exceedingly well arranged 
 under the direction of Mr. Dunn, of London, 
 assisted by Messrs. Hanmer and Gittins, of this 
 town, and entered the domain of Halston in the 
 following order : — 
 
 Four Trumpeters of the North Shropshire Cavalry. 
 
 Capt. Croxon and Capt. Jones. 
 
 Thirty-two Members of the Cavalry. 
 
 A Standard of the Regiment covered with Crape. 
 
 Forty-two Members of the Cavalry. 
 
 Adjutant Shirley and Cornet Nicolls. 
 
 Mr. Dunn (undertaker) and Mr. Gittins. 
 
 Two Mutes. 
 
 Carriage of the Revds. W. Jones and J. D. Pigott. 
 
 Two Mourning Coaches and Four, with the 
 
 Pall-Bearers. 
 
 Hon. T. Kenyon. A. W. Corbett, Esq. 
 
 R. A. Slaney, Esq., M.P. J. R. Kynaston, Esq. 
 
 J. C. Pelham, Esq. Rev. H. C. Cotton. 
 
 The Hearse, drawn by Four Horses, with
 
 i6 4 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 THE BODY, 
 
 In a Coffin covered with Black Velvet, with massive 
 
 Handles richly ornamented, the Plate inscribed 
 
 ' John Mytton, Esq. of Halston, 
 
 'Born 30th of Sept., 1796, 
 
 'Died 29th of March, 1834.' 
 
 (The Hearse was driven by Mr. Bowyer, the Deceased's 
 
 Coachman, who, with Mr. M'Dougal, another Servant, 
 
 attended him in his last moments). 
 
 Mourning Coach with two Mourners, the Rev. E. H. Owen 
 
 (Deceased's Uncle), and the Hon. and Rev. R. Noel Hill. 
 
 Mrs. Mytton's Carriage. 
 
 Lady Kynaston's Carriage, with Mr. W. H. Griffiths 
 
 and Mr. Cooper. 
 
 Carriage of A. W. Corbett, Esq. 
 
 Carriage of the Rev. Sir Edward Kynaston, Bart. 
 
 Carriage of the Rev. E. H. Owen. 
 
 Carriage of R. A. Slaney, Esq., M.P. 
 
 Carriage and Four of the Hon. Thomas Kenyon. 
 
 J. Beck, Esq., in his Carriage. 
 
 Dr. Cockerill and Lieut. Tudor, in Carriage. 
 
 Carriage of T. N. Parker, Esq. 
 
 Carriage of W. Ormsby Gore, Esq., M.P. 
 
 Carriage of the Viscountess Avonmore, 
 
 Several Cars, &c, with friends. 
 
 Mr. Broughall, Agent. 
 
 About One Hundred of the Tenantry, Tradesmen, and 
 
 Friends on Horseback, closed the procession. Among 
 
 these were Messrs. Longueville, Cartwright, Bolas, 
 
 Hughes, J. Howell, S. Windsor, J. Williams, Morris, 
 
 Griffiths, Venables, D. Thomas, W. Francis, R. 
 
 Edwards, Farr, Blandford, Rogers, Davies, &c. &c. 
 
 The Mutes were old men, brothers, John and Edward 
 Niccolas,of Whittington ; the latter was mute at the funeral 
 of the deceased's grandfather ; John was mute at the grand- 
 father's funeral, the father's funeral, and at that of Mr. 
 Mytton.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 165 
 
 " A mourning peal was rung at Oswestry, and 
 the bells of Shrewsbury, Ellesmere, Whittington, 
 Halston, &c, tolled during the day. The number 
 of spectators was immense, and the road along 
 which the procession slowly moved was bedewed 
 with the tears of thousands who wished to have 
 a last glance. Everything was conducted with 
 the greatest order ; but there was a great rush to 
 enter the chapel on the body being taken out of 
 the hearse. The body was placed in a shelf in 
 the family vault, under the communion table of 
 Halston Chapel, surrounded by the coffins of twelve 
 of his relatives." 
 
 The family of Mytton, as has already been 
 shown, is an ancient one ; and the inhabitants of 
 Shropshire and Wales are attached to it from 
 many old historical, personal, and feudal recollec- 
 tions. Halston is called in ancient deeds Haly 
 Stone or Holy Stone. Near it stood the abbey, 
 taken down above a century ago. Meyric Lloyd, 
 Lord of some part of Uch Ales, in the reign 
 of Richard I. would not yield subjection to the 
 English government, under which the hundred 
 of Dyffryn Clwyd, and several others were 
 then ; and having taken some English officers that 
 came there to execute the law, killed several of 
 them. For this fact he forfeited his lands to the
 
 1 66 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 king ; fled, and took sanctuary at Halston, where 
 he was taken to the protection of its possessor, 
 John Fitzalen, Earl of Arundel. In the Saxon 
 era, the lordship of Halston belonged to Edrio ; 
 at which time there were on it two Welchmen and 
 one Frenchman. After the Norman Conquest, 
 Halston became the property of an Earl of Arundel, 
 and was given by that family to the Knights of St. 
 John of Jerusalem. — In the 26th of Henry VIII. 
 the commandry was valued at £ 160 14J. lod. a 
 year. Upon the abolition of many of the military 
 religious orders, Henry VIII. empowered John 
 Sewster, Esq. to dispose of this manor to Alan 
 Horde, who made an exchange with Edward 
 Mytton, Esq. of Habberley ; which alienation was 
 afterwards confirmed by Queen Elizabeth. The 
 church or chapel of Halston, is a donative, with- 
 out any other revenue than what the chaplain is 
 allowed by the owner, and is exempt of jurisdiction. 
 Halston was the birth-place of the famous General 
 Mytton. 
 
 Immediately after the funeral his last will was read, 
 in which he had bequeathed all that he had to leave 
 equally amongst all his children, and to which the 
 Hon. Thomas Kenyon, of Pradoe, near Oswestry, 
 and R. A. Slaney, Esq., M.P. for Shrewsbury, were 
 appointed executors. He had previously, at Calais,
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 167 
 
 made a will to which Sir Edward Smythe, Mr. 
 Owen, of Woodhouse, Shropshire (his uncle), 
 and myself, were appointed executors, in which 
 his all was left to his only child by his first 
 wife. The alteration, however, was immaterial, 
 his " all," poor fellow, that is to say, his dis- 
 posable personal property, being nothing ; but 
 it is consoling to think that estates amount- 
 ing to ^4,500 per annum were out of his 
 reach, by entail, and still remain to his family. 
 Thus is it possible, that by the aid of a ten 
 years' minority, and, barring another " JohnMytton," 
 Halston and its oaks x may yet flourish. The 
 heir-apparent, now in his fourteenth year, is at 
 Eton school. 
 
 One question may very naturally be asked — 
 Why was not that substitute for the law of 
 Corinth, the High Court of Chancery appealed 
 to, to endeavour to stop the final dissipation 
 of the unentailed portion of this fine property, 
 since it is quite evident that for the last several 
 years the unfortunate proprietor was not equal to 
 the management of it — no, not more so than a 
 child of six years old ? This question is answered in 
 
 1 It has been stated to me, that the amount of timber 
 sold by Mr. Mytton at various times was £80,000, but 
 I will not pledge myself to the fact.
 
