The things we do!

Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long
impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me
with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's grandfather
"with the wild Prince and Poins," of his feats in the hunting-field, over
the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a
sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He
played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful
sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the
penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of
the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year.
The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. "Dorking cannot
cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park," the good old Major used to
tell with tragic accents, "he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and
pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and
gardens, which are still the show of the county, and among the most
splendid in the island.


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