Whenever sport was to be knocked out of anyone or anything Lord William was sure to be there. Nothing came amiss to him, fisticuffs, American cock-fighting, hunting, racing, polo, the latter only just becoming popular in England. It was about this time that he came into his share of the family fortune. He considered it so inadequate to his needs, that he decided to spend the capital as interest. This is how he described it to me one evening, years later, in the grounds of the Taj at Agra. “So inadequate to my needs was the interest on my share, that I decided to use my capital as income so long as it would last, and rearrange my life again when it came to an end. I started a coach, a stud of hunters, some racehorses, and laid myself out for a real good time. I managed to hold on until just before the regiment was ordered to India. Then, as the fateful day drew near, I thought I would have one final flutter at the Raleigh Club. A turn up of three cards at £1000 a card! I won the lot, was able to pay up all I owed and clear out to India, cleaned out, but a free man as to debt.” I do not feel I am betraying any confidence, as he told the story to several people, and really it is an amazing example of what pluck and daring, combined with determination, can do. A lesson in resource and audacity that a young subaltern should arrive in India a penniless soldier, and yet reach the height of social and official fame combined with pecuniary comfort, as he did, in a few years. To sit down with premeditation and map out such a wild scheme, and then be able to bring it off and win the odd trick, was rather wonderful. Possibly what he suffered during those years when he was riding for a fall made him reckless, risking his life more frequently than he otherwise would have done, thinking it was bound to be a short and merry one, so what matter? Or, like others I have known when riding for a fall, would not give himself time to think. Some of the extraordinarily kind things I have known him do for young men when in financial difficulties, though not overburdened with cash himself at the time, leads me to the belief that he remembered his feelings when the crash of his own arranging was drawing near, assisted perhaps by a little luck, which saved him. Considering that he was not a rich man, it was wonderful how lavish was his unselfish and large-hearted generosity. I verily believe no living soul ever went to him in trouble and was sent “empty away.” Yet he could never bear his left hand to know what his right hand was doing. It really ruffled him if he ever heard of it again. Nevertheless, some of those near his left hand did know what his right was doing, more often perhaps than he guessed.