 1 68 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 many ways. Mr. Mytton's nearest connexions 
 were compelled, early in life, to leave him to 
 his fate, their endeavours to save him from ruin 
 having been always rejected by himself. He 
 would not, like Savage, spurn the friend who 
 presumed to dictate to him, but he heeded him 
 not. That he was half mad without drink, 
 and rendered quite mad with it, no man who 
 knew him latterly can for a moment doubt ; and a 
 waggon load of evidence could be produced to 
 prove that fact. But let us suppose a commission 
 of inquiry, a writ de Lunatko inquirendo to have 
 been issued ! Why the result would have been 
 this : — he would have kept himself sober for 
 two days, and, like Sophocles before the 
 Areopagus, would have dumb-founded his oppo- 
 nents. I am, however, quite certain that from 
 the time he arrived first at Calais to the day of 
 his death, bordering on three years, he had not 
 the slightest insight into his own pecuniary 
 affairs, nor did he know, to thousands, how 
 he stood in the world ; and moreover, if he 
 had had ten thousand pounds put into his hands 
 any one day, he would not have had a shilling of 
 it left by that day week ! ! I can bring a host of 
 evidence to back me in this assertion ; and it was in 
 vain that his friends asked him to call for something 
 like a statement of his cash account from those who
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 169 
 
 received his purchase money, for estates sold for 
 upwards of fifty thousand pounds, subsequently to 
 his arrival in Calais. 
 
 Having now traced this extraordinary character 
 — this anomaly in human nature — this mixture of 
 very right and very wrong — this strange compound 
 of contradictory qualities — through the various 
 stages of his eventful life, over which he may be 
 said to have posted with the rapidity with 
 which he travelled on the road, or, rather, with 
 which he crossed a country after his hounds, 
 knocking down everything before him, I shall 
 bring his memoir to an end ; and if I have 
 followed him through a long train of errors or 
 follies, which mark his eventful course, it has 
 not been for the purpose of exposing but of 
 accounting for them. If I have bared the 
 sore with one hand I have endeavoured to find 
 a balm for it with the other, and it would be 
 needless to demand of me — " who hath required 
 this at your hands ? " I had the concurrence of 
 those most nearly and dearly connected with him, 
 one of whom observed, with no less feeling than truth, 
 that the task I have undertaken would " do the living 
 service and rescue the character of the dead." The 
 man himself has passed away, yet his good deeds 
 remain ; as to his follies, we will cast them to the
 
 170 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 winds ; but unfortunately for his character when 
 alive, as well as for his memory now he is no more, 
 
 " There is a lust in man, no charm can tame, 
 Of loudly publishing his neighbour's shame : 
 On eagle's wings immortal scandals fly, 
 While virtuous actions are but born and die." 
 
 He has been represented as a monster for acts he has 
 never committed, and why should the sun be thus 
 permitted — and " falsely thus " — to go down 
 upon his shame ? It is true, there is one mournful 
 blemish on his character which, as has already 
 been said, I wish could be washed in Lethe 
 and forgotten, as I can offer no extenuation for 
 it but insanity. But if I have given the lie to 
 one single calumny which an illnatured world 
 has cast upon the late John Mytton unjustly, I 
 shall be satisfied. He is the best man, says one of 
 the best judges of mankind, that has the fewest 
 faults ; but he that has none is not to be found 
 on this earth. 1 Poor Mytton's faults were the faults 
 of the head, not of the heart, than which no man had 
 a sounder or a kinder. They were numerous, I 
 admit ; but let not their number be augmented, nei- 
 ther let his many virtues be forgotten — and above all, 
 remember the years in which he suffered adversity ! 
 
 1 Vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille 
 Qui minimis urgetur. — Hor.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 171 
 
 This part of his history, however, cannot be without 
 a useful moral. The contemplation of distress, no 
 matter how created, corrects the pride of prosperity, 
 softens the mind of man, and makes the heart better. 
 Indeed, it was by such representations to the 
 public eye that the nature of man was first polished 
 and refined. 1 
 
 The service done to the living only commences 
 here. By pointing out the fatal rock on which Mr. 
 Mytton struck, a beacon is erected which might warn 
 others — if they would see it — who are entering 
 now on the voyage of life, and the vicissitudes of his 
 latter days and the melancholy circumstances of his 
 death are fearful lessons to the present possessors of 
 
 1 I one day told Mr. Mytton, in jest, I should write a 
 history of his life, if I survived him. "I shall write it 
 myself," he replied, "like Antoninus's ko.6 eavrbv ! " It 
 will be remembered that, in a frolic, I did write his 
 epitaph some years since at Halston, and it was, I am 
 sorry to say, prophetic. It ran thus : — 
 " Here lies John Mytton ; his short career is past, 
 
 The pace was quick, and therefore could not last, 
 
 From end to end he went an arrant burst, 
 
 Determined to be nowhere, or be first. 
 
 No marble monument proclaims his fate — 
 
 No pompous emblems of funereal state ; 
 
 But let this simple tablet say, 
 
 That, upon a much lamented day, 
 
 There went to ground, beneath this mould'ring sod, 
 
 An honest man — the noblest work of God."
 
 172 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 what he once was master of — namely, all that might 
 make life desirable and happy. That memorable 
 position then, that good is often the consequence of 
 evil, is once more illustrated ; and, as the poet says, 
 it often happens, when they little dream of it, that 
 
 " The sons of men may owe 
 The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe." 
 
 Let me indulge in a few more moral 
 reflections, as such themes do not often present 
 themselves to my pen. Man has been repre- 
 sented the miracle of nature, and truly John 
 Mytton does not give the lie to this. Perhaps 
 no character in modern times can be found as 
 a parallel to his, which is on one side dark and 
 desolate ; yet if we turn the reverse, it is not 
 difficult to determine to which side the balance 
 inclines. But in human nature beauty and 
 deformity are so closely linked, that in my opinion 
 the character of no man can be very nicely weighed. 
 Not only are there vices and virtues which bear so 
 strong a resemblance to each other, that it is not 
 easy to determine where the former end and where 
 the latter begin ; but the virtues of some men are so 
 obscured by their vices, and the vices of others so 
 softened down by their virtues (as in both respects 
 was the case here) that it is next to impossible to sep- 
 arate the chaff" and cockle from the good grain. As
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 173 
 
 for reconciling the contradictions and inconsistencies 
 we have now been recounting, it would be vain 
 to attempt it, unless, as Johnson, with his usual 
 force, says, " by those inconsistencies which folly 
 produces and infirmity suffers in the human mind." 
 At all events, an analysis of such a character as 
 that now in our view can only be effected by a 
 sort of debtor and creditor account of good and 
 evil, holding the balance with a charitable hand. 
 But it must be said of Mytton, what Clarendon 
 said of Cromwell, and what had been said of 
 another more than a thousand years back, that 
 his enemies (if he had any) could not condemn 
 him without commending him at the same time. 
 His cardinal virtue was benevolence of heart ; his 
 besetting sin, a destroying spirit, not amenable to 
 any counsel, and an apparent contempt for all 
 moral restraint. In fact, like Charles the Fifth, 
 who impiously asserted " there was but one Charles 
 and one God," Mytton appeared to aim at similar 
 notoriety, and every man pays a dear price for 
 that. To a prodigality of heart, he added a 
 prodigality of hand which no such fortune as his 
 could suffice, and I am very much of Tom Penn's 
 opinion, that " if he had had two hundred thousand 
 a year he would have been in debt in five years." 
 But although his extravagance might have reduced 
 Mr. Mytton to want, he would have remained
 
