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They were generally more or less spavined brutes, which he had bought at Tattersall's auctions for a ridiculous price, and so quiet and well in hand that they might have been held with a silk thread, but with a good shape, bright eyes, and coats that glistened like silk.
It is true I have been deceived by them, but it was from the want of proper judgment in myself, arising from a foolish and ill-directed education. I should have been equally ill-treated in the purchase of a horse at Tattersall's, or a pound of tea in Piccadilly, had I been equally unacquainted with the value of the articles. We both, as nations, have erred.
He spared no expense; he gambled, betted, played at every game of chance; he was well known at Tattersall's in all the green rooms; he played to perfection the part of a fast man about town, while the woman he had pretended to love was wearing her life away in mortification and suspense. At last, what she had long foreseen came to pass.
There were engravings after Morland on the walls, and the silver on the breakfast-table was Queen Anne the little round tea urn Owen and Evelyn had picked up the other day in a suburban shop; the horses, whose glittering red hides could be seen through the window, had been bought last Saturday at Tattersall's.
Of late years there has been the sale of the Quorn for, it was said, P3,000, and the late Lord Willoughby de Broke valued the North Warwickshire for the county to purchase at P2,500. In 1903 the Atherstone was valued by Mr. Rawlence, the well-known representative of Tattersall's, at P3,500, or something like P50 a hound, and that has been considered very cheap.
He had bought a mare at Tattersall's for his daughter to ride, and brought her down to Dangerfield, thinking she would conduct herself like the rest of her species. How well I remember my governess's face when she gave me leave to go to the stable with Sir Harry and look over the new purchase.
The knowing ones declared this man worthy to rank high amongst the best of them; but no one knew where he lived, or what he was. He was rarely known to miss a race; and he was conspicuous amongst the crowd in those mysterious purlieus where the plebeian bookmen, who are unworthy to enter the sacred precincts of Tattersall's, mostly do congregate, in utter defiance of the police.
Tattersall's, therefore, is not without its privateers. Many persons of rank and character patronize sporting, from a patriotic but mistaken notion, that it is to the turf alone the excellence of the English horse is attributable.
They play at billiards in the morning, they absorb pale ale for breakfast, and 'top up' with glasses of strong waters. They go down to Tattersall's, and swagger in the Park, with their hands plunged in the pockets of their paletots. What strikes me especially in the outward demeanour of sporting youth is their amazing gravity, their conciseness of speech, and careworn and moody air.
The average Londoner would have taken him for a county gentleman on a visit to the Agricultural Show at Islington, with a morning at Tattersall's as a variant. Yet, Sam Weller's extensive and peculiar knowledge of London compared with his as a freshman's with a don's of a university.