CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY "By U^EW MARKET 2- 7 JOHNA.SEAVERNS TUFTS UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 3 9090 014 540 286 Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University 200 Westboro Road North Grafton. MA 01535 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY The Two Thousand. The One Thousand. Pindarrie . ... 1820 Catgut . ... 1819 Reginald .. . ... 1821 Rowena . . ... 1820 Pastille .. . ... 1822 Zeal ... , . ... 1821 Dervise . . . ... 1826 Whizgig . . ... 1822 Turcoman ... 1827 Zinc ... . ... 1823 Tontine . . ... 1825 Problem . . ... 1826 Arab... 1827 The Oaks. Music 1813 Zinc... Medora . 1814 Turquoise Minuet 1815 (T^xygen Pastille . 1822 The Derby. Whisker 1815 1823 1828 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY BY NEWMARKET LONDON "THE NATIONAL REVIEW" OFFICE 43 DUKE STREET, ST. JAMES'S. S.W.I 1922 '"^1"- 6 5f \^n The author desires to make due acknowledgment to Mr. Maxse, Editor of the National Review, for permission to reprint the chapters of this book which first appeared under his auspices. CONTENTS PAGK I. PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES II II. A GREAT MATCH (VOLTIGEUR AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN) . . . -44 III. DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK . 6l IV. THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT (MR. GULLY, M.P.) . . . .86 V. DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE . . IO3 VI. THE FRAUD OF A DERBY .... I26 VII. THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS . . I44 ILLUSTRATIONS THE 4TH DUKE OF GRAFTON .... Frontispiece TO FACE PAGE THE 3RD DUKE OF GRAFTON, FROM AN OLD PRINT . . 22 THE DEFEAT OF CANEZOU IN THE ST. LEGER ... 35 BLUE BONNET, WINNER OF THE ST. LEGER, 1842 . . 45 THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, WINNER OF THE DERBY AND THE ST. LEGER, 1849 .48 VOLTIGEUR, WINNER OF THE DERBY AND THE ST. LEGER, 1850 50 THE DONCASTER CUP, 1850. VOLTIGEUR BEATING THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 54 trainer's COTTAGE AT DANEBURY IN THE TIME OF OLD JOHN DAY 62 THE STOCKBRIDGE STANDS 62 LORD GEORGE BENTINCK, AFTER THE DRAWING BY COUNT d'orsay 64 TRAINER WITH HORSES ON STOCKBRIDGE RACE-COURSE . 66 THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 69 CRUCIFIX, WINNER OF THE OAKS, 184O .... 72 THE CARAVAN, FROM A PAINTING BY A. D. COOPER . . 77 THE GRAVEYARD AT DANEBURY 85 MR. J. GULLY, M.P., ADDRESSING HIS CONSTITUENTS AT PONTEFRACT 96 MR. C. GREVILLE, CLERK OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL . . 98 PHOSPHORUS, WINNER OF THE DERBY OF 1837 . . I08 A TOUT WATCHING A TRIAL I28 RUNNING REIN, WINNER OF THE DERBY, 1844, DISQUALI- FIED SUBSEQUENTLY I32 THE RUN IN OVER THE ROUND COURSE, NEWMARKET, FROM AN OLD PRINT I43 THE HOOF OF ECLIPSE ON A PIECE OF PLATE, PRESENTED TO THE JOCKEY CLUB BY H.M. KING WILLIAM IV, 1832 159 9 Die mihi . . . ; animalia muta Quis generosa putet nisi fortia ? nempe volucrcm Sic laudamus equum, facili cui plurima palma Fervet et exultat rauco victoria circo ; Nobilis hie, quocunque venit de gramine, cujus Clara fiiga ante alios, et primus in aequo; e pulvis. I PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES We justly boast At least superior jockeyship, and claim The honour of the Turf as all our own. COWPER. The recreations and tastes of statesmen have always engaged the interest of the pubHc. Indeed^ it would often seem that it is their desire not so much to serve their country as to amuse it by their pastimes. Temple is more remembered for raising melons at his villa at Sheen than for his embassy to Holland ; and the rash and impetuous Carteret for the Burgundy which flowed so abund- antly at his table than for his consummate know- ledge of Continental politics. Fox is a more familiar figure as the slovenly card-player at Brooks's, and as a gambler at Newmarket, than as a politician who, without principles, was a master of Parliamentary eloquence. Walpole and Glad- stone took a delight in trees, though the latter did not echo the other's appreciation of them — " My flatterers are all mutes." The Gladstone legend will probably survive in an amateur's classical scholarship and some passing exploits in religious controversy rather than in the recollection of any enduring work of statesmanship. Brief, indeed, II CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY is the glory of the Chief Minister. Even mild and tentative excursions into the arid fields of theology and philosophy will have a place in the memory of a posterity which will wholly forget the dialectical triumphs of debate and the charm of a temperament unequal to the task of leadership. The varying ventures of politicians in a sphere which they do not officially control are often salutary lessons of their own insignificance. Ihe higher men rise above the average mass of mankind the more clearly they should recognize the limita- tion of their powers and their incapacity to act the part of Providence. Although an Empire is governed from Whitehall, yet a Minister's horizon is frequently little more than the country squire's with its boundary of visibility from the church tower. When fashion compels the flattery of conspicuous men and the heaping-up of super- latives upon their passing deeds, it is well that they should realize that their achievements are merely the events which accidentally surround their names ; that, in the main, they owe their situation in the political orbit to the iron rules of caste ; and that they are honoured largely at the expense of the silent labourers of their Departments. To minds uplifted by the political atmosphere the Turf supplies an admirable corrective. The vivid passion and the varied action inseparable from the sport, the fluctuating fortunes and the miscarriage of high hopes, the equality of all owners at the fall of the flag — as " when Careless beat His Grace's Atlas ^ that never was beat ^ Atlas was the horse who was shown to Dr. Johnson on the occasion of his visit to Chatsworth. Dr. Johnson said he was the 12 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RAGE-HORSES before " — these are the constituent elements of a most wholesome tonic, and impart a moral so often wanting in the mentality of public men. The philosophy of racing might be written in many volumes. It is a living comment on the uncer- tainty of human expectation, a living disproof of finality, a living reminder that there is an authority higher than the highest. The victory of an outsider by a short head is the killing frost that nips the very root of exultation. It is, however, useless to develop this theme. Ministers of to-day have no taste for the Turf. Is it because their dispositions are superior to its reputed morality ? Assuredly not. With a zest equal to the distempered passions of the eighteenth century they contrive all the secret intricacies of Parliamentary management and political intrigue. They still extract full value from unquestioning service and the seductive hints of the Patronage Secretary. Without the sordid leaven of rewards and punishments individual genius and a soaring spirit are in vain. The struggle for ofBce and honours is stubborn and tenacious, and the success- ful are duly paid in the current coin of cozenage. The thought of a coronet Dissolves them into ecstacies. And brings all heaven before their eyes. Indeed, a levee of placemen is a less worthy assembly than the Turf Senate in council, and the Garter is often gained by arts which com- pare unfavourably with the sportsman's plans for winning the Blue Riband of Epsom Downs. only one of the Duke of Devonshire's possessions which he coveted — a remark which would have been greatly appreciated by the late Duke. 13 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY The association of politicians with the Turt dates far back in the history of the sport. In the annals of Newmarket it is related that Ministers in the train of Charles II were engaged for weeks together in the pursuit of horse-racing. King James's interest in it was somewhat languid ; but on the accession of his son-in-law, who had served a good apprenticeship in all the graceless junketings of the licentious Court during his racing visits to the Merry Monarch, the Turf became more prominent than ever among popular pursuits. On a brilliant page the Whig historian ^ describes the joyous pilgrimage when William III escorted the French Ambassador to Newmarket for the Spring Meet- ing. The principal Ministers of State and the leaders of the Opposition were all members of that distinguished company. Montague deserted the Treasury and Orford the Admiralty. Sidney Godolphin, the Lord High Treasurer, was as usual busy with his horses and absorbed in his bets. Garters, stars and collars shone in the crowd. The King ran his horse. Stiff Dick, against Lord Whar- ton's Careless over a five-mile course for ;f500, and with 7 to 4 betted against him, the Royal steed won.3 Careless, of course, is the horse that is honoured in a passage now classical, and of whom it is told that the profligate and corrupt owner I Macaulay, History of England, vol. viii. p. 109. This volume was not published till after the author's death, and was uncorrected, which accounts for the date being erroneously given. It was the Spring Meeting of i6g8, not that of the following year (Hore, History of Newmarket, vol. iii. p. 209). * The Postman, April 12/14, No. 446. The Postman and the Post Boy were two of the best conducted papers which appeared in 1695 after the expiry of the Press Censorship. They were w^retchedly printed on scraps of dingy paper. 14 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES would take him down to some distant country meeting in order to defeat the horse of a High Church Tory squire, and thus gratify a violent poHtical animosity. Wharton was " the truest of Whigs," wrote Macaulay. " He was the most universal villain that I ever knew," was the verdict of Swift. Vicious as the owner undoubtedly was, his stud was beyond reproach. When Louis XIV endeavoured to institute horse-racing in France, he gave a plate worth i,ooo pistoles to be run for at Echere, near St.-Germains, for which the best animals in Europe were entered. The horse selected to do battle for England was one of Wharton's, on which the Duke of Monmouth rode and won. Louis offered its weight in gold for the horse ; but as the Englishman was too proud to sell and the Frenchman would not stoop to the gift, no property passed. ^ Since the institution of the capital races of the Turf, five Prime Ministers have devoted them- selves to the pursuit of winning them. The Marquis of Rockingham. — The outcome of a violent struggle by George HI in 1765 to rid himself of the Grenville Ministry and the yoke of the Bedfords was that, after seven weeks of administrative anarchy, the main body of the Whigs returned to office under a new leader in the person of the Marquis of Rockingham, then thirty- I Memoirs of the Life of Thomas, late Marquis of Wharton, London, 1 7 15. There is another version of this story which makes Louis purchase the horse (Echard, History of England, vol. ii. p. 1204). 15 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY five years of age. Charles Watson-Wentworth was the second of the title. His father had de- manded the Garter and had been appeased with a Marquisate.^ Of this young nobleman there is little to be said. His fortune was splendid ; his character unblemished. His political fame depended upon his resignation of a Bedchamber appointment and his dismissal from the Lieutenancy of his County. He appears to have possessed conciliatory manners and some ability in the management of men ; but he was absolutely destitute of any power to express himself in debate, and he was without intellect or knowledge. Few Ministries have been more feeble than the first which he directed, although it carried some measures of importance during its brief existence of a year and twenty days. It was a Government of great families, distinguished only for their wealth and position, and it perished by a combination of many enemies. Townshend described it as "a lute-string Administration fit only for pretty summer wear which would never do in the winter." Rockingham rarely opened his mouth in the House of Lords, although he enjoyed the assistance of Burke, who was his Private Secretary, and who, through his influence, was brought into Parliament. But the inspiration of Burke could not save his master, and the Administration came to an end in July 1766. After an interval of sixteen years, Rockingham fluttered once more into office — this time in succession to Lord North. He died within the year. 2 » Walpole, referring to his wealth and luxury, calls him Marquis Sardanapalus. ^ The inscription on the mausoleum at "Wentworth erected by 16 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES Rockingham, hopeless as a Minister, and, in his relations to the King, impar congressus Achilli, was remarkable as a patron of the Turf. His signature is appended to the first public document issued by the Jockey Club. " The Whigs are much given to horse-racing," wrote a respectable divine to the King's chaplain some years before this date, and Rockingham was certainly loyal to the tradition. So were his colleagues and the leaders of his political connection. Burke, the Arch- Whig trumpeter, could not induce the Duke of Richmond to put off his party for Goodwood races when an important division was imminent, nor the Chancellor of the Exchequer his fox- hunting at a moment of political crisis. New- market races kept many adherents from attendance at Westminster. Rockingham's appointment to the Treasury had been negotiated by the Duke of Cumberland, the breeder of Eclipse. The Duke and Rockingham frequently opposed each other at Newmarket. The young nobleman in 1757 defeated the Duke's horse, Cullen Arabian, in a match for 1,000 guineas over the Beacon Course. The Duke again lost a match to Rockingham when his horse failed to give 18 lb. to his opponent's colt, Prospero. However, the hero of Culloden had his revenge at Ascot in the following year, when he ran the famous Herod to victory in a four mile match. The North was Rockingham's favourite battleground. In a match for 2,000 guineas his horse, Whistle-jacket, defeated Brutus over a long distance at York, and Lord Fitzwilliam in honour of his uncle is from the pen of Burke. Of his Chief Burke wrote, " his virtues were his arts." 17 B CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the achievements of the winner are commemorated in a suite of rooms at Wentworth ^ which to this day bears his name. Rockingham bred a great horse called Bay Malton. With him he defeated the game little grey Gimcrack, who endeavoured to give the other 71b. over a severe course at Newmarket. This event is referred to in one of Lady Sarah Lennox's charming gossiping letters to Lady Susan Fox-Strangways. " There was," writes the famous beauty, " a meeting of two days at Newmarket at this time of year to see the sweetest little horse run that ever was. His name is Gimcrack ;2 he is delightful." Then, with a touch of sentiment which would find a ready response in the hearts of many people to-day, she adds : " Lord Rockingham kissed hands the day Gimcrack ran. I must say I was more anxious about the horse than about the Ministry ! " This fascinating woman was the second daughter of the Duke of Richmond and was aunt of Charles James Fox. Her grandfather was the first Duke, son of Charles II by Louisa de la Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. Her first husband was Sir Charles Bunbury, " Father of the Turf/' who I At Rockingham's death his fine property in Yorkshire passed to Lord FitzwilUam, whose father had married Rocldngham's sister. The Rockingham racing colours, green jacket and black cap, also descended to the owner of Catton and Mulatto, the pro- genitors of some of the most distinguished families in the Stud Book. For a description of Wentworth Woodhouse at this date see Walpole, Letters, vol. iii. p. 28. The Rockingham colours on Torlinda were victorious at the recent Ascot Races. * This little horse was a wonder — he was just over 14 hands — and was raced for no less than eleven years and won twenty-five races. It was to perpetuate his fame that the Gimcrack Club was formed in York in 1767. The race for the Gimcrack Stakes was established in 1846. 18 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES won the first Derby in 1780. It was alleged against Fox when Paymaster that he presumed to think it possible that his lovely kinswoman, Lady Sarah, might ascend the throne. A few months before his marriage George III was remarkable for his attentions to the young lady, and it is said that only the influence of his mother, the Princess Dowager, prevented an alliance.^ Lady Sarah's philosophy of existence is always admirably expressed. She writes in 1762 to her friend, " Pray now, who the devil would not be happy with a pretty place, a good house, good horses, greyhounds and fox-hunting, so near New- market, what company we please in the house, and £2,000 a year to spend ? " How reminiscent this is of Thackeray's immortal heroine ! But to return to Rockingham. His horse. Bay Malton, was idolized in Yorkshire. In a sweepstakes of 500 guineas he vanquished the renowned King Herod, at even weights, and two others. This race, it was said, brought together a larger number of people of all ranks than had ever been seen at Newmarket. That stern struggle ended well. When strong of heart the Wentworth bay From staggering * Herod strode away. But, perhaps, Rockingham's fame on the Turf rests chiefly on the victory of Allabaculia, who in 1776 carried the green jacket and black cap to victory in the first race for the St. Leger. The mare was a bay daughter of Rockingham's great ' Massey, History of England, vol. i. p. 97 ; Walpole, Memoirs of George III , vol. i. p. 64 ; Albemarle, Life of Rockingham, vol. i. p. 72. » King Herod broke a bloodvessel in the crisis of the contest. 19 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY horse, Samson. The race was at that time a Sweep- stakes over a two-mile course, and was the first race ever run for three-year-olds at Doncaster. On that occasion Rockingham, Mr. Wentworth, Mr. Foljambe, and Mr. St. Leger were responsible for the six entries and the five starters. Two years later Rockingham named the race after Mr. St. Leger, with whom it had originated.^ Rockingham in his official business appears to have had an excellent counsellor in Sir George Savile.* This Yorkshire worthy thus WTites to the Prime Minister : " You advertize that George Grenville should have continued Minister, if you ride the heat as he did. He waited and lay in a good place till he came to the ending post. I beseech you make the p\a.y if you are stout." Sounder advice was never given to a Minister. Even the serious Burke could defend his chief against the unctuous critics of that date who *' charged him with jockeyship, as they were pleased to style it, as though any diversion could become noblemen in general better than that by which the breed of one of the noblest and most useful animals is much improved." Rockingham's training quarters were on Langton Wold, close by the stables of White wall, where John Scott in later days made his great name as a master of the trainer's art. On those breezy I Eclipse and O'Kelly, by Sir Theodore Cook, p. 57. » Sir George Savile was Member for Yorkshire 1759-83. He was invited to take part in Rockingham's Administration, but with a candour habitual to him, he declined the offer, alleging that as an independent Member of Parliament he could better serve his friends. Faction has spared his name. He died in 1781 (Nichol's Recollec- iions, vol. i. p. 41 ; Albemarle, Life of Rockingham, vol. i. p. 227). 20 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES downs the Minister watched the gallops of his horses with an interest he never felt in the per- formances of his divided and mutinous following at Westminster. II The Duke of Grafton. — In the long gallery of Prime Ministers there is surely no more unlovely picture than that which historians have drawn of the third Duke of Grafton. Upon the accession to power of Chatham, in 1766, after Rockingham's death, Grafton held the uneasy position of nominal Chief of the Government as First Lord of the Treasury. His vicarious responsibility was soon terminated. Chatham fell ill, and the supreme direction of affairs passed to the Duke, who con- tinued in office until his resignation in 1770. It was a troubled period. It saw the taxation of American imports, the disturbances caused by Wilkes's election for Middlesex, and the appearance of the letters of " Junius." Grafton owed his election partly to accident, but mainly to his high rank and great fortune — qualifications of the utmost weight with the Whig connection. Irregular in life, capricious and indolent, he had few of the qualities of a statesman, and he presumed greatly on his position. Such reputation as he had was mangled by " Junius," who derided his descent from a Royal Mistress and jested with him over the infidelity of his wife. Grafton was indeed a fair mark for the measured malignity of anony- mous attack, and, certainly, the libeller did not spare either the matrimonial infelicities or the ama- tory vagaries of the peccant Minister. The Duke 21 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY seems to have delighted in outraging the decencies and conventions of society. He used to appear at the Opera, at Ascot and at Newmarket with a notorious Phryne/ who, according to Walpole, had lost not only her character but also the charms of youth. Although Grafton thus walked according to the flesh, he enjoyed a considerable popularity in the world of sport, for he was generous and profuse in his expenditure, both on the race-course and in the hunting-field. He usually rode a fiery thorough- bred horse, which he sat with ease and dignity, and on the race-course he is described as an elderly gentleman of spare form, middle stature, straight silver hair and a countenance of much severity. In a picture he appears dressed in a light, tight- fitting coat, long black boots and a small three- cornered hat. To most people " Junius Duke of Grafton " ^ was a formidable personage. He was a good judge of breeding and training ; his horses were v/ell and honestly ridden ; and the Turf owes much to the blood which he took great pains to improve. He was an enthusiastic sportsman. Indeed, it was said of him when Prime Minister that, like an apprentice, he thought the world should be postponed to a horse-race, which was true — at least, so far as an epigram need be true. If he squandered his reputation, at all events ' This person was the well-known Nancy Parsons, who assumed the name of Mrs. Horton. Her hand was sought by many suitors of distinction, and she ultimately married Lord Maynard. After his death she established herself at the Court of Naples. See Walpole 's Letters, vol. iv. p. 70 ; vol. vii. p. 184 ; Grenville Papers, vol. iv. p. 275. » On the Turf he was spoken of as the " old Duke of Grafton." 22 The Derby, Tyrant 1802 Tope 1809 Whalebone ... 18 10 Tht Oaks. Pelisse 1804 Morel 1808 THE OLD DUKE OF GRAFTON I'lime Minister, I 766-1770. /•>."« «'/ 0!d Print. PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES he bequeathed to his son ^ a stud of unrivalled value, which shone conspicuously in the great classic races of the period. Ten years before the Duke was called to office, Mr. Panton of Newmarket had bred a mare named Julia. Her pedigree could be traced not only to the Byerley Turk, but beyond the Lord Protector Cromwell's White Turk to the Taffolat Barb. She was introduced into the Grafton stud and foaled a filly called Promise. A daughter of Promise — Penelope, foaled in 1798 — was the dam of eleven first-rate race-horses, including two Derby winners, and the family brought little short of £100,000 to the house of Grafton. Penelope herself won no less than eighteen races for the Duke, and twice beat Eleanor, the first mare to carry off the Blue Riband. Needless to say, the Duke's name is of frequent mention in the Match Book. Like other owners, he challenged for large sums with his horses the best animals of the day. Twice he raced his grey horse, Chigger, against Eclipse — once for the King's Purse of 100 guineas — four-mile heats, for six-year- olds — when he received a sound beating ; and again at Newmarket over the Round Course, two heats of 3|- miles, when his horse and the rest of the field were, as usual, " nowhere " to the champion, who was never beaten, never had a whip flourished over him or felt the tickling of a spur, or was ever for a moment distressed ; outfooting, outstriding and outlasting every horse which started against him.* I See frontispiece. » 'La.wTence's History and Delineation of the Horse, i8og. Lawrence saw Eclipse. See also Eclipse and O' Kelly, by Sir Theodore Cook. 23 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY In 1802 the Duke won the Derby with a horse of his own breeding called Tyrant from a field of nine runners. I Tyrant was by Pot-8-os, and his success led His Grace to spare neither money nor trouble to secure the best specimens of this strain of blood. Tyrant is said to have been a very moderate animal, and owed his victory to the riding and fine judgment of Frank Buckle, the most accomplished rider of the day. In the race the running was made at a fast pace by an Eclipse colt, with Sir Charles Bun- bury's Orlando in close attendance. Buckle was sure they would come back to him, and they did so, with the result that he snatched the verdict with Grafton's colt. Another son of Pot-8-os was the renowned Waxy, who won the Derby of 1793. Grafton acquired this fine horse for his stud, and by him bred Pope — known also as Waxy Pope — from Prunella, the granddaughter of Julia of the long lineage. With Pope Grafton won the Derby of 1809. But the Duke's greatest horse was undoubtedly the mottled brown Whalebone, with whom he won the Blue Riband in the following year. He, too, was a son of Waxy from the famous Penelope. This horse's performances on the Turf were the greatest of that date. He made all the running in the Derby. He won the most important King's Plates and Cups. Grafton challenged Pan, the Derby winner of 1808, to a match over the Beacon Course, and Whalebone prevailed. This stout little horse — he was only 15 hands and half an inch — found no course too long. But insig- nificant in size and with bad feet, it was thought I There were 30 subscribers to the Derby in 1802. In 1914 they numbered 372. 24 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES he would make no success as a sire, and accordingly, at the age of seven, he was sold for 510 guineas. Frail is the judgment of the breeder ! Whalebone became the sire of three winners of the Derby, and of the Oaks winner, Caroline. His line is handed down by some of the most illustrious names in the Stud Book. The Duke never won the St. Leger, but he twice won the Oaks : in 1804 with Pelisse, a daughter of Prunella, and in 1808 with Morel, whom he bred from Sorcerer and Hornby Lass. The year after Whalebone's Derby,, the Duke of Grafton's racing career was ended by his death. Ill Viscount Palmerston. — Lord Palmerston was a Minister whose political life opened in 1808 and ceased only with his death in 1865. During this long period he was rarely unemployed. His disposition was pleasant, his principles easy, and in his day he eminently suited the average man, both inside and outside the House of Commons. To Parliament he was devoted, and he gave his life to it. In Palmerston's time the success of a leader depended upon the closest attendance in the House ; an occupation that has always en- couraged the illusion that the dust and din of debate, the worry of the Lobby, and the boredom of the Committee-room are the main cause of the great social movement. As a Minister he made much stir in the outer world by interference in the affairs of foreign nations and by bluster concern- ing the rights of Englishmen abroad. He enjoyed frequent triumphs in vindicating his conduct, and 25 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY his confidence and flippancy often helped a situa- tion. Palmerston began his career as a Tory. He occasionally amused himself at the expense of the Whigs, and was once told for his pains by a Whig Leader that he resembled a favourite footman on easy terms with his mistress. He left the Duke of Wellington in 1828, and was forthwith accepted seriously by Brooks's Club and the Reformers. Thereafter, his official and political position was assured. He dreaded the enlargement of the electorate, and the long respite from 1832 to 1867 was mainly due to his influence. He was sustained in office by the Tories because he was known to stand between them and the growing demands of a democracy which claimed that the Constitution should be so developed as to give a wider scope to the play of social forces. While he had a considerable familiarity with the com- plicated labyrinth of foreign Chanceries, his hterary attainments were extremely slender. When Monckton Milnes was asked how Palmerston got on at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, he replied : " For a man who never read a book in his life, I think he did very well." Although he never acquired the art of fluent or perspicuous speech, he had a Parliamentary authority out of all proportion to his political and official abilities. The truth was that he represented the fundamental tastes of his countrymen, at a time, moreover, when the Throne was under the unpopular and unbounded influence of an alien Prince and his German tutor. Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 at the age of seventy-one, and with one brief interval continued in that position until his death. 