 174 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 a man of unblemished integrity in rags, and nothing 
 would have engaged him in dishonest practices. 
 Oh, no ! He had a spirit, which, it is true, was 
 " marred in its beauty," but, in this respect, never 
 forgetful of its own nobleness. He was faithful 
 to his friends, an indulgent landlord, and a most 
 kind master ; and, last but not least in the novelty, 
 with all this consideration for the happiness of others, 
 he appears to have possessed very little for himself. 
 
 But he is now — ill-fated man — safe in his urn, 
 and let no one attempt to throw more stones at 
 his monument. There are specks in the sun, 
 straggling weeds amongst the choicest flowers ; 
 and until the sons of Adam cease to be the sons of 
 Adam, perfection must not be expected from them. 
 From a retrospect of his career, let this moral be 
 drawn : — Life has been compared to wine ; it must 
 not be drawn to the dregs : and all who may have 
 it in their power, as he had, to drain nature to 
 satiety, will find out at last — as I myself have at 
 last found out — that tranquillity of mind and 
 health of body, which form the happiness as well 
 as the security of life, are not to be enjoyed under 
 the tyrant rule of passion, and nowhere without 
 something like discretion to guide and direct us in 
 our ordinary concerns and pursuits.
 
 PART IV 
 
 A S may be supposed, the first edition of the Life 
 of Mr. Mytton in the form of a book, as well 
 as its first appearance in the pages of the New 
 Sporting Magazine, created considerable interest 
 in the county of Salop ; it also gave rise to 
 the recalling to mind other adventures and 
 hair-breadth escapes of this most extraordinary 
 man, besides such as I had already detailed. 
 Some of these I am now about to add to them 
 have presented themselves to my recollection 
 since the Memoir was written, and others are 
 from a quarter — and those by far the greater 
 part — which I have good reason to believe 
 may be considered a sufficient guarantee for 
 the truth of them. They have been sent me 
 by the writer of the interesting papers contributed, 
 under the name of " Junglicus," (who, it appears, 
 is a native of Shropshire,) to the pages of the New 
 Sporting Magazine. Suppose then, I commence 
 with a few more of his larking exploits on horse- 
 
 175
 
 176 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 back, and in carriages, in which perhaps no man 
 yet born was his equal. 1 
 
 On one occasion, on his return from hunting, 
 and when within a couple of miles of Halston, he 
 laid a trifling wager with one of the party who ac- 
 companied him, that he would reach home, the first. 
 He suffered his friend to take the lead until they 
 arrived on the Halston domain, and were going at 
 speed in a line with the lake, which is one of con- 
 siderable breadth ; when, suddenly pulling up his 
 horse, and forcing him into the water, he was con- 
 veyed by him with safety across it. Thus, by 
 cutting off an acute angle, he gained a considerable 
 advantage over his competitor ; and, jumping the 
 sunken fence into the flower garden, arrived first at his 
 hall door. It must be observed that Mr. Mytton 
 could not swim, even a little — not across a duck 
 pond! 
 
 It hasalready been shown howregardless Mr. Myt- 
 ton was of weather, whether hot or cold ; and with the 
 
 1 I am certain it will be considered but fair towards 
 myself to state here, that when this Memoir appeared in 
 the pages of the New Sporting Magazine, I never con- 
 templated its coming forth in the shape of a book, illus- 
 trated with plates, and not having an opportunity of 
 revising the press, some errors unavoidably crept in, 
 which it has now been in my power to correct.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 177 
 
 thermometer at zero, he would be seen walking to 
 his stables before breakfast, with nothing on his per- 
 son but his shirt, dressing gown, and slippers. On 
 one occasion he mounted a hunter in this partial 
 attire, and, accompanied by one of his guests, equally 
 wild as himself, rode bare-backed over the country 
 for three or four miles. In some of these frolics, 
 however, he ascertained the good properties of 
 his horses, with which perhaps he would not 
 otherwise have been acquainted. For example 
 — at the end of a capital run, in Shropshire, his 
 whipper-in rode a horse called Oliver, over a brook 
 which Mytton's own horse refused. " Stop," 
 said he to him ; " it is fit that the master should 
 ride the best horse ; " and from that day till he 
 became blind, which was not for several seasons 
 afterwards, no person but himself rode Oliver with 
 hounds. 
 
 Frolics of all sorts delighted him. On one 
 occasion a thought struck him that a good race 
 might be made between waggon horses ; and seeing 
 four of his own at the moment, he ordered all 
 their gearing, except their bridles, to be taken off 
 them, and to be drawn up in a line. Having 
 mounted one of them himself, he persuaded 
 three of his friends to jockey the others, and 
 away they went as fast as words and blows could
 
 178 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 avail. By a preconcerted plan, however, Mytton 
 placed the waggoner at a spot where the ground 
 was somewhat on the descent, with orders to 
 cry out "Who-ho," at a signal given by himself. 
 The horses knowing the voice, and glad to 
 obey the word, stopped so suddenly as to occasion 
 two of his three friends, who rode on the bare 
 back, to glide from their seats, and fall headlong 
 to the ground. 
 
 In a long frost, Mytton was often at a loss for 
 out of door sport, although he was far from being 
 particular as to the means by which it could be 
 procured — so little so indeed that I remember his 
 once letting out a fox, and a lot of his own hounds 
 to hunt him, when he was aware that no horseman 
 — not even himself — had a chance to follow them 
 over two fields, and consequently they were seen 
 no more till the next morning. Being, however, 
 during one very hard frost, quite at a loss for a 
 lark, he had recourse to the following expedient. 
 He sent to Oswestry for twenty pairs of skates, 
 and had twenty of his servants (stable-boys, &c.) 
 mounted upon them, the greater part of them, as 
 may be supposed, for the first time in their lives. 
 He then had a number of rats turned down before 
 terriers — one of each at a time — on the ice, when 
 tumbling was the order of the day. But a cir-
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 179 
 
 cumstance occurred which put a stop to the 
 diversion, if such it could be called ; and I only 
 wonder that the person who was the cause of it 
 escaped with whole bones. The purveyor of the 
 rats was the cowherd, who was paid by the tails 
 for his rats on all other occasions, and to ensure 
 payment for these, had actually cut off their tails 
 before turning them down, which Mytton acci- 
 dentally found out by seeing blood upon the ice. 
 As may be supposed, he immediately put a stop 
 to such a barbarous proceeding, and had not the 
 old cowherd been a favourite, he would have had 
 an awful beating. 
 
