Leg Glance
A sportsman and an officer lays a wager that he can make a trigger-happy Irishman go barefoot in public.
?1770s
King George III 1760-1820
A sportsman and an officer lays a wager that he can make a trigger-happy Irishman go barefoot in public.
?1770s
King George III 1760-1820
It is a familiar scene: the legendary gunslinger in the saloon, the young upstart ragging on him, and a table of fellow-gamblers urging the reckless boy to think better of it. In this case however, it all took place in a coffee-house in Georgian London, and the upstart was a middle-order batsman for the MCC.
SIR George Beaumont,* when a young man, was one day in the Mount (a famous coffee-house in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square) with Harvey Aston.* Various persons were seated at different tables. Among others present, there was an Irishman who was very celebrated as a duellist, having killed at least half-a-dozen antagonists.*
Aston, talking to some of his acquaintance, swore that he would make the duellist stand barefooted before them. “You had better take care what you say,” they replied; “he has his eye upon you.” “No matter,” rejoined Aston; “I declare again that he shall stand barefooted before you, if you will make up among you a purse of fifty guineas.”
Sir George Howland Beaumont, 7th Baronet (1753-1827). He is remembered chiefly as an energetic patron of the arts, with very strong opinions on artistic good taste which did not include the works of J.M.W. Turner, though he was friendly towards John Constable and an admirer of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s work. Beaumont’s gift of sixteen paintings to the National Gallery in 1825, just a year after it was founded, helped to form the backbone of its collection.
Colonel Henry Hervey Aston (1759-1798) was an officer in the British Army who was mortally wounded in a duel against a Major Allen in Madras in December 1798, just one day after fighting another with a Major Picton in which both parties had deliberately shot high. In happier times, Henry had played thirteen first-class matches as a batsman for the Hambledon Club and the MCC. Even then he walked on the wild side, winning a duel in 1790 against a certain Lieutenant Fitzgerald at the cost of severe wounding. Aston was a grandson of the Revd Harry Aston (1701-1748), a friend of Samuel Johnson.
Rogers does not name the duellist. The most celebrated Irish duellist of the day was surely Colonel Richard ‘Hairtrigger Dick’ Martin (1754-1834), born in Ballynahinch Castle in County Galway, for which he was a Member of Parliament at Westminster from 1800. A complex man, he was opposed to slavery and campaigned vigorously for the prevention of cruelty to animals, winning a notable victory in Martin’s Act (1822) criminalising the ill-treatment of cattle, and earning him the soubriquet ‘Humanity Dick’ from King George IV; but his humanity apparently did not stop him participating in over a hundred duels with sword and pistol.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What wager did Hervey Aston lay?