26 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES He was devoted to racing, giving constant attention, even in official hours, to business con- nected with the health and training of his horses. An entry on the tablet of his office diary for a Monday in May i860 reads thus : " John Day and Professor Spooner about Mainstone. Shaftes- bury about Church appointments. Powell to ask about Mainstone. Bernstorff to read me a dis- patch." ^ He would leave a debate at any moment to meet and talk with his trainer in the lobby. In 18 16 Palmerston had horses with old Day at Oughton Downs and owned a mare named Mignonette. The following year he won his maiden race with a Sorcerer filly — Enchantress — and with her and Luxborough he had much success in the West Country. Day moved his training quarters to Danebury, and soon afterwards Palmer- ston picked up for £65, at a sale of a draft from Lord George Bentinck's stable, a daughter of the Derby winner, Priam, who was neatly named Iliona, and with whom as a four-year-old he won the Cesarewitch in 1841 — the third year of the institution of the great handicap. The mare had been relegated to the paddocks at Broadlands, but Day persuaded his patron to train her, and in addition to the Cesarewitch she won the Southampton Stakes and the Chesterfield Cup. An amusing controversy arose over the correct pronunciation of the name, and the quantity of the third syllable was the subject of many bets. For the benefit of the illiterati, the problem was referred to the Master ' Life of Palmerston, Evelyn Ashley, vol. ii. p. 199. 27 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY of Trinity College, Cambridge, who pointed to the lines Praeterea sceptrum, Ilione quod gesserat olim. Maxima natarum Priami. It was quite characteristic of the owner to say " they might call the mare what they — pleased as long as she had won the Cesarewitch." Palmer- ston also owned a nice Venison colt in Buckthorn^ with whom he won the Ascot Stakes in 1853. It was a surprising victory : the horse started at 100 to I, but Alfred Day rode a clever waiting race and prevailed by half a length. Palmerston had set his heart on winning the Derby while he was First Minister, and in i860 it looked as if his ambition would be gratified. His horse Mainstone at one time was third favourite and was genuinely fancied. He failed, however,, in the final stages of his preparation, and starting at the long odds of 40 to i, he ran inconspicuously in the race. In those halcyon days the House of Commons adjourned over the Derby, and on this occasion Palmerston took the unusual course of proposing the resolution himself from the Treasury Bench, saying that " to adjourn over that day is part of the unwritten law of Parliament, and that Her Majesty's Government do not wish to depart from so wholesome a custom." ^ Although he knew that the Olympian prize was not for him, the next morning the gay old Minister mounted his familiar grey hack and trotted briskly down to Epsom, his whiskers dyed,^^ I Hansard, May 15, i860. * For a description of Palraerston's appearance five years earlier,, see a letter from Disraeli to Lady Londonderry [Life of Disraeli, vol. iii. p. 567). 28 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES his hair an example of the art of the friseur, his trousers strapped, his whole appearance significant of the senile dandyism which he always affected. At that date the sporting world went to the Derby in green veiled hats stuck round with dolls — tot circa tmum caput tumultuantes deos — and Palmerston's attire was in harmony with the fashion. He saw Mr. Merry's Thormanby win the race, and his only consolation was that the leader of the Opposition, with Cape Flyaway, shared in the same decisive defeat. In the week following the Derby the House of Lords rejected the Paper Duties Bill. Lady Palmerston in the gallery applauded their Lordships, knowing well that her own Lord was of the same mind. Gladstone met Palmerston in the street. It was no whispered invective : the Chancellor of the Exchequer's bosom blazed against the sinning Senate. The ruse old cynic replied, " Of course, you are mortified and disappointed, but your disappointment is nothing to mine, who had a horse with whom I hoped to win the Derby and he went amiss at the last moment." ^ The calculated irreverence of his leader must have stirred the younger man to the depths. To the earnest mind of the pietist the analogy was sheer profanity. There is no doubt that the collapse of Mainstone was a bitter disappointment to Palmerston. It was said that he suspected foul play. At all events, he yielded to the advice of his old pad groom, whom he much indulged, and removed his horses from Day's stable and transferred them to Goater. He gained nothing by the change, and his colours * Greville Memoirs, vol. viii. p. 317. 29 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY were never afterwards prominent on the race- course. During his career of fifty years as an owner of race-horses Palmerston seldom made a bet. He raced from a natural love of the sport, breeding his own horses and often naming them after his farms. Twice during the year preceding his death he started at nine o'clock in the morning from Broadlands and rode over to his training stables, and thence to see his horses gallop on Winchester race-course.^ But, as often happens with men of exceptional vitality, the end came swiftly. He died within two days of completing his eighty-first year, and was buried with public honours in Westminster Abbey. IV The Earl of Derby. — The fourteenth Earl of Derby was nearly half a century in public life. He inherited a taste for the Turf. His grand- father founded the Oaks ^ in 1779 and the great race to which he gave his name in the following year. More fortunate than his grandson, he won the Derby in 1787 with Sir Peter Teazle, the best of Highflyer's sons. Sir Peter commemorated the romance of his owner's life and the play in which Miss Farren, the celebrated actress, won her admirer's heart. Ten years after Sir Peter's victory >■ Life of Palmerston, Evelyn Ashley. ^ The Oaks derived its name from an alehouse called " The Oaks " which at one time stood upon part of Banstead Downs, in the parish of Woodmansterne. It was afterwards purchased by General Burgoyne, who added to the building and fitted it up for a hunting-seat. Subsequently, the General sold it to Lord Derby, who further enlarged the house and enclosed a considerable part of the adjoining fields (History of Horse-Racing, pub. 1863, p. 214). 30 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES Derby married Miss Farren ; and it was said that from his step-grandmother young Stanley caught the grace and force of style which were the orna- ments of his oratory in later years. The boy acquired his first taste for racing from his grand- father, as by his side he strolled through the paddocks and studied the stock of Sir Peter. Derby spent thirteen years in high office and four years as Prime Minister. He had been bred to the orthodox school of Whiggism. Goldsmith told Boswell that he took his religion from the priest as he took his coat from the tailor, and young Stanley received his political principles from his party in much the same fashion. It was the creed which registered the experience of certain noble families and claimed Holland House as the centre of political wisdom and the Edinburgh Review as its prophet. In these days it is difficult to appreciate the schemes of an aristocratic junto for ever engaged in framing a comfortable middle- class creed and in turning the prejudices of dissenters and tradesmen to the best political account. Their belief was in compromise, and in their ability to conciliate democracy. The school has perished, and Liberalism, its successor, with its pompous dullness and affectation of high principle, is now gasping in articulo mortis. Stanley, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, left the Whig Government in 1834 01^ the question of the Irish Church, and, thereafter, laid a heavy hand on his old friends. Perhaps they felt they were well rid of him, for the indiscretions of his speeches created a host of enemies. The type of Member produced by the Reform Act loathed his aristocratic insolence and 31 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY reproached him for his haughtiness. As a man of rank and fashion he moved in a world unknown to the new men of the middle class, who were shocked at language which was current at White's and at metaphors which recalled Newmarket Heath. In the House of Commons, one day,^ he alluded in a formal Motion to the Clerk of the Course, instead of the Clerk of the House, In a debate on a Tithe Bill, he put his legs on the table and then rose to scandalize the respectable mediocrities by comparing the conduct of the Government to the thimble-rigging tricks of the juggler on the race- course. Again, after Stanley had joined Sir Robert Peel, he thought that his leader had unduly delayed his resignation when defeated in the House of Commons. He described the situation by saying that his colleague should have died in the open like a gallant fox, instead of turning up his toes in a ditch. Peel, the leader of the Conservative Party of 1841 — the hero of so many hopes and prayers — ruined his followers. The broken remnant turned to Stanley, and from 1846 until his resignation in 1868 they served under his banner. The direction of the party in the Commons devolved upon Lord George Bentinck, and so it was that the political fortunes of Conservative gentlemen were entrusted to the two most prominent members of the Jockey Club. In the midst of the crisis of 1846, when the chief office of the State was vacant, Stanley and Bentinck were to be seen at Newmarket laughing together as if the issue of the hour counted less ' When Lord Stanley he sat for the racing borough of Stock- bridge, where, according to Gay, " cobblers used to feast three years upon one vote ! " 32 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES than a race across the Flat. Disraeli deplored his Chief's indifference. In a letter to a corres- pondent, he wrote of him as " a confederate always at Newmarket and Doncaster when Europe — nay the world — is in the throes of immense changes, and all the elements of power at home in a state of dissolution." ^ On occasions, nevertheless, Derby fiercely arraigned the foreign policy of Palmerston, alleging, in the language of his taste, that he liked " to give the Lords a gallop when they had been on the easy list for some time." Whether in office or in Opposition, Derby rarely allowed public business to interfere with the claims of the race- course. In the Session of 1854 it became necessary to pass the Universities Bill through the Upper House in one night because the Chancellor of Oxford University was engaged to attend the races at Liverpool. Derby was at Newmarket at the date of the Vienna Conference. The famous four points had been rejected by Russia. On his return to London, Malmesbury met him in much agitation and told him that the British proposals had failed. " What proposals ? " said Derby. On the occasion of the great debate on the seizure of the Arrow by the Chinese and the bombardment of Canton, which led to the defeat of Lord Palmerston's Government, Derby made one of his finest speeches, showing himself master of a complicated subject and speak- ing with an air of complete absorption in the issue involved. The debate over, he stroUed out of the House of Lords arm-in-arm with a friend, and was overheard in earnest conversation on the ' Life of Disraeli, Buckle, vol. iii. p. 547. 33 c CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY prospect of Lord Zetland winning the Two Thousand with Vedette. In the days of his health, Derby was the life and soul of a great race-meeting. He loved his dinner at the Rooms at Newmarket. There his wit and his anecdote had full play, and he ruled his kingdom of the long dining-room without a rival. So, too, at Epsom in Derby week. The rather tall, slack-backed figure in curled-up hat, surtout and large black stock was the life and soul of the Stewards' Stand. " It was curious," writes Greville, " to see Stanley. Who would believe they saw the orator and statesman on whom the destiny of the country perhaps depends ? There he was, as if he had no thoughts but for the Turf, eager, blunt, noisy, good-humoured. Thus can a man relax whose existence is devoted to great objects and serious thoughts."^ Whether the stakes were high or low, Derby was equally keen to win. He availed himself of every legitimate advantage ; and if his information was better than another's, so much the worse for the loser. After all, it was the game. Derby trained his horses with John Scott at Whitewall, and with fifty-four of them he won upwards of £94,000 in stakes. There was no more familiar figure on the greater race-courses than Scott in his broad-brimmed hat, black coat, drab knee-breeches and ample white neckcloth. His knowledge of his business was complete, his experience unequalled, and during his long life he had known all the notables of the Worshipful Company of the Turf. He died in his seventy- » Greville Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 383. 34 ^JKutiwF^" _£ a; U The St. Leger of 1848. Lord Stanley's Canezou (winner of the One Thousand) beaten by Surplice (winner of the Derby) after an exciting race. PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES eighth year, and left a considerable fortune. It was on his advice that Derby bought perhaps the best animal he ever owned — Canezou — a brown daughter of Melbourne and Madame Pelerine by Velocipede — who herself and her sons, Paletot, Fazzoletto and Cape Flyaway, gained him many valuable races. Canezou won the One Thousand, and in the St. Leger she was only just beaten by Surplice. The great race of 1848 at Doncaster was long remembered. Canezou, who a fortnight earlier had won the Ebor St. Leger at York, was a sound favourite at 7 to 4 ; the Derby winner and Flat- catcher being supported at slightly more liberal prices. Nine came to the post. Flatcatcher made the running at a great pace with Surplice lying third until the turn for home. Then Surplice and Canezou raced up to the leader, and the three swept round the rails at the Red House in close order. As they reached the distance post Canezou asserted her- self, and went rapidly to the front, while Flat- catcher, beaten by the pace, gave way to Surplice, who then joined issue with the mare. Locked together they came abreast the stands, the dark bay colt just winning by a head in a scene of popular delirium. For the first time since Champion's victory in 1800, a Derby winner had prevailed in the St. Leger, and thus had dissolved the charm which seemed to forbid the same animal to win buch races. On the Friday, none the worse for her severe race, Canezou was pulled out to run in the Park Hill Stakes, and, with 4 to i betted on her, she won easily in precisely the same time as the St. Leger had taken. 35 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Three years later, Iris won the Oaks. This mare was by Derby's horse Ithuriel, who in his year had been much fancied for the St. Leger, but fell lame just before the race. In 1854 Derby was unlucky to lose the Oaks. His filly Meteora started a hot favourite, but her jocke}^ failed to do her justice, and she only filled the second place. In 1856 he won the Two Thousand with Fazzoletto, who, however, was only fourth to Ellington in the Derby of that year ; and four years later he won the One Thousand with Sagitta, a daughter of his horse Longbow, a winner of much distinction. It was, of course, Derby's ambition to emulate the success of his grandfather and to win the Derby. His opportunity, apparently, had arrived in 1858, when he was Prime Minister for the second time, and when, to use his own words, he hoped " to pull off the double event." He had a bay horse by Longbow from Legerdemain,^ named Toxophilite, and with him had won a good race at Goodwood, beating, among others, Sir Joseph Hawley's Beadsman, to whom he gave 8 lb. It was this performance that caused Toxophilite to be fancied and well supported for the Epsom race. The racing public were greatly interested in a contest with which the First Minister of the Crown was so immediately concerned, and Toxo- philite became a popular favourite, his name — generally abbreviated to Tox — being on the lips of people who had never seen a race in their lives. But, alas ! it was not to be. Beadsman ' Legerdemain as a three-year-old with 5 st. 7 lb. won the Cesarewitch in 1849, and a day after the race slipped a filly foal. 36 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES was backward as a two-year-old, and though he had fine action, his general appearance was un- attractive. He greatly improved during the winter, and, sent to the post in brilliant con- dition, he defeated the Prime Minister's horse by a length. Toxophilite was soft-hearted, and he lost through refusing to struggle when he was challenged. In 1863 Derby sold his stud and retired from the Turf. He had enjoyed his racing career to the full. In the Session he rejoiced to escape from London to his Yorkshire training grounds. After a debate in the House of Lords, he would hurry off by the night mail, arriving in the hours of dawn to see his horses do their early gallop. He would dine with his trainer, and sit up with him all night gossiping over the past deeds of great horses in classic races, until it was time to turn out to see the morning work. Owner and trainer maintained an unbroken intimacy of twenty-two years. When it was all over, and the black jacket and white cap were laid aside, Derby still found delight in the home paddocks. There he would show his guests his favourite, Canezou, for whom, with her groom, he provided in his will. The old mare survived her master. The Earl of Rosebery. — Born in 1847, Lord Rosebery succeeded to the peerage in 1868. His education had been at Eton and Oxford, but coming into collision with the authorities of Christ Church, he left that seminary of learning without 37 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY submitting to a degree. Forty years later his eminence in public life justified his candidature for the high office of Chancellor of the University. He took his seat in the House of Lords, and there- after assisted both at the councils of the nation and of his party. The deciding epoch in his career was in 1878. In that year he married the heiress of the house of Rothschild, who was led to the altar by a Prime Minister of her own race before an assembly of brilliant society. In the political field he made steady progress. He became a finished speaker and an accomplished writer. He was responsible for the invitation to Mr. Gladstone to contest Midlothian, and at the election played the host to the great protean actor, who on the hustings only anticipated the imaginative performance, a generation later, of Chinese Slavery. Lord Rose- bery, henceforth, was under the spell of his hero. He obliged him by accepting a subordinate post in the Home Department and the appointment of First Commissioner of Works. In 1886 and 1892 he filled the important office of Foreign Secretary with fair distinction. Mr. Gladstone retired in 1894, and went down to Windsor intent on pressing the Queen to send for Lord Spencer, but the experienced and adroit Sovereign allowed her old servant no opportunity of recommendation, and, greatly mortified, he departed from the presence. To the disastrous heritage Lord Rosebery succeeded. There was no unity and little zeal in his party, and disappointment bred a contemptuous disloyalty in his chief colleague. The Administration tottered to its fall in the following year, and in 1896 Lord Rosebery resigned the titular leadership of the 38 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES Liberal Party, stating that Mr. Gladstone had given the coup de grace to his successor.^ Thus ended Lord Rosebery's political career. Occasion- ally, he tried to stir his friends to the realization of the British Empire, and he hoped at one time that something would come of Liberal Imperialism. But, though Liberal Imperialists dined hand- somely in Berkeley Square and sat long over the wine, the arrival of Campbell- Bannerman, with all the powers of patronage in his hands, settled the pretensions of the coterie, and Lord Rosebery was left an interested spectator of their desertion and promotion. The Turf attracted Lord Rosebery from his youth. While at Oxford he had a racing stud, and in consequence incurred the censure of the reverend authorities of Christ Church. At this period of youthful effervescence he avowed his intention of winning the Derby. He bought for a considerable sum from a north-country breeder a colt, whom he named Ladas, and sent him to Dover at Ilsley to be trained. The horse, however, ran ignominiously * in the stirring encounter of 1869, in which Pretender defeated Pero Gomez by a very doubtful head. The year following, Lord Rosebery was elected a member of the Jockey Club ; and in 1873 he won five races, including the Gimcrack Stakes. This historic race he gained with Padoroskna, whom he bought » speech at Edinburgh, October 9, 1896. * According to the Sporting Magazine (1869, p. 398), Ladas ran last in the field of twenty-two. The horse apparently grew but little between two and three years of age, and the sporting writer observes that 8 st. 10 lb. (the weight then carried) looked too much for him. 39 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the morning before the event. In 1874 he won the City and Suburban with Aldrich, after a very exciting finish. In that year he went very near the object of his racing ambition. Two months before the Derby he bought out of Matthew Dawson's stable a horse called Couronne de Fer, and with him he ran second to George Frederick. Crossing the road, Lord Rosebery's horse seemed well placed for success : but George Frederick, drawing out wide on the right and at the Stands, coming rapidly away, won in a canter by two lengths. From this date until the year 1885 Lord Rosebery's successes in important races were frequent. He gained his first classic honours in the Oaks in 1883 with a beautifully bred filly, named Bonny Jean, by Macaroni from an Agnes mare by Blair Athol. About this time Lord Rosebery's association with the Turf was tempor- arily suspended, and he transferred his activities to official service. He sold his horses, retired from racing, and became the subject of an amusing cartoon. But the determination to win the Derby was still strong within his breast. In 1891 he bred from a Rosicrucian mare, Illuminata, a brown colt, and, greatly daring, he repeated the name Ladas. The horse was of exceptional size and quality, and his action perhaps the most fluent ever seen. As a two-year-old he swept the board and never knew defeat. In 1894 he won the Two Thousand. In that race Ladas dashed to the front in the Abingdon Mile bottom, and won easily by a length and a half in a style that recalled the incomparable performance of Macgregor in 40 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES 1870. The colt won the Newmarket Stakes, and then awaited the Epsom race. At this date Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister of England, and every sportsman in the country hoped that at last " the double event " would be won. But, in reality, there was little doubt of his success when, on the chill morning that ushered in the Derby, Ladas at six o'clock, in the presence of his owner, did a six-furlong gallop in brilliant style. As the day drew on, the crowds were immense. The superstitious were persuaded of victory, for did not Primrose Way win the race immediately before the Derby Stakes ? The actual wagering was small, for few could afiford to lay the almost prohibitive odds. Nothing looked so well as Ladas. From the start he allowed his opponents to lead until they were in line for home, and then coming right away he won at his ease. The scene of triumph was without parallel. The crowd swept the police off their feet, while Lord Rosebery struggled through the cheering masses to lead in the second Ladas. The spell had been broken, and at last the First Minister of the Crown during his term of office had won the Blue Riband of the Turf. Although Ladas never gained another race, Lord Rosebery was consoled by taking the Derby in the following year with Sir Visto after an exciting contest, and then won the St. Leger with him. Ten years later the elegant Cicero, enjoying some luck and with long odds betted on him, won Lord Rosebery his third Derby. Three more classic victories have to be mentioned. In 1910 Lord Rosebery won the Two Thousand with Neil Gow, 41 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY and in 1897 with Chelandry ; in 1915 with Vaucluse, he won the One Thousand. It is, indeed, a fine racing record, but at times the fortunate owner had to bear resounding buffets from some of his poHtical adherents. He was, however, equal to the occasion. When they com- plained of his Epsom victory, he reminded them that Cromwell kept race-horses : ^ and when the Nonconformist conscience was agitated, he replied that so long as he was unsuccessful that interesting and sensitive organ was silent, but when he won, he became at once the torture of pious souls. Lord Rosebery's horses are still seen on the race- course, but of late their owner has not witnessed their achievements. At the recent Carnival of Epsom there were many who thought of him, resting at his favourite Tusculum, almost within earshot of those crowds on the Downs who had thrice acclaimed him winner of the paramount prize. It is hardly in human nature to be so circumstanced without a secret pang. Relief from public cares may be desirable, and yet even the greatest man, Though his best part long since was done, Still on the stage desires to tarry. Lord Rosebery has known high fortune in the State and on the Turf. The measure of his natural I "While there is no proof that Cromwell ever attended a race- meeting or ran any of his horses, there is ample evidence of his having owned and bred race-horses. He loved " to look upon his Barbary steeds." He obtained some of the best animals at the Royal Stud in 1650, and at the Restoration his horses, " said to be the best in England," reverted to the Royal paddocks {Par- liamentary Intelligencer, May 21, 1660). 42 PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES talents and ambitions has been filled to the brim- Now, as the glories of the past recede, may it be his to have that unclouded serenity and calmness of mind which are the greatest of all human blessings. 43 II A GREAT MATCH A young racehorse of old pedigree Match'd for the Spring, whom several went to see. Byron, Don Juan. The Scottish peer whose famiUar reputation rests upon the romantic tournament which bears his name, and whose popularity was proverbial in Scotland as a princely host, and in Ireland as genial Viceroy in two of Lord Derby's administra- tions, figures prominently in the annals of the Turf at a most interesting period. A sketch, masterly but fanciful, is given of him in a classic work of political romance, in which reference is made to " his horses that were entered for all the great races of the kingdom." The thirteenth Earl of Eglinton at the age of nineteen won the Ayr Plate with his grey mare Bathsheba. En- couraged by this success, three years later he had ten horses in training under the care of old George Dawson. Among them was St. Benet, who achieved a notable victory in the Liverpool Cup of 1838. Irishmen in numbers had crossed the Channel to witness the success of their invincible Harkaway ; but, great horse as he was, he failed to give 15 lb. to St. Benet, who v/on a desperate race for Lord Eglinton by a neck. Three years after the celebration of the historic 44 m -7; ° Blue Bonxkt. Winner of the St. Leger, 1842. A GREAT MATCH tournament at Eglinton Castle his lordship won his first classical race. He owned a mare named Blue Bonnet, a daughter of Touchstone and Maid of Melrose. As a two-year-old she had broken down more than once. Engagements at Goodwood, Liverpool, and other places had all been sacrificed. She had travelled hundreds of miles, but had never been saddled for a race, and her owner had long lost any faith in her. It was the Saturday before the races when Lord Eglinton arrived at Doncaster. In the course of the afternoon he and a friend looked in at Dawson's stables, when the trainer proudly led the way to a box where stood a fine lengthy bay mare in brilliant condition. He introduced this maiden three-year-old to his visitors as the winner of the forthcoming St. Leger. It was then explained to Lord Eglinton that the mare was his despised Blue Bonnet, and that she had been so tried as to make the great race a certainty for her. Her trial had been remarkable, although in these days the argument drawn from it would perhaps be not so confident. The trainer reported that he had twice tried the mare with the six-year-old Charles XII, winner of the St. Leger of 1839, ^^^ ^t that time one of the best horses in England. In receipt of 2 st., she had beaten the horse on each occasion, and the trainer declared that no other three-year-old in the country was capable of such a performance. Lord Eglinton was so impressed with this account that he repaired to the betting-rooms after dinner to back his St. Leger candidate. From the notorious Crockford he took £10,000 to £150, and before he left the rooms he booked another 45 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY wager of £10,000 to £200. His confidence in the filly's prospects increased, and the following day- he took another bet of £10,000 to £300. The turf market was strong in those times, for, despite these large wagers made openly by the owner, the mare started at the remunerative price of 8 to I. The Derby winner of that year, Attila — the hero of a famous midnight trial — was favourite, but Blue Bonnet beat him out of a place, and won cleverly by a length from Seahorse. She was cruelly and unnecessarily punished by her jockey. Lye, who had backed her heavily, and after this treatment she was useless on the race-course. Lye was never again employed by Dawson. In 1844 Lord Eglinton removed his horses from Dawson and entrusted their training to Fobert. Fortune continued to smile on the tartan colours, and at this date Lord Eglinton's career on the Turf was made by an extraordinarily lucky accident. A mare named Barbelle had bred to the famous Lanercost a brown colt. When a yearling Lord Eglinton took it on trust, leaving its value to be settled subsequently by Colonel Anson and Mr. Charles Greville. These eminent stable authorities of Whitewall and Danebury valued the colt at £300, with a proviso that the purhaser should pay £500 in addition if it won the Derby. Lord Eglinton called his purchase Van Tromp. The colt soon became a celebrity. He was an idle horse requiring much work, but he had a fine turn of speed. As a two-year-old he won valuable races at Liverpool, Goodwood, and Doncaster. In the Derby of 1847 — the last run over the old course — for which he was heavily supported by 46 A GREAT MATCH Lord George Bentinck, who stood upwards of £20,000 at flag fall, he was third to Cossack and War Eagle. After the race it was considered that Job Marson, a jockey of experience and repute, had not done his best for his mount, and both Bentinck and Grev^ille declared that fairly ridden the horse must have won. Another version on record is that early in the race Van Tromp was struck into, and, swerving in consequence, lost several lengths. Be this as it may, Marson at the end of the season was dismissed from Lord Eghnton's service, though he lived to have signal success in the colours of a rival stable. It is indeed more than likely that if he had remained in Lord Eghnton's employment he would have spared his master his greatest disappointment on the Turf. The jockey always protested his innocence, and with some justice in the opinion of persons less interested than those who had much at stake, for Van Tromp was not nearly so well adapted to the Epsom gradients as Cossack, who moved freely and easily down the hill. In the St. Leger, Van Tromp, well suited by the Doncaster course, achieved an easy victory over his Derby conqueror, and in the following year beat him by a hundred yards at Goodwood. In 1849 ^^^ Tromp again beat Cossack in the Emperor's Plate at Ascot in the style of a great horse, and with this race to his credit he quitted the Turf. During his last year in training he developed a very bad temper, and was ridden in a muzzle. Subsequently he was bought by the Tsar's agent. Colonel Schreider, and was exported to Russia, where he became a great favourite. 