[Illustration: A NEW HUNTER--TALLYHO! TALLYHO!]
In 1830 the _Sporting Magazine_ came to grief, in consequence of the death of the editor, and Apperley, who had borrowed large sums of Pittman, was obliged to take refuge from his creditors at Calais, where he spent the next twelve years. Here, a year later, arrived John Mytton, also a fugitive, having run through a splendid property, and ruined a magnificent constitution by drink, before he was thirty-five. Apperley seems to have done his best for his old friend and comrade, who, having exchanged old port--of which his daily allowance had been from four to six bottles a day--for brandy, was rapidly drinking himself to death. Mytton, who seems to have been practically a madman in his last years, returned to London in 1833, and was promptly thrown into the King's Bench, where he died of delirium tremens in the following year.
Apperley occupied himself during his exile in writing sporting memoirs and reminiscences, and contributing to Ackermann's _New Sporting Magazine_. In 1835 he was invited by Lockhart to write three articles on Hunting, Racing, and Coaching for the _Quarterly Review_, and these, which represent some of his best work, were republished under the title of _The Chase, the Turf, and the Road_, with coloured etchings by Henry Alken. Lockhart was so much impressed by the powers of his new contributor, that he told John Murray, "I have found a man who can hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,"--a criticism that did more credit to his sporting than his literary acumen, though Apperley's style is greatly superior to that of Pierce Egan and other of his sporting contemporaries. In 1837 he published his _Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton_, which had appeared serially in the _New Sporting Magazine_, and was illustrated with plates drawn by Alken and etched by Rawlings. This was followed by _The Life of a Sportsman_, illustrated by the same artist, which has become one of the classics of hunting literature. Apperley returned to London in 1842, and died in Pimlico the following year.
[Illustration: MR. RIDGEWAY'S GOOD HEALTH--NOW!]
[Illustration: "OH GENTLEMEN! GENTLEMEN! HERE'S A LAMENTABLE OCCURRENCE"]