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TO 



EICHAUD AND EDMUND 



TATTERSALL, 



FROM THFIR FKIEND 



THE AUTHOR. 



i P I C E ; 



A THIRD work of the same class scarcely caljs for 
a preface, except as pure matter of form. In 
writing it I have adhered strictly to my original 
plan of endeavouring to fill up from oral evidence, 
some blanks in the sporting history of the last 
seventy years ; and where I have had the good 
fortune to meet vrith an especially well-known charac- 
ter, I have got him, Dick Christian fashion, to give 
the public the butt end of his mind in the first per- 
son. The three books must be taken as a whole, 
and hence any seeming omissions, or very slight 
notice of a celebrated man or horse in the present 
one, will generally be accounted for by reference 
to its predecessors. The difficulty of the task has 
been great, as no two men ever seemed to give 
precisely the same account of any thing, and on 
some points I have despaired of getting more than 



n PREFACE. 

an approximation to the exact truths amid so many 
conflicting statements. Poor Dick Christianas me- 
mory can aid me no more^ and I can only again 
trust that in his present impoverished and bed- 
ridden state, his friends of other days may not 
wholly forget him. 

The name of '^ Post and Paddock '' could cause 
no mistake, but " Silk and Scarlet^^ deluded a few 
into the belief that it was a contribution to Church 
Polemics. When I had to think out a third title, I 
did hope that by adopting the names of two of their 
most accomplished practitioners, as the types of The 
Turf and The Chase, I ran no risk of being mis- 
understood j but still I found one of my old Rugby 
school-fellows under the firm belief that bv the 
heading '^ Sebright" I must be taken to contemplate 
a treatise on Bantams. 

As regards the first three chapters, I have nothing 
to remark, except that I have handled the great win- 
ners as nearly as possible in chronological order, and 
separated man from horse, by a pony chapter, which, 
with about twenty pages more, has already appeared 
in print. " The Flag" part of the fourth chapter is 
a mere fragment, for the sake of illustrating the 
career of one of its most celebrated riders, when 



PREFACE. Ill 

steeple-chasing really was a sport ; and both " The 
Stag '' and " The Drag '' might have been worked 
out much more fully if there had been space at com- 
mand. 

I have, in fact, been able to make only a very 
sparing selection from the mass of sporting evidence 
which I collected in the course of three years. 
Still, "Field and Fold" is a very comprehensive 
title, and although I have now a new love, I dare say 
I shall not be found quite faithless to the old, in my 
proposed August and September rambles, and that I 
shall often turn aside from farming stock for the 
sake of a note on those two earlier subjects, which 
are connected in my mind with so many pleasant 
friendships. 

10, Kensington Square, 
June 10th, 1862. 



s 



Mr. Tatteksall .... 


Froniispieee. 


"Nat" 


Vignette. 


John Day (1836) . . ... 


Page 41 


Me. J. E. Herring 


89 


A Quiet Day at Sledmere, 1862 


137 


Bill Bean (the Arch Trespasser of England) 


391 


Mr. Musters .... 


325 


Old Days in Holderness 


335 


Dick Gurney .... 


351 


Stephen Goodall 


361 


Jem Hills .... 


365 


Dick Burton .... 


387 





CHAPTEll 



PAGE 



_ _ _ it 'i' tfi i O ^ A word at starting — 
Hirse traditions — Old sporting writers — Eccentric turf cha- 
racters—Old Q — Colonel Thornton — -The Swaffham Club — 
Cricketing and archery — The dawn of Goodwood — The 
driving era — Ascot qualification tickets — -Doncaster Moor 
to wit — - The Prince Eegent at Bibury — Dr. Cyril 
Jackson on Bibury and Hunting — Dean Milner's inter- 
view with Mendoza — Sir Tatton Sykes and his sheep 
tastes — His little difficulty \\dth Mr. Baker of Elemoro — His 
early days in London — His probation in Lincoln's Inn — 
Humours of the Yorkshire shrievalties — A word with Lord 
Thurlow — Sir Tatton's race-riding — Yisits to Doncaster — 
His rides to London — The old race of Turfites — The old 
Derby course — Early betting — The certainties of '17 — How 
they kept the course at Epsom — The year of Gustavus 
and Augusta — The Warren Hill parade — The Nomination 
night at York — The Leger eve at the Salutation — Crutch 
Robinson's sayings and doings — Michael Brunton — The 
old school of Yorkshire trainers : Thuytes — His views on 
tails and training —Mark Plews — His interview Avith the 
Marquis of Queensberry — John Smith— Mrs. Smith's love for 
Middleham — Old Sykes and his cards inspection — Billy 
Pierse — Mrs. Pierse's training tact — His test of two-year- 
old form — Tact in stopping a quarrel — His studies in Political 
Economy— The Borodino tip in the bed- room— Old Forth — 
Buckle, Ptobinson, and Chifney — Grandfather Day and Tom 
Goodisson — Wheatley and CHft— Bill Arnull on money 
matters — William Edwards — Plot to make Orville run awa}' 
— John Jackson — Ben Smith — Malaprop sayings of Ben — 
Early humours of Bob Johnson — First mount on General 




.11 CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Chasse — His perpetual tMrcLs for the St. Leger — His fall at 
Doncaster — Colloquies and correspondence with Mr. Ord — 
The Pilgrim's Eest, at Gosforth — Sam Darling's wastes — 
Mr. Horsley's story of Sam — Vfinning the St. Leger on 
Hochingham — John and Sam Day's first pony race — Sam 
in the crate — Grandfather Day — John Day as a jockey — His 
race on Amphitrite — His waste walk, and Danebury disci- 
pline — Su' John Mills at Stockbridge races — Isaac Day— Un- 
cle Sam in the Epsom paddock— Uncle Sam on the pipe — 
His lecture on wasting— His London practice — Early tuition 
of John and Bill Scott — Filho da Puta's match — Lookiner 
over the Squeers lot — The sporting bagman- — Performances 
of Filho — Dispute about his name — John's riding — Life on 
Sherwood Forest — Forest privileges — Birth of Matilda — 
Mr. Petre's career— Bill Scott's jockeyship — His riding of 
AttHa — His amusements — Visit to Harrogate — Training of 
his colt Sir Tatton Sykes — The Wliitewall snuggery — 
Pictures of the cracks — The Whitewall dining-room — The 
guests at Wliitewall — Baron Alderson's visit — Old Cyprian — 
Langton Wold — The schoolmaster at home — " Ben"andtiie 
hounds — John Scott's commentaries — Pavis and Conolly — 
Isaac Day's descent with Little Boy Blue — Jemmy Chappie — 
A word on Nat — Job Marson — -Prank Butler's surprise with 
The West — Colloquy with Isaac Walker on the Moors — The 
Old Victory jacket — Last days of Frank — Mr. Theobald, of 
Stockwell — Camel — Mr. Bransby Cooper's opinion of him — 
Stockwell sires — Mr. Theobald's love of being in the fashion 
— His dress and dogs — Trap horses — Trips to Doncaster and 
Newmarket — The late Mr. Tattersall — Dislike to bettins: — 
His entiy on the business — The yard at Tattersall's — Mr. 
Tattersall's connection Avith the Prince — Difficulties with 
H.R.H. about a challenge — His Majesty's care for old chums 
— Mr. Tattersall as a hunting man— Understanding with 
highwaymen — Sir Clement Dormer in difficulties — The 
stories of Slender BiUy — Boiling the exciseman — Billy's 
warning voice ; and his execution- Parson Harvey — Mr. 
Vernon on long preaching— Coaeliing", dogs, and fists — 
Theatre rows — The late John Warde — Mr. Tattersall's 
Derby dinner — The first guests— Humours of Charles 
Mathews, sen. — Drawing the Derby Lottery — Frightening 
the Chelmsford postboy — Mr. Tattersall as a breeder of 
blood stock — Mr. Tattersall's scrap book — James Ward, 
R.A. — Mr. Fernely — Principal pictures — His habits — Visit 
to Mr. Herring at Meopham — Horse and donkey models — 
The Arab Imaum — Mr. Herring's first efforts — Other sub- 
jects — Interior of his studio — Recollections of his " Book 
of Beauty" — Painting Bay Middleton — Baron Petrofiski 
— His love of sport — His racehorse breeding — Racing in 
Russia — Training troubles. . . , .1 



CONTENTS. Hi 

CHAPTER II. 

J' AGE 

1 ffl © P i T @ W i Te The road to Exmoor— 

Emmett's Gri^ange — Mr. Robert Smitli's cob breeduag — 
Bobby — The Inn at Simon's Bath — Origin of the Exmoor 
ponies — Tlie Dongalas — Thoroughbred crosses — The first 
pony sales — Mr. Knight's pony stock — Their mode of life — 
Habits and battles of the sires — Annual marking of the 
hoofs — Average of casualties — The herdsmen — A ride by « 
the Barle — On Exmoor — Bringing up the ponies — The 
Sparkham pony — The Doons of Badgery , . .97 

CHAPTER in. 

UBi ^ll^MiCfcl a County rivahy in Arabs 
— Indian blood- sire contract — Willesden Paddocks — Volti- 
geur and Sir Edwin Landseer — The WiUesden staff — The 
selected sires — On shipboard — Arabs in England — Mr. 
Wilson and Omer Pacha— Mr. Elliot on Arab champions — 
Landing of Arabs at Bombay — Racing in Indiji — Breeds 
and .'peculiarities of Arabs — Tricks of Native dealers — The 
early English cracks — Hambletonian — John Smith at 
Streatlam — " I see Queen Mab has been with you" — The 
Queen Mab family at Streatlam — Streatlam trainers — 
Isaac Walker at home — Isaac's interviews with Will Good- 
all — The Streatlam Paddock pets — The Yorkshire Greys — 
Delpini of the woolly coat — Turf doings at Sledmere — Sam 
Chifney in Yorkshire — Camillus and Stumps— Death of ■ 
Stumps — An afternoon with Sir Tatton and Snarry — Diplo- 
matic relations of Snarry and the Sledmere sires — The Diall's 
field— Swale's Wold— The Cottage Pasture— Cherry Wood 
End— The Craggs Flat— The Castle Field— The King's 
Field — Across the road and into the Park — A little arith- 
metic — The sire paddocks — Old times at Ashton Hall— 
" The best of all good company"— Lancashire turf rivals — 
St. Leger sons of Sir Peter — The Waxy blood — -"Wlialebone 
at Petworth — The Petworth stud — Blacklock's youth — 
Racing finish of Blackloock — The sire and sons of Tramp 
— Lottery — Peculiar action of Lottery and Tomboy 
— The last of Lottery — The Catton tribe — Dr. Syntax 
and Reveller — Death of Dr. Syntax — Ralph — Scottish 
cracks — Sir John Maxwell and " Old Nelson" — 
Canteen and Sprinkell at Carlisle — Difficulties of the 
Hoddom Castle butler — Matilda — Purchase of Rowton — 
His race for the St. Leger — Yelocipede on the Turf — The 
Colonel — Charles Marson at Lord Exeter's— The Sultan 
stock — Beiram — Green Mantle and Varna — Galata ripping 



IV CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

item, up — Darling's best race — Camarine and Tatirus — 
The Duke of Bedford as a racing man — The Oakley meet — 
Envoy, and Magog the giant — The late Earl of Albemarle 
— Bad Beaufort luck — Muley and Muley Moloch — The 
grandsire of Touchstone — John Scott's first sight of Touch- 
stone — His mishaps and medicine— Mostyn-Mile martyrs — 
— Ascot Cup tremblings — Touchstone's peculiarities — His 
descendants — Jereed and Mundig — Mundig's Derby Day — - 
Hornsea, Scroggins, and Carew — Gladiator— Early days of 
Cyprian — Purchase of Epirus — His training in the metro- 
polis — The trial of Don John and Cardinal Puff—The Colo- 
nel and " the Admiral" — Horse whimg — A horse's know- 
ledge of sound— Purchase of Charles XII — Hetman Platoff 
— Industry and Ghuznee- — Launcelot — Satirist's St. Leger 
trial — -Attila's trial — Jacob's bet about Attila — Jacob on a 
totit hunt — King Cole — Marlow and old John Day — Sam 
Darling and Isaac — History of Isaac- — Weighting him for 
the Audley End — The old Scottish cracks — The late Lord 
Eglinton — Sir James Boswell — Myrrha and Philip— Gul- 
lane — Zohrab and Co. — Scottish coaching days — Inheritor 
and the Ramsay lot — Lanereost — Mr. James Parkin — La- 
nercostiana — Outwitting St. Martin — Labours of Lanereost 
— Winning the Cambridgeshire — His after-career — The 
love of Lanereost for a dog — Blue Bonnet — Cotherstone — 
Coiherstone's trial — Attempt to hocus liim — A visit to 
Althorp Paddocks — Cotherstone in retirement — His stock 
• — Orlando's maiden race — Young John Day's win on Wise- 
acre — Death of Franchise — " Eunning Rein" and St. Law- 
rence — The Baron — lago — The B. Green two-year-olds — 
Two-year-old trials — The purchase of Cossack — War Eagle 
— The Hero — Chanticleer — Canezou and Springy Jack — 
Maid of Masham — Ellerdale — Sale of Stockwell and West 
Australian — The late Lord Londesboro' — Yan Tromp — 
Marlow and The Dutchman — The Dutcliman's Derby race 
— Yatican — Sui-plice — Accidents to Surplice — The roaring 
Immour — Beginning of the Aske Stud — Death of Comfit — 
Yoitigeur — Pm-chase and trial of Yoltigeur — Bobby Hill's 
training notions — Yoltigeur at Epsom — Bobby's Lightfoot 
fancy — Yoltigeur's decline — Yedette — Waking up Sabreur 
— His trial at Richmond — Nunnykirk — Teddington - — His 
yearling form — His two-year-old trials wdth Aphrodite, &c. 
— His Derby trial — Derby anxieties — Kingston — Death of 
Kingston — The Cawston stnd — Pantaloon and Phryne — 
The Windhound rout — A visit to Cawston — The late Lord 
John Scott — Old Helen — Hobbie Noble — Cannobie — Poca- 
hontas — Early history of Stockwell — Birth of Rataplan — 
Rataplan's racing and training habits — King Tom — Long- 
bow — Miss Bowe — Daniel O'Rourke — Little Harry — Joe 
MiUer — Umbriel — West Australian — Isaac Walker's an- 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

nual appearance at Wliitewall — Frank's first introduction 
to " The West"— The West's Doncaster JubHee— Catherine 
Hayes — Goorkah's history — Butterfly — Boiardo — Knight 
of St. George — ^Virago — Lord of the Isles. — WHd Day- 
rell's history — Birth of Wild Dayrell — His change of hands 
— His training and trial — Ellington — Warlock — Imperieuse 
— Horse eccentricities— St. Giles — Queen Mary's blood — 
Blink Bonny — Her race for the Derby — Balrownie, Blooming 
Heather, and Bonnie Scotland — Beadsman — Antonio, Anton, 
and Actffion — Trumpeter — Musjid — His Derby trial — Un- 
derhand and the greyhounds — His Newcastle triumphs — 
St. Albans — Ashdown Park — Ride to the coursing ground 
— Notabilities of the field — Coursers' talk — The two blacks 
at work — Beating the plantations — Over the hill to Russley 
— A peep at Russley Park — Thormanby — Thormanby's 
early labours — Dundee — His break down — A peep at Ben- 
hams — Fisherman and Co. — Avalanche — Caller Ou — Trials 
and peculiarities — Her St. Leger race — The youth of Ket- 
tledrum — Training Kettledn.im — Col. Towneley's paddocks 
— An hoiir mth the Whitwell brood mares. . .115 



CHAPTER IV. 



m^f ^mtlh^ MIO P'L^r^— Old 
huntmg times — The first Master of the Royal Hounds — The 
Royal Staghounds — Reverence of the country people — The 
King out hunting — The original pack — The Goodwood 
kennels — George IV.'s hunting — Mr. Davis's best runs- 
Fun in the Vale of Aylesbury — The Marquis at bay — Visit 
to the Royal Kennels — Pictures and testimonials — The 
Hound kennel — Old Swinley revelries — The Deer_ Pad- 
docks — Deer diet — Paddock exercise — Carting the deer 
— Peculiarities of great stags — Harry — The great 
Leicestershire Staghunt — " The Marquis's" freaks — 
Baron Rothschild's deer — Sir Clifibrd's deer — Harvey 
Combe — The Baron's pack — Limits of the Vale — The 
Rothschild cracks — Grouse, King Pippin, and Harkover 
— Bill Bean the arch-trespasser of England — The perils 
of the drag — WUl White and his successor Kit — Bill 
Bean's horses — Persecution of the fa,rmers — The great in- 
dignation meeting — How Bill attended to the notices — His 
graceful manners with the Tax Commissioners — Jem Hills's 
steeple-chase— The start — The plot thickens — The last 
brook — First steeple-chase in Leicestershire — Captain 
Becher — The palmy days of St. Alban's — First St. 
Alban's steeple-chase — Tommy Coleman's volunteers — 
Moonraker — A fierce lawyer — " The Squire" as steward 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

— Grimaldi v. Moonraker — Grimaldi and Napoleon 
— Viviana — Vivian v. Coek Eobin — Fun in the 
Vale — Latter days and death of Grimaldi — Flacrow 
and the Leamington — Lottery's beginnings — Fun in the 
Midlands — Vivian v. Lottery — Beginning of the Liver- 
pool Grand National — Leicestershire to wit — Lottery's 
zenith and finish — Establishment of the Broeklesby Hunt 
steeple- chases — Broeklesby steeple- chases 1842-49 — Mr. 
Tilbury, the dealer — His class of horses — His coachman- 
ship — The two Frenchmen and the Three Pigeons — The 
Elmores — The Elmores as hunter dealers — John Elmore 
at home — John Ehnore's stories — Staghound diplomacy 
— Larking with Lottery. . . . .269 



CHAPTBE V. 

§11. MU H SIM.— Visit to Joe HewiU 
— Service under Mr. Frank Fawkes — Joe's staghunting in 
Norfolk — Fox-hunting in Norfolk — A new light on fox- 
huntincT — Fox-huntin*? lecture — Fox-huntitiCT 1790-1810 — 
The late Earl of Darlington — Squire Draper — The York- 
shire Wolds— The Wold Hunts— The Sykes hounds— The 
Badsworth — Engagement of Wild Danby — Waifs and Strays 
for Holdemess — Kennel building — Life in Holderness — 
Will Danby's sayings — Dreams of the chase — Holdemess 
foxes — Mr. Hodgson's Scurry Stakes at Beverley — Practical 
jokes in Holderness — The biter bit — Captain Percy Wil- 
liams — Mr. John Bower — Mr. Ealph Lambton — His liabits 
of life — Mr. Lambton on the flags — His hound feeding — Mr» 
Williamson's mastership — The late Sir Harry Main waring 
—Tom Ranee's history — The late Dick Gui-ney — Tom in 
Cheshire — Tom's table talk — Head, Miiiden, and Markwell 
— Foxes and their troubles — Tom's disasters — The Che- 
shire green collars — Old Zach Goddard — The snooze in the 
Park — Celebrities at Bicester — Sir Thomas Mostyn and the 
B.D.C. — Stephen Goodall — Stephen in kennel — Tom 
Moody — Griff Llo^^d — Giiff Lloyd's power of bearing fa- 
tigue — Jem Hills — View from the kennel — The Heythrop 
covers — New kennels near Chipping Norton — Heythrop 
foxes — Making up forty brace— Jem and the badgers — 
Glories of Cribb, the terrier — Jem's early days — Special 
day for the Duke of Beaufort — Blooding future Masters of 
Hounds — Scent symptoms — The South Warwickshire's 
triumph — Dislike to water — Cricket reminiscences — Clarke's 
sanctum — The kennel beauties of Badminton — Recol- 
lections of Will Long — The dawn of Leicestershire — 
The Quom country — Mr. Assheton Smith — Hunting field 



CONTENTS. Vll 



PAGE 

habits — Tlie Billesdon Brook leap — Training little Will 
Burton — Will's kennel education — Mr. CodringtOn's talking 
habit — " The Squire" in Lincolnshire — The Osbaldeston 
hound blood — "The Squire's" hound tastes — His scorn of fa- 
tigue — Meltoniana — General Grosvenor — Mr. John Moore — 
Lord Alvanley — Mr. Maher's " Old Tommy" — Mr. Maher 
outwitted — Sir Francis Burdett — Sir Harry Goodricke— 
Doing Tom Heycock — Old Snow — -Mr. Holyoake — Captain 
White — Putting up hunters at the Old Club — Harlequin- 
Mr. Maxse pounding a couple — Merry Lad — Captain White 
at Croxton and Heaton Park — The late Mr. Greene of 
EoUeston — Style of riding — The riding of his later years — 
His horses — His hunting journal — His great Thorpe TrusseUs 
run— Mr. Greene at home — His latter days — The last meet 
at Eolleston — His last hunt — His death — The sale day — 
Sir Eichard Sutton — Hound fancies — Early days of WiU 
Goodall— Will GoodaU at the Belvoir — Tom Sebright — 
Tom in Leicestershire — First day in the Milton country — 
Scenery about Milton — Tom on the flags — The kennel after 
liis death — Tom's hunting habits — Style of huntiiig — 
Describing a run — Tom at home — Tom's snuggery — First 
symptoms of illness — Tom at Middlesboro' and Yarm — The 
last party — His illness and death— His burial. , 325-426 



(g[M]/S^[PTl[^ I 






" Mr. Percival and Lord Sidmouth were Premiers, and that is all that is 
known of them ; but if they had been great racing men, there would have 
been hundreds of enthusiasts who would treasure up the minute descriptions 
in which a Turf writer would have collected all the traditionary stream of 
knowledge bearing on their physical and mental gifts, on their successes and 
failures, the way they carried their heads, and the way they turned out their 
feet." 



<( 



'll tell you what it is, my old a word at start- 
U friends'^ said a candidate, wlieii ^"^' 

he had been met at the station, and duly conducted 
to a dais at the end of his Committee Room ; " Pm 
not going to stand up here for a speech to-night, but 
Pit just come down and smoke a pipe with youJ" It 
was six to four on him at once, and the takers had 
the worst of it on the polling day. Such a homely 
solution of the starting difficulty might make the 
Jockey Club prick up its ears, and fill the author- 
world with the direst envy. It suits our own humour 
to a nicety. We want to settle down quickly into our 
stride, and tell from our note-book, as of yore, the 
post and paddock recollections of many an old English 
and Scottish worthy. Our appetite for moralizing 
is not sufficiently athletic to grapple with the mor- 
bid anatomy of The Turf, or to trace everj^ dark 
episode in its annals. We simply feel proud, that an 
institution, so fraught with temptation, and exposed 
to the ken of so many millions of ignorant or 
crusty critics from within and from without, should 



2 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

continue to furnisli ns with Premiers, and to show 
such wonderful fibre and endurance under the 
chronic onslaughts of that lop-sided morality, which 
almost denies the existence of an honest owner, 
trainer, or jockey. 

But second-hand homilies are not in 

Horse traditions. t -, ^ j'x.' x* 

vogue, and nearly every tradition tor 
good or evil has been already moulded into shape. 
We may have to take the Venerable Bede on trust, 
when hs tells us that in 631 the " English first began 
to saddle horses/^ but the same genius of stable 
gossip which was at hand to note for posterity how 
Lord Falkland's son bartered away his father's 
library for a horse and a mare, has stayed the two 
centuries well. A rich harvest of facts, down to 
PAnson's last Leger orders to Challoner, never to 
raise his hands from Caller Ou's withers, has been 
gathered in by its ageucy, but there is still much 
work for the gleaner. And if our version of some 
events differs in a measure from that which was 
given of them at the time, it may be that we have 
traced them more thoroughly to the fountain head, 
when all motive on the part of the actors for gloss 
ov concealment had long passed away. 

Old sporting " ^Tis scvcnty years ago" is a phrase 
writers. ^f cdgc uot to bc matchcd now, and we 
may well not care to go back further. We can still 
reach by the light of living memory (the only book 
we have cared much to consult),- that great historic 
age of " Genius Genuine,'^ the Prince Regent, and 
John Bull. Of thousands of good sportsmen, who 
rode the hill towards Black Hambleton, on the 
King's Plate day, to see the judges place 16 out of 
31 for posterity behind the Belvoir " Bonny Black/^ 
or decide the delicate question between five Marys, we 
must fain be content with the simple record that they 
were born and died. No newspaper had then made 
sporting its specialty, and the Old Sporting Maga^ 



TURF WORTHIES. 

zine only began in 1792 to '^ woo the votaries 
of Dian and the frequenters of Newmarket/^ with 
intelh'gence and '^ lyric compositions of the sylvan, 
rustic^ and Anacreontic kind/^ The field of Turf 
literature had lain comparatively fallow, and when the 
writers did begin to work it again, they stuck too much 
to one kind of cropping. They were careless of the 
fame of great horses, or considered them to be suffi- 
ciently provided for in the Racing Calendar, which 
extended its earliest favours to Jamaica as well as 
Great Britain; and embalmed the Royal Rules of 
Cockfighting as solemnly as the pedigree of Coughing 
Peggy, or Skipjack from Old Mother Neesome. Men 
who had completed a zealous novitiate of folly or 
eccentricity, and risen to the dignity of a character ; 
the careless cassock, fonder, of brewing an October 
posset than writing a fifteen-minutes sermon, and 
yet ready, like his ancestors, to melt his last tankard 
for Church and King; and the wealthy Corinthian 
who had run the gauntlet of the coflPee-houses before 
he was three-and-twenty, were the subjects they de- 
lighted to honour. 

The Prince Regent was their Mcecenas, Eccentric turf 
and Sir Harry Vane their Suwarrow of characters. 
the turf. Lord Barrymore, who was known as 
Cripplegate,^^ while another brother became 
Newgate," and a third owned to a still warmer and 
more expressive title, was a most fruitful study with 
them. Inspired by the account of the countryman, 
who consumed a pound of salt, a cabbage, and a 
cabbage-net at a sitting, his Lordship Lord Barrymore's 
made a bet that he would produce a man ^®^®' 
who was equal to eating a live cat ; and he won by 
a few yards at Brighton, when he challenged the 
Duke of York to try who could wade farthest into 
the sea. Well might his Boswell exclaim, on hear- 
ing of his early death, " Could the emotions of grief 
restore his vital heat, my lamentations should fatigue 

B 2 






4 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Echo." Earl Orford's eccentricities, wrote another, 
^^ are too firmly indented upon the tablet of the 
memory, ever to be obliterated from the diversified 
rays of retrospection," and then feeling refreshed by 
this prelude, he proceeds, with his usual kindness, 
to give them in detail. Major Topham earned a 
mention both for the drama^s and SnowbalFs sake. 
Sir John Lade (who " stood in" with '' Leader, the 
great coach builder of Liquor Pond Street,") was 
a fund in himself for them, whether he was 
driving his phaeton and four across the ice of the 
Thames, or riding his mule for a thousand pound 
match over the Ditch In ; and they loved to tell 
how O^ Kelly would fumble among a quire of bank- 
notes just to set the caster, when he had got every 
floating guinea in the bank. 

Sonneteers and satirists all laid vio- 
lent hands on Old Q, who still stuck to 
his Piccadilly bow window, his green vis a vis with 
black horses and long tails, his Richmond beauties, his 
mufP, and defied them. His body physician had only to 
look in the Morning Post occasionally to be reminded 
that he had strictly a life-interest in his patient, and 
that his prescriptions of a warm milk bath scented 
with almond powder, and a veal cutlet at 3 a.m., 
might as well have been posted at Charing Cross. 
Colonel Thorn- Coloucl Thomtou^s thiTst for uotoricty 
ton. was also slaked to the full. If he sat 

down next to Oliver Goldsmith at the Sgavoir Vivre 
Club, or jumped a five-foot-seven gate, or ran down 
a hare on horseback, or coursed a bustard, or shot 
a dotteril, or unhooded Sans Quartier amid the 
elastic wold breezes round Falconer's Hall, the feat 
never lacked a chronicler. His greyhound Major, 
his beagle Merryman, and his terrier Pitch were all 
accepted types of their order; and Juno, whose fame 
caused Lord Grantley to pay h?lf-forfeit in a match 
of thousands, was the queen of the twenty brace of 



TURF WORTHIES. 5 

setters and thirty-five pointers, which composed his 
'^ partridge preparations/^ 

Lord Orford^s kennel was worsted by The swaffham 
the Snowball blood over the Wharram ^^"^• 
Wolds, but the plains of Swaffham had no mightier 
champion. It was at his bidding, that the club was 
limited to the number of letters in the alphabet, and 
each member selected a colour. If The Heath 
knew well the orange and black cap of the dashing 
match-maker Grosvenor, the green and white stripes 
of Foley and Fox, and the mazarine blue of Standish, 
coursing men watched with equal zest in Norfolk, 
whether brimstone, quaker, or pompadour would be 
the steward^s cockade for the week. 

While the turf and the leash thus cricketing and 
held their alternate six months^ sway, -Archery. 
the Marchioness of Salisbury was tasting the 
delights of the chase and the quiver. A golden 
bugle-horn was sometimes the Hatfield prize, and it 
sounded the reveille for many a county muster of 
the Woodmen of Arden, the Bowmen of Cheviot 
Chase, and the Hainault Foresters in their green 
and buff. While the Essex archers were keeping 
summer trysts at Fairlop Oak, the Men of Kent 
knew well how to handle the willow. Earls Win- 
chilsea, Darnley, and two more dashing spirits 
thought nothing of pitting county elevens against 
each other at Lord''s for a thousand guineas ; and in 
1792, fourteen matches were played for that sum, 
and six for half of it. The cricketing picture of 
the period is strange to look upon. The players are 
attired in round hats, knee-breeches, and pig-tails ; 
the umpires are all frill, and two scorers sit con- 
tentedly with slates on a form. 

Goodwood subsequently achieved The dawn of 
renown, as the spot where Lillywhite Goodwood. 
and James Broadbridge first took the hint for their 
round bowling from Lambert. In 1801 its racing 



6 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

was of a very lowly kind. One writer^ in fact_, seems 
to have carried away nothing more than an indefi- 
nite idea of " five or six roving tents, and plenty of 
ice and pickpockets.^^ Ascot basked earlier in the 
smiles of royalty ; its sports were regularly opened 
by beat of drum, and its cords bounded South by 
E O tables, some fifty strong, and North by four- 
in hands. Never were the pigeons more heavily 
and more openly winged, and one E Oite, plain- 
tively referring to his rich dividends of the previous 
year, seemed almost to consider that in a bad sum- 
mer he was entitled to compensation from the Crown 
on its native heather, for " the poverty of one, the 
death of a second, and the compulsive abdication of 
a third.^^ 
The driviug Thc ncw driving era was just be- 
era. ginning to dawn in ''93, and the pro- 
cession of a score of freshly-painted mail-coaches 
up St. James-street from the Bull and Mouth and 
The Swan with Two Necks, &c., after the birthday 
drawing-room, on June 4th, with their drivers and 
guards in new scarlets, and the horses in parti- 
coloured streamers, was becoming one of the 
most popular sights of the season. The Driving 
and the Whip Clubs were not then in being. The 
landlord of the Black Dog, at Bedfont had no visions 
for himself or his successors, of eleven teams of bays 
at his door, with Mr. Villebois, Mr. John Warde, and 
Sir Thomas Mostyn on the box.' The Buxton bit, 
and the Hawke head territ still slumbered- in the 
brains of their inventors, and the wildest dreams of 
the future ^^Baron Stultz,^^ — who gained Beau Brum- 
melPs love by putting a £100 -note into each of 
his dress- coat pockets, and destroyed ^Schweizer^s 
and Dawson^s monopoly by the two hussar-jackets 
which he begged to make as a favour for " The 
Seventh,^^ in Lord Anglesey's time, — did not as yet 
compass that double-breasted drab driving coat, with 



TURF WORTHIES. 7 

three tiers of pockets^ and Spanish five-dollar pieces 
for buttons_, in which Sir Godfrey Webster found no 
followers. Sir Henry Peyton had not brought four 
greys^ or Squire A^nnesley four strawberry roans with 
'^ Harlequin^^ as off-leader into fashion ; and a really 
crack team seldom showed at Ascot^ except each 
horse was of a different colour. 

Nothing pleased '^ Farmer George^^ Ascot quaim- 
so much as to find that there was a good ^^^'^^ tickets. 
entry for his four-mile Hunter Plate. His Majesty 
on his white horse^ which did duty long before Hob 
was foaled^ never missed the Windsor Forest Meet, on 
Holyrood Day (September 26th) : and until the me- 
lancholy twilight of his powers stole on, he cared 
quite as much to calculate how many of the horses 
were about to try for their ten qualification tickets, 
as to look at his hounds and men. Owners or 
grooms might ride them, but it was a sine qua non 
that the Royal Huntsman should see them, both at 
the uncarting and the take of the deer. It made no 
matter how forward they might be during the run, 
if both those cardinal rules were not complied with. 
If three horses succeeded in winning their tickets at 
the end of a severe chase, it was thought to be a good 
day^s work ; but in an ordinary run, very few failed, 
and Mr. Davis has granted one, as an especial 
honour, to a lad on a pony. 

The early history of the Ascot of the Doncaster Moor 
North has been told so often, that there *o^^*' 
is no need for us to go back to the £5 5s., which was 
voted by its corporate body in 1681, for five years, to 
encourage the sport on their Town Moor. The 
return list began in 1728; and the meetings were 
held in July, and after shifting all over the summer 
months, they finally settled down into September, 
about 1750. Eight-and-twenty years after, the 
uncle of " Handsome Jack St. Leger'^ gave his name 
to the race, and so the ball has been kept rolling to 



8 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the present day. In 1794 tlie light skirmishes be- 
tween the mayor and the gamblers began^ but His 
Worship won, and like another Lord Elgin, at Pekin, 
burnt the E O tables in front of the Mansion House. 
Less martial mayors succeeded, and in 1825 another 
civic sally had to be made, or the very mace and 
meat-jack would have been in danger. The skulk- 
ing which that defeat entailed upon the E Oites ex- 
asperated them to such an extent, that they joined 
forces with the thimble-riggers, and on Monday, 
September 14, 1829, was fought that sixteenth " de- 
cisive battle of the world,^^ on Doncaster Moor, be- 
tween the " Confederates,^^ with legs of tables on 
the one side, and His Worship, with mounted con- 
stabulary, militia, yeomanry, volunteers, and Si posse 
comitatus on the other, which eventuated in a series 
of exciting chases and prodigies of private valour, 
whose recital still furnishes many of the older in- 
habitants with an annually lengthening story over 
their wine and walnuts. 

The Bibury Club was also in great force each 
June, with Lord Sackville, the Hon. George Ger- 
maine, Delme Kadcliflfe, Eerdinando Bullock, and 
'' Splitpost Douglas^' (an undying name conferred 
on him by the Prince Regent himself) at the 
head of its silks. It was there, too, that 
John Scott, when quite a little Oxford lad, 
had his first glimpse of Sir Tatton in the saddle. 
The Prince Re- Thc Priucc Rcgcnt' scldom failed to 

gent at Bibury. ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ p^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ 

Christ Church without calling upon his old tutor. 
Dr. Cyril Jackson. On one occasion he presented 
himself in his full Club uniform of green coat, buck- 
skins, and top-boots. The Dean was as cordial as ever, 
but he felt, that in those cloistered precincts, dis- 

Dr rii Jack ^^P^^^^ must bc maintained even with 
son on Bibury Thc Hcir Apparent. His stately hint at 
and Hunting, parting was ou this wke:—'' Noiv re- 



TURF WORTHIES. 9 

member Vm always glad to see you, except when 
you're dressed for Bibury, and then I donH know that 
Your Royal Highness exists .'' Racing was a different 
matter, but the Dean did not in his heart object to 
hunting, and rather held the belief that a few fast 
men were not without their use to the hard readers 
in a large college, by giving them something to talk 
about. In fact, with rare and beautiful candour, he 
went so far as to say, to Lord Foley at the begin- 
ning of an October term ; " Well, you've come back 
amongst us, my Lord ; I suppose yon've brought your 
red rag with youP Hence under his dynasty, and 
before the Duke of Bedford^s political " crops^^ be- 
came legion, or the Duke of Rutland^s raven wig 
was voted the best scratch in New Bond-street, those 
who wanted a gallop with Lord Sefton could do 
the thing correctly, and have their pigtails powdered 
for the field, after morning chapel, in peace. 

Dean Milner, the President of Queen^s, had also 
rather scandalized the Cambridge dons at this period, 
by the report that he had, on crossing over in the 
packet boat from Hull to Barton, been observed by 
curious eyes to make his way towards ^ ,,., , 

u u DeaJi Milner s 

Mendoza, and enter, with his wonted interview with 
energy, into a long conversation on box- 
ing with him. However, he would brook no admoni- 
tion on the point, and curtly replied to his ques- 
tionists : ^^ Ah ! I knew he was at the head oj his 
profession, and I wanted to get something out of him J^ 
Mendoza^s conqueror, Humphreys, had (as Tom 
Cribb did afterwards) retired into the coal line, near 
the Temple, and Mendoza after joining a party of 
'' The Fancy" at the Lyceum, had accepted office 
as a sutler in the Notts Militia. The regiment was 
then (1798) encamped on Dorlington Heights, 
and '^ Jack Musters, " who was considered, when 
blue coats and leathers came in, to divide with 
Brummell the honour of being the best dressed man 



10 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

on town, was helping, as ensign, to keep the coast 
from Bridlington to Spurn Point. 

"When the Dean and the Professor 
^an/hiT sheep held their discussion, Sir Tatton Sj^kes 
tastes. ^g^g ^ young banker in Hull, and em- 

ploying his intervals of business between the camp 
and his Leicesters. Seven years before. Barton 
Ferry had been a memorable spot to him in con- 
nection with his first purchase of ewes. He had 
been smitten at twenty-oue with a desire to have 
some pure Bakewells from the late Mr. Sanday's 
flock; and after selecting half-a-score at 20 gs. a- 
piece, he met them afterwards at Lincoln, where they 
arrived from Holmpierrepont by wagon, and drove 
them home in person, a three days^ journey, to Barton. 
He soon became a ram-letter, and last September was 
the fifty-eighth anniversary of his show ; and until he 
was upwards of eighty, he never missed his annual 
June ride into the Midlands, to Burgesses, Buckley^ s, 
and Stone's. This love of Leicesters has always 
fought hard for supremacy with thoroughbreds at 
Sledmere. It peeped out in the naming of the bay 
colt, '^ Holmpierrepont,^^ on which Sim Templeman 
in his seven-stone days was beaten in a canter, at 
York, by the dam of Charles XII. ; and a somewhat 
expensive complication arose because of it at Cat- 
, terick. Mr. Baker, of Elemore, in his 

A little difficulty , . , i • ^ /• j i n tt 

■with Mr. Baker chagriu at Dcmg deieated lor a Hun- 
of Elemore. ^^^^, St^l^e, coustrued Sir Tatton's gal- 
lant wave of his whip to the ladies on The Stand, 
into an expression of triumph over himself, and 
accordingly made matters so hot for him at Mr. 
Kobert Collings^s sheep sale, that he had to pay 156 
gs. for the shearling Ajax. 
His early days '^^^ forty milcs behind his ewes from 
in London. Liucoln was as nothing in Sir Tatton's 
eyes, as he had walked from London to Epsom and 
back to see Eager^s Derby in ^91, starting at four 



TURF WORTHIES. 11 

on that June Thursday, and landing back at Lamb's 
Conduit-street about eleven at night. Next year he 
rode down to see Buckle win it on John Bull_, and 
he has never been at Epsom since. He had first 
looked on London as a Westminster boy, with his bro- 
thers Mark and Christopher ; and it was a cherished 
recollection with the three, that after often linger- 
ing for that purpose at their tailor's, in Bolt-court, 
they once caught a glimpse of Dr. Johnson, as he 
handed a visitor to her carriage. In° Sir Tatton's 
case, a probation with Messrs. Farrar and Atkinson, 
the solicitors of Lincoln's Inn Fields, followed 
hard upon Westminster and Brasenose. Edwin as 
Jemmy Jumps, Banelagh, or the rope dancing at 
Sadler's Wells, where a pint of punch, " and very 
good punch too," was dispensed to every box visitor, 
after the third act, might be the evening's amuse- 
ment, but the young clerk had no easy time of it by 
day. When he was not indirectly fostering hisfuture 
Holmpierrepont tastes among the sheep- skins in the 
office, he was dutifully bearing the green bag after Mr. 
Farrar to Westminster Hall, or to con- his probation in 
sultations at chambers, in one of which Lincoln's inn. 
Erskine and the two Scotts were engaged. Hol- 
royd was then great as a special pleader, Kenyon and 
Buller were on the Bench, and Thurlow's tenure of 
the Great Seal was rapidly waning to its close. 

Hullock and Bayley were still hard working stuffs, 
but Sir Tatton met them both in their ermine, when 
it became his turn to put four bays into " the 
Chameleon carriage,'^ at York Assizes. That won- 
derful county conveyance was popularly supposed to 
have heard some of " The Squire's" best hunting 
stories, as he conveyed his learned charges and his 
chaplain to and from the Castle, and to have been 
the scene of that inward resolve to challenge Clinker 
four miles over Leicestershire with Clasher, which 
he reduced into his own queer manuscript before he 



12 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

had been ten minutes in court. It is also in the 
Humours of the ^ecollection of some of its annual mas- 
Yorkshire shriev- teYs, how at the magistrates^ dinner. 
Baron Hullock invariably proved him- 
self fonder of two bottles than one, and quizzed " my 
Brother Bayley," whenever he lighted by mistake on 
his special bottle of toast-and-water; and how strict 
the latter was with Sir Tatton and every other High 
Sheriff about conducting him home to his lodgings 
after a late sitting, lest, as he was wont to phrase it, 
" there should be an assassin behind the door/^ 
While these stories were current of the Puisnes, 
Lord Thurlow earned no mean fame in the eyes of 
Sir Tattou and the Holderness men by his conduct 
in the little affair of Spaxton Vicarage. The Chan- 
A word with cellor had sworn up to his usual mark. 
Lord Thurlow. ^}ien a youug clergyman (Mr. Jaques) 
encountered him on the sands at Scarborough, and 
asked him, without the smallest introduction and with 
a very slight preface, for the then vacant living. 
" But I won't go about my business/' rejoined the 
intrepid divine, " a7id what's more, it now be- 
comes my duty, as a clergyman, to reprove you 
for swearing." The man of the awful eyebrows was 
fairly brought to his bearings, at last. ^' Will you, 
indeed?" he began; but ^^ hang it, I see you're a 

good fellow — you shall have it," was the rest 

of the sentence, and the Chancellor shook hands over 
it and kept his word. 

Sir Tatton'srace- ^^^^ WO mUSt glaUCC off from thcse 

riding. woolsack rccoUections to the saddle, and 
the '' orange body, blue sleeves, and cap" of Sledmere, 
in which the then Mr. Tatton Svkes won his maiden 
race, on his brother^s Sir Pertinax, at Beverley. 
" Bob Lascelles," of Thirsk, was second, and Sir 
Henry Boynton, Mr. Burton, and, '^ Hamlet Thomp- 
son^s^^ father were in the ruck. Sir Tatton had on 
that occasion to ride ] 3st., but eleven was his regu- 



TXJaF WORTHIES. 13 

lar racing weighty and he scaled ten-and-a-half over 
Morpeth, at a pinch. No one ever loved a mount bet- 
ter, and he rode till he was above sixty for any one 
who asked him, without a thought about fatigue or 
distance. On one occasion, after riding 63 miles 
from Sledmere that morning he was second to Mr. 
Lindow (half-brother to Mr. Rawlinson, the owner 
of Coronation), in the four-mile Macaroni Stakes, 
at Pontefract, slept at Doncaster that night, and was 
beaten in another four-mile heat race against " Split- 
post Douglas,^^ at Lincoln next day. Twice over he 
journeyed from Sledmere to Aberdeen, with his 
racing jacket under his waistcoat, and a clean shirt 
and a razor in his pocket, for the sake of a mount 
on the Marquis of Huntley^s Kutusoff, and Sir 
David Moncrieff^s Harlequin, when the Welter Stakes 
was the greatest race in Scotland ; and without 
stopping to dine went back to sleep at Breeching 
that night, and reached Doncaster after a six days' 
ride, just in time to see Blacklock beat for the St. 
Leger. KutusoflP, whom he thought to be decidedly 
the best he was ever on, did not win that bout, but 
the victory in " the white and black cap*^ of Sir 
David, in ^22, squared up his Scottish luck. The 
360 miles were done, principally in the forenoon, on 
a little blood mare, and with the exception of a 
slight stiffness she seemed no worse. 

Caller Ou's St. Leger was the seventy- visits to Doncas- 
sixth Sir Tatton had seen, with only one ^^^' 
break, from illness, in Charles Xllth's and Euclid's 
year; and he lodged for forty years with a cow-keeper 
in Sheffield Lane, who offered him a bed by accident, 
when he arrived late one night, and not another roost- 
ing place was to be had in the town. Since Tom 
Carter's death in 1854, he has ceased to ride to Don- 
caster ; but when Tom was at his side, they used to 
meet at Pocklington, and come through between 
four and four, and sleep at Booth Ferry on the Cup 



14 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

His rides to evening. The first of his rides to Lon- 

London. {[qj^ ^as in 1805, when he sat for his 
portrait to Sir Thomas Lawrence in the scarlet coat, 
and black silk breeches, &c._, which formed the 
evening costume of the Castle Howard Hunt. Sir 
Mark and Lady Sykes, who are also in the group, 
returned from the easel to the North with him. It 
was Christmas week, and his little blood mare re- 
quired sharping twice a-day, but after spending two 
evenings with the carriage party at Eaton and New- 
ark, her rider supped with them at York on the 
third. The ride three- and-forty years after, to Mr. 
Grant^s studio was accomplished quite easily in June, 
partly on the black horse (by Colwick, from Lord 
Chesterfield^s grey mare, Mad Moll), which with its 
rider numbered 108 years, when* Sir Tatton was last 
on him at the cover side, and partly on the chesnut 
Bevenge, by Recovery ; and a peep at Buckley^ s and 
Eurgess's beguiled the way. 

Death and time combined had wrought a mighty 
change among the familiar faces of " Sportsman^s 
HalF^ between those two visits. Colonel Mellish, who 
commanded the Princess crack ^' German troop ,^^ in 
The old race of the Tenth, and Avhom a few can still re- 

Turfites. rQcmber raising his white hat ironically 
to his friends in the Grand Stand, as he sat behind 
his four browns, and saying, '' If Sancho's beat, I 
hope some of you will take me for a coachman/' had 
died in his prime. Martin Hawke, of whom it was 
told that he always clove the air with his hand, 
whenever he saw a magpie, had failed to avert the 
omen. Within a year of each other. Sir Charles Turner, 
who swore by King Fergus, Sir Hedworth William- 
son, who twice had good reason to bless his " saucj^ 
Arethusa^^ when the Derby was over, Mr. Went- 
worth, whose Chance found few save Haphazard to 
beat him, and Mr. Gascoigne, the great liegeman of 
the Delpini blood, had been laid under the turf of 



TURF WORTHIES. 15 

their hearts_, and scarcely a jockey save Sammy King 
was livings who had begun the century at York or 
Epsom. 

Up to that very visit the Jockey Chib The old Derby 
authorities had been faithful in practice^ course. 
as John Scott and nearlv all the elder trainers and 
jockeys are in heart to the Old Derby Course, with 
its nice gentle rise of three-quarters of a mile, which 
*^^ nearly settled the thing before Tattenham Corner ;'' 
and it is somewhat remarkable that Sim Templeman 
should have won the last Derby and Oaks on Cos- 
sack and Miami over it, and opened the new era 
with another double benefit on Surplice and 
Cymba. 

Betting had been as tardy in its _ , , ^^. 

^ . ^ :\ ' ^^^^y betting. 

growth as the American aloe, dunug 
the first few years of this eventful interval. Owners 
were ready enough to put down money for a match, 
but did not care to speculate deeply about other 
people^s horses. Much of that spirit still lingered 
which had made Lord Grosvenor oflPer to match any 
three out of his stable against the same number of the 
Duke of Bedford^s for ten thousand; but till book- 
making gradually became a profession, getting the 
odds laid was always a matter of difficulty, and it 
was told as quite a marvellous thing, that Sir John 
Shelley should win nine thousand guineas on Plian- 
tom^s Derby in 1811. Another kind of ring had risen 
so high in ^17, when Molyneux was open to '^ fight 
any man born of woman bar Tom Cribb,^^ that the 
first wits of the day flocked round Incledon at Tom^s 
anniversary Tavern dinner near St. James's Square, 
to hear Edmund Kean return thanks for the drama 
and take a second in " AlVs IVellJ" It was in this 
year, that the two greatest certainties The certainties 
in the North and South came to naught. ^^ '^^• 
The first favourite Student was beaten to a stand- 
still at Epsom by his own ^^ valet'^ Azor, and, like 



16 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

him^ tlie mighty Blacklock was also snapped by the 
very last horse in the betting at Doncaster. Still, 
despite these turns for the fielders, the betting was at 
least forty per cent, below that of the two preceding 
seasons. Chester seems to have been the one bright 
exception. Such was the crush and excitement 
during the heats, that " two ladies fainted and two 
gentlemen betted over them, two course-clearers 
were knocked down, and nobody picked them up.^^ 

This difficulty about course-clearing 
the course ^at effected an important alteration at Ep- 
Epsom. gQ^^ jj^ ^l^g Prince Regent's day, it was 

the custom for the royal party to leave the Grand 
Stand, and lunch with Mr. Ladbroke the banker at 
Hedley, as soon as the Derby was over. The trainers 
and spectators whiled away this interval between 
two and four, by dining in the town or the tents ; 
and hence the running for the plates was conducted, 
like those memorable evening sittings at the Old 
Bailey, in a very vinous mist. There was not much 
value received by the authorities after dinner from 
the Surrey labourers, who got eighteen-pence per 
diem to "make a waie for the horse-race;'" and re- 
gard for human life called loudly for reform. The 
crowd broke in when Gustavus and Reginald 
" worked together from end to end in the Derby, as 
if it was run a match.^" Buckle's horse stared about 
him as Russborough did in a similar dilemma, and 
the old man's nerve rather went ; while Sam Day, 
who kept close at his girths, thus graphically de- 
scribes their journey from Tattenham Corner, " TVe 
wound in and out, for xill the world like a dog at a 
fair. " 

If Sam's shabby little grey, which was purchased 

for a pony at Hampton Court, was not 

''^tavur and Au- worthyof liis stccrsmau, Robinson proved 

gusta. ^Q ^i^g world next day, that Augusta was 

one of the soundest and best mares that ever 



TURF WORTHIES. 17 

dared to make all her own running and win the Oaks. 
There was no little disappointment that autumn^ 
when the terms of a match could not be arranged 
between her and Jack Spigot^ on whom Bill Scott 
had just verified that favourite axiom, which came 
booming out to the end of his days, whenever turf- 
scale rogueries were mooted : ^^ Only give me a good 
horse, and quicksilver be hanged.^' If Augusta did not 
measure conclusions with the St. Leger winner, she 
defeated Emilius (of whom Robson, whose word was 
law, declared that there " had been no such horse 
since the days of John BulF^) three years after, in 
nearly as heavy a match as that between " the hen- 
speckled Sultan^^ and Banker ; but neither she nor 
Jack were in the great A.F. race, that First October, 
for the Grand Duke Michael Cup. Its Boyal donor 
stayed with the Duke of Rutland at the Palace 
during the races, and saw Sam Day win it for Lord 
Grosvenor on Michaelmas, with four others not 
beaten a length. 

The afternoon parade on Easter Sun- The wanen hui 
day was looked forward to year after parade. 
year at Newmarket, as the great Warren Hill pre- 
lude to the first Craven meeting of the morrow, 
and " half Cambridge came over.^' Trainers who 
never took kindly to the Robsonian system of hav- 
ing their horses out at four, morning and afternoon, 
for six months of the year, relaxed their code for 
that day; and vied with each other in their new 
lad-liveries. The Jersey and Shelley lot of Tiny 
Edwards, than whom none knew better when to slip 
it into them, and when to let well alone, was dis- 
tinguished as the ^^ brown, and white metal buttons.^' 
The Duke of York^s, under the command of Frank 
and Will Butler's father, formed " the drab divi- 
sion ;'' blue with red waistcoats marked the approach 
of Lord Foley's ; drab with red and white stripes 
(borrowed from Tom Panton The Squire of New- 

c 



18 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

marketj for whom Jim Robinson's father trained) 
of the Brothers Chifney, with the jaunty and wide- 
awake Will at their side; while the Heath in- 
separables^ Lord Henry Fitzroy and 'flobson_, headed 
the long Indian file of the Grafton grey-coats and 
leather-breeches. As time went on_, those two 
clerically-dressed figures were seen no more, and 
Bob Stephenson was in command for the Duke as 
well as Lord Esfremont. Bovce was there on behalf 
of his good master from Belvoir_, John Howe repre- 
sented the Sowerby interest_, and Cotton that of 
Lord Yerulam ; while Cooper was on duty for 
" Payne and Greville/^ and sturdy little Pettic for 
Mr. Stonehewer, whose love of neatness extended to 
having his boot- soles blacked. Nearly all of that 
trainer baud have passed away, and so has the King's 
Chair Pond, with the odd practice to which it gave 
rise, of taking the horses to the troughs to drink, and 
giving them a final canter " to warm the water.'' 
The Nomination Thc samc aftcmoon produced nearly 
night at York, ^s gTcat a "Yorkshirc parade at Ham- 
bleton ; but the spirit of racing never glowed 
more brightly at " Old Ebor," than on the evening 
of each New Year's Day. The trainers held their 
nomination dinner, over which John Scott for many 
years presided, at Sylvester Reed's of the Old Sand 
Hill Tavern ; and all that varied turf artillery of 
talent which had been laid up in ordinary since 
Richmond, Avas brought into action by night-fall at 
The Star in Stonegate. Lord Kennedy, Mr. Rhodes 
Milnes, Mr. Milbanke, and Sir William Max- 
well could • have hardly been happy away ; and 
the Earl of Darlington never failed to drop in and 
do a smart stroke of business on the St. Leger. 
When that great problem of the Northern year was 
about to be solved, the scene was chane^ed to the 

The Leger eve at frout, aud tllC loug TOOm of Thc Saluta- 

the Salutation, tiou. Those whcf wcTC thcrc to mark 



TURF WORTHIES. 19 

the feverish anxiety of tlie crowd as the loyal phalanx 
of '^ Croft's men" bore up for their stable against 
the dashing assaults of Mr. Gully in his kerseymeres 
and top-boots — with Crockford and his curious half- 
grammar, the terrible Justice, and the reckless 
E/idsdale, to aid him — could never forget it more. 

Kirby was waiting for an innings, and, as often as 
not, scoring badly when he got one; Tommy Swann 
(who detested betting with a captain who had a 
patch on his boot, as much as booking the odds on a 
Sunday), and Michael Brunton were doing a safe little 
game on the quiet, and Crutch Robinson would lean 
against the outer wall or make his Crutch Robin- 
way to the horse-block, and sit there son's sayings 
full of his gammon, and yet watch- 
ing the market with the eye of a glede hawk. 
He made it* his rule of life to ^^lay agin the 
Manchester pick. " It might be that it was his 
peculiar mode of upholding the rival dignity of Staley 
Bridge, but he never swerved from it. To hot 
favourites he had a deathless dislike, and as he 
maintained that it was the specialty of the Man- 
chester mind not only to back them, but to run 
after them, when they came on to the course, he 
foimd himself perpetually ministering to its enthu- 
siasm, by laying the odds. '^ 1 may just as weel have 
thee five pun as anybody else,^^ was the phrase in which 
he graciously signified his intentions of operating. 

If any one said that a horse was dead amiss, or fit to 
run for a man^s life, he never believed it ; and he was 
equally sceptical about their doing such great things 
in private. '^ Nar, nar ! thou knawest a great deal 
aboot it, I dar say,'' was his stereotyped reply, when 
he heard of those marvellous trials, which are so rife 
before the Derby; and then came his inevitable 
proposal, ^' Fit bet thee five pun ; I may as 
weel have my expenses, ^c/' This antipathy to 
favourites was so rooted, that if anything was backed 

c 2 



20 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

against tlie field for a large stake, he would invari- 
ably stand the latter for five hundred. He seldom 
drank anything himself, but when he was fairly 
ensconced of an evening in the Black Bear at New- 
market, he was far from happy, if Joe Rogers, who 
was always staunch to his friends and Spaniel, Sam 
Darling, and a few more of them, did not look in to 
'*^pull up the score/^ His jockeys v/ere not much 
troubled with orrlers from him beyond, ^' Ride as 
thoo likest, only mind and win'^ Of all his race- 
horses he loved best to discourse of Stockport, and 
he ought to have known his form to an ounce, as he 
never wearied of trying him on Delamere Forest. 
His Liverpool was also a favoured theme, but when 
he boasted about selling him for seventeen hundred, 
he always wound up the recital with some dark 
grievance of " thirteen pun for the togs'' 

Any one who conversed with Michael 

Michael Brunton. -r-, . i , i i i 

Brunton about horses, was sure to near 
of Atalanta. ^' Bless you,'^ he was wont to say, 
when they pressed him with modern cracks, '^ Old 
Atalanta would have snuffed them up her nose.'' 
Physician was always his delight, more especially for 
his delicate step, which " wouldn^t crush an ^^^." 
His betting creed was concise, and based mainly on 
the principle, that ^' none are so good to bet with as 
trainers ; if there are twenty of them in a race 
theyVe all got a good horse.^^ He never took less 
than 3 to 1, or laid mere than 5 to 2^ and if he 
lost, he watched night and day for his man till he 
paid him. No one lost with better grace, and 
'' Bubbled again I" was his only ebullition. 

The trainers in drab-breeches and 

The old school of ., /.,i -i i-^i- 

Yorkshire train- gaiters 01 the pcrioQ WCTC strictly lU 
ers-Thuytes. j^ggpi^^g ^i^h thosc old-fashioucd odd- 

dealers. Thuytes of Middleham was quite a char- 
acter among them, and hailed for a time from 
Tupgili. It was there that he first enunciated 



TURF WORTHIES. 21 

to a friend his great theory of Perpetual Mo- 
tion. ^' By the Godlins^ I can find out how to 
save a horse^s legs, and mak hira run for ever : — 
tak a feed of corn off a day/^ He was one of 
the first Northern trainers who adopted long 
tails^ and he did it on the ground that " horses 
came into the world with them^ and His views on tails 
didn't want besom stumps. '' He thought ^""^ training. 
a good deal on this subject, and highly approved of 
the old horse-dealer, who, to all seeming, seldom 
cared to do more than pass his hand down to the 
dock. If it was a strong one, he took the back- 
bone for granted, ^^only a continuation of it, — 
Maister.'^ 

Mark Plows was a mixture of a black- 

•j.T_ J i? 1 ■£• xi Mark Plews. 

smith and a farmer, and it there was a 
Richmond horse in the St. Leger, he invariably stood 
it. When Vingt'-un from Belle Isle was all the rage, 
Mark and his wife got on without telling each other, 
one to win j825 for himself, and the other j64 in 
partnership with Mrs. Pierse. These daring ventures 
got bruited about, and hence when the town express, 
which was managed on state occasions by sending 
horses on to Ferrybridge the day before, arrived at 
midnight, with the news of the defeat, one of the 
large party which sat up for it, could think of no 
other consolation than hoaxing ^*^01d Mark.'' The 
window was not far from the ground, and the dele- 
gate was enabled to report, word for word, the matri- 
monial colloquy, which followed the shout of '^ Vingf- 
un's wonP Mark was furious when the truth came 
out in the morning, and threatened in vain to walk 
all over Yorkshire, if he could only discover the 
owner of the voice. 

He always delivered his mind about „. . , . 

, •' His interview with 

man or horse, without fear or favour ; the Marquis of 
and was looked upon by some as no "^^"^ ^^'^^' 
mean authority. When the Marquis of Queens- 



23 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

berry, whose waist was quite as capacious as Hs 
own, requested Mm to come and give him his confi- 
dential opinion of Caledonian^s chance for the 
Leger, he mounted his spectacles and took a pro- 
tracted survey. His rainbow neck he dismissed in 
silence, and then he broke out with, " He wants 
what you and me has gitten, my Lord — hinder ribs, 
hinder ribs f^ and in went his spectacles to their 
case once more. 

The Marquis had John Smith for his 
trainer both in Scotland and at Middle- 
ham, and then he went to the Duke of Cleveland at 
Raby. In all these wanderings, his heart still turned 
to the Streatlam of his younger days (where he first 
wooed and won his Peggy, who was housekeeper at 
the Castle), and the lot he trained for Lord Strath- 
more. If a friend came to see him, as soon as 
'' only some thin ribs of mutton and a craw pie,''* 
which is, being interpreted, a most excellent din- 
ner, was over, his first toast was to that master's 
memory. ^' He was the best master/' he used 
to say, ''that I ever served ; he made me a Tory.^^ 
Still his loyalty to his dead Lord ^as quite 
equalled by that which one of his own Middle- 
ham stable lads showed towards himself. As he was 
setting out with his horses for Lancaster, he sud- 
denly recollected that he had left his hair-brush, and 
sent Jem Alderson alias " Botty"* (who was under- 
valet at the time to Cartwright, alias " Harrogate,^') 
in immediate search of it. " Botty" began doing 
up his mare, and for a time quite forgot his com- 
mission ; and then snatching the brush out of the 
dressing-case rushed wildly after the lot on the road 
to Kettlewell, which was the first stage. The horses 
were nearly done up for the night, when one of the 
lads ran to tell his master that they had caught a 

* In tlie Yorlcsliire dialect " above timself." 



TURP WORTHIES. 23 

glimpse of "Botty/^ running in his shirt- sleeves, 
and without his cap_, and brought him out of the 
inn with a rush, under the firm, impression that some 
disaster had happened at home. " Please, sir, Fve 
brought you your hair-brush/' said the gasping lad ; 
but " Get into the stable, and don't let any one see 
that Fve such a fool about me,'^ was his only wel- 
come. However, Smith gave him the fullest credit 
in his heart, and had him conveyed the eighteen 
miles back in a miller^s wagon, which happened to be 
passing. Such perseverance was certain to succeed, 
and when "Botty^^ became too heavy and had saved a 
good deal of money from presents, he became groom 
to Mr. Christy the great hat-maker, was eventually 
placed in one of his farms, and is there, we believe 
to this day. 

Smith was severe with his lads, but he always 
hedged by saying during the ash-plant process, 
" ThoiClt come to me in ten years' time, and thank me 
on thy knees for saving thee from the galloivsJ' 
'^ Only cruel to be kind^^ had never a finer exem- 
plification. His '^ poor Peggy^' was a rare help- 
mate, but she still sighed for Middleham (where 
their charity and kindness will long be remem- 
bered), during her Baby sojourn. " Anything 
that comes from Middleham must be Mrs. smith's love 
fed at all ends,^^ was her sponsors in- for Middleham. 
variable remark, when he found her giving an 
apple out of the window to Maria, the dam 
of Euclid and Theon, or any of her especials, which 
would regularly stop to claim it on their way from 
exercise ; and he lived under a moral conviction, 
that "poor Peggy and Maria betwixt them will 
break all the glass about the place.^^ The wish of 
the former to return to Middleham was fulfilled, and 
she and her John died at their house directly 
opposite " Croft^s old stables," from whence the four 
first horses for the St. Leger, and three of them 



24 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

ComuseSj set out for Doncaster in Theodore^s year, 
and had their deeds recorded on their trainer^s 

marble. 

Tommy Sykes was a great advocate for long 
, steady work on Lan^jton Wold, and he 

Old Sykes and i r i , i ° T - 

hiscardinspec- could havc staycQ any distance over 
^^°°' cards. He was of grim aspect, and 

most rigidly orthodox in his silence during the 
game, except when he felt it salutary to say to his 
partner, '^ Tlioo maks a very poor tew of it'' A 
Malton landlady, who knew his forte, implored him 
to counsel and shield her husband, when he had got 
up a little card party on the sly. " Bo go up, Mr. 
Sykes,'' she said, " and see after my poor Jacky ; I 
fear he'se only got among a baddish lot." A very few 
minutes satisfied Tommy how matters stood, and he 
was shortly enabled to descend with a clear con- 
science, and beg the anxious wife ^' not to trouble 
yourself J for Jacky' s the biggest rogue amongst them." 

Billy Pierse had a wife who looked 
1 y lerse. ^^^^^^ more wiscly after his interests, and 

made the most admirable Clary wine. It was, in 
fact, quite a moot point with him, whether he 
did not prefer it to that pipe of port, which Sir 
William Gerard sent him when he won the Oaks on his 
Oriana, and which, with another from the same hand, 
lasted him his life. His belief that '^ If I ever saved 
a shilling, my wife saved sixpence,^^ was fully veri- 
fied after his death, as his son Tom succeeded to a 
stable full of horses, with six hundred bushels in the 
corn chamber, and no debts. For three years he had 
no luck at Belle Isle, and was about to migrate to 
Hambleton, when his wife entreated him to stay ^^just 
one year more/' and then came their harvest home. 
Mr. Kay, the banker, who used occasionally to in- 
vest a fiver on his advice, admired his character so 
much, that he was always believed to be the invisible 
friend, who presented him with the place. Billy was 



TURF WORTHIES. 25 

never known to quarrel witli any one in E/ichmond^ 
and he was so popular with the little freehold owners 
round there, that by way of homage they used to 
lead manure on to his land^ and top-dress it without 
leave. 

Mrs. Pierse took a large share in the manage- 
ment of the stable, and her husband always said 
that she had the quickest eye of the two for finding 
out if a horse was lame. She was_, in short, the 
exact counterpart in the North, of Grandmother Day, 
with her walking-stick and black crunch bonnet, in 
the South. Morning after morning, Mrs. pierse's 
she would stand at the door, with her ^^^^i^i^s t^ct. 
hands behind her, marking each horse as it left 
the yard; and if there came " / say, turn him 
hack, mun, that horse is leame, I see/' in the 
broad dialect of Yorkshire, there could be no mis- 
take about it. In domestic matters, Billy never 
interfered, except, firstly by enforcing a goose 
every Sunday during the season (which he never 
thoroughly believed in, '^ except my wife roasts it"), 
and secondly by always buying and spreading out 
triumphantly on the dresser, when it arrived, just 
twice as much meat as was wanted whenever, purse 
in hand, he had chosen to sally forth to market. 
On this one point he was so proof to the last against 
all experience, that the poor people who shared the 
overplus began to think that his good soul of a wife 
secretly backed him in the habit. She was always 
her own almoner, and her plain useful education and 
sound sense made them quite a pattern couple. 

The excessive shortness of his legs rather spoilt her 
Billyhs seat on horseback, and he could not always use 
them to advantage when he was wasting. Jacques 
and Ben Smith walked with him once from Lancas- 
ter to Ashton Hall, on the morning of the races, but 
they were obliged to leave him behind at last on the 
road side, and he returned rather crest-fallen in a 



26 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

cart. Riding and training had taught him the great 
His test of two- general rule, which he scarcely ever 
year-oid form, found to fail him — " If a two-year-old 
wins by half-a-neck_, or even a length, with diflQcultVj 
depend upon it the whole squad^s bad." As a power- 
ful finisher and judge of pace, especially when he 
was on Haphazard, he stood in the first rank, and 
although he was such a one to dodge the lads, and 
knee their elders, when he had a chance, he was 
looked up to as quite a Lyndhurst in the profession. 
Mr. Tomline, the judge at Richmond, used often to 
tell how deftly he stopped a quarrel between Field 
and Mangles, who had ridden a very punishing 
Tact in stopping fi^^ish, and got to high words about the 

a quarrel. issuc. Trotting back past the chair to 
weigh in, he called out, " Hoiv far did 1 win^ Mr, 
Tomline ?" " You, Mr. Pierse? wliij you were beaten 
three lengths, ^^ was the response ; and even the belli- 
gerents could not help laughing when they saw 
Billyhs polite bow, and heard his dry rejoinder, 
" Thank you, sir; that alters the case materially J' 

His whole book reading was confined to the Bible 
and Smithes Wealth of Nations. It was calculated 
that he had gone through each of them about thirty 
times, and they were his joy and solace to the last. 
His studies in Po- With his arms folded on the table he 
liticai Economy, ^ould study Political Economy sternly 
for hours together. Although he gained largely by 
always paying ready money,' he did not scruple, 
as we have seen in meat matters, to openly vio- 
late all the most cherished doctrines of supply 
and demand ; but, armed with arguments at every 
point, he would occasionally open his mind to 
Sir Tatton, even when they were both dressed to 
ride, on the influx of bullion and the medium 
of exchange, subjects which threatened at times 
quitfe to weigh him down. Why John Day should 
be the only '^ Honest''^ man in the world also 



TURF WORTHIES. 27 

puzzled him as sorely, as lie did his own friends 
with the question, whether, in a commercial point of 
view, " the French will ever get us on to all-fours -^^ 
and he carried out his principle of selling in the 
dearest and buying in the cheapest market, by giving 
a few of the cordmen in Manchester an occasional 
stable tip, and carrying back as many yards of 
corduroy as breeched his stable lads for the year. 

Mr. Joliff was the repository of one r^^^ Borodino tip 
of his most cherished secrets. Billy in the bed-room. 
went over to dine and sleep at his house, and after a 
very pleasant evening was ended, his host heard un- 
mistnkeable signals of distress in one of the guest- 
chambers. On entering, he found a little bare- 
headed figure, in a long night-dress, which turned 
out to be Bilty, pacing about the room, quite on the 
fret, because " my wife has forgotten to put up my 
nightcap, Mr. Joliff, and I can^t sleep without one.^' 
He was soon fitted with a substitute, and his peace 
of mind was restored. " These are very high beds of 
yours, Mr, Joliff, " he observed, " / canH get in, do 
give me a leg up.'' This was also done with as much 
solemnity as if the St. Leger bell was ringing. Billy 
was tucked in, and felt at once warm and grateful. 
" Mr. Joliff,'' said he, '^ You've been very kind and 
neighbourly to me to-day, Mr. Joliff — / wish to make 
some return — it goes no farther — Borodino' s a race^ 
horse — Good night, Sir !'^ 

He never betted, and hated to hear of either trainers 
or jockeys doing much that way ; and his last mount 
was on Sir Walter, at Richmond, in 1819, for Col. 
Cradock, who thought very highly of him, and 
in later years always had him as his carriage com- 
panion to Doncaster and back. One of the most 
striking pictures of him is that in which he and Tom 
are looking at the Shuttle mare, with Simon at her 
foot. She was originally given to Billy by Sir 
William Gerard, after she broke her fetlock, and 



28 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

she nearly equalled the fame of Pratt of Askrigg^s 
Squirt mare^ (twelve of whose seventeen foals 
turned out well,) by throwing nineteen, with Swiss 
amongst them. Simon proved himself in a rough 
gallop, as a yearling, to be nearly as good as the 
three-year-old Canteen, from the Greystone In; 
but he died very soon afterwards from rupture of 
the heart. 

Old Forth was another of those trainer- 

Old Forth. ., n ^ ' t -\t ^ i ■ i i 

jockeys, oi which Yorkshire has been 
pretty prolific, but he became so naturalized at Mit- 
chell Grove, that the Southrons seemed to claim 
him. To the last he kept his "Frederick weigh t,^^ and 
rode in trials with the same fine patience and tact. 
He loved to come through with the old one, and con- 
sidered that " two year olds would do much greater 
things with each other than threes.^^ Frederick^ 
Little Wonder, and Merry Mon9.rch were all trained 
by him, and through them he framed the rule, that 
^^ if you try a two-year-old a reeker for a quarter-of- 
a-mile at even weights with a Derby winner, and the 
young^un cannot win, depend upon it he's not worth 
backing for Epsom.^^ The Goodwood Cup was the 
race he loved best, and he was sure, that " if a horse 
wins that really well trained, it is all up with him for 
the Leger.^' Even for it or anything else, he would 
never try more than a mile and a quarter, and if 
they could get that distance well, he was " quite 
ready to take the rest on credit.^' Buckle and Jim 
Kobinson were his jockey idols, and he used to say 
that he would gladly have given j8500 a-year to have 
the first call of " Old Frank.^-' He delighted to dwell 
on those finishes in which "Buckle brought his horse 
with such energy on the post, " that the very plates 
flew into the air.^' 

Buckle, Robin- Joliu Day's dccidcd opinion about 
son.&chifney. u Qj^ Frank'' was, that if you threw 

him up in the air in any part of the country, he 



TURF WORTHIES. 29 

would be certain to fall on a horse at the post, all 
ready to begin. His courage was quite on a par 
with the bulL dog's, which never left his heels; and 
when a man nearly twice his weight annoyed 
him at The Star, it took five or six to choke 
him off again. His weakest point was his judg- 
ment in a trial and on horses generally ; and it 
was calculated that he must have lost hundreds of 
pounds by bad hack bargains alone. Still, take him 
for all in all, Jim Robinson, with his short heads on 
the post, and Sam Chifney with his mighty rushes, 
we cannot wonder that the old school of Turfites 
dwell very fondly on the past, and declare that it 
was " quite worth all the meeting^s expenses to see 
those three ride." As for Sam, they said that it 
was equal to a tenner, just to watch him canter an 
awkward horse. '' Of Newmarket" maj^ well be the 
solitary and stately comment on his headstone at 
Hove; but still our senior jockeys generally acknow- 
ledge, and none more cordially than John and 
Alfred Day, that Jim was ^^ the schoolmaster" from 
whom they formed their style. 

Old Chifnev rode so lone; that he ^ ^^ x. t. 

./ . . o Grandfather Day 

hardly seemed to rise m ms saddle, and and Tom Good- 
his son as well as Tom Goodisson car- 
ried the practice to an extreme. Tom suffered from 
it two or three times on the Heath, and more espe- 
cially when Grandfather Day, who was two-and- 
twenty stone, and always the boy for a lark, caught 
him upon the road after Exeter races, and gammoned 
him to put on his cap and jacket, fasten his hack to 
the gigshafts, and ride it as leader for him into De~ 
vonport. The crowd, which rolled up like a snowball 
to see the great sight, frightened the hack by their 
cheers, and bolting into a shop window, it landed 
Tom headforemost among a pile of shawls. He 
rode no more leaders to the day of his death, 
and never at any period of his life did he look like 



30 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

a jockey, although he was a very good and fortunate 
one. There was no absence of mind in the saddle ; 
but if he asked a friend to dine, it was just as likely 
as not that he would take up a little thumb -piece, walk 
round the table chewing it in silence, and depart to 
a glass and a pipe elsewhere, for the remainder of the 
wheatiey&ciift. evening. Owing to his height, Wheatley 
had much difficulty in wasting, and 
although he won the Derby on Prince Leopold and 
Spaniel, and was entrusted with Velocipede for the St. 
Leger, the impression left on posterity was, that he 
had great splay feet, and would always stick them 
out. Copperbottom was the first horse that Clift 
looked after, when he went into the Marquis of 
Rockingham's stables, under Kit Skaife, and the 
name well foreshadowed the future riding and walk- 
ing powers of the lad. He was forty-four when he 
received the Fitzwilliam green jacket, and he held 
it till he could ride no more, and Harry Edwards 
succeeded him. Once only did he win the St. Leger^ 
and then it was snatched not out of the fire, but the 
ditch, into which he and Paulina were driven. The 
lodge on the North side of Wentworth Park still re- 
tains his name, and if no jockey can say ditto to 
his winning the Derby in a trot, they are equally 
unable to boast that they ever judged at Ash down. 

Bill Arnull on ^ill Amull infinitely preferred cock- 

money matters, figliting to coursing, and saving money 
to both. His friends used to tell him that he would 
go without victuals for a month, if he saw his way 
to a sovereign. This feeling grew upon him after 
he lost an action at Cambridge, and for years, as 
he reflected on those painful costs and damages, 
he would remark " Pve never swallowed that four 
hundred yet.''^ To realize when you can was his 
prevailing idea, and " Pd put my horse in But- 
ton Park,^' was the mode in which he conveyed it. 
Robinson could always outride him , but he had a 



TURF WORTHIES. 31 

high saddle repute, and quite a mania for winning 
both in pubHc and private. Hence he would stop 
the pace so cleverly on the trial horse, that he could 
invariably win on him, and then blame the lads for 
not getting theirs out. The thing happened so 
often, that the Exeter stable at last put some one 
else up to come right away. He was very gouty, 
and a wretched walker in consequence, and it was 
carious to see hitn get off " his great grey like a 
giraffe/^ and helped with a straight leg on to the 
horse he had to steer. 
William Edwards (who won his maiden ,,,.„. ^^ 

TVT 1 ^ • Tor\r^\ • ^1 William Edwards. 

race over JNewmarket, m loOO), is the 
Southern Nestor among jockeys; and he and Sir Tat- 
ton had all the wins to themselves on the last day 
of Doncaster, four years later, one with Gratitude and 
Lady Brough, and the other with his brother's Sir 
Pertinax. What Will most grudged losing was the 
Doncaster Cup, which was then nearly a four-mile 
race on Lord Fitzwilliam's Orville. He was a mere 
feather at the time, and he begged hard for a curb- 
bridle; but the trainer knew his colt to be such a slug, 
that he only said " the farther he runs away the more 
heHl bead them.'' Jackson on Alonzo and piottomakeor- 
Shepherd on Sir Solomon thought very viiierun away, 
differently, and decided, in a hasty council of war, 
that it was their bounden duty to make the Leger 
winner run away. Accordingly they got the lad 
between them, and one, by sly taps of the whip, and 
the other by sundry toe administrations, waked up 
his colt most effectually for him. It was in vain for 
him to shout when he saw their game, " Pll tell the 
Jockey Club of you ;" and Jackson finished up the 
matter, by kneeing him on to the rails. Three 
hundred guineas was Mr. Wattes present to George 
Edwards for winning the One Thousand on Cara, and 
that daring horseman well deserved such a sweetener. 
His brother Harry had still more power, and fairly 



33 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

drove his horse before him, sitting back in his set-to 
like Robinson, and spurring in front of the girths. 
No man got himself up better, and when he and Sam 
Darling were side by side, the one might be seen, 
turning up his cuff's for the fray, and the other pull- 
ing down his ruffles. 

Although Jackson was only one Leger 

John Jackson. i , p-rrno j i i i ir« 

snort 01 i3ill bcott, and had lor many 
years the finest practice in the North, he just lacked 
EilPs dash, and with a first-class rider he would get 
into difficulties at the finish. John Shepherd was a 
splendid judge of pace, and very fond, as a young 
man, of coming to meetings in a chaise and pair, 
when others were glad to hack it. Some of his 
finest races were won on Sir Solomon, whose power of 
making his own play in a four-mile race was as remark- 
able as his rider's seat. Shepherd held himself so 
bolt upright, that there was quite a hollow in the 
middle of his back, and he kept his foot straight out 
before him, to the point of the horse's shoulder. 

Ben Smith's patience and loyalty were 

Ben Smith. , , .^ , t n t , 

nobly conspicuous, when he reiused to 
dismount from the Duke of Hamilton's Ironsides, 
after a horse had broken his leg with a kick, and he 
won the race as he deserved. It was a deed worthy 
of the good, simple-hearted creature, and the connec- 
tion with the stable was only ended by the Duke's 
death. Two St. Legers fell to their lot in the course 
of it, and it is remarkable that the two he won for 
Mr. Gascoigne, resulted from the only mounts that 
gentleman ever gave him. 

Maiaprop sayings His Malapropisms formcd a fund of 
of Ben. amusement to the county, and were duly 
repeated as " Ben's last." When, however, it trans- 
pired that he had gone forth to commune with Na- 
ture at Studley, and had spoken on his return to 
Middleham, of " fine i avenues and turpentine 
walks/' Yorkshire shook her head, and wouldn't 



TUKF WORTHIES. 



33 



have it. There was plenty of the genuine article 
without drawing on fancy. An affidavit could have 
been SAVorn, if necessary^ that on more than one oc- 
casion he had observed to an owner^ ^' I should say, 
Sir, that horse of yours is fifteen four or five.'' ^^ If 
you'll only buy thai horse. Sir," he remarked to 
another^ " Fll ivarrant he'll win all the Maiden Plates 
in Scotland. " His only comment on three Sir 
Peters, which Mr. Baillie of Mellerstein showed him, 
was to the effect : ^' I'll lay. Sir, thou maans them 
to be in the rear ;" and he used his favourite 
adjuration, " By the Lord Harry, that's a fine colt,'' 
to such an extent, when Mr. Henry Peirse of Be» 
dale invited him to a similar inspection, that his 
host might well ask rather tartly after his departure, 
^' What on earth did the fellow mean ' Harrying' me 
every minute V With all his quiet ways, he did a 
little of the kneeing business occasionally ; but when 
he began it with Jackson, there came the fierce 
North Eiding challenge ; " By the Heart, my lad, 
thoo'se tryiiig it on. I'll gie it thee," and at it 
they both went, and after fairly cutting each 
other^s jackets off their backs, returned to scale in 
peace. 

Bob Johnson was an equally good- Eariyhumoursof 
hearted fellow, though much rougher in ^<^^ Johnson. 
his speech, full of activity and a quick starter, but in 
far too great a hurry to get home. He was born at 
Sunderland, and was apprenticed to a quack doctor. 
This gentleman also did a little in smuggled spirits, 
and often sent Bob out to his customers, with two 
tin cases full of gin on his shoulders. On one of 
his journeys, he met the Lambton hounds, and his 
pony becoming excited by the cry, and the flapping 
of the empty cases, carried him with a tremendous 
cannon against Sir Hedworth Williamson, who was 
at first disposed to be very angry. However, the 
lad^s enthusiasm under difficulties disarmed the 

D 



34 SCOTT AXD SEBRIGHT. 

baronet_, and lie often told tlie story when Bob had 
become famous. The budding apothecary soon 
deserted the herb and spirit business, and after a 
probation at Ellerker's of Hart^s_, he became a light- 
weight at Croft^s. Ottrington, who, as he elegantly . 
remarked, ^'^had tired like rauck/^ in all his other 
races, was the first St. Leger winner he rode. His 
orders were to watch Manuella, and when he found 
his horse living on, and the Oaks mare sinking, he 
irreverently exclaimed as he swept past the old 
Richmond jock ; " Hoo do ye like me, Mr. Pierse V^ 
Well might Billy say afterwards, in his anguish, that 
" for cheek that Bob Johnson beats them all.^^ 
First mount on His first councction with General 
General chasse. Chasse was brought about rather oddly. 
Sir James Boswell came to see his string, which 
were at Ashgill for a short time, and consulted 
with Eobert, as to whom he should get to ride the 
chesnut, in his maiden race at Liverpool. " Yon-- 
der^s Robert Johnson breaking sticks, Sir James; 
he'se nearly as good as any of them,'' said Eobert, 
pointing in the direction of Tupgill, where the ever- 
busy Robert then resided ; ^' he'se just the man for 
him." '^ In course I can ride him-,'' said Bob, when 
he had been waved up ; ^' we've nought in, have 
we, Mr. Fohertl" This question was absolutely 
necessary, as he left everything to his brother-in-law 
Watson Lonsdale, and Robert Hill his head lad. 

Even if any one asked him about a pedigree (which 
they took care to do pretty often), he gave his inva- 
riable answer ^^ In course thou knaws, he^se by faud 
horse, out of t'aud meer'' However, if he forgot their 
pedigrees, or rather never learnt them, he gave a 
pretty vivid sketch of their capabilities when he had 
scaled in. He had not ridden Chasse in his trial, 
and did not therefore expect to find him such a 
lurcher, and Sir James was equally unprepared for 
his definition of the chesnut, as ^^ a nice donkey of a 



TURF WORTHIES. 85 

divil — donkey I tell therJ' Stilly owners felt great 
confidence in him, and if Bill Scott carried off four 
St. Legers in succession. Bob, Mangles, and Ben 
Smith were the only jockeys who could boast of 
having won it three years out of four. Belying on 
this prestige, his friends were wont to consult him at 
Doncaster as to his chance ; but they never got 
much more out of him than ^' In course, 
ihoo may back me to he third — likely thirds for the st. 
enough faud place — / never get for- -^^s®^- 
warder y That was true enough after St. Patrick^s 
year. When the Barefoot St. Leger was run twice 
over, he held that place each time on Comte d'Artois ; 
and Emancipation, La Fille Mai Gardee, Bedlamite, 
General Chasse, and Beeswing only rivetted the 
spell. Bedlamite suffered severely from that terri- 
hle shower which almost washed away horse and 
man during the first parade that was ever made 
for the great race, and Bob, who was always up 
early, and away towards the distance to " try his 
stirrups,^^ resolutely refused to accept the umbrella 
and great coats which were pressed upon him, and 
ended, as in General Chasse^s case^ with making his 
run too soon. 

He got an ugly fall over Doncaster his faii at Don- 
on the Nutwith day. Trainers were caster. 
then allowed to ride on the course when the 
horses were running, and Tom Dawson, in 
galloping up from the distance to encourage 
the sulky Aristides, ran against him on his pony, 
and left him lying on his face with the force 
of the concussion. He picked himself up just in 
time to hear that Job had beaten the Malton crack, 
and subsequently informed Tom Dawson of his 
accident, which, he stuck to it, had been caused by 
'^ a great divil with a red coat on a grey meer," and 
quite fought out the point with Tom, when he 
explained and apologized, 

D 3 



36 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Colloquies and ^ perfcct Ordiaiia might be made up 
correspondence of tlic scenes betwecii liim. and the lord 
of Beeswing. They duly decided^ after 
accepting sixpence for the purpose from a face- 
tious friend at Ascot, to " let t^aud meer win first, 
and get shaved afterwards/^ Again they Avere heard 
to take counsel together about the state of Mr. 
Ord^s betting book. '^ Fve taken fifteen sovereigns 
to two, Robert, about the mai'e," said that gentleman, 
most meekly. " Shall I hedge ?'' " In course, nowt 
of the sortj" was the prompt answ^er, " Stan it out ; 
be a man or a mouse '^ Once when this comical pair 
were separated, Bob suddenly felt constrained by a 
sense of duty to communicate stable intelligence; 
and Will Beresford, who used to tell the story in 
his best style, was requested to act as his secretary. 
^' Sir, the meer's weel, Fm weel, we're all iveel,'^ 
was the result of Bob^s dictation, and he declined 
to furnish any other address than '* Ord, Esq., 
Northumberland.^^ It must, however, be explained 
that the original draft was much more voluminous, 
and that Bob had thus remonstrated when it was 
read over to him : ^' In course, thou knows, Mr. 
Beresford, I din^nt tell thee to put in ^ In course' 
all that number of times. Now, Fll gie it ye 
plain.^' After this, he felt it more politic to com- 
mit his own feelings to paper, and having left Tup- 
gill with a cause of anxiety upon him, he announced 
his return to convalescence at Liverpool, in these 
spousal words : " Peg, alFs ivell; Robert Johnson.'' 
The Pilgrim's Rest, l^ his wastiug days Bob was an 
atGosforth. eminent member of that School of In- 
dustry, which met during the Newcastle race- morn- 
ings in the Servants' Hall at Gosforth. ^Ir. Brand- 
ling liked the custom kept up, and often a muffled 
troop of Sim, Jacques, Scott, Harry Edwards, Holmes, 
Garbutt, Cartwright, Lye, Gates, Gray, &c., would be 
found there about ten o'clock, sipping the warm ale 



TURF WORTHIES. 37 

which the butler always had in readiness for them 
after their three miles^ walk from the Grand Stand, 
and listenings if Bill Scott was not just i' the vein, 
to Bob Johnson^s comments on nags and men. One 
morning Bob did not get on with his ale, and Mr. 
Brandling asked him if there was anything else he 
would like better. " / doiiH knaw, Si7%'' he said, 
" but I should like a bottle of yow champeagneJ' It 
was accordingly brought, and Bob considered that 
he put his host up to such a good thing for the day 
while they Avere drinking it, that he wound up with 
^' Weel, I think I should like another away with me, 
Mr. Brandling, to drink your health when Vve wonj" 
His companion protested in vain, but Mr. Brandling 
was intensely amused, and sided so energetically with 
Bob, that another was fetched, and duly stuffed into 
his pocket, and away he went rejoicing, and verified 
his Gosforth tip by beating Sim cleverly. Jacques 
turned that Pilgrim^s Best to high account once, as 
he was in it three times in four-and-twenty hours, 
and in spite of the butler^s request to consider his 
health, took off about 171bs. in the time, rather than 
lose his mount. Two ounces of Epsom salts, a little 
tea with gin in it, to make him break out' freely, a 
dry biscuit, and a poached egg with vinegar, were all 
that passed his lips. He excelled as much in wasting, 
as he did in corner-cutting, and if fifteen or sixteen 
started on a Doncaster morning to Bossington Bridge 
and back, he and Sim and Jack Holmes would in- 
variably^ be seen leading up the old elm-avenue at 
the finish. 

Sam Darling, who has ceased to ride sam Darling's 
since 1844, was another of the hard wastes, 
wasters, and seemed to view it merely in the light 
of a constitutional. His walks in the sweaters alone, 
for fully twenty-five years, averaged some five hun- 
dred miles, as he often went, whether he had weight 
to get off or not. To the last he could manage 



38 SCOTT AXD SEBRIGHT. 

eight two "with hard pinching on a 41b. saddle, tc 
which he was peculiarly partial. He quite knocked 
up John Day junior, who was always a bit of a 
piper, in a strong twelve mile walk from New- 
market to the Swan at Bottisham and back. John^s 
sweaters got slack, and he was so completely beat 
that he gave in near the toll-bar. Coach-riding was 
Sam's aversion, as travelling in that style, especially 
by night, has an immense tendency to put on weight, 
although it " comes off like butter.^^ He perhaps 
never galloped from Manchester to York in an 
afternoon, as Sim, Gray, and Garbutt once did; but 
in 1832, one of the best seasons he ever had, he rode 
in 174 races, and won seventy- three, many of them 
heats, in all parts of the country. One year after 
riding in the St. Leger, he borrowed a clever hack 
from a brother "jockey, and catching the coach at 
Sheffield, won twice at Shrewsbury the next day, 
and had time to waste as well. His delight was to 
get a great raking horse to make play with, and in 
the science of going in front to stop or force a 
pace, there was no more able practitioner. 
Mr. Horsiey's Tho habit of Tathcr closing one eye 
story of Sam. gave him a very knowing look, and his 
friend Horsley used to have a joke against him on 
this head. He had backed a horse with some 
stranger on the course for two sovereigns, and was 
asked for the money next day. " Dash me,'' said Sam,, 
opening both his eyes as if he was quite astonished at 
the request, " / bet you two sovereigns F' '' Oh ! I beg 
your pardon, Sir/' said the man, quite submissively, 
'^ The gentleman I bet it with had only one eye — Fve 
made some mistake," and he was moving off to renew 
the search when Sam called him back and paid* 
Such was poor Horsley^s version of the story, but Sam 
always said that he made it. Isaac is the horse with 
which his name is linked, but Major Ormsby Gore's 
Hesperus, which he also trained, was the luckiest for 



TURF WORTHIES. 39 

liim. The Gloucestershire Stakes, one of the 
earliest and most important handicaps, made part 
and parcel of this horse's thirty-four victories in his 
hands, and he was beaten in the only race in which 
Sam did not ride him. Pour times over was Sam 
cheered as the winner of the Chester Cup, and pex'- 
haps no one ever rode so many different animals, all 
by the same horse, as he did when Lord Exeter and 
Mr. Houldsworth were making such a run upon 
Sultan. 

Only one of the three great races, to ^^^^^^ ^^^ g. 
wit, the St. Leger with Rockingham, Leger on Rock- 
fell to his lot, and he never took a mount '"s^^™- 
with less heart. He was engaged, as he considered, 
by Mr. Watt to ride Belshazzar, and was about to 
dress for him, when Dick Shepherd called him aside, 
and said, " / want thee ; thee must ride in the ivhite 
cap to-day ; thee'd win.^' Sam^s countenance fell, 
as he had just put a pony on Belshazzar, but there 
was no remedy. ^^ TJiee'd win, I tell thee,^ resumed 
the relentless Dick in a louder key ; " coom and have 
a glass of sherry for luck, and doanH look so sulky J' 
Under these grim blandishments, he very reluctantly 
gave up the harlequin cap to Nicholson, and saddled 
the big pheasant-looking son of Humphrey Clinker^ 
whose temper seemed none of the sweetest. The 
joints of the narrow-looking Belshazzar fairly 
^^snocked*^ as he walked, and Tommy with his 
^^ spurs down-hilP' as usual, made all the running 
with him ; but long before they reached the Bed 
House, Sam found out that it was the white cap's 
day, and got two hundred from Mr. Watt for wear- 
ing it. 

There were only a few years between ^ ^ ^ „ 

-J- -1 -J £>, -^ -, "^ - , John and Sam 

John and oam Day, and clever as the Da?? 's first pony 
brothers were, they got regularly picked ''*''^* 
up in the morning of life, when they went off to- 
gether to the diversions at Lyndhurst. John had a 



40 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

wonderful little brown pony, witli whicli lie expected 
to clear out tlie whole lot of Hampshire yokels, and 
he was so haunted with the fear of her being " got 
at/^ that he persuaded Sam, nothing loath for a game 
of that sort, to get into a crate in the stable, and 
watch her all the forenoon. Sam^s position was one 
„ . ^ of undoubted peril. He was a tisrht fit 

Sam in the «rate. , . ..^ 1,1 ^ -, 

to begin with, and the truss oi hay, 
which the cautious John had piled over him, gra- 
dually became so diminished, that at last he was 
within an ace of having the pitch-fork in his spine. 
Those who have known him, whether on Mendicant 
at the Oaks post (where his mare was nearly kicked 
out of time) or in later years as banker at the Dane- 
bury Stewards' Stand, will feel assured that he bore 
up under the dispensation; but when he did rejoin 
the outer world, it was only to face worse things. 
The brothers proceeded to the course, but it got 
buzzed about who they were, and how high they 
had tried their pouy, and no one cared to be beaten. 
However, a country lad suddenly came forward in an 
apron and high-lows, and very humbly trusted that 
John would not take it amiss if '' I run my old pony 
out of a cart there against you.^^ " Who are you, 
Sir, may I ask f said John drawing himself up with 
native dignity; ^'pul dotv?i your ten pounds, and then 
Til see about it.'' The money came out so promptly, 
that John rather began to smell a rat, but there was 
no retreating. John mounted, and the 3'Oung man 
mounted with his butcher's apron twisted round his 
arm, and when the Danebury pony had been beaten 
some twenty yards, John learnt that he had been 
matching her against Gulliver, whose fame was in 
all the West Countrie. 

Sam had quite his share of wiunings in the pony 
way, but he had the ill-luck to meet Macdonald on 
Mat o^ the Mint at Sherborne, and to find that 
Mat's sister was pounds below his form. He also 




Jolm Day (1836), p. 41. 



TURF WORTHIES. 41 

rode at Barnet for the Duke of St. Albans, and then 
he had six years with Cooper, who trained for the 
Duke of York at Newmarket, while ^' Our Jim" was 
riding exercise at Robson^s. His brother John 
learnt his rudiments from his father, " an out and 
out fellow,^' as Hampshire says to this Grandfather 
day. Sitting in his low-crowned hat ^^^' 
and brown leggings, on his pony Black Jack, and 
with Lord Palmerston at his side^ watching Hougo- 
mont at work on Houghton Downs, he was as com- 
pletely the model of the old John Bull trainer, as 
his son Sam was of the elegant muscular jockey, 
when Lord Rivers placed his statuette by the side of 
Tom Cribb^s in his collection of man-models. John 
was first apprenticed at Newmarket with S mailman, 
who then trained the Prince Regent^s horses. His 
salary was only ten guineas a-year, and two suits 
of livery ; but he steadily rose the ranks, and when 
he did get into riding practice, his hack^s shoes had 
scarcely time to cool. With a saddle round his 
waist, and huge saddle-bags flapping at his side, he 
might be seen year after year on circuit, and two 
summers in succession, with Tom Dillv to cheer the 
way, he rode through the night from Exeter to 
Southampton, so as to catch a mount at both the 
meetings. 

Perhaps he was greatest as a jockey joimDayasa 
in his earlier days, when he had not so jockey. 
much training and betting on his mind. Latterly 
he presumed very much on his own training, and 
liked to ^' feel my own condition under me/^ He 
was all activity, and very fond of a rush, and no one 
could handle a hard-pulling or bad-mouthed horse 
more ably. Touchstone, for instance, he held as if 
he was in a vice, and unlike Sam Chifney, who 
abhorred them, he gloried in curb-bridles. Still 
there was a lack of ease and style about his seat, as 
well as his son Sam^s, whose patience and hands 



42 SCOTT AKD SEBRIGHT. 

were undeniable. Strange to say, old John never 
won a Derby, thougb he made up for it by five Oaks. 
Some of his pleasantest jockey recollections were his 
beating Priam and Conolly on Lord Berners^s Chap- 
man, and the recital of how he made play, and then, 
stopped his horse for a few strides, and let the crack 
reach his girths, was given with a solemnity and em- 
phasis befitting a passage out of the Old Fathers. 
Defeating Buckle for the Biddies worth was another 
sunny memory, and so was The Column, which he 
His race on Am- suatchcd out of the firc ou the Duke of 
phitrite. Portland's Amphitrite, ''His Grace, ^^ 
he would say, ''gave me Ms own orders ; 'John, you 
make play behind P and I did, Jim Robinson went 
on Mixbury ; and then he suffered ; and I came 
thirty yards from the post, and I got first run, and 
he never quite reached me — that was a great victoiy 
for me.^' Coldrenick was a rare miler, but he did 
not deceive hira at last, and there was nothing for it 
but to " bear up for him,'' and try and save some of 
the Derby money. John's severe system of training 
hardly suited a horse of that stamp, as he worked 
him instead of stopping him, and made matters 
rather worse than better. Still he wrought wonders 
in his time, and it would have made half-a-dozen 
trainers' reputations to have brought Crucifix with 
such a faulty sinew to the Oaks post, or get Grey 
Momus through The Port on such doubtful fore-legs. 
^ Never did any one lead a harder life 

in and out of the saddle. He went to 
bed quite early, and was never asleep after four in sum- 
mer, or letting any one else sleep. He took nearly 
an hour to dress, always tying his white cravat 
with the most scrupulous care. The horses were 
all done up again by eight, and then after a slender 
breakfast of tea and bread and butter, he went 
wasting for a couple of hours. The wind might be 
high, and the rain might pelt, but in that path of 



TURr WORTHIES. 43 

duty lie defied tlie elements. A mile walk, whicli 
Alfred Day still uses, was cut out for him round Sad- 
ler's Plantation, and when the March winds whistled 
keenly round young John's home at Longstock, he too 
deserted his daily trudge to Tidcomb Bridge or " the 
Lily Roarer'^ (Avglice White Lion) at Wherwell, 
and piped away towards the afternoon in the same 
sheltered grove. The umbrella, which never left Old 
John^s grasp except for a whip, was not forgotten in 
his waste walk ; and he held it aloft on a wet morn- 
ing, and swung his arms by turn. He generally be- 
gan at nine stone ten, but it came off very freely, 
and at his latest efi'ort in '45 he rode 8st. and Danebury 
lib. on Wilderness for the Ham Stakes discipline. 
in a 31b. saddle. His stable lads were kept in the 
highest state of discipline, and after the two Sunday 
services, he never failed to assemble them in the 
dinner-room, and read one of Blair's Discourses. 
His whip hung up behind him, and with a rush as 
electric as that on Amphitrite, he had it down from 
its peg, and across the back of any of the unlucky 
sleepers. 

With his round hat, scarlet coat, and massive silver- 
handled whip (which John Day rigidly preserves as 
his staff of office) he made up admirably as a clerk 
of the course at the Stockbridge Meeting. When he 
had resigned that office and the stables to his son, he 
never missed coming over to the meetings to shake 
his old friends by the hand, and we remember how 
in 1854, he solemnly indorsed John's demand 
that " my boy William,'^ — who whipped in for the 
Pour- Year- Old Trienial on the peacocky Pharos, 
which he had just purchased for twenty-seven 
guineas at Tattersall's — should pass the post and 
'^not disgrace the family by being distanced." Those 
were times when Sir John Mills with ^. ^ ^ „.„ ^ 

-. Sir John Mills at 

nis lour bays and the red-cun postilions, stockbridge 
was seen driving up to Danebury for 



44 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

lunch before the races began, and then leading the 
way to the Stand. But the cavalcade did not go 
straight back to Mottisfont from the Stand, when 
Aitchbone and Alfred in the " all blae^^ had won the 
Champagne Stakes. The postilions nearly pulled 
down one of the Danebury gate-posts in their zeal to 
come in at a trot. The old baronet had another cigar, 
and some more champagne, and gave the gout notice 
to look out for itself; every bit of blue ribbon that 
the ladies or the lasses could rifle off cap, bonnet, or 
watch-case, was pressed into the service for streamers 
and rosettes; and the church bells rung many a 
merry peal, as they did in after years for Giantess 
and the Warwickshire Handicap, when Mottisfont 
heard the news. Old John was in the thick of it, 
as delighted as any of them, at the success of the 
lord of the soil, but the meeting of ^59 was the last 
both for 1dm and Isaac Day. 

" No relation, but the best of friends,^^ 
was always lull 01 his kidding, and actively 
proposing during that visit to ride his black cob 
against a man on foot for a hundred yards. Good 
cobs.were a great point with him, but he was happiest 
when he had a screw to doctor, and his very highest 
ambition was to be talked about. " The Vicar" had 
a remarkable time of it with his patron, before whom 
he used to stand most reverentially, hat in hand, as 
if he had been the Archbishop of Northleach. Still 
he could not make out what game Isaac would be up 
to next with him, when he once darkly observed on 
the authority of a late Duke of Grafton, that " no 
jockey was a jockey unless he could cross country," 
and that as he (The Vicar) was no longer a young 
man, it was high time that it should be seen by the 
world how he could perform in that line. The ap- 
parition of all John Osborne's lads, determined to 
eat out their entrance shilling, was not one whit less 
startling to the office-bearers at a recent Middleham 



TURF WORTHIES. 45 

tea-fight^ than the next announcement that Sparta 
was in training for the Liverpool, and that he was 
to ride her. However, to Aintree the trio went, and 
Isaac had the langh he yearned for, when he learnt 
from Tom Oliver, through the medium of an image 
of Avhich Swift and Addison in their best form 
never dreamed, that the face of ^' The Vicar" in the 
scramble at Becher^s Brook reminded him of a man, 
^^ who had swallowed a wagon-load of monkeys." 

Like his frieiod Isaac, the celebrated ^^^j^ j.^^^^ .^ 
*^ Uncle Sam" has always been a ^^ light the Epsom pad- 
■'arted ^oss/^ and we may say, quite the 
Sam Weller of the Turf. We hardly ever saw that 
great steersman of Gustavus, Priam, Pyrrhus, and 
Mendicant look perfectly grave, except when he was 
lately leaning on his staff under the hawthorn canopy 
in the Epsom Paddock, drawing shrewd mental paral- 
lels between the past and the present, as twice the 
eighteen walked round him, and finally delivering 
judgment that one ^^ was made at a pottery," and 
another " at six.'^ No man has had such a string of 
accidents, and plucked up under them so wonder- 
fully. He broke nearly every limb he had but the 
right arm, " skull and jaw included," riding for Dick 
Goodison, and then one leg was broken twice, once 
by jumping out of a carriage into a rut at Good- 
wood, when an omnibus backed into it, and again by 
slipping up in the Hall at Mr. Ben Way^s. His spirits, 
however, knew no decay -, and music soothed his 
soul. He would liave hold of a tin- uncie sam on 
pipe, when he was on his back after the ^^^® p^p®- 
first accident for nearly nine months, and played a 
variety of pastoral and martial airs with a taste and 
brilliancy which astonished the Singleton farmers. 
They never just knew where they had him on that pipe. 
At times, he would blow a hurricane, or go as low as a 
Southern Hound. " He could," as he was wont to 
observe, ^' kill a town wasting, and when he was in 



46 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

his golden prime, which, barring his leg, never seems 
to leave him, he was not far wrong. Eor instance, 
when he was at supper at K^obson^s, a letter came 
from Lord Henry Fitzroy, that the Duke of Graf- 
ton^s mare Loo was to run next day in an A. E. race, 
and that the money was on. Sam finished his help- 
ing, and then mounted the weighing-machine, which 
made him 8st. 41bs. without his coat, but he went at 
it like a Briton, and, with physic and a fourteen- 
mile walk, got off the ]21bs., and won. 

His lecture on Thc announcement of a lecture by 
waste. hiin. to the young jockeys and society 
in general on " My Wasting Days,^^ would fill Covent 
Garden thrice over. First he would treat of liquors 
on this wise : " Drink inflates you just like a balloon ; 
champagne and light wines are all rubbish ; they only 
blow a fellow^ s roof off.'' He would then tackle the 
eating part of the business in very different terms : 
'^ No man can work if he canH eat ; you can't get 
light without eating ; have a good mutton-chop, thafs 
my style ; it gives a tone to the stomach'' We might 
then have a pleasing digression to the days when he 
was an eleven-six farmer near Reading, and took to 
the racing-saddle once more, accompanied by a 
variety of Robson anecdotes; but most assuredly 
the curtain would fall to this great moral tag, 
" Depend upon it a man does'nt enjoy the comforts 
of life unless he knows the wasting part of the 
business. '' 

His London The history of his residence in London. 
practice. whcH hc was at that business for the 
second time, would be one of his finest ^' bits.'-* He 
wanted to draw 8st. 71bs., and he was two months 
doing it. Sometimes he showed his ruddy, stream- 
ing face among the quiet dwellers at Wimbledon, 
and departed like a flash, before they could make 
out his mission, leaving the very wildest surmises in 
his track. Again, he would be found walking iu his 



TURF WORTHIES. 47 

woollen attire on Greenwich Hill during Easter, and 
not only getting scratched himself, but investing a 
penny on the spot, running after a large field of girls 
(who called him "The Mysterious Stranger/') and 
doing immense execution with his scratcher in re- 
turn. At all events it was fine fun, and he was 
not only ^^ fit to fight a wind-mill after it,'' but to 
win the Derby and the Oaks as well. 

John and Bill Scott began well by ^^^^^ ^^.^.^^^ ^^ 
being; born at Chippenham, near New- John and bui 
market, but they were not in the same 
stable, from the time they left their father, who be- 
came the landlord of The Ship at Oxford, till they 
met in 1814 at Crofts of Middleham. Mr. Scott, 
sen., who had ridden for Sir Sitwell Sitwell when 
he had Clinker and Gooseander (the dam of Sailor 
and Shoveller) in his stable, destined them both for 
the saddle, and placed John at Bourton under 
Stevens, and Will at Sadler's of Allsworth. Boyce 
and Tiny Edwards gave them respectively " a New- 
market polish," and John had three-quarters of a 
year with Franks at Middleham, before he joined 
Croft, and looked after Sir William MaxwelFs grey 
cup horse, Viscount. Starting for himself he had a few 
months at Hambleton, where he trained No Go, and 
when the great match was made between Filho da 
Puta and Sir Joshua, he was requested puho da Puta's 
by Croft, whose health was very delicate, match. , 
to undertake the responsible charge of the crack of 
the North on his Newmarket journey. The train- 
ing of this fine-tempered, leggy, and near-sighted 
colt was a very anxious task, and John had not 
much credit out of it after all. True to the great 
code of his life, he wanted to run him rather above 
himself; but when Croft came, he thought he had 
not done work enough. The Brothers Chifney, who 
had backed him, and were made Friends in Council, 
sided with the elder, so he was sent along again, and as 



48 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

John says with a sigh to this day^ " That cooked him.'' 
Looking over the John^s cye foi' Condition is of a very 
squeers' lot. univcrsal kind^ and no one made a more 
accurate calculation of the time it would require to 
them " fit/^ when the supposed " young Wackford 
Squeers" and a batch of pupils, rode down with him 
on the coach from London to Yorkshire. 

The fame of the match brought shoals of visitors 
to Filho da Puta^s stable^ and one of them walked in 
and made himself so much at home, that the young 
trainer was quite taken aback, and supposed that he 
must be a friend of the Maxwell familv. However, 
when the horse was sheeted up again, it struck him 
The sporting that lic had becu a little too good-na- 

bagman. tuTcd, and lic veutuTcd to ask the stran- 
ger if he would favour him with his name. ^'^ My 
name,"' he said, '' with all pleasure — Mr. Hogg from 
town,— in the silk way," and with a most magnificent 
bow and strut he departed. The horse lost some 
lengths at starting by nearly going on to his head, 
and Goodisson drove him after that ; but the match 
was the making of John Scott, and it ended in Mr. 
HouldswortVs buying Filho for 3,000 guineas, and 
taking the young trainer with him to Mansfield. It 
is worthy of note that on the great match afternoon, 
Sam Darling, who wore the Houldsworth colours so 
long and well in Beresford's day, made his Heath 
dihut on one of Mr. West^s horses. 
Performances of Bill Scott woh the Doucastcr and 

Filho. -ti^g Richmond Cups on Filho, after 
running clean out of the course in the latter race. As 
a sire Filho paid well for a time, and Sherwood, the 
second for the St. Leger, and Miller of Mansfield, 
were his principal legacies to the green and gold. 
His St. Leger was a very remarkable one, from the 
fact that at the close of the betting, the four first 
horses were exactly placed. The weight of money 
which Filho and Dinmont carried was enormous^ as 



TURF WORTHIES. 49 

Croft had never been more confident, and hence Sir 
William Maxwell might well thrust his stick for a 
safety-valve to his feelings, at night, through all the 
pier-glasses at the Rein Deer, and long in his rapture 
for more. The name of his horse was Dispute about his 
rather a puzzler to the hardware youths, "^"^®- 
who had a vague notion that it was Eill the Pewter, 
and it led to a little difficulty between two of them, 
who had seen the race from a carriage- wheel. 
"iVoo Jack, what wiVt have for a croon?'' said one; 
and '^ Hang it man, Fll have Filler,'' was the reply. 
'' TVilt'er T' said his mate. '^ Bang it, then, Fll have 
Pewter f' and anon when the winner^s name was 
shouted, there came such an angry skirmish of ^^ Fse 
won ; Filler's ivon ; Dang it thoo'se a le'er ; Pewter's 
won, ^c," succeeded by a battle royal, that the 
police had to interfere and explain. 

John had quite given up the saddle ^^^^,^ ^.^.^^^ 
before he settled at Mansfield, and as he 
jocularly says, " Bill turned me out of training.^^ 
His first win was the Treemen^s Plate, four mile 
heats, at 4st. 41bs. over the Oxford Port Meadows. 
Wasting never suited him, and after getting from 
ten stone to 7st. 71bs. in a very short time, to ride 
for a Seventy Pound Plate at Lancaster, which he 
lost by a neck, and half killing himself by the efi'ort, 
he was glad to let it alone. His last appearance 
was in a private trial of eleven cocktails at Malton, in 
which he rode Kufus, but his Brother Bill and Sim 
ran him out at the last turn, and '^ruined my pros- 
pects entirely .^^ 

With the exception of a few of Pratt's Life on sherwood 
leather-platers, not a horse had as yet Forest, 
been trained on Sherwood Forest, when John went 
into residence there, and began operations with a 
stable at the top of the Windmill Hill. The gallops 
were laid out on the Forest land, and extended 
nearly up to Sherwood Hall, and Filho and the 

E 



50 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

young stock stood at Farnsfield. Although Cata- 
line and Magistrate by Camillus, a perfect beauty of 
a horse and bought for .£500 from Major Bower of 
Welham^ were the only other good things through his 
hands, John had a pleasant enough time of it. Mr, 
Houldsworth scarcely knew his horses by sight, 
and to the end of his life, if he took a nomination, 
he invariably said, " / donH know what I have for it ; 
put down my name ; and Fit write to my man.'' The 
Rufford Hunt in ^' Black Jack^s'^ day had few more 
constant attendants than John in his drab-breeches 
and cherry-coloured tops ; and Bill, who was then 
first jockey to Mr. PoAvlett, and also rode for 
Mr. Houldsworth, was nearly as well known with 
them during the season, as he was in affcer-j^ears with 
Sir Tatton^s. John Jones (and latterly Sharpe) was 
huntsman, and Jem Davis (father to the present Jack) 
and " Johnny Walker of Wynnstay,^' whipped in to 
him. It was a merry sort of life " under the green 
wood tree^^ for the young trainer, as the master and 
the Duke of Portland gave him full liberty of the 
!Porest. Railways were then undreamt of in those 
sylvan solitudes, and no telegraph-posts in black, 
white, and green array near Wellow Wood sug- 
, . ., srested names for foxhounds. He could 

Forest privileges, f n p i . -i t i 

nave coursed lor twenty miles, and he 
killed some ninety-three hares in one season, a feat 
which pleased him nearly as much as beating thirty 
dogs in a Scurrj^" Stakes, with Iiis Glaucus, after he 
had been busy among the scuts all day. 

. ^ If he had just missed one St. Leger 
for Mr. Houldsworth with Sherwood, he 
found '^ the missing link^^ to victory during the short 
time which he spent at Mansfield, between leaving 
that gentleman's service and entering on Mr. Petrels. 
At his advice, old Juliana had come to Magistrate, 
and was standing at the stable of a lawyer near the 
Swan Inn. About four o'clock on May morning, a 



TURF WORTHIES. 51 

lad came running to his lodgings with the news that 
she had foaled, and that they thought it was a colt. 
John thought so too, at first, from its excessive 
activity, although in size it looked " like a buck 
rabbit, with a black list stripe down its back.^' Its 
arrival created a very great sensation even at that 
early hour, and Mrs. Stirrup, the landlady of The 
Swan, and own sister to the celebrated George Clark 
of Barnby Moor, ran out to see it, in her shift. In 
spite of his disappointment, John^s gallantry did 
not wax cold, when he found that she had come to 
do honour to ouq of her own sex, and his offer to 
^^ stand you a new quarter piece, Mam, if this 
Comus filly vjins the Leger,'^ was quickly made and 
accepted. The word was lightly spoken, but the 
little bay, which was soon skipping everywhere about 
the box, ripened into " Matilda,^^ — the first of Mr. 
Petrels memorable St, Leger trio, and the first of 
the Whitewall fifteen — and the silk was not forgotten. 
She was in fact the load-star of John^s fortunes, and 
refusing a very tempting offer from Sir Thomas 
Mostyn to go to Holywell, he cast in his lot with 
Mr. Petre at Whitewall (whose twenty- Mr. Petre's 
four stalls are now trebled), with Veluti, career. 
IvanhoflP, and a few more cast-offs, in the Martinmas 
of ^24. A hundred sovereign match over the St. 
Leger course that year with Tramper, was the first 
Scott victory of " the pink and black,^^ and it only 
missed a 450 Sovereign Stake with Saladin, a half- 
hrother to Matilda, by half-a-head. It was some- 
what remarkable that in this race John should beat 
his old master, and that Mr, Petre should be worsted 
by a mare of Mr. Lambton^s, whose parties, equi- 
pages, and racing stud had stirred up his keenest 
emulation. His Whitewall career was as short as it 
was merry. He was at the same time master of the 
Badsworth, with Jack Richards from Sir Bellingham 
Graham as his huntsman, and there ^^ was a sound of 

E 2 



52 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

revelry by niglit^^ as well as day, at Stapleton Park, 
Still, when all had crumbled in his hand, he had at 
least something to boast of. He had led back a 
St. Leger winner to scale, who started at 200 to 1 ; 
he had scored three St. Leger victories in succession, 
and in this respect has never known his marrow, 
save in Lord Archibald Hamilton. His horses had 
beaten Voltaire, Sir Hercules, Yelocipede, Zinganee, 
Lottery, and Laurel ; and he had sold a six-year-old, 
good enough even in his decline to give 17lbs. for 
his two years, and collar the great Camarine for the 
Ascot Cup. Well may John Scott have a tender 
recollection of his first Whitewall master, and say 
in our hearing to one who had so often shared his 
triumphs, '' If ive were among them, Sim, with another 
Mr. Petre, ive should not take a deal of harm.'' 
Bill Scott's jockey- To writc of Bill Scott is to master the 
ship. inner history of four Derbies, nine St. 
Legers, and as many Champagne Stakes, three Oaks, 
and a succession of the best stakes of the North and 
South for thirty years, until we recall him wending his 
way back to scale in his yellow and blue cap for the 
last time, on Snowball, at York. Still there is some- 
thing in Tommy Nicholson's facetious boast that he 
(Tommy) was best man over Doncaster ; as in Jack 
Spigot's year, he had amount in fourteen out of the 
twenty-one races, and only lost once. Two years 
before that, Bill's and Tommy'^ claim to have ridden 
the St. Leger winner was in abeyance for sixteen 
days, and then the Jockey Club decided that the 
first start was valid, and that Tommy's Antonio win 
must stand. If Bill lost the St. Leger on Sher- 
wood, it gave him an opinion of Barefoot which he 
turned to good account, when that Tramp chesnut 
ran for the Oatlands and carried seven hundred of 
his money. He often declared, " It was the first good 
money I ever won. I knew from the Leger what a 
game beggar he was'' Bill perhaps a little over-did 



TURF WORTHIES. 53 

it in tliat race by making such a strong pace with 
Sherwood^ but his Doncaster recipe to the last was 
to make severe running to the top of the hill. "If 
you can't get a pull and go on again,'' he was wont 
to say, " you'll never win; whafs the use of condition 
if you don't use it ?" No one ever knew him lose a 
race if he once had the best of it, and if thirty were 
in it, he could tell with one of his Parthian glances, 
exactly what every one of them was ms riding of 
doing. His brother always considers Attiia. 
that his riding of Satirist in the St. Leger, and of 
Mundig in the Derby were the finest specimens of 
his style, which as far as daring and decision went, has 
perhaps never been matched. He was out of humour 
with Col. Anson for starting Attila, with 91bs. extra, 
and the St. Leger in view, and hence he cut the colt up 
sadly in the Drawing Room Stakes, when Robinson 
on Envoy had him as dead as a stone. In the St. 
Leger again he went off with him at score, and en- 
abled Heseltine on Eboracum before they got to the 
E-ed House triumphantly to carry out his threat, — 
" Fll run at Bill Scott as long as my horse can wag 
a leg.'' Strange as it may seem, ten out of the 
seventeen jockeys who rode that day are dead, and 
Sam Rogers is the only one left in Ruff. 
Bill was wonderfully fond of chaffine; 

tvtj it T-,-ii- ii His amusements. 

JN'at, and dropped it into mm rather 
heavily one day at " the Squire^s ;" but still his 
pleasantry was very neat, when he chose. '' Well, 
my Lord," was his salute to Lord Maidstone, when the 
(1) was entered against the '^ gorge de pigeon" jacket, 
in Mr. Clark^s book, after the Molecomb, and his 
lordship met him coming back to scale on The Caster, 
who had run half way up the hill, " We've set the 
caster the first time." In his hunters he was very 
choice, and the likeness between him and Ben Mor- 
gan, on horseback, has always been so striking, that 
the East Biding men often say, that they seem to 



54? SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

have liim still amongst them^ at Firby Wood 
side. For one grey horse, Ainderby, he was bid 450 
gs._, and he rode the hollow-backed Heslington^ of 
Northumberland Plate fame, with Sir Tatton^s, for 
two or three seasons after he had steeple-chased him, 
but he never made much out. 

In other respects he was not a keen sportsman. 
He liked to have his greyhound, Major, at his 
heels, but did not care to run him much. Some- 
times he fished in the Ouse, and if the fish did not 
rise properly, away would go rod and creel into the 
water; and when, after frightening a few rooks, he 
eventually knocked himself down with his gun, he 
gave it away to Isaac Blades. He was always in high 
Visit to Harro- spirits whcu hc got to Harrogatc, and in 
gate. j^jg latest visit, the Tewit waters seemed 
quite to set him up. Markwell was with him as 
aide-de-carap, and one day, at Bill's suggestion, the 
pair went to Brimham Rocks, not only in a donkey 
carriage, but in real state, with two more donkey 
boys as outriders. 
^ . . ... William Gates and his father looked 

Training of his i -.- r» i • 

colt Sir Tatton aftcT his colt Su? Tattou Sykes for him, 
^ ^^* but he was very seldom " up'' himself 

during his preparation. The colt took plenty of work, 
and Driffield had the schooling of him over a mile-and- 
a-half round Wise's Farm. Th^ had only one spin 
together on Langton Wold, when his pupil gave him 
four stone easily. Old George Gates rode the young 
one in the trial, and despite his recollections of Lot- 
tery, he declared that he had never been on any- 
thing like him, and that he never half got him out. 
Still he was far riper for the St, Leger than he was 
on the Derby day; and William Gates was so 
anxious, that he went to the course all dressed to 
ride him, in case his owner, who had wasted very 
severely, should feel unfit at the last moment. How 
such a sluggish horse got through his task was a 



TURF WORTHIES. 55 

wonder to every one ; as half-way up the distance 
Bill fairly dropped forward on to his neck, from 
exhaustion, and coukVnt drive him at all. 

Many a rich story has fallen from the The whitewau 
lips of " The Wizard'' in that little snug- snuggery. 
gery on the left, when he goes back to the good old 
days, and dashes off in one pregnant sentence, the 
form of each stable favourite, till we can almost see 
Eill, and Frank, and Nat in the saddle once more^ 
and silently filing before us. What merry, and yet 
what anxious groups have mustered there, round the 
trio of spirit decanters, with their varied pace and 
colour emblems of horse and game cock — white pile 
and grey, dun and chesnut, brown-red and bay ! 
Colonel Anson knew that council chamber well, and 
it was there that many a crafty Derby attack was 
planned ; and " all white,'^ " red and blue,'' or *^ all 
black" was selected to silence the ^' Kentish fire," or 
turn the Danebury flank. Sim, Jack Holmes, and 
Nelson would all be on duty; and if it was a great trial. 
Bill would start from his house at York after 
nightfall, to put the double on the touts, who stood, 
with a perseverance hardly natural to man, watch- 
ing his every movement, about Epsom-tide. No one 
wished for the dawn, when he had come with an 
ever-fresh stock of anecdotes and ethics, enough to 
set up half-a-dozen wits in trade. 

As the light flashes back on the walls, pictures of the 
we read, from Herring's hand, the silent cracks, 
canvas record of those days. Hornsea of the wall 
eye, Don John, and Industry take up the Bretby 
tale ; Mundig, the first '^ member for Streatlam'^ 
is there to catch the eye and jog the memory of many 
a speaker, and so is Cotherstone whose merits, to the 
Colonel's utter astonishment, were enforced in Bill's 
most emphatic speech, when the party had come 
back from Langton Wold on that morning which 
sealed Gaper's doom. There, too, among the family 



56 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

pictures of the little girl in tlie red cloak on the spotted 
donkey^ are the late General Norcliffe^ the owner of 
the Wold, and Sir Tatton and his trusty henchman, 
Tom Carter, as they appeared "vyhen the scarlets were 
hung on the nail, and the cubs at play, with no 
Proctor or Cruiser to rally them. Harry Hall and 
Ferneley also bear their part among the " Cracks of the 
Turf/^ Holmes pulling Maroon double for the St. 
Leger, is the first painting on the left; and if poor Jack 
ever mourned over his riding orders of that day, with- 
in earshot of Sim, he was pretty sure to be reminded 
that his resolution had not always been so rigid, 
and that neither his memory nor all the shouting at 
his girths could prevail upon him, at Richmond^ to 
pull Delphine to one side, and let Sim win the stable 
money on Matilda. Touchstone has his In Memo- 
ria7n in the Doncaster Cup, in which Hornsea sepa- 
rated him and his old foe General Chasse once 
more. Attila, Canezou, " a good mare, but not a 
smasher,^^ Fazzoletto, little Daniel, The West, and 
Songstress tell the story of their years : and there, 
too, in a pleasant tree and water group, are 
Frailty of Filho's blood, the dam of Cyprian, and 
Mrs. Bang-up, with Morgan Rattler by Velocipede 
at her foot. 

The w^hitewaii The clcgaut little Matilda, defying the 
dining-room. ^M^h. of Sam and the misrhtv stride of 

o c 

Mameluke, has her place in the dining-room, with 
Charles and Euclid fighting out their dead-heat. 
Velocipede holds the post of honour over the side- 
board, flanked by Cotherstone and Princess, the 
son and daughter of the great Ascot Cup rivals, and 
under their shadow, among Durham, Pontefract, and 
Malton Cups, the steel-armed shank bones of Tramp 
know no rest from man, w^hen a round or silver- edge 
of beef is between them. The Petre chesnut davs 
live again in Kowton and The Colonel; and Cy- 
prian, of the vicious eye and ear,bears testimony to that 



TURF WORTHIES. 57 

punishiDg finish,in whicli she taught the Houldsworth 
stable that it was not their destiny to win the Oaks. 
Trank and John himself are on guard over the fire- 
place, and there, too, is the Roland which carried 
the flying huntress, who introduced the first three- 
pommel saddle into Leicestershire, and made Cap- 
tain Whitens sing out as she topped her first fence_, 
^^ Look to yourself Hey cock J or you^ll be cut down by a 
woman !'' 

What a multifarious miscellany of The guests at 
men have sat at that bountiful board ! — whitewaii. 
peers, baronets, barons, and Queen^s counsel learned 
in the law; foreigners, who have reverently jour- 
neyed to it and Sir Tatton's, within a week of land- 
ing, as if to a shrine ; squires, farmers, jockeys, 
trainers, and authors, 

" Pricking a Cockney ear," 

and jealously treasuring up each waif and stray for 
the time, when all Yorkshire is in its delicious Sep- 
tember simmer, and the talk in every harvest field, and 
at every ram-letting, is of what John Scott will run 
for the Leger, and when he intends to Baron AWerson's 
try. Baron Alder son only wrote half ^^^^*- 
his recollections of his visit. He might have told 
how he questioned Frank, on the whole art of 
riding ; how he wondered not so much at the condi- 
tion of the horses, as where the supply of boys came 
from, and the solution of the difficulty; how he 
noted down, at Jim Perren's dictation, some of 
their most remarkable titles, " Spider, '' " Cud- 
joe,^' '' Frog," " Weasel,^' '^Squeaky,'' &c., and how, 
when the contents of Jacobus cock-bag were duly 
unfolded, nothing but the sternest Whitewaii head- 
shake checked FranVs itching fingers from having 
a regular carpet set-to. 

And so we draw near Cyprian^s barn, ^.^^ 

and turn aside to see that ancient bag 



58 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

of bones, with nigli eight- and- twenty summers on 
her head, and enough malice to make a short run^ 
and a finish of every visitor in turn. Her death- 
warrant had been duly signed; and when John Scott 
next took his way to visit Isaac Walker and '' the 
infants" at Streatlam Castle, the barn knew her no 
more ; but a couple of thousand guinea and three 
five-hundred guinea foals, with Meteora to head them, 
are placed to her credit, with Weatherby. Then 
passing by TAnson^s paddock, where Queen Mary 
and her daughter Blink Bonny raise their white faces 
at our approach, we are through the wicket gate on 
to the Wolds. 

Scene on Lang- Evcry ouo scoms out that moming. 
ton Wolds. Cyprian's old friend Johnny Gray, who 
could ride six stone seven when he was fifty, is there at 
seventy -odd, and blazing away upon Willie Wright. 
John Scott spies him forthwith, and does'nt forget to 
tell of BilFs frisk at Knutsford races, when he slept in 
the same room with Johnny and Ben Smith. Little 
Baker with the big straw hat, " the tall man from 
Newcastle,^^ and eight or ten others, are on duty 
along the outposts, gathering ^^ such information as 
no other gentleman possibly can have, " from 
their tan gallop survey. Balnamoon is there, and they 
little think, as a despised brown ball of a filly bounds 
along by herself, that she is duly fated to lower the 
pride of the great Kettledrum. Cape Flyaway, as true 
a tryer as Dilkoosh or Backbiter, leads Sweetsauce, 
who, in his white quarter piece, and with Jack Charl- 
ton up, comes striding along as if the Goodwood 
Cup fiekl were at his heels once more. The next 
are a lot of Barbatuses, and the Miss Whip colt 
fresh from a Knavesmire Stakes victory at York ; 
and The Wizard, with Bob ClifFe still true to 
him, in sunshine or in shade, comes up, nearly 
pulling double over his schoolmaster, the ever bold 
Benbow. 



TURF WORTHIES. 59 

Then the ffreen furze at the distance „, , , 
is suddenly alive with sterns, and the ter at home on 
word is passed :— " There are Morgan ^^"^*'" ™^- 
and the hounds^' coming over the Wold from Bird- 
sail. Ben draws them up on a little knoll, and John 
Scott gets out of his phaeton, to give them greetings 
and beckons Jim Perren to bring up the horses, and 
'^ let them walk near us in a ring.^^ Tlte Malton Mes- 
senger, big with prophec}^, and on his white steed of 
fate, keeps, like ourselves, to the scarlets, while Jack 
Charlton with his grey^s rein on his arm, and Ashmall 
on I^Anson^s rare eleven-season hunter. Kettle, half- 
sister to Fisherman, join the morning consultation. 
^^ DonH take off too much at once, Jim, from The 
Drone." ^^ Noiv you may go home with Sweetsauce, 
yoiCve done enough for this morning f^ " Walk Long- 
range, and bring him steadily along a mile ; mind keep 
your hands down. Ginger P Jack, just get up again, 
and lead 1dm !" float tons occasionally, as John, v/ith 
his adjutant scans each of the troop. 