47 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY But Van Tromp's dam, Barbelle, was to breed a yet better son. The mare rather lacked power, but she was neat, short-legged, and lengthy, stand- ing not more than 15-2. Her stud value having been established by the early successes of Van Tromp, Lord Eglinton made a bargain with her owner, Colonel Vansittart, to pay a thousand guineas for every foal she should produce. It was a very fortunate contract, for in 1846 the mare foaled the Flying Dutchman, one of the best horses that ever ran on an English race-course, and destined to confer on Lord Eglinton a higher title to fame than he ever gained from tournament in Scotland or from political service in Ireland. The Flying Dutchman was a brown colt by Bay Middleton, winner of the Derby in 1836, a sire held in the highest esteem by all good judges of the thoroughbred. The pedigree of the Flying Dutchman shows the excellent judgment of the breeder, who, in common with the best stud masters of the time, believed in close in-breeding to Eclipse Herod, and Matchem. The colt was of a very irritable temperament and a hard puller. He required very little work, and in his gallops was generally unaccompanied. The first time he was mounted by a jockey, his rider on dismounting exclaimed, " I have never been on such a one before." As a two-year-old he won the July Stakes with 7 to 4 betted on him, and the Cham- pagne at Doncaster without being extended. In all he won five races in his first year. The next year he won the Derby, beating Nunnykirk, the winner of the Two Thousand Guineas. It was a desperate race, for the downs at Epsom were very sticky, 48 The Flying Dutchman. Winner of the Derby ; the St. Leger, 1849 ; and the Emperor's Plate, Ascot, 1850. A GREAT MATCH owing to recent rains, and the horse did not show to advantage in heavy going. He easily mastered his conspicuous opponents, but an outsider. Hotspur, stuck to him with desperate tenacity, and at one moment it appeared as if the unbeaten champion would at last have to own defeat. Marlow struck him twice, and in the last few strides he shook off his game antagonist and won by a bare half length. The St. Leger he won easily, and at Ascot in the following year he carried off the Emperor of Russia's Plate by no less than eight lengths. At the Royal meeting he was the cynosure of all eyes. His condition was absolutely dazzling. An admiring trainer from Newmarket was heard to say, " He looks like a picture of a race-horse, coloured and varnished." But the sensational period of his career was now approaching. His title to pre-eminence was to be challenged by a younger rival, who had become the idol of all Yorkshire, and whose history is one of the most interesting in the records of the Turf. In 1847 a mare by Mulatto foaled a dark brown colt with a white hind foot. He was a grandson of Blacklock from the union of his sire Voltaire with Martha Lynn, her dam Leda by Filho-da- Puta. The pedigree of this colt shows the name of Eclipse in no less than fifteen of its thirty-two quarterings, the name of Herod in eighteen, and Matchem in eleven, thus exhibiting more close in- breeding to these distinguished old sires than any animal of his date. Curiously enough, the Voltaire colts were not highly valued. They were generally heavy necked and fleshy, and when Hill, Lord Zet- land's trainer, marked the yearling at the Doncaster 49 D CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY sales, his lordship would have none of him. He was quickly passed out of the sale ring as no one would bid a hundred for him, and he was returned to his breeder, Mr. Stephenson of Hart. But the trainer adhered to his favourable opinion of the unpopular yearling with his too massive fore- hand, and at last Lord Zetland reluctantly gave permission for him to be sent to Aske. To the amazement of the Aske stable the brown colt won two trials with consummate ease, and in a third, in which Ellen Middleton and Castenette ^ were engaged, he came in alone. Lord Zetland was now only too anxious to buy the animal he had once so contemptuously declined, and gladly gave £1,500 for him, with a /500 contingency on every classic race he should win. The horse was named Voltigeur. He brought imperishable lustre to his owner, and inspired the love and adoration of every sportsman in the Northern shire. Voltigeur only ran once as a two-year-old, winning a small race at Richmond. The colt carried 8 st. 9 lb. and with 6 to 4 betted on him he won by a length. For the Derby he underwent the careful and old-fashioned preparation of those days, and the thickset three-year-old, with legs and feet like iron, throve under the heavy sweats which were then in vogue. In due course he was sent to Epson ; but through some mischance of the journey he was delayed in his box for many hours, and he had evidently suffered greatly by the prolonged confinement. The cognoscenti in » Both these mares became famous at the stud. Ellen Middleton bred Wild Dayrell, who won the Derby in 1855, and Castenette the renowned Cup horse. Fandango. 50 VoLTiGEUK. Winner of the Dc-ihy, the St. Leger, and the Doncaster Cup, 1850. o ^ A GREAT MATCH the paddock passed an unfavourable judgment on him, and he started at the long odds of i6 to i. Davis the bookmaker perambulated the ring or'ier- ing any odds against him. Over this Derby and the two following, when Teddington and Daniel O'Rourke won, the Leviathan operator was said to have lost more than a quarter of a million. Ridden by Job Marson, Voltigeur, although in running he nearly gave himself an overreach, won the race easily by a length from Pitsford, the winner of the Two Thousand Guineas, a victory of no little satisfaction to the jockey, who thus handsomely justified the confidence of a new master. The horse was then reserved for the St. Leger, and for the Doncaster race he was a hot favourite, 13 to 8 being laid on his chance. His victory was regarded as so certain that only eight horses came to the post to oppose him. But the crack had a very different task to that set him on Epsom Downs. In the race, when he had apparently settled all his English opponents, a despised out- sider, against whom 20 to i had been laid at the start, was seen to be gaining on him yard by yard, and sticking gallantly to him refused to be shaken off. Head to head they came thundering on amid the roar of the multitude, and head to head the brown and the chestnut passed the judge's chair. The suspense was breathless, the anxiety over- whelming. At length the verdict was given. The judge had been unable to separate the two horses : it was a dead heat. An Irish horse, Russ- borough, the property of Mr. Mangan, who had been backed by the Irish division to win a great stake, and who was a grandson of Voltigeur's 51 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY sire, had had — with the brilUant assistance of Robinson, his jockey — the presumption to assert equaUty with the hero of the North Country. Before the excitement had died down it was decided to take issue again. The dead heat was to be run off. Hill, the trainer of the favourite, was by this time quite unnerved. He allowed Voltigeur to be led towards his stable, there to be rubbed down and to rest before renewing the contest with his doughty Irish rival, who, of the two, was the better trained. Fortunately, some shrewd sports- men interested in the fortunes of the Zetland stable realized that if suffered to stand still for two hours the horse would then be unable to raise a gallop ; but the trainer would not heed their remonstrances. At that critical moment John Scott was seen talking to Sir William Milner. At once an appeal was addressed to the oracle of Whitewall. " If," said he, " you put Voltigeur into a stable and allow him to get stiff you might as well shoot him through the head. You must keep him walk- ing the whole time till he runs for the deciding heat. That is what I did with Charles XII." * Such authority could not be questioned. Roma locuta est. After these words of sagacity and ripe experience, Voltigeur was led about until the supreme moment arrived for the deciding encounter. Soon after five o'clock, when the other races on the card were over, the two heroes of the day were seen approaching the enclosure. A whisper went round that Russborough would set a severe ' Charles XII ran a dead heat for the St. Lager with Euclid in 2839, and won the deciding heat. 53 A GREAT MATCH pace to the Zetland horse. Voltigeur was mounted on the course. The canter followed the parade. When the flag fell the Irish horse was first away, making strong running. Up the hill the pace quickened, and two lengths separated the horses at the Red House. Into the straight Russborough came, still keeping the lead, his jockey glancing over his shoulder at Marson, who rode with hands well down on Voltigeur's withers. The vast crowd, as the horses passed, closed in upon them. Half- way within the distance Marson gave his horse a sharp reminder with the spurs. In the next three strides he was alongside the other, and ran home a clever winner by a length. Spotted handkerchiefs — the Zetland colours — flew in the air, the police went down like thistledown before a hurricane, and the winner was mobbed by his frantic admirers. But the climax of the week's excitement was yet to come. Voltigeur on the Friday threw down the gauntlet to the mighty Dutchman in the Cup. Never had there been such a Cup day on the historic Town Moor. It was a battle d outrance between North and South. The four- year-old was a hot favourite — ii to 2 and 6 to i being betted on him — and by the talent he was fully expected to beat his younger rival, who, it was thought, would be feeling the effect of his two severe races only two days before. Voltigeur, however, was in reality all the better for his exer- tions. On the Wednesday he was undoubtedly short of a gallop : but the following day, when he walked over for the Scarborough Stakes, he seemed as if he had never run a race the day before, and 53 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY when he came to the post for the Cup he showed a significant improvement on his form in the St. Leger. In the race Marlow rode the Dutchman and Nat (Flatman) displaced Job Marson as the Zetland jockey. Lord Eglinton's horse had been rather upset by his journey to Doncaster, and was more fretful than usual. Marlow had strict in- junctions to wait on the three-year-old, who was in receipt of 19 Ib.^ from his horse (there were no other runners), until they were round the Red House corner — some six furlongs from the winning- post ; but to the consternation of owner and trainer the Dutchman, on passing the stand for the first time, was seen to be making the running at a rate without parallel in a long-distance race. Round the turn and up the hill the pace was maintained, the Dutchman still leading, and as they descended the hill the tartan jacket was ten lengths in front. At the Red House Voltigeur drew up within two lengths of the other, and Nat challenged just before the distance was reached. Then, to his horror, Marlow on the Dutchman found that he had driven his great horse to a stand- still, and that there was not an ounce of extra power left in him for a final effort. Voltigeur, ridden with fine judgment throughout, passed the post with an advantage of half a length, and the Yorkshiremen roared themselves hoarse with delight. 2 « The Flying Dutchman carried 8 st. 12 lb. and Voltigeur 7 St. 7 lb. « The writer had the account of this race, as also that of the match at York in the following spring, from a relative, a Yorkshire squire, who was an eyewitness of both races. This authority stated that it was evident that when Marlow got up 54 The Doncaster Cup, 1850. \'oltigeur beating the Flying Dutchman. o 5 lo jr. U >< ■'El A GREAT MATCH A contemporary writer relates that the vast crowd seemed quite stunned by the result, and were hardly able to realize that such a giant as the Flying Dutchman had fallen at last. His backers moved about pale and silent, and the unhappy jockey stood by the weighing-room in a flood of tears, while Lord Eglinton endeavoured to soothe his disappointment with some kindly words. On the other hand, the Voltigeur idolaters were absolutely demoralized by the wonder of their champion's victory. That night it was high revel at the Salutation and at every crammed hostelry in the old town. Yorkshire ale foamed in the glasses. Farmers, graziers, and clothiers ate, drank, and danced with the inn servants. To an inquiry whether he was going to bed, a stout Yorkshireman shouted back indignantly in the rich vernacular, "Go to bed, indeed ! Who'd go to bed when Voltigeur 's won the Leger and the Cup ? " " After Calais," as a wise wit once said, " nothing surprises." The racing world that autumn and winter talked of little but the Doncaster battle of the giants, and of their respective merits. It had been so even a contest that sporting opinion was keenly divided. At length Lord Zetland and Lord Eglinton agreed to a match. The venue was to be York, for a thousand guineas a side, two miles over the old course, at the Spring Meeting on May 13th. The handicapping was entrusted to Captain Rous. This was the gallant sailor's first notable handicap. He had been in 1841 on the Flying Dutchman for the Doncaster Cup he was not sober, and that his riding of the horse was flagrantly contrary to the orders he had received 55 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY elected Member for Westminster, but, doubtless regarding Sir Robert Peel as a shifty performer, had wisely retired from pohtics. Thenceforward he devoted himself to the stewardship of the Jockey Club, and to the extrication of that institution from its financial embarrassment — a task which he accomplished with complete success. In 1850 he published his work on the Laws and Practice of Horse-Racing, and was with universal approval appointed the first official handicapper by the Jockey Club in 1855. Captain Rous (he became Rear-Admiral of the Blue in 1852), after infinite consideration, allotted the Flying Dutchman 8 st. 8-J- lb. and Voltigeur 8 st. The result of the race, as will be seen, was a fine compliment to the handi- capper. No better theatre for the contest could have been chosen. York as a race-course has always been beloved of Yorkshiremen. Its racing history goes back to a remote past. In Camden's Brita^mia horse-racing is spoken of as being practised on the east side of the City of York in the year 1590, at which a gold or silver bell » was the winning prize, and large sums were wagered upon the horses. Sylvanus writes that in his days there were many retail shops in York wherein " you might get pepper to a pony," on any great race that was pending, from the sedate old gentleman who was serving behind the counter in drab garments and flaxen wig, and who would have derived his informa- » Hence the proverb " to bear the bell." Jockey and his horse were by their masters sent To put in for the bell. North, Forest of Vaneti-es. 56 A GREAT MATCH tion from some Malton stable-lad at that moment in the little back parlour discussing a plate of corned beef and a horn of October ale. The present race-course is situate about a mile from the city on the Tadcaster Road, and is known as the Knavesmire. Here were estabhshed races as far back as 1709, in which year the citizens made a collection with which they purchased five plates for competition, while, according to the historian Drake, four years later " the King's Gold Cup was procured to be run for." ^ The course is a mile and six furlongs and rather over fifty yards round ; and, being in the form of a horseshoe, is considered one of the best in England, as the spectators can stand and witness the horses running round them. Throughout the winter and early spring tongues wagged and pens wrote concerning the probable issue of the great match and the manner in which it would be run. Match-riding in those days was understood ; in recent years it has become a lost art. One prophetic scribe opined that the Dutch- man would go away and run the four-year-old down as soon as they reached the turn — the famous spot where an Archbishop of York, having stolen from his adjoining palace of Bishopthorpe, is said to have been discovered by his chaplain on a race day slyly peeping through the hedge at the horses running on the Knavesmire — the chaplain, be it said, being equally interested in the proceedings. From that point it was anticipated that Voltigeur would make his effort and win the match. On the other hand, there were sound judges who, ' Strictly, Drake should have called it the Queen's Cup, as at that date Queen Anne was on the throne. 57 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY having regard to the races in which the Zetland horse had taken part, doubted whether he was of as good class as the Dutchman. Among these was the famous sporting Baronet of Sledmere, whose opinion is thus quoted in a medley com- memorating the event : Of victory for Voltigeur The masses never doubt, But thus outspoke Sir Tatton, He cannot win this bout. Indeed, the poet was right, Voltigeur was the horse of the million. The miners, the hardware youths from Sheffield, the factory hands from Leeds, the farmers from every quarter of Yorkshire drove, rode, or tramped along the roads leading to York. From Leeds to Tadcaster and onwards hundreds slept on the wayside, resuming their walk betimes in order to get a place on the course near the rails. There were then some limited railway facilities ; but trains announced to start at 10 A.M. were packed full at 6 o'clock by crowds who sang and cheered the name of Voltigeur and the Zetland spots. " Pompeius before Pharsalia, Harold before Hastings, Napoleon before Waterloo, might afford some striking contrasts to the immediate catastrophe of their fortunes. And yet the Before and After of a first-rate English race in the degree of its excitement, and sometimes in the tragic emotions of its close, may vie even with these." Thus wrote DisraeH of the Derby of 1837 when Phos- phorus prevailed. Certainly no " before " and " after " ever aroused more interest on an English race-course than did this match of the century. 58 A GREAT MATCH The two horses were at even betting almost from the day when it was announced that the match had been made, and when they went to the post there was not a shade of odds on the one side or the other. The match was the third event on the card. At the fall of the flag Nat on Voltigeur made the running at the top of his speed, and was soon three lengths ahead of his rival, the pace being very fast, having regard to the state of the ground. No change took place until they rounded the last turn, when Marlow called on the Flying Dutchman to go up to his antagonist with a request very pointedly urged. As the two horses passed the stands it was stride for stride, and it was seen by the breathless spectators to be a struggle of desperate effort. It proved too much for the younger horse, and he tired first, the Dutchman with his relentless reach passing the post first by a short length. Marlow appeared to be nervous before the start, but throughout he rode a confident and well-judged race. He was a jockey with good hands, very patient, and a most resolute finisher. The next day Lord Eglinton announced that the Flying Dutchman would forthwith be with- drawn from the Turf, having lost only one of the sixteen races in which he had been engaged. And for Yorkshire, too, it was all over. The Richmond men had their long journey home before them. It was no more the rollicking roystering crowd that had shouted over the successes of their favourite at Doncaster, and who in their hearts had believed that he would never know defeat. As they plodded along they had to relate the story of their disappointment in the sanded kitchen 59 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY of many an alehouse on village greens, and to listen to old greybeards who, in their turn, told of their memory of another North-country cham- pion, Hambletonian of the County of Durham, who fifty-two years before had vanquished Dia- mond in a match for three thousand guineas over the Beacon Course. How Hambletonian beat of yore Such horses as are seen no more. They told how Sir Harry Vane Tempest's horse only won by a head, and how before the race Sir Harry took the cool hand of his jockey, Frank Buckle, in his own hot grasp, exclaiming that he would give much to possess such nerve, and how Buckle's judgment in making up his ground between the Ditch and the Turn of the Lands had gained him his narrow victory. Voltigeur's picture by Landseer hangs at Aske, with the horse's favourite companion, the kitten, which would curl up contentedly on his clothing, but would never sit upon his bare back. At the stud the progeny of Voltigeur and his great rival met and loved — a union of the family of Eclipse with that of Herod, and one of significant contrast, if the concetto may be forgiven, to the tragedy of the children of Montague and Capulet. Voltigeur's son Vedette was mated with Flying Duchess, a daughter of the Flying Dutchman. The offspring of this union was the famous Galopin, winner of the Derby of 1875, and the immediate founder of the St. Simon Hne, which for many years has dominated the Racing Peerage of England. 60 Ill DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK Sat est vixisse. Wherein were two things equally amusing : The one was winning, and the other losing. Danebury for sale !^ Is there a surviving votary of the Turf of the Victorian era whose mind is not charged with memories of Danebury and Stockbridge — once the centre of racing interests, where the quick pulse of the Turf world throbbed, where fortunes were made and lost, and where the dead progenitors of the race-horses of to-day were born and trained for their engagements ? Some seven miles from Andover and about seventeen from Salisbury lies the little town of Stockbridge, with its race-course in the middle of the open country. On the sky-line is seen the majestic Danebury Clump, and as the descent is made from that commanding height, there stretches the famous Danebury Down, revealing all the quiet beauties of the valley. The turf is sound and yielding and of a livelier hue than elsewhere. The hill-sides are bright with a rich verdure, and in the sunshine the landscape has a freshness and a warmth of colouring peculiar to this delicious quarter of Hampshire. The race-course on which I This property was put up for sale, and bought by Lord Glanely. 6i CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the Stockbridge and Bibury Club meetings were held is one of severe gradients, and offers more reward to stamina than mere speed. Indeed, the severity which makes it so admirable as a training ground somewhat spoils it for racing purposes. The races have been discontinued these twenty- three years, but the stands remain, from which many a close struggle has been witnessed of horses battling up and down the dips as the winning- post was approached. These structures are now rapidly falling into decay ; but one still serves for the evening entertainment of the stable-boys, and another for a chapel where the local priest says Mass for the benefit of the Irish employes of the adjoining training establishments, and hears confessions, which must give his reverence — if he has any mind for the sport — material for interest- ing and sometimes profitable reflection. It would seem that the observance of religious discipline has been inherited at Danebury. In the time of John Day the boys were compelled to attend two services on Sunday, and, after these devotions, were assembled in the trainer's dining-room, where he read them one of Blair's discourses, with a whip at hand, which he used for the benefit of any member of the congregation who chanced to slumber. Vox domini furit instantis virgamgue ieneniis.'^ After the turn is made from the Andover road and passing along the lane which winds through the sleepy Wallops, the trainer's house is soon reached. It lies in a pleasant hollow in the midst of stables and paddocks. Here reigned the famous * Juvenal, xiv. 63. 62 Trainer's Cottage at Danebury in the Time of Old John Day. The Stands, Stockbridge Race-course. Traixer's Cottage at Danebury in the time of old John Day. •dHHHHiiafi^HHi i The Stands, Stockdridge Race-course. DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINGK John Day. In his time the house was Uttle more than a cottage, overshadowed by a great horse- chestnut tree and in close proximity to stalls and boxes ; but since then his successors have occupied a building of more modern proportions. Many interesting memorials of the past remain — notably the little cramped room where the old trainer kept his saddles and colours, and where the weighing machine still stands in which jockeys and boys were weighed out before riding a trial to determine an issue on which many thousands of pounds were ultimately hazarded in the betting ring. Day gave evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1844, ^^^ i^ ^is answers to questions by the Chairman stated that thirty-five servants in his employment at Danebury sat down to dinner every day, and upwards of a hundred persons were employed in the stables in con- nexion with the management of the horses in training. The old place is full of the traditions of classic race-horses. Mr. Crosby's mare Pussy was trained here, winner of the Oaks as far back as 1834. In the hands of " Old John " (J. B. Day), and starting at 20 to I, she defeated an Epsom field of fifteen runners — a lucky performance, for May Day at the distance, with the race well in hand, fell and broke her leg. John Gully, prize-fighter and Member of Parliament, owned Pyrrhus the First, who learnt his business on Danebury Down and won the Derby in 1846 — a success which the same owner repeated in 1854 with his bay horse Andover. Cossack, who gave his name to the renowned port-wine vintage of 1847, completes the list of 63 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Danebury winners of the Epsom race, and was the last horse to win over the old course, of which the first three-quarters of a mile nearly settled the contest before Tattenham Corner was reached. The Oaks race went to Danebury in 1840 with the famous Crucifix, while Mendicant, of exquisite symmetry and perfect action, won it easily six years later — both mares at the stud making great names for themselves with their sons who won the Derby. Danebury also sent out Mr. Hill's mares, Cymba to win the Oaks in 1848 and Mincepie in 1856 ; and to win the One Thousand Guineas, Lord George Bentinck's Chapeau d'Espagne, the Duke of Beaufort's Siberia, and Lord Hastings' Repulse. Vauban, though he failed in Hermit's sensational Derby of 1867, brought credit to Dane- bury by his easy victory in the Two Thousand, as did The Hermit in the same race in 1854. Elis in 1836 took the St. Leger and so did Saucebox in 1854. Bay Middleton, after his unbeaten career on the Turf, stood here : the magnificent son of Sultan having been bought by Lord George Bentinck from Lord Jersey for the sum of £4,000, partly because he was the only horse who consistently proved himself superior to Elis, of whom Lord George had the highest opinion, and partly in the hope that the skill of Day at Danebury would repair a suspicious leg and again bring the great horse to the post. But this was not to be. Bay Middleton's subsequent renown was gained as the sire of the Flying Dutchman and Andover — both winners of the Derby — and as one of the best representatives of an important branch of the .genealogical stud tree. 64 The Two 'Thousand. The One Thousand. The Oaks. Grey Momus ... 1838 Chapeau d'Espagne 1837 Crucifix 1840 Crucifix 1840 Crucifi.\ 1840 firebrand 1842 67. Leger. Elii 1836 ^(Zwfc^;^ DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK The Grand National is the classic steeplechase, and on the Danebur}^ ground was schooled Mani- festo, who was twice victorious and became the idol of the Aintree public. In 1908 Rubio and Mattie Macgregor were first and second for the great race over the Liverpool country, and were trained for this engagement by Mr. Withington — then the tenant of Danebury — a gentleman of deserved popularity, a fine horseman, and an accomplished master of his craft. Danebury will always be associated with the name of Lord George Bentinck. Despite the literary charm with which Disraeli has drawn his character as a politician, it is as one of the most astute and imperious personalities of the racing world that he will be remembered in the history of the English Turf. Bentinck, bom in 1802, was the second son of the Duke of Portland. He was bred to race, for his father had won the Derby in 1819 with Tiresias. In early life he was for three years private secretary to his uncle, Mr. Canning, when Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. In the service of the eminent statesman he made the acquaintance of the Duke of York, whom he had greatly impressed by his knowledge of racing affairs and whose race-horses were managed by Charles Greville, Clerk of the Privy Council. His Royal Highness rewarded his young friend with a majority in the loth Hussars. Two years later Bentinck became Member for Lynn, and in 1833 started a racing stud at Danebury, entering and running his horses sometimes in the name of his trainer, John Day, and sometimes in the name of his cousin, Greville. 65 E CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY In his diary Greville ^ records that Bentinck ran a number of horses in various ahases at Newmarket. The Duke of Portland was much puzzled, and asked his friends who these invisible personages were. At last, as it was evident that the Duke would find out the truth, Greville advised his cousin to make a clean breast of it. Mustering up his courage, Bentinck told his father that all those horses were his. The Duke was greatly incensed and at once left Newmarket. For a long time he would not see the offender, but he was ultimately pacified, and afterwards became much interested in his son's racing interests. Bentinck's first good horse was Preserve, an animal Greville had bred in 1832, and which he states that he bought for Bentinck in the following year. Preserve was an own sister to Greville's famous horse Mango by Emilius (winner of the Derby of 1833) out of Mustard. This reference to Mango recalls an incident of the Stockbridge race-course in June of 1837. The races were in progress on the Friday, and when the time set for a sweepstakes of ;fioo had arrived, the owner of Mango had not appeared. The race was delayed » Mr. Greville's career on the Turf began in 182 1 — the year of liis appointment as Clerk of the Council — and closed in 1855, when he sold his horses. In racing affairs his judgment was so highly respected that, in 1822, he became the manager of the Duke of York's stud on the retirement of Mr. Warwick Lake. Subsequently Lord Egremont's stud was under his direction. He enjoyed a fair measure of success on the Turf. He would have won the Derby in 1845 — and according to his own account ;^20,ooo in bets — had not his horse, Alarm, been driven over the rails by the Libel at the starting-post. Alarm, though badly injured, took part in the race. Later on Alarm won several engagements of importance ^{Grevilh Memoirs, vol. v. p. 290). 66 Stockbridge Race-course. Trainer with horses on the straight five furlongs. 5 i DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK for half an hour, when Lord Chesterfield ^ and the Clerk of the Council came rattling over the hill in an open barouche and four. The carriage had hardly reached the stand before the noble lord offered 6 to 4 in thousands on his friend's horse Mango to beat his solitary opponent, Wisdom. It was a desperate race, the horses entering the straight almost level, Mango on the inside. They ran neck and neck under the whip to the winning- post, the judge awarding the race to Greville's horse by a head. " Punch " Greville gossips interestingly about Mango. Bentinck and he had quarrelled over the former's purchase of Preserve, and matters were not made better by Greville's interference in an affaire de conur — at any time a perilous operation ; but in about two years' time they began to jumble into intimacy again, and at length their friendship was almost re-established under the following cir- cumstances. Greville wanted to try Mango for the St. Leger. Bentinck's trainer told him he was sure that his master would arrange this at Danebury. Greville and Bentinck went down to Stockbridge together and tried the horse. Mango won the trial, and subsequently won the St. Leger ; Bentinck, according to his cousin's journal, re- ceiving £14,000 over the race. Preserve was a useful purchase for Bentinck. She took the Clearwell and the Criterion, and as a three-year-old won for her owner his first classic I Lord Chesterfield made his first appearance on the Turf under the guidance of Charles Greville, with whom he trained his horses at Newmarket under Prince. The connexion was dissolved in 1832, when Chesterfield removed his horses to John Scott's care at Malton. 67 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY race — the One Thousand. She was subsequently second for the Oaks to Queen of Trumps and ran unplaced for the St. Leger. Bentinck loved Danebury. It is said that he spent £1,500 over the gallops in bone-dust alone, and in his shirt-sleeves spread a good deal of it himself while young Day wheeled the barrow. He owned and trained on the downs a notable horse in Grey Momus. The colt was a stout one, but a little wanting in speed. He started six times as a two-year-old and won three of his engagements. He began his three-year-old career by winning the Two Thousand Guineas, a race for which Lord Sufheld's Bamboo was favourite. Lord Suffield, who had backed his horse for the ensuing Derby to win £50,000, was so dissatisfied with the race that he matched his horse against Bentinck's at the same meeting, but the grey won even more easily than in the first encounter. In the Derby, however. Grey Momus suffered a hand- some defeat by Amato in a field of twenty-two runners. Bentinck was confident of taking the race to Danebury, and having another horse — D' Egville — engaged, declared to win with Grey Momus, who at once became first favourite. He was ridden by Day, who, knowing his mount well, made most of the running in what proved to be for those days a very fast-run race. On entering the straight, Amato went easily up to the leaders and won by two lengths. Grey Momus was a bad third, and Bentinck lost £5,000 on the race. Amato is always known as a winner of the Blue Riband who won his first and only race on Epsom Downs and who lies buried at the Durdans, the 68 The Oaks. Industry 1838 Lady Evelyn ... 1849 St. Leger. Don John 183S DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK Surrey retreat of Lord Rosebery. Grey Momus subsequently won the Ascot Cup, beating Caravan, though that horse turned the tables on him in a match at Newmarket in the autumn. In the spring of the year of Queen Victoria's accession Lord Chesterfield sold a draft from his stud. His princely fortune was practically gone. He had been Master of the Buckhounds, which he had hunted with unexampled extravagance. For three seasons he had carried the Pytchley horn, and that country had rejoiced in his amazing hospitality. His mode of living at Chesterfield house was modelled on the profusion of Elagabalus. His banquets were the talk of London, and Dolesio, his chef, enjoyed the salary of a Cabinet Minister, and would have been decorated under the Empire. This finished artist in extravagance and gambling — with the hel air slightly overdone — this habitue of Newmarket and the race-course, was the sixth holder of the title made famous by Philip Dormer, the fourth Earl, statesman, scholar and letter-writer. " The greatest of all the Chesterfields " ^ hated field sports, and told his son that such amusements were frivolous and the resource of little minds who either do not think or do not love to think. During the whole period of his public service he never touched a card, but on the evening of his resignation of the seals of office he repaired to White's and quietly resumed his seat among the gamblers in the card-room. It is notorious that the pious wishes of a testator are seldom fulfilled by the legatee, and certainly ' The description is Lord Carnarvon's : see Prefatory Memoir to the Letters. 69 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY there can hardly be a more signal example of the futility of a last testament than that which is exhibited in the will of the illustrious nobleman who died in 1773. He left his property to his godson, Philip Stanhope, but saddled it with one of the most remarkable conditions which the Registry of Wills enshrines. The will provided " that in case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, should at any time hereafter keep or be concerned in the keeping of any race-horse or race-horses, or pack or packs of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and ill manners, during the course of the races there, or shall resort to the said races, or shall lose in any one day at any games or bet whatever the sum of £500 there ; and in any of the cases afore- said it is my express will that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay out of my estate the sum of ;f5,ooo to and for the use of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster." With a sardonic sneer the testator avowed that he had selected these reverend parties to enforce this clause in his will, because he felt sure that, if the penalty should be incurred, they would not be remiss in claiming it ! Lord Chesterfield would have been sadly dis- appointed in his heir, who, according to Madame D'Arblay, had " as little good breeding as any man I ever met " ; but if his distaste for the race- course and the card-table was genuine, it was indeed the irony of fate that his title and estates should in the second succession devolve upon one who was a master of hounds, who captured the chief prizes of the Turf, who gave his name to important races at Newmarket and Goodwood, and 70 DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK who squandered a fortune in the gambling hells of St. James's. The Lord Chesterfield of this period under review had won the Oaks with Industry — a daughter of the Derby winner, Priam — and the St. Leger with Don John, but he had neither the means nor the courage to turn their victories to profitable account. At this date Bentinck was the Napoleon of the Turf market, and he could not conceal his contempt for a man who, owning such a horse as Don John, allowed the bookmakers to escape with impunity. " I am just about to address myself," he wrote to a friend, " to the weary task of making out my book upon which I have not won a single bet. And yet I would rather be in my position than in that of Lord Chesterfield, who, with such a horse as Don John in his possession, has only won £1,500 upon the St. Leger. Had Don John been mine, I would not have left a single card-seller in Don- caster with a coat to his back." At this sale of Lord Chesterfield's at Tattersall's there was led into the ring an old mare, twenty- one years of age, with an ungainly looking bay foal at foot. The pair excited more contempt than interest, and were knocked down to Bentinck for the paltry sum of fifty-four guineas. The foal was by Priam out of Octaviana, by Octavian who won the St. Leger in 1810. With such a pedigree it is not surprising that Bentinck bought mother and foal on the advice of a sound judge of bloodstock who was present at the sale. The foal proved to be a wonder, and in her brief career witched the world of racing under the name of Crucifix. 71 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Crucifix made her first appearance in the Julv Stakes at Newmarket in 1839 — ^ i"^ce which in those days attracted heavy betting. Two days before the race the secret was whispered that Danebury would send something exceptionally good to run, and after Bentinck's money was invested the odds shortened to 2 to i. Young John Day who rode the filly was obliged, in spite of a very tight rein, to let her win by two lengths. On the Thursday she ran in the Chesterfield Stakes, which proved to be a chapter of accidents. After several false starts the horses ran the full course, and Crucifix finished second to Lord Albemarle's Iris. The stewards decided that it was " no race," and in the actual contest Crucifix reversed the verdict and won easily by two lengths. The style in which Crucifix had won her races showed that she was a filly of more than ordinary excellence, and she increased her reputation by cantering away with the Lavant Stakes at Good- wood and with the Molecomb Stakes at the same meeting. In October at Newmarket she won the Hopeful Stakes. In this race there were seventeen false starts, and the horses were kept at the post for over an hour. She was favourite, had a bad start, and carried a 9-lb. penalty, but nevertheless she won as she liked, and afterwards walked over for a £100 sweepstakes. At the second October meeting she won the Clearwell easily with odds betted on her, and in the last race of the year she ran a dead-heat for the Criterion with General Bates' Gibraltar, carrying a 9-lb. penalty and getting last off after a long delay at the starting- 72 Crucifix. Winner cf the Oaks Stakes at Epsom, 1840. iSlM ^ s DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK post. On this occasion Bentinck presented her jockey with a cheque for £ioo, observing, " This is not for your riding, but for keeping your temper." Bentinck's purchase had won in all nine races, had never known defeat, and had placed to his credit £4,507 in stakes — a lucrative return for the fifty- four guineas which the filly and her dam had cost him. In the following season Crucifix won the Two Thousand Guineas without an effort, and on the following Thursday made an example of her oppo- nents in the One Thousand. She started for this race at the extravagant odds of 10 to i on, which her owner cheerfully laid. But the filly was now beginning to feel the effects of her numerous efforts, and her trainer at Danebury was obliged to break it to Bentinck that her legs would hardly last another race, and that it would take the utmost care to bring her to the post for the Oaks. She was indeed built on curious lines. Standing nearly sixteen hands high, she had a neck long and light ; her shoulders were thin, her chest very narrow, and her arms and legs small. She was flat-sided, with short back ribs and drooping quarters. She is said to have been a shambling mover with a tendency to cross her legs, but she was as active as a cat, and had the faculty of reach- ing her top speed in a few strides. On June 5th, in the presence of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort and an immense crowd, Crucifix ran in her last race. She was a hot favourite, for the public knew nothing of her infirmities. Fifteen fillies went to the post at two o'clock, but sixteen false starts delayed the race for more than an 73 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY hour. As the pace was slow, Crucifix, who was last off by two or three lengths, took up the running. Coming down the hill Lalla Rookh, Welfare, and Teleta drew near to the sky-blue and white cap, when the trainer's anxiety was seen to be acute, and in the straight it became a good race, Welfare and Teleta being alongside the favourite. There they stayed to the finish. Crucifix, fully extended, winning by half a length. As the mare came back to scale. Day observed with a significant shake of the head, " That is well over," for he knew she had really won on three legs. It was a fine ending to a great career. The winner had run in twelve races, had never been beaten, and had won £18,287 in stakes. Bentinck received £20,000 in bets over her Oaks victory — his betting book showing three times that amount to the mare's credit during her victorious life on the Turf. At the stud Crucifix bred The Cowl (by Bay Middleton), a good horse whose name is found in the best pedigrees, and in 1845, having been mated with Touchstone, produced Surplice, the first winner of the Derby and the St. Leger since the victories of Champion in 1800. Surplice, as is well known, was included in Bentinck's stud, which he sold across the breakfast table at Good- wood one morning before the races in 1846 to Mr. Mostyn for the sum of £10,000. Two years later he groaned over his misfortune in the library of the House of Commons — it was the day after Surplice had won the Derby — and his biographer has described the scene in words which have become a familiar quotation. 74 DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK Not long after Crucifix's success in the Oaks^ Bentinck severed his connexion with Danebury. He became dissatisfied with the Days,* and trans- ferred his horses to the care of John Kent at Goodwood, a trainer who made his master his hero, and who has left more than one interesting reminiscence of their connexion. Bentinck's life is not an easy one to review or to estimate. As Greville says, it was one in which opposite motives and feelings were strangely inter- mingled. His record in political history, of course, depends upon Disraeli's brilliant monograph ; but Greville, though deeply prejudiced, knew his cousin better than the politician, and, at all events, may be taken as a superior authority upon those quaUties which engaged him in the sovereign passion. Bentinck, however, defined his own character in a sentence he uttered to Disraeli a few months before he died. " I don't pretend," he said, " to know much, but I can judge of men and horses " ; and indeed this was true. Strenuous and irascible — the epithets are those of Disraeli, his sympathetic biographer — he worked at the problems of the Turf with the same energy as he afterwards dis- played in the House of Commons when he was called — as he might well have been called in these days — to the aid of an acephalous and helpless political group. He had no claims to cultivation or to polite learning. He could have taken na part in conversation with Fox and Windham at ' Although Bentinck ceased to employ Day as his trainer irt 1 84 1, it appears from the report of a qui tarn action at Guildford Assizes in 1844 that he won ;^3,ooo from his quondam servant in. a bet. 75 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Newmarket on the horses of the ancients or on the VirgiHan meaning of argutum caput : Ardua cervix, Argutumque caput, brevis alvus, obesaque terga, Luxuriatque toris animosum pectus. ' but he mastered the rules of racing and reformed them. He instituted a new system of starting, and by posting a man with a flag directly in view of the jockeys, who were ordered to go the moment the flag fell, he alleviated the difficulties of the starter and hindered the fraud of the dishonest rider. It must have been an interesting spectacle when Bentinck, to test the value of his plan, took the flag himself at York races, and attired after the manner of D'Orsay, and in a vest and cravat which rivalled Beau Brummell, started a field of twenty-eight in the Great Yorkshire Handicap. The conditions of a race-meeting of to-day are practically due to him. He enforced punctuality upon stewards, trainers, and jockeys. He con- trived the scheme of hoisting on a board the names and riders — by numbers corresponding to those on the race-card — of the field about to start for a race ; and, for the further benefit of the spectators, he introduced the practice of walking horses in the paddock before their engagements, and cantering them past the stands en route to the starting-post. Upon defaulters and swindlers he waged war without mercy. To a man who owed him £4,000 over a bet, and who offered him los. in the pound and the remainder in instalments, he wrote as follows : " Sir, — No man has a right to bet if he cannot pay should he lose. The sum I want of I Virgil, Georgics, iii. 80. Conf. PiU, by Lord Rosebery, p. 32. 76 DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK you is £4,000, and until that sum is paid 3^ou are in the list of defaulters." Again, among other reforms for which he is responsible is one recorded in the proceedings of the Jockey Club for 1848. It may astonish the racing men of to-day to learn that up to that time it was the practice for the winners of great stakes to make a present to the judge. The custom was a vicious one, and Bentinck wisely moved the Jockey Club to abrogate it. Bentinck on the training ground was equally indefatigable. During the severe frost of 1843 he turned the avenue in Goodwood Park into a tan-gallop, and thus was enabled to work his horses throughout the winter. He himself taught the lads in the stable how to ride. He would explain to the veriest midget the best method of reining-in and of managing his mount. He would school him until he had hands to hold and a head to judge. The first time that he put up his famous light- weight. Kitchener, I the weight, including saddle, bridle, and other equipment of a jockey, was just under 3 st. It was declared by the onlookers that the boy would never sit on : but he had been well taught, and he won the race in gallant style. Bentinck was greatly interested in the transport of horses from their training grounds to the race- course. He revived the system of the caravan, which was due to the invention of a Mr. Territt, who in the year 1816 moved his horse Sovereign from Worcestershire to Newmarket in a four- wheeled padded vehicle, drawn unicorn fashion by ' In 1844 this boy rode the winner of the Chester Cup in a field of twenty-six horses on what is, perhaps, the most cramped course in the kingdom. He carried 4 st. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY two heavy horses in the wheel and one in front. Doe, who was Mr. Territt's trainer, suggested this method of conveying Ehs — the St. Leger winner — to Doncaster in 1836. Ehs, by Langar out of Olympia, had a distinguished career on the Turf. He ran the famous Bay Middleton to a neck for the Two Thousand Guineas. Although he had the St. Leger in prospect, his owner ran him in four races in July and August. As the day of the Doncaster race drew near, no one knew whether the horse would make the journey to Doncaster, and his owner was pressed on all hands to declare his intentions. At last, when it seemed almost impossible for Elis to reach the Town Moor in time, it was announced that if people were so anxious to see him he should make the long journey in a carriage and four ; but on one con- dition only — namely, that the odds to one thousand should be laid against him at 12 to i. The odds were duly laid, and in the hands of Day the horse won the St. Leger by two lengths. The caravan built for Elis had accommodation for a companion, and resembled a narrow two-stall stable on wheels. It was drawn by four horses, and had a seat in front for two persons. In a picture by Cooper the postillions are seen forcing their horses along the road at a great pace. This system of transport was no doubt expensive ; but it enabled the owner of a good horse to save the animal's legs from the hard hot roads and to send him to fulfil his engage- ments with an economy of time which was certainly not less than a fourth of that taken by walking the distance. But the endurance of the horse is remarkable. Venison in 1836, when a three-year- 78 The Caravan'. Eli.s (winner of the St. Leger of 1S36) was thus conveyed to Doncaster. u -^ DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK old, tramped from one race-course to another to win no less than eleven races between the Epsom and Doncaster meetings. On the other hand, *' the ambulatory horse-box " proved its value in an emergency. For example, at an autumn meeting at Newmarket, Bentinck, finding that Grey Momus was not well enough to run, dispatched an express to Danebury on the Tuesday for a horse of his named D'Egville. On the Thursday after- noon D'Egville arrived at Newmarket in his caravan, and, none the worse for the long journey, won his race on the following day. A striking incident in Bentinck's career on the Turf was his part in the famous case of Running Rein.^ In the Derby of 1844 a horse came in first described as Mr. A. Wood's Running Rein by the Saddler out of Mab. This horse had been suspected of being a year older than his descrip- tion in the previous year, and bets had been paid under protest. Immediately after the Epsom race. Colonel Peel, the owner of Orlando, who ran second, lodged an objection, and obtained an order of the Court of Queen's Bench restraining the stake- holders from parting with the stakes until the issue had been decided in a court of law. It was alleged by Colonel Peel that Running Rein was not the three-year-old as described, but a four-year-old horse named Maccabaeus (afterwards Zanoni) by Gladiator. Bentinck at once devoted himself to the affair with extraordinary industry and enthusiasm. He hunted up evidence in Ire- land and in all parts of the country. He even I This case is developed under the title " The Fraud of a Derby " at page 126. 79 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY set to work to discover where the dye had been purchased with which the horse's legs had been painted, and he proved this part of the case up to the hilt. In the result the Jockey Club dis- qualified Running Rein and awarded the race to Colonel Peel's Orlando. The stakeholders paid the stakes into court, and left the owners of the two horses to fight out the issue in an action at law. On July i, 1844, a great sensation was caused by the trial of the suit before Baron Alderson in the Court of Exchequer. Cockburn, afterwards a law of&cer of the Crown and Lord Chief Justice of England, appeared for the owner of Running Rein, but on the second day of the trial he had to confess defeat and to withdraw the action. The jury returned a verdict for Colonel Peel, and Orlando was legally declared the winner of the Derby of 1844. On all hands it was admitted that the result had been achieved by Bentinck's activity, ingenuity, and perseverance. The solicitor employed in the case was amazed at his dexterity, and said there was no sum he would not pay for such professional assistance. Cockburn, who had been completely surprised by the strength of the evidence which had been collected against his client, made a violent attack upon Bentinck and accused him of being party, attorney, and poUce- man. Bentinck was furious, and demanded that he should be put in the witness-box so that he might vindicate his character. However, some explanatory civilities were exchanged between Bentinck, Cockburn, and the learned judge, and the matter ended amicably. So great was the credit gained by Bentinck that a valuable testimonial 80 DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK was subscribed in honour of his exertions. This he refused to accept : but he desired that the money might be apphed to the estabUshment of a fund for the benefit of decayed and distressed servants of the Turf. It is known at this day as the Bentinck Memorial Fund, and is a most valuable institution, and one that is admirably administered by the authorities of the Jockey Club. Bentinck was no easy owner for a trainer to serve. He had his way in every detail of stable management. His letters to his Danebury trainer were in the nature of State papers, and were as long and argumentative as a Foreign Office memor- andum. He worked out the most elaborate schemes for winning races with particular horses, and, if Greville is to be believed, his ardour, industry, and cleverness led him into courses which would have incurred public reproach had they been generally known. But this testimony, though corroborated by the Days, who never forgave him for removing his horses from Danebury, rests mainly upon the memoir of his cousin. Greville admits that he was not a fair judge of Bentinck's character and behaviour. Nor was he. Reference has already been made to their quarrel ov^er Preserve, and though, after the Doncaster victory of Mango in 1837, Greville protests his own spirit of recon- ciliation, he questions the sincerity of Bentinck. Crucifix became the occasion of a new difference, and of their final estrangement, Greville remarking with some naivete that he perceived that Bentinck intended to keep all the advantage of the mare's 81 F CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY merits to himself without allowing him to partici- pate in them. Subsequently, they had a personal collision at Newm.arket in a matter relating to the rules of the Turf Senate, and in the spring of 1840, after a speech by Greville at the Jockey Club ^ which Bentinck bitterly resented, they were never again on speaking terms. No doubt Bentinck was at times impulsive and arrogant, but Greville's version is manifestly ex parte and coloured by a personal prejudice which usually deformed the judgments of that seasoned viveur. There is, on the other hand, ample evidence that Bentinck had many of the best qualities of a sportsman. He bore the loss of a race with admirable philosophy, and he never reviled his jockey or reproached his trainer. Although he set his horses tasks of con- siderable severity, he taught the rider that plus fait douceur que violence. He was most liberal to all who served him and most obliging in money matters to his friends. He threw himself with passionate ardour into any business he undertook, and he risked his money with the ring because to win was the test of judgment and success. In the words used by both his biographers, he counted his thousands after a great race as a general would count his prisoners and cannon after a victory. The Turf and its interests were nearest to Bentinck's heart. His political career was merely I Speeches at the Jockey Club in those days must have been portentous performances. Greville told Martin, Q.C., that Bentinck might well be encouraged to make his maiden speech in the House of Commons on the ground that he (Greville) had heard him speak with great advantage for two hours at a meeting of the Jockey Club ! 82 DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK a parenthesis. He had accepted the leadership of a poHtical Party with great reluctance and after more than one refusal ; but he did it at the call of a man who stood alone in ability among a beggarly array of mediocrities and who had to wait for his command until reason slowly entered the minds of a distracted and factious remnant. In less than two years he retired from his Parlia- mentary post, rejoicing, as he told a colleague, " like a caged wild bird escaped from his wired prison." Had his life been spared he would have returned to the Turf : at least that was the opinion entertained by many of his friends, and it is strongly supported by a passage in Greville's diary written two months after the tragedy in Welbeck Park. He died on September 21, 1848, but only the week before he was standing by the jockey who was unsaddling Surplice after the St. Leger victory of that horse. " Nat," said Bentinck, " from this time I engage you should I ever have a stud of horses," and turning to a friend who was with him, he continued : " Nat has, I know, four masters ; if I could be Nat's sole master I would give him £1,000 a year." ^ The death of Bentinck is a familiar tragedy. He set out to walk in the afternoon from Welbeck to Thoresby. About a mile from the Abbey, near the edge of the deer park, he was found dead. In the half-hour after leaving his home, it may be ^ The famous jockey Elnathan Flatman, always known as Nat, though he had for some years more winning mounts than any jockey in the racing season, was never first past the post in either the Derby or the Oaks. He, however, won the St. Leger on three occasions. The suggested retainer is, of course, much less than that paid to a jockey of eminence in these days. 83 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY that his thoughts turned upon the many incidents of his racing Ufe. Surely he had found in it more of the segreto per esser felice than in the sordid struggle at Westminster, which he had so gladly relinquished. He may have expended a sigh upon the failure of his Parliamentary fortunes, but he had no wish to resume the part of the homme politique or the thankless office of a Party leader. He could look back to his career on the Turf with a larger and more generous spirit than common men do. He had seen the real features of his world of sport more fairly than the timid shufflers who see theirs through blinkers, and who only boast an opinion when there is a majority to back it. He was still in the prime of life. Time enough yet to breed and own and lead in the winner of the Derby. This is a real achievement for a man, and to have his name inscribed on that long scroll of fame is like having it written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world behold it and admire. After all, he had found in politics a morality not a whit superior to that in sport. As in racing he had laid himself out to defeat foul play, so he had opposed a states- man on the Treasury Bench who had sold his Party with less excuse than has the jockey who sells his employer. And, thus musing, he may have turned his thoughts upon his early days before he wielded his undisputed authority as Lord Paramount of the Turf — before he left the pleasant scene of Danebury and the breezy downs where he trained and triumphed. He may have thought of those who had served him well, and of the good horses that had carried his colours : 84 IV. .1. Rouch, Copyright. The Graveyard, Danebury. The graves of Bay Middleton {ob. 1856) and Crucifix (pb. 1857). The Graveyard, Danebury. The graves of Bay JVIiddleton {ob. 1856) and Crucifix {ob. 1857). DANEBURY AND LORD GEORGE BENTINCK and, doubtless, in his reflections his mind wandered to Bay Middleton and his favourite Crucifix. They both rest at Danebury in a little campo santo beyond the old trainer's cottage, under the shadow of a chestnut-tree planted in their honour and sacred to their memory. 85 IV THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT I beseech you make the play, if you are stout. Sir George Saville to Lord Rockingham. Rockingham Memoirs. In the year 1804 there lay in the Fleet Prison a young man, twenty-one years of age. Born in August 1783, at the Crown Inn, on the road between Bath and Bristol, he had moved with his father to Bath, who set up in business as a butcher. The father died, trade declined, and the boy failing to meet his liabilities was sentenced to confine- ment in the debtors' prison. Such was the opening chapter of the long career of John Gully, who in his time was butcher, pugilist, publican, and book- maker, until he became a Member of Parliament, a prominent owner of race-horses, and a wealthy colliery proprietor. In the Fleet — " that Cavern of Obhvion " — young Gully might have passed the best years of his life had not his hard case reached the ears of a famous citizen of Bath, who out of compassion for his fellow-townsman called on him in prison. Henry Pearce was then Champion of England, and known far and wide in the pugilistic world as the Game Chicken. He was greatly attracted by Gully, and determined to secure his liberation 86 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT from imprisonment. One day he brought to the Fleet a set of gloves and engaged Gully in a friendly sparring match. The champion was astonished at the boy's natural proficienc}/, which had only been acquired in casual encounters with local bullies of the roadside. It then occurred to Pearce that, to extricate Gully from his debts, a fight between them should be arranged for one thousand guineas. A well-known sportsman was found to stake six hundred guineas on behalf of Pearce against four hundred put down for Gully by Colonel Mellish, at that time the most popular plunger in England. The butcher's creditors, see- ing their money secured, consented to his release from the Fleet, and young Gully stepped out into the sunshine a free man. Pearce told him before- hand that he was destined to be soundly beaten, but that if he showed himself a stout fighter, as he thought he would, his fortune would be made. It was an ingenious device, alike creditable to the generosity of the elder man and to the courage of the younger. A fortnight before the naval victory of Trafalgar the fight took place at Hailsham, on the road between Brighton and Lewes, in the presence of a vast assembly, including the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV. In the opening rounds the youthful challenger, who had been in training at Virginia Water, appeared hopelessly outmatched. Again and again was he knocked down, but by degrees acquiring confidence, and making full use of the height and reach in which he was superior to his opponent, he hit the champion off his legs time after time, and the odds were called slightly 87 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY in his favour. However, in the last rounds of the encounter the judgment and experience of Pearce began to tell, and finding Gully's throat with some fearful blows, the issue was no longer in doubt. Colonel Mellish withdrew his man, and the Champion of England was declared the winner after sixty-four rounds had been fought, lasting an hour and seventeen minutes. It had been a magnificent struggle : both men had fought their hardest, and both had suffered severely. The last scene was dramatic. Pearce tottered up to the beaten novice, grasped his hand, and in his broad dialect congratulated him on the skill and endurance he had shown, asserting before the whole company that he was the best man he had ever fought. On the retirement of Pearce, Gully, who had gained great popularity by his performance, accepted the championship. For two years his claim was undisputed, but at length he was called upon to defend his title. He was challenged by a fighter from Lancashire, named Gregson, who up to that time had beaten every bruiser who had ventured to oppose him. The challenge was of course ac- cepted, and on October 14, 1807, the two men met at the then wayside settlement of Six Mile Bottom, near Newmarket, to decide the Championship of England for a stake of two hundred guineas. The fight began shortly after 10 o'clock, and slight odds were betted on Gully. They were a powerful pair, over six feet in height, but the challenger was the taller, and had the advantage of excep- tional bodily strength. At the eighth round he caught Gully in his arms and dashed him with 88 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT great force upon the ground. The odds now moved in favour of Gregson, who had throughout punished Gully severely. At the twenty-fifth round the combatants were so exhausted that they could hardly see or stand, and their blows lost power and precision. However, after the fight had lasted an hour, Gully, pulhng himself together, exerted every ounce of his remaining strength in one- desperate hit with which he knocked his opponent senseless, and the fight was thereupon declared in his favour. The struggle had been Titanic, and victory was in the balance until the final blow. Captain Barclay drove Gully from the ring in his carriage, and the following day both men appeared at the races at Newmarket. A review of this fight showed Gully and Gregson to have been very evenly matched, and the backers of the latter contended that the verdict would be reversed if the pair were again engaged. A second match was therefore arranged to take place on May 8, 1808, and again for two hundred guineas. The venue was to have been in Buckinghamshire,, but the Lord-Lieutenant gave public notice by proclamation of his intention to frustrate the fight. On the appointed day the town of Woburn and the neighbourhood were in an uproar. The roads were blocked with strings of vehicles and a confused array of pedestrians. The Dunstable volunteers were called out, and the countryside were firmly persuaded that the French had landed. Ultimately a rendezvous was found in Sir John Sebright 's park, some seventeen miles from Ashley Common. By two o'clock a huge concourse had reached the park, and had assembled at a flat 89 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY spot about a mile from the house, where a space was cleared for the fight. Gully and Gregson entered the ring at three o'clock. They fought in white breeches and silk stockings, but without shoes. On this occasion the result was a decisive victory for Gully. Although the contest lasted for an hour and a quarter, the experts hailed the success of the champion in the tenth round. His coolness, science, and fortitude under severe punishment was amazing, while he confidently placed the heaviest blows on his opponent with a dexterous finish which the defence could not resist. After the battle had been formally decided in his favour Gully addressed the spectators. He said he had not desired this fight, for he had fought with a partially disabled arm, but that he had been obhged to accept the challenge. Now that the issue was settled, he hoped he should never fight again, and, hke Entellus in the games sung by Virgil, Hie victor caestus artemque repono, he resigned the Championship of the Ring. Im- mediately he was dressed. Lord Barrymore drove him in his barouche to London and left him at the Plough Inn, Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, a tavern of which at that date the champion was the proprietor. The following morning, despite a face severely cut and bruised and both eyes re- covering from heavy blows, Gully, in a little white apron, was serving his customers and delighting them with a recital of the incidents of his fight on the previous afternoon. But he was a shrewd fellow. He saw no fortune 90 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT in the trade of Boniface, and he reahzed that the betting-ring offered exceptional opportunities of making money to a man who could combine a cool head and calculating brain with a character for scrupulous honesty. At this period, although the number of horses in training was few compared with the long strings at Newmarket and provincial training quarters which may be seen to-day, the betting was far heavier. There was practically no wagering by the general public. The professional members of the betting-ring laid the odds them- selves and worked commissions for heavy speculators of the type of the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Abingdon, and the famous confederates. Lord Foley and Colonel Mellish — Mellish of whom the sporting writer of that day says that he never opened his mouth under £500. Gully prospered in his new calling. He soon had all the best commissions in his hands, and the big backers found their business done with skill and fidelity. In 1827 — nineteen years after his last fight in the Ring — he had acquired a fortune sufficient to enable him to buy the Derby winner of that year from Lord Jersey. The Epsom race had brought much criticism upon his lordship, who had inherited from his father, a Cabinet Minister in the preceding reign, a high sense of honour and a spotless character. Lord Jersey's horse Glenartney, an own brother to Middleton, the Derby winner of 1825, was probably the best three-year-old of his year, and if his jockey had not been financially interested in the race would have won it. Lord Jersey ran another horse in the Derby, called Mameluke, but he made no declaration to win with either of the pair. At 91 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the distance it was obvious that Glenartney had the race in hand, but his jockey steadied him and let up that consummate rider Robinson on Mameluke, who won by a length. After the race Glenartney's jockey frankly admitted his conduct, adding that the ovv^ner's orders were that each jockey was to do his best to win. At Ascot Lord Jersey sold Mameluke to Gully for £4,000, while he refused £5,000 for Glenartney. It then became Gully's ambition to win the St. Leger with the son of Partisan. He took £10,000 to £1,000 about his horse, and, in addition to other large investments, had a heavy bet with Mr. Crockford, founder of the great gaming-house which bore his name. It was commonly beheved that Crockford made a corrupt bargain with the starter, who kept the horses so long at the post that Mameluke, a bad- tempered colt, could hardly be induced to go near the flag. At a moment when Chifney was turn- ing Mameluke round and when Mr. Petre's mare Matilda was many yards ahead, the starter let the field go, and Mameluke was left at the post. He was ridden hard to join the front rank. At the turn his jockey made an appeal to another rider to pull on one side, but Nicholson would not oblige him, and Chifney having to go round lost four lengths. Mameluke's great speed, however, enabled him to reach the girths of Matilda, but he could not sustain the effort, and Mr. Petre's elegant little mare, defying the Chifney rush with his far- striding horse, won by half a length. After the race Gully challenged Mr. Petre to run his mare at an additional advantage of 7 lb. in the weights on the following Friday, but acting on the skilled 92 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT advice of Scott, who knew the filly was a lucky winner, the challenge was decUned. Gully was said to have lost £45,000 over the event, but he paid his losses without a murmur. This race for the St. Leger was made famous by a poem from the pen of the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Sir Francis Doyle wrote of Matilda, trained, as he solemnly told his lecture-room, *' by that immortal man Scott, not the mere poet and novelist " (how amusing those lectures must have been !) : With birdlike dart shoots clean away,» And by half a length has gained the day. These lines were criticized with academic irreverence by a distinguished writer and sportsman who, like the Professor, was a Fellow of All Souls. The critic refused to admit the verisimilitude of " the birdlike dart." " Did ever human being," he asked with conscientious accuracy of detail, " see the horse who could make running over the mile and three-quarters of the Leger course and then muster speed for ' a birdhke dart ' ? " Probably, as he suggests, the nearest approach to such a finish was that in which Throstle in the St. Leger of 1894, after sulking and shirking in the earher stages of the race, swooped down upon Ladas and Matchbox who had run themselves to a standstill in their desperate duel. But to return to Mameluke. At Newmarket the following season he won two races for his owner, and in 1829 was second for the Ascot Cup. Subse- quently Gully sold the horse to Mr. Theobald, I Thus in the edition of 1883 ; but in the original version of 1841 it runs : " Just on the post she springs away." 93 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY breeder of Stockwell and Rataplan, but, repenting of the sale, tried hard to buy him back. The pur- chaser, however, was obdurate, informing Gully that no money would induce him to cancel the bargain. Soon after this date Gully was in partnership with a man named Ridsdale,^ and the confederacy was a financial success. They were joint-owners of St. Giles, who won the Derby in the year of the Reform Bill, the year that Gully became Member for Pontefract. St. Giles as a yearling was sent to be sold at the August meeting at York, but the ungainly colt did not obtain a single bid, and William Day thought that he gave full value for him and three others when he paid £240. The horse was slow in coming to hand, and was deficient in pace, but he was excellent over a distance. Ridsdale ran another horse in the race. Trustee, but he declared to win with St. Giles, who was favourite at 3 to i. Gully also ran his own horse Margrave. After a tedious delay at the post. Trustee led the field for a long way, when his jockey, believing that he had not done enough to prevent anything waiting on St. Giles and beating him for speed, increased the pace. A quarter of a mile from home Scott brought St. Giles to the front and won easily by two lengths. Edwards on Trustee had ridden a fast and masterly race, well calculated to serve the purpose of the winner. Ridsdale and Gully won largely over the event ; but Gully, who had sacrificed his own horse Margrave » Ridsdale was a man of humble origin, who acquired consider- able wealth. He had some literary and artistic attainments, and was undoubtedly able. It is unnecessary in this narrative to discuss a quarrel between the two men, and its consequences. 94 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT to St. Giles, thought that he was entitled to a moiety of the receipts. To this, however, Ridsdale would not agree, and the coalition was dissolved on the following Monday. At Doncaster, Gully, who had bought Margrave after winning the Criterion, and had sent him to Whitehall to be trained by Scott, carried off the St. Leger with that horse. It was, in contrast to the Derby, a very slow-run race. Robinson caught his field opposite the stands and won by three-quarters of a length. There were further racing triumphs in store for Gully. Fourteen years later he had the supreme satisfaction of winning the Derby with Pyrrhus I. The colt had been purchased as a yearling at Don- caster by John Day, and subsequently was acquired by Gully. The chestnut son of Epirus won the race by a neck, just beating Sir Tatton Sykes, who was left sixty yards at the post. In the same week Gully supplemented this victory by winning the Oaks with Mendicant, a mare of the highest class and of exquisite quality. Not since 1801, when Sir Charles Banbury carried off the Derby and the Oaks with his famous mare Eleanor, had both races fallen to the same owner in the same year. Gully won but little over the success of Mendicant, as Lord George Bentinck had fore- stalled him in the market. At Ascot he sold the mare for £4,000 to Sir Joseph Hawley, who was thought to have made a bad bargain when she was beaten in the Cup ; but she bred him Beadsman, who won the Derby in 1858 and brought him a large fortune over the race. Eight years later Gully again won the Derby. On his own judgment 95 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY he had bought Andover, a bay son of Bay Middleton, the Derby winner of 1836, and had tried him to be a certainty for the Epsom race. John Scott trained a good favourite in Dervish, and the field also included the Rothschild horse King Tom, Gully's own horse The Hermit, who had won the Two Thousand, and Knight of St. George, subse- quently the winner of the St. Leger. Andover, who was a lengthy, shortlegged, and handsome horse, won very cleverly in the lilac jacket. The racing chronicle of that day thus concludes an account of the race : " Even losers sympathized in the glorious triumph for such a fine old sports- man as Mr. Gully in the evening of his life." At the Reform dissolution Gully was pressed to come forward as a candidate for Pontefract, a constituency which returned two Members, but he declined the invitation. However, when Par- liament was dissolved in December 1832 he was again invited by a numerous deputation, and after some hesitation he consented to stand, and with Mr. Jerningham was returned without opposition. His opponents, it was said, left the field because they had no chance before a parcel of Gr^'hounds with a dash of Fox m them — a punning and sport- ing metaphor which was doubtless appreciated by one of the elected candidates. Pontefract at that date was under the Tory influence of Lord Mex- borough, a peer whose political pressure at an election was strongly resented by Gully, who stood in the Liberal interest. At the election of 1835 Gully headed the poll, and had the satisfaction of beating Lord Mexborough's heir into the second place, the other Tory candidate, Mr. Raphael, 96 The Two Thousand. The One Thousand. The Derby. The Hermit ... 1S54 Mendicant ... 1846 Pynhus I. ... 1846 Andover 1854. The Oaks. St. Lege:: Mendicant 1846 Mar<:;iave 1832 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT being defeated. In 1837 Gully declined nomina- tion, but again (and for the last time) contesting the borough in 1841, when Sir Robert Peel swept the country, was beaten by the two Tory candidates. Lord Pollington, his former colleague, and Mr. Monckton Milnes. A battle of words between Gully and Monckton Milnes must have been a most humorous feature of this electoral contest. The character of Monckton Milnes, satirically drawn by Disraeli six years later in the pages of Tancred under the name of Vavasour, is immortal. " Vavasour," writes Disraeli, " liked to know everybody who was known, and to see everything which ought to be seen. He also was of opinion that everybody who was known ought to know him. . . . He had gone down in a diving-bell and gone up in a balloon." An exchange of political compliments with Gully must have added largely to Vavasour's experiences ! In reference to Gully's election to the House of Commons in 1832 the following sketch appears in the memoirs of that jaundiced diarist, Charles Greville. " In person Gully is tall and finely made, full of strength and grace, with delicate hands and feet, his head well set on his shoulders, and remark- ably graceful and even dignified in his actions and manners. He has strong sense, discretion, and reserve, and a species of good taste which has pre- vented, in the height of his fortunes, his behaviour from ever transgressing the bounds of modesty and respect." The concluding reference in the diary has a strange ring about it. Greville, in the arrogant vein of the courtier that he was, writes : " Gully's position is now more anomalous 97 G CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY than ever, for a Member of Parliament is a great man, though there appear no reasons why the suffrages of Pontefract should place him in different social relations towards us than those in which we mutually stood before." But the history of Greville's references to Gully is a curious one. The earlier editions of the famous memoirs contain several very offensive reflections upon Gully and his chequered career. In the edition of 1894 they wholly disappear. The following explanation is offered. It is of unimpeachable authority. " I knew Harry Hill, the Commissioner, very well. He banked with me at Charing Cross. One day I was going down towards Whitehall when I met him and a tall young man whom he introduced to me as young Gully. He said, ' We have just been to see Mr. Reeve ^ at the Council Office and have asked him to leave out things he had said in his earlier editions. He said he would do so, and he was very civil about it, and it is just as well he was, for young ' Mr. Henry Reeve in 1837 was appointed by Lord Lansdowne Clerk of Appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and was promoted to the Registrarship in 1843. In 1855 he became Editor of the Edinburgh Review. Ten years later Greville placed in his hands the important deposit of his memoirs. These were most conscientiously edited by Reeve, whose cosmopolitan training and broad political sympatliies eminently qualified him for the task. The publication of the memoirs provoked the wrath and fury of Queen Victoria. She was " horrified and indignant " at Greville's " indiscretion." Her anger was. equally directed against Reeve, and her deep displeasure with the poor Editor was conveyed to him by Sir Arthur Helps. Reeve adroitly defended himself, but to no purpose ; and when he left the public service the customary knighthood was denied him. Disraeli on Greville in a letter to Lady Bradford is most entertaining [Lije of Disraeli, vol. v. pp. 348-51)- 98 The One Thorfsand. Si. Lcger. Preserve 1835 Mange (Clerk t>f tlie Privy Council.) THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT Gully would have punched his head if he had not consented.' All this was told me by Hill in his broadest Yorkshire accent." It would seem that Greville's portrait of Gully's personal appearance was not exaggerated. When the late Lord FitzwiUiam came of age in 1836 an entertainment was given at the family seat of Wentworth Woodhouse to celebrate the occasion. Upwards of two thousand persons were present. Among the groups that passed from room to room there was one that attracted universal atten- tion. It was formed of three persons. The central one a fine, manly, athletic, yet well-formed and graceful figure, and resting on either arm two of the loveliest women of all the assembled multitude. They were unknown, but the whisper was every- where, " Who are they ? Who can they be ? " At length it was discovered that they were Mr. Gully and his daughters — Mr. Gully, the ci-devant prize-fighter, the owner of the St. Leger winner of 1832, the newly elected Member of the neigh- bouring borough of Pontefract, and the proprietor of a large estate. ^ Hero worship — the thin illusion of the biographer — makes bad history. The chronicle of a hero seldom adheres to veracity, and usually is as untrustworthy as an epitaph. Gully was no hero. He was a sporting representative of his day. He moved with a sure step among the Chesterfields, the Bentincks, the Grevilles, the Paynes, and the ' This account is taken from Mr. Buckingham's autobiography. ]VIr. Buckingham was then Member for Sheffield, and appears to have been one of Lord Fitzvvilliam's guests on the occasion in question. 99 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Padwicks, and in their company he played his part in the Turf's drama with courage and resolu- tion. He knew their ways ; he understood their cupidities and resentments ; he conformed to their canon of racing ethics. Doubtless he was no finished example of moral excellence, but he had an honest and substantial shrewdness. He had a cool brain and iron nerve, and his judgment was rarely coloured by prejudice. While he was conscious of his own limitations, his sagacity and power of penetration led him to a correct appraise- ment of the men with whom he had to deal. He accomplished his main purposes. He had been the champion of the Ring. His judgment of men and horses was as fine as Lord George Bentinck once boasted that his was. But, more fortunate than that eminent person. Gully twice led a Derby winner up the little sacred enclosure to the weighing- room. At the time that he entered Parliament that political portent, the Nonconformist Conscience, was making its appearance, and as a domestic effervescence was beginning to trouble Ministers of the Reform era. Although it had not yet been obliged to decide on the political inconvenience of the late Mr. Parnell's moral indiscretion, and had not come to hesitate about the propriety of a financial speculation which involved a Chancellor of the Exchequer of its own religious persuasion, it was, and still is, pleased to consider itself of the school of Charles James Fox, and to hold in reverence the memory of that soiled gamester who divided his time between women and the dice-box. It regarded with horror such a career as that of the Member for Pontefract ; but while 100 THE RING, THE TURF, AND PARLIAMENT Fox might leave a twenty-four-hour seance at the quinze-table in order to address the House of Commons, or keep the faro bank at Brooks's and back horses on Newmarket Heath, that gambhng rake was still the object of its political veneration. » It has always been true to its inconsistency. In i860, after the great fight between Tom Sayers and Heenan, the Liberal Home Secretary one evening was explaining to his querulous supporters the illegality of prize-fighting and the duty of justices of the peace, when the Prime Minister, leaving the side of his apologetic colleague, passed into the lobby. He was at once held by a Member. " My lord, I want a sovereign for a testimonial to Tom Sayers." " A sovereign for Tom Sayers," exclaimed Jaunty Pam, " I'll give you five with pleasure. He's a splendid fellow." " I am sorry, my lord, but the subscription is limited to a sovereign." " Well," said Palmerston, " here it is, but I wish you would let me make it five to show my appreciation of his pluck." What a scene ! How piquant the contrast ! The Puritan on the bench ; the sportsman in the lobby. In Selwyn's words with reference to the performances of Fox, la plus parfaitement comique que Von puisse imaginer. During the closing years of his life Gully acquired extensive colliery property in the north of England, which he successfully controlled with the same mastery of detail and calculating judgment as he had shown in the affairs of the Turf. Latterly he lived in the vicinity of Durham, and in that city he died in March 1863, at the ripe age of eighty. He had always desired to be buried at Ackworth, » See Political Portraits, by Whibley, 191 7. lOI CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY a village on the outskirts of Pontefract, near which place at one time he had owned an estate. His wishes were respected. At the graveside stood the mayor and corporation of his old constituency. They were accompanied by his former neighbours and friends, whose crowded ranks bore witness to their respect and regard. An epitaph justly commemorative of such a life would require the research of a sportsman and the taste of a scholar. 102 V DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE To-morrow [Derby Day] I believe we shall all be engaged else- where.— Disraeli, Speech in the House of Commons, June 3, 1862. Much has been written on the subject of DisraeH's hfe, as it is presented in the admirable volumes from the pen of Mr. Buckle.^ Nor, indeed, could it be otherwise. No career possesses so many facets — Literature, Politics, International Affairs and Society are the theme of the biographer and the text of the reviewer. But, while it is only natural that the serious world should be edified by the pregnant reflections of cultivated critics of life and character, while it may be profitable to debate the vexata qucBstio of the Bradford- Chesterfield romance, or to defend the revelation of Queen Victoria's letters, so grievous to the scanty remnant of Gladstonian apostles, it may be of transient interest to glance at some of those sparkling references which Disraeli makes to the pursuit of horse-racing, both in the scenes he has sketched in his novels and in the pointed allusions of his correspondence with his friends. Great and various as were the powers of Disraeli, he owes his fame to a disposition which ' The Life of Benjarmn Disraeh, Earl of Beaconsfield, by George Earle Buckle (John Murray, 1920). 103 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY was free of all cant and illusion and to a wide sympathy with popular tastes and amusements. Possessing a keen sense of minute observation and a striking amplitude of comprehension, he was able without undue presumption to enter the province of the sportsman and to describe in brilliant terms all the features of a classic encounter on the race-course and all the emotions which it excites. Sybil, a work of grave purpose, and, according to an eminent critic, the sincerest of all Disraeli's novels, seems to have been written soon after the publication of Coningshy, and made its ap- pearance in May 1845. The first chapter opens with a really brilliant sketch of Crockford's on the eve of the Derby of 1837. Disraeli did not rely on his imagination for his description of the golden saloons of this famous and sumptuous gaming-house in St. James's Street. He had been elected a member of it in 1840 — the year that " Old Crocky," the proprietor, had retired from his hazard bank and had acquired a residence in Carlton House Terrace and a racing stud of some importance.^ It was at Crockford's that ' Crockford started in life as a fishmonger in a shop next door to Temple Bar Without, which he quitted for play in St. James's. He began by taking Waller's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank and won a great deal of money. Crockford then removed to St. James's Street, had a good year, and built in 1827 the club-house which bore his name, and of which the decorations are said to have cost ;^g4,ooo. Ude was engaged as maitre d'hdtel, and Crockford's was high fashion. There were cards, but the main business was the hazard bank at which the proprietor took his nightly stand, prepared for all comers. He retired in 1840, much as an Indian chief retires from a fine hunting country where there is not game enough left for his tribe. He then went in heavily for racing, but a Turf conspiracy killed him. 104 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE Disraeli had submitted to an embrace and to the effusiv^e congratulations of admirers on the occasion of his trenchant indictment of Palmerston.* It is late : the hour of supper, a repast pre- pared by the renowned Ude, the Club's accom- plished maitre d'hotel of those days.* The night is close and warm, and thunder rolls in the heavens. The macaroni of Society and the young exquisites of the Guards are taking the odds and studying their betting-books. " I'll take the odds against Caravan. In ponies ? Done." Then comes the satiric touch at the expense of artless youth. " How shall we all feel to-morrow ? The happiest fellow at this moment must be Cockie Graves : he can have no suspense," said Lord Milford : " I have been looking at his book and I defy him, whatever happens, not to lose." " Poor Cockie," said Mr. Berners, " he has asked me to dine with him on Saturday." One of the youths declares his faith in Caravan : " Mark my words," says another, " Rat-trap wins." " You used to be all for Phos- His disappointment over his horse, Ratan, who with fair play must have won the Derby of 1844, proved fatal, and on the Friday in Epsom week he died in his magnificent mansion in Carlton House Terrace within a week of his seventieth year. » Life of Disraeli, vol. ii. p. 128. » The year after this event Ude was dismissed. He had admitted to the Committee of the Club that he was worth ;^4,ooo a year. In spite of this fortune he was miserable in retirement, and sat all day with his hands before him doing nothing. He shed tears, and told George Wombwell that he had only been twice in St. James's Street since his dismissal, and that he never walked on the same side of the street as the Clubhouse. To Wombwell he said : " Ah ! I love that Club, though they are ingrais. Do not be offended if I do not take my hat ofi to you when we meet." Wombwell replied : "I shall always take my hat off to you, Mr. Ude." From a letter of Disraeli to his sister, Life of Disraeli, vol. ii. P- 39. 105 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY phorus, Egremont," observes a noble lord. " Yes," replies the hero, " but, fortunately, I got out of that scrape ; I was the third man who knew he had gone lame." " And what are the odds against him now ? " inquires Lord Eugene de Vere. " Oh ! nominal — 40 to i. What you please." " He won't run," said Mr. Berners ; " John Day told me he had refused to ride him." Then Lord Milford : "I beheve Cookie Graves might win something if Phosphorus came in first." Lord Milford, a betting nobleman of the famiUar type who confer with jockeys about the prospects of horses, moves aside, and after secretly glancing at a letter from the famous Chifney, offers to take the odds about Pocket Hercules — Chifney's mount in the race — a losing bet, however, for the grey had no price at starting and was beaten a long way from home. So much for the eve of the Derby. The next chapter describes the Ring at Epsom on the morning of the race : the eager groups round the betting-post, and the gentlemen shouting from their saddles the odds they would take. In a few lines there is a witty sketch of two of the leading professionals. Spruce, " who had earned his title of Captain on the plains of Newmarket," had a weakness for the aristocracy, who, knowing his infirmity, acknowledged his existence in Pall Mall as well as at Tattersalls, and thus occasionally obtained a point over the odds. Mr. Chippendale, on the other hand, had none of these gentle failings : " he was a democratic leg and thought all men were born equal." The business quickens : " Five- and-thirty ponies, Phosphorus," is called. " I'll 106 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE bet forty," said Lord Milford. " Forty to one,'^ murmurs the hero, who stood heavily against Phosphorus. Nervously, he turns to a neighbour : " Don't you think that Phosphorus may, after all, have some chance ? " "I should be cursed sorry to be deep against him," said his friend. Egremont strolls away and consults his book- Should he hedge ? — he stood so well by the favourite, why mar the symmetry of his winnings ? No, he would trust his star : he would not hedge. This is the true mentality of the doubting punter^ drawn to life. At last the Ring is up — the last odds declared and the cavalcade of horsemen gallop away to the Warren. Then follows a vivid description of the race, which, with a trifling exception,^ is exact in all points. The Derby of the 37ear 1837 was won by Phos- phorus, a bay horse by Lamplighter out of a Rubens mare, bred by his owner. Lord Berners, Phosphorus had made his first appearance that year in the Newmarket Stakes, when he ran an indifferent second to Rat-trap. At the Second Spring Meeting he won a £50 Plate easily in the hands of John Day. These performances did not warrant much hope of his success in the Epsom race, and the horse had few supporters. Moreover,, as Disraeli here asserts, it was well known that he was an infirm colt, so much so that at twelve o'clock on the day before the race he was absolutely lame and John Day decHned to ride him. In the evening the trainer called on Lord Berners- I Phosphorus is described as running on the higher ground ; he was on the lower. 107 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY for orders, not knowing what to do with his lame charge. The old lord merely growled, " Run, I always run " : and so Phosphorus the next day, heavily bandaged, was duly saddled for the race. At twenty minutes to three the Derby field assem- bled. Rat-trap was a hot favourite at 6 to 4. Lord Stradbroke's Caravan, and Mango, who sub- sequently won the St. Leger for Mr. Greville, Clerk of the Privy Council, were next in demand. The price of Phosphorus was 40 to i. After two false starts the field was dispatched on level terms, and a very fast pace was set by Pocket Hercules till the famous corner was reached, when he and a good many others were beaten. Rounding the corner. Caravan, well ridden by Pavis, led Phos- phorus by a length until the distance. Then Phosphorus on the lower ground drew level and a desperate struggle ensued. They ran locked together until some twenty yards from the winning- post, when George Edwards, with fine horseman- ship, drove the hardridden Phosphorus to win by a bare half-length. The third horse was many lengths away. Phosphorus never ran again in England, and his eccentric owner dying in the following year, his horses were sold at the First Spring Meeting at Newmarket. The Derby winner was bought in for 910 guineas. Subsequently he was sold to the Duke of Brunswick for 1,000 guineas and sent abroad. A futile attempt was made to train him, but his lameness was too deeply seated to be cured, and he was put to the stud. It can be seen from this account of the Derby, which is based on contemporary reports, how 108 Phosphorus. \\'innei of the Derby of 1S37. r n DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE carefully Disraeli, eight years later, compiled his narrative of the event. In the novel his list of the field is correct in every particular, as is his quotation of the betting. He touches on the remote chance of Phosphorus, owing to his lameness, and on the current report that the horse would not be started. He accurately describes the very fast pace at which the race was run, and attributes the result to the skilful and resolute riding of the jockey. The finale is on a delicious note. " By Jove ! " said Lord Milford, " only think of Cockie Graves having gone and done it." Cockie Graves, whose amateur book on the race had made the impossible Phos- phorus his only winner, had in the end proved wiser than the noble lord and all the select coterie of Crockford's. But, then, is it not so written in the Chronicles of Tattersalls ? In Endymion, a curious mixture of history and fiction, I and planned as a story in consequence of the success of Lothair, Disraeli again brings in the subject of the Epsom race. If Endymion be indeed a study of the author's youthful career, it is possible Disraeli sketched his own early experi- ence of Derby Day. Endymion lodges in Warwick Street with a Mr. Rodney, who, having saved the Duke of Wellington's life in the Reform Bill riots, was proud to be acknowledged by His Grace in St. James's Street. Mr. Rodney was interested in racing. " In 1835," writes Disraeli, " men made books, and Mr. Rodney was proficient in a com- position which requires no ordinary qualities of character and intelligence — nay, more, it demands I Life of Disraeli, vol. vi. p. 558. 109 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY method, judgment, self-restraint, not too much imagination, and powers of calculation." Such qualities Endymion's landlord was actively em- ploying in anticipation of the Derby, and his family, who were deeply interested in the result, were to attend " the celebrated festival." One of the patrician lodgers insists on taking the Rodney family to Epsom on his drag, and Endy- mion joins the party. Another of the passengers is credited with saying that he is not a classical scholar, " but there are two things which I think I understand, men and horses.^ I like to back them both when I think they ought to win." The drive to " the Carnival of England " is des- cribed. It is a bright day — a day of wild hopes and terrible fears, but yet, on the whole, of joy and exultation. Unfortunately, the author dis- misses the race with the brief sentence : " The right horse won." Accordingly, Mr. Rodney pockets a good stake. Although the hero did not know he had betted, he found he too had won a little money. Mr. Rodney " had put him on something, though what that meant he had not the slightest idea." A fair neighbour informs him it is all right. " Mr. Rodney constantly put her on something." The return from the race-course is delightfully written, and the chapter ends with a laugh at Jawett — a rather malignant portrait — who " disapproved of races." " The right horse won." It may have been so I This is a curious plagiarism of Lord George Bentinck's state- ment concerning himself: "I don't pretend to know much, but I ■can judge of men and horses." — Disraeli's Life of Lord George Bentinck, p. 575. no DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE from Mr. Rodney's point of view, but he evidently had not backed the favourite. The winner of that year's Derby was Miindig — the first North Country horse to win the Blue Riband. He was a coarse-looking chestnut son of Catton and Emma, whose chief recommendation was his fine action. The Derb}^ was his first race. In April he stood at the long odds of 50 to i, but his home reputation became known shortly before the race and he touched 6 to I in the betting. There was a hot favourite in Ibrahim, Lord Jersey's horse, whose price was 7 to 4, and also heavily backed was Ascot, the property of Lord Orford. Fourteen horses faced the starter. A good pace was set from the start, but at Tattenham Corner they were all together. In the straight Robinson brought the favourite to the front. As the road was reached, Miindig and Ascot shot forward, the former on the higher ground. At the stands the favourite was beaten and the issue lay between Miindig and Ascot. It was a fine neck-to-neck race, but Miindig just won on the post. A stride after the judge's chair Ascot's head was in front ! Miindig will always be classed as a moderate horse and a lucky one. He ran nowhere in the St. Leger to Queen of Trumps and Hornsea. It was well known before the Derby that Hornsea could give weight to Miindig ; but to please Scott, the trainer of Hornsea, the better horse remained in his stable, so that Mr. Bowes, M.P., the popular Squire of Streatlam, might win the Derby. " The right horse won," says Disraeli. It was a statement the late Lady Dorothy Nevill would have vigor- ously disputed, for she was wont to deplore the III CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY difference to the family fortunes which the neck defeat of her father's horse had unhappily entailed. In his very young days Disraeli trifled with the subject of racing. He published The Young Duke, a romance of fashion, in 1830, but, on his own confession, he never liked it. To the edition of his works in 1853 he prefixed an apology for it, pleading that a young author is apt to fall into affectation and conceit ; but adding, with charac- teristic humour, that " every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful." The hero of the book is, indeed, a sublime coxcomb. At Ascot he bought up all the winning horses at an average of 3,000 guineas " for each pair of ears " ! At Doncaster, which the boy-writer christens " the Carnival of the North," the hero runs his horse Sans Pareil in the St. Leger. Sportsmen will be surprised to hear that ninety horses started in the race and that the start was a fair one. The young Duke's horse ran, but with no success, and the noble owner lost £25,000 — a sum he con- sidered " too trifling to be thought of." "This is the most successful meeting, I should think, that was ever known at Doncaster," observes the heroine. It was certainly the most remarkable. Subsequently, the Duke goes to Newmarket, where "a Club discharges a crowd of gentlemen and a stable a crowd of grooms." He exclaims : " This, then, is Newmarket : if it required £25,000 to make Doncaster amusing, a plum at least will go in rendering Newmarket endurable." He began to find Newmarket not so disagreeable. He galloped about the course and his blood warmed. " Even the jockeys were civil to him, and welcomed him 112 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE with a sweet smile and gracious nod — those mys- terious characters who, in their influence over their superiors and their total want of sympathy with their species, are our only match for the Oriental eunuch." The Duke completed his stud, and became one of the most distinguished votaries of the Turf. Strange to say, the book had a good reception and was popular. Indeed, Disraeli's sister says that it was reviewed with excessive praise. But it must surely have excited contemptuous opinions in the racing world. In such an assembly, for example, as at that date sat round Lord Egremont's hospitable table — the host who had owned no less than five winners of the Derby — when over the wine a plain little foal was sold which after- wards achieved a classic success. It can hardly be supposed that of the then professional element Gully or Ridsdale ever dipped into imaginative hterature, or they too would have been greatly diverted by the pantomime of Doncaster and the absurd picture of Newmarket Heath. Impossible, of course, and ridiculous would have been the verdict of them all. What extravagant odds would they have gladly laid about the romantic novelist ever being the director of the destinies of the British Empire ! And yet in 1878 the author of The Young Duke is the leading Plenipotentiary of Great Britain at the Berlin Congress and discusses racing with Prince Bismarck. In a letter to Queen Victoria, he states that one evening he dined with the Prince. They were alone, and in the course of conversation Bismarck asked Disraeli " whether racing was still 113 H CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY much encouraged in England." To this question Disraeli says, " I replied never more so : that when I was young, though there were numerous race-meetings, they were at intervals, and some- times long intervals — Epsom, Ascot, Doncaster, Goodwood and Newmarket frequently ; but now there were races throughout the year — it might be said every day in the year — and all much attended." The letter continues : " The Prince cried out eagerly, ' Then there never will be Social- ism in England. You are a happy country. You are safe as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street with- out twenty persons saying to themselves or each other, ' WTiy has that fellow a horse and I have not one ? In England the more horses a nobleman has the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing Socialism has no chance with you.' " ^ Alas ! for the infirmity of political vision ! Disraeli formed his second Administration in 1874. In the following year his private corre- spondence contains a reference to a defeat which the horse of his friend Lord Bradford had sustained. Writing to Lady Bradford on July 28, he said : " Tell Bradford I was greatly disappointed that his horse came in second. I cannot understand why a great noble with his brains and knowledge of horses does not command the Turf. I don't want him to have a great stable, but I want him to have a famous one ; that he should, at any rate, obtain some first-rate blood and then carefully and sedulously breed from it, as Rothschild did with King Tom. I saw the beginning of his plan I Lije of Disraeli, vol. vi. p. 331. 114 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE at Mentmore, and people turned up their noses at his scheme and his sire for a while, and yet eventually that blood gave him the Derby, the Oaks and the St. Leger in one year. I should like to see that done at dear Weston." Disraeli here is writing of the Goodwood Meeting of that year, and had evidently heard by telegram that his friend's horse Glendinning had run second in the Drayton Handicap to Glenmarkie. Owners set their horses severe tasks even in those days. Previously Glendinning had run unplaced in the Stewards' Cup on the Tuesday, and, after his second defeat, was pulled out again on the Friday, when, with Archer riding, he beat Mr. Sturt's Beechnut by a neck in a match for £200 over five furlongs. This success must have been very agree- able to Disraeli, for reasons which appear in the biography.^ Apart from this particular incident, Disraeli's observations are interesting, although they reveal no little ignorance of the philosophy of racing. It is not for a great nobleman as such to command success on the Turf, where all men are equal, whether above it or below it. Disraeli's friend Lord George Bentinck undoubtedly had his triumphs on the race-course ; but the end of his ambition w as to win the Derby. He never achieved it. True, he bred Surplice in 1845, but the colt was included in the stud which he sold across the breakfast-table that fatal morning at Goodwood. Two years later, when Surplice won the Derby, Bentinck mourned his misfortune. " All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed it ? " For what indeed ? For a futile I Life of Disraeli, vol. v. p. 248. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY struggle with the sophistries of Peel in the cockpit of pohtics.^ Again, there is the case of the late Duke of Devonshire. To win the classic races of the Turf he devoted his energies and his fortune. He gained one — the One Thousand Guineas with Bel- phoebe in 1877. The statesman who refused three times to be Prime Minister, who in 1873 " had come to detest office," and who wrote of the possible succession to Gladstone that " it will really be a great relief to be out of it," would gladly have given his life instead of his leisure to the prosecution of the sport of racing. In the House of Commons he yawned in the course of his own speech : at Newmarket he was never bored. " Sometimes," he said, " I dream that I am leading in the winner of the Derby, but I am afraid it will never be anything but a dream." Reluctantly, he thought that his destiny summoned him to public life and office, and so he obeyed. But that he cared greatly for the Turf and ac- knowledged its claim is well known. The dates for Cabinets were often fixed to suit his racing engage- ments, and he sometimes cancelled important Com- mittees when they clashed with such appointments. There is extant a letter from the late Lord Salis- bury to a colleague in which he laments the in- convenience caused by " Hartington being obliged to go to Newmarket to ascertain whether one quadruped can run a little faster than another ! " Lastly, it may be noted that year after year generations of the House of Stanley have striven to win the great classic of the racing season, but * See Political Portraits, by Charles Whibley. 116 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE since 1787 their efforts have met with no success. Lord Rosebery once playfully consoled the present Earl with the reminder that he ought to be well content with the honour of giving his name to the greatest race in the world. What is it that tempts men of rank and position to devote themselves to the pursuit of racing ? Assuredly, it is not lucri faciendi causa. An authority, distinguished alike in the Senate and on the Turf, has suggested two answers to the question. He thinks that friendships are thus formed which are invaluable to men who wish to get on in life, and he quotes from a remark made to Lord Houghton, that such friendships are durable because each man knows something that would hang the other. The second answer to the question is that men are lured to race by the ambition of owning the horse of the century. Whatever value may be attributed to the first answer, none belongs to the second. Sportsmen do not dream of miraculous animals. They do not contemplate such a deceitful mirage. They are quite happy to win the chief prizes of the Turf with any horse in any year. But to return to Disraeli and the ideal he held up to Lord Bradford. If it be difficult to appreciate the distinction between a great stable and a famous one, at all events his observations on breeding are sound enough. Possibly on his round of visits to country houses he had been attracted by those fascinating groups of mares and foals which are the most delightful furniture of park or paddock : but, wisely, the Prime Minister did not presume beyond a general statement on the subject. The 117 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY practical question involved is not whether breeding is a matter of chance, but whether it is possible to arrive at any system of principles which are sound enough and exact enough to be a useful guide to the breeder. The Stud Book, of course, abounds in the results of opposite theories, for race-horse breeding is, and always will be, an inexact and largely conjectural science. Disraeli pointed to the example of his friend Baron Meyer de Rothschild. The wealth of a Monte Cristo combined with the shrewd judgment of a financier had founded a superb stud. Still, as in the case of Lord Bradford, the Baron had to wait for Fortune's favours, and to endure dis- appointment before his anmis mirahilis arrived. That came in 1871. The Zephyr colt, aptly christened Favonius — a name which originated in the Common Room of Trinity College, Dubhn, and which was communicated to the Baron on the eve of the race by a distinguished classical scholar of that fraternity — won the Derby with two good horses behind him. He was a chestnut colt by Parmesan, his dam Zephyr, a daughter of the horse Disraeli mentions, King Tom, out of Mentmore Lass by Melbourne. In Hannah, a rather small bay filly, sister to Zephyr, Baron de Rothschild owned a remarkable animal. Her record was wonderful. In this year when the stable won the Derby with Favonius, Hannah was successful in the One Thousand, the Oaks and the St. Leger, the feat of an owner winning the Derby and the Oaks having been accompUshed previously on only three occasions. And yet, wonderful to say, the stable sheltered in Corisande 118 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE another King Tom filly who was absolutely sacrificed to Hannah. She won several good races, including the Cesarewitch, in this season of marvellous success. " Follow the Baron " was the cry that year of the racing multitude. Well might Disraeli urge his friend to emulate the example of the family of Sidonia, whose devotion to sport he held to be the safety-valve of their energy.' In the September of 1875 Disraeli was on a visit to Sandbeck, and attended the Doncaster meeting. His biographer relates that the Prime Minister witnessed the St. Leger, betted, and lost his money. Rarely have such indifferent horses competed in a classic race as on that occasion. The actual favourite was Seymour, a horse that had been beaten in eleven out of the twelve races in which he had taken part. Indeed, it was such a bad year that it was said anything might win. The race was won easily by Craig-Millar, a chestnut son of Blair Athol, of whom the stable had a poor opinion. No wonder that the Prime Minister lost his money ; unfortunately for him, the Prince of Wales had heard of his ill-fortune, and when later in the month Disraeli paid him a visit at Sandring- ham, it appears that the Prince twitted his guest unmercifully. At first Disraeli denied his losses, and then pleaded in extenuation that he had only indulged "in a sweepstake with some ladies." But the Prince would not accept the plea. " Oh no ! " said His Royal Highness ; " I hear a good round sum, paid in bank-notes, a rouleau. I always thought Bunny was sharp, but I never thought he would top all by putting the Prime I Coningsby, p. 221. 119 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Minister on a dead horse." Of course, the said Bunny was Mr. Gerard Sturt, the racing confederate of Sir Frederick Johnstone, and a man who had well earned the character given of him by the Prince of Wales (who at one time trained in the Kingsclere stable with him), a character which was substantially confirmed when, in 1894, the Crichel bred colt Matchbox, a few days after running second in the Derby, was sold for £15,000 to Baron Hirsch, and the vendor, keeping Throstle in his own hands, beat the son of St. Simon in the St. Leger with that rather flighty mare. It would be interesting to know whether the Prince ever referred to the incident of the Doncaster bets when the forgiving Prime Minister in the following year recommended Mr. Sturt for a peerage ! Disraeli maintained an active interest in Lord Bradford's stable. He followed its fortunes from race to race. Born fifteen years after Disraeh, Lord Bradford filled the offices of Lord Chamberlain and Master of the Horse during Queen Victoria's reign. In early life he formed a small stud at Weston, which in course of time attained to some size and celebrity. This was in the main due to Quick March, a full sister of Vedette, from whom he bred Manoeuvre (destined to breed a Derby winner), Retreat and other good horses. From other mares, also, he bred some very successful animals, including Zealot and Quicklime, who ran second to Shotover for the Derby of 1882. But the best horse Lord Bradford owned in Disraeli's lifetime was Chippendale. This colt, with his dam Adversity, Lord Bradford purchased from 120 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE Thomas Dawson (the eldest of the four celebrated trainers) for 350 guineas. He was by Rococo (son of Gemma di Vergy), his dam by Adventurer. Chippendale did not run until he was three years old, but in 1879 ^^ credited his owner with nearly £7,000. He began his career by beating Palm- bearer, who later ran second in the Derby. Next, he won the Epsom Summer Plate, and at Ascot was successful in the Ascot Derby and the Hard- wicke Stakes. In the Hardwicke, Silvio, the Derby and St. Leger winner of 1877, was an odds-on favourite, and, with Archer riding, was confidently expected to win. In the race, which was run in very deep ground, Silvio, having apparently beaten all his opponents, was allowed by Archer to take matters too easily, so that Osborne was able to drive Chippendale alongside of him and,, catching the Derby winner at every stride, won the race. No doubt the task set Silvio was a stiff one, and it may have been that the attempt to give Chippendale 18 lb. was beyond his powers,, though he made a very gallant effort to do it. Later in the season, Chippendale suffered two defeats — one of them by that good mare Dresden China ^ in the Great Yorkshire Handicap at Don- caster ; but Wadlow, Lord Bradford's trainer, made no secret of his belief that the horse would beat the mare at Newmarket in the autumn, and he was right. " I hope you have won the race," wrote the Prime Minister from Downing Street to Lady Bradford ; adding, " this is possible, as they say ' Dresden China in the following year won the Goodwood Cup and the Doncaster Cup. 121 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY * everybody has his turn.' " The race was the Cesarewitch. Chippendale, who had been specially trained for the event, carried 7 st. 5 lb. There were twenty-seven runners. The popular fancies were Adamite and Westbourne, but Mr. Gretton, who had backed his horse Westbourne to win him upwards of £50,000, also ran Isonomy. In the race the favourite was in trouble at the Bushes, and Chippendale took up the running. Just as Isonomy, under the heavy burden of 9 st. 10 lb,, was making a splendid effort to overtake Lord Bradford's horse, he received a bump from his stable companion Westbourne which nearly knocked him over. Chippendale won the race by a length and a half from Westbourne, and Isonomy was fourth. In the opinion of good judges Isonomy, with a clear run, would have won the race, so that, under the circumstances, Chippendale was rather a lucky winner. Two days after this success Disraeli again writes to Lady Bradford. After referring to some im- portant news he had received in connection with a victory by Lord Roberts in Afghanistan, he says : " However, I will only think of your own victory, which is very triumphant. I wrote a line of con- gratulation to Bradford yesterday, who, being Master of the Horse, deserves to win. My house- hold is much excited by the event. I suspect Bradford's valet must have * put them on.' I fear they are all on the Turf, even Mr. Baum."» ' Disraeli's valet : quite a character (see Life of Disraeli, vol. vi. pp. 501, 581) ; he nursed Disraeli in his last illness {ib. 609). Disraeli always pronounced the name as if it were Beaume. 