 I have already stated that there was a heronry 
 at Halston, in which there were annually from 
 fifty to eighty nests. Mytton expressed a wish 
 to have some young herons taken in order to 
 satisfy himself of the asserted superiority of heron 
 over rook pie. The nests being on the very tops 
 of high trees, neither his keepers, nor any persons 
 about the house, would undertake to get them. 
 " Here goes then," said Mytton ; and stripping 
 off his coat and waistcoat, he ascended a tree 
 of prodigious height, and safely brought down his 
 prize. 
 
 Whilst in the Seventh Hussars, and quartered with
 
 180 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 the army of occupation in Fiance, he heard of a 
 badger that no dog in that country was able to 
 draw. Having offered a bet, which was accepted, 
 that he •would produce a dog in a certain given time 
 that would perform that act, he very coolly ordered 
 his favourite servant ("old John," as he always 
 called him, and who was in his service from his 
 boyhood), to go to a village called Cockshut, in 
 Shropshire, and purchase and bring to him, one 
 Burroughs's dog. Nor did the order end here. 
 "If Burroughs won't part with his dog," said 
 Mytton, " bring him over, dog and all, at his 
 own price"! The dog, however, was bought 
 for eight pounds, and drew the badger in great 
 style. He was a small animal, half bull, half 
 terrier ; and having been brought to England by 
 Mytton, remained at Halston, where he was well 
 taken care of, till he died. 
 
 Most of his frolics were of a ludicrous at the 
 same time of a perfectly harmless nature. I can 
 enumerate a few. On going into the bar of 
 the Lion Inn, Shrewsbury, one evening, when 
 somewhat " sprung " by wine, he was told there 
 was a box m the coach - office for him, which 
 contained two brace of foxes. He requested it 
 might be brought to him ; when taking up the 
 poker, he knocked off the lid of it, and
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 181 
 
 let the foxes out in the room in which the 
 landlady and some of her female friends were 
 assembled — giving a thrilling view - holloa at the 
 time. Now it cannot be said they " broke cover " 
 in good style ; but it may safely be asserted, that 
 they broke such a great quantity of bottles, glasses, 
 and crockery-ware, as to have rendered the joke 
 an expensive one. 
 
 In 1829, having been disappointed by a blank 
 day with Sir Edward Smythe's hounds, which 
 then hunted the Shrewsbury country, he was 
 determined upon a lark when he got home. He 
 accordingly ordered some drafted hounds, which 
 he had in his kennel at Halston, together with all 
 the terriers and bull-dogs, about the house, to be 
 taken to a certain place, where he also ordered to 
 be assembled all the servants of his establishment, 
 mounted on whatever they could catch — such as 
 ponies, donkeys, or mules — and a fox to be turned 
 out before them. The scene was, as may be supposed, 
 a most ludicrous one, although it was accidentally 
 concluded by an act of cruelty from which humanity 
 revolts. A stable-boy, on a fast pony, having been 
 first up when the fox was laid hold of by the hounds, 
 cut off his brush without waiting for him to be killed, 
 and, breaking away from the park, the poor animal 
 ran over several fields in that mutilated state before he
 
 i8 2 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 was again run into by the pack. But Mytton was 
 often in the habit of mounting his servants with his 
 hounds when he turned out bag foxes, merely for 
 the sake of witnessing the falls they got, from their 
 want of skill in horsemanship. And he was equally 
 fond of creating amusement, even at the expense 
 of his own person. For example : — During his 
 successful contest for the borough of Shrewsbury, 
 in 1 819, he threw himself from the car in which 
 he was being carried home from the hustings, 
 through a window into the Lion Inn in that town, 
 at the imminent hazard of his life. But the turmoil 
 of a contested election was a fine field for John 
 Mytton. On one occasion the principal champion 
 of the opposing party stood opposite to his inn, 
 challenging any man to contend with him. Mytton 
 listened to his bravado for a while ; till his Welch 
 blood being excited ; when he set to and thrashed 
 him to his heart's content after only five rounds. 
 He then put something into his fist, as he said, 
 " to make him comfortable for the evening." 
 
 He was very much beloved by the labouring 
 classes within a large circle round his house, 
 and would occasionally enter their cottages 
 without invitation or ceremony. His horse 
 having fallen with him one day, and broken 
 his knees very badly, he applied to an
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 183 
 
 old woman by the road side, for some linen band- 
 ages to apply to them. Being unable to furnish 
 them, he thus addressed her. " Never mind, my 
 good woman ; bring your scissors here and cut off 
 the tail of my shirt, and then you may cut up the 
 sleeves of it, which will make capital bandages." 
 On another occasion, after having been long 
 exposed to cold on the Hawkestone hills, with 
 hounds, he entered a house near Wem, taking 
 his favourite hunter, Baronet, along with him ; 
 and having ordered a good fire to be made to warm 
 himself and his horse, departed for home, saying 
 they were both very much the better for it, and 
 also for what they found in the house, — for he was 
 by no means particular as to what he helped him- 
 self or his horse on these occasions ; and is said 
 once to have seriously injured a horse by dosing 
 him as he dosed himself — ivith wine. 1 
 
 Again — he one day rode at the Ellesmere canal, 
 and of course got a ducking. Finding himself very 
 cold, on the road home, with his hounds, he exchanged 
 his wet coat for a flannel petticoat which he espied on 
 a cottager's garden hedge ; and slipping it over his 
 
 1 It is stated by a correspondent that the horse I allude 
 to, called Sportsman, dropped down dead in his gig. in 
 consequence of his owner having given him a bottle of 
 mulled port wine at Wrexham. I knew the horse well, 
 but cannot vouch for the cause of his death.
 
 1 84 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 head, pursued his course, to the great amusement 
 of all spectators, leaving his coat to be brought to 
 Halston by the owner of the said petticoat ! 
 
 In speaking of Mr. Mytton as a horseman, I 
 have stated the singular fact of his never having 
 so completely tired his horses in the field as to 
 have been obliged to walk, home, which I, in 
 great part, attribute to his strength of hand in 
 assisting them in their work. It is true he rode 
 excellent horses, for bad ones were useless to him ; 
 but he really appeared to have a sort of magic 
 influence over their tempers — at all events it 
 seemed as if they sympathised with him in his 
 frolics — for they were always tranquil under him, 
 and would do almost any thing he required them 
 to do. He would ride them up steps, and down 
 steps, and round the inside of the house, without 
 their appearing to be in the least disconcerted or 
 alarmed, nor did I ever hear that he was a 
 sufferer by such dangerous frolics. 
 
 Some of Mytton's practical jokes were rather 
 "beyond a joke" — or in other words, he would some- 
 times " drive the jest too far." For example. He 
 had the wire of a spring gun laid in the path, in his 
 shrubbery at Halston, which he knew his chaplain 
 would take on his road to church. So soon as he
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 185 
 
 heard the report, for which he was of course on 
 the watch, he ran out of the house and accused 
 the parson of shooting at his pheasants on a Sunday. 
 His reverence's nerves, however, were so dis- 
 turbed by the shock, that he was unable to face 
 his congregation until he returned to the house and 
 composed himself. Mytton's universal remedy was 
 proposed by him, and two glasses of Madeira made 
 the parson all right again. 
 