Now, the council is over, and he turns once more to 

the hounds. He has, of course, his old Arrival of "Ben" 

fling at Ben, for assuring him that his '''"'^ *^® hounds. 
country was " like the Grampians, and even The 
West could^nt live with them.^^ Then Bill is in his 
mind once more, and he tells us of the run from 
Millington Wood, when " he rode a Whalebone 
horse, and I was only nine stone.^^ Gameboy and 
Warlock lie blinking lazily, and half-dreaming, it 
may be, of the greatest day of the next season, from 
Garrowbv to Warter : or of the still more mem- 
orable Christmas Eve of ^61, over three rivers and 
nineteen parishes. There, too, are Dexter and 
Dimity, of the Grove Duster sort, '' and john scott's com^ 
not a bad sort either,'' as John Scott mentanes. 
observes. Again, he picks out Woodman, "one of 
the Proctor sort in the picture for a thousand;" and 
" hang it, he's a slasher" is his terse commentary, as 



60 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Rocliester^ with his stern up^ walks proudly past him. 
Now Perren has a word, and asks about a Grove Rec- 
tor, in a spirit of anxious inquiry, which makes his 
captain predict that '*^Jim will be a great kennel 
huntsman yet/^ Then the scarlets and the "spot' 
ted darlings^^ are lost among the distant furzes, and 
once more the Whitewall thirtv-nine, with Benbow 
still in command, file homeward through the Rifle- 
man Dell, and the morning^ s work is over. 

Robson delighted to see jockeys do 
ono y. ij^g^^, travelling on horseback, and he 
was once known to say to a very eminent one, " l^ow, 
I saw you come in a chaise ; you don't ride for me all 
this week.'' Conolly and Pavis were great epicures 
in this way, and liked to go a,bout with their gigs 
and servants. On one occasion they passed Darling 
and Chappie riding into Abingdon, with their saddle- 
bags at their sides and their light saddles round 
their waists. When they again met on their arrival 
at The Lamb, Pavis told them that they were " a 
disgrace to go about with their pots'' but quiet 
Jemmy only clapped his hand on his saddle-bags, 
and retorted, ^' I'll lay there's been more in these 
pots than there ever will be in all your fine gigs." 
Sam got his best rise out of Pavis, at Wells, 
whither the natty one had gone down for Mazeppa in 

Isaac Day's de- ^^^® Mcudip Stakcs. At tlic clevcnth 

scent with Lit- hour, Isaac Day determined to start Lit- 

oy ue. ^^^ -g^^ Blue, and brought Sam to ride 

him. Pavis had been elected king of the revels at 

the inn, and was bouncing most valiantly of what 

he was going to do next day, when the fatal forms 

of Sam and Isaac loomed in the door-way. Little 

Arthur nearly dropped under the table at tlie sight, 

and years after Isaac would go solemnly through the 

scene, with increasing humour at each performance. 

Chappie's great country successes were 

Jemmy Chappie; -ii o i. i i • r i. -i." 

With bpectre, and his lorte was waitiDf^ 



TURF WORTHIES. 61 

with a quiet horse_, and taking a beautiful measure. 
Somehow or other, the country knew his value better 
than they did at head-quarters, and this he felt so 
keenly _, that it somewhat hardened and crisped his 
manner. They were ready enough to offer him en- 
gagements after he won the Cesarewitch and Cam- 
bridgeshire, and it was no very cynical asperity in 
him to decline them. 

It was Nat^s misfortune to have out- 

,. ,,. ^ T., 1 1 ^ • 1 A word on Nat. 

lived his lame, and the baseless object- 
ions which were taken to his mode of riding 
Toxophilite (who was "never half a good horse'^)_^ 
for the Derby, made it the fashion to call him 
" old Nat,^^ and to say that he was nervous. For 
our own part, we believe that the public (who 
had always praised his riding most extravagantly 
up to that point) merely followed suit, and that 
his brother-jockeys are right in saying that he 
was as good as ever to the last. At no period of his 
career had he been quite a first-class man ; but still 
a most efficient rider, a respectful servant, and as 
honest as the day. He had been creeping well up 
for four or five seasons ; but the death of Pavis in 
1839, at a time when he could ride 6st. lOlbs. 
cleverly, and there were no " Tinies^^ or '' Bantams,^^ 
gave him an opening which he knew well how to use. 
He was the first Newmarket jockey that ever regu- 
larly got a footing at the Northern meetings ; and 
Garbutt, whose practice had all but departed from 
him, did not much like this innovation. On one 
occasion, Jem made the running very good in a race 
at Newton, and turning round in his rough way, he 
contemptuously bellowed out to him as they re- 
turned to scale, " There, Mr. Newmarket , what do 
you think of that to apace ?" 

Weight always favoured him, as he was barely 
lllbs. heavier at fifty than he was at twenty-nine. 
His great knack was his quickness at a T.Y.C. post ; 



62 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and, although he just kept within the line and 
avoided being fined, he often put the starter^s temper 
sadly to the test by his determination if possible 
to anticipate the " Go along.'' We should call him 
rather a good jockey by profession, than a great 
horseman by intuition. He seldom did anj^thing 
brilliant, but his good head and fine patience served 
him, and he rarely made a mistake as regards measure 
in the last few strides. A tremendous finish, when 
a horse had to be ridden home from below the dis- 
tance, was not his foy^te ; and it put him all abroad 
if he had to make running. His thighs were so 
short that he had^nt sufficient purchase from the 
knee to use a sluggish horse, and if he had a free 
goer he was a little apt to overdo it. In his annus 
mirabilis 1848, he scored 104 victories ; but it was 
generally believed that he made most in Orlando^s 
year, and entered about £5,000 to the credit side of 
his riding book in fees and presents alone. His 
illness was very painful and wearing. As the spring 
came on, he seemed to recover a little, and got out, 
we believe, a few times, in a carriage ; but when he 
went up to London to have the best advice during 
the July meeting, he learnt that there was no hope 
for him, and quietly returned to Newmarket to die. 
Strange to say, it was one of his last requests that 
he should not be buried in the cemetery at the en-^ 
trance of the Heath. 

, ^ ,r He was not very sociable in his tem- 

Job Marson. • , i i • i ,^ • ^ 

per, or popular with his brother-jockeys, 
and between him and poor Job Marson there was 
always a sort of secret feud, and nothing delighted 
the latter so much as to beat him in a finish. Job 
was best on a very free goer, as he could hold any- 
thing, and preferred it to having to ride them all the 
way. There was less of the Chifney style about 
him than Frank, as he was never fond of lying too 
much away, and then trusting so implicitly to the 



TURF WORTHIES. 63 

creeping business, which once put Frank quite wrong 
on IM unnykirk at York . According to his own notions^ 
the A.F. match on Colleen Bawn when he beat 
Prank on Leopard in the Newmarket Craven of 
1847, and his Humdrum victory over the same 
jockey and Wolfdog for the Queen^s Plate the same 
spring, after a most terrific finish from the Planta- 
tion, were about the best things Job ever did ; and 
the men were worthy of each other. His anxiety 
to pull off a great race for Mr. Bouverie and his 
uncle, after their Derby disappointment, rather up- 
set his nerve in the Chester Cup, and he always be- 
lieved that he had won his race with War Eagle at 
the Castle Pole, and that if he had waited longer 
under that crushing weight, he might have landed 
their money. 

It was somewhat singular that both Job and Frank 
should have been each specially known during their 
last season, in connection with the horse they loved 
best of all. Job made his last great finish for the 
Don caster Cup on Fandango, and Frank^s sun set 
ffloriouslyin "TheWest.^^ The first con- „ , „ , 
nection of the latter couple was rather surprise with 
an odd one. Frank had been on him at ^^^ ^^^*' 
Whitewall, but never expected that he was coming 
for the Criterion. His astonishment was unbounded 
when he first learnt the news from John Scott^s 
lips at the Newmarket Station. " What I" said he, 
'^ you donH mean to say you've brought the big bay 
horse with you ; we^ve tried a rare good 'un, and Pve 
backed him for a devit of a lot of money !'^ " I'm 
very sorry for it,'^ replied John, '^but weVe had 
Sim and Jack up, and we like him, and Mr. Bowes 
has backed him for the Derby, — the money's all on 
— and youVe to stand the odds to fifty.'' There 
was no help for it, and so Frank went and told his 
brother that Rogers would have to take the Sitting- 
bourne mount. He strictly obeyed his orders to 



64 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 



<c 



ride him tenderly up the hill, for fear he flounders 
in the dirt," but the horse could not move in it, and 
Speed the Plough dropped on to him at the finish. 
„ „ .,^ Frank^s opinion of '' the bis: bav 

Colloquy with r ^ n^ " 

Isaac Walker norsc Underwent a great change alter 
the Glasgow Stakes_, and he thought all 
the winter of what he and "my hack" were to do. 
He had liked what he had seen of the colt in the 
previous summer, though he never expected him ta 
be got fit that year. In the August of DanieFs 
year^ when he was riding back with Isaac Walker 
from the Hunderthwaite Moors to Streatlam, he thus 
broke out, " Isaac, Fve been thinking how wonderful 
it would be if we should win the Derby next year 
for Mr. Bowes. Pve got a rough customer for them ; 
Fve won with a little one this year, and I should^nt 
be surprised if I pull through with a big ''un next.-'^ 
He came down to Durham for the grouse-shooting 
both years, but there was a great change in him 
in ^53. No day was too long for him in DanieFs year, 
but the next August he could not follow his game. 
He wanted constant flask refreshers, and he was glad 
to sit down on the heather with the daily paper, and 
talk about what they had been doing at Egham, 
His fund of anecdote and chaflp, which he delivered 
in a thick, husky voice, and with a visage as grave as 
a mustard-pot, seemed to have failed him, and there 
was no " Fine Old English Gentleman," or " Return 
of the Admiral" at night. Isaac still sadly remem- 
bers how they visited Tom Flint at Raby, and how 
out of that party of six he alone remains. 
The Old Victory Frank ncvcr exactly alluded to his 
Jacket. growing weakness ; but it was in these 
pleasant summer days, that he promised Isaac to 
give him his Bowes jacket, whenever he died. ''All 
the boys/' as he used to say when he spoke of the be- 
quest, " ivhen they donH go for the stuff, they put oji the 
flash jacket J but I always put on the old Victory. '^ Next 



TURF WORTHIES. 65 

month when he came out of the weighing-house 
after the St. Leger, and gravely asked Isaac if he 
had ridden him quite to orders, he slapped his hand, 
on his jacket breast, and repeated the promise : 
'' You'll never breed another West" he added, " / 
never knew what he was, I only touched him ivith the 
spur once in the Derby, and I was glad to get him 
stopped." It was to Hobby Horse that he could posi- 
tively give 6st. in a rough gallop, and strangely 
enough, it was on that wretch that Frank weighed 
in for the last time on the Houghton Saturday of ^53. 
Sore as the trial was, he kept at 8st. 71bs. till this 
last afternoon, and won two matches, the second of 
them on Ariosto against his old opponent Nat. 

Acrobat had been his Derby delight ^^st days of 
ever since he got off him after the Frank. 
Doncaster TAVO-Year-Old Stakes, with a prophecy in 
his mouth, and Dervish was his abhorrence; but he 
never saw them put together with Boiardo, at three 
Two years old. He was at the Ditch Stables on the 
Thousand Day, just about a stone over weight, 
and led Sim on Boiardo their canter; and he took 
his saddle down to Goodwood that July in the 
hope of meeting The West once more, and getting 
upon him at exercise. His first master. Colonel 
Anson, lingered before going out to India just to 
see The West win at Doncaster, and he had arranged 
to meet John Scott when it was over, near the 
Rubbing House, that they might say good-by. Both 
had, however, a melancholv consciousness that thev 
should never see each other again, and when John 
did not trust himself to come, the other knew " the 
reason why," and with the kindest of farewell letters 
they parted. Jockey and master died almost to- 
gether, the one in his tent at Poonah, on Ellington's 
Derby day ; and when we pass by that low St. Mar- 
garet's church wall, and glance over the " P. C. 
1842" stone of little Conolly, and the grave of 

F 



66 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

cillery Will Beresford beside him, towards the rail- 
ings in the Nunnery corner, we may well think of 
the glorious time of Whitewall, and Frank in the 
'^ all white/^ and trust that, like his old master, he 
sleeps well. 

Mr. Theobald, of Mr. Thcobald, of Stockwell, was one 
stockweu. q£ ^|^^ most remarkable of the Southern 
patriarchs. The manor house still defies change, 
and his valued factotum John Lowry lives hard-by, 
in the public line, cherishing both on his walls and 
in his heart every fresh triumph of the Pocahontas 
blood ; but an Angel Town of brick and mortar is 
built upon the site of the paddocks where she was 
wont to roam, with seventy or eighty brood mares 
in the season. The old gentleman swore by 
Whalebone, Whisker, and Orville ; and Camel of the 
Whalebone and Selim blood, whom he- bought from 
Lord Egremont, held the undistui^bed premiership 
of his stud. This horse was as good as 
an <£800 annuity for some seasons after 
Touchstone had brought him out, and Caravan, 
Wapiti, and Callisto carried on the game. When the 
Americans arrived and bid Mr. Theobald 5,000 gs., 
he "gave a verdict without turning round in the 
box.^^ In fact, he did not even allow Lowry time 
to strip the brown, before he refused the offer. 
The horse was then rising seventeen, and he lived 
for six seasons more. Nothing delighted the old 
man more than to stroll into the paddock, with 
General Wemyss and Bransby Cooper, to visit my 
"bit of Whalebone,^^ and his fairy genius the white 
Mr Bracsb ^'^^^i^' ^T. Coopcr uscd invariably to 
Cooper's opin- visit Stockwcll ou a Suuday, and Camel 
im. ^^g always stripped as a relish before 
dinner. The great surgeon always maintained that he 
never looked over a more powerful piece of anatomy. 
His gaskins were enormous, and his leverage and 
mettle so great, that when Lowry lunged him, he could 



TURF WORTHIES. 67 

leap mid air almost to the last, to tlie full extent of 
a cave9on-rein. Mr. Theobald used to tell how 
Banter came there from Moor Park in the shape of 
a low lengthy mare of fifteen-two, but she was on a 
■visit to Peter Lely when her first fruits appeared 
in the frail-looking foal Touchstone. 

Camel, Smolensko, and the little other sires at 
thirteen-hand racing pony Mat-o^-the- stockweii. 
Mint were buried in that paddock along with Laurel, 
Cydnus, Norfolk Phenomenon, and the rest, but 
there were no tablets. " That would have touched 
the old gentleman up,^^ and there was not even a 
tree to mark them. He had another bit of Whale- 
bone in the grey Exquisite, the second to Frederick in 
the Derby, and the subject of Old Forth^s bet about 
placing two ; but he served only a few hack mares, and 
that was also the line, though in a more eminent 
degree, of the short, thick-set Caccia Piatti by 
Whisker. Cydnus, who beat Serab, was a chesnut 
by Quiz, and good for long distances in his day, and 
for half-breds in his decline; and even old Flibberti- 
gibbet, a blind chesnut by Comus from a Selim 
mare, was added to his collection from Jemmy 
Messer^s of Welwyn. Tarrare by Catton was a great 
strapping sire for job horses, after his mud tour with 
Tommy Nicholson at Doncaster -, but " the coarse 
and larky coach-horse '' Laurel, who had under the 
same guidance avenged himself on both Matilda and 
Mameluke, and put Long waist, Medora, Purity, and 
Mulatto to shame in the greatest of his eight cup 
victories, never made or had much chance of making 
himself a name at Stockweii, or any where else. 
The big, leggy Muley Moloch found a quiet refuge 
here, when he was compelled to abdicate in favour 
of Lanercost at Walm Gate Bar Without, and held 
it till the old gentleman died. Rockingham, Cal- 
muck, Belgrade, and The Baron were also in resi- 
dence ; Sorella was rtither a favourite purchase ; and 

F 2 



68 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Pocahontas came in the course of a city transaction 
from Mr. Greatrex. 

His love of being Mr. TheobaM^s highest ambition was 
in the fashion, j^q havc the bcst of everything^ cost 
what it might. Mat-o'-the-Mint was the result of 
this feeling, and so was a dun trotting mare. He 
also owned Rochester, who did the five miles on the 
Bourne Bridge Boad in 15 minutes 38 seconds^ 
against the Squire^s hunting-looking Battler; and 
Macdonald never handled anything much better 
than his Bockingham, who, with his shaggy mane 
and low-set tail, reminded bystanders more of a lion 
than a horse. In short, the Squire of Stockw^ll 
carried out the fashion of the day in everything, and 
pushed it to the very extreme. Cost what it might, he 
would be in the front. Sometimes his harness was 
smothered in brass, and then plated would come up 
once more, and he had the best of that. All his 
bacon was cured on the premises^ and he defied 
Yorkshire or Cumberland to beat it. He brewed 
ale, which he was readv to match for a hundred 
a-side against the Sledmere or Trinity College audit ; 
and yet amid all this rivalry with the great, " he 
ne^er forgot the small,^^ and kept four or five cows 
specially for the poor's milk. 

At one time he dressed like the Prince 

His dress & dogs, -r, . -, ■, n -n \ • t t • i 

Begent, and he nnally subsided into 
buckskins, brown- tojjs, blue-coat, with gilt-buttons, 
buff-waistcoat, white handkerchief, and a broad-brim- 
med hat. His weight was about twenty stone. He 
breakfasted regularly at half-past ten in his little 
parlour, whose walls James Ward, R.A., and Her- 
ring had covered with their racers and trotters. The 
blood-hound lay blinking on the rug, and quietly 
waiting for his share of the plate with those mysteri- 
ous eleven slices of thick bread and butter, which the 
housekeeper placed each morning at her master's 
side. Before starting for town, the old man made 



TURF WORTHIES. 69 

it a rule of life to walk to the wicket-gate where 
five cats and as many more dogs were duly in 
waiting, but they learnt to know by the church 
bells that they had to look out for Sunday^s 
breakfast elsewhere. A yellow " pill-box^-' always 
took him to his place of business in Skinner- 
street, and a roan, brown, or chesnut, ^ 

1 n 1 11 i ctr\r\ • Ti'ap horses. 

each of them worth about 200 guineas 
at the very least, was between the shafts. The pace 
was always first-class, and his man returned for him 
in the afternoon with a fresh horse. After dinner, 
if he was alone, John Lowry appeared, and read 
The Advertise?', beginning, of course, with the rac- 
ing and '' Vates.^^ On Saturday ni^ht ^ . , ^ 

^o ^4/0 Trips to L/Oncas- 

his master would sometimes produce ter and New- 
a roll of bank-notes, and be oflP betimes ™^^ ^ ' 
in the yellow chariot, with John on the box, to New- 
market for the week. Such was his love of pace, 
that he would not condescend to divide the Don- 
caster journey into three days, as others did, but he 
dozed all the way and slept at the Bull at Witham 
Common the first night, and arrived on the second 
at his lodgings near the Betting Rooms, which he 
shared with his friends Tattersall and Peter Cloves. 
He was hearty and bulky, and had the keenest en- 
joyment of a race to the last, and it was not any 
disease of old age, but a mere casual ailment which 
laid him, at 85 ^ low in Kensal Green, nearly three 
years before Stockwell secured him his A 1 register 
among breeders. 

Eor three years before his death, Mr. TheiateMr. 
Richard or rather ''Dick'' Tattersall, Tattersaii.' 
never mounted the rostrum, and even then his 
memory had begun slightly to fail, and his son never 
left his side. It was only on this point that he showed 
signs of decay, as his general health continued good, 
and he died very suddenly (1858), at Dover, in his 
seventy "fourth year, merely from exhaustion brought 



70 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

on by the heat; and was buried on the Good- 
wood Cup day. He was a man who from his simple 
honesty and unusually straightforward^ decisive man- 
ner it was impossible to misunderstancl_, and it has 
been well said of him_, that ^' the best men liked him 
best/'' To rogues and dodgers he was a perfect 
terror^ as he spoke his mind to every one^ peer or 
groom alike_, whom he did^nt consider to be going 
straight, and always conveyed his sentiments in 
pretty unmistakable terms. If the servant or any 
other agent of the owner bid when the sale was " with- 
out reserve/^ he has been known to send the whole 
stud away, after the first horse, declaring in tones 
like the view holloa of *^ The Squire/^ "piercing 
the heavens, Boys/^ that he " would tell a liejor no 
man alive»'' 

To professional betting he had a most inveterate 
dislike, and beyond perhaps taking the odds to a 
fiver for the Derby or St. Leger, often only on the 
morning of the race, and very seldom winning, 

except in Phosphorus^ year, (when he 
ing. ^^^^^ -j^Q^ ^^ -j^^ ^^^ ^^ respect to Lord 

Berners,) he hardly risked a crown. In fact, when 
young men wrote up to him about becoming members 
of the Booms, he as often as not wrote a line in reply 
to say that betting was certain to ruin them, and 
they had, therefore, far better keep their two 
guineas in their pockets. His feelings, both on 
this and many other points, kept very large sums 
out of his ledger ; but it was the confidence of the 
public, not money, that he cared for. Still The 
Booms were an institution which hardly admitted of 
being conducted in any other than a pure matter-of- 
fact way ; and as inconvenience arose out of his scru- 
pies, he felt it best to hand over the management of 
them entirely to a committee. His opinion, like 
Bill Scott^s, was made up by his first glance at a man 
or horse, and his laconic analysis of a lot, whick 



TURF WORTHIES. 71 

seldom failed to put his audience in a roar, and tlie 
way in which he dropped on to any dodging bidders, 
or pert would-be questionists, were always grand in 
the extreme. 

His father, Mr. Edmund Tattersall, His entry on the 
died suddenly from brain fever, and he business. 
thus assumed the sole command at The Corner, when 
he was only twenty-five. For some years he did all 
the business himself, and was then joined by his 
brother Edmund, and under their joint auspices, 
and that of his son and nephew, the present part- 
ners, the firm has well held its own. A stag-hound 
difi'erence between ^' Dick ^^ and Colonel Maberley 
led to the establishment of the Baker-street Bazaar, 
but as Horace Walpole said of a certain Court 
beauty, the old spot ^^ required a vast of ruining.^^ 

His grandfather ^^ Old Tat,^^ Avho first established 

the concern, died some seventy years ago, and 

was buried near Highflyer Hall. That The yard at Tat - 

'^ family horse'^ was not foaled, and Bay tersaii's, 

Malton had just made the pace strong enough in a 

four-mile race over York to burst a blood vessel in 

King Herod^s head, when the 99 years lease of the 

place was first signed with Lord Grosvenor. Old 

Tat showed his loyalty by surmounting the pump 

cupola with a bust of the Prince Begent, modelled 

when he was only seventeen. It was lost during 

the repairs, and missing for several years, after 

being searched for high and low, and was then 

found by the merest chance among some waste 

stones in a builder^s yard and duly replaced. 

When the lease was signed, in 1766, ^^ The Five 

Eields^^ stood on the site of Belgrave Square^ 

and cows and footpads shared them. There was 

in fact nothing but fields, where partridges still 

dared to "jug," as late as 1812, between Hyde 

Park Corner and Chelsea, and back fare had to 

be paid to the ancient jarveys if they took a fare 



7'2 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

off the stones up to the present Prince's Gate. Mr. 
Eichard TattersalFs house was for many years the 
London head-quarters of the Jockey Club, who had a 
regular cook and coffee-room; an d^ all the Newmar- 
ket business was transacted at the office of the late 
Mr. Weatherby, who was in practice there as a soli- 
citor. 

Mr. Tattersaii's ^^^^' TattcTsalFs father and the Prince 
fhePHnce.'"^^' Hcgeut had been partners in the Morn- 
ing Post, and cast in £5,000 damages 
for '' a delicate Court disclosure. '' Although the 
paper passed into other hands, the royal con- 
nection with the son remained firm, and only 
once was there an interruption of good feeling on 
George Guelph's part, and then only for a few hours. 

Diffieuities with ^°^^^ Muustcr was the Hanoverian 
H.R H. about a Ambassador to the Court of St. 
challenge. Jamcs, and shared with His Majesty the 

guardianship of a certain reigning Duke. "^The 
latter felt himself aggrieved at some money matters, 
and his equerry requested Mr. Tattersall to con- 
vey a letter to the Count. Not suspecting any- 
thing, he took Wimbledon in his afternoon^s ride, 
and as the Count was not at home, he gave the letter 
to the valet. His astonishment and indignation w^ere 
most unmeasured, when The Times of the next day 
announced that a challenge had been sent to the 
Count, and that Mr. Tattersall had been the bearer 
of it. It was, of course, construed by the King 
into an insult to himself, as co-guardian; but an 
explanation soon set matters right between them, 
and it transpired that, if the letter had not met 
with such convoy, it would have been left by an 
attornev's clerk. 

His Majesty's care Whcu GeoTgc Guclph bccame King, 
^ for old chums, j^g houourably paid off every outstand- 
ing liability, and sending for Mr. Tattersall, he said to 
him, " You've known all the men Tve known in my 



TURF WORTHIES. 73 

youth ; when any of them ever get into difficulties^, 
send me word/^ And so he did most faithfully, and 
a royal cheque for all amounts from j8100 to j8500 
would arrive, whenever the out-of-elbows office was 
given. 

Mr. TattersalFs lameness began when ^^ Tattersaii as 
he was quite a boy, and was always at- ^ hunting man. 
tributed to the groom^s habit of giving him a leg up 
very roughly on to his pony. He had been limping 
for some months before his family took much notice of 
it, and even Dr. Hunter pledged his word that the 
bone was not out of the socket. Time said differently, 
but not until all cure was hopeless. Still this sad mis- 
fortune did not dwell on his mind or stand in the 
way of his hunting, a sport which he loved far be- 
yond racing ; and after Lord Derby^s grandfather 
gave up the Surrey staghounds, and Mr. Maberley 
tired, he managed them for three or four seasons. 

He was one of the most regular staggers when 
his Lordship lived at The Oaks. Jonathan Griffin, 
on his grey, came out in state, with his whips and 
prickers on their 200-guinea horses, and Lord Fitz- 
wiiliam. Sir Hed worth Williamson, the Hon. Fitzroy 
Stanhope, the Hon. George and John Coventry, 
Lord Leaconfield and his brother General Wyndham, 
and the Hon. Berkeley Craven were seldom missing 
from among the scarlets, when Smitham Bottom was 
the meet. Mr. Tattersaii was also a constant fre- 
quenter of the cover-side ; and in order to meet Earl 
Fitzwilliam^s, he would sometimes have three hacks 
posted for him, and starting as soon as his Monday^s 
sale labours were over, ride all the way to Stamford 
where he arrived in the dead of night. In consequence 
of his infirmity, he liked to have the horse on his arms, 
and hence any one who had a very hard-puller or 
rusher, at about five-and-thirty pounds, knew pretty 
generally where there was a customer for it. He 
had no purchase with one knee, and simply rode by 



74 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

balance^ steadying himself at a leap by a handle at 
the back of his saddle. If he could succeed in hav- 
ing three or four falls in a day, he was all the better 
pleased with himself; and said that he never had a 
good run without them. He quite enjoyed hearing 
those who did not know him_, exclaim as he limped 
across the held after his horsCj — " Poor fellow ! 
look how he's hurt himself 

Understanding The days whcu the white horse of 
with highwaymen. ^ leading Toad practitioncT was styled 
'^ Auld Eobin Grav" were not over, when he took 
his lonely night rides into the Midlands : but the 
highwaymen all knew him, and he rode unscathed 
among ma^sks and pistols. The pikeman near Gran- 
tham once said to him, when he was on his way to 
meet "The Duke's,-'-' ^^ DonH go on, sir; Fve had se- 
veral through to-night, and they've all been robbed J' 
^^ Never mind, my man,'' said the little hero, " no one 
ever stops 7ne," and on he went. Two miles further, 
and a masked horseman was at his side, and they rode 
silently for some two hundred yards together. At 
last there came the husky voice of the night, " / 
think your naine's Tattersall." " Tatter sail I — of 
course it is," was the reply, " Richard Tattersall all 
the world over." This was quite enough, and with 
the courteous rejoinder, " " Ah, I thought €0 ; I beg 
your pardon, sir," and a mutual " good night,'^ they 
parted. 

Sir Clement Dor- "^^ ^^^ scldom heard to tcU this- 
mer in difficui- stoiv without dwelling: in contrast upon 

ties " . ^ ■'- 

the woes of Sir Clement Dormer, who 
was Master of the Ceremonies at St. James's. Sir 
Clement was fond of riding up to London on a very 
large horse, and talked on horse matters to every one 
he saw. Coming out of Beaconsfield one day he over- 
took another horseman, " Going to toivn, sir ?" he 
began -, " Yes, Sir Clement, I am" was the reply ; 
*^ What I you knoiu me, then ? ive'll rids together." 



TURF WORTHIES. 75 

And on they went. '^ That's a very nice horse you're 
on," said Sir Clement ; " Yes he is/' said the man, 
'^ Would you like to see him go ?" They were under 
Bulstrode Park wall at the time, and the man trot- 
ted away to a turn of the road, where he could see 
half-a-mile before him. The coast was clear both 
ways, and when Sir Clement arrived full of admira- 
tion, his new friend promptly put a pistol to his 
head. There was nothing for it but to produce his 
purse, and receive the sorry consolation in exchange, 
^^ Now, Sir Clement, do let me advise you to give up that 
bad habit of talking to every one about their horse.'' 

Mr. Tattersall bore a charDied pocket in town, and 
once when it was picked of a handkerchief, remorse 
seized the appropriator, when he was proceeding to 
pick out the name, and it was " returned with compli- 
ments — taken quite by mistake.^^ One cracksman was, 
however, much less scrupulous, as he broke into the 
office and took j€500. Suspicion rather His stories of 
fell upon the too celebrated " Slender blender Biuy. 
Billy,^^ who was then a great man with the Corin- 
thians, and had cocks, badgers, rats, bears, and 
terriers, ready to go into action at any moment. 
His crib in the Willow Walk, Tothill Fields, was a 
perfect conjurors^ bottle in this respect, and if 
there was likely to be ^^ a call of the house,^^ on any 
very important occasion, he could knock up a bull- 
ring as well. The Bow Street runners were all 
terrified at him, and haunted with a legend, that 
when their august body had once girded up their 
loins for a descent upon him, Billy had vindicated 
the majesty of the spot in his peculiar way, by un- 
loosing the bears. They knew him ostensibly as a 
knacker, but it was whispered that he " was wanted^^ 
for a little aflair about the communion plate at St. 
PauFs. A still heavier suspicion hung over him, and 
" Oh I master, to think that I should go Boiling the ex- 
and boil an exciseman !" was his invari- ciseman. 



76 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

able mode of parrying the question which was so often 
propounded to him on that head. He seemed to 
look upon any allusion to it as rather a delicate 
compliment than otherwise^ and there was an im- 
pression on the mind of the executive, that the 
unhappy ganger, who could never be traced beyond, 
had visited Billyhs premises once too often, and had 
been popped bodily into the flesh copper. 
Billy's warning Under all tlicsc rumours, Billy pre- 
voice ; scrvcd a pleasing and courteous exterior, 
and in such perilous times it was prudent for virtue 
and respectability to stand in with him, just so far 
as to have his good word if they were robbed. One 
evening, a leading man was sitting down to dinner, 
when the presence of " The slender one^^ in the ser- 
vants^ hall was announced. ^^ Do ask Billy lohat he 
wants with me at this time of night,'' was the testy 
message ; but Billy refused to unbosom by proxy. 
There was nothing for it, and as it was not safe to 
aUenate Billyhs affections hj neglect, the parties met 
at once, and conversed on this wise : "TFell, Billy, 
whafs up 710W?'' " You've lost one of your fat pigs, 
master." " Yes, I have, Billy, and I'll make the fellows 
pay for it pretty sharply." " Now, look here, master, 
I'll just tell you ivhat it is ; ij you (jo on as you're 
doing, kicking up such a confounded roio, you^ll lose 
THE OTHER.^' " Well, Billy, it's a bad job ; but,per' 
haps, I'll take your advice, and say no more about it,^' 
And so Billy departed, and the bereft one became 
bacon in peace. 

Billy came to srrief and the srallows 

and his execution. , y , ^ • /» i 

at last, under the operation ot the 
Forgery Act. It was proved that he could neither 
read nor write, but that mattered very little. 
When Bow Street, stimulated to unusual energy 
by the taunts of its superior, dropped uj)on him, 
he had the flash-notes in his hand, and not only 
thrust them into the fire, but held them there. 



TURF WORTHIES. ^"K 

Haidng only his " left duke" at liberty, he could 
uot defend his hearth position long enough, and 
sufficient fragments were rescued to give the as- 
sayer his cue. Mr. Tattersall A'isited him in the 
condemned cell, and urged him to confess his asso- 
ciates, and for a few minutes he sat on his box, with 
his heavily chained hands to his face, apparently 
absorbed in thought. Then he broke out : " No, 
master, iheyHl neve7^ say that Slender Billy split on 
his pals ; if every hair in my head was alive, and had 
to be hung separate, I luoald^ntP And die he did, 
walking second in the procession of nine on to the 
Newgate Scaffold, and some would have it that Dan 
Dawson, who wore the fatal nightcap on Cam- 
bridge jail next spring, when he had cost the Jockey 
Club £1,500 to prosecute him, had stood near St. 
Sepulchre^s church that very morning, and marked 
that " Billy was game.^^ 

Parson Harvev was wont to hanj? ^ „ 

T 1 nc " 1 r\y , , th i Parson Harvey. 

about the olnce at Tattersall s on sale 
days, in his dirty white cravat and suit of rustv 
black. Mr. Tattersall would never let them wake 
him if he snored in his chair, with the butt end of a 
pound of mutton chops sticking out of his pocket. 
" Let him sleep , poor fellow I ifs a sweeter place than 
the garret in PimlicoJ' His only connection with 
the church latterly consisted in almost daily visits to 
"Westminster Abbey, to hear the anthem, and he 
rode his stallions there by turn. To avoid ostler^s 
fees, they were left at a farrier^s while he lingered 
about the nave, and one new shoe was put on at a 
time, that he might have a pretext for the conveni- 
ence as often as possible. Mr. Tattersall had always 
some fresh story about him, and if there was an odd 
anecdote about man or horse, the master of ^' The 
Corner" generally gave it first. 

He delighted to tell of the great Mr. vemon on 
racing man, Mr. Vernon, who had been long preaching. 



78 SCOTT AND SEBUIGHT. 

quite a "Waterton in his wanderings, and rode a. 
horse, which he had painted like a leopard, on his 
return. Long sermons were not to his mind. Hence 
he presented his parish church with a hollow sound- 
ing board, craftily connected by a secret string to his 
pew, and when on the first Sunday the sermon had 
reached a certain length, and showed no symptoms 
of ending, he dropped it like an extinguisher on to 
the preacher. Poachers and steel traps were alike 
his horror ; and as his notices, spring guns, and 
steel traps gradually became stale, he wrote up in 
three-inch letters : " Every one found trespassing 
on these grounds shall be spiffiicated,'' and the 
menace of such unknown torture was effectual at 
last. 

Coaching, dogs, Driving the Peterbro^ coach was 
and fists, great fancy of Mr. TattersalFs, and he 
was quite as au fait at road language as John 
Warde, who invariably worked the Hungerford coach 
up, on his non-hunting days. Still he always confessed 
himself to be quite in shadow, when he told how 
the master of the Craven had admonished a " box 
seat,^"* who wore immensely high collars, in lan- 
guage more graphic than polite, of the iiltimate 
injury he might inflict on his health. Dogs he 
was exceedingly fond of, and the best one he ever 
had, wandered into his yard by accident. The 
groom misunderstood the extent of his orders to 
'^ give the poor wretch something to eat,^^ and 
kept it for two months. There was then nothing 
for it: but to be put through the mill, and by way 
of trying high enough, it was tumbled bodily into 
a tub with two badgers, A tremendous scuffle of 
five minutes was followed by an ominous lull ; but 
the dog had won the day most decisively, and 
nothing would face it for 100 guineas a-side. Once 
it was challenged by its old owner in Piccadilly, but 
as it would let no one but Mr. Tattersall touch it. 



TURF WORTHIES. 79 

the offers to '^ take Mm, if you can/' — was a perfectly 
safe one. 

It never left its adopted master^s 

. -i • 1 ' 11 1 "•iii? 1 • Theatre rows. 

Side m his walks, and waited ior him 
outside the theatres. It was well that it did 
not penetrate further, or it would have taken 
a most dangerous part in some of the light skir- 
mishes, which came off there almost nightly. 
There were no police to keep disorderlies in check, 
and numerous ^^ little difficulties '^ were arranged 
by fists in the lobby. Mr. Tattersall, who was 
immensely powerful, and had enjoyed many a pri- 
vate glove bout with Jackson in the old betting 
Tooms, was not unfrequently engaged, and the box- 
keeper would seize up a bench, and run to him, in 
order that by seating himself, and daring his man 
to sit opposite him, and fight it out, he might never 
be at a discount. Sir Tatton promptly offered to 
act for him when the foe, who had been very offen- 
sive, seemed far above his weight, in the Doncaster 
theatre, but his blood was up, and he would'nt hear 
of it. 

The great John "Warde was one of Mr. tj^q i^te John 
Tattersall^s most intimate friends, and warde. 
Monday after Monday his portly form would be seen 
at dinner there, facing Col. Dan Mackinnon. The 
room was in keeping with the company. Highflyer 
and " old Tat'^ looked do\vn on them from its walls, 
and so did Warrior, Tandem, and Mambrino, and 
^^ Dick^' himself on the bay Bonaparte, with his little 
white terrier at his side, going as if the dickens 
kicked them, across Surrey. This Monday feast 
commenced before his father died, and the old man, 
who said that hunting talk was hardly in his line, 
gave up his room for the day, and " left the boys to 
themselves.^^ At these times the Doncaster Cup, of 
the two horse-handles, won by Crookshanks in 1781, 
always held the punch. The pipe of port, which the 



80 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

host and his brother Edmund laid down annually 
between them from Harmer^s^ had also a heavy tax 
laid on it, as each man had to drink John Warde 
and the Noble Science, in a silver fox -head, which 
held nearly a pint, and admitted of no heel taps. 
None stood the process better than ^^ glorious- 
John^^ himself, and he would rise from the table 
as steady as a rock, and never leave till he had 
gone up to the drawing-room, in the short hours, to 
bid Mrs. Tattersall good-by. 

Mr. Tattersaii's Tlic Derby dinner, which was held late 
Derby dinner, {^i tlic wcek beforc Epsom, would liave 
seemed as nothing without him to represent fox- 
hunting, and true as the dial to the sun, he would, 
a few minutes before six, issue from his yellow cha- 
riot, in his silver knee and shoe buckles. His ser- 
vants wore that same style of low-crowned hat, 
which the Blue Ruin and Betsy picture has immor- 
talized, and their brown coats were edged with silver 
braid. A large cold game pie held its pride of place 
at the feast, and the host especially plumed himself 
on the Rhenish hock, which his foreign friends sent 
him. The venison was from Goodwood, where he 
was often a guest during the races, and the present 
Duke and Lord Stradbroke were at his last festival. 
With his brother, and latterly his son Richard, to face 
him, no host held his party together better, or told 
such old-fashioned stories from behind his stiff white 
choker, and it was only when his memory began to 
fail him, and his jokes would not come out quite so 
crisp and neat as of yore, that he reluctantly gave it 
up. 

Death has been busy with host and 
rst gues s. g-^^^g^g siucc Johu Wardc^s place knew 

him no more, and the Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope is the 
sole survivor of " the old lot.^^ Kit Wilson, the Fa- 
ther of the Turf, Jack Musters, and the florid Duke 
of Holstein, — who bought the Duke of York^s mares. 



TURF WORTHIES. 81 

and loved a field-day among the badgers in the Eive 
Fields Pit, — all dined there once, and adjourned to 
a ball at Carlton House in the evening. There, 
too, came Ormsby Gore, the master of Hesperus, 
'^ Plenipo Batson^^ from Gogmagog, and Captain 
Meynell, who won the Derby Club Cup for his host, 
with a cocktail, when thev were confederates in ^16. 
Val Kingston, a wine merchant, who had a share of 
his Ruby and Ratcatcher, never failed to show ; nor 
did the hapless Berkeley Craven, whose Oaks book 
would have brought back more than the amount for 
which his Derby one beat him. Bedfordshire sent 
her best Nimrod, Sam Ongley, to face John Warde, 
and those who had 

" Seen him at the time, 
When Melon glittered in his prime ; 
And one by one the scattered train 
Came up to question or explain," — 

dare not dispute the title. The stately Charles 
Youlig, with his fine baritone voice, was another, 
and the evening never passed without a call on 
him for " The Old English Gentleman.^' Years 
after he was gone, two rival authors quarrelled 
about this song, and Mr. Fitzroy Stanhope knocked 
them both out of the betting, by stating that he 
had heard his friend Charles sing it almost before 
they were born. 

Young was a beautiful foil for his Humours of Chas. 

vivacious friend Charles Mathews, who Mathews, sen. 
always had a bet on the Derby, and was never more 
'' At Home" than at his friend Tat^s house. He 
would mimic his selling manner to the life, and 
his " Take Care!'' was absolute^ tremendous. 
Another of his annual encores was in the story of 
the foreigner, who went to purchase blood-stock 
at Newmarket, and utterly confounded the trainer 
by asking " What 2/ears he has ?'^ If he was in 



82 SCOTT AN1> SEBRIGHT. 

his best form, lie would go behind the cur- 
tain_, and come out quite a different man, just as 
when he dined with a rich pawnbroker, and slip- 
ping out of the room unobserved, appeared in 
the shop below, and pawned him his own knives 
Drawing the ^ud forks. In thc Derby Lottery of 
Derby Lottery. |.]^g evcuing, he was, of coursc, Mr. 

TattersalFs deputy. The stakes were two sovereigns 
each, and of the eighteen or twenty subscribers one 
always took the field. The lots were placed in a 
claret-cup, and drawn after dinner, and those who 
did not like their horse^s chance, or wanted to hedge, 
had it put up for sale. Mathews knew his Calen- 
dar and Corner quotations right well, and could di- 
late to any extent on the merits of a favourite, which 
he sometimes sold as high as o€20. " Some say 
Glaucus, some Forester, and others Whale, but I 
say that Astra — can win the Derby,^^ was one of his 
neatest hits in 1833. 

Frightening the ^^^^ ^^^^^7 frightened a post-boy out 
chesterford post of liis wits, whcu he accompauicd Mr. 
°^* Tattersall and his son Kichard to New- 

market. They had dined at Chesterford (whose old 
waiter never wore a hat except when he came to Lon- 
don to receive his half-yearly diiddends), and had got 
about a mile on the road, when Mathews put his 
head out of the window, and imitated the cry of a 
child which had been run over.. The post-boy pulled 
up with a jerk, but being very short and hump-backed, 
he was unable to get off, and had to run along the 
pole, and so to earth by the splinter-bar. Once 
there, he groped about hopelessly in the dark, for 
the sufferer, till Mr. Tattersall ordered him to 
ascend once more. Beyond Bourne Bridge, the 
screams were again heard, and descending still 
more swiftly, he was not content this time with 
crawling under the carriage to make sure that he 
had not committed infanticide, but drew the neigh- 



TURF WORTHIES. 83 

"bouring hedges blank as well. Again the same 
agonizing scream startled the night ; but the little 
man could bear it no longer, and going at his horses, 
hand and heel, he raced them past Six-mile Bottom, 
roaring that he would stop for no one, and that there 
was " something evil in the chaise.^^ 

As a breeder of blood stock, Mr. Tat- ,, rr ** 

. ■' ^ Mr. Tattersall as 

tersali was not particularly successiul. a breeder of wood 

" stock 

He always sold when he could, and his 
foreign customers cleared him out so often, that 
his brood mares and yearlings were but little tested. 
It seemed his duty to keep the thing going, and as he 
quaintly told a committee of the House of Commons, 
with a low bow, he" did not wish to see an end of horse 
racing and your humble servant.^^ He bought The 
Colonel out of pure loyalty at the Hampton Court 
sale, because he did not consider that France ought 
to have him so cheap ; but neither he nor Glaucus, 
nor Ratcatcher (a very great favourite) did much for 
him. Charles XII., Sir Hercules, and Harkaway 
were also hired by him to stand at Dawley or Willes- 
den, and the chesnut was the last horse of renown 
that he sold at Doncaster. The " race Sunday^^ there 
never quite looked itself, unless Mr. Tattersall ap- 
peared in his wonted seat of honour at old St. 
George^ s, making the responses in a deep, sonorous 
voice, along with the Marquis of Westminster (who 
seldom quitted the borough all September), from 
the front row of the Corporation pew. Scarcely an 
alderman or common councillor was absent from the 
rear of the mace that day ; and never did men look 
so important as they marched down Baxter Gate in 
procession. 

