Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/84

54 A man who dances, who dresses decently, and who is tolerably well introduced, rarely wants invitations to balls in London, and I found some occupation for my evenings.

But I sadly wanted a club, and in those days the institution was not as common as it is now. At odd times I went to the theatres, and amused myself with the humours of the little "Pic" and the old Cocoa-Nut Tree. But hazard is a terrible game. It takes a man years to learn it well, and by that time he has lost all the luck with which he begins. I always disliked private play, although I played a tolerable hand at whist, écarté, and piquet, but I found it almost as unpleasant to win from my friends as to lose to my friends. On the other hand, I was unusually lucky at public tables. I went upon a principle, not a theory, which has ruined so many men. I noted as a rule that players are brave enough when they lose, whereas they begin to fear when they win. My plan, therefore, was to put a certain sum in my pocket and resolve never to exceed it. If I lost it I stopped, one of the advantages of public over private playing; but I did not lay down any limits to winning when I was in luck; I boldly went ahead, and only stopped when I found fortune turning the other way.

My grandmother's house was hardly pleasant to a devoted smoker; I was put out on the leads, leading from the staircase, whenever I required a weed. So I took lodgings in Maddox Street, and there became as it were a "man about town." My brother Edward joined me, and we had, as the Yankees say, "A high old time." It appeared only too short, and presently came on the Spring Term, when I returned to my frouzy rooms in Trinity College; and I had not formed many friendships in Trinity itself. It had made a name for fastness amongst the last generation of undergraduates, and now a reaction had set in. They laughed at me, at my first lecture, because I spoke in Roman Latin—real Latin—I did not know the English pronunciation, only known in England. The only men of my own college I met in after life, were Father Coleridge, S.J., and Edward A. Freeman, of Somerleaze, the historian.

Mrs. Grundy had then just begun to regin, inaugurated by Douglas Jerrold with "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" This ancient genitrix highly disapproved of my foreign ways, and my expressed dislike to school and college, over which I ought to have waxed sentimental, tender, and æsthetic; it appeared to her a little short of blasphemy. I had a few friends at "Exeter," including Richards, and three at Brasenose, then famous for drinking heavy beers and ales as Bonn or Heidelberg, especially on Shrove Tuesday, when certain verses chaffingly called the "Carmen seculare" used to be sung. But I