Racing “Tips” Picked Up in Queer Places.

Franklin Times, Volume XXV, Issue 63, 4 June 1935, Page 5

Racing “Tips” Picked Up in Queer Places.

ONE IN A TURKISH BATH.

STORIES FOR ALL MOODS. j AMUSING EXPERIENCES TOLD. J People pick up racing "tips’' in queer places. Sir Lionel Earle, who was for many years Permanent Secretary to the Office of Works, picked one up in a Turkish hatli in Paris! In the cooling chamber, he tells us in his reminiscences, “Turn Over the Page,” lie found himself next to a slim man who asked him if he were going to Longehamps that afternoon to see the Grand Prix: —“l replied that 1 knew ■ nothing about racing, so never went, i He then told me that he was riding : in ttie race. I asked him if he ; thought he had a chance of winning;| lie said none, hut he thought he would he second. He was riding a horse called The Lambskin. After he had gone to dress I asked the hath attendant who he was, and he told me— Fred Archer!” So Sir Lionel decided to see the. i race. lie found a bookmaker who j offered him long odds against The Lambskin coming in second —and ho won quite a good sum. Sir Lionel is a great picker-up of stories and amusing experiences. Colonel House, President. Wilson’s right-hand man, went to luncheon at Downing Street during Mr Asquith’s Premiership. No one. so the tale goes, had time to explain who he was to Mrs Asquith (now Lady Asquith). Hardly had we been seated before Mrs Asquith turned to Colonel House and said: “Oh. Mr House, who and what are you ?” The cautious man thought for a few seconds, and then replied: ma’am, they say that I am the eyes and ears of the President.” “Good God,” said Mrs Asquith, “what an appalling fate!” When Sir Edward Lutyens went to India as architect of the Government buildings at New Delhi, he had a difference of opinion with Lord Har--1 dinge, the Viceroy, over questions of 1 style: v | i Lord Hardinge wanted him to adopt i the pointed arch, and said that the i greatest benefactor that India had , ever known was Raj So-and-so, who I had always adopted the pointed arch I in all the great buildings of his time, i Lutyen’s reply to this was that the j greatest benefactor to India in his op- ! inion was God, , and that He had not , given the pointed arch when he gave I the rainbow! < • ' ' i ’ ? The Silent President:'" I President Coolidge was more famous • for his brevity than lor his wit. When j Sir Lionel was in the United States he I went to the White House and was 1 taken to ’the President’s room : 1 He rose from his table and came forward, shook hands and said: “I am very pleased to meet you, Sir Lionel.” I answered: “I feel greatly honoured at being received by you, Mr President.” From that moment he never uttered a word, and I had to do all the talking..'' It was at a time just lief ore the presidential election, and an enormous stars and stripes flag j was on the table, stretching over a I large area of the floor. He was re- ! ceiving constant deputations from the West and Middle-West, and I was I terrified at treading on this sacred emI blem. But the President had his flashes of wit. There is the story of the lady who had made a bet that she would make him talk: i She sat next to him at dinner and i tried every possible subject, but he i never said a word beyond Yes or No. ! At last in despair she told him about 'her bet. All he said was: “You will lose, ma’am 1" When Sir Lionel landed, his photograph appeared in many New York

newspapers. A Hollywood film company saw it, he says, and offered him a contract for three years, at a salary of £13,000 a year, if he would play the part of British Ambassadors in films!

In 1013 Lord Fisher, then First Sea Lord, asked Sir Lionel to go to see him at his official residence, the Mall House:

He told me that he could not concentrate on his serious problems on account of the mantelpiece in his study. It was a wooden mantelpiece designed, I presume, by the architect of the building, Sir Aston Webb, and would not have offended me. But Lord Fisher was so emphatic on the point, that I told him I would remove it and replace it by an attractive marble mantelpiece that had come out of the old houses in Great George Street when demolished, and which we had in store. That seems to have done the trick. One day, says Sir Lionel, Fisher confided to him that “the greatest mistake of his life was his agreeing to the attack on the Dardanelles by the Fleet.” No Dogs or Poems. When Sir Lionel was in Ireland he received a letter from Alfred Austin, the Poet Laureate, asking if he would lei his flat for a few weeks: I agreed and terms were arranged, Shortly after his occupation I received a letter from him, saying that he had a small request to make namely, that I would not leave a dog in the flat. Never having, at that time, owned a dog I was able to reassure him, but t.old him that I equally had a small request to make to him, and it was that when he vacated my flat he would not leave any poems! A noted Irish wit, Father Healy, was at a Viceregal garden party when a somew’hat vulgar and pushing lady who did not even know him, said: “Oh! Father Healy, do say something funny.” In a flash he replied: “I am very pleased to meet you, Mrs . Now T that’s funny, isn’t it?” M. Roux, the distinguished Swiss surgeon, was a man of remarkable character. A wealthy French lady had to have a delicate operation, and the French surgeons, afraid to tackle it, recommended that Roix should be called in: * He came, the operation lasted over two hours, and he was perspiring and exhausted by the strain of the complicated task. Before . the patient came round the French doctors and surgeons present said: “Now, M. Roux will you name your fee, as we have to get half?” The distinguished surgeon, nettled and annoyed beyond words at this matter being raised or mentioned at such a moment, replied: “Well, gentlemen, my fee is twenty francs and a third-class ticket to and from Lausanne!”

During the suffragette trouble in 1912 Sir Lionel .was opposite the Horse Guards, when just inside St James’ Park he saw a small band of excited women, and lying on the ground was Mr Birrell, then Chief Secretary for Ireland; his spectacles had fallen from his nose, and he was quite helpless. lam afraid I saw red at this outrageous attack on a harmless and not very athletic gentleman. I sent the women flying, picked up Mr Rirrel, who was quite dazed, made him take my arm and escorted him to the Athenaeum Club, where I deposited him on a sofa to recover.