His collection of horse portraits, Mr. Tattersaii's 
which is far the largest in England, was scrap book, 
Mr. TattersalFs great delight, and each member of 
that congress of cracks, lies like a veiled prophet 
under silver paper, with its performances written out 

G 2 



84 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

by the collector himself, in small round -hand. 
Lord Lonsdale's collection merged in it, and it goes 
back to Sedbury, 1734, who was " for justness of 
shape the most beautiful/^ Stubbs begins in 1768, 
with Mambrino, of the lofty style, and the forefather 
of some of the best American trotters. FiretaiPs 
head is a remarkable specimen ; and in Jupiter we 
have the softer line of Gilpin, about 1790, and again 
in Sir Peter Teazle. According to the picture of 
Orville and Selim, they must have been giraffes of 
a trifle under nineteen hands, and their painter need 
hardly have made such a point of drinking " The 
Arts,^^ as the last toast wherever he dined. Highflyer^s 
113 winners stand, in rows of nine, opposite him, 
and close by the original deed of conveyance 
which Lord Bolingbroke, literally sealed with his 
thumb. The new era of steel engraving seems 
to dawn with Ben Marshall, and Haphazard. Quiz 
(1808) is remarkable for its curious Newmarket 
back ground, in which the Duke^s Stand, a heavy- 
sterned jockey, a soldier, and a man with a wooden 
leg, have not been forgotten; and Rubens, after 
Barenger, and supposed to be in training, is as fat as 
a Dutch vrow. 
James Ward, The latc Mr. Jamcs Ward, B.A,, is 
R.A. y^Qii represented in that strange turf 
missal. He was related by marriage to Morland, 
and took to the same line of art, with such success 
as to become quite the first animal painter of the 
early part of the century. " He showed,^^ as an 
eminent critic writes us, " wonderful facility in the 
management of white animals, particularly bulls ; 
and painted the skins of his horses most delightfully^ 
and his Earl Powis's Arabian and portrait of a 
Hunter, exhibited in the Boyal Academy about 1818, 
are marvellous both in colour and execution. Unfor-- 
tunately he did not let well alone, but began to study 
Bubens ; and in all his after-backgrounds there were 



TURF WORTHIES. 85 

the heavy blues and purples so conspicuous in 
that great master^s works, but which were quite out 
of place in the portrait of a horse or other animal. 
Instead of continuing his beautiful skins, he now 
sought to give more texture, and consequently ex- 
changed the satin for the door-mat. He was, it has 
been considered, a good anatomist ; but now he 
made a bad use of his knowledge, for some of his 
horses looked as if they were skinned. Arabians 
and thorough -breds show this to a great extent, but 
never as drawn by him. This he called '^ giving 
€haracter •/' but he forgot that, by adopting crooked 
lines where they should be straight, in many in- 
stances he introduced that which gave the appear- 
ance of disease — i. e., curbs, thorough-pins, spavins, 
splints, and ringbones. He also introduced so many 
lines and veins into his horses^ heads, and more par- 
ticularly into the eyes and nostrils, that, instead of 
producing the effect he intended to express, they 
quite looked as if they were laughing. His " Doctor 
Syntax" has some strange drawing in the under-lip, 
and also in the hind-legs : but his '^ Phantom^^ is 
better.'' 

Mr. Ferneley's father was a wheel- 
wright at Thrussington (where the future ^' ^^'^^ ^^* 
painter was born on the 18th of May, 1782), and 
obliged him to follow that trade until he was twenty- 
one. He had, however, chosen his own line long 
before that ; and every leisure moment was spent in 
preparing his colours and canvas, and copying pic- 
tures lent him by a gentleman in the neighbourhood. 
His father soon found that it was no use contesting 
the point, and, accordingly, sent him, in 1803, to 
study under Ben Marshall, the great horse-painter 
of that day. After a year's tuition from his brilliant 
but lazy tutor, he started to seek his fortune in Ire- 
land. In 1806 he turned up at Quorn, about the 
time when Mr. Assheton Smith bought the hounds; 



86 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and achieved, as it were, his Leicestershire diploma, 
by painting some hunting pictures for " Le grand 
Chasseur, '' beginning with little Will Burton and 
Manager. The next three years were spent between 
England and Ireland. He then retraced his steps 
to Thrussington, and was married ; and 1814 found 
him regularly settled at Melton Mowbray, where he 
painted two generations of Leicestershire hard 
riders and stable beauties, and received a very ex- 
tensive patronage from other hunts. His works 
since that date amount to some hundreds, several of 
them of a very large size. Among the earliest of 
them was " Mr. Assheton Smith and his Hounds,^^ 
for the Earl of Plvmouth. He seldom recurred to 
this picture without telling how one day, when he 
strolled out as a lad to the meet, the Leicestershire 
hunting-field first became cognizant of Mr. Smithes 
existence by seeing a young man (of whom nothing 
more was then known, except that he was a guest at 
Belvoir) put his chesnut, Jack-a-Lantern, eight or 
nine times at a flight of rails, before he could get him 
over. 
Principal pic- ^lic latc Marquis of Westminster, Mr. 
tures. Eoljambe, Mr. Uussell, of Brancepeth 
Castle; the Earl of Kintore, Mr. Ralph Lambton, 
and Sir Bellingham Graham were also among his 
large hunting-picture, patrons; and the latter se- 
lected as his subject ^' The Meet at Kirby Gate." 
One also adorned the lobby of the late Master of the 
Hurworth; and Mr. Crawfurd, of Langton Hall, has 
a large " Scurry" from his hand, with portraits of Sir 
Harry Goodricke, Mr. Osbaldeston, and Sir Francis 
Holyoake. The study for these three was a very 
favourite one, and hung in his studio, like a sacred 
relic of the good old times, as long as the little, en- 
feebled form of the hoary devotee to art could bend 
over the easel. There, too, was another and a 
smaller " Scurry" of modern scarlets, which Earl 



TURF WORTHIES. 87 

Wilton won in a raffle ; a half-finislied picture of Sir 
Harry Goodricke^ with Mumford and his whips. 
Will Derry and Beers at the Whaw-Hoop ; and a 
sort of caricature of hard ridings in which Sir Fran- 
cis HolyoakC;, on his white-legged chesnut Brilliant, 
is trying to catch the fox, and within an ace of 
succeeding. ^' Silver Firs^^ was also a well-known 
shooting-picture of his, and the Duke of Rutland had 
many hunters from his hand. Miss Burdett Coutts 
honoured him, as well, with an order for an eques- 
trian portrait of her late father ; and his last profes- 
sional journey was undertaken in company with his 
daughter, to paint some hunters for Lord Middleton, 
in Yorkshire. Bacehorses were less in his line ; but 
a commission from Lord Jersey included Filagree and 
Cobweb, with their foals ; and Velocipede, and The 
Cur (for Mr. Craufurd) are among his Turf memo- 
rials. 

He was a man of unwearied industry ^^.^ ^^^^.^^ 
and perseverance; and, although he 
had been a great invalid for the last two years, he 
never gave up his habit of early rising till a very 
short time before his death. However sleepless and 
painful the night might have been, it seemed a relief 
to him to be back, with the morning light, in his 
studio. Every June found him up in London for 
his annual visit to the exhibitions ; and, if we remem- 
ber rightly, his last sketching expedition was into 
the Vale of Belvoir ; and he showed us the stable- 
interiors he had gathered in that quarter with par- 
ticular delight, from some connexion they had with 
the hunting days of Mr. Musters. Amongst his 
latest works were two very large ones of ^' The Horse 
Fair" and The* ^Cattle Market,^^ containing portraits 
of celebrated horses and horse-characters in the neigh- 
bourhood. The chase was, after all, his great /or^e. 
He loved it best ; and hence he painted it best ; and 
his pictures were real bits of Cream Gorse memory. 



88 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

In his plain groups of horses there was more 
mannerism, and his outline and shadows were often 
rather too hard; but although he lacked any very- 
remarkable finish, there were the higher qualities 
of feeling and breadth about everything he handled. 
Beyond what they were doing at Belvoir, the hunt- 
ing of the present had but little interest for him. 
He sighed for the old regime when " George the 
Fourth was king/' and when Moore, Maxse, and 
Maher were names of Melton renown. 

" Him go vip, vip, vip I Vot he know about horses ?'' 
„ said a iealous old artist, when Herrine;, 

Visit to Mr Her- " "' 

ring at Meop- the wcU-knowu coachmau of the Lon- 
**^™* don and York Highflyer, had thrown 

aside the reins in Jack Spigot^s year, and fairly cast 
in his lot with the mahl-stick. We thought of the 
saying, as, under the guidance of '' Sailor Jack,-'^ 
another of the North Road men who had followed 
Mr. Herring^s fortunes, and now looks after his 
Arabs, we bowled over the three miles from Ton- 
bridge to Meopham Park. Even in the tender sun- 
shine of a May morning, the hop-fields with their 
countless wigwams of poles wore a very dreary air, and 
made us long for the autumn, when their rich green 
clusters will once more claim to be Barley Brides. 
The carriage- drive shaded by oaks with large fan- 
tastic arms, which would have made Parson Gilpin 
of the New Forest gaze for a moment and then rush 
for relief to his pencil, is kept in faultless " Quick- 
silver mail order,^^ as a memento of the old whip 
davs. 

Scarcely a wheel has touched it since Charles 
Herring was borne over it, six years since, to his grave, 
and it is really sacred to his memory. And well it 
may be, as a better son or a more skilful lover of art 
for his years never passed to his rest. 

White and red rosebuds just bursting into bloom, 
clustered round the verandah, and from it the 




Mr J- F. Herring, p. 89. 



TURF WORTHIES. 89 

outline of the pleasant woods of Penshurst, which 

" Heard tlie sound of Sydney's song, 
Perchance of Surrey's reed," 

was just visible in the drowsy distance. Partridges 
were feeding on the lawn^ and scarcely caring 
to rise on the wing, or run behind the purple beech 
at your approach ; and the deep coo of the wood- 
pigeons as they perched on the Scotch and silver 
firs, which towered above the thickly interlaced 
grove of holly and laburnum,, so vocal with its song 
of spring, was all in harmony with a painter^s 
home. 

Jack, the thirty-seven inch pony, is Horse & donkey 
nearly as free to range, and he mounted models. 
the steps of the front-door and walked gravely into 
the room, in search of his ginger-bread, or to enquire 
if he was wanted for the basket that day. Favourite 
as he is, we did not meet with him on canvas, and 
in this respect he differs widely from the white Arab 
Imaum, of which the story goes that he has not 
been seen to lie down for at least eight years. He 
sleeps leaning against his stall, and like the oldest 
Alderney, and the donkey which runs unicorn in the 
bush-harrow and roller team, and wins half the sad- 
dles in the neighbourhood when so disposed, he is 
on canvas all the world over, in nearly a hundred 
positions. Sometimes an Ironside stables him in a 
cathedral nave, or he waits for some boisterous 
cavalier, hard bv an ale-house bench. 

He was one of the four first horses 

.1 , , 1 ii T The Arab Imaum. 

that was ever sent over by the Imaum 
of Muscat to Her Majesty; and was made a pre- 
sent to the Clerk of the Kcyal Stable, who sold him 
at Tattersall's. When it became necessary to have 
a model for the dead horses, which Mr. Herring was 
to have introduced into the Battle of Waterloo at the 
Gallery of Illustrations he sent for Pedro, a black man 



90 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

from Batty^s Circus^ and had him taught to lie down. 
With a few lessons he became so complete a trick 
horse, that Pedro declared he wanted nothing but 
youth to beat the Bedas, and the other time-honoured 
pets of the horse ballet, quite out of the field. He 
looks peaky and worn now, and his tricks have rather 
departed from him ; but in his prime, Mr. Herring 
was followed by a gentleman into a yard in Picca- 
dilly, and had 200 guineas bid for him there and 
then. In spite of the prejudice against Arabs, he 
was wonderfully stout, and when his master drove 
him from Camberwell to Stevenage and back, about 
75 miles in one day, to paint The Switcher and other 
^^ Steeple-Chase Cracks'^ for Lord Strathmore, he was 
fresher than the English black, who was in the 
phaeton with him, and who had never shirked his 
work by comparison before. Her Majesty hearing 
of Mr. Herring^s severe asthma, which has for some 
time past quite disabled him from leaving home, 
sent down three of her horses for him to paint. 
They included Korseed (^ white Arab), Bagdad, a 
black charger of the late Prince Albert^s, and Said, 
the Arab on which Mr. Meyer has instructed the 
royal children. The latter is among the Osborne 
collection, with a back-ground of white sand and 
Arab tents, in the composition of which, his friend 
Mr. D. Boberts, B.A., gave Mr. Herring the advan- 
tage of all his Eastern lore. ~ 

The painting-room almost adjoins the stable, but 
it has been but little used since his son^s death. A 
model of a coach in a case rests upon some packing- 
boxes, and the original sketch for the picture which 
he took of the beautiful Attila, just before he went 
abroad, is the only tenant of the easel ; but the 
sketch, like that fatal journey, was never com- 
pleted. 

Mr. Herring himself is about sixty-seven, or just 
the mean in age between his old friends John and 



TURr WORTHIES. 91 

Mr. Herring's William Scott. Doncaster and its TowD. 
first efforts. jVJoor associatioiis naturally whetted Ms 
zeal for tlie brusli_, long before he took to it as a 
profession, and many a little horse or mail-coach 
sketch by him crept on to the tavern walls, and the 
signs. His earliest anatomy study was the fractured 
leg of Spartan, one of whose small bones near the 
pastern was completely pulverized by his break 
down ; and Smolensko and Comus were the racers 
on which his ^' prentice han" was tried. 
A gigantic " Horse Fair" adorns the 
lobby, which is, as Mr. Herring^s pic- ^ ^^^su jects. 
tures so invariably are, *^* all daylight.^-' The mail is 
again in requisition, following in the wake of a gig, 
whose horse .trots right out of the picture, and 
whose driver casts a glance at the troops of nags and 
stallions, which are dispersing to their stalls when 
business is over. All kinds have mustered there, 
and the supply of ginger-nuts and ginger in the raw 
has been of course unlimited. Then we get among 
the Eight Day- Waggons and a pair of the blue 
jacket and white hat line, stopping foi* refreshment 
at one of the old road-side inns near the orthodox 
trough and tree. Wood-piling and hop -picking are 
not forgotten. It seems that there is a family in the 
neighbourhood, who especially pride themselves on 
the accomplishment ; and accordingly, at half-past 
six, one summer morning, Mr. Herring sallied out, 
and caught them by appointment, just at the most 
picturesque crisis, when the timber is slung aloft, 
and the truck is being backed under it. In the other, 
the artist in a straw-hat, with a black ribbon and 
mahogany tops, plays '^ Farmer Oldfield,^^ and does 
not look, as he gazes complacently at the fast-filling 
bins, as if the iron of Gladstone was piercing his 
soul so acutely. The jaunty ribbons and tunics of 
the hop-pickers blend very prettily with the green 
avenues which they are so ruthlessly rifling, and the 



93 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

farmer^s daughter with her bonnet carelessly tossed 
back is taking the tally as the widow brings up her 
bin to be measured. 
Interior of bis Mr. Hcrriug now paints in his dining- 
studio. room, which is hung all round with 
prints from his works, of which '^ Distinguished 
Members of the Temperance Society" is the premier. 
It is there that he loves to grapple with the Giant 
Foreshortening, who has given the cross-buttock 
to so many, and flings him in picture after picture. 
Leading lines have always bqen his great guide for 
perspective, and he invariably works from left to 
right. His great racing pictures have generally been 
got by the aid of a sketch-book, with ideal horses and 
jockeys, which a few strokes from life at the post 
converted into portraits. Of Vision he had no sight 
at all, but sketched her, years after her death, merely 
from the description of Will Beresford, who pro- 
nounced the likeness perfect. All the elder heroes 
caught our eye, as we turned from a gigantic* Dutch- 
man galloping, and scanned the oil treasures of his 
portfolio. Sultan was there, with his beautiful Arab 
, head and dish nose, not more beautiful, 

Kecollections of , ,. . , . ' 

his " Book of but more masculine m its expression 
Beauty. than Attila^s. Langar's was another of 

the glorious heads, and so was Dr. Syntax''s, Mame- 
luke^s. Partisan's, and Venison's, with his deep jowl 
and tapering nose. Mr. Herring considers that the 
coarsest thorough-bred horse he ever painted was 
Ardrossan, the sire of Jack Spigot (the first of his 
St. Leger winning series), as his neck was really 
heavier than even Stabbs's sketch of the Go- 
dolphin Arabian ; and Welbeck the sire of the 

* Apropos of this picture, Mr. Herring told a landlord of an inn, 
tlie sign of wliicli was a half moori, that if he would get his licence 
altered to The Flying Dutchman, he would make him a present of a 
new sign, which Boniface considering too good for a sign, never hung 
outside, and refused a veiy long sum for, although painted on the 
Half Moon wood. 



TURF WORTHIES. 93 

neat little Bedlamite ranks nearly as high in his list 
of the Ugly Club. Mr. Lambton^s Don Juan by 
Orville, who wrought wonders among the Cleveland 
mares, was quite one of his delights, and so 
were Magistrate, and Filho da Put a ; while The 
Duchess (who always ran in high company) 
was his prima donna among the small, and Cruci- 
fix and Queen of Trumps among the larger-sized 
mares. 

We traced in a pictured line the Painting Bay 
Cotherstone pedigree on both sides, till Middieton. 
the Whalebone and Whisker strains united ; and in 
essaying The Dutchman's, we came across the original 
sketch of Bay Middieton, just as it was left about a 
quarter of a century ago. It occupied only 1 hour 
10 min., but it looks like the work of a day. No 
horse impressed Mr. Herring more firmly than 
this son of Sultan with the belief that he had the heart 
and the muscular energy to do what he liked with his 
fields. " George Villiers^' too stood by the easel, 
watching every stroke as it was dashed in; and never 
had painter a higher stimulus to bring all his man- 
hood to his hand. 

If we Avant to sketch an enthusiast 

r^ , ' , 1 , ^ Baron Petroflfski. 

among Contmental sportsmen, we need 
only turn for a space to the BomanoJff dominions 
and its Baron Ippolyte PetroflPski. The Baron, who 
is better known in the thirty-six-letter alphabet 
of his country as " Ummoiuml Nemjsobevez,'' re- 
sides at Petroffski Park, a short distance out of Mos- 
cow. The house is a two-storied one, built in the 
oriental style, among beautiful gardens, and with a 
large set of stables attached. These are, after all, 
merely his head- quarters during the season of ice 
and snow, and hardly furnish any index to the mag- 
nitude of his possessions, which consist of three large 
estates in the interior. On each of them he keeps 
nearly a thousand serfs ; but his sway is not of a 
Tery iron kind, and those who are not engaged in 



94) SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

agriculture are all brought up to some trade. Every- 
thing necessary for himself and this huge family 
is produced on his own estates^ from sheep-skins 
down to his renowned kish-le-shee, a species of 
mead of an aromatic rose flavour, and compounded 
from apple juice, honey, and flour and water. 
Hisioveofs ort Sixty-fivc summcrs have done very 
little towards blanching his hair or dim- 
ming his sharp hazel eyes, and he still carries his light 
wiry frame erect, as beseems a captain of the Im- 
perial Guard. No one who has visited him can for- 
get that quiet, courteous bearing, or the delight 
with which he speaks of everything English. Sir 
Joseph Hawley and John Scott are breathing types 
to his imagination of everything ^cute in connection 
with horse management ; and if a Witch of Endor 
gave him his choice as to what spirit among the 
departed thoroughbreds he should recall from the 
Happy Pastures to his delighted gaze for a season, 
he would decide for old Waxy or Orville. His fowls, 
"^heep, pigs, and dogs (not forgetting the favourite 
iblack terrier which has been painted in one of his 
pictures), are all English ; but w^e are not so sure as 
to the nativity of his fighting geese. They are 
stouter than the common geese, and on shorter legs, 
and are put down just like game cocks on to the green 
sod for the fray, which they solemnly conduct by 
seizing each other by the beak, and striking furiously 
with the butts of their wings. Such is his passion 
for the sport, th?^t for one of the most warhke he 
paid no less than 500 silver roubles. 
His race-horse The Baron brccds his horses at one of 
breeding- ]^jg cstatcs, and traius at another, where 
his string do their work in the winter, without 
shoes, on frozen snow regularly harrowed for the 
purpose. The ground is, however, mostly flat, with- 
out any extent or variety of gallops. His breeding 
farm is bordered by a noble river of great width, and 
in summer, when the flies teaze the young foals to 



TURF WOUTHIES. 95t 

distraction, they clash in and swim, while their dams 
watch them placidly from the bank, and occasionally 
join in the sport. If a ten-stone by iive-feet- eight 
figure is seen standing by, in a blue tunic, and trow- 
sers tucked inside his boots, it is even betting that 
it is the Baron himself, meditating on Moscow or 
Crenavoy Meetings to come. Many of them have 
excellent hind-leg action, and their owner invariably 
attributes it to their early swimming habits. The 
brood mares alone number about 160, some of 
which are still unbroken, and most of them never 
trained. The blood is, strictly speaking, a cross 
between the Russian and Arab mares, and the 
horses imported by Government — Memnon, General 
Chasse, Van Tromp, Andover, &c. ; and the stock 
are generally browns, of great length and on short 
legs, having all the Arab deficiency of shoulder, but 
catching the Eastern character in their fine eye and 
small nostrils, and bearing the Sir Hercules crest at 
the root of their tails. In 1859 his racing stud 
consisted of seventeen horses in training, fifty brood 
mares, twenty-five two-year-olds, nearly as many 
yearlings and foals respectively, while Signal, 
Granite, and Bombardier were the principal sires, 
and the Signals his best racing stock. 

The spring opens for training in April, t, . . -p . 
ana early m June the racmg season 
begins at Moscow, where the Baron gives 500 silver 
roubles in prizes. The Moscow Meeting then lasts 
for a month ; they race for three days out of the seven, 
and run off four or five races per day. The Jockey 
Club, of which Baron Petroffski is an active mem- 
ber, have a stand of their own, and the horses are 
entered the night before at their rooms. There is 
very little betting, and that has been principally in- 
troduced by the English jockeys, who are, alas ! too 
true to their old TattersalFs instincts. The Toola 
meeting is on Jidy 8th, and on August 18th the one at 
Tsarskey Sela begins. Lebedan, on September 12th> 



96 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

is the fourth, and last meeting; and here, in 1859, 
the Petroffski " boy in yellow^^ literally carried off 
every prize. 

Trainin troubles ^^ ^^^ training troublcs, however, the 
Baron shall speak for himself: " You 
like the horses of old stock,^^ he says, in writing to 
a friend, *^ and old form, just the same, which I pre- 
fer to the new-fashioned^ who win great prizes on a 
short distance. Such a horse is the same as the 
card at the play of bank, only by accident ready at 
time. I would like very much to try the best 
English race-horse with my poor fellows. I call my 
horses poor fellows. "We have only two months to 
prepare them for the races, that is May and June. 
The horses are led 500 versts, with all the road in- 
conveniences. They change water and food, and 
suffer much before they come to the racing place. 
All that is not easy to support for a racing horse. 
Our prizes are not worth carrying food and water, 
and the horse itself in equipage. It would be sup- 
portable yet to run once, having passed 500 versts, 
but they go again 200 versts and run, and then 
again 500 versts, and yet 200 versts and run again.-*' 
The English Stud Book is his Koran, and in his 
librar}^ may also be found every Racing Calendar and 
Sporting Magazine that has ever seen the light. 
He is himself an author, and has been at the pains 
of publishing, in the Russian language, a most com- 
plete synopsis of the celebrated stallions in England 
from 1811. It enters with the greatest accuracy 
into the number of years they were at the stud, the 
price at which they covered, and the dams of their 
most celebrated winners. Upwards of 135 paintings 
or engravings of racers and sporting subjects adorn 
his rooms ; and if there was an alarm of fire, we are 
afraid that his valuable gallery of old Dutch and 
Italian masters would be left to take their chance, 
till those dearly-loved forms of Derby and St. Leger 
renown were safe out of harm's way. 



97 







" I ride as good a galloway, 

As any man in town ; 
He'll trot you sixteen miles an liour, 

I'll bet you half-a-crown ; 
He's sucli a one to bend the knee, 

And tuck bis bauncbes in ; 
And to tlu*ow the dirt into your face, 

He never deems a sin." 

.EVONSHiRE had done its best to The road to Ex- 
naturalize us. Its clotted cream "^°°^- 
had appealed to our feelings through the tart and 
the teacup ; and its junket had whispered '^ Stay V 
We had borne our part in its pleasant pastorals 
among the deep shady lanes and orchard clusters of 
Barton. We had viewed that grave Wittenagemote of 
the red-line elders of the West, which met under 
old Frank Quartly^s picture in the black wainscoted 
parlour at Champson^ and arose from their rump 
cuts and their cider, to " trv a falF^ for the Flowers 
and the Pictures of that grand old stock. Still the 
gipsy element of our nature was strong upon us, and 
we longed to wander afield. It may be that our 
labours had been too much in one groove. After 
four long days among the cattle, we might 
well wish for a change, and even consider that 
Locke of Lynemouth, who roasted an Exmoor 
pony for his friends after one of the Simon's 
Bath sales, judiciously sympathized with Tartar 

H 



98 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

tastes. Both slieep and ponies acted as a 
magnet in our case. We bade good-by to oiir 
kind host and his chesnut hack, without one 
ounce of saddle ache, as a forget-me-not at part- 
ing; and Flitton Oak, that far-famed tryst of the 
Poltimore hounds, was soon upon our lee. The 
time of nuts was not yet come, and it was rather 
exasperating to see them brush the gig with their 
clusters, as we toiled up the rutty lanes. Mist 
was fast closing over the land of the Devons when 
we reached North Molton Ridge, and then the long, 
dark line of forest wall bade us welcome to Somer- 
set, and the pony glories of its Exmoor hills. 

The lights in Emmett^s Grange, about 

Emmett's Grange. '1j_jli -i^ ii i ^.-n 

a mile to the right, acted as a still more 
cheery beacon, and the white gates, dotted here and 
there, as guardians to the richly irrigated tracts, of 
which Philip Pusey so loved to talk, told too surely 
that the glorious days of hound and horse, when 
'^ Fred Knight" led the field over Exmoor, will ere 
long live only in hearth-side story, or the songs of 
the Somerset dames. The Red men of North 
America have already succumbed before the dread 
fire-water, and the red deer are equally certain in 
their turn to bow their antlered heads before Mr. 
Robert Smith and his water-sluices. 
Mr. Robt. Smith's Pouics and mouutaiu sheep were his 
cob breeding, ^^^j^ Exmoor aipi, but as cultivation 
grew apace, and irrigation laid its green velvet hand 
on the meadows, where the rushy swamp and the 
snipe had flourished amicably since the days of 
William Rufus, the former gave way in the natural 
order of things to galloways. The necessity of 
sticking to mountain produce ceased, when only 250 
acres out of the 700 were left unenclosed ; and hence 
the only ponies on the Emmett's Grange holding 
consist of some twenty-five short-legged brood 
mares of about thir teen-two. Three parts of the 



EXMOOR TO WIT. 99 

year these mares live on the mountain land_, while 
the farm is making beef and mutton below^ and sup- 
porting the Taunton sale lot of that autumn to 
boot. Their foals are carefully wintered in paddocks 
with the yearlings_, and if the weather is very severe, 
the two-year-olds have hay as well. The paddocks 
are principally four acres in extent ; little open 
sheds, neatly thatched^ nestle in cunning nooks^ to 
shelter the young stock, and when its whole array 
is marshalled on to the lowlands, the stud is about 
120 strong. At first Mr. Smith used neighbouring 
sires, among whom Old Port, the first-born of Sir 
Hercules and Beeswing, had the lead, and at length 
started on his own account with "Exmoor.'^ His 
dam was one of the seven mares, with hunting 
blemishes, which migrated to Emmett^s Grange from 
Burley ; but they were all sold oflP with the ex- 
ception of a lied Gauntlet, after adding some high- 
priced entries to the ledger. 

The renowned fourteen-hand Bobby 
then came from Dr. Beevor, for two sea- ° ^* 

sons, and won the Champion prize, and a two-guinea 
bonus at " The Bath and West of England,^^ at Barn- 
staple. He looked more than his height, and the 
officials measured him three times before the fourteen- 
hand claim was allowed. The greybeards of Devon 
were, one and all, amazed at his remarkable likeness 
to the renowned Katerfelto of their youth. Both of 
them had the same Eastern blood in their escutch- 
eons. Bobby could trace his descent through two 
degrees on his dam^s side to Borax, who beat all the 
best hoTses, under high weights, at Madras ; and 
Katerfelto^s dam, after being stolen by some gypsies, 
was recovered in foal with him to an Arab. Inde- 
pendently of his fine stock, which is still referred to in 
nearly every pedigree, Katerfelto was a mighty hunter, 
and earned deathless glory, both for himself and 
his owner, a lusty farmer, by taking the bit between 

^ 2 



100 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

his teetli on the Barkham Hills^ and carrying liim 
bodily over a twenty-foot gap in an old Roman iron 
mine. Bobby^s stock so far have almost invariably 
fallen bays, and nearly all of them have a star. 
Twenty- five foals, with their chubby chieftain "Master 
Bobby/^ from a black mare Avere running with their 
dams, so that The Lifers query, " Where are the 
Bobbies ?'' receives a highly practical answer from 
Somersetshire. They are so thick that the clerical 
visitor, who broke out into an exclamation, '' I can 
only describe them as bantam cocks /'"' did not draw 
his description bow at a venture. An Arab has 
succeeded Bobby, and if he only proves a second 
Katerfelto, the day may come w^hen the poet, who 
summed up mere human felicity under six heads, 
and placed " the gentle wife/^ behind " the haunch 
of good buck^^ and "the glass of Madeira old,-" 
mav feel that the " Exmoor '^ has as good a right as 
the" " Norfolk'^ cob, in the fifth 
The Inn at The mist was thick upon Long Hal- 
sitnon's Bath, combc, and the rain was rattling down 
on to the devoted " Bobbies^^ as we took our first 
glance at Exm^oor by broad daylight, and it seemed 
like an act of sheer self-immolation to wander forth 
on the hills that day. However, it cleared up towards 
ten o^ clock, and w^e were soon on our road toward 
Simon^s Bath Lodge. The most inveterate stickler 
for blood would have been satisfied with his mounts, 
as " Sambo,^^ a grandson of old Beeswing, was 
allotted us for the first day, this being " positively 
his last appearance^^ before his departure for Corn- 
wall ; and as if to aid our Newcastle Cup recollec- 
tions, we found ourselves next day on " The Comet,'^ 
a grandson of Lanercost's, — who was also fourteen- 
two, and from an Exmoor pony dam. The original 
colour of the Exmoor seems to have been a buffy bay, 
with a mealy nose, and it is supposed to have pre- 
served its characteristics ever since ths Phoenicians 



EXMOOH TO WIT. 101 

brought it over, when they visited the shores of 
Cornwall, to trade in tin and metals. The climate 
was propitious ; and thus the private sale at the 
Simon^s Bath Inn gradually became a sort of rustic 
fete. The aspirants to the Cann and Polkinghorne 
line of business met there, and showed rude feats 
of wrestling, not only with each other, but at the 
expence of the ponies, which they seized and dragged 
out of the fold, w4th all a giant's thew. " Seventy 
years ago, si?'/' said a bailiff to us, " there luere only 
five men and a ivoman and a little girl on Exmoor, 
and my mother ivas that little girl. She dreiv beer at 
the Simon's Bath public -hous e ; — they ivere a rough 
lot of customers there, I promise ijou^ And no 
doubt they were. The Doons, who had retired to 
Badgery, and carried out their Commonw^ealth 
yearnings, by becoming the Moss-troopers of the 
West, had taken their last leap from the cart, one 
after another, at Taunton Assizes, or '^^ saved their 
lives by dying in jail.'^ After them, the illicit love 
of mutton extended to spirits. Smugglers slung 
their kegs across their " Scrambling Jacks'' at night, 
and, if they did not care to hide their treasure in 
the rocks, or leave it at a certain gate, till the next 
mystic hand in that living chain should give it his 
allotted lift on its road towards Exeter, there were 
always friendly cellars under the ale-house at Simon's 
Bath. The ale was decent, and the landlady was 
judiciously deaf, and hence its old ingle, where the 
date 1654 still lingers on a beam, shorn or built into 
half its length, heard many a roystering tale of 
prime brandy and extra-parochial enormities, bad 
enough to make a beadle blush and an exciseman 
groan. 

The time of pony memory for all prac- origin of the ex- 
tical purposes goes back to the present "^^'^^ ^°"'^'- 
Sir Thomas iicland, who rented a great part of Ex- 
moor from the Crown. When it was disforested in 



102 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

1818, the father of the present Mr. Frederick 
Knight, M.P., bought the 10,000-acre Crown allot- 
ment, and by the subsequent purchase of 6,000 
more, became the owner of at least four-fifths. The 
ponies had for some years past only fetched from £4< 
to £6, and in spite of '^ the anchor brand,^^ and the 
death code, the Exmoor shepherds took very liberal 
tithe of them, as well as the sheep, and passed them 
at night- fall over the hills to their crafty Wiltshire 
customers. Sir Thomas carried away his original 
uncrossed stock to the Winsford Hills, and only 
about a dozen mare ponies were left to preserve the 
line. Luckily, an after-dinner conversation led Mr. 
Knight, senior, to consider the great pony question 
in all its bearings. The party met at Sir Joseph 
Banks^s, the eminent naturalist, in the days when 
Soho Square was equivalent to Belgravia in fashion- 
able ears, and Bruce's Abyssinian stories were all 
the rage. Passing from live beef-steaks, they dis- 
cussed the merits of the Dongala horse, which " the 
travelling giant " had described as an Arab of six- 
teen hands, and peculiar to the regions round 
Nubia. 

Sir Joseph proposed to the party to 
onga as. ^^^ them somc of the breed, and accord- 
ingly Lords Headley, Morton, and Dundas, and Mr. 
Knight then and there gave him a joint-^1,000- 
cheque as a deposit for the expences. The English 
Consul in Egypt was applied to in due course, and 
the horses and mares which he sent over bore out 
Bruce^s description to the letter. It was said that 
they were got through the agency of a High Priest, 
who " had his price -j^ and after trying unsuccess- 
fully for two years, dissembled most artfully at the 
end. The Moorish Princes felt that they had been 
duped, and a century of bullocks were offered in 
vain as the ransom. In addition to their fine height, 
they were rather Boman-nosed, with a very fine 



EXMOOH TO WIT. 103 

texture of skin, well-chiselled under the jowl, and 
as clear-winded as all their race. Their action was 
quite of the " knee-in- the-curb-chain-^^ school ; and 
they had short thick backs, and great hind- quarters. 
Still, there were three or four points against these 
'' gaudy blacks,^^ in the shape of flattish ribs, droop- 
ing croups, and rather long white legs. 

As manage horses they were perfect ; and the dusky 
Nubian, who brought them over, delighted to gallop 
them at a wall in the riding-school, and make them 
stop dead when they reached it. About ten or 
twelve arrived, and Mr. Knight was so pleased with 
them, that, acting on the advice of the late Marquis 
of Anglesey, who considered that they " would im- 
prove any breed alive,^^ he bought Lord Headley^s 
share. Lord Dundas bred a good many from his 
lot in Scotland, and one especially nice white one 
sprang from the stock. Mr. Knight's two sires and 
three mares were brought to Simon's Bath at once, 
where he had established a stud of seven or eight 
thorough-bred mares, and thirty half-breds of the 
coaching Cleveland sort. A dozen twelve- hand pony 
mares were also put to one of the Dongalas, and the 
produce generally came four teen-two, and very sel- 
dom black. The first cross knocked out the mealy 
nose, as completely as the Leicester destroys the Ex- 
moor horn \ but the buffy stood true to its colour, 
and thus the type was never quite lost. The half- 
Dongalas did wonderfully well with the West Somer- 
set, which often came to Exmoor to draw for a fox, 
and thev managed to sret down the difficult hills so 
well, and crossed the brooks so close up with the 
hounds, that the vocation of the white-clad guides 
on chase da^s gradually fell into disuse. One of the 
Dongalas was never put to the stud, and preceded 
the Quicksilver colts in Mr. Frederick Knight's 
hunting stable. This cross-out was only intended 
ibr size, and not for character, as no sire oi half 



104 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Don gala blood was used, and the mares which did 
not retain as much as possible of the Exmoor type 
were drafted forthwith. 

Thorough-bred Paudarus, a whole-coloured fifteen- 
crosses, iiand son of Whalebone, was the first 
important successor of the Dongala; but though he 
confirmed the original bay, he reduced the standard 
to thirteen hands or thirteen and a-half. The fine 
breeding as well as the '^ Pandarus bay^^ were kept up 
by Canopus, a grandson of Velocipede, and while 
the experiment was in progress, the colts were better 
wintered on limed land, which enabled them to bear 
up pretty well against the climate. When, how- 
ever, the farms were let by the present Mr. Knight, 
they had to go back en masse to the naked moor, 
and then it was found that even if the mares with 
the first cross could put up with the fare and climate, 
they grew far too thin to give any milk, while those 
which were of the old stock stood it well with their 
foals. Hence, about eighteen years ago, the whole 
pony stud was remodelled, the lighter mares were 
drafted, and Mr. Knight determined to stick hence- 
forth to his own ponies, with the bufiy bay sire. 
So strict has been this rule, that for many years,, 
with the exception of the chesnut Hero, whose mas- 
sive form and Pandarus dam preserved him from 
^' Schedule G,^' and the grey Lillias, whose original 
Acland blood knows but little alloy, no other colour 
has been used* 

The first pony They wcTC disposcd of by private con- 
saies. tract until 1850, when the public sales 
were established. At the first, the whole of the hunt- 
ing stock were sold along with some forty ponies. Sir 
Thomas Sebright gave £16 for a pony which had 
rather a large-sized cross in him, and Mr. Pole 
Carey, M.P., .-€41 for three, which were an exact bay 
unicorn match, with the exception of one slight star. 
The hunters had long been under the charge of 



EXMOOR TO WIT. 105 

Robert Milton, Lord Portsmouth's present training 
grooQci, who got old Tory and the other steeple-chase 
denizens of the eight-stall stable, so well up to their 
*' flag line" form, and they fetched good prices, along 
with the colts, which were principally of the Dongala 
and Quicksilver blood. The stock of ponies was^ 
sold up so close, that no more were brought out for 
sale until the autumn of 1853, when Stony Plot, the 
knoll with its belt of quartz boulders, on which the 
picturesque new parish church stands, had a hammer 
auditory of two hundred. The average was an im- 
provement over that of other years ; but the plan of 
selling in the heart of the wilds was far too primi- 
tive, and in the following autumn the venue was 
changed to Bampton fair, fourteen miles nearer the 
rail. Then they were broken and brought as far as 
Reading, with Kettledrum and Dundee, '^ names 
worth all the money'' (as the auctioneer observed) 
among them ; and in future the foals are to be 
weaned in October, and fed more highly, instead of 
running with their dams all winter. Philip Richards 
has very little trouble with them. When he once gets 
near enough to scratch their tails, he soon makes a 
rural Rarey of himself, and contrives to be on their 
backs, the very first day. 

The present pony stock consists of Mr. Knight's 
about 400, of which nearly a fourth are p""^ ^*°^^' 
brood mares, of all ages from one to thirteen. The 
mares are put to the horses at three, and up to that 
age they share the 800 heather acres of Badger}^, 
with the red deer and the blackcock, protected on 
all sides by high stone walls, which even Lillias, the 
gay Lothario of the moor, cannot jump in his moon- 
lit rambles. The average height is 12J hands, but 
the smaller mares are being gradually drafted. In 
order to keep up the size, one hundred and thirty 
acres of the pasture land and water meadows round 
Simon's Bath have been taken in hand, to winter the 



106 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

foals and weakly yearlings. The foals came in for tlie 
first time in '59^ and the efl'ect upon the two-year-olds 
and yearlings has already been most encourag- 

Theirraodeof i^g* This wintering begins after the 
i^f^- marking in November, and the meadows 
are shut up for hay again on the 1st of May. The 
older ponies live on the hills all winter, and seek the 
most sheltered spots during the continuance of the 
wind and wet, which are much more the features of 
the climate, than extreme cold. These favourite 
nooks are well-known to the herdsmen, who build 
up stacks of hay, straw, and rushes, and dole forth 
their out- door relief over the rails, without any re- 
gard to the Union dietary scale. Still, like honest_, 
hard-working labourers, the ponies never assemble 
at the wicket, till they have exhausted every means 
of self-support, by scratching with their fore-feet in 
the snow, for the last remnants of the summer tufts ; 
and drag wearily behind them an ever-lengthening 
chain of snow-balls. 
Habits and bat- The bays and the buffy bays (a de- 

ties of the sires, gcriptiou of ycllow), botli with mealy 
noses, are in a majority of at least three to one, but 
there are several browns and greys, half-a-dozen 
blacks, and a few chesnuts, which have strained back 
to their great grandsire Velocipede. They are 
grouped about on certain hills, and " The Sparkham 
pony" (a son of the beautiful mare Bay Lillias), soon 
earned his name from such constancy. He won the 
head prize at Barnstaple in ^59, with Cheriton 
second, and a Pandarus pony third, and the instant 
the three shook off civilization and its halters on 
their return, they galloped off several miles, as 
straight as a minie ball, to their respective hills. 
The ten sires are all wintered tooether in an allot- 
ment, until the 1st May, apart from the mares ; but 
Lillias, who has more of the old pony blood in him 
than any of them, twice scrambled over at least a 



EXMOOR TO WIT. 107 

score of six-feet walls, and away to his loved North. 
Forest. 

It is a very beautiful sight to see them 
jealously beating the bounds, when they are once 
more in their own domains ; and they would, if they 
wore shoes, break every bone in a iisurper^s skin. 
The challenge to a battle royal is given with a snort, 
and then they commence by rearing up against each 
other^s necks, so as to get the finest leverage for a 
worry. When they are weary of that, they turn 
tail to tail, and commence a series of heavy ex- 
changes, till the least exhausted pony of the two 
watches his opportunity, and whisking round, gives 
his antagonist a broadside in the ribs, which fairly 
echoes down the glen. In the closing scene, they 
face each other once more, and begin like bull-dogs 
to manoeuvre for their favourite bite on the arm. 
The first which is caught oflp his guard, goes down 
like a shot, and then scurries off, with the victor in 
hot pursuit, savagely "weaving/^ while his head 
nearly touches the ground, and his " flag" waves 
triumphantly in the air. With the exception of 
Lillias, the ten are generally pretty content, each with 
their one thousand acres of territory, and like Sayers 
and Heenan they are ultimately '^ reconciled," — in 
November. 

