The death of Halbert Glendinning will, in my mind, always be coupled to the great battle fought at Waterloo, and the extraordinaary celebration within the city of London that June of 1815.
At about the same time also an odd little event occurred that I mention, not by way of name-dropping, but only because it, too, is forever linked in memory to the Glendinning affair. I had the good fortune to meet the famous Lord Byron, and under circumstances that you will hardly credit, for we did not meet at a salon-Bow Street Runners were not welcome at such gatherings. No, we met at a club I frequented: Gentlemen John Jackson's boxing club. Byron was a devotee of the manly arts, and we actually stood toe to toe and traded some pretty fair blows for a time. That was before the great scandal broke that drove the poet from England forever.
But I am getting away from my story. I recall this meeting because it was after our contest at Jackson's that a boy came to fetch me about this fellow Glendinning. It seems he'd arrived at a nearby house in a hackney-coach. All I knew about him then was that he hadn't paid his fare, and that he was dead.
But it turned out he was a poet, too, of sorts….