Among his eccentricities was an inordinate love of filberts. He and a friend ate eighteen pounds on one occasion, on the way down from London in his carriage, and when they reached Halston they were “up to their knees in nutshells,” as he declared. A sporting hairdresser of Shrewsbury, who generally supplied him with filberts, once said that he had sent two cartloads to Halston in one season. Perhaps he ate them to provoke a thirst, and certainly his exploits with the port equalled his consumption of nuts, four to six bottles a day being his usual performance. But he would drink anything. On one occasion, going into the establishment of the sporting hairdresser, he called imperiously for something, and taking down a bottle of lavender-water, knocked the head off and drank the contents. He said it would be “a good preservative against the night air.” In a comparison made by an admiring friend between him and the dissolute Lord Rochester of Charles II.’s time—a comparison showing Mytton to be Rochester’s superior in every kind of extravagance and depravity—it was said that Rochester was drunk continually for five years, and Mytton beat him by seven. He had a breath like a wine-vault and a complexion like a beet-root, as a result of these excesses. They, naturally, did not lessen his extravagances, but never left him helpless. “Damn this hiccup!” he exclaimed one night, when standing in his nightshirt, about to get into bed, “but I’ll _frighten_ it away,” that being the usually accepted theory of ridding one’s self of that distressing spasm. So saying, he took a lighted candle and, applying it to the tail of his shirt, was instantly enveloped in flames. By the exertions of two friends, who rushed to his aid and tore the blazing garments piecemeal from him, he was saved from being burnt to death; but his only remark was, as he staggered, naked, to bed, “The hiccup is gone, by God!” He ran his course to its appointed and inevitable end. The fine timber of his estate went to pay for his racing, hunting, gambling, and drinking extravagances, and for others still less reputable, and the estate followed. A relative remonstrated with him, and deplored the approaching necessity of alienating those ancestral acres. “How long,” asked Mytton, “has the property been in the family?” “Five hundred years,” was the reply. “Then,” rejoined the reckless Squire, with an oath, “it is high time it went out of it.” Imprisonment for debt, and exile to the Continent came later. Brandy did what port could not, and sent the graceless scion of an ancient stock to his death-bed. His body was brought from London and laid among the ashes of worthier men, who had passed on to their descendants the patrimony they had received, Halston passed away with the Mad Squire to other hands, and his son lived and died landless, filling the position of bailiff to a Shropshire nobleman. XXX