 Mytton may be said to have lived in a storm, 
 for a row was his delight. Nevertheless, although 
 there was an apparent ferocity of temper about him 
 at times, it was blended with much kindness of 
 heart, and he scarcely ever thrashed a man that he 
 did not give him something afterwards as amends. 
 I remember hearing of an unfortunate horsebreaker 
 having been carried, nolens vo/ens, by a half-broken 
 colt into the midst of his hounds. Mytton flogged 
 him severely, and then gave him a guinea. But 
 there are scores of similar facts to this upon 
 record — one of which I have already related. 
 He would not, however, suffer any man to take 
 an improper liberty with him, and, in that case, 
 there was no compensation for a thrashing. A 
 Shrewsbury tradesman, when a little "sprung*' 
 ventured to call him " Johnny." Mytton floored 
 him on the spot.
 
 1 86 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 He was the dread of the owners of the minor 
 gambling-tables who frequent country races, for 
 he was given to break their banks in more ways 
 than one. In the first place, as I before observed, 
 he was often a great winner ; and in the next, 
 he would demolish the entire apparatus if he 
 suspected any unfair advantage to be taken of 
 himself, or of any other person in the room. 
 At Warwick races, in 1824, he and his com- 
 panions not only broke a rouge et noir table to 
 atoms, but gave the proprietor of it and his 
 gang a sound drubbing into the bargain. They 
 applied to the magistrates for redress, but Mytton 
 had been beforehand with them, and conse- 
 quently they got none. He was likewise once, 
 together with some others, surprised by the 
 Mayor of Chester, in the act of playing hazard, 
 in a room hired for the purpose, on the Sunday 
 evening previous to the races of that town. On 
 seeing the Mayor enter, he coolly put his winnings 
 into his hat ; then the hat on his head ; and then 
 walked away unnoticed, being taken only for a 
 spectator. 
 
 I have spoken of Mytton as a shot, and I believe no 
 sportsman need be superior to what he was at one 
 time of his life. For myself, I only knew him as a 
 game shot, as the term is, never having seen him with
 
 x^ 
 
 ^
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 187 
 
 either pistol or rifle in his hand. It has, however, 
 been represented to me, on the authority to which 
 I have before alluded, that he was a most superior 
 marksman with a rifle — so superior indeed as to 
 be able to hit the edge of a razor at a distance 
 of thirty yards, and occasionally to split his 
 ball! " Credat Judaus" — I do not add "»o« 
 ego " ; yet I never chanced to hear of such a 
 wonderful performance. But I will transcribe 
 the rest of the story, and leave my readers to 
 make the best of it. 
 
 " He would," writes my informant, " cross the 
 yard (at Halston), and shoot from one of the iron 
 gates on the drive, or carriage road, to the coal- 
 house wall, a distance of fifty-five yards, and put his 
 ball through the peg-hole of a trimmer (used for 
 pike fishing). The trimmer-cork, in this instance, 
 was placed on the tame fox's cub, or kennel, with 
 the flat side towards Mytton's aim ; and it invari- 
 ably fell to the ground on each time of being fired 
 at, — the ball actually going through the aperture 
 where the peg of the trimmer is put in, and not 
 above an inch and a half diameter, covered with 
 a piece of white paper, pasted thereon, to ascertain 
 the fact. This he has done over and over again 
 to the amazement of all who have witnessed it, and 
 with his rifle to his shoulder, and not on a rest, as
 
 1 88 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 might be imagined by some. Talk of Americans, 
 for their precision in shooting, after this ! It cannot 
 be surpassed, if equalled." To this account is added 
 the fact of his having shot rats with a rifle, from the 
 top of his house, and sundry other achievements, 
 rather too marvellous to relate. 1 
 
 As I have already said, no part of this extra- 
 ordinary man's character is more interesting to 
 the generality of the readers of this memoir, than 
 that which relates to his exploits in the saddle and 
 in carriages. 
 
 During the period of Sir Bellingham Graham 
 hunting Shropshire, he performed several gallant 
 feats in the field. Whilst suffering severely from 
 the effects of a fall, and with his right arm in a 
 sling, he rode his favourite hunter, Baronet, over 
 the park, paling of the late Lord Berwick, of 
 Atsham, near Shrewsbury, to the astonishment 
 of the whole field — Sir Bellingham himself 
 exclaiming, " Well done, Neck or Nothing ; 
 you are not a bad one to breed from." With 
 the same hounds, he signalized himself greatly 
 in a run from Bomer-wood to Haughmond-hill, 
 when the river Severn brought the field to check. 
 
 1 For example. — He is represented as having more than 
 once put a ball through a man's hat, whilst on his head !
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 189 
 
 Three or four of them managed to get their horses 
 into a boat, but Mytton scorned its assistance. 
 " Let all who call themselves sportsmen," he 
 exclaimed, " follow me ; " and, dashing into the 
 stream, gained the opposite bank, and was one of 
 the very few who saw the fox killed. It must 
 again be observed, that Mytton was no swimmer, 
 and the Severn is broad and deep, and with banks 
 none of the best. 
 
 On another occasion, he nearly lost his life in 
 the Severn, in a run with his own hounds, near 
 Bridgenorth. All the field but himself crossed it 
 by a horse-ferry boat, but he gallantly plunged into 
 it, although it was much swollen by rain at the 
 time. His mare — a fine hunter, called Cara Sposa 
 — was carried a long way down the stream by the 
 current, and although she at length gained the 
 opposite side with him, the bank would not admit 
 of her landing herself. His whipper-in (Ned 
 Evans), however, who had crossed by the boat, 
 fortunately came to his assistance, and pulled him 
 up the bank, leaving the mare in the water. Nor 
 does the story end here. Jumping upon the whip's 
 mare, Mytton got to his hounds, and the mare was 
 eventually brought ashore, without much injury. 
 
 Still I have reason to believe the hair-breadth
 
 igo LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 escapes on wheels even exceeded those in the saddle, 
 which perhaps may be in some measure accounted 
 for by his early predilection for tandem driving — 
 the most hazardous of any, even in the best of hands, 
 and Mytton was no coachman. 1 The following 
 feat, if true, certainly out-herod's Herod ; but my 
 readers shall have it exactly as I myself had it, 
 accompanied with the following remark ; — Nothing, 
 we are led to believe is impossible with God ; 
 nothing was improbable of the late John Mytton. 
 
 " He was one day," says my informant, 
 " engaged to dine with a friend at some distance 
 from Halston, and came, as usual, in his tandem. 
 After dinner, the conversation turning on the 
 danger of that mode of harnessing horses, from the 
 little command the driver can have over the leader, 
 Mytton at once expressed his dissent from this 
 doctrine ; and being under the influence of the 
 "rosy god," offered to bet a pony (^25) all 
 round, that he would, that night, drive his tandem 
 across the country, into the turnpike road, a distance 
 of half a mile, having in his progress to get over 
 a sunk-fence, three yards wide ; a broad deep 
 
 1 When I say he was " no coachman," I mean he knew 
 nothing of the science or system of driving four horses. 
 He would, however, now and then take hold of a team 
 in the Holyhead mail, and I was told that when he did, 
 he never attempted to lark.
 