122 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE The next year Disraeli was out of office and fast failing in health. He still exhibited a lively interest in his friend's horse. Chippendale had won the Great Metropolitan and the Gold Vase at Ascot, and then essayed the severe task of tackhng the mighty Isonomy in the Gold Cup. " All my hopes are on Chippendale," wrote Disraeli to Lady Bradford on June 8th. Alas ! they were doomed to disappointment ; but they should never have been entertained. Isonomy only ran twice this year. In the Manchester Cup, decided over a mile and five furlongs, he had carried the enor- mous burden of 9 st. 12 lb. Ridden by Cannon, he won the race by a neck, beating the Abbot, to whom he gave 45 lb. The horse was cheered to the echo as he passed the post. It was a great performance. None the worse for this effort on very hard ground, Isonomy was saddled for the Gold Cup at Ascot, a race he had won in the preceding year. Odds of 9 to 4 were laid on him. His only opponents were Chippen- dale and Zut, the property of Count Lagrange. On sufferance Chippendale made the running until inside the distance, when Isonomy was allowed to stride up to him and to win very easily. Three days later Disraeli wrote to Lady Brad- ford : " Your letter was deHghtful. What they call graphic. I am glad I have been to Ascot and have royally lunched and lounged on the lawn. All my household were on Bradford's stable, and I believe well backed their opinion. The coachman on these matters is the great authority, greater even than Baum. He has backed the 123 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY stable systematically for some time. At first, to use his lingo, because he thought it ' respectable to Lord B.' as a friend of his lord's, but for the last year from a conviction that Lord B/s stable had at length got right. I fear, however, he has been hit on the Cup." " We " — thus amusingly identifying himself with the owner — " could have beaten anything but Isonomy." There is one more reference to Chippendale. On July 30th of this year, in a letter to Lady Bradford, Disraeli wrote : " The terrible news from Afghanistan, the defeat of Chippendale and some other matters, so knocked me up yesterday that I felt physically incapacitated to write." The defeat to which Disraeli refers in this letter was one of those reverses for which Goodwood is famous. There were only two runners for the Cup — Chip- pendale and Dresden China ; and Lord Bradford's horse was so confidently expected to beat the mare that the odds of 3 to i were laid on him. He, however, suffered defeat by three-quarters of a length. Chippendale continued to run. Although he could only get fifth in the Cesarewitch, he won the Jockey Club Cup. In the two following years he again failed in the Cesarewitch, but under very heavy weights. He wound up his fine career by winning the Jockey Club Cup for the second time, beating, among others, such famous animals as Tristan and Corrie Roy. Disraeli, broken in health and weary of the world which he had once ruled by his wit and wisdom, died in 1881. Eleven years later the scene is Epsom Downs, and a field of thirteen runners contests " the paramount and Olympian stake.'* 124 DISRAELI AND THE RACE-COURSE Sir Hugo prevails, and Lord Bradford is both the owner and breeder of the horse. Doubtless in his hour of triumph he thought of the lively pleasure the victory would have given to his old friend. He would remember the message he had received from, him in days gone by : how that he ought to have a famous stable and breed from the best blood a Derby winner. And now it had all been fulfilled, and he had attained, after years of endeavour, the highest pinnacle of racing fame. The fickle goddess had at length smiled upon him : Nos te, Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam coeloque locamus. 125 VI THE FRAUD OF A DERBY Why, what an intricate impeach is this ! And I was ta'en for him, and he for me. Comedy of Errors, Act V, Sc. i. Castigatque auditque doles subigitque fateri. ^neid, VI, 567. In the month of September last a Judge of the High Court was engaged for many days in trying a series of Turf frauds. The prisoners were con- victed of conspiracy and of obtaining stake moneys by false pretences in relation to certain races in which horses had been substituted for those originally entered. Complicated and tedious as were the charges, they recalled to the minds of many readers the most famous case of fraud which has ever stained the annals of horse-racing. It is an old story : but perhaps its importance in the long tale of racing life deserves that it should be rediscovered from its burial in the dust- heap of drowsy documents. The race for the Derby of 1844 was won by a horse called Running Rein. This animal was subsequently proved to have been a four-year-old whose real name was Maccabaeus, and who was disqualified. The race and the stakes were awarded to the second horse, Orlando, the property of 126 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY Colonel Peel, brother of the Prime Minister of the day- Jonathan Peel was a notable figure on the Turf. He was the fifth son of the first Sir Robert Peel, whose baronetcy had been conferred upon him by Mr. Pitt in recognition of a large subscription to the Loyalty Loan and his equipment of a regiment of volunteers at a crisis in the French War. Possessing more geniality than his father and more manners than his eminent brother, he joined at a very early age a marching regiment as an ensign. He soon entered upon the sport of racing, and, as often happens, his betting ventures as a youth were in striking contrast to the modest wagers of his riper years. It is told of him that he was once a guest at a regimental mess when the presiding officer blustered that he would take 5,000 to 100 about a horse for the forthcoming St. Leger, knowing that it was quite unhkely that any officer of the regiment would accept the offer. To the gallant Colonel's con- sternation, a voice from the end of the mess table called out, " Done, sir ; I will lay you fifty hundreds to one." The layer was Lieutenant Peel, and wry was the face of Sir John Byng at being snapped up by a subaltern in this cool fashion. However, the honour of the regiment required that the bet should be booked. Peel won some small races with his two-year-olds in 1823, and in 1824 Fille de Joie, a filly he had bred, ran second in the Oaks to Lord Jersey's Cobweb.^ In the year of ' The Dictionary of National Biography states that Peel's filly was named Phantom ! This blunder on the part of the compiler of the memoir of General Peel is due apparently to the fact that 127 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the Reform Bill he won the Two Thousand Guineas with Archibald, a small horse of exquisite quality and a great favourite with the public. His next classic was the sensational Derby of 1844. Among the two-year-olds of 1843 was a reputed one named Running Rein. He was described as by the Saddler — Mab by Duncan Grey, a bay with four black legs, and a few grey hairs on the forehead not amounting to a star.^ The colt ran in two races at Newmarket during the Second October Meeting. He won a £$0 plate, beating twelve others in a canter. In the Clearwell the next day, won by Colonel Peel's Zenobia, he was not placed. At this, his first appearance on the race-course, he was evidently regarded with sus- picion— indeed, the Turf chronicler of the day called him " that disputed animal " — and, after winning his race, the Duke of Rutland, who was second with Crenoiine, objected to the owner receiving the stakes on the ground that the winner was a year older than he ought to be. There is no doubt that Lord George Bentinck suspected the colt, and that he instigated the Duke to lodge the objection. A fortnight after the race the Stewards — Lord Stradbroke, Mr. Greville and Mr. Thornhill — investigated the objection. They took the evidence of a boy named Kitchen, who professed to identify the horse as the Saddler colt which the sire of Cobweb was Phantom (the Derby winner of 1811), and that the sire's name in the race record, following after Cobweb's name, was mistaken by the writer for that of the second in the race. '■ According to the evidence at the subsequent trial there was practically no difference in the colour or marking of Running Rein and Maccabaeus. There was some question about scars on the fore legs, but it came to Uttle or nothing. 128 How THE Secret got out. THE FRAUD OF A DERBY had been foaled in 1841 at Mr. Cobb's stud farm at New Malton, in Yorkshire. Lord Stradbroke and his colleagues then proposed that the colt's mouth should be examined, but the owner, Levi Goodman, in strong language, refused point-blank to allow it.^ In spite of this most suspicious circumstance the Stewards over-ruled the objec- tion.^ " There is little doubt," wrote another sporting scribe, " that objection will be taken when Running Rein comes to the post again. Anyone may be excused for forming an opinion that Running Rein is a three-year-old, for a more furnished two-year-old I never saw." Although the decision was in favour of the horse, all bets were paid under protest. Some of the legitimate competitors for the Blue Riband of 1844 were thought to be animals of considerable merit. The Ugly Buck, a colt by Venison out of a Plenipotentiary mare, ran only once as a two-year-old, when he won the Molecomb Stakes at Goodwood. He was then reserved for the Two Thousand Guineas, which he won, but not with that ease which his Derby admirers expected. His favouritism for the great race was throughout challenged by Ratan, a colt by Buzzard, bred and owned by Crockford, the owner of the gaming-house in St. James's Street. He had won a race at Ascot on his first appearance, and in the autumn carried a penalty to victory in the Criterion. It only remains to notice that ' This was subsequently proved at the trial in court. » This decision was set aside by a resolution of the Jockey Club at their general meeting on July 6, 1844, and the Duke of Rutland's Crenoline was declared the winner of the Plate. 129 I CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY Colonel Peel had two candidates engaged : Orlando, a bay horse by Touchstone out of Vulture, a rather soft mare, and Ionian. The former was beaten in his race at Ascot into second place, but he subsequently won the July Stakes at Newmarket and the Ham Stakes at Goodwood. He was a singularly handsome horse of conspicuous quality. He fell lame, ultimately, in running for the Gold Cup at Ascot and was retired to the stud. As a sire he was very successful, and his son, Tedding- ton, was probably one of the best horses who ever won the Derby. Alec Taylor, who trained Ted- dington, was wont to say that he was the fastest horse he ever had in his stable. At the same time Orlando's stable companion Ionian commanded more admirers. This horse was by Ion out of Maiibran by Whisker. At the Craven Meeting he had won a match and had carried off the Chester- field Stakes in brilhant style. For the Epsom race he stood at much shorter odds than Orlando. A few days before the Derby the Stewards of the Epsom meeting — Baron de Tessier and Sir G. Heathcote — were served with a protest signed by Lord George Bentinck, Mr. Bowes and John Scott against the inclusion of Running Rein in the Derby field. Thereupon the Stewards asked the then owner of the colt, Mr. Anthony Wood, a corn merchant of Epsom, to produce either the servant of the breeder or such other evidence as would establish the identity of the horse. On the Saturday before the race the Stewards appear to have been satisfied with the evidence tendered, and they directed that the colt should be allowed to start. They, however, informed the owner 130 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY and his friends that they must be prepared for another scrutiny, as probably ttiey would be required to prove their declarations in a court of law. It was a large field for the great race on May 22nd, no less than twenty-nine horses coming under the orders of the starter. The Ugly Buck was favourite at 9 to 4, with Ratan supported at 5 to 2. Running Rein, whose condition was greatly admired, started at 10 to i, the rest of the field being quoted at much longer odds. Before the race the Stewards assembled the jockeys and warned them that any infraction of the rules of starting would be visited with the extreme penalty. At three o'clock the flag fell, and Leander ^ made the running at a great pace with the Ugly Buck in close attendance, followed by Running Rein. When half a mile had been covered Leander was seen to falter, and the horse was pulled up, as he had broken his off hind leg. Running Rein then rapidly passed his horses and took a clear lead, followed by the Ugly Buck. Enveloped in a cloud of dust, they came round Tattenham Corner, at which point the race began in earnest. It was then seen to be a struggle to catch the rider in the white jacket. The Ugly Buck was beaten, and Colonel Peel's pair followed the leader home. Orlando made a gallant effort ; he got within half a length of Running Rein, but could not sustain the pressure, and Mr. Wood's horse won I There was much controversy at the time concerning this animal. Conflicting veterinary reports were made as to his age. and the horse, having been destroyed and buried after his accident, was subsequently exhumed. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY comfortably by three parts of a length. Ionian, two lengths away, was third. That a protest would be raised against the winner was at once realized, and the general opinion was loudly asserted that the Derby would have to be run over again, and this time within the narrow precincts of Westminster Hall. The settlement of bets over the race was postponed, and the successful holders of lottery tickets were deeply concerned as to the doubtful issue of their interests. Meantime, odds of 2 to i were laid, on Orlando getting the race. On the other hand it was believed that if Running Rein kept the verdict the owner and his friends would win up- wards of £50,000. Immediately after the race Colonel Peel entered an objection and claimed the stakes, following this up by serving a writ on Messrs. Weatherby, the stakeholders, for £4,250. Upon this the solicitor to the owner of Running Rein addressed a letter to the Stewards of the Jockey Club asking them to appoint twelve o'clock on the following Monday in order to hear the objection to the qualification of the Derby winner. The Stewards accordingly communicated with Colonel Peel, who then offered to refer the question of qualification to a barrister who should be nominated by the Lord Chief Justice, and who, according to the provisions of a recent Act of ParUament, would be able, as an arbitrator, to examine witnesses upon oath. Peel also in- formed the Stewards that he had commenced process against Messrs. Weatherby for the Derby stakes. This invitation to arbitration was, how- ever, declined by the owner of Running Rein, 132 Running Rein, 1844. THE FRAUD OF A DERBY and the Stewards, in view of the legal action taken by Colonel Peel, declined jurisdiction, and stated that, so far as they were concerned, the matter was at an end. The next step in the proceedings was that Messrs. Weatherby obtained an interpleader rule, and it was ordered that the stake money should be paid into court, that the owner of Running Rein should be the plaintiff in the action and Colonel Peel the defendant. The order also settled the terms of the issue to be tried. On July ist the trial took place in Westminster Hall before a special jury. It was well staged : indeed, it was the event of the season, for England dearly loves a cause celebre. The avenues to the Court of Exchequer were blocked by an eager and expectant public. To hear " the Derby cause " came the leaders of a brilliant society. The mag- nates of the racing world were there, conspicuous among them being the commanding figure of Lord George Bentinck in all the " majestic frivolity " of attire which distinguished that age. In the imposing array of counsel on either side were men celebrated for their talents and learning and destined to reach the highest posts of their pro- fession. Cockburn,^ whose musical voice and « With Cockburn in the case were Edwin James, whose career was to prove at once a success and a tragedy, and Lush, who later sat with his leader in the Court of Queen's Bench, and was after- wards raised to the Court of Appeal. Counsel with the Solicitor- General were Martin (afterwards Baron Martin), S. Wortley and Rawlinson. Martin, who had an intimate and complete knowledge of the Turf, was able to instruct his leader in all the technical details of the case. The conferences at which Lord George Bentinck and Martin were present with Thesiger must have been entertaining and interesting. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY dignified bearing are still a pleasing memory, and who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, led for the plaintiff. The defendant, Colonel Peel, was represented by the Solicitor-General, Sir Frederick Thesiger. As Lord Chancellor, some years later, he sat in Cabinet with his client in Lord Derby's Administrations. The judge was Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer. ^ For fourteen years he had been an ornament of the Judicial Bench. A judge of humane character and of some literary taste, he combined a strong Churchman- ship with the religious sentiments of a liberal and enlightened mind. He had some acquaintance with the business of racing, for at times he had been the guest of John Scott, the famous trainer at Whitewall, at whose hospitable board he had put questions about the art of riding, the condition of horses and the supply of stable-boys. The pleadings were opened to the effect that an issue had arisen between the plaintiff and the defendant in which the former maintained the affirmative of the question whether a certain horse called Running Rein, who had won the last Derby Stakes at Epsom, was a colt by the Saddler out of Mab, foaled in 1841. Cockburn then addressed the jury in the familiar style of those days. He pledged himself to establish a case in his client's favour as clear as ever was done in a court of justice, and boldly asserted that the truth was with the plaintiff. He pro ceeded to give the history of Running Rein. He said that Abraham Levi Goodman, a trainer, ' Thirteen years later Baron Alderson 's daughter became the wife of the late Lord Salisbury. 134 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY had bought him in 1841 as a foal in Yorkshire, and after keeping him at his own stables in Foley Place and later in Dorset Square, had sent him to Finchley and thence to Haine's stables in Langham Place on vSeptember 24, 1842. From Langham Place Running Rein was dispatched to Epsom to one Smith, who was engaged to train him. Goodman and vSmith disagreed, and the colt was moved to Sutton, and was there trained until the autumn of 1843, when he was due to run at Newmarket. He ran there in Goodman's name in two races, but, shortly afterwards, Goodman, being indebted to the plaintiff, allowed the latter, on payment of £200, to take the colt with his engagements in satisfaction of the debt. From Newmarket the colt was sent back to Epsom, and remained in training there until the Derby. Cockburn confessed that he could not call Good- man, and that he must admit that this important witness was a person of bad character. He con- cluded his address by saying that the Jockey Club was the proper authority for trying the issue, and that " a court of justice was desecrated by bein,!2 made arbiters in such a case " ! After four witnesses had been called to identify the horse and to prove the sequence of events narrated by counsel,^ the learned Baron showed his hand. " Is the horse here ? " he exclaimed. The Solicitor-General intervened, "Your Lordship made an order for us to inspect him, but we have been refused permission." Then the Judge : "I sit here as a Court of Conscience, and the jury will feel with me that the production of the horse » Some of these witnesses were badly shaken in cross-examination. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY and his examination is indispensable. After this notice I shall expect to see him, and I should like to look at his mouth myself." ^ Cockburn having assured the Judge that there would be no objection to produce the animal, the case proceeded. Five more witnesses gave evidence, some of identification, and some con- cerning the movements of the horse in London and in the neighbourhood. Towards the end of his evidence Smith, the Epsom trainer, related how the day before the Judge's order for inspection was made he had allowed Running Rein to be fetched from his stable in conformity, as he alleged, with the verbal orders of the owner. Then the Judge raged. " Justice demands the production of the horse." " I'll tell you," address- ing the plaintiff's counsel, " what makes an im- pression on my mind, and that is your anxiety to conceal the horse." " But, my Lord," began James. The Judge cut him short. " Produce your horse ! " he cried. One more witness, and the plaintiff's case closed. The Solicitor-General then addressed the court on behalf of Colonel Peel. After the usual pro- fessional comment on his opponent's difficulties, and the unfortunate character borne by some of his witnesses, he entered upon a long and elaborate narrative of the events which he undertook to prove. The horse that won the Derby was really Maccabaeus — a colt by Gladiator out of a mare ' In a rather clever poem, entitled The Exchequer Epic, the poetaster refers to this utterance of the Judge : " Mr. C, Where's the colt ? " Baron Alderson cried, "I WILL see liis mouth, and I won't be denied." 136 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY by Capsicum. He was bred by Sir G. Ibbetson in April 1840. In the month of September 1841 he was offered for sale by Mr. Tattersall at Don- caster and was bought by Goodman. He was entered for the Derby of 1843. After Doncaster the colt was first lodged wth a farmer named Worley at Sywell, near Northampton, and was then sent to a place in the occupation of Higgins, who was Goodman's accomplice, where he remained until September 1842, and was there known as Maccabseus. Thence he was walked to London, and on September 24th was stabled in Langham Place. Here the fraud was perpetrated,^ and the Gladiator colt (Maccabaeus), under the name of Running Rein, on September 27th was dispatched to Epsom, while the real Running Rein (the Saddler colt) was hidden away at Finchley. Mac- cabaeus— henceforward Running Rein — was kept at Epsom and trained there until he was sent to Newmarket in the autumn of the following year, to fulfil the real Running Rein's engagements. Goodman, in order to account for Maccabaeus' existence, resorted to another deception. There was an Irish horse called Goneaway. In July 1842 Goodman, after inquiring about the colour of the animal, paid the owner, Mr. Ferguson, of Rossmore Lodge, County Kildare, £500 for the use of this three-year-old,^ who was dispatched « So, too, the Judge at the close of the trial : " The pinch of the case is what was done at the stable in Langham Place, for there is no doubt that the colt that left Langham Place for Epsom to be trained became Running Rein." » Lord George Bentinck travelled to Ireland to see Mr. Ferguson about this transaction with Goodman, and even traced the purchase of the dye which Goodman had used. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY to England in January 1843 and was taken to the stable in Langham Place. Goodman, with dye and other treatment, altered the appearance of the horse to conform to that of Maccabaeus,'^ and ran him as a three-year-old under the name of Maccabaeus at the Epsom Spring Meeting,, when, with 7 st. on his four-year-old back and a hot favourite, he was beaten by a neck. Good- man intended to run the horse in the Derby, but the owner, becoming acquainted with the con- templated fraud, interfered, and frustrated this second scheme of impersonation. Evidence was then called to prove the sale of Maccabaeus as a yearling in 1841 and his delivery to Goodman and Higgins ; while the age of the colt was further established by proof of the entries at Messrs. Weatherby's office. It was now past seven o'clock, and the court adjourned. The following morning it was evident that the proceedings were about to take a sensa- tional turn. The plaintiff was observed to approach Colonel Peel with a letter in his hand, and counsel held agitated consultation until interrupted by the arrival of the learned Judge. Cockburn then rose and informed the court that he could not produce the Derby winner. He had been taken away from the trainer's stable. Then the Judge burst out : " Why doesn't he set a policeman to find him ? If the horse has been taken away against the owner's will, it is a clear case of horse- stealing, and if I try the parties who have removed him at the Old Bailey I will transport them for ' The horse had a white pastern, which Goodman painted a. dark colour. 138 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY life to a dead certainty." Turning to Cockburn : " What's to be done now ? You cannot produce a horse you haven't got." Still the case dragged on. Worley, the farmer who had charge of the horse in September 1841 as a yearling, had not a shadow of a doubt that he was the animal he saw win the Derby, and his evidence was cor- roborated by another witness. The Judge then asked Cockburn how, after this identification, he could proceed with the case, and the embarrassed lawyer, having admitted that his client had written a letter to Colonel Peel saying that he now felt that some fraud had been committed and that he would withdraw from the inquiry, consented ta a verdict for the defendant. There was an incident at the trial which gave rise to some comment. Although Lord George Bentinck had been subpoenaed by the plaintiff,. Cockburn at the opening of the proceedings applied that he should withdraw from the court. To this arbitrary request the Judge declined to assent. Then Cockburn, in his address to the jury, thDught fit to assail the noble lord, who was his own witness,^ in language of asperity and indecency. He charged Bentinck with being not only the real promoter of the litigation, but also accused him of acting as attorney and policeman and of tampering with the witnesses, whom, he averred, Bentinck had clothed, fed and paid. On the evening of the first day of the trial Bentinck addressed a most polite and temperate letter to Cockburn imploring that he might have an opportunity of denying these accusations in the witness-box. At the con- clusion of the case Cockburn referred to Bentinck's 139 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY request. The reasons he gave for not complying with it were considered at the time to be weak and unconvincing, but they were upheld by the Judge, who asserted the traditional privilege of learned counsel to speak according to his instruc- tions. The next morning The Times, in the best style of leading-article criticism, thundered against Cockbum's conduct, and derided the wide extent of the privilege of the Bar which had been claimed. The article accused Cockburn of culpable care- lessness in making the charges, uncompensated as they were by any adequate amende in the sequel of the proceedings. Two or three days later Cockburn made a statement in court withdrawing the imputations on Bentinck's character. ^ The speedy action of his friends must, however, have been some solace to Bentinck's wounded feelings. On the evening after the trial a meeting was called at which the following resolution was passed: "That the noblemen and gentlemen of the Jockey Club and several proprietors of race- horses interested in the honour and prosperity of the Turf intend to present Lord George Bentinck with a piece of plate to mark their sense of the immense service he has rendered to the racing community by detecting and defeating the » See the Greville Memoirs, vol. v. p. 256. Although Greville and Bentinck were not on speaking terms at the time, the former pays a high tribute to the energy and ability displayed by his cousin in exposing the fraud. Greville, who was in court on both days, writes that the Running Rein parties had no idea that Colonel Peel's friends had got up their case so perfectly, and also that the trial was over before it was half developed in evidence. There is authority for saying that the attorney in the case declared of Bentinck that there was " no sum he would not give to secure the professional assistance of such a coadjutor." 