“The archbishop may go to the devil!” snapped Mr. Garrick.  “I do not know a greater rascal, except yourself.”

I was little short of thunderstruck.  But presently Mr. Garrick added complainingly: 

“I paid a guinea for the archbishop, but the fellow got me three murderers to-day and the best alderman I ever clapped eyes upon.  So we are square.”

After the play we supped with him at his new house in Adelphi Terrace, next Topham Beauclerk’s.  ’Twas handsomely built in the Italian style, and newly furnished throughout, for Mr. Garrick travelled now with a coach and six and four menservants, forsooth.  And amongst other things he took pride in showing us that night was a handsome snuffbox which the King of Denmark had given him the year before, his Majesty’s portrait set in jewels thereon.

Presently the news of the trial of Lord Baltimore’s horse began to be noised about, and was followed by a deluge of wagers at Brooks’s and White’s and elsewhere.  Comyn and Fox, my chief supporters, laid large sums upon me, despite all my persuasion.  But the most unpleasant part of the publicity was the rumour that the match was connected with the struggle for Miss Manners’s hand.  I was pressed with invitations to go into the country to ride this or that horse.  His Grace the Duke of Grafton had a mount he would have me try at Wakefield Lodge, and was far from pleasant over my refusal of his invitation.  I was besieged by young noblemen like Lord Derby and Lord Foley, until I was heartily sick of notoriety, and cursed the indiscretion of the person who let out the news, and my own likewise.  My Lord March, who did me the honour to lay one hundred pounds upon my skill, insisted that I should make one of a party to the famous amphitheatre near Lambeth.  Mr. Astley, the showman, being informed of his Lordship’s intention, met us on Westminster Bridge dressed in his uniform as sergeant major of the Royal Light Dragoons and mounted on a white charger.  He escorted us to one of the large boxes under the pent-house reserved for the gentry.  And when the show was over and the place cleared, begged, that I would ride his Indian Chief.  I refused; but March pressed me, and Comyn declared he had staked his reputation upon my horsemanship.  Astley was a large man, about my build, and I donned a pair of his leather breeches and boots, and put Indian Chief to his paces around the ring.  I found him no more restive, nor as much so, as Firefly.  The gentlemen were good enough to clap me roundly, and Astley vowed (no doubt because of the noble patrons present) that he had never seen a better seat.

We all repaired afterwards for supper to Don Saltero’s Coffee House and Museum in Chelsea.  And I remembered having heard my grandfather speak of the place, and tell how he had seen Sir Richard Steele there, listening to the Don scraping away at the “Merry Christ Church Bells” on his fiddle.  The Don was since dead, but King James’s coronation sword and King Henry VIII.’s coat of mail still hung on the walls.