Stock is taken of the whole in the ^^nuai mark- 
second week of this month, when the ing of the hoofs. 
hills are swept by the three ^^ hard-riding Dicks," 
for a couple of days, and the four hundred are 
brought into a paddock at Simon^s Bath in lots. 
The first process is the separation of them into 
ages, andj placing them in distinct paddocks for 
marking. The foals are then branded on the saddle 
place, with " the forest mark,^' which has been 
changed from the Acland anchor, to the spur, which 
forms part of the crest of the Knight family. It is 
burnt in with a hot iron, just sufficiently to sear the 



108 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

roots of the hair^ and no age eradicates it. If a pony 
wanders away, and there is any dispute, the hair 
is clipped off to make the identity more perfect, and 
on one occasion a white sire was discovered by the 
head herdsman^s brother, after he had been lost for 
three seasons. The spur has only one heel, and as 
the brand can be made with the rowel pointing in 
four directions (beginning towards the neck), on 
each side of the pony, it coincides with an eight year 
cycle, and serves as a guide, in case the foot-marks 
are prematurely worn out. The foal is of course 
not marked on the foot, but an exact record is taken 
of his dam and all his marks, by the land-steward, 
who stands book in hand under all weathers, for 
at least a week, to act as the Weatherby of the 
hills. 

The mares then come under review, and if any are 
absent, the stud-book tells its infallible tale. A 
mare and two yearlings were missing one November, 
and the herdsmen set forth on their search so com- 
pletely primed with these stud-book data, that the 
two were very shortly discovered. The register 
hoof-marks are then renewed on the mares, &c., 
and the Dominical letter of their year of entry 
is placed upon the yearlings. The marks are two- 
fold, to wit, that of the year, which began with 
B in 1848, on the off hoof, and the register 
figure of the dam from the stud-book, on the near. 
They are marked as close to the coronet as possi- 
ble, as it is found that in all the ages, the hoof has 
the faculty of reproducing itself in twelve months. 
In the older ones it grows more rapidly, and not 
unfrequently the spur-mark has to be referred to as 
a guide. The letters A and I have proved exces- 
sively troublesome, as the one broke away towards 
the end of the year in the shape of a triangular 
fissure ; while the other merged into a species of 
sand-crack. 



EXMOOR TO WIT. 109 

Average of casu- Under the old system^ when the 
allies. mares and their foals were never sepa- 
rated, it was not unusual to see one of the matrons 
with two or three of her progeny trotting after her, 
and trying to get a stray suck; but since the foals were 
weaned, and drafted into their Simon^s Bath quar- 
ters, the family tie is quite broken, and the new win- 
ter associations foreshadow the hill groupings of the 
summer. The percentage of deaths is comparatively 
small, and during the winter of ^59, when many of 
the old ponies fairly gave in on the neighbouring hills, 
Mr. Knight's mares fought through it, but five or 
six of them died from exhaustion at foaling, or 
slipped foals at ten months. Their greatest peril is 
when they are tempted into the bogs about that 
period, by the green bait of the early aquatic grasses, 
and flounder about under weakness and heavy pres- 
sure, till they die. The stud-book contains some 
very curious records. '' Died of old age in the snow'' 
forms quite a pathetic St. Bernard sort of entry. 

Found dead in a bog'' has less poetry about it. 

Iron grey, found dead with a broken leg, at the foot 
of a hill," is rather an odd mortality comment on 
such a chamois-footed race ; while ^' Grey mare C 
22, and grey yearling missing ; both found, mare ivith 
foal at her foot," gives us rather a more cheery 
glimpse of forest history. 

Will Court, the head herdsman, and 
his two aide-de-camps, Bill Shapland 
and Will Scott, form the staff of the pony depart- 
ment: and the latter has been gazetted from the 
Scotch hills, vice Jack Huxtable, promoted to be 
ground-keeper on Larkborough and Badgery. Will 
Court has been bred up among " our ponies^' from a 
boy, and treats ^' the droop-rumped mongrels'' on 
the adjacent hills with the most magnificent disdain. 
He is a perfect Follett in his advocacy of " the old 
sort" on the review-day, and unwavering in his 






110 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

fealty to Lillias as a lineal descendant of the anchor 
brand. The trio have two ponies a-piece, besides 
occasional young ones in breaking ; and Will's boast 
about Exmoor endurance receives strong con- 
firmation from the fact^ that his men^ who, like him- 
self, are no feather weights, can ride a pony incessantly 
through a ten-hour herding-day. 
A ride by the If ^^ ^^^ prefaced all this pony lore 
Barie. {jq^ the truc G. P. James fashion, by 
saying that it was morning, &c., and that two men 
on horseback were seen in conversation, as they wound 
their way, &c., we should be pretty nearly describing 
ourselves on Sambo, and our informant on the stag- 
loving Rattler, as we rode towards Simon-'s Bath 
Lodge, with a very promising sky overhead. There 
had been nothing but a common-place succession of 
pasture and moorlands, varied with " Bobby foals^^ 
and iron-ore piles (which a private railway is des- 
tined to carry Wales-ward to the Bristol Channel) ; 
but a turn in the road brought us on to a sort of 
plateau, and revealed the heather and gorse-clad 
rocks of Cornham Brake, with the Barle rippling 
quietly along its valley, to join the Exe, near Dul- 
verton. 

A herd of nearly three dozen Devons were march- 
ing in slow, Indian file along the opposite bank, and 
foxhunters tell that nearly half as many cubs were 
" at home" in the Brake, when the North Devon 
drew it three seasons ago. Milton, by Old Port, 
whom Mr. Knight has used for a good brown cross, 
was grazing at the water^s edge, with a pony mare of 
Barley and Dongala blood. The patriarchs Hero 
and Nelson, the son of the Forest prima donna 
Nelly, then told by their joint pasture presence, on 
the opposite side, of the proximity of the Simony's 
Bath stables. The renowned Pocket Hercules of 
Exmoor lifted his white Velocipede forehead, and 
shook his shaggy chesnut forelock more assiduously 



EXMOOR TO WIT. Ill 

than ever into his eyes^ as he gave back an answer- 
ing cheer to our Sambo; while the massive Nelson 
(whose sire pined himself to death to escape the in- 
dignity of the breaking bit) ate calmly on, as befitted 
the deposed head of the bufiy bays, or perchance 
reserved his greeting for one of his great namesake's 
lieutenants, who had long since risen to admiral's 
estate, and had just arrived, " as green as grass/-' for 
.< a cruise among the hills, in his poncha. 
The day had quite broken lons^ before 

T 1 ^ ^i ^? . „ On Exmoor. 

noon, and hence there was nothing tor 
it but to mount a military cloak, which the rain of 
the tropics could hardly soak, and with a second 
companion cased in oilskin, and on a bit of Dongala 
blood at our side, and Will Court making strong 
running on his pet sister to the Sparkham pony, we 
were soon pointing across the deer park for the South 
Porest. Hundreds of red and fallow deer used to 
consider this as their sanctuary, but they have been 
shot or hunted down, or have fallen back for a 
last stand amongst the old haunts of the Doons of 
Badgery. The moor was like a sponge ; but the clay 
pan which holds up the peaty surface is doomed to 
be broken by Fowler^s subsoil plough, and a top- 
dressing of railway-brought lime will complete this 
great measure of Reform. 

A perfect parliament of sale ponies, sixty strong, 
was met at the corner of the South Forest, after the 
most active whip on the part of Scott and Shapland, 
who kept them steadily in position till we got up. 
Some of the draft brood mares had foals at their 
sides, and all the horse ponies dated from the May or 
June of ^56. Buffy Bay was quite in the ascendant, 
and five or six Lillias greys formed that Stumps 
element which has hitherto given such pleasant cha- 
racter to the thorough-bred Sledmere park troop. 
Some dark browns added life to the whole, and one 
of them, with a piece of bracken hanging carelessly 



112 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

in his mane tresses_, would remind us of Herring's 
fine study of Muley Molocli, and Rebecca. A soli- 
tary Devon kept running among tliem, vainly claim- 
ing kindred ; but their sympathies had evidently 
been too much for a brown in his strangles troubles, 
as they had licked his ears till they were raw, and 
the festering blast had converted him into a croppy. 
Bringing up the ^ur military-cappcd leader then gave 
ponies. tiie word for the North Forest ; and in 
a few minutes the whole troop were dispersed into 
little friendly knots once more, while Will and Bill 
scoured wildly away, with their whips aloft, and 
driving their brothers to Lillias and Tipton Slasher 
with as much energy as if they were racing for life 
or a bride. The office was, to gather the Sparkham 
and Pinford ponies; and, heedless of the Exmoor 
cavaliers, who dashed carelessly dovv^n something very 
little short of a precipice, we accomplished a more 
cautious, but successful descent in the neighbour- 
hood of an iron mine, whose water-wheel was lazily 
resting till the railway era sets in. Once across the 
brook, in which our cloak, which already weighed 
some fourteen pounds, went in gallantly for 
another, there were no obstacles on the Honevmead 
and Warren farms. The latter is said to have shel- 
tered a banished lord, who beguiled his unwilling 
martyrdom by breeding and eating rabbits. 

Not a trace of his furry fancy crossed our path ; and 
in fact, throughout our entire staj^, we saw nei- 
ther red deer nor " heather poult.'^ A leash 
of wild ducks certainly sailed far above us, into 
the Buscombe mist; while three other flying black 
specks were seen against the outline of the horizon, in 
the shape of the two Wills and Bill. In utter despair 
at their not bringing up the Sparkham pony — 
the Barnstaple pet of his heart — Will Court had gone 
off, with an expressive grunt and a Chifney rush on 
" my Polly,'^ into space, across bogs and heather. 



EXMOOR TO WIT. 113 

to do the deed, or die ; and we watched The sparkham 
him as he made a series of masterly t^^^- 
casts on the Sparkham hill, with his two whips wait- 
ing handy to turn them to him. It seemed Ukely 
to be a twent3^-minutes' job, at least; but as we 
quietly rested in our saddle — on a knoll near the 
rushy Pinford bottom, where Mr. Knight saw his 
first fox found — (a small clump of rushes is often a 
sure Exmoor draw), a trampling behind us told that 
WilPs grand coup was achieved. Up came the 
Sparkham pony, as if he had dropped from the 
clouds, with his crest erect and his mane flying, in 
the van, and, drawing himself proudly into attitude 
for a moment, snorted his defiance, and paced on to 
his companions. The second prizeman, Cheriton, 
was not far behind ; and the Pandarus pony 
promptly ran alongside of him, as if to move for a 
fresh trial on the points which so puzzled the bench 
at Barnstaple. 

The bones of a pony, which the foxes ^he noons of 
and the ravens had pecked bare between Badgery. 
them, lay bleaching across our path, as we turned 
for the Lillias hill. Badgery had been our original 
point ; and as the sun shone out for a brief quarter of 
an hour, and just lit up the yellow surface of the 
dying brackens, and tipped the grey boulders in their 
rich green setting, we felt inclined to make a pil- 
grimage to its forty fillies, its desolate huts, and the 
spot where the late Lord Alford got into a bog, and 
named a pet Pytchley horse in its honour. How- 
ever, the thin indigo haze on the Culbourne hills 
behind soon died away ; rain followed hard on the 
train of the rainbow, which spanned the Doons^ val- 
ley ; and Lillias was still unseen. A little chesnut 
colt, " as thick as a bear," raised countless surmises 
as to whether he was one of the race of " Heroes f' 
while Will and his men, with a most energetic 
^volunteer on a chesnut to aid them, routed up the 

I 



114 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

crafty white from his lair, and drove him past at a 
smart trot. 

After this specimen of WilFs "old sort/^ which 
has no particular style about him, and looks, as they 
all do, much larger on the heather than off it, 
we beguiled the road home by seeing the little 
twelve-hand Brother to Tipton Slasher crawl up a 
six-feet wall like a cat, after Bill Shapland, and trot 
away, seemingly " as fresh as a kitten,^^ after his 
eight hours^ enjoyment of something beyond a 
thirteen-stone hamper. The Hero was waiting at 
the door of Simon^s Bath Lodge, to give its young 
heir his third taste of saddle-life, as we passed 
it ; and, leaving that last note to memory, we 
shook up " The Comet^^ into a smart canter, and 
chased the groom and our carpet-bag, over hill and 
heather, to " the boat^^ at Lynemouth. 



115 



©[Mi^iPTit^ Baa, 






" If our author liad lived in the days of the Emperor who made 
his horse a consul, he would undoubtedly have been the first to pro- 
pose a vote of confidence in the Government." 

tT is to the rivalry of the county fami- county rivalry in 
lies in the three great Bidings of Arabs. 
Yorkshire, even in the days when they were up to 
their very cruppers in politics, that we may be said 
to owe the foundation of our finest English blood. 
The cockfighter, who lies full length on the floor to 
judge of his champions^ action ; the naturalist 
who nearly hatched a fowPs eg^ in his arm-pit; 
the gardener " who sat up all night with a sick 
cactus/^ and the lunatic lady who, for six long years 
addressed the editor of a stern Radical newspaper 
weekly, as '^ My dearest Alphonzo,^^ had not one whit 
more enthusiasm than these jealons vendees of Turks,;, 
Barbs, and Arabians. '' To winde their horn, to 
carry their hawke fair,^' and to see Matchem Timms 
riding the pick of their stables for the Gold Cup 
over Hambletonor RawclifFe Ings, made up no mean 
portion of their ancestral pride. Timms went to 
glory on his own hook with Bald Peg at Hambleton, 
but his finest victories were on the Earl of Carlisle's 
Buckhunter, by the Bald Galloway. Not the oldest 
man who used to totter to Castle Howard, year after 
year, in the beginning of the century, to see the an- 
nual Buck's Head run for by Levy Eckersley and other 
crack foot-racers of Yorkshire, could remember that 
renowned chesnut, whose half-sister Boxana was the 

I 2 



116 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

first consort of tlie Godolpliin Ar?cbian. This 
foreign blood still flourished long after 1770, and 
even Eclipse^s 25-gmnea Epsom advertisement, and 
that of ^^Mask* sire of Eclipse — witness my hand, 
iB. Smith,^^ are almost overshadowed in the Racing 
Calendar by a cloud of Arabs. One of them won 
the Arabian Plate at Newmarket, and another had 
been presented by the Emperor of Morocco, "' on a 
particular occasion to Thomas Adams, merchant of 
Rotherhithe, whose groom could be enquired for at 
the Europa Inn.^^ 

Indian blood sire Such wcrc thc flca-bittcn and "bloody- 
contract, shouldered ^' treasures which the East 
sent us, and it was not until last year, in compliance 
with Lord Canning's request that the Indian Council 
would export some young blood sires between fifteen- 
two and three, instead of such half-bred, actionless 
coachers, that we began systematically to pay back 
our heavy horse debt to the East. Sir John Law- 
rence, Sir Erskine Perry, and Sir Frederick Cur- 
rie, three of the most " stable minds'' of the 
Indian Council, undertook, with Mr. Jex, V. S., 
of the First Life Guards, the preliminary inspection 
of the twenty-two which had been sifted by Mr. 
Phillips, during six months, from upwards of 200. 
On the day after the private inspection, in which 
two only were put back, the rest of the Council 
arrived at Willesden, headed by the President Sir 
Charles Wood, a right good man with the Badsworth, 
and as fond as every other tyke of the side of the 
horse ring. The Council did not attend in the 
capacity of a Court of Error, but they freely en- 
dorsed the choice which had been made. 
Willesden Pad^ Willcsdcn Paddocks are very beauti- 
docks. fully adapted for such an inspection. 
The place is so daintily kept, and the green ivy- 
clustered boxes are so nicely interspersed among the 



* Another reading of " Marske." 



TURF CRACKS. 117 

foliage and the paddocks^, where a choice Southdown 
01' a Leicester disputes the supremacy of the herbage 
with a blood mare, that on a sunny day it reminds 
us of one of Madame Vestris^s drop scenes. We 
had no need to dwell on the memories of Hark- 
away, Charles XII., or Ratcatcher. Vandermulin 
and Ellington were there in the flesh under the same 
roof where Pyrrhus the First dwelt ; and a little 
farther on, the tortoise-shell cat, with the leather - 
collar round her neck, was snoozing on the yellow 
sheet, which covered the haunches of Voltigeur. 

When his friend is in the rack, the voitigeur and sir 
horse will lift his head affectionately, and ^'^"^^^ Landseer. 
she will crawl along his nose and neck to the 
old spot ; and Sir Edwin was so delighted with 
the partnership, when Lord and Lady Zetland 
introduced him, that it furnished an idea at once 
for his canvas. The groom, however, put in a 
special demurrer, and convinced him, by removing 
the sheet and placing the cat on the bare back, that 
she was far too particular to rest on that natural 
couch, and that therefore painting her there was dead 
against nature. Fifteen times did Voltigeur w^end his 
way to St. John's Wood, and his canvas carte de 
visite, which is to adorn the great staircase at Aske, 
represents him as large as life, with his head 
down, whispering soft things to his furry friend. 
Martha Lynn, along with Hersey and Birthday (dam 
of Lupellus) had departed after their visit to Elling- 
ton, and therefore we had not the pleasure of com- 
paring sire and dam together ; but The Lion Ram- 
pant, the whilom champion of the carriage world, 
passed the door just as we emerged (pulling at 
his new mahogany-coloured water-cart with a 
vigour worthy of tlie days when the most 
languid of the park strollers would run to the 
rails to have a look at " Batthyany^s turn out,'') 
and we got up a pleasant contrast between . 



118 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the two browns^ so pre-eminent in their peculiar 
spheres. 

The wiiiesden About five-and-twcnty men are em- 
staff. ploj^ed about the spot, under Mr. 

Charles Phillips, who acts as his cousin^s secre- 
tary. Independently of Mr. Phillips^s own mares 
and foals, the stalls and paddocks are seldom 
less than half-full. Sometimes a troop of blacks 
are there, waiting to be passed for the Life 
Guards. Then there are chargers, hunters, or brood 
mares, for the King of Italj^, or some other of the 
European potentates^ resting a space before they are 
shipped ; and Asia also takes her turn, as the Egyp- 
tian cavalry contract brought up four hundred. New- 
market, too, claims its place in the arrangements^ 
and we found some yearlings preparing for Mr. 
Saville's trainer, and about, we trust, to follow in 
the footsteps of Parmesan, who drew breath here. 
The little fellow excited Mr. Phillips's attention so 
much by his action in the paddock, that he pressed 
Mr. Saville to overlook his lack of size, and buy him 
for 60 guineas, and a contingency of half his first 
five races, which made 250 more. 

Besides Voltisreur, there were eisrht- 

■The selected sires. -, , . . ° . . -, 7i , 

and-twenty sires m lesidence that 
day, and the great majority of the Indian ones were 
on ship parade. They had been duly physicked, 
and cooled down with bran-mashes, and now they 
stood side by side in blinkers, fastened with white 
pillar reins, in order to drill them for the long voyage. 
Seventeen of them "all in a row'' in one stable, and 
champing at their bits, was a sight worth remem- 
bering ; but alas ! Field Marshal TJie Duke of Duty, 
a chesnut with a very beautiful forehand, by Pyrrhus 
the First, was sadly belying Mr. Hutchinson's no- 
menclature, and misconducting himself far worse 
than any of them. Young Pyrrhus and Apollo were 
also there^ to keep up the Gully chesnut line ; and 



TURF CRACKS. 119 

the rare-jumper Eremite bore solitary witness for his 
Hermit. Touchstone had only one son Jasper 
amongst them ; but in direct succession came Gari- 
baldi and Volcano by Orlando, Hearths Delight by 
Pontifex, and the mouldy-looking Sermon by Sur- 
plice, the most beautiful of the lot and the most un- 
certain in his temper. Mr. Rarey had been with 
him; and his remembrance of the system was still so 
keen, that he would go down the moment his foot 
was taken up. Brown Holland, with his dark glossy 
coat, was quite The Dutchman's son, and there too 
was the sturdy little, white-man ed Lord Nelson, who 
would puzzle all the physiologists to discover where 
his dashing mile talent could have come from, unless 
they knew of his Collingwood and Velocipede de- 
scent. 

Bumble Bee was a good-looking relic of the 
glorious days of Curraghmore, and beside him stood 
Young St. Francis, with many traces of the old 
horse, who learnt the language of the bit from Sam 
Chifney's hand. Ethiopian was one dark-brown 
level, from his ears to his croup, as many of the 
Kobert de Gorbams are wont to be. Near him was 
Kyedale, long, low, and untried, and dubious as to 
his paternity between Vatican and John O' Gaunt. 
The Alderman by Knight of Avenel was so neat, that 
Tom Dawson could hardly bear to let him go ; and 
Professor Dick and Young JVLarcian (h.b.) were of the 
hunting field order ; Belgium had furnished Namur 
by Corban, with only three summers on his head, 
and Ackworth, half-brother to Mincepie, and the 
best of the score, carried the fortunes of Simoom. 

Four grooms, two of them appointed ^ , . r^ , 
by the company (for Mr. Phillips's re- 
sponsibility ceased the moment the horses were on 
ship board), and two of Mr. Green's men, went to 
attend on them during their voyage. The stalls 
were built in two lines between decks, with a gang- 



120 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

way separating thein, to admit of exercise in fine- 
weather^ and were five feet wide, well-padded and 
laid down with mats. The allowance for the ninety- 
five days was lOlbs. of compressed ha}^, 81bs. of oats, 
and IJ bushels of bran for each horse per diem. 
Twelve loads of hay was the general supply, with 33 
quarters of bran, and 60 quarters of oats, the latter 
pure Riga, and not Scotch " potato/^ The great 
London job-masters have long held by the Riga, and 
old Bob Newman used to say that his greys could 
face Barnet Hill, and go the eleven mile stage in ten 
minutes' less time, when they were not stuffed up 
with that "thick-skinned potato stuff/' There was^ 
also a medicine chest, with a good stock of directions, 
and as the horses were not allowed to lie down, stays 
were provided, and adjusted so as to prevent the 
pressure, which slings too often produce on the intes- 
tines. They hang loosely when things are going 
right ; and in case of a horse losing his sea 
legs by a sudden heave, or becoming unduly weary, 
he learns to drop and lie upon them. The embark- 
ation was managed nicely enough ; as they started 
from Willesden Paddocks soon after daylight, with 
their twenty aid~de-camps and a blacksmith. Their 
shoes were then taken off", and after a little remon- 
strance on the part of Sermon and Namur, they 
were all in position between decks by eight o'clock. 

The President of the Council,'the examiners, and 
others of the Board, looked in upon them once more, 
and in ninety days their leagues along the watery 
way were over, and the Pilgrim Fathers set foot 
on Eastern ground, without one death in the lot.* 

* " In Bengal there are two Government stud establisliments — one 
called "The North-west Stud," and the other "The Central Stud.'' 
The former consists of two depots, viz., at Hauppu and Scharunpore, 
with a breeding district ; and the latter of four depots, viz., Ghazee- 
poor, Bunar, KuiTuntadhee, and Poosah, also with a breeding dis- 
trict. The North-west breeding district is conducted on what is 
called the Zemindaree system. The mares belong to the farmers, but 



TURF CRACKS. 121 

Young St. Francis^ however^ broke from his picket 
one niglit on the way to his station^ and clashed out 
his brains against a walk 

The preiudice ao:ainst Arabs was not . ^ . ^ , , 

T ^^"^ ° . iiii-i Arabs in England. 

lessened by the strange mixed lot wmcn 
were brought home after the Crimean war. About 
that time, if you saw a crowd m the city, and a 
turban elevated above it, you might be sure that it 
was some Unhappy native on an. Arab, as damp as if 
it had been dragged through a river. Those who 
have passed their lives in India wonder why the 
Arab sires never will take in England ; and others 
wonder, in reply, why the ^' nabobs^^ who come over 
do not give them the chance themselves, by buying a 

before being covered they are duly registered, and the man is bound 
to bring the produce to thp Deputy Superintendent when he goes on 
his yearly tour of inspection. If the foal is approved of, and the 
price agreed to, the foal is purchased, and goes into the Government 
depot at once. If the foal is not apj)roved of, it becomes the pro- 
perty of the farmer. Formerly, when entire horses were ridden in 
the ranks (what a mistake that was, by the way, and what thousands 
of povmds have been lost by it, through not being able to make use of 
mares !), colts only were purchased, fillies always belonging to the 
farmers ; now, however, hlhes are also purchased, if they appear 
likely to make troopers. 

In the Central Stud the system is different altogether. There the 
mares belong to Government, and they are given out to the farmers 
at four years old, under the following conditions : The farmer signs a 
bond that he will keep the mare in good condition — that she shall 
want for nothing — that he will bring her and her foal for inspection, 
when called on, &c. ; and he has also to give a security. When the 
mare comes in season she is covered by a Government stallion, the 
farmer merely paying a groom's fee of two rupees, equivalent to four 
shillings — as I dare say you Icnow. Both in the North-west and Central 
Studs the mare^ are classed to the stallions thought most fitted for 
them, by the Deputy Superintendents in their yearly tours of in- 
spection. In the Central Stud the mares are inspected in the dis- 
tricts once a month by the district officers, when their condition and 
everything connected with them is noted down in a book kept for the 
purpose. Three times in the year the Deputy Superintendent pur- 
chases the young stock that are over seven months old. The prices 
vary from £7 to £13, being never under the former or above the 
latter sum, and the following is the system : 

It is considered that, as both the mare and stallion belong to Go- 



122 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

few thorough- bred brood mares, and boldly leading 
the way. Precepts fall dead from the lips of men 
who have plenty of time and money, and yet dare 
not back their opinions by stud practice, or claim 
the 321b. allowance in the Goodwood Cup, or the 
281b s. in the Royal Ascot Stand Plate. 
Mr. Wilson and To judgc from Mr. Wilson and his 
omer Pacha, j^tc fifteeu-hand bay charge, Omer 
Pacha, at Althorpe, the habits of some of these 
Arabs are remarkable. This horse was ridden 
ninety miles in one day without drawing rein, 
by Omer Pacha^s messenger, with the news of the 
Russian repulse, from Silistria to Varna; and al- 
though he was none the worse, the unhappy rider 

vemment, and s]ie was classed to tliat particular horse by a Govern- 
ment servant, if the farmer lias invariably done justice to tlie mare 
and foal, it is not his fault if the latter prove worthless, and conse- 
quently it is a standing rule that if a man's mare and foal have 
always been mustered good, he gets the highest price — £13 for the 
latter, whatever it may be like. If, however, the farmer has at any 
time neglected the mare in any way, he at once forfeits this privilege. 
You may probably think these prices low ; but when I tell you 
that if a man sells a foal for 130 rupees (£13), he can, without 
loss, keep the mare for three years, even if she does not have another 
foal — in other words, that £13 will keep the mare for four years — ^you 
will, I think, consider the remuneration sufficient. When these foals 
are purchased, the colts go to the Bunar and Kurruntadhee depots, 
from whence they are at three years old transfeiTcd to Ghazeepoor, 
where they remain till they go into the service at four years old. The 
tiJlies all go to Poosah (there are generally upwards of 1,500 there), 
and remain there till they are four years old, when the best go into 
the districts as brood mares, the second-best go into the Light 
Cavalry regiments and batteries, and the others are sold in the Cal- 
cutta and other markets, where they realize fair prices. The stallions 
are stationed in the districts, and each has about thirty mares allotted 
to bim. The situation of the stable of course depends on the num- 
ber of mares in the vicinity. At some stands there are six stallions, 
at others only one. 

Those horses that are now coming out will be kept in the depots 
until they are in good condition, wben they Avill be sent into the dis- 
tricts ; but if, when the hot weather comes on, any of them show 
signs of feeling the heat, they will be at once brought to the depot 
again. From the 15th June till the 15th October aU covering is 
stopped, and the horses come into the depot. — Sjporting Magazine. 



TURF CRACKS. 123 

died. Mr. Wilson does not wonder at that, as he 
believes that ^' nothing short of a cast-iron man 
could sit on him for six hours.^' He certainly speaks 
from a pretty vast experience, as he rode him out every 
morning on his rounds. Their matutinal progress 
was not unfrequently marked by a succession of pirou- 
ettes. Owing to his peculiar military training, he 
has acquired a habit of always keeping a leg in re- 
serve. If he is cantering, it is with only three legs, 
and he is trotting with the other ; and then he will 
suddenly reverse matters. Again, seized by a sud- 
den fit of martial enthusiasm, he will gallop across 
the paddock at thirty miles an hour, then stop dead, 
and wheel round on one leg for a pivot. He was 
given by Omer Pacha to Sir Richard Airey, and was 
bought by the late Lord Spencer for 200 guineas, 
quite weak and almost hairless from the effects of 
the voyage. When his present Lordship gave up 
his stud, he was given to his agent Mr. Beaseley, 
who has since let him to Mr. Smith, to follow up 
the Katerfelto cross at Exmoor. 

Mr. Elliot, late of the Bombay Presi- Mr.EiiiotonArab 
dency, in an article in the India Sport- champions. 
ing Review (1852), gives it as his deliberate opinion, 
that up to that point the silver grey Barefoot* was 
of the purest Arabian blood he had met with. 
To The Child of the Islands he assigns the palm of 
racing superiority at 9st. 71b. and under j and 

* Tlie following is the description given by Major Gwatkin of 
Barefoot in 1828 : Barefoot is of the Nedgdee caste, eight years old, 
stands 1 4 hands 2 inches ; is a silvery grey, with a dark skin ; blood 
head, full eye, large thropple, light neck ; the shoulders are flat, with 
the muscular lines very distinct ; withers well raised ; a good arm ; 
legs flat, and the sinews large and well detached from the bone ; 
pasterns of a moderate length. His back and loins are particularly 
beautiful, and convey the idea of great strength.- His quarters are 
finely turned and very muscular. His temper is exceedingly good. 
When led out to start, he appears to great advantage, full of fire, yet 
very temperate ; and when at work no horse could evince more vigour 
and determined courage. 



124 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

selects Elepoo, whose race Avith the Cape horse Sir 
-Benjamin, was described in these terms — which, 
if they had been embodied in a telegram, would 
have sorely puzzled Lord John and the Foreign 
Office, — '• Asia gave Africa a stone and a beat- 
ing/' as the Champion of the Heavy Weights. 
Taking, however, purity of breed and goodness com- 
bined, there has, perhaps, been nothing to beat 
Barefoot, who was imported in 1820, and after run- 
ning at Bombay, and Baroda, passed over into 
the hands of Major Gwatkin, and distinguished him- 
self at Meerut and Cawnpore. He was only four- 
teen hands two inches, and of the Nedgdee caste, 
and his owner at one time intended to have sent 
him to the stud in England, but Mr. Weatherby did 
not think he would take, and dissuaded him 
from it.* 

Landingof Arabs Bagdad is the great emporium at 
at Bombay. "vvhich the Arabs are collected for India, 
and shipped thence to Bombay in droves of forty to 
seventy, where the great dealers from Calcutta and 
Madras await them. They begin to arrive about 
October 1 st, and never cease till the middle of March. 
Formerly they used to come as threes and fours, but 
of late years the system has been changed. The 
buyers like them with more age on them, and they 
require at least a yearns seasoning before they can be 
got into racing condition. From 6,000 to 9,000 are 
landed at the Apollo pier annually, the majority of 
them grey sires, which become quite white at eight. 
The prices range generally from £45 to o€60, but no 
good charger for a 12st. man can be got under £100 
to £150, while a racer will fetch his £150 to £250. 
The landing is a very picturesque sight, as the 
nativ3 dealers in long yellow robes and turbans 
struggle with their charges on the landing boards, 
and hand them over to little African boys, who flock 

* Mr. Elliott ranks Euby next to Barefoot. 



TURF CRACKS. 125 

down to the pier, and ride them to the different 
stables with nothing but a halter. 

Many of them have never seen a carriasre in their 
lives before, and there is not unfrequently some 
terrible devilry among them in consequence. They 
rush from one side of the street to another, till they 
-are one mass of foam, and occasionally dash head- 
long through the Bazaar, and perhaps kill a child. 
The voyage varies from thirty to seventy days, and 
reduces some of them to mere grey ghosts. Very 
few mares come, and those are generally barren. 
Their food on board consists of barley and dates, and 
what with this, day after day, following on their bad 
pasture, they get sadly heated, and their legs fill. 
Earbadoes aloes, and a little soap and ginger, is prin- 
cipally given them on landing, and it not unfre- 
quently removes a plate of pebbles, which they have 
brought inside them, as a most appropriate memento 
from Stony Arabia. Their food is changed to gram, 
which is a species of pulse, and very much resembles 
dry peas. It is so apt to ferment in the stomach, 
that it is not possible to give them very much of it, 
and it is usually mixed with English oats, which are 
very much better than the oats of the country. 

Madras used to be the Newmarket of . 

India, and its success from 1826-38 may 
be fairly attributed to the energetic system of the 
late and " lanky Will Hall,^^ who was then training 
for General Showers. Till 1838 no Arab had ever 
run two miles under 3 minutes 54 seconds ; but at 
Madras in the January of 1838_, it was first done in 
3 minutes 51 seconds, with 7st. 121b., by the bay 
four-year-old Samnite.* The courses are measured 
to a yard, about 12 inches from the inside, in order to 
make the time test as perfect as possible. Racing 
at Madras is in a great measure a dead letter now, 
and the Companj'^have rather set their faces against 

* It has been done tliree times since, in 3 min. 48 sees. 



126 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the sport everywhere, on account of the great amount 
of gambling which went on. Calcutta and Barrack- 
pore were the worst in this respect, and the system 
of lotteries (which is somewhat elaborate and rather 
different to ours), had grown to such a height, that 
at times a lac of rupees (£10,000) would be depending 
on the issue of one race. There are still 100 courses in 
India, the principal of which are Bombay, Poonah, 
Mysore, Baroda, Guzerat, Calcutta, and Cawnpore, 
General McDowell had seldom less than fifty Arabs 
in training ; Colonel Macleane had also a large string, 
and the late Sir Walter Gilbert^s was very renowned 
at Cawnpore. In Calcutta they begin to race at seven 
in the morning, but have to wait till nine, some 
times, on account of the fogs ; while at Madras and 
Bombay they begin at three or four in the after- 
n.oon. 

The " Bombay ducks^^ consider their racing season 
to extend through January, February, and part of 
March. Heats have been abolished ; from four to 
six races are run off in an afternoon, and seldom 
more than eight or nine start in each. The Maiden 
Plate at Bombay, for horses imported the previous 
year, generally ensures a capital start, and as there 
are sometimes seventy subscribers, it has been known 
to reach £1,200. The course on which it is run is 
circular, about a mile and a-half round, and very 
flat and hard, as in portions of it there are not more 
than eight or nine inches of soil above the rock. Arabs 
and Mahrattas and Parsees all look after the racers 
in the stables, and lead them at exercise for about 
three-quarters of an hour before they gallop. The 
native jockeys (which have been of late years nearly 
superseded by English ones), are principally Mah- 
rattas, and ride to the course on their hacks in 
true English style ; and as a general thing, they do 
not extend their circuits out of their own presi- 
dency. 



TrRF CRACKS. 127 

Arabs are invariably quick beginners^ Breeds and pecu- 
as most horses with hocks well under liantiesot Arabs. 
them are, and it is generally a case of trying to cut 
down each other from the very post. In point of 
speed they are not remarkable ; but their forte is to 
keep up to the very " top of their foot^^ for two miles. 
Their legs are very good naturally_, and none the 
worse for being calf-kneed ; but the fetlocks often 
become ossified with hard work on hard ground. 
Some of them will run three seasons in this state, 
and the excessive stifi'ness only seems to tell against 
them, by their getting off from the post rather 
slower. As hacks they are inferior, and often 
stumble most dreadfully. One of their greatest 
peculiarities is, that owing to their compact form, 
their over-stepping sometimes goes to the extent of 
fourteen inches, whereas the English horse seldom 
does more than just clear his fore-foot print. The 
Arab dealers lay great stress on this talent, as indi- 
cative of the highest racing capacity. With respect 
to carrying weight, the real test is whether the 
shoulder is well laid, and the girth deep. Hog 
hunting is quite in their way, and if their master is a 
cool hand (which they very soon find out), they are 
not long in learning how to turn with the boar, and 
receive his charge with the most unflinching courage. 
The most approved colours are bays and light greys, 
and in the case of the latter, it is easy to tell from 
an examination of the subtle red and black shades 
under the skin, whether they will be silver grey or 
flea-bitten ; and the tendency to the latter coat de- 
velopes itself very distinctly at four years old. If the 
Arabs have a golden chesnut, they love the accom- 
paniment of a blaze, and four white stockings. 

The two principal tribes are the Aneza, in the 
centre of Arabia, and the Nedgdee, so called after the 
capital of Stony Arabia. Several of a distinct tribe 
are bred at Bagdad -, but although they are very 



128 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

handsome and showy, they are hardly so pure in 
bloody and seldom stay a distance so well. The 
Aneza horses have very great endurance, and during 
the last twenty years they have gradually got ahead 
of the Nedgdee, which scarcely ever exceeds fourteen- 
two, while the Aneza is seldom less than that, and 
occasionall}^ reaches fifteen. Both are fine in their 
tempers, though, perhaps, the Nedgdee has the pull 
in this respect. The Anezas are mostly bays and 
chesnuts, whereas the most famous Nedgdee tribe of 
Saglowdie is almost invariably grey. As regards the 
heads of these desert rivals, that of the Aneza horse 
is the least pure of the two, and there is, perhaps, 
a cross of the Turcoman (native dealers say the 
English) horse in it, which makes the head larger 
and more Roman-nosed, though the eye is equally 
good. 

In this point, the Nedgdee is remarkably beau- 
tiful, and retains the small head, fine eye, neat 
ears, and clean jowl of his patrician race; and as a 
general rule, these two tribes are not crossed with 
Tricks of native cach othcr. Ouc of tlic leading marks 

dealers. gf ^]^g purc Ncdgdec, is the line at the 
root of the ear, arising from the practice of sewing 
the ears together when they are young. As this point 
is always looked for by purchasers, the dealers take 
care not to disappoint them, and a hot skewer makes 
s. very fair fac-simile of it. In the Aneza, a white 
mark above the near hock, caused by the chain 
attached to the fore-leg, which prevents them from 
straying in the desert, has been almost made a sine 
qua no?i, since Major Seaton first noticed it ; 
but the '^ Eort Adjutant^s mark^^ gradually came 
up in horses of apparently such coarse caste, 
that forgery and friction had no doubt been at 
work. 

The early Eng- HorizOU, thc first of tllC EclipSCS, 

lisii cracks. camc out iu 1774, and Competitor, 



TURF CRACKS. 129 

the last of them, died towards the close of 1816. 
Neither the late Mr. Kirby, nor any other of the 
Turf patriarchs we have talked with, can remember 
seeing the mighty chesnut, and we have therefore no 
fresh traditions, wherewith to rush into that profitless 
controversy, which rages at intervals over his 
bones. Good old Sylvester Reed is also gone; 
but many a little hint of his, on man and horse, 
is scattered through these pages. Of Champion, 
he was wont to say, that he showed remarkable 
breeding, and had no coarseness about him, except 
his lop -ears. Hambletonian although " more of a har- 
ness horse," was another of his boyish jjambietonian. 
darlings. This horse was not thought 
much of as a yearling, when he was in the pad- 
docks at Shipton, with Beningbrough, and his mares 
were his best runners. In his seventeen starts he 
was never beaten but once, and then he jumped the 
cords; but his sister Gipsy, gained a most unhappy 
notoriety, by throwing George Herring (who won 
nineteen races in succession) three times at Hull, 
in 1796, and killing him at last on the spot. She 
was sold as a maiden to Russia, and there have 
been no races at Hull since. 

Mr. Reed^s invariable storv of Crowcatcher, whom 
John Smith insisted on so naming, when j^^^n smith at 
he had seen him deftly behead a wool streatiam. 
stealer in ipso facto, led us insensibly on to the Streat- 
iam stud. It is quite the oldest in the North, and 
well has it held its ground. John Smith entered 
the tenth Lord Strathmore^s service in 1795, and 
was with him till 1808. Before this, his lordship 
had quite a small stud at Esher, near Kingston, and 
Pipator, one of Lord Clermont^s breeding, and 
Queen Mab, the nursing mother of the stud, both 
came from there. Queen Mab was by .,^ _ ..„M.r, 

.. «! " I see Queen Mab 

Lclipse, irom a Tartar mare, and has been witii 
the youngest of the ten chesnuts, five ^°"* 

K 



130 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

colts, and five fillies_, with. Jupiter and Mercurjr 
among tliem_, which her dam threw to Eclipse 
in 1772-85. Some would have it that she was 
foaled when the Tartar mare was thirty-six; but 
Isaac Walker, after making himself, as in duty 
bound, a perfect Strype on the subject, cannot find 
that she was more than twenty-seven. 

She was trained at Epsom and Newmarket, but, like 
one of Captain MeynelFs (who had four years of it on 
the Warren Hill) she never started. Lord Strath- 
more gave ^296 for her, and she was sent, in 1795, 
to TattersalFs; but as 180 gs. was the highest oft'er, 
she did not change hands, and commenced a 
three hundred mile walk, to Gibside. As regards 
her looks, Isaac has all the facts and figures 
of the thing, down to " white nearly up to hock 
on near hind leg, and a few white hairs close to 
hoof on near forefoot, &c. f^ but it is enough for 
us to know that she was a-thick and lengthy fourteen- 
three chesnut, with white mane and tail, and wide 
drooping ears. Her Hemembrancer by Pipator won 
the St. Leger in Ben Smithes hands, and Cassio by 
Sir Peter, who was born when she was a desperate 
sufi'erer from a gathered udder, ran second to Fylde- 
ner, and performed most brilliantly the following 
year. It was, however, through Remembrance by 
Sir Solomon, and Oblivion by Jerry, that her blood 
descends in female tail to Forget-me-Not, the dam 
of Daniel O^Hourke. 

The Queen Mab ^hc three othcr '^ bluc ribbous" of 
family at s treat- Strcatlam, oulv inherit a strono^ collate- 

lam ■' «/ o 

ral dash of her blood through her dark 
chesnut nephew Hermes by Mercury, from a Wood- 
pecker dam. He went blind from inflammation, at 
Winchester races, and Lord Strathmore rode him 
hack, and drove him in his curricle. John Smith 
was wont to say, that he never rode a faster trotter, 
and bade the farmers be of good courage, and not 



TURF CRACKS. 131 

mind a fifteen-shilling fee. Hermes died at Gib- 
side in 1814, but not before be had united the 
Eclipse and Highflyer strains in his Gibside Fairy, 
from Vicissitude by Pipator. From the cross of 
this bloody-looking brown and Whisker^ came Em- 
ma, the dam of Mundig, Cotherstone, and the gran- 
dam of West Australian, and as Isaac triumphantly 
observes, " there we have it.'' Vicissitude was foaled 
at the paddocks, and was forfeited with her dam to 
his Lordship, because her owner left her till the ex- 
penses of the keep were far beyond her seeming 
value. She was the granddaughter of Pyrrha, the 
produce of those two Northumberland flyers of Mr. 
Eenwick^s, of whom a highly equitable poet observes^^ 
in allusion to there not being the weight of a stable- 
key between them : 

" Matcliem lie was the best of all 

But Duchess the flower of Bywell Hall." 