 ^ 
 
 1 
 
 *
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 191 
 
 drain ; and two stiff quick-set-fences, with 
 ditches on the further side ! ! The bets offered 
 were taken by several of the party present, to 
 the tune of ^150 and upwards, and after the 
 necessary preparations, all turned out to see 
 the fun, although in justice it should be said, as 
 Mytton was then under age, it was not only 
 proposed to him that the bets made should be off, 
 but he was strongly persuaded not to make the 
 attempt. This, however, with him had always a 
 contrary effect ; and twelve men, with lanthorns on 
 poles, having been procured, to aid the light of the 
 moon, away went Mytton at the appointed signal 
 being given. 
 
 " The first obstacle was the sunk fence, into 
 which, as may be expected, he was landed ; but 
 the opposite side being on a gradual slope, from 
 bottom to top, the carriage and its extraordinary 
 inmate, by dint of whipping, were drawn out 
 without receiving injury. Nowise disconcerted, 
 he sent his team at the next fence — the wide 
 drain — and such was the pace he went at, that 
 it was cleared by a yard or more ; but the jerk 
 pitched Mytton on the wheeler's back ; but crawl- 
 ing over the dashing leather, he resumed his seat, 
 and got his horses again into the proper direction, 
 and taking the two remaining fences in gallant style,
 
 192 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 got safe into the turnpike road, and pocketed 
 the cash. This occurred at Mr. Walford's 1 
 of Cronkhill, about four miles from Shrews- 
 bury." 
 
 The above appears somewhat of a miraculous 
 adventure ; but that Mytton was equal to the 
 attempt, no one who knew him as well as I 
 knew him would doubt. Indeed I have already 
 stated a fact (I think in my Shropshire Tour) 
 bearing some relation to it. He was driving 
 me from Shrewsbury to Chillington to dinner, 
 and after one or two trifling occurrences, such as 
 knocking down a bullock, and breaking a shaft 
 of the gig on the road, we found ourselves in an 
 awkward predicament. By having taken a wrong 
 turn, on approaching the house, we found ourselves 
 in a field with no means of getting out of it, except 
 by the gate by which we entered it ; and we 
 were already behind time for dinner. "We'll 
 manage it," said Mytton; "this horse is a capital 
 fencer, so do you get over the fence (a hedge and 
 ditch) and catch him." He then merely unbuckled 
 the bearing rein, gave the horse a cut with his whip, 
 and over he came, gig and all, without the slightest 
 accident. 
 
 1 I knew Mr. Walford, and, for all that I know to the 
 contrary, he is alive to refute or confirm this statement.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 193 
 
 Amongst the numerous anecdotes sent to me 
 since the publication of the first edition of this 
 memoir, was the following. Having shown a 
 friend his entire stud at Halston, as also his hounds, 
 &c, he told him he had something still better 
 worth his seeing, in reserve for him ; and on open- 
 ing his coach-house doors, he thus addressed him. 
 " You see that gig ; last night it was carried clean 
 over my lodge gate, and it is not a bit the worse 
 for it, nor, as you have seen, is the horse that 
 carried it over." Now this sounds rather 
 marvellous ; but the inhabitants of the town of 
 Wrexham, in Denbighshire, can well remember a 
 somewhat similar circumstance occurring at a villa 
 close to that town, some twenty years back. A 
 horse, the property of the late Mr. Watkin Hayman, 
 ran away with his gig from the door, and carried it 
 over a high palisade gate, without injury to either 
 himself or the gig. I went the next day to see the 
 gate, and the only impression left upon it was the 
 fracture of one of the spikes, or points, of the top 
 rail. But Mytton would wantonly seek accidents 
 from gigs and phaetons ; and, latterly, I never 
 entered into one with him, but on condition of 
 his having nothing to do with the reins. I 
 remember seeing him get out of his phaeton 
 at the hall door at Halston, and instead of letting 
 a servant drive it round to the stables, start 
 13
 
 194 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 the horses off by themselves, at a gallop ; and, 
 strange to say, they conducted the carriage safely 
 into the yard, although they had two rather sharp 
 turns to make, and one gate to go through. This 
 was in the life-time of the first Mrs. Mytton, who 
 had more than one providential escape from this 
 same phaeton. 
 
 In his love of frolics, I never knew nor heard of 
 but one person anywise his equal. This was the 
 late well known "Tom Leigh," as he was gener- 
 ally called, of High Leigh, in Cheshire, a gentleman 
 of very large fortune, and altogether a truly singular 
 character. He had a regular pit-fall in his grounds, 
 into which he would walk a stranger who came to 
 visit him, and sundry other manoeuvres which he 
 called sport. Even the parson of the parish was 
 not exempt from being made the subject of a lark, as 
 the following anecdote will show. Imagining him- 
 self to be a good judge of horse-flesh, he invariably 
 brought his new purchase to the Squire of High 
 Leigh, partly for his approbation, and partly in proof 
 of his own skill in the selection of him. On one 
 occasion the nag was ordered into the stable, and 
 his reverence also well taken care of for the night, 
 the next morning being a hunting morning. " Now 
 Doctor," said the Squire, as soon as breakfast was 
 over, " we will go into the stables and see this famous
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 195 
 
 new horse of yours, of which you have talked to 
 me so much." But he was not to be found. The 
 parson declared he himself put him in a particular 
 stall ; and there in truth he ivas ; but the Squire 
 having ordered him to be cropped and docked over 
 night, his owner had not the slightest recollection 
 of him. As may be supposed, a hearty laugh was 
 raised at his expense, and there was an end of all 
 future, somewhat boring, exhibitions of inferior 
 animals to a man who had some of the best horses 
 that money could procure, and who was really a 
 judge of them. But I was never an admirer of 
 practical jokes, especially when, as in this instance, 
 the sufferings of an animal form a feature in them. 
 Neither were many of the frolics of poor Mytton 
 creditable to him. In the first place they are 
 always inconsistent with manhood ; and in the 
 next, knowing no bounds with him, they often led 
 him into excesses which endangered his character 
 as a man, and verified the censure passed upon 
 them by Horace : — 
 
 " Lusit amabiliter ; donee jam ssevus apertam 
 In rabiem verti ccepit jocus." 
 
 Some idea may be formed of Mr. Mytton's zeal 
 in the pursuit of every description of sporting, by the 
 following extract from the catalogue of effects sold 
 at Halston, when the establishment was broken up.
 
 i 9 6 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 NET HOUSE. 
 