140 THE FRAUD OF A DERBY attempted fraud exposed in the late trial in the Court of Exchequer." Although the subscriptions were limited to £25 each, a very large sum was rapidly raised. Bentinck declined a personal gift, but the money subscribed was at his request made the nucleus of the Bentinck Benevolent and Provident Fund for Trainers and Jockeys, which is maintained and administered at the present day by the authorities of the Jockey Club. Official approval of Bentinck's services was also recorded in a resolution agreed to by the members of the Jockey Club at their general meeting held in Old Burlington Street on July 6, 1844. Besides promulgating the result of the race consequent upon the decision of the court, the Stewards, having been asked as to the day when the Epsom account should be settled, recommended Monday, July 8th, for this purpose, and ordered that notice to this effect should be posted at Tattersalls. La commedia e finita. Wood, the dispossessed owner, protested his innocence. The scoundrel Goodman and his confederates fled the country. Nothing more was seen in public of the mystery horses. The story goes in Northamptonshire that Worley, who owned and farmed Sywell House Farm — not far from the birthplace of the Derby winners of 1827 ^^^ iS47» Mameluke and Cos- sack— had an interest in Maccabseus, and that after the Derby the horse was taken to Sywell, where he was destroyed and buried. There is also a legend that at nightfall the ghost of the murdered horse used to haunt the road leading 141 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY to the farm.'' The difficulty in accepting this romantic tale is that Worley gave evidence at the trial in favour of Colonel Peel's contention (see ante), which is not easy to reconcile except upon the supposition that in self-protection he turned, in effect, Queen's evidence. And so Orlando was legally declared the winner of the Derby of 1844, while Ionian, also the property of Colonel Peel, was placed second in the race and Bay Momus third. The mention of Ionian recalls an incident greatly to the honour of the gallant officer. He had laid Lord Glasgow 10,000 to 100 against Ionian. In the spring of the year 1844, when he tried the horse, he was astonished to find that he was nearly as good as Orlando. Thus embarrassed, he proceeded to cover his money at some sacrifice, and, this done, he invited Lord Glasgow to give his own orders to Ionian's jockey. These two were firm allies. Lord Glasgow be- queathed his race-horses to Peel, and the last winner that Peel had he called Peter, a sobriquet given to Lord Glasgow by his intimate friends. Four months after Peter's victory Peel died at his house at Twickenham in the eightieth year of his age. Among sportsmen he was the kindest, gentlest and most honourable. His political career as Member of Parliament for forty-two years and as a most capable Secretary of State for War was passed without an enemy. But his heart was at Newmarket. » The writer is indebted for this statement to that distinguished soldier and excellent sportsman, Field-Marshal Lord Grenfell, who Jived for some years in the neighbourhood of Syweil. 142 The Run In over the Round Course, Newmarket. The Run In over the Round Course, Newmarket. THE FRAUD OF A DERBY Sixty years ago a group of horsemen might have been seen on the Heath — the Admiral on his well-known hack. Lord Glasgow, blunt of speech and quaint in dress, and Lord Exeter. They are joined by General Peel, an erect figure without the lightest overcoat, although the air bites shrewdly as the wind whistles over the Flat. It is the season when the votaries of the Turf come to great decisions and commit great mis- takes. Absorbed in the passionate pursuit of the moment, they watch the issue of a trial from a spot where the roll of the famous plain swells like a wave into the distance — Quam Ditis nomine dicta Fossa secat. The scene is strangely changed since those days, and Newmarket, with its stands and crowds, can hardly be recalled as Peel knew it. Peel's name stands high on the record of winning owners ; but it is found in a better list — in the list of those honest and straightforward men who have proved by their example of honour and integrity that racing is not necessarily a doubtful trade nor the race-course the exclusive haunt of the professional gambler. 143 VII THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS' Eventus docet : Stultorum iste magister est. This has been an annus mirahilis in the history of the Enghsh Turf. It has been marked by events of a novel and exciting character. The authority of the Jockey Club has been frequently exercised and has been in one instance loudly questioned. The rules of racing have been debated by the Club in full session and have been substantially amended ; and within the last two months a Court of Law has been turned into a theatre where peers, trainers, jockeys and handicappers have appeared in due succession on the stage, and a learned judge has amused the public with his jokes and the world of racing with his views on short stirrups. > This chapter was pubhshed in September 1913. For the Derby of that year Mr. Bower Ismay's horse Cragenour was a well-backed favourite and won the race by a head. The Stewards on their own initiative disqualified the winner for bumping and boring, and awarded the race to Aboyeur. Chancery proceedings to withhold payment of the stakes were contemplated, pending an attempt to obtain a revision of the decision ; but in this course Mr. Ismay did not persist. A few days later he sold Cragenour to an Argentine syndicate for ;^30,ooo. In the month of July Mr. Richard Wootton, a prominent trainer, brought an action for libel against Mr. Sievier, editor of the Winning Post, who had charged him with dishonesty in the training and running of horses in his charge. The case, which was tried before Mr. Justice Darling and a special jury, lasted eight days, and resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff with the derisory damages of a farthing. 144 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS The horse first past the post in the earhest important handicap of the year was disqualified for interfering with the second ; an objection was lodged against the winner of the One Thousand Guineas, but was dismissed ; and the judges' fiat in the Derby was set aside by the Epsom Stewards and the race awarded to an outsider which started at 100 to I. In other cases, notably at Newmarket, at Ascot, and at Goodwood, the Stewards had occasion to review the riding and conduct of the jockeys. At Newmarket and Ascot the winning horses were disquahfied, and at Goodwood some surprise was expressed that the objection was not sustained. The action of the Stewards at Epsom was strongly criticized. In view of the special circumstances this was inevitable. A bumping finish, a cluster of non-staying horses struggling together, the favourite's number hoisted as the winner of the melee, and the horse led in by his dehghted owner, only to be followed by an inquiry undertaken on the sole motion of the Stewards — these incidents combined in connection with the greatest race of the year made up a situation of palpitating and poignant interest without parallel in racing annals. Pendente lite, tongues wagged apace. Sir Oracle of the Rostrum laid down the law ; blase punters, backers of the favourite, were hotly indignant ; gentlemen of the amateur Press were deeply concerned ; and even the fair and fashion- able fiutterers in a few sovereigns Who change complexions at a losing game joined in the chorus of protest. 145 K CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY But, to the great credit of the sporting com- munity as a whole, the decision was generally accepted. It was known that the Stewards had acted in good faith, and it was believed that they had cogent reasons for the course they had taken. If, it was said, they had considered their own popularity and had consulted their own wishes they would have acquiesced in the judge's verdict on that memorable afternoon. The mere fact that they had felt compelled to set it aside, and that they had drawn no distinction between a classic race and a selling plate scramble at Newmarket, was proof, if proof were wanted, of the justice and equity of their interposition. Out of this controversy, however, arises a question of far greater importance than the merits of the decision in this particular case. The welfare of racing, the maintenance of the best traditions of the Turf, and the security of the millions of capital which have been expended on race-courses and racing establishments depend, and depend entirely, on maintaining the authority of the Jockey Club. Owners of race-horses submit themselves to the Rules of Racing. These rules are promulgated by the Jockey Club, and either in the first instance or as a Court of Appeal the Stewards examine into the facts of each dispute or questionable result, interpret the Rules, and in virtue of them enforce their decision. The Jockey Club, like the Cabinet, sits in camera ; but, unlike the Cabinet, there appears in their official organ — the Racing Calendar — a well-edited report of their debates and proceedings. Is it permissible for a moment to look into that Council 146 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS Chamber at the Rooms in Newmarket ? There are assembled the august Senators of the Turf — stewards of its mysteries. Some of them have known the spacious days of Admiral Rous and Lord Hastings, of Mr. George Payne and Mr. Savile. Some have trained their horses with Mat Dawson of famous memory, and can recall their racing victories of the sixties ; while a younger generation have been elected to the sacred circle who have been born since Galopin won the Derby. Lord Durham is there. Out of office now, he has at several periods filled with great credit the highest position in the Club. He is a just judge, but a hanging judge, more often wearing the black cap than the white gloves. He replies to the case made by the Senior Steward — the secundum columen of the Turf — in argument which lacks nothing of pungent difference marked by studied gravity and respect. Lord Londonderry's narrative flows easily on in its ordered sequence of logic and reminiscence. Lord Derby, wielding a calm and consistent statement, presses home some material point. Lord Harewood assists his colleagues with his intimate knowledge of the classic races, with opinions sound, though at times pontifical, and with his ripe experience of the law and practice of the Turf. Lord Rosebery, who can now give to the Jockey Club what he denies to the Legislature, may offer a criticism all the keener for its playful humour. Though wondering Senates hung on all he spoke. The Club must hail him master of the joke. Lord Villiers and Lord Hamilton of Dalzell bring 147 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY to the matter in hand a practical knowledge and debating ability which lose nothing of effect from that salt flavour that comes to younger minds in contact with business affairs. Lord Crewe is in attendance. His part in the discussion must be an easier and more agreeable task than that which he undertakes as an unenvied leader of the House of Lords. Glad indeed must he be to have temporary relief from those Cabinet complications ^ which have turned upon the gambling exploits of his Ministerial colleagues, and to find himself in the purer atmosphere of an assembly which since October 1842 has taken no cognisance of trans- actions in the betting ring. There is no playing to the Gallery. There are no lobbying Pressmen. Interruptions, if any, are polite and orderly. At the close of the debate the officials claim urgency and the business is dispatched. The Venetian oligarchs rise from their seats with the feelings of statesmen who have realized their responsibilities, and who, as the Guardians of the Turf, have exercised their extensive and arbitrary powers alike in the best interests of that sport which they regulate, and of that discipline which is vital to its continuance. The recent case in which a representative of the yellow section of the Sporting Press was sued for libel by a well-known trainer excited much comment in racing circles. To the particular charges levelled by the defendant against the plaintiff it is un- necessary to refer. The trial itself was a long and pitiful exhibition of personal prejudice and irrele- vancy. The broad result was that the jury found ' The reference is to the Marconi scandal of that date. 148 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS in explicit terms that there was no warrant for the defendant's accusations and that the plaintiff's grievance was sufficiently met by an award of contemptuous damages. But the by-products of the case are perhaps deserving of passing notice. Frequent references were made in the trial to the suspension of jockeys for foul riding. It is unfortunate that any offence committed by a jockey in a race should be thus described. Racing terminology is surely not so poor but that a dis- tinction can be drawn between a breach of the rules due to negligence, rashness or inability, and one into which scienter or intention enters. The majority of jockeys are little more than boys. They are eager to win : but — according to authority — to be eager is not a very bad vice at any age under the critical forty. Je veux risquer le tout pour le tout may be said to be a young jockey's motto. In his anxiety to carry out the orders of an exacting trainer he crosses another horse before he is that distance clear of him which the rule prescribes. He is properly convicted of an offence. Again, a 6 st. jockey, riding a big and awkward animal, finds himself unable to avoid interference with another horse in the race. He too is rightly condemned. But it certainly seems harsh to stigmatize these offences by an epithet which is ordinarily understood to import intentional wrong. In the old articles of racing they were careful to make this point of intention. Thus : " whosoever doth stop or stay any of the horses that rideth for this plate or prize and it appears to be willingly done, he shall win no plate or prize." The Jockey Club have recently been much engaged in reforming 149 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY the rules which deal with crossing and jostling, and racing opinion supports them, and will support them, in defining the precise character of these offences and in determining their penal conse- quences. It certainly ought not to be beyond the powers of a competent draughtsman to use terms of definition and distinction which are quite familiar in every code of criminal jurisprudence. Times are indeed changed since the days when foul play on the part of one jockey towards another was allowed by the rules of the Jockey Club, and when " crossing and jostling " was always under- stood to be permitted in a match unless there was a special provision to the contrary. Compelled to run each knavish jockey's heat Subservient to Newmarket's annual cheat. It was alleged, in the course of the trial, that the recent increase of objections to the riding of jockeys was due to the present fashion of the seat on the horse. With all respect to the distinguished upholders of the old practice of the upright seat and long stirrups, they may be reminded of some of the essentials of the controversy. Sloan was the author in this country not only of the modern seat but also of the true run race. " Waiting in front " was the paradoxical aphorism associated with his name. Those who rejoice in garrulous reminiscences of the past forget that, ridden as a race was in former days, it was comparatively easy for the jockey to keep his horse straight. The early part of the race was often a mere cantering finesse. Speed and stamina were husbanded for the finish. A race now run from end to end 150 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS occasionally finds the leading horses swerving from distress ; but it is very doubtful indeed whether the accomplished riders of former times would, under these conditions, have been more successful in keeping a straight course than the much-abused jockeys of the present day. An obscurantist patron of the Turf may talk bravely of the advantage of the old style. Let him go to his trainer in the paddock before an important race when the wind blows freshly down the Rowley mile some October afternoon. Let him suggest to the trainer that his jockey should let his stirrup leathers down some holes and should sit upright in the saddle. The trainer would reply : " Very well, my lord, but you are giving 5 lb. away to the others." No one is so foolish as to contend that the present style, in the case of some exponents of it, is not open to criticism ; that apprentices and light- weights do not show at times to disadvantage just as the tiny midgets of the past did when the older jockeys crowded them out at the fall of the flag or squeezed them on to the rails. But the continued vigilance of the Stewards and the due enforcement of penalties will certainly lead to more careful riding in public, and will make it incumbent on trainers, where their apprentices are concerned, to see that they are well practised in riding and at the gate before they appear in the weighing-room in the glory of colours. It is undeniable that the evidence of considerable betting by a trainer of horses produced a very unfavourable impression on the public mind. The combination of trainer and semi-professional backer is not a wholesome one. It is calculated to create 151 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY a conflict of disturbing factors in connection with a given race : and it is at variance with the correct relations between an owner and his servant. If the trainer bets, his stable lads will do the same ; and, though it may not be possible to banish betting from a stable, it is obvious that the one man who can exercise a healthy restraint on the gambling of his employes, who ought to teach them to resist the scandalous temptations which are offered to them by the advertising tipster in search of stable information, is in no position to set a sober example of independence of the betting market if he is known — and known he will be- — to be employing a commissioner to accept the odds about the horses he trains, or to support the more- fancied animals in another establishment. A trainer holds a position of trust. He requires a licence in order to follow his calling. It has been argued that a licensed trainer ought to be under the same disability as regards betting as a licensed jockey. This would, however, be aiming at too rigid a standard of morality, at too lofty a counsel of perfection. And yet, when the statement is made that the emoluments of a trainer are in- sufficient for his situation unless he supplements his professional earnings by betting, the matter is one which should not be too lightly dismissed. That a trainer should be obliged to look for a necessary addition to his income from betting operations on the course or from manipulating the machinery of starting-price offices is an intolerable reflection upon those who engage his services and who are responsible for his rate of remuneration. There are, of course, trainers and trainers ; but 152 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS certain it is that the Lord Chesterfield of to-day^ when writing to his son upon the general scheme of his amusements d la mode, would add to his worldly code the recommendation that he should not place his race-horses in a stable where gambling was the practice of the trainer. In every department of national amusements great changes and developments have taken place, and racing is no exception to the law of human progress. In earlier times the sport was the diversion of the few : it is now the pastime of the multitude. The days are long past when the race- course was attended by a select band of gentlemen who followed the proceedings on horseback and who cantered on their hacks to the ring to support the animal of their choice. Races have increased in number and enormously in value. Matches, which within the lifetime of some who are still racing, figured in one year to the number of 86, are now practically unknown, save when an engage- ment of the kind appeals to the boyish fancy of a Jewish millionaire. The great prizes offered by the flourishing Park Clubs in the neighbour- hood of London and by the management of other racing centres, where enterprise and reforming policy have been rewarded with financial success,, have naturally proved more attractive to owners than running for their own money. The purging of racing from the graver kinds of fraud and chicane has been a gradual process. It is improbable that four-year-old horses will ever again be engaged in races limited to three-year- olds ; or that such circumstances as Greville, for example, records in connection with the Derby of 153 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY 1833 will in future deform the history of the sport. Cromwell once said that England had need of a Constable, and racing will always require the strictest supervision of the Jockey Club. There are men of every type who follow the game, and who are neither finished examples of moral excellence nor of the standard of just men made perfect. In the early Victorian period the authorities were as drowsy and indulgent as the bishops of the eighteenth century, and offences went undetected and unpunished. But in these days even Stewards of minor meetings have asserted themselves, conscious that they will be supported by the appellate tribunal ; and no owner, no trainer at the head of his profession, and no leading jockey can expect to receive the smallest mercy when the Stewards of the Jockey Club are satisfied of the evidence of guilt. It is not too much to say that betting as it prevailed in former days has practically ceased. Betting in small sums takes place extensively among the lower orders of the community. The facilities for it have grown. The most ingenious and the most active canvassing is employed. Columns of advertisements appear in some news- papers, as insidious as money-lenders' letters and generally as misleading. As Voltaire wrote shrewdly of the Cathohc priests, so of these practitioners it may also be said : Notre credulUe fait toute leur science. Again, the modern institution of starting-price offices accounts for a great deal of betting in the aggregate. These offices, with their elaborate rules, their telegraphic codes, and 154 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS lines of telephone, are largely used by connections of certain gambling stables, by members of the Stock Exchange, and among others by those who adopt some silly pseudonym * to cloak, as they vainly hope, their speculative interests in insig- nificant races. To these classes and to the Post- master-General their prohibition might be un- welcome ; but the better type of bookmaker on the race-course and the respectable adherent of racing would rejoice in their extinction. Young Sidonia may splash large sums on an outsider, and South Africa may occasionally launch out with a few thousands, but the fashion of individual heavy betting is dead. What would be thought in these days of an owner who stood to win £150,000 on his own horse in the Derby, which was beaten, and at the same time won £30,000 on another which proved successful, and who could call his net winnings by betting in a single year £100,000 ? Racing history records this of Lord George Bentinck. Where are the owners who bet as did Lord Hastings during his brief career on the Turf, Mr. George Payne, Mr. Merry and Sir Joseph Hawley ? Where is the bookmaker to-day whose betting transactions bear any resemblance to those of Davis ? Over the Derby of 185 1 Davis is said to have paid more than £100,000, and without waiting for settling day sent Mr. Greville a cheque for £15,000 twenty-four hours after the race was run. The truth is the whole scheme of betting has changed. There are now no yearling books on the Derby ; no owner would I The Jockey Club has now prohibited racing under an assumed name. CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY dream now of taking £40,000 to £600 about each of his five filHes for the Derby nearly a year before the race, as did Sir Joseph Hawley. Such a scene as is described in the glowing pages of Sybil — accurate as are the details down to the lameness of the bandaged winner, Phosphorus — seems to modern sportsmen as grotesque a picture of the eve of an Epsom contest as the recent melodrama of The Whip at Drury Lane, or the description of the betting on the race in Ouida's novel of Under Two Flags. With very few exceptions betting is now confined to the day of the race. A comparatively small outlay brings a horse to a short price in the market — a market ever apprehensive of some starting- price manoeuvre. Cramped odds lead to light betting, and the restriction of business over the rails. Indeed, in these times not a few attend- ants of the members' enclosure witness race after race without making a wager, and appear to emulate the reputation of the late Lord Falmouth. For these changed conditions the Sporting Press is in part responsible. Thanks to the calculation of chances " by our Special Correspondent " and to the daily leading articles based upon training reports and a searching analysis of form, the public know as much about a horse as the ring and frequently more than his owner. The recog- nized organs of racing each morning enter fully into the prospects of every horse that is likely to run during the day. In this enterprise they are followed by journals whose proprietors are endowed with the profits from the sales of cocoa, which they 156 THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS recommend, and are enriched by the news of racing which they denounce. Little can be said against the general policy of the legitimate organs of the Turf. Their writers know their business. Their articles are readable. They steer the student through all the dreary intricacies of varying form, and comment to their own satisfaction upon " in and out " running. True, they occasionally elevate a trainer into an oracle and exalt a jockey to the dignity of a hero. But, generally speaking, their gospel is against gambling and their message is for fair play ; and they rarely deviate from loyalty to the rule of constituted authority. They would certainly have found a reader in Horace Walpole vv^ho wrote to a correspondent : "I read the part of newspapers I used to skip, and peruse the list of Sweepstakes, not the articles of in- telligence." It is sometimes questioned whether the Turf is in any danger at the hands of the Legislature. There have been times when Nonconformist politicians in Parliament have talked glibly of confiscatory measures. The egregious Mr. John Burns once recommended the ploughing up of race-courses, and Labour members have displayed hostility to racing apparently because it is a popular amusement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd George) in his best manner says that his opponents hurry back from Ascot to vote against him. Nevertheless it is difficult to imagine even this Government embarking on a policy of racing repression. It is but the other day that Mr. Lloyd George indulged in a considerable gamble. He acted on a tip given him by one of his stable 157 CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY confederates who professed to know the chances of Marconi,^ and he won his money. After the habit of plungers who have had a success, Mr. George " played up " his winnings and increased his stake, and, as frequently happens, with disastrous results. He did not settle his account. On the Turf a man who fails to settle may be posted at Tattersalls as a defaulter : a professional tipster would not be appointed a judge at any race meeting in the country. It would be interesting were a modern Massinger to draw afresh the characters of Overreach and Justice Greedy. Consistency in these political times does not count for much, but it counts for something ; and if the present Administration were to attempt to interfere with racing they would indeed challenge their own record for Pharisaical hypocrisy. The philosophy of this prose age has borne much ; but this would touch the limits of endurance. In truth the fortunes of the Turf do not depend upon Parliament. " You have taught me," exclaimed George II. to his imperious Minister, " to look for the sense of my people in other places than the House of Commons." What the second Hanoverian had to learn from the greatest of English statesmen his illustrious descendant must have long since realized without the counsel of a Minister and despite the whisper of a Courtier. Hence, so long as the democracy enjoys its racing, so long as owners set an example of honesty and probity in their own persons and require clean conduct from their I The reference is to Sir Rufus Isaacs, then Attorney- General, and shortly afterwards appointed Lord Chief Justice of England. 158 This Piece of Plate, with the Hoof of Eclipse was PRESENTED BY HiS MoST GRACIOUS MaJESTY WiLLIAM THE Fourth to the Jockey Club, May, 1832. THIS PIECE OF PLATE WITH THE HOOF OF ECLIPSE WAS PRESENTED BY ?I6 iWost ffiracious iWajpstB ffiaiilliam tfjr .ifourtft THE JOCKEY CLUB. Maw 1832. THE TURF AND SOME REFLECTIONS servants and employes, and so long as the Govern- ment of the Turf is administered by a wise and courageous autocracy, the sense of the people will surely protect it from the predatory passions of puritans and partisans. 159 Printed in Great Britain by ONWIN BB0THBR3. UMITBJ) LONDON AXD WORFNO Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cummings School of Veterinaiy Medicine at Tufts University 200 Westboro Road North Grafton, MA 01536