In 1808, John Smith went to the streatiam tram- 
Marquis of Queensberry, as stud- groom, ^rs. 
in Scotland, and from thence with his lordship^s horses 
to Middleham. Dunn succeeded him as trainer at 
Streatiam, and then Charles Marson, who trained 
for his lordship till he died, and afterwards entered 
the Marquis of Exeter^s service, taking with him a 
2,000-guinea colt, by Ardrossan from Vicissitude. 
After him there was no more training at Streatiam, 
and a riband of rather greener turf in the park 
still faintly marks the course, over which he worked 

* 

the Remembrancer stock, with Lord Foley and 
Sir John Shelley to look on during the grouse 
season. 

Independent of all this Turf heraldry, isaac waiker at 
the spot is as beautiful a one as you i^^™®- 
may find in the county of Durham. A large herd 
of Argyles formed a red, black, and cream array, as 
they gathered beef in the park, where the Pipatora 



132 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and Remembrancers got rid of it. A herd of fallow 
deer^ which had months before 

Hung their old heads on the pale, 

were sauntering past the boxes of the fated Night- 
watch and the bay filly Culotte de Peau, a name just 
fresh from Paris, and over the meaning and pronun- 
ciation of which we found Isaac fiercely strugghrjg 
for the mastery, in the recesses of his saddle-room. 
Among the inner and outer treasures of that cupboard 
are Obadiah the Quaker musing on the future; and 
the Doncaster return sheet of The West's year in full. 
There, too, are the gilt plates of that hero, while one 
of a larger size represents Mundig. Isaac himself went 
as a stripling to Mr. George Laue Fox's, of Bramham, 
and first visited Newmarket, in charge of Macduff, 
when he beat the Duke of York^s Moses, the Derbv 
winner of ^2.2. After a few years there with Eloss, he 
joined Perren, of Settrington, and putting into liam- 
bleton, in stress of weather, with Euphrosyne, 
Macduff, New Baith, and Sir Tatton's I^egotiator, 
he first saw his future ally John Scott. It was a 
rare harbour of refuge for Yorkshire trainers in hard 
weather ; and there, too, among others, came Dicky 
Shepherd, with Muta andManuella, and Bobby Pet- 
tit, with Sir B. K. Dick's Ajax and Euphrates. 

After this little interlude, near '^tlie white mare of 

"Whisseucliffe," Isaac lived three,years as padgroom 

to Mr. Bowes, at Cambrid«;e: and when 

Ts3.3.c's ititGrviG ws 

with Will Good- that gentleman sat for South Durham, 
^^^' in the iirst BL-form Parliament, he still 

held his post. He met W ill Goodall, w4io was there 
on duty for Mr. Drake, and " on the other side of 
the question," night after night, under the St. 
Stephen's horse shed ; and when their minds, like the 
Laird of Cockpen's, were not '' ta'en up wi'' affairs of 
the State," during a great division niglit, they ex- 
changed many a reflection on horse and hound. 



TURF CRACKS. 133 

Tsaac/s father gave up his place soon after; but he 
lived to see his son hold it in his room for exactly 
a third of a century. 

The earliest stud recollection of the xi^^ streatiam 
latter was seeing his father help to Paddock pets. 
drag out Hermes from his box, to be buried under 
the hawthorn, close by the precipice of the Lune 
bank, to the side of which he had galloped even 
in his blind days, and stopped short like a manege 
horse. A few nettles close by bloom over Pipator 
and Queen Mab ; and the paddocks in which 
their piogeny roamed, still flourish, guarded by 
those thick holly hedges which the stable lads 
planted, and John Smith watered with such care. 
The stones for their high walls came from the old 
buildings, and Frank never failed to tell Isaac that 
he knew he " shut up his yearlings for another twelve 
months, if they were not big enough, and only 
brought them up honest if they were.^^ The West^s 
paddock is generally reserved for the crack of the 
year, but Welcome and Katomski were its doubtful 
denizens of ^Sixty. 

Among the ijiares, which were a little further 
on, The Flapper looked like a lengthy, lame 
poster, and Mowerina, an own sister to Cother- 
stone, with her chubby-headed old Orange Girl 
at her side, was quite light enough below the 
knee. Still there can be no doubt, if you 
look at her, whence The West catches his beau- 
tiful head and shoulders, and Isaac observes to us 
as he tenderly passes his hand under her jowl, 
that ^^ she has no chance of roaring when the machi- 
nery is so clean.^^ The year that she went to Bay 
Middleton she was his only thoroughbred mare, and 
she lost her colt foal, owing to the man in charge 
turning idle and riding her for fifteen or sixteen 
miles. Forget-me-Not Avas there, with the first and 
last foal by The West they ever had at these pad- 



134 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

docks; aud wlien Isaac is called on for the other 
curiosities of his Streatlam experience ; he will tell 
you that Balderdale and Lunedale have been the 
only roarers on the place^ that in Cotherstone^s year 
all seven mares produced colts, that he never had twins 
except the brothers to Klarikoff, and that Gibside 
Pairy carried Emma for a twelvemonth and a day. 
The Yorkshire Phenomenon had the honour of 

Greys. making roaring as fashionable in the 
North, as the stock of Cervantes made two-vear-old- 
running. Delpini filled it with rather leggy greys, 
most of which could go four miles. He was the 
sire of Mr. Garforth^s Vesta, who, with her dam, 
Paith, and her half-sister Marcia, formed the most 
beautiful trio of greys that ever adorned a stud, 
Mr. Pierse^s not excepted. There were three Del- 
pini greys amongst the eight St. Leger starters in 
Beningbrough^s year ; and his grey Symmetry soon 
afterwards proved his claim to be the sweetest-looking 

Delpini of the ^^^ ^^^^ ®^^^ '^OTL that racc. Delpini 
woolly coat, himself was very closely allied to the 
Arab in his look, light-bodied, and with a promi- 
nent eye and head, Avhich told of desert descent ; 
and even when he was wasted almost to a skeleton, 
he miraculously retained his beauty. During his 
last three years, he never shed his coat, and became 
like the woolly child of caravan lore. The fact was 
so well known in Yorkshire, that when an old gen- 
tleman with very long white hair sat on the Grand 
Jury for the first time at York, and went up to the 
foreman to pay his footings, there was heard this 
pretty audible aside from one of them^ " Here comes 
the Delpini colt,'^ 

Turf doings at Golumpus was thc first sire Sir Tat- 
siedmere. ^q^^ gygj, uscd, wlicu hc began to keep a 

few mares at Westow, and Sledmere, by Delpini 
from a Gabriel mare, who went to Sir Bellingham 
Graham for 800 gs., was the first good sale he 



TURE CRACKS. 135 

made. Half of this liorse belonged to Sir Mark, 
who had four or five brood mares at Sledmere, 
in 1804, and among them the sisters Miss Teazle 
Hornpipe and Miss Hornpipe Teazle, by Sir 
Peter from a Trumpator mare. Both of them were 
sent to Sancho, and they returned in foal with Prime 
Minister and President. The former beat Tramp, 
after a most desperate finish in the Pour-year-old 
Subscription at York, and the latter was a little 
brown horse, which passed into Sir Tatton^s hands, 
and was given by him to an earth-stopper. To the 
donor he proved rich treasure-trove, as he soon 
ranked next to Screveton in the North E-iding^s 
eyes, and nearly al] the young things were fathered 
on the pair. The Sledmere horses were then trained 
at Marramat, by George Searle, and while Mr. 
Bethell, of Rise (who was confederate with Mr. 
Pratt) confined his racing nomenclature to Green- 
gage and other fruits, Sir Mark bethought himself of 
the Knights-of-the-liound-Table, and went in for 
Sir Sacripant, Sir Bertram, Sir Marinel, and the 
like. 

Sam Chifney, who had attracted his sam chifney m 
notice at York, was engaged as jockey Yorkshire 
at £100 a-year, but his dawdling ways were against 
him, and he was spoken of, in the Sledmere stable, as 
^' the long, thiuj lazy lad.^^ As he lived at New- 
market, a hack had to be sent over frequently by 
appointment to meet the coach at Malton, and as 
often as not, it returned without him. When 
"Woldsman was to be tried for his Shuttlecock 
match, over Knavesmii-e, Sam kept Sir Mark and 
his brother waiting three or four hours, and then 
arrived a stone over weight, from a venison 
feast. 

After his discharge on the trial morning, Trarbutt, 
who was, like Snarry, a lad with Searle, rode occa- 
sionally for the stable; but Jackson got the best 



136 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

mounts, and never showed finer horsemansliip 
than when he met Petronius with Theresa,, at 
"York. 

Sir Mark eave 500 guineas for Camil- 

Caixiillus & stumps -■ itti-1j.-/» t:i-j_i i 

Ins by Hambietonian irom Jbaith^ and 
kept him for eight or nine seasons, till he died. He 
was barely fifteen-one, and full of Arab quality, and 
his portrait, with the old coachman at his head, 
forms one of the Penates at Sledmere. One of 
his fillies was the dam of Negotiator by Prime 
Minister, a strong, useful horse, but rather a ram- 
bling goer, and sold to Lord Kennedy for 700 gs., 
at three. Stumps by Whalebone was the first sire 
Sir Tatton ever bought, and he combined his 
favourite fifteen-two standard, with rather light 
bone, and an aptitude for heats, in which he had 
beaten Goshawk. He had Delpini^s style of head, 
and it w^as from his light fore-legs, and his stumped- 
up way of going on themj that he acquired his 
name. 

Two hundred guineas was his Doncaster price, and 

he was finally given away after five seasons to a 

tenant in Holderness. His end was a 

Death of Stumps. -, i ' i j* i • 

sad one, as he broke away irom his 
leader, w^ho was in his cups, and caught a fatal in- 
flammation from vfandering up and down a field in 
a rainy night, with his sheets dragging at his 
heels. 

But Snarrv in his snow-white iacket 

-An Ultimo oil *' 

with Sir Tat- must step forward now, ashen plant in 
ton&snarry. ^^^^^ ^-j.^ ^^^ ChoTus iu thc play, and 

tell his experience of Sledmere past and present. 
The inspiriting presence of Dick Stockdale, more 
deep than ever in the Maroon faith since he became 
his own, w^as not wanting that day. Both openly 
and by implication he set forth his praises. We heard 
of high stepping bays by him, which had worked 
their way into the Royal Mews, and again that 











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TURF CRACKS. 137 

mysterious story of a presumptuous rival, who only 
lived to break two men, and well nigh caused another 
to hang liimself. And so, passing for the present, 
over Daniel the delight of Snarry^s 
heart, Colsterdale with whom he has i?on"J)f snarry 
never held more than an armed truce, and mere^^ires^^^"^' 
Fandango towards whom he has always 
preserved a highly dignified neutrality, we com- 
menced our journey with The Dialls field. It was 
high -tide with The Lawyer that summer aad 
Snarry^s Manchester Examiner was perpetually 
bringing good tidings. As luck would have it, his 
dam stood foremost among the eleven mares; and 
our interpreter spake on this wise, ' _, ^. „, ^ ,. 

rr mi i.^ T ) J \! i \. The Diall's field. 

" That s Lawyer s dam ; she s by 
Hampton, dam by Cervantes, great grandam by 
Smasher. Lawyer M have been a lost horse if he^d 
not been sold at York; he's just got hold of four 
Queen^s Plates in four days. They rode her at 
Birdsall when the hounds went there, hunter and 
hack occasionally. That's a half-brother to him by 
Caster, that chesnut Sir Tatton's on now; Mr. 
Sykes has another of them in London. The old 
brown horse, he was shot last week, not very safe at 
last, heM carried Sir Tatton sixteen years. I thought 
I was right on that point, however ; I don^t think 
he ever had a name. Hampton ? — yes, we must go 
back a bit ; he'd be by Sultan out of Sister to 
Moses : we had him first in ^38 ; his mares are going 
off now; Lord Westminster had him; gave 600 gs. 
for him at the Hampton sale ; he Avas a chesnut ; 
he got us short-legged, strong chesnut mares ; Sir 
Tatton gave three hundred for him ; he was a slow 
beast, did us a deal of good for all that. Cervantes ! 
you want to know about him ? he was a compact- 
looking horse ; not so very big ; they were pretty 
fair stayers. That's a Fernhill mare, we had him a 
season. That's sister to Odd Trick by Sleight, she's 



138 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

got the best foal here, thafs by Daniel, That's 
Thornhill's dam ; hers^ll be by Colsterdale ; like 
him too ; second best foal, but a long way behind. 
WeVe thirty or forty Colster dales. ThaPs Grey- 
ling's dam there, and sister to Jack Prost, both by 
Sleight. They've each got one, so has the Jereed 
mare. That's a Knight of the Whistle ; she's one 
of the best bred ones in England, I'll be bound for 
it ; her foal's by Daniel, and a very good one it is. 
We had a good way on to a hundred foals, five 
double ones, seven or eight mares slipped, and some 
not put to. That mare's by Hampton, dam by 
Young Phantom out of sister to Barefoot, she's the 
prettiest mare we have. 

" This is Swale's Wold, that will be an 

Swale's Wold. iiii i n^, ix- 

ash belt, oaks don t manage much oi a 
tap-root in these parts. We've four Fernhill mares 
here; that's one of them, the chesnut; let me see, 
she's by Pyrrhus from Odd Trick's dam \ a Daniel 
foal too, such a thick one. Pyrrhus was only here 
one season, and left us large chesnut mares. That's 
a Burgundy : we'll not say much about her looks, 
rare bred 'un for all that, out of a Muley Moloch 
mare, the foal's a Colsterdale ; got his hind-legs to 
a shaving. Do you mean that white-faced one 
on the heap ? Algebra, best of Mathematician's 
get. Poor Mr. Drinkald, he ivould send him ; she's 
got a chesnut filly by Daniel, bloody-looking — the 
white-faced one, I mean. They're ten foals here, all 
of them fillies. That's a C^^ster mare, Colsterdale 
again, and very like him. We had Caster seven or 
eight seasons, I think you'd put thirty to him one 
season. Sir Tatton ; aye ! it would be fully that ; he 
was a thick, short horse, got us little stumpy mares, 
we've very few of them. That mare's off' sister to 
Spotted Boy's dam ; — ^ ^ ^ Yes, it's a good 
cow, I question whether we've a better about the 
place. 



TURF CRACKS, 139 

'^They call this The Cottage Pasture. The cottage Pas- 
There are the mares among those white *^^' 

thorns in the slack : sister to Sauter le Coup, she's 
a beautiful mare by Sleight of Hand out of Black 
Tommy ^s dam ; we bred him, he was second for the 
Derby. That Orlando-looking coitus out of her own 
sister, and her first foal; you needn't ask it^s if a 
Daniel, when we see the legs and limbs. Yon brown 
mare, she's by Sleight out of Darling; a grand 
mare ; we've best mares of any body's, I don't care 
where they are, we can challenge any stud in Eng- 
land with our Sleight of Hand mares ; bring what 
they like, we'll meet them. That's a Stumps mare, 
as like the family as aught we have ; he had sweet 
legs and hind- quarters, his fore ones wern't much to 
€rack of; she's got a grey, short-looking Daniel ; it 
may make something yet ; from grey mares Daniel 
gets as many grey as anything ; we've put her to Fan- 
dango, — he's rather starved Daniel ; that Stumps 
mare Wicket we had, she scratched her hip with a nail 
in the railway-box, and died of lock-jaw. This will 
be as good as ever she was. That's a Pyrrhus mare, 
dam by Sleight of Hand, she's sister to Baronet. 
Colsterdale, he got them half chesnuts the first go 
ofi ; after that more bay ones. 

" We're comins^ into Cherry Wood 

-n 1 .1 n -w c ±A Cherry Wood End. 

Ji-nd; there are five mares, all oi them 
with fillies ; three whites among them. That's Pan- 
mure's dam by Stumps ; we had Stumps six or seven 
years ; he'd be fifteen-two. Sir Tatton, and not very 
good measure either ; we've a granddaughter of 
Wicket, she's had nothing that's come to hand yet ; 
Monge's dam by Bay Middleton, she's another of 
the whites ; and that mare by Sleight of Hand dam 
by Cervantes, grandam by Young Phantom, we call 
her blue grey. That great, stout-bodied mare, she's 
sister to Grey Tommy by Sleight of Hand; Mr. 
Drinkald bought five or six that turn. The brown 



140 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

mare next her (the Colsterdale^s a twin), she's by 
Sleight of Hand, dam by Comus, grandam by Go- 
lumpus. WeWe most stout mares by Sleight, he got 
us nice bays and browns; St. Giles is from them. 
Sleight of Hand, he was as narrow as a rail across 
the hips -J he hit with the Hamptons, they're low 
and wide, with wonderful fore-legs, and the Comus 
mares. Mr. Scott said he was good, but a bit deli- 
cate — bloody head and neck. Sir Tat ton and Mr. 
Osborne were a long time over the bargain, it went 
on nearly all the Doncaster week — 325 guineas at 
last; he was a cheap horse to us. We had two 
Comus mares last year, one's put down and one's 
dead ; he got foals, did the old horse when he was 
twenty-eight ; he got us chesnuts with white legs ; 
he had no white himself; Sir Tatton hired him for 
six seasons. Grey Momus, he was the pick of the 
basket, he was from a Cervantes mare. Many 
Comus mares are grey, they get it from Camillus, — ■ 
he got them grey ; Cervantes's and Young Phan- 
tom's, they come bays. Young Phantom never got 
us a chesnut j he was half Bill Scott's ; lame at three 
years old, though ; he got his foot into a rabbit 
hole ; Comus never had a spavinned one, and only 
one ring-bone that I know of. 

^^ You'll know Craggs Flat again, we 
* put the cracks here ; all colts looking 
like yearlings, and all chesnuts but one ; five Col- 
sterdales and two Daniels. They're very forward 
pastures ; there are two black lambs to make stock- 
ings of. That chesnut mare's by Sleight out of 
sister to Hamptonia ; she only lived to have a colt 
and a filly ; that's the filly. The pretty dark chesnut 
by itself, that's Thornhill's dam; that's the first 
Colsterdale foal we had ; there's Naughty Boy's dam 
close by her ; that's a rare thick chesnut Colsterdale 
she's got with her, it's a horse now; Amati's 
dam never made a mistake ; Mr. Cookson came 



TURF CRACKS. 141 

liere and found the name on a fiddle, that's why 
we called him that. We must get it correct 
anyhow ; only four of them have ever had a bridle 
on. Gorse Hill, Amati, Elcho, Bogle Hill — 
Marquis of Bowmont they called him when he 
won — all winners ; bred nothing but what's won, — 
what^s been tried however. The chesnut's by 
Sleight of Hand out of Darling ; she has a ches- 
nut ; to'ther's a bay Colsterdale foal, and like him 
too ; that Darling blood^s as good as anything 
we have. Little Hampton was from the old mare. 
That^s a Pyrrhus mare, none of themes run but 
Bayonet ; I doubt he^s not so good as he ought to 
be ; they keep matching of him ; I don^t know what 
they're doing with him ; they don't measure him 
well, I think. Yes ! he gave 221bs., Sir Tatton. 
" There are lots of mushrooms in this 

r-t ,-t n ^ 1 iii ^ j • n The Castle Field. 

Castle held; we get the best view oi 
Sledmere from it ; that's Marramat among the firs 
and ashes over there. Sir Christopher planted the 
woods ; there's a good gallop two miles round aaiong 
those woods at Marramat : Sam Chifnev's ridden in 
it many a time. George Serle had the farm, and 
trained Sir Mark's horses ; I was there as a lad, 
fifty years ago ; aye ! it will be fully that ; then Sir 
Mark's horses went to Joe Ackroyd's, where Mr. 
Scott lives now ; then on to Perren's at Settrington. 
Tibthorpe Wold Farm lies over there ; a good bit of 
Boddle was a rabbit warren; those red roofs there, 
that's it ; then we get round — Marramat — Mow- 
thorpe — Kirby and the rest of them. The separate 
trees look like a wood. We're forgetting these 
mares ; there are five Sleights amongst them ; have 
you got that one down ? I suppose you'll be bring- 
ing out something in the Si/k and Scarlet style ; one 
of them's by Sleight out of Wicket, white mare you 
were talking of ; next her, let me see, she'll be by 
Sleight of Hand, dam by Stumps, grandam by Oiseau. 



142 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

The white-legged bay walking off ; that^s Wynnstay's 
dam^ with a foal just the make of Colsterdale. Mr« 
Sykes rode the little chesnut mare with the har- 
riers ; that^s her Daniel foal, that thick ^un. Daniels 
fillies have a deal more grey at the root of their 
tails than the colts ; there are a deal of grey hairs 
from Daniel ; that^s the Irishman ; the tails always 
witness of Daniel, — they used to be called the Mat- 
chem arms. That big foal in the middle, he^s bro- 
ther to — Highflyer, and not fly so very fast either. 
We only once brought up twins, they were a couple 
of Riflemen. 

" There are only two Pyrrhuses in this 
The ing s le . j^* j^g^g Field, and a sister to Wollaton ; 

the skewballed one's out of sister to Baronet ; I 
didnH know what was coming; so Sir Tatton says ; 
Well ! there was a great white patch on the side, — 
as like a calf as aught. That other Pyrrhus, Sir 
Tatton thinks her about his best. Now, there is a 
good halter full, Mr. Stockdale ! We had seven or 
eight Pyrrhuses, Sir Tatton's never sold but two, 
and those to the King of Italy ; Mr. Phillips 
came, and Count Cigar or Cigala, I think they call 
him — well, it's some name like that. 

" We must cross the Driffield Road, 

Across the road , , i ,i i j.i i -n i • 

and into the and througu the wood ; that will bring 
^^'"^' us into the Park. This reservoir it's 

about thirty yards across. We've only fifty-five 
mares here. How many have we got? I never counted 
them, — better than a hundred ; Sir Tatton gave the 
word, and we left off early in May ; several good 
mares have never been touched with nothing, four, 
five, six, not one in this Park too young ; we've that 
Lanercost mare, dam of Monsieur Dobler, she's all 
we've got or ever had of that sort. That's by Caster, 
she goes into a Muscat Arab, bought at Hampton 
Court. The great grandam of that mare, it's sup- 
posed to be by Grey Orvile from a pony that was 



TURF CRACKS. 143 

at Waterloo, Sir Tatton will tell you all about it; 
Grey Orvile, he^d got a skip with a coach-horse 
some way. There are nineteen on the other side of 
Marram at^ we\e seen about fifty. There are eight we 
haven^t seen, other side of Colly Wood. There^s one 
Womersley here, sister to Gaspard, neither covered 
or nothing else ; most of them are Daniels, when, 
we get at them below. That's a Russian ; this is 
an Andover out of a Caster mare ; it's a bit damaged 
in the eye ; the other's a Cossack out of sister to 
Grey Tommy ; three white legs, she^s sister to 
Baronet ; there's sister to Juggler ; that's a Young 
Barefoot. This is either a Colonel mare or a Langar 
dam; they^re four-year-olds, I must look at my 
book : Woo ! my lass I No. 57, ivhat marks ? "^ A 
star, a spot on the nose, far hind-leg white nearly up 
to hockj'^ that will be Colonel. Wev'e seven or 
eight Andovers, they suit DanieFs, they're on a 
longer leg. 

" I don't see any Kecovery mares ; Sir Tatton sent 
six to him : King of Hearts's dam is from one. We 
had Sir Joseph here ; he looked the yearlings over, 
and King of Hearts was the only one he had out 
the second time. He didn't buy him for all that ; and 
he just beat his Duke RoUo. It would be at North- 
ampton, Sir Tatton. That's a Defence mare : we've 
only one Andover and Pyrrhus ; they both go back 
to Lord Fitzwilliam^s Amadis blood, Mr. Kirby 
hired him ; he came once a week to the kennels at 
Eddlethorpe ; he got the best hunters Lord Fitz- 
william ever had. He was got by Quicksilver, the 
same horse as Cervantes. There's Gaspard's dam, 
and the chesnut, she's by Sleight of Pland out 
of Ragged Petticoat by Comus. That brown's 
been ridden in the harrier stables a bit of one 
season. 

That black 'un^s a Fernhill ; I don't fancy the sort 
much, — game horse too for all that. Most of them 



144 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

down here are Daniels ; that want's to be out of 
sight, Poverty^s been there since it came from Hes- 
lington Wold. That Andover out of Caster mare 
want^s to be shown ; she thinks herself better than 
common. DonH be so proud, Miss ! That DanieFs 
out of a Lanercost mare : she^s very like him. That 
one never had a tail to speak of, and never will have. 
That's by Fugleman ; next her's an Andover, let 
me see my book, a twin ; yes ! she will be, Sir Tat- 
ton, out of sister to Billy go Rarely. That Avas one 
of Lord AVaterford's names ; he put him in his drag, 
and drove Mr. Legard down to Epsom first time he'd 
been in harness. That mare's the best of Daniel's ; 
the thin end of them we picked out to go to York, 
the thick's not covered yet. 

^''We'rethrouerh them at last: they're 

A little arithmetic. '■,-,-, • i,it-\ • ^ i " ^ 

middie-sized these Daniel mares; they re 
not big, still they're wide mares. How manj^ have 
we ? I don't know rightly, Sir Tatton ; there are 
twenty-five two-year-olds at the kennels ; eleven 
threes we picked out to keep, they're at Heslington 
Carr j eleven three-year-old colts down in Holder- 
ness on the Marshes; the fours and fives are about 
home : I can't just tell about the yearling 
fillies ; I've not cast them up lately ; there'll be 
thirtv-two or thirtv-three of one kind or another, 
fifteen on farmers' seeds, eighteen left at home ; I 
don't know without looking at my book where they 
are. This is the tally-board, I've just done chalking 
up all the filly foals with their marks. I'll copy 
them out some evening into the book; there we fix 
them ; there'll be twenty-five this year, one of them's 
dead. We'll begin swinging them at the stack, when 
we've done with York, to teach them to lead; we do 
two or three stack-fulls a day, eight a- piece about 
two hours at a time, that's quite long enough. We've 
been a g^ood deal bothered with these worms — they're 
five or six inches long — but I think we've matched 



TURF CRACKS. 145 

'em ; we give them a gill of cold drawn linseed oil, 
and an ounce of spirits of turpentine ; it brings them 
away in scuttles full ; they^ve forks at both ends, and 
they fairly eat through the bowels. 
" Sir Tatton's had these laurels by the 

T-T ,1 iji T\-ij^ The sire paddocks. 

road-side cut down lately. JJaniel gets 
plenty of swing here ; he goes once round the pad- 
dockj whoever^s here; now he does that nicely; Sir 
Tatton still says, I hang to him a bit ; look at those 
legs moving, just like a fiddle for ail the world ; 
Derby course, indeed ! he could have run to Derby 
that dav, if Frank had asked him. He mastered 
them a bit latterly at Mr. Scott^s ; aye ! it^s a good 
colour; dark chesuut^s as pretty as aught when it^s 
blooming. Now, you Colsterdale men ! he^s up in 
that corner among the peacocks ; he^s as proud as 
any of them in his way ; he needn'^t be ; it's a very 
silky skin, but he's no credit to himself, he tears at 
himself; his thighs are straight enough, they'll just 
suit the Daniel crook ; Sir Tatton looked at Loup.- 
garou, and five or six more before he bought him. 
Take care of him ; keep a look out or he'll begin his 
dot-and-go-one, and wheedle up to you. He's all 
wire; he was a great jumper with hounds in his 
pauper days, so they tell me ; well, he's had a rare 
chance now. Be off with you I None of your 
tricks I We'll shut him up with his gay companv. 
That will be the bell, Sir Tatton." 

From Sledmere to Ashton Hall is a oid times at Ash- 
long leap, but we must make it for tonHaii. 
chronology's sake. It lies about three miles from 
Lancaster, and in the Duke of Hamilton's zenith, 
no paddocks were a surer find for a St. Leger win- 
ner. They are like a fortified town with walls 
seven feet high, Avhich, with a belt of planting, form 
a good bulwark against the breezes of the Irish 
Ocean. Underley was twenty-five miles away, and 
Muley had not then made for it a name. The 

L 



146 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Duke was very oiien at the Hall_, and lie had a jovial; 
custom that the sailors_, when they came in from 
abroad^ and passed on their route from Glaston 
Dock to Lancaster, should make it their half-way 
house, and pledge Old England in a horn of ale. 
The Duke's and their Poils^ healths were not for- 
gotten, and if his Grace was about, they would 
huzza, till for peace and quietness he was compelled 
to show himself and bow. His own dress was quite 
of the good old fashion, and he was not above grey 
breeches and drab gaiters, with a double-breaster 
of blue and yellow stripes, and a large drab 
coat. 

His horses were his great delight at home, but he 

cared very little for seeing them run, and had the re- 

" The best of all sults acToss the hills by express. When 

good company." }jg ^{^ ^qj^ ^s far as York, he stayed with 

Archbishop Harcourt at Bishopthorpe, and they 
would watch the running together from a stile It was 
said that they gradually shifted their ground nearly 
half-a-mile in six or seven years, and finally finished 
opposite the Gravel Road. Eyes as keen had been 
content to look on at the running from Middlethorpe 
Corner, and it was there that Mr. BethelFs Ruler 
broke his fetlock-joint in ^82, and the three young 
Sykoses, then boys with a tutor at Bishopthorpe, were 
the first to get up to him. 

Lancashire turf The era of 1808-10 was a merry one 
rivals. j^t Ashton Hall. The York Herald was 
77ie Life of that day, and "Nap^s" battles were 
keenly looked for and talked over by the lads, amid 
the intervals of cricket, nine pins, and nurr and 
spell. Of all such games, his Grace was a great 
patron, and he engaged Mendoza, whose " limbs 
like an ox" were the astonishment of that little 
community, to come down and instruct his sons. 
Theakstone trained for him, and Charles Marson, 
who looked after Petronius and Ashton in turn, rode: 



TURF CRACKTS. 147 

his light weights. There had been some little dis- 
pute between his Grace and Lord Strath more, as to 
which should have the black jacket^ which, by the bye, 
had no gold braid till Mr. Bowes came of age. The 
former gave way, and adopted a blue belt, and went 
to Lancaster to see Marson winniug the first race 
in it on Ploughboy, and getting carried shoulder high 
into the stand. Preston was then quite the county 
race course, and His Grace made it a point of honour 
to go there, and pit his steeds specially against Lord 
Derby, Sir Thomas Stanley, and Mr. Clifton. 

Sir Peter had long been the Touch- st. Leger sons of 
stone of Knowsley and Mr. Clifton sir°reter. 
owned the first St. Leger winner Fyldener, and the 
Duke of Hamilton the last in that extraordi- 
nary triple succession of luck (1806-8), which has 
never before or since fallen to the lot of one sire. 
Petronius went to 100 to 3 at starting, as a report 
got wind that he had flung his lad behind the Rock- 
ingham, and lunched up to his knees in clover. 
Ashton was tried to be as good as him at 71bs, that 
autumn, and hence the stable considered that they 
had four horses good enough to win the St. Leger, 
and pretty well proved it by running first and 
second. Ashton was quite a hunter-looking horse, 
with very hairy legs, which "took a life-time to dry," 
and none of the elegance of his reputed sire Walnut. 
The latter never ran, as he broke his shoulder, which 
united with a curious knot at the point, and brought 
about a complete wasting of the fore-leg and foot. 

Sultanas head, Memnon^s Doncaster 

, y-y. , 1 -Ti , te • 1 • The Waxy blood. 

coat, Oiseau s ability to " give nis year 
away and win the St. Leger,^^ and Whisker's quar^ 
ters seem still to haunt the old school of sportsmen 
The Duke of Grafton was won^t to say, " Let us find 
the horse, and then we'll talk about the jockey,'^ and 
Penelope and Waxy furnished him with a worthy 
pair in Whisker and Whalebone. Short legs, high* 

L 2 



148 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

bred nostrils, and very prominent eyes were the 
principal trade marks of the \\ axy stock, and the 
mottled brown Whalebone was the smallest amongst 
them. 

The standard could never make him more than 

fifteen and half an inch, and as he did not seem 

likely to become fashionable, he was sold at seven 

Whalebone at for 510 guincas. His old Petworth 

Petworth. groom Dayman enthusiastically says of 
him, " He was the lowest, and longest, and most 
double-jointed horse, with the best legs — eight and 
half below the knee — and worst feet I ever saw in 
my. life.^^ The latter were contracted and high on 
the heel, and became so Chinese boot-like and full 
of fever at last that he never moved out of his 
box. 

The Earl of Egremont tried to train him after he 
bought him with Octavius at Mr. Ladbroke^s sale, 
but he never ran, and his principal occupation in 
training was to rear and knock his hoofs together 
like a pair of castanettes, a freak which once cost 
him three tumbles in a day. His hunters were good 
and mostly bays and browns, and Myrrha and Sir 
Hercules were the last of his racing line. He was 
ten years at Petworth, but he did not seem to have 
created much private veneration. No enthusiasts 
helped to rob him of his tail, and the kennel copper 
and the knacker claimed every hair. 

The Petworth Octavius had quitc his share of the 
stud. mares, of which his Lordship had at 
least thirty at Upwaltham, and his son Little John 
from Greyskin got several hunters, which were often 
sluggish, and went blind. Among the thirty, only 
a tithe of which in one very slippery spring produced 
foals, were Wasp the dam of Chateau Margaux; and 
the Canopus mare, which twice over hit to Whale- 
bone, with that natty little pair of Derby winners, 
Lapdog and Spaniel. , Wanderer by Gohanna was 



TURF CRACKS. 149 

another great Petwortli character^ and grandsire on 
the dam^s side to Sir Hercules. He was quite a 
slug when he was put in training, but all alive after 
his sweats, and so restless as a sire that he would 
fight a stick, or toss a stone or straws, about all day, 
and vary matters by kicking all night. 
Elacklock^s dam, the chesnut Rosa- 

1' 1 i_ m • -I ••11 i? Blacklock's youth. 

Imd by Coriander, was originally one or 
the Wiganthorpe stud in Atalanta and Faith's day. 
Mr. Garforth also bred his sire Whitelock *^ a na^- 
gish horse with a big, coarse head and plumb fore- 
legs." He became the property of Sir Mark Sykes, 
who named him from the lock in his tail, and sold 
him to Mr. Sylvester Reed for three hundred. Mr. 
Reed had the offer of Blacklock as a foal for fifty, 
but he neitlier liked his fore-legs nor the remem- 
brance of his dam, when he saw her crawling past 
his window to Mr. Moss's, through the streets of 
York, after she had been purchased for £3. Aristotle's 
fore-legs were not more ^^ plumb" than Blacklock's, 
and hence Tom Dawson begged Mr. Meiklam, who 
was very loath to risk it, not to part with him as a 
yearling. Blacklock's most desperate Racing finish of 
race was four miles over York with Ma- Biackiock. 
gistrate, whom he barely defeated by a head. The 
severity of it finished them both ; Magistrate never 
ran again, and after his defeat the next day by St. 
Helena, who had been pulled up in the first 
race, a mile from home, Blacklock was saddled no 
more. 

He used to lead the unhappy Duchess such dances 
that Tom Peirse exclaimed in his anguish, when he 
saw the great half-moon head and seven-leagued 
stride at work, " Father's going to kill the mare by 
followmg that half-thick,'' John Smith was of the 
same opinion, and thought that "if Eclipse himself 
came again he couldn't beat him;" and Tommy Sykes 
was so confident before the St. Leger, that he would 



150 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

give Jackson no orders, but " Bid him as thou likes, 
lig thee hands down and let him stride away, and dis^ 
tance them." 

Sire and sons of Jcmmy Rookc had Joe and Dick 
Tramp. Andrews on Wychwood Forest, when he 
was sold up, and it was quite a novel t}^ to see the 
latter eat hay with his giraflPe-like neck, from the 
top of his rack. In ugliness of ears and head alto- 
gether, he w^as almost unsurpassable, and so light in 
the bodj^ that he required next to no training. 
Tramp was narrow like all his tribe, when a year- 
ling, but he gradually became one of the grandest 
boned horses in England, and Herring^s likeness of 
him at the Tickhill Castle Paddocks makes him well 
•worthy to be the sire of Lottery from Mandane. 

This horse^s finest race was for that Don- 
Lottery, i. /^ 1 J • 1 

caster Cup, whose wanderings and uses 

by land and river were so varied and remarkable. 
He made his own running all the way, and just beat 
Longwaist by half a neck, and scattered his field 
nearly half a mile. Sam Day still says that it ^'^was 
like going after a steam-engine, '' and that he " suf- 
fered to keep near him at all.'^ He always went 
like a machine, and the trainers declared that they 
^^ could hear him a mile ofi". ''^ Sam was not on 
Longwaist, when that horse had such a great finish 
"with Fleur de Lis, who nearly fell on his head, and 
left Sam, as he pathetically says, " hanging by the 
spurs.^^ Lottery was a curious horse to meet, as he 

Peculiar action ^lirCW his off forC-lcg quitC OUt. Still 

of Lottery and hc was uot SO ccccntric as Tomboy, who 
om oy. threw both legs clean round, and had 

all his action so completely from behind, that Johnny 
Gray said of him when he rode him at Durham, " he 
couldnH get on to his legs, without first sitting down 
on his tail.'' 

The last of Lottciy was an unsatisfactory, erratic 
Lottery. genius all his days. He was tried to 



TURF CRACKS. 151 

run away from Barefoot in private, but he would 
hardly make an effort in the St. Leger, and Mr. 
"Watt did not care to run him after the false start. 
In his last race, he whipped in sixth to Fleur de Lis at 
Doncaster, and the first of his get, Chorister from 
the dam of Crowcatcher, won the St. Leger. Finally, 
he became a Government sire at the Bois de Bou- 
logne, with Cadland and Physician, and the fame of 
the three quite spoilt the sport of Palmer at Viro- 
ilay, who had made , jg2,000 in three years, or 
sufficient to stock a farm in Poland, by fees from 
the Parisians. They came over by cartloads every 
Sunday to see Rainbow and the Viroflay mares, and 
clubbed from five to twenty francs, to have the door 
opened. 

Catton by Golumpus was stout and ^, ^ 

„ , ."' . , ^ 111 The Catton tribe. 

•useful, and with unsurpassable legs. 
Old Tom Taylor (or " Catton Tom '' as he was 
then called), looked after him when he was with 
Sammy King, who had always the credit of being 
rather tender with his horses. Mulatto was more 
blood-like than the majority of the Cattons ; Royal 
Oak, the sire of Slane, ran first as Mr. Catton; and 
the game Ossian had to live the greater part of his 
time '' on the muzzle.^^ Slane had a sad aptitude for 
getting roarers, and there were no less than ten or 
eleven by him in one year. Like The Princess, 
who very much resembled Altisidora in her chief 
points, their specialty was to be game and slow. 

Reveller was a thick-necked, fine goer, with square 
hips and short ribs, and ran with his head low. The 
defeat of Underhand and Beeswing at Newcastle, 
or Isaac at Warwick, never struck the beholders with 
such a chill, as did that of Dr. Syntax Dr. syntax and 
at Preston. It was there that the Httle Reveiier. 
brown won his Maiden Plate, and for seven years in 
-Succession carried off the Old Gold Cup. So sure 
'did the Guild make of his winning the eighth, that 



152 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

they liad prepared gilt shoes, and marshalled the pro- 
gramrae of a procession in his honour^ The race 
was worthy of the anticipations it raised, as Reveller 
and Jack Spigot came for it, but Dr. Syntax divided 
them at the finish. If spurred or whipped, " Doctor^' 
would invariably swerve, and Bob Johnson and 
Bill Scott, (who rode him in a few of his first races,) 
would never venture to do more than talk to him, 
and hiss at him in an extremity. 
Death of Dr. The old horsc passed into William 
syntax. Edwards^s hands, with a promise to Mr, 
lliddell, that he would never give him away. He be- 
came so paralyzed that a party of Newmarket jockeys 
and trainers were invited to see him shot, and buried 
in the paddocks behind The Palace. They gave 
three times three over his grave, and then toasted 
his memory. Ralph, from a sister to 
Ralph. Altisidora, was one of the very few 
chesnuts he ever got. He had the same prominent 
eye, and such a velvetty skin that critics were 
wont to say of him that he had no hair except on 
his mane and tail. A very fine cross was lost by 
his death, which was occasioned by his being poisoned 
before the Ascot Cup. He won, but pulled up in a 
desperate state of gasping, and the perspiration and 
distension of the nostrils never seemed to leave 

him. 

Scottish racing was in its best form 
scottis crac s. ^^^^ jyj-j.^ Sharpc bccamc secretary, in 

1827, to the Caledonian Hunt, He has stood to it, 
and seen old friends drop ofiP, year after year, till 
verv few of those who sat round the ordinary at 
Edinburgh in 1828, and first drank his ofiicial health, 
are left to greet him in his October tryst. Leda by 
Eilho da Puta, and purchased from Mr. Houlds- 
worth commenced matters for him by winning two 
'races at that meeting, but although his own luck 
with the white bodv and blue sleeves has been but 



TURF CRACKS. 153 

scant_, he has held what proved trumps, either as 
dams or runners for others. From Leda he bred 
Martha Lynn_, the dam of Voltigeur ; he gave 
away Old Bessy, the dnm of Mj^rrha, and gran- 
dam of Wild bayrell; he sold Butterfly to Wil- 
liam Oates, as a foal ; he did not stand to the 
steeple chaser, Mauchline, and lastly he did not bid 
quite enough for Isaac. His brother. General Sharpe, 
Sir A. Bamsay, Sir David Moncrieff, and Sir Wil- 
liam Maxwell were all thoroughly staunch, and so wa^ 
Sir John Heron Maxwell, whose ancient brown cob 
was nearly as well known as himself. 

The two Maxwells were exceedingly alike, and when 
Charles Lord Queensberry joined them, at the side 
of the cords, the three in their cool calico waistcoats 
made up, as the agriculturists have it, ^^ a very 
thick and level pen.^^ Sir William trained at Bog- 
side, with Bichard Greathead, and had Monreith, 
brother to Filho, while Springkell and Fair Helen 
flourished under " Old Nelson''^ and his sir John Maxweii 
lad "Finkle," in Sir John's own park. &" om Nelson." 
There was a good deal of quiet humour about Sir 
John, and on one occasion when ^^ Old Nelson'^ 
rather demurred to his recommendation about taking 
Springkell back to his stable by the least crowded 
way, after winning the Cup, he stopped any 
further bounce by solemnlj^ pulling off his hat in 
the streets of Carlisle, and saying, with a most 
courteous bow, " I beg your pardon, Mr. Nelson, 
for presuming to give you a little advice about my own 
horse'' 

His Fair Helen was a red grey, with a most pecu- 
liarly arched neck and weaselly body, and the potions, 
which were administered to her during the season, no 
doubt aff'ected her foals. Springkell was a round, 
useful, thick-necked hunter ; but good as the two 
were, their names are quite wiped out of the stud- 
book. Perlet, by Peter Lely, was one of the first 



154 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

teen&p rin ^^er trained in the Holme at Hoddom 
keii at Castle, and he bettered the instruction 

Carlisle. ^^ Dumfrics : but it was when the neat 
little Canteen came from Brecongill to meet Spring- 
kellj for the Carlisle Cup, that Dumfriesshire made its 
great exodus Southwards. 
^.^ 1.- ^.1 Even old Mr. Bird, the Hoddom 

Difficulties of the , ., , t , 

Hoddom Cas- buticr, was persuadcQ on to horse- 
tie butler. "back, for the first time in his life, and 
rode the twenty miles, with the tails of his dress- 
coat pinned in front of him. The course was too 
deep to suit Canteen, and hence the Cup returned 
in the Springkell carriage, and Mr. Bird retired 
into the fastnesses of his Border Tower, leaving his 
bark in the saddle, and his crowns in the hands of 
others. However, Mr. Kirby had a still more bitter 
recollection of Canteen, as he laid 1,000 to 5 against 
Jerry and him coupled, as first and second for the 
St. Leger. 