 Three bush nets, 26 and 28 yards long, 5 deep 
 Two small mesh nets for bushes 
 Three larger ditto ditto 
 Two drag nets, with large tunnels 
 Four trammel flue nets of various sizes 
 One minnow net 
 One minnow net and pole 
 Three gutter nets. Two casting nets 
 Two drum nets. One cleaching net 
 One large salmon net 
 One gudgeon, or fine meshed, brook net 
 Four landing nets of various sizes 
 Six fishing poles. Four bait cans 
 Two large fish cans. Two angling chairs 
 Two coracles, or small fishing boats 
 Two eel spears. Two trout spears 
 
 One salmon spear. Fishing cases and rods of every 
 description. 
 
 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AND AVIARV. 
 
 Six pheasant nets 
 
 Three rabbit nets and several purse nets 
 
 Two pairs of lark nets 
 
 One partridge net 
 
 Various rabbit traps, in lots 
 
 One hundred and twenty-eight vermin traps of every 
 
 description 
 One badger cub 
 Two fox cubs 
 Thirteen dog kennels 
 Fourteen ferret boxes 
 Three cages for wild animals 
 Nine bird cages 
 Sixteen pairs of quoits 
 Two sets of bowls 
 Sundry cricket bats and balls
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 197 
 
 GUNS. 
 
 Six rifles of various bores 
 Nine double-barrelled guns 
 Four single ditto 
 Some dozens of powder flasks 
 Shot belts, Gun cases, &c. &c. 
 
 As a finish to his shooting career, the following 
 anecdote may be relied upon. On a very cold 
 morning after a very warm night, he disturbed 
 some herons, whilst pheasant shooting. " They 
 are out of distance, sir," said his keeper. " The 
 devil they are ! " replied Mytton ; " but I'll be 
 with them," and into the water he plunged. 
 
 Perhaps Mytton never made himself much more 
 conspicuous in the field, than he did upon what, a 
 few years back, was well known in the hunting 
 circles of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, 
 as " The Shavington Day." This was a day on 
 which a trial of speed, nose, and bottom was to be 
 made between the fox-hounds of Sir Harry Main- 
 waring, of Peover-Hall, Cheshire, commonly called 
 " the Cheshire hounds," hunted by Will Head, 
 now huntsman to the Marquis of Hastings ; those 
 kept joindy by Sir Edward Smythe, of Acton 
 Burnal-park, Mr. Smythe Owen, of Condover- 
 hall, and Mr. Lloyd, of Aston-hall, each in the 
 County of Salop, (late Sir Bellingham Graham's)
 
 1 98 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 commonly called " the Shropshire hounds " ; and 
 those of Mr. Wicksted, whose kennel is at Betley, 
 near Newcastle-under-Lyne, from which they hunt 
 what is called "the Woore country," once hunted 
 by the late Sir Thomas Mostyn, previously to his 
 taking Oxfordshire, and likewise a part of Shrop- 
 shire ; hunted by Charles Wells, formerly huntsman 
 to the Oakley, in the time of Lords Ludlow and 
 Tavistock, and who is still, I believe, with Mr. 
 Wicksted. The interest taken, for many surround- 
 ing miles, in this extraordinary, and, I believe I 
 may add, unique undertaking, was immense ; and 
 it was supposed that, independently of the contents 
 of carriages, there were considerably more than a 
 thousand horsemen in the field, about seven hundred 
 of them clad in scarlet. 
 
 Mytton, as usual, was resolved to make him- 
 self conspicuous in more ways than one on this 
 memorable occasion ; and on the preceding evening 
 he arrived at Whitchurch, to be near to the scene 
 of action, and where he had ordered the best 
 dinner that could be provided for himself and 
 two friends, who accompanied him. But the 
 dinner at Whitchurch and its evils, were not 
 " sufficient for the day " ; he ordered his carriage 
 in the evening, and drove to the village of Wren- 
 bury, the rendezvous of the difFerent packs, and
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 199 
 
 where a main of cocks was being fought. Hav- 
 ing seen what was going on there, he returned 
 to his quarters at Whitchurch, and after draw- 
 ing a commercial traveller from his bed, and 
 dosing him with wine, retired at length to his 
 own. 
 
 The place of meeting to decide this important 
 affair, was Shavington-hall, the seat of the late 
 Viscount Kilmorey, who, although but little of 
 a fox-hunter himself, was a great promoter of 
 the sport, by his strict preservation of foxes ; 
 and he left an excellent name behind him, 
 as one of "the right sort." The time fixed 
 was eleven o'clock, and at that hour a scene 
 highly interesting to sportsmen presented it- 
 self, and indeed to all descriptions of persons 
 who witnessed it ; for it is well known that 
 there is nothing which adds more to scenery, 
 fine scenery, which this park affords, than a 
 numerously attended pack of hounds, in motion. 
 
 The modus operandi was this : — Six couples out of 
 each pack were selected for the trial, forming a pro- 
 perly sized pack, and they appeared in the field, 
 attended by their respective huntsmen, namely, Will 
 Head, for the Cheshire ; John Wrigglesworth, now 
 huntsman to Mr. Smythe Owen, for the Shropshire ;
 
 200 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 and Charles Wells, for Mr. Wicksted's — Will Head 
 acting as leading huntsman of the day, by reason of 
 its being the country which his hounds claimed as 
 their own as well as Cheshire being the senior pack. 
 
 These being the best days of the Tomkinsons, 
 the Gleggs, the Brookes, Jack Ford, and sundry 
 other first flight Cheshire men, it may naturally be 
 imagined, that a spirit of rivalry amongst men would 
 accompany the trial of speed in hounds, and that 
 Mytton would be amongst the foremost to distinguish 
 himself. That he came prepared to do so, was 
 evident by the fact of his having had his capital 
 Hit-or-Miss mare reserved for this particular 
 occasion, orders having been given to his groom to 
 11 have her right fit to go." l 
 
 Precisely at the hour of twelve, the business of the 
 day commenced ; the pack were thrown into what is 
 called the Big- wood, in Shavington-park, from which 
 a fox almost immediately broke, and, having stood 
 
 1 Many of your readers will remember my account, in 
 my Shropshire Tour, of this Hit-or-Miss mare having 
 carried Mr. Mytton, superbly, throughout a capital run 
 of an hour and forty minutes, with Sir Bellingham 
 Graham's hounds, from Babbins-wood, and over a very 
 severe country. Sir Bellingham confessed, that he had 
 never before been so ridden away from, as he was on that 
 day by Mytton, and that is saying enough for the merits 
 of the Hit-or-Miss mare.
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 v
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 201 
 
 before them for thirty minutes, at a very severe 
 pace, was lost near the village of Clovely. 
 Mytton very soon got the lead, and very 
 soon lost it, and nearly his life at the same 
 time ; for coming to a deep sunk, fence, 
 or ha-ha, at which there was a high and stiff 
 rail, on the rising side, which he gallantly 
 charged, his mare fell and gave him a severe 
 fall, — in addition to his being much hurt by 
 another person's horse, that had followed him, 
 tumbling upon him, and crushing him. " Now, 
 
 FOR THE HONOUR OF SHROPSHIRE," Said he, 
 
 when he rode at this fence, which indicated two 
 things ; First, that he considered the fence some- 
 thing Hke a stopper ; and secondly, that he 
 was determined not to be beaten by any man 
 in the field, so long as his mare could keep 
 on her legs. This fall, however, shook him 
 much, and although he remounted and went on — 
 bleeding and bare-headed, for his hat was too much 
 crushed to be worth picking up, the horse that 
 followed him having alighted on it — he was forced 
 to content himself with following a leader for the 
 remainder of this day. 
 
