There was boldness for you on both sides!  All the town was laughing and betting on the event of the night in June:  and the odds were in favour of Kirby; for though, Lord Cressett was quite the popular young English nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his coin, in those days men who had smelt powder were often prized above titles, and the feeling, out of society, was very strong for Kirby, even previous to the fight on the heath.  And the age of the indomitable adventurer must have contributed to his popularity.  He was the hero of every song.

       “’What’s age to me!” cries Kirby;
        “Why, young and fresh let her be,
        But it ’s mighty better reasoned
        For a man to be well seasoned,
        And a man she has in me,” cries Kirby.’

As to his exact age: 

       “‘Write me down sixty-three,” cries Kirby.’

I have always maintained that it was an understatement.  We must remember, it was not Kirby speaking, but the song-writer.  Kirby would not, in my opinion, have numbered years he was proud of below their due quantity.  He was more, if he died at ninety-one; and Chillon Switzer John Kirby, born eleven months after the elopement, was, we know, twenty-three years old when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed him little besides a law-suit with the Austrian Government, and the care of Carinthia Jane, the second child of this extraordinary union; both children born in wedlock, as you will hear.  Sixty-three, or sixty-seven, near upon seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins with groans and weak knees, Kirby was a match for his juniors, which they discovered.

Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincolnshire squire of an ancient stock, was proud of his blood, and claimed descent from a chief of the Danish rovers.

       ’"What’s rank to me!” cries Kirby;
        “A titled lass let her be,
          But unless my plans miscarry,
          I’ll show her when we marry;
        As brave a pedigree,” cries Kirby.’

That was the song-writer’s answer to the charge that the countess had stooped to a degrading alliance.

John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, all males, and hard at the bottle early in life:  ‘for want of proper occupation,’ he says in his Memoirs, and applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for being ahead of him in renouncing strong dunks, because he found that he ’cursed better upon water.’  Water, however, helped Stanson Kirby to outlive his brothers and inherit the Lincolnshire property, and at the period of the great scandal in London he was palsied, and waited on by his grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the hero of an adventure celebrated in our Law courts and on the English stage; for he took possession of his coachman’s wife, and was accused of compassing the death of the husband.  He was not hanged for it, so we are bound to think him not guilty.