Lucrative
Gambling

This extraordinary and still famous personage, better known as the Duke of Queensberry, was the `observed of all observers' almost from his boyhood to extreme old age. His passions were for women and the turf; and the sensual devotedness with which he pursued the one, and the eccentricity which he displayed in the enjoyment of both, added to the observation which he attracted from his position as a man of high rank and princely fortune, rendered him an object of unceasing curiosity.

He was deeply versed in the mysteries of the turf, and in all practical and theoretical knowledge connected with the race-course was acknowledged to be the most accomplished gambling adept of his own time. He seems also to have been a skilful gambling gamester and player of billiards. Writing to George Selwyn from Paris in 1763, he says:--`I won the first day about L2000, of which I brought off about L1500. All things are exaggerated, I am supposed to have won at least twice as much.' In 1765 he is said to have won two thousand louis of a German at gambling billiards. Writing to Selwyn, Gilly Williams says of him: `I did not know he was more adept at that gambling game than you are at any other, but I think you are both said to be losers on the whole, at least Betty says that her letters mention you as pillaged.'

Among the numerous occasions on which the name of the Duke of Queensberry came before the public in connection with sporting and gambling matters, may be mentioned the circumstance of the following curious trial, which took place before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench, in 1771. The Duke of Queensberry, then Lord March, was the plaintiff, and a Mr Pigot the defendant. The object of this trial was to recover the sum of five hundred guineas, being the amount of a wager laid by the duke With Mr Pigot--whether Sir William Codrington or _OLD_ Mr Pigot should die first. It had singularly happened that Mr Pigot died suddenly the same morning, of the gout in his head, but before either of the parties interested in the result of the wager could by any possibility have been made acquainted with the fact. In the contemporary accounts of the trial, the Duke of Queensberry is mentioned as having been accommodated with a seat on the bench; while Lord Ossory, and several other noblemen, were examined on the merits of the case. By the counsel for the defendant it was argued that (as in the case of a horse dying before the day on which he was to be run) the wager was invalid and annulled. Lord Mansfield, however, was of a different opinion; and after a brief charge from that great lawyer, the jury brought in a verdict for the plaintiff for five hundred guineas, and he sentenced the defendant to defray the costs of the suit.[143]

[143] Jesse, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 194.

This prince of debauchees seems to have surpassed every model of the kind, ancient or modern. In his prime he reproduced in his own drawing-room the scene of Paris and the Goddesses, exactly as we see it in classic pictures, three of the most beautiful women of London representing the divinities as they appeared to Paris on Mount Ida, while he himself, dressed as the Dardan shepherd holding a gilded apple (it should have been really golden) in his hand, conferred the prize on her whom he deemed the fairest. In his decrepit old age it was his custom, in fine sunny weather, to seat himself in his balcony in Piccadilly, where his figure was familiar to every person who was in the habit of passing through that great thoroughfare. Here (his emaciated figure rendered the more conspicuous from his custom of holding a parasol over his head) he was in the habit of watching every attractive female form, and ogling every pretty face that met his eye. He is said, indeed, to have kept a pony and a servant in constant readiness, in order to follow and ascertain the residence of any fair girl whose attractions particularly caught his fancy! At this period the old man was deaf with one ear, blind with one eye, nearly toothless, and labouring under multiplied infirmities. But the hideous propensities of his prime still pursued him when all enjoyment was impossible. Can there be a greater penalty for unbridled licentiousness?

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