“Hoby was not only the greatest and most fashionable bootmaker in London, but, in spite of the old adage, ‘Ne sutor ultra crepidam,’ he employed his spare time with considerable success as a Methodist preacher at Islington. He was said to have in his employment three hundred workmen; and he was so great a man in his own estimation that he was apt to take rather an insolent tone with his customers. He was, however, tolerated as a sort of privileged person, and his impertinence was not only overlooked, but was considered as rather a good joke. He was a pompous fellow, with a considerable vein of sarcastic humour.

Products from Pukimo Raivio

Kiton, grey sports jacket, size 50EU
Ralph Lauren, Black Label suit, size 52EU

I remember Horace Churchill, (afterwards killed in India with the rank of major-general,) who was then an ensign in the Guards, entering Hoby’s shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill made that he should never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby, putting on a pathetic cast of countenance, called to his shopman,
‘John, close the shutters. It is all over with us. I must shut up shop; Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me.’

Churchill’s fury can be better imagined than described.

On another occasion the late Sir John Shelley came into Hoby’s shop to complain that his topboots had split in several places. Hoby quietly said, ‘How did that happen, Sir John?’

‘Why, in walking to my stable.’

‘Walking to your stable!” said Hoby, with a sneer. ‘I made the boots for riding, not walking.’

Hoby was bootmaker to the Duke of Kent; and as he was calling on H.R.H. to try on some boots, the news arrived that Lord Wellington had gained a great victory over the French army at Vittoria. The Duke was kind enough to mention the glorious news to Hoby, who coolly said,

‘If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself, he never would have had his great and constant successess; for my boots and prayers bring his lordship out of all his difficulties.’

One may well say that there is nothing like leather; for Hoby died worth a hundred and twenty thousand pounds [in 1832].

Hoby was bootmaker to George III, the Prince of Wales, the royal dukes, and many officers in the army and navy. His shop was situated at the top of St James’s Street, at the corner of Piccadilly, next to the old Guards Club. He was bootmaker to the Duke of Wellington from his boyhood, and received innumerable orders in the duke’s handwriting, both from the Peninsula and France, which he always religiously preserved. Hoby was the first man who drove about London in a tilbury. It was painted black, and drawn by a beautiful black cob. This vehicle was built by the inventor, Mr Tilbury, whose manufactory was in a street leading from South Audley Street into Park Street.”

— as told in The Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow