I have a little sheaf of Army Snobs in my portfolio, but shall pause in
my attack upon the forces till next week.
CHAPTER X--MILITARY SNOBS
Walking in the Park yesterday with my young friend Tagg, and discoursing
with him upon the next number of the Snob, at the very nick of time
who should pass us but two very good specimens of Military Snobs,--the
Sporting Military Snob, Capt. Rag, and the 'lurking' or raffish Military
Snob, Ensign Famish. Indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging
on horseback, about five o'clock, under the trees by the Serpentine,
examining critically the inmates of the flashy broughams which parade up
and down 'the Lady's Mile.'
Tagg and Rag are very well acquainted, and so the former, with that
candour inseparable from intimate friendship, told me his dear friend's
history. Captain Rag is a small dapper north-country man. He went when
quite a boy into a crack light cavalry regiment, and by the time he got
his troop, had cheated all his brother officers so completely, selling
them lame horses for sound ones, and winning their money by all manner
of strange and ingenious contrivances, that his Colonel advised him to
retire; which he did without much reluctance, accommodating a youngster,
who had just entered the regiment, with a glandered charger at an
uncommonly stiff figure.
He has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple-chasing, and the
turf. His head-quarters are 'Rummer's,' in Conduit Street, where
he keeps his kit; but he is ever on the move in the exercise of his
vocation as a gentleman-jockey and gentleman-leg.
According to BELL'S LIFE, he is an invariable attendant at all races,
and an actor in most of them. He rode the winner at Leamington; he was
left for dead in a ditch a fortnight ago at Harrow; and yet there he
was, last week, at the Croix de Berny, pale and determined as ever,
astonishing the BADAUDS of Paris by the elegance of his seat and the
neatness of his rig, as he took a preliminary gallop on that vicious
brute 'The Disowned,' before starting for 'the French Grand National.'
He is a regular attendant at the Corner, where he compiles a limited but
comfortable libretto. During season he rides often in the Park, mounted
on a clever well-bred pony. He is to be seen escorting celebrated
horsewoman, Fanny Highflyer, or in confidential converse with Lord
Thimblerig, the eminent handicapper.
He carefully avoids decent society, and would rather dine off a steak at
the 'One Tun' with Sam Snaffle the jockey, Captain O'Rourke, and two or
three other notorious turf robbers, than with the choicest company in
London. He likes to announce at 'Rummer's' that he is going to run down
and spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus, the leg,
at his little box near Epsom; where, if report speak true, many 'rummish
plants' are concocted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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