Three months is not a long leave to spend at home, it seems to be all coming and going; it really was not long enough to pick Lord William up properly--he was badly in need of English air and fare.
A good part of this brief holiday was spent racing and attending to racing matters. He bought a horse called Pennant, winning a race with him at Croydon value £200. Oberon was another he purchased, but turned out rather unreliable. Clarion was also added to his string.
Being at home in time to see the Derby run, he was enthusiastically greeted by all his old friends, and had a great time. I rather think it was at this Derby or Ascot that Sir Claude De Crespigny coming up behind what he recognised as a Beresford back, said “Good morning, Marcus,” and then, seeing he had made a mistake and it was Lord William, asked whom he should apologise to? Without an instant’s hesitation came the reply, “Marcus, of course, you’ve taken the elder brother for the younger.”
All the Beresford brothers were smart at repartee; indeed I think they would be hard to beat. Someone asked Lord Charles which of his brothers he considered the quickest at repartee. To which he replied: “Marcus. It was only this morning when walking down Regent Street, ahead of us was a doddering old Irish peer, one of the Backwoodsmen who came over once a year to vote against Home Rule, I said, ‘Marcus, if you were a despotic monarch would you keep that Irish nobleman in your House of Lords?’ ‘Yes,’ said Marcus, ‘I think I should, but I should fire him first on the _Coronet_.’”
The smartness of this may be lost upon people who are not horsy and therefore do not know that the part of a horse’s anatomy between the fetlock and the hoof is termed the coronet.
The Marquess of Lansdowne succeeded Lord Dufferin as Governor-General of India, holding the office from 1888 to 1893. No events of great importance occurred during his administration; there were some small frontier expeditions, but we did not hear much about them.
In 1893, at the end of Lord Lansdowne’s reign, Sir Mortimer Durand, then Foreign Secretary to the Indian Government, was sent on a mission to Kabul with a view to defining the limits of influence of the British Government and the Amir, with respect to the independent tribes in the wide belt of country between Afghanistan and British India. However, we are not yet dealing with 1893 but 1888, when Lord Lansdowne had only just taken office. He was fond of horses and racing, therefore watched his Military Secretary’s horses work with sympathetic interest.