 Not satisfied with the burst, the rival hounds drew 
 the covers in Combermere-paik, the seat of Lord 
 Combermere, and found a second fox, which took
 
 202 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 them a ring of about twelve miles, in which 
 some excellent hunting was displayed ; but it being 
 ascertained that they were running a heavy vixen 
 (i.e., a bitch fox, in whelp), they were whipped 
 off without tasting blood. As to which lot 
 of hounds bore off the palm, it would not 
 only be invidious, but now useless to say, 
 neither does my informant state that fact ; — 
 and, observe, reader ! the foregoing account has 
 been forwarded to me from Shropshire, for 
 insertion, and is not the result of my own 
 personal observation, as I was not present on 
 the memorable occasion which gave birth to 
 it. I have, however, reason to believe it is a 
 true one, inasmuch as it is quite characteristic of 
 the man. 
 
 The stables and boxes at Halston have the 
 doors covered with a greater or less number of 
 plates, as the shoes worn by racers are called. 
 They are painted light blue, with white in the 
 centre, in which are printed all the horses' names, 
 the stakes, &c. won by them in every year up to 
 1827 or later. Each stake or race won, has a 
 plate to record it, and they are arranged by 
 half dozens in a line across the breadth of 
 the door. The racing career of any individual 
 horse is recorded along with others on the door
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 203 
 
 of the particular stable or box he once occupied, and 
 there are nine stables and box doors covered with 
 plates in the following order. 
 
 First set of stables, 
 
 on the door are recorded 27 Stakes in as many plates 
 
 Second 
 
 ditto 
 
 "7 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Third 
 
 ditto 
 
 18 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Fourth 
 
 ditto 
 
 24 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Fifth 
 
 ditto 
 
 5 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Sixth 
 
 ditto 
 
 6 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Seventh 
 
 ditto 
 
 16 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Eighth 
 
 ditto 
 
 26 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto 
 
 Ninth 
 
 ditto 
 
 26 
 Total 165 
 
 ditto 
 
 Stakes. 
 
 ditto 
 
 But there are many stakes not recorded on the 
 doors, for I am told none have been entered since 
 the year 1827. 
 
 The following horses, &c, are recorded to have 
 won stakes, plates, and matches, to the number 
 specified against their respective names, viz : — 
 
 Langolee . 
 Singlepeeper 
 Fox-huntress 
 Chance . 
 Sir Oliver . 
 Jovial . 
 Milo Mare 
 
 Brought forivard 
 Harriet Wilson 
 Mandeville 
 Ruler . 
 Libertine 
 Victorine . 
 Mallet . . 
 Whittington 
 
 40
 
 204 
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Brought forward 40 
 
 Brought forivard 
 
 118 
 
 Alexander .... 2 
 
 Bowsprit . 
 
 1 
 
 Habberley . 
 
 
 • J 3 
 
 Colt by Amadis . 
 
 3 
 
 Cara Spoza 
 
 
 2 
 
 Oswestry . 
 
 6 
 
 Ashbourn . . 
 
 
 1 
 
 Ludford 
 
 4 
 
 Anti-radical . 
 
 
 17 
 
 Geranium . 
 
 3 
 
 Banker . . . 
 
 
 4 
 
 Cannon-ball Filly 
 
 1 
 
 Ostrich . . 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 3 
 
 Comrade . 
 
 
 1 
 
 George the Third 
 
 1 
 
 Colt by Bustard 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 7 
 
 Euphrates. 
 
 
 16 
 
 Sir William 
 
 4 
 
 Flexible . 
 
 
 6 
 
 Chancellor . 
 
 1 
 
 Longwaist 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 1 
 
 Tattoo . . . 
 
 
 2 
 
 Paradigm . 
 
 1 
 
 Handel . . 
 
 
 2 
 
 Berghill. . . . 
 
 6 
 
 Claudius . 
 
 
 2 
 
 Comte dArtois . 
 
 5 
 
 Paul Potter . . 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 118 
 
 165 
 
 The foregoing account has been sent to me by a 
 Shropshire gentleman, and I have every reason to 
 believe it to be correct. 
 
 The following lines on the death of Mr. 
 Mytton, were added by the publisher, the author 
 being unknown to me. Let the merits of 
 them speak for themselves ; it only remains for 
 me to remark, that they breathe the effusions of 
 a warm and friendly heart, and display a know- 
 ledge of the character of the man they are intended 
 to commemorate.
 
 LIFE OF MYTTON 205 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF JOHN MYTTON, Esq. 
 
 "The earth 
 Owns no such spirit as his." 
 
 Manfred. 
 
 Hast thou e'er trod Italia's classic land ? 
 Paus'd by her temples, e'en in ruins grand ? 
 Mark'd the rude weed's obnoxious shadow thrown 
 O'er sculptured forms, the gods themselves might 
 
 own ? 
 Beheld vile reptiles desecrate the shrine 
 That pious worshippers had deem'd divine ? 
 Heard the loud tempest give its anger tongue 
 Where once devotion's holy chauntings rung ? 
 Mark'd where the dove once rear'd her peaceful 
 
 brood 
 The hungry vulture hold his feast of blood ? 
 If so, what felt ye at this game of fate ? 
 Disgust or pity ? fond regret or hate ? 
 There needs no sound to tell thy proud reply, — 
 Thy soul's indignant answer's in thine eye ! 
 And shall (however beautiful) a stone 
 Claim from our hearts all sympathy alone ? 
 Shall the unequall'd fabric of a man, 
 Built upon nature's most exalted plan,
 
 ao6 LIFE OF MYTTON 
 
 Tho' razed by tempests and by weeds defac'd, 
 Tho' carrion vultures have the dove displac'd, 
 Tho' noisome reptiles from their slimy springs 
 Pollute the heart's most holy, treasur'd, things — 
 Say, shall we coldly gaze upon this scene, 
 Nor mourn the loveliness that once has been ? 
 Aye, mourn as man may mourn, but not with tears, 
 His age of passion thro' a life of years ; 
 Mourn ! but no tears — they honour not the grave 
 Of such as Mytton was, the kind, the brave. 
 His was a restless soul — too wildly prone 
 To wear the show of vices not his own, 
 To mock the love his heart most dearly priz'd, 
 To scorn the lesson wisdom most advis'd, 
 And, in the maddening poison of the bowl, 
 Drown in one mighty draught — heart — health — 
 
 and soul. 
 His was the hand most ready to bestow, 
 The good effected all he ask'd to know ; 
 The friend unchang'd — the foe that scorn'd to sue, 
 Himself the only victim that he slew. 
 His vices all deformities of art, 
 Whilst every virtue centered in his heart. 
 For such we mourn — and be our grief expi ess'd 
 By faults forgotten and by good confess'd ! 
 
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