Matilda Matilda w^as sadly fidgetty, and in 

and out in her running, after the St. 
Leger. When she was taken up as a yearling 
late in September, she was only fourteen-one-and- 
a-half, but still she was half-an-inch bigger than The 
Colonel. Perhaps a handsomer little mare and big 
horse than she and Mameluke never met in a race. 
Eventually Mr. Petre gave her to the Duke of Cleve- 
land, and she bred Henriade, Alzira, and Foxberry, 
and some other fair things. 
Purchase of Rowtou had his bcauty as a heritage 
Rowton. from Oiseau and Camillus, and John 
Scott thus sums up the delight of his heart, as ^' long 
and low, not fifteen at the Leger, calf-kneed, straight 
hocks, no girth, and a regular tickler.^' He was rather 
light-fleshed, and not one to come every day. His 
dam Katharina was bred precisely like Augusta, by 
Woful from a Rubens mare, and he was bought at 
her foot, from Mr. Allen, after dinner. The bargain 



TURF CRACKS. 155 

was a regular Dutch auction. During dinner, Mr. 
Allen was deaf to aaytliing less than five hundred; 
but after the first bottle_, he was down at four. With 
the second bottle, the colt stood at three ; but John. 
Scott had his guard up, and no business was done, so 
Mr. Allen ofi'ered to drive him home, and they shook 
hands for two hundred at parting. Never but once 
that his friends can remember, did John Scott miss 
anything peculiar when he looked over a horse, but 
it never struck him that E-owton had no warts on the 
inside of his legs, and his brother won a sovereign 
from him on the point. In his slow paces, he was 
not remarkable, and he lurched like a fox with his 
head down. To all appearance, his St. His race for the 
Leger finish with Voltaire was quite as ^^- ^eger. 
desperate as Mundig's Derby one ; but Bill Scott 
always said that he won quite easily. He certainly 
allowed to his friends that he '^ got the fog down 
his throat •/' but his private report to his brother 
was, that he left ofi" riding at the distance, after 
forcing the pace from the hill, and could not get his 
chesnut to bescin a2:ain. 

Like the sisters to Touchstone and Lanercost 
Moss Rose, sister to Velocipede, was a velocipede 
very faint reflection of him, and not the Turf, 
fond of more than half-a-mile. Her brother was 
bought for £120 from Mr. Moss, after Mr. Houlds- 
worth had said that he would not give sixpence for 
such a slight-legged one. His. mettle under leg diffi- 
culties elicited this eulogy from Bill Scott, " that if his 
legs had been cut off he'd have fought on his stumps;^' 
and the way in which, four-year-old cripple as he was, 
he cut down Bessy Bedlam over the T.Y.C., at 
York, was his highest triumph of speed. His first 
great race was won at York August, during a meet- 
ing, in which Mulatto and Fleur-de-Lis were win- 
ners, and Jerry, Laurel, Humphrey Clinker, and 
Emma were not ; and as a parting gift he beat Dr. 



on 



156 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Paustus, Economistj and a good field for the Liver- 
pool Trades Cup. Soon after tliat, lie ran away 
with liis lad, and broke down so badly after gallop- 
ing several times round the field in front of Whice- 
wall_, that they had the greatest difficulty to support 
him back into his stable with sacks. 

John Scott considered him in his 

prime, quite 2 libs, better than The 
Colonel, who was bred by Mr. Wyvill, of Burton Con- 
stable, and bought by Mr. Peti-e, as a yearling, in 
settlement of some confederate bets. The latter was 
short and pudgy, with fine speed, and high and 
fighting in his action, " ready to curl up into a 
mousehole, if he was reached, but very difficult to 
reach.^^ 

Charles Marson ■ Charlcs Marsou^s ten years of service 
at Lord Exeter's, produced about £60,000 to the Exeter 
stable, as he won or received forfeit 207 times ; 
and hence it is hardly to be wondered, that with 
such a sterling memento, his lordship stuck so 
long and so tenaciously by his Sultans. Pre- 
vious to Marson^s engagement, his lordship had 
seventeen horses at Prince's, but with no very 
great result ; and Augusta, Holbein, and The Athe- 
nian, with Robinson up, were the first of the new 
era. "When Sultan, of the lovely head, long back 
ribs, and muscular quarters, w^as purchased at seven, 
his legs had become quite fine,' and he won one out of 
Th «uitan stock ^^^^ raccs in the narrow blue stripes. 

The T.Y.C. was his forte^ but he could 
get well over the Flat. He was a long horse, and 
many were wont to compare him to the prints 
of The Darley Arabian. In his last trial, a bad- 
tempered half-brother to Galata won, with Augusta 
second, and then his lordship put him out of 
training, and sent ten mares to him. His stock 
were fleshy and good doers ; and for beauty, Vanish 
had no peer among them. Enamel by Phantom 



TURF CRACKS. 157 

had been a successful horse for the stable before the 
Sultans were ready ; and it was after the Two Thou- 
sand that the Burleigh agent and Mr. Tattersall 
raced off to Simon's Bath, on Exmoor, to look after 
his Rubens dam. Enamel got his name from the 
gold patches on one quarter. This colt's two remark- 
able white stockings were well known to all New- 
market ; and his way of nodding his great, lop-eared, 
and flesh-nosed head, secured an uncommon affec- 
tionate look out for " Old Baldy'' about the Bushes. 

Beiram was nervous and irritable, and 
so wet through when he came to the July 
post, that Bill Arnull vowed he '' would never want 
sweating again.'' E/Unning, however, hardened his 
confidence, and he pulled up as dry as a bone. 
Being thrown up for two years effected nothing, 
and he came out in Rockingham's Goodwood Cup, 
only to break down. Even in his prime, a half- 
brother to Zinganee could give him any weight, and 
was considered by Marson the best he ever trained. 
This colt unfortunately slipped up on some wet 
bricks in his box, and was good for nothing after- 
wards. Green Mantle could get two Green Mantle 

miles well; but she would jump all ways ^"^ vama. 
but the right one at the post. Nothing could be 
more deceptive in her trials, as she was beat to 
nothing by Bessie before the July ; but her speed, 
when she meant it, was such, that a loss of 
forty yards in the Clearwell went for very little. 
Hers was a very glorious year with Lord Exeter, 
as Green Mantle and Varna were first and second 
in the Oaks, and Patron won the Two Thousand and 
four other races that spring before he went for the 
Derby. This colt had beaten her easily in an A. F. 
trial ; and Lord Exeter, who would try three times 
over if it did not exactly suit him, and worked the 
weights by a clock, tried them in opposite directions 
■on the same course, to be sure of the form. 



158 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Gaiata ripping Galata was, after all^ the best of the 
them up. Burleigh inares_, and in the Ascot Cup 
of 1833, Will Arnull received the daring orders to 
'^ rip up Lucetta/^ and acted up to them most effec- 
tually. Her timidity was such, that Marson was 
obliged to train her alone, or else she would not 
have touched an oat. She was leggy, light-fleshed, 
and with large feet, and if she was held she would 
utterly beat herself, as she proved in a trial with 
Beiram. In the Port Stakes, Sam Darling had the 
cue to let her go, and finish them in the first mile, 
" TVe'll catch the countryman/' said Robinson to Will 
Wheatley, '^ before he gets to the cords ;" but " Well 
you may go and do it ; Fll stop on this side of the 
Ditch/' was WilFs only reply. Lord Chesterfield, 
Mr. Payne, Col. Udny^ and Marson were all at the 
Ditch gap, and Darling so literally obeyed his orders 
to "catch her by the head and come along," that there 
was soon a fearful spread-eagle of Emiliana, Archi- 
bald and Co. In fact, the Ditch gazers did not 
think it was a race at all, and declared that there was 
something running away ; but Marson soon in- 
formed them, " Thafs Galata ; they'll ?iever catch 
her, " and he and Col. Udney each drew Will Chif- 
ney of a tenner upon it. It took a good deal to 
excite Lord Jersey ; but on this occasion he was as 
pleased as when he jumped out of his phaeton aftei' 
Cobweb won the One Thousand, and left the gout 
behind him. " Hold her fast, Darling/' he roared, 
as he galloped down the side of the course. ^' All 
right, my lord,'' was the reply, '' If 1 was going tO' 
Bury I should win." 

Darling's best Darling was pitted successfully against 
race. Robiuson in the dead heat for the Grand 

Duke Michael, between Mulev Ishmael and Amu- 
rath. The first race was not so severe; but Darling 
had his orders to force the running as much as pos- 
sible the second time. He did not like his job; but 



TURF CRACKS. 159 

Lord Exeter said, " You've a great man against you, 
keep up your spirits ,' and " a pony^^ from liis lordship, 
and a twenty -pound note from Lord George Bentinck, 
rewarded his steady riding. In the decider Robin- 
son had a taste coming down the Bashes Hill, and 
Sam watched his shadow over the left, in the rays of 
the afternoon sun, and calling on his horse almost 
at the instant that he saw it glide slightly back, 
he got a clear length, and was never quite reached 
again. 

The public had a notion that Cama- camarine and 
rine was far beyond Lucetta in point Taurus. 
of speed, but had no chance with her over a Queen^s 
Plate course ; and that she required to run with her 
near leg first. If she started on the oft' one, said 
they, she swung it round so much, that, unless she 
had been steadied and made to change, she would 
soon have been in distress. Robinson, however, 
declares that the former was the very best mare he 
ever rode, and that Lucetta had no chance with her 
at any distance, and he knows nothing whatever of the 
leg peculiarity. Taurus stuck well up for two miles 
and a quarter, to her in the Jockey Club Plate, over 
the Beacon course. He had won an A. F. handicap so 
cleverly under 9st. 31bs., that His Grace was de- 
termined to give him full Newmarket measure. 
Robinson made steady running on Camarine, to take 
the edge off his old friencVs speed; but the victory 
was a costly one, and neither of them saw the post 
again. " Our Jim^^ felt so sure of the result in every 
way, that he went in vain to both owners to beg 
them not to run, but they would not heed him. 
Taurus was sixteen hands high, with enormous 
pace, for a mile and a quarter, and a very beauti- 
ful horse to look at. William Edwards bought 
him from Lord Warwick, at TattersalFs, and sold 
him to the Duke of Bedford. At three years 
old^ he suddenly became a high-blower, but he 



160 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

was tried to have sucli speed for th ree- quarters- of- 
a-mile^ that no other measure was ever taken of 
him. He was matched five times at half-a-mile^ and, 
as he would be going best pace in forty yards, 
scarcely anything could get to his shoulder at that 
distance. His sons, Oakley, John o' Gaunt, King 
of the Peak, &c., were all in the Bedford stable 
when Admiral Kous became the Duke^s " Master of 
the Horse." 

The Duke of ^^^ Gracc was very uncertain in his 
Bedford as a attendance at Newmarket. He seldom 

racing man. • ■ i • i i i t 

came m the sprmg, and looked upon 
the October meetings more as a tryst where he 
could meet his Whig friends, than his horses. He 
was very seldor);i through his stables, and cared 
for a race-horse about as much as he did for a uni- 
corn. None of his winners were ever painted, as he 
considered it " quite an acquired taste." Admiral 
E.OUS persuaded him to have occasional trials, but 
the only one he ever attended in Edwards^s day, was 
when John o' Gaunt was tried before the New- 
market Stakes. His heart was not in " The 
Bushes ;" but roving back to the Cowper^s Oak, of his 
earlier days, with Hercules and Marmion, waiting 
for the word to draw. Pearce^s canvas has placed 
him once more among them, on his white Shamrock, 
with Colonel Higgins on his rat- tailed horse. Major 
Macginnes, Mr. Magniac on The Sad- 
dle (which Mr. Phillimore bequeathed 
to him when its Newmarket match days were over), 
old Sam AVhitbread, on his odd-coloured chesnut. 
Captain Newland, and George Beers, on Cognac, 
looking as fierce as if he had just pulled down 
a fox, and was breaking him up in the spirit. At 
Tedworth, too, his Grace would be on the flags with 
Carter for hours to the last, tracing back lines of 
blood, and recalling the work of every hound in his 
own and the Grafton pack; but for racing he 



TURF CRACKS. 161 

had no real heart, and merely wished his stable 
to pay. 

tlohn o' Gaunt was always tried to be better than 
Oakley; but he put out incipient ring- Envoy, & Magog 
bones, and no one ever knew how good *^® ^^^"*- 
he was. Edwards swore by Envoy, as the best, bar 
Ralph, that he ever trained, and the chesnut was an 
equal favourite with the Duke. He ran quite un- 
tried for the Drawing Room Stakes, and hence the 
House party had no reason to wonder that they had 
not heard of him. No horse required so much long 
walking exercise, in addition to his work, at least five 
daysa-week; and the petting and lack of exercise at Wo- 
burn him made him so round and foul-blooded, that he 
could never be trained again. Oakley and Eobinson 
^^ knew every post on the Flat,^^ and over aT.Y.C. he 
was just about 51bs. better than Celia. He might 
have run further, but his great muscular top hardly 
comported with his small knees and hocks ; and as 
he showed a tendency to put out curbs, they dare 
not go on with him for a longer course. Magog 
was bought by the Duke for ^300, from Mr. Ean- 
some, and for three-quarters-of-a-mile he was im- 
mensely fast j but his leg gave way at three, and his 
temper soon after. He quite ate up to his weight, 
and when his rations were gone, he would have been 
ready to take his turn at a pig-trough. 

The Earl of Albemarle was in the The late Eari of 
Palace stable at the same time as His Aibemarie. 
Grace; but Barcarolle's Oaks chance was put out 
by illness, after she had won The Thousand, and Mr. 
Kirby's ^400 cheque was ready. His lordship 
formed very little judgment about horses, and as Dr. 
Johnson said of his Derbyshire friend, " His talk is of 
sheep and buUocksJ' He would, in fact, have never 
kept horses at all, but for the very laudable feeling 
that, as Master of the Horse, he had no right to see 
Ascot racing at other people's expence. ^till, as is 



162 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

ofteu the case when owners take things easy, and do 
not make their lives miserable by watching the mar- 
ket, his green-and- white cap had a good time of it 
with Ralph and the Emperor; and he purchased 
Royal George for £150 from Edwards, and sold him 
to the foreigners for more than thrice that sum. The 
ill luck of the stable seemed to concen- 

Bad Beaufort luck. . . • . ic l^ -r\ ^ c -n c i. 

trate itselt on the Duke or rJeauiort. 
"Whatever he bought, bred, or borrowed, turned out 
badly, and when it really seemed on the cards, his 
horse would tumble down, or run out of the course, 
or go amiss. 

Muiey and Muiey Mulcy was a good ruuncr, despite his 
Moloch. somewhat odd pins, and Muiey Moloch 
was rather high on the leg, and rather short- 
quartered. His Champagne and York Derby wins 
had made him a hot St. Leger favourite in Yorkshire, 
but he never had a chance, and they hedged their 
opinion after the race, by saying that his teeth had 
been so bad that he lived on balls of meal for six 
weeks before. Mr. Tattersall, who had the charge 
of the Underley stud, was not a little fond of selling 
them at Doncaster, and it was from Marpessa, one 
of old Muley^s daughters, and Alice Hawthorne, 
his granddaughter, that Pocahontas and Thormanby 
sprang. 

The grandsireof Mastcr Hcury, the sire of Touchstone^s 
Touchstone, dam, is embalmed in Sam Day's memory, 
as being one of his favourite platers ; and especially 
great in mud. John Scott had never seen Touch- 
stone till the Liverpool St. Leger, when the brown 
made his own running, and was beaten by General 
John Scott's first Chasse. Godfrey Kirkley, who was with 
sight of 1 ouch- Mr. Riddell, trained him, and had him 
^ *^"^* as fat as a bull ; but still Birdlime and 

Inheritor, who had just beaten Physician at 321bs. 
for the two years, in the Cup, were behind him, 
and Scott told Lords Derby and Wilton that he 



TURF CRACKS. 163 

felt sure he could win the St. Leger. The beginning 
was not favourable, as he was put in the charge of a 
drunken groom to walk to Yorkshire, and got loose 
on the Lancashire moors for hours, where a sailor 
caught him and brought him to Sheffield. After 
such neglect, he arrived at Malton in a His mishaps and 
painfully weak state, and a course of medicine. 
Peruvian bark had to be resorted to before they 
dared to work him. What with this and his jaun- 
dice, John Scott seldom had a horse which required 
so much doctoring. A record of the calomel and 
other drugs which he swallowed would form a portion 
of White wall history, as remarkable as the recovery 
of its Prince Lewellyn, who answered to the old ale 
and port, and won two races after he had been covered 
up in the stall as dead, and his grave had been dug 
in the paddock. 

He had his final polish at Hambleton, and when 
Bill declared after the trial to ride Lady le Gros, 
Darling was applied to for Touchstone. However, 
Lord Shgo had been before-hand, and Sam weighed 
for Bran, and declares to this day that Touchstone 
stopped to him at the finish; while Bob Johnson 
^^ dodged backwards and forwards on Chasse before 
us and between us, all over the course." 

Touchstone was only third up the Mostyn-miie 
Mostyn mile to Intriguer and Birdlime, martys. 
both of his year. Oddly enough, as soon as his flag 
was lowered, Blenkhorn led out his Leger successor 
Queen of Trumps for her maiden race, bat although 
they were both at the same meeting the next autumn, 
and each walked over for two stakes, thev never met 
at the post. In 1835, when he had just shown in 
good Cup form at Doncaster, he again failed up the 
Mostyn mile, but he was before Birdlime, who 
essayed that heart-breaking hill four times in vain. 
At five years old, he did a great thing with Hornsea 
and Scroggins at Epsom^ the week before the Ascot 

M 2 



164 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Cup^ in which he beat Eockingham and Lucifer; 
His near fore-ankle was never very good, and even 
in his first Ascot Cup race, it had almost risen to 
the dignity of " a leg/^ Its chance of rising to it 
was furthered by the wdld notions of the man in 
charge, who persisted in doctoring it during John 
Ascot Cup tremb- Scott^s abseucc at Manchester, with hot 
lings. oils instead of Gowland^s lotion. Still, it 
was 100 to 1 on him if the leg stood, though Connolly 
and Pavis had been clever enough to get on nearly 
^5,000 against him, and it was half-past twelve be- 
fore Mr. Hill would release them. Joe Rogers was 
another of the sceptics at Death^s, and expressed 
such a confident determination to eat him if he won, 
that John Scott could not refrain from subsequently 
sending his compliments, and a request to know how 
" he should like him cooked. ^^ 

Touchstone's pe- Touclistonc was a pcculiar horse in 
cuiiarities. evcry way. He had very fleshy legs, and 
turned his hocks out so much, and went so wide 
behind, that a barrel could have been go*; between 
his legs when he was galloping. He went with a 
straight knee ; and in short he was nearly the oddest 
goer that ever cleared its pipes in good air on Lang- 
ton Wold, as he pitched and yet stayed as well. 
Ground made no appreciable difference to him, but 
he was desperately lazy at exercise, and could hardly 
be kicked along on most days. As a beginner he 
did not excel, and his fine speed was quite his 
greatest point. It was a very hard matter to catch 
him when he was once set a-going, and no horse 
pulled harder. If he was at all stale, it would never 
do to squeeze him too much, or he would swerve to 
the left like a shot. He just lived into his 31st 
year, and although that wondrous hind action in his 
walk rather failed him, and he Avas quite wasted 
over the back and loins, he could wave his flag 
and march very proudl}^ round his court-yard at 



TURF CRACKS. 165 

Eaton. For two vears he had been on the wane, 
but still he never had an hour^s illness at the stud, 
and never had a dose of medicine in Cheshire till 
just before he died. He was quite a valetudinarian, 
and it was remarkable to see how on wet days he 
would retreat, quick march, to his shed, and stand 
earnestly watching the weather. There was appa- 
rently great pain in the head for three days before his 
death, and he took nothing but a little gruel, and 
scarcely any notice of Fisher, who had attended him 
for seven years. His feet were all taken off, and 
the greater part of his mane and tail, and sent to 
the Hall, and he was buried in the middle of the 
stable-yard. 

Till within the last three years, he 

.1 i. 1 J , His descendants. 

was a very sure stock-getter, but not 
partial to young mares, nor to old ones till May or 
June. The latest Sire List contains 18 of his sons and 
37 of his grandsons ; and upwards of 100 of his mares 
are at the stud. He got his sires especially in every 
form, and we fancy that Surplice is the finest and big- 
gest of them, Orlando the most beautiful and blood- 
like, and Touchwood more like himself than any of 
them, but on alarger scale. His luck with distinguished 
mares was variable. There was Orlando from Vulture^ 
Newminster and Nunnykirk from Beeswing, Cother- 
stone from Emma, Surplice from Crucifix, Assault 
from Ghuznee; but Alice Hawthorne and Lady 
Evelyn failed, Ellerdale, Inheritress, and Queen 
Mary missed; Refraction and Canezou were not 
very lucky; Miss Twickenham, Ellen Middleton 
Pocahontas, Barbelle, and Martha Lynn never 
honoured him with a. visit; and Mr. Johnstone^s 
Harriot was the last mare that went to him. He and 
Liverpool were selected by the late Duke of Orleans 
for four of his best mares, when with Edgar Pavis, 
and then with Charles Edwards, that true-hearted 
sportsman held his racing court at Chantilly. As a 



166 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

general thing, his stock were best at a mile^ bad 
on their legs after three^ and_, like him^ with no great 
action in their slow paces. 

Jereed could live with him well at 
un ig. ^g-g|-^^g £q^ ^gg^ ^^^ John Scott quite 

hoped to stand on him for the Derby instead of 
Mickle Fell, that anything but brilliant Brother to 
Mundig. It was not to be ; he was all well at eight 
one night, but a secret foe got at him before five 
next morning,, and a glance at his legs told the trea- 
cherous tale. Mundig was a very moderate horse, 
and Consol was his schoolmaster. Still he convinced 
the brothers so completely that he was worth back- 
ing for the Derby after his ^^ Yorkshire gallop^^ in 
clothes with Marcian over the D.I., that the double 
had to be i)romptly put on the touts. They had 
'^ got^-* one of the stable lads, and so the chesnut 
and Consol were started oflP, as if they had given 
np Epsom, and were going home, and then turned 
back after a six miles walk, when the lad had fully 
gazetted their departure for the North. Although 
the chesnnt had never run in public, he came to 6 
to 1 in a few hours, and those who had been most 
active in '' drawing'^ the lad, immediately said that 
it " was a nice robbery, and the Scotts ought to be 
ashamed of themselves.^^ 

Mundig's Derby When lic ran for the Derby, Lord 
^^y- Chesterfield lent John a bad-mouthed 

pony, ^^hich took to rusting in the furzes. At last 
his rider got him straight and milled him well across 
the Downs, and at their next effort he cannoned a 
carriage near the winning-post. He was barely 
pulled off that, when Lord Jersey rode up : " Well, 
John, Pm sorrij for you — Ascot's won,^' *^ Now't of 
the sort" said a cad with enough rags ready made 
on his back for a mop, '^ the old beggar in black's 
won.'' " Has he ?" said John ; ^' you're the man for 
my business;" and flinging him half-a-crown, he rode 



TURF CRACKS. 167 

off to meet his horse and congratulate the young 
heir of Streatlam on his eighteen thousand. Bill 
Scott never rode a severer race, and he had to shout 
as loud to Nat to keep his colt from hanging on to 
him, as he did in the Satirist Legerwhen he summarily 
ordered him to pull Van Amburgh to one side after 
coming round the hend_, and " let me have a shy at 
Old John Day.'' 

Hornsea, Scroggins,Carew, and Gladi- Hornsea, scrog- 
ator were all contemporaries of Touch- ^*"^ ^ carew. 
stone at Malton, and when the three first were tried 
with him, Scroggins was beat a distance. Hornsea 
and Touchstone were regularly laid alongside each 
other at 201bs. in the Doncaster Cup, and the young 
one was the better favourite of the two at starting, 
and beaten a neck. The chesnut, the origin of 
whose wall-eyes once strangely puzzled a German, 
was a " good, steady horse -'' but Carew, who 
separated Touchstone from Venison, Beeswing, and 
General Chasse in the Doncaster Cup of the next 
year, and beat a Goodwood Cup field as well, was 
really ^Wery moderate.^^ He cut himself down in. 
the St. Leger, to serve the narrow thin-fleshed 
Scroggins, of whom John Scott speaks as *^ queer 
in the pipes, but smart.^^ 

Gladiator by Partisan was a very 
blood-like, dark chesnut, but rather deli- 
cate, and requiring remarkable nicety in his prepara- 
tion. John and William Scott gave <£]00 for him, 
and sold him to Lord Wilton for £200, and a con- 
tingency of half the Derby and St. Leger. He lost 
the first, and never started again, but his price 
gradually rose to £800, and finally to £2,000. For 
Sweetmeat^s sake alone he was worth every penny of 
it, but he also left Queen Mary the dam of Blink 
Bonny and the grandam of Caller Ou. His sire 
Partisan was a beautiful, short-legged horse with a 
lovely head, straight-hocks, and a clubby fore- foot. 



168 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Many of the elder trainers still recur to him fondly 
as " like a bit of machinery in his stride/^ His 
Patron, a half-brother to Augusta was very good; 
but Venison was the gamest and stoutest of his 
spns. Still that little fellow could never quite 
do himself justice, as his very long action hardly 
fitted him for forcing the running, as he was often 
obliged to do. 

The mare Frailty was presented to John Scott by 
Mr. Petre, and was sent to Partisan, when she was 
rising five. There was nothing particular about her, 
but a very curby hock, which had sprung going round 
Perguson^s Corner at Catterick. Her Cyprian was 
Early days of scut for a few mouths bcforc breaking 
Cyprian. ^q ]\/[j.^ Hcbdcn at Appletou, among 
the Helmsley Moors, near the haunts of the re- 
nowned Jemmy Golding, who when he was rising 
ninetj^-tw^o, thus addressed John Scott, " There 
are no hunters bred now a-days, Mr. Scott. Fll 
just away and buy some brood mares, and breed a 
few J' She w^as made quite a pet of in that country, 
and knew the taste of cheese-cakes, and all that sort 
of thing ; but Bill Scott did not think much of her 
Oaks chance when he ^' had a taste,^^ and it hung 
upon her beating Aveline for a c€40 stake at Malton, 
w^iether she went to Epsom at all. She had a hard 
time of it, as she walked into Surrey, and then back 
to Newcastle, and then home -to Malton, and won 
both Oaks and Northumberland Plate, during the 
six weeks. Joe Wilkins the present Aintree trainer, 
conducted her on a pony, and they travelled on an 
average twenty miles per day. She was terribly 
high-mettled, and never trained after four, and 
Songstress, also a winner of the Oaks, and Meteora 
were her best foals. She never caused any death 
herself, and her ill-temper did not descend to her 
stock ; but one of them. Artful Dodger, hit a 
lad who was washing his feet, with his hock 



TURF CRACKS. 169 

on the jugular vein, and killed him outright on 
the spot. 

Epirus, the Malton horse of 'S7, was purchase of 
purchased along with his brother Epi- Epirus. 
daurus from Mrs. Savile Lumlev for ^81,700, with a 
^500 contingency if he won the Leger, but it 
needed all John Scott^s eloquence in a two-hours' 
confab to get them at the price. Epirus was un- 
tried, and " the young beauty, '' as his mistress 
termed him in her delivery order to Hornshaw, was 
disqualified, or else Elis^s brilliant running, both as 
a two-year-old and with Bay Middleton a fortnight 
before, would have made the figure a much higher 
one. Langar filled a 25 so v. subscription at Tick- 
hill Castle in the following year, and such was Lord 
George^s admiration for EUs, that he took a fourth 
of the forty, subscriptions. The chesnut died 
there at last, and he is buried on one side of the 
hedge in the principal paddock, and Catton on the 
other. 

Epirus could stay well enough, al- His training in 
though speed was his best point, and the metropolis. 
his trial, in which he gave Cardinal Puff lOlbs., 
seemed quite good enough for the St. Leger. He 
was the only horse that ever broke Bill Scott^'s col- 
lar-bone; and as John Scott adds, " the only one I 
ever trained in the streets of Jjondon." Owing to 
there being no North Western truck at liberty, he 
had to stay three days there in stables behind All 
Saints^ Church, and he used to take long constitu- 
tionals from four a.m« up and down Regent-street. 
Sam Chifney had a heavy retainer, to go down and 
ride him at the Potteries, but he never looked near, 
and Nat got a winning mount on him. 

Cardinal Puff bore a verv distinoruished ^, . , ^ ^ 

, . ,-■ , ^ ^"^ , • *? 1 The trial of Don 

part in tne great Don John trial, when John and car- 
the young one beat him at 12108. **^"^^^"«- 
for the year. George Nelson^s orders were simply 



170 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

to " stand none of Bill's humbug, but come right 
through.'^ Both Lord Chesterfield and Colonel An- 
son thought it madness to try at that weight ; and 
at the far side of the hill_, Bill thought the young 
horse had the worst of it. He accordingly shouted 
to George to ease a bit; but the more he shouted, 
the harder went '^ The Admiral/^ Bill suffered a 
little, and caught his leader on the hill, " fairly 
jumping over me, the moment he was touched with 
the spur/^ George, " who never made a mistake 
with the old ^un," gradually fancied himself in full 
The coinnei and Command of The '' Fleet,"^ at Pigburn, 
" the Admiral." ^^^j ^^ ][^g^ demanded in his vinous 

valoui' from Colonel Anson, whether he called Jiim^ 
self a Colonel. However, he rode over special to 
Doncaster in the morning, to apologize ; and the 
Colonel, who had the keenest appreciation, for years 
after, of his antics and carols, on that memorable 
night, only replied, ^' Never mind, George ; Fm 
glad to be bloivn up on such an occasion ; you only 
ride another Don John trial, and you may do it 
again" 
„ ^. Don John detested Bill Scott, owin^. 

Horse whims. ., ,^ i-i • i-.i- 

it was supposed, to his having hit mm 
twice with a whip, in his box at York. All the car- 
rots in the East Biding woulrl not have reconciled 
them, and like Jack Spigot, it made him furious 
even to hear the sound of Bill's voice. The Princess 
took a dislike to every one at Whitewall, and after 
giving Jacob more trouble than half the stable to 
shoe, she ended by running John Scott and Mark- 
well out of the paddock, when they went to see her 
at Bretby. It is a pretty general opinion among 
trainers, that horses cannot tell one person from 
another except by the voice, and that, in this re- 
A horses' know- spcct, tlicy are like the fairy ^^ Fine 
ledge of sound, i^^^p Ellcrdale, for instance, took no 

notice of Tom Dawson, when he went to see her at 



TURF CRACKS. 171 

Admiral Harcourt's, some four or five years after 
she had left his stable ; but the moment he said 
^^ Coachman!'' she wheeled round, and struck at him 
quite viciously. Mentor was quite as odd this way, 
and he proved pretty well that the dislike arises from 
the association of the voice with the orders at exer- 
cise. Mat Dawson had him under his charge for 
a short time in Scotland, when his legs were wrong ; 
and as he gave him no work, there was no raw esta- 
blished between them. Hence Mat quite laughed 
at the notion that the horse would not let him go 
up to him, if he heard his brother Tom^s voice, and 
a bet of a new hat was made on it. They adjourned 
with sojue visitors to the box, and Mat got on most 
aifectionately with his old charge, till there came 
Tom^s whisper from behind — '' Poor old Mentor F' 
and the whole party were dispersed in a second. 
Even General Chasse, as gluttonous a feeder as ever 
faced a manger, would pause in his swallow, and grunt 
if he heard Bob Johnson^ s voice ; and Meretrix be- 
came so fidgetty from hearing Fobert^s, at exercise, 
that he was obliged to employ a code of stick and 
hand signals to the boy. 

Charles XII. was a very curious- purchase of 
coated horse, and very delicate at three, charies xii. 
Like Touchstone, he had rather a queer time of 
it on Blackstone Edge (over which Sydney Smith 
had years before proved himself such a Hannibal in 
the " Immortal,") as he stuck there for three hours, 
with every trace broken, on his return from 
the Liverpool Cup. In the same journey he had an 
equally narrow escape on the Liverpool platform, 
and hung on the ledge of it for minutes, without 
injuring a hair. He came into Mr. Johnstone's 
hands in rather a curious way. That gentleman 
had always nursed the wish, while in India, to own 
one of the finest horses that money could buy 
on his return. Accordingly, when he did reach 



172 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

England, he commissioned Tom Dawson to buy liim 
one for three thousand. " Better get two for that 
price" was Tom^s counsel^ and Hetman Platoff was 
priced to him at £1,200, and The Provost at £1,500. 
The latter was not up to Mr. Johnstone^s mark, and 
accordingly a bid of £2,000 was made for Euclid. 
" Pd sooner shoot him than take it,'' was Mr. Thorn- 
hilFs reply, and at length it was decided to give the 
£3,000 for Charles Xll. Mr. Johnstone had a 
thousand offered for his bargain, but he refused it in 
real Thornhill style, and he was never prouder of his 
resolve, than when two years in succession he 
felt all the glory of winning the Goodwood Cup. 
At first Charleses stock sold pretty well at Doncaster, 
but at last he himself could only command a £20 bid. 
He was then sold privately for £50, but the vendee 
forfeited the £20 rather than take him. His tail 
was so short, and his back so down, that even Tom 
Dawson stood at the ring side and asked what he 
was. 

Hetman Platoff had much finer speed, 
e mc^ri a o . ^|^|^Q^g|-^ d^^rles staycd rather the best, 

but still John and Bill Scott always fancied, that if 
Hetman had not put out a curb, he would have been 
the A 1 on the St. Leger day. He was a wonderful 
w^eight-carrier, and of such boundless nerve, that he 
would have walked among a park of artillery and 
never moved a muscle. The Melton farmers first 
told John Scott of him when he was a yearling, and 
pathetically described him as half-starved in a field 
near Stillington, "w^ith a half-bred colt, which had got 
master of him.^^ Mr. Bowes and John made a rapid 
descent on that village, whose smoky alehouse and 
its indigestible Noah^s Ark bacon dwell upon John^s 
mind yet ; but it ended in Colonel Croft selling 
the colt for 200 gs., and engaging to pay his St. 
Leger forfeit ; and Mr. Bowes took half of him. The 
bad fare of the day was made up w hen Bill joined 



TURF CRACKS. 173 

them at The Black Swan, at night, and " Nancy" 
Martinson waited on them. 

Industry was pretty, but as nervous industry and 
as Hetman was bold ; and the Brown Ghuznee. 
Duchess she met in the Oaks was not of the Saxon 
mint. Caroline Elvina, who went to help her, was 
" without exception the finest-looking mare that 
ever was at Whitewall ;" and Ghuznee was " only 
fourteen-three on the Oaks day; but a perfect rat- 
tler. The latter w^as also one of the many proofs 
in John Scott's mind that " very superior-looking 
legs go the quickest,^^ as she had rest and green meat 
for a fortnight after Ascot, and her sinew s were quite 
crooked when she was taken out of the box. 

Launcelot had enormous speed, and 
pulled even harder than his brother 
Touchstone, with his head right into his chest. In 
fact, hardly any one could hold him ; and the hunt- 
ing curb, which Bill selected for his St. Leger race, 
was a most formidable aftair. He had rather heavy 
shoulder points, a short neck, and not very good 
ankles, and John Scott considered him fully 311bs. 
better than Maroon. After the St. Leger he lay two 
days in his box, and it is a miracle how he contrived 
to reach The Salutation at all. Meteor, after the 
Two Thousand, was in nearly the same plight, but he 
was such a chronic cripple, that his lad had to chase 
him about his box for an hour or two before a race, 
to get him to " act'^ at all. 

Satirist was soon forgotten at Malton, satirist's st Leger 
but not the joke about his Doncaster trial. 
trial. The Corporation Steward took up the chains 
and held his peace, and the neat-herd, who was 
charged not to tell any one, gave the office most 
freely. In order to disappoint them, the Pigburn 
party arrived at the Moor about half-past three, and 
found only a few sweeps and Irishmen in attendance. 
As it rained hard, they were most politely invited to 



174 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

share the Rubbing-house, and then the Scott party- 
slipped out and locked them up till it was over ; and 
squared the " false imprisonment^^ with half-a- 
crown^s worth of gin. It was rather a hard matter 
to bring off a trial at Doncaster, and on one occasion 
the blacking pot had to be freely used on their legs 
and fac2s, before the horses set out from Pigburn. 
Attila's Newmarket trial at two-years- 
old was quite in the dark, and Colonel 
Peel's Hardinge and Sir Harry had just tried him 
half-a-mile on the limekiln-hill, when the renowned 
J. B. arrived with a lantern to reconnoitre. John. 
Scott could not see the horses, but he knew from 
Attila's peculiarly quick and delicate step that he 
was coming away in fronts two hundred yards before 
they finished, 
jacob-sbet about He was a cheap £120 bargain at two 

Attiia. years old, but not a lucky horse, as he 
was got at three times, and was coughing sadly be- 
fore the Drawing Room Stakes. On the Derby 
day, after Jacob had discharged his plating func- 
tions, he stationed himself near the winning post 
with Charley Robinson, and waited there in the 
most boundless faith. A stranger presumed to 
doubt him, when he said, '^ You' II precious soon see 
his white feace firsi /' and clenched his opinion by a 
sovereign bet. With a presence of mind, which 
Yorkshire can never cease to venerate, he added, 
'' Fll just tak hold of your horse's head, and I'll 
thank you, sir, not to stir fra the spot ;" and suiting 
the action to thS word, he secured his man and his 
money. It is on record that he and his companion 
gave away a barrel of beer to the multitude, and 
that in the hilarity of the moment he would have 
signed a week's truce with the touts. 
Jacob on a tout That fraternity's experiences of the de- 

iiiint. ceased are of a most doleful kind. He 
was long in partnership with an American dog, which 



TURF CRACKS. 175 

Mr. Harry Hill bought at a baker's in Knigbtsbridge, 
and sent for John Scott's acceptance as an Under- 
Leadbeater to Whitewall. The dog had been regu- 
larly educated to track slaves^ and hence it took to 
touts with the highest imaginable zest. At times^ 
the pair would come to a check at the foot of a tree, 
and when Jacob made his eye-cast among the 
branches, it became his turn to give tongue. 
^^ Now Fve got 'iher, tJioo must, and ihoo shalt come 
doon,'' and when his brown-and-white friend had 
enjoyed a good muzzled worry, the game would fly 
Malton-wards, bawling ten thousand murders. Well 
might one of them confide to his Malton allies, 
*' Jt's not that John Scott, but his old thief of a black- 
smith and ^ Captain' that Fm afeard onJ^ 

The old Pottery course is now so built upon, that 
the most imaginative mind cannot conjure up the 
idea that Attila ever won a Champagne Stakes over 
it, and that it ever witnessed a struggle between 
The Potentate and ^' The Alderman's'' 
King Cole. Marlow won no less than 
two dozen races on this son of Memnon, and the 
Buxton Cup three years in succession. He never 
had a horse so difficult to handle, as he always hung 
to the left, despite a Magogian pricker ; and if the 
running was that way round, he could hardly be 
kept off the posts, Holmes, who got on him at 
exercise at Liverpool, voted it the worst mouth he 
had ever touched, but it was not inherited by his 
hunters and carriage horses, which were always at a 
premium in the district. At the first time of asking, 
he departed with Marlow down a lane at Bridge- 
north, but got such a refresher for it, that he wiped off 
his maidenhood very quickly at Ludlow. Marlow 
always considers that his Chester Cup was an enor- 
mous bit of luck. He lay in front with 7st. 81bs., to 
the Castle Pole, and took the lead at the distance, 
and Lye, who watched nothing but Birdlime, could 



176 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

never quite reach him_, and was beaten a neck. 
The Potentate always beat him afterwards^ and was 
a good 7lbs. better at least. 
Mariow and old Marlow, who began life as '' a fea- 

john Day. ther'^ on the same day and in the same 
race as Sam Rogers, got another good race for The 
Alderman, still more out of the fire. It was a 100- 
sovereign Stake, and all the money at Ascot; and 
The Deputy went there on the chance of getting 
his stake back, not to run. Accordingly Marlow, 
who had sole charge of the colt, made this pro- 
position to old John Day, when they met at scale ; 
but John could " settle nothing till Pve seen my 
Lord Lichfield ;^^ and so sajdng, he seated him- 
self on the weighing-chair, and called '' eight seven.^^ 
Sam Darling sat there quietly tapping the toes of 
his boots with his whip, and probably thought more 
than he said, but Marlow did not fail to mark that 
the generally accurate John, and Doe, the trainer, 
had overlooked the 51bs. extra on The Corsair, for 
winning the Two Thousand. John then went to 
seek out Lord Lichfield, and was not a little sur- 
prised when he returned with his lordship's consent 
to give back the stake, that Marlow should meet him 
with " Pve altered my mind ; Fll have all or none ; — 
but we'd better make haste, its getting late.'' 

It will do now, thought Marlow, when he had 
John fairly in the saddle, - and cantering and 
whistling, and singing, as was his wont, down to 
the post; but still he was not quite comfortable^ 
and he took care to get alongside of him, and 
keep him in conversation upon things in general. 
Mr. Davis started them, and they merely can- 
tered to the distance ; but when the black was 
set going, he smashed up the chesnut in a trice,, 
and went nearly to the Swinley Course post be- 
fore he could be stopped. The chesnut '" wanted 
no stopping ,'' but when John arrived back, Mar- 



TURF CRACKS. 177 

low placed eight twelve in the scale. " / did^nt 
weigh that^' said John." " I know you did'nt,'* 
was the reply ; ^^ but you ought. Whereas the 
penalty V^ " Fetch the bridle," said John. " Bet- 
ter bring the horse,'' said Marlow ; ^^ it ivill he a neio 
kind of snaffle if it weighs olbs.'' John was fine 
weight as usual to begin with, and he could not stir 
the beam. '^ You did that very well^ my boy; I give 
you great credit/^ he shouted to Marlow, as he rode 
past him off the course, and away he went whistling 
and singing once more. Job Marson and Taylor 
made the same mistake with Aphrodite, in the Don- 
caster Stakes, but one of the local reporters found it 
out, and gave Job the hint, to Nat^s intense disgust > 

Not to have a word on old Isaac sam Darling and 
and Sam Darling would be a strange ^^^^°- 
omission indeed, and one that Warwick would not 
overlook in a hurry. Sam was ever true to his 
boyish impressions, and never thought either him 
or Hesperus quite so wonderful as Mantidamum, 
by Sir Solomon. On that horse, at Stafford, with 
3i st. of saddle-cloths, &c., he beat Dick Spencer 
and Jack Hayes, both great men on that circuit, 
but they had their revenge at Holywell, as they 
combined on Ambo and Stella, and fairly drove him 
into the Ditch. ^' ril have you some day,'' he mut- 
tered, like another D'Israeli, when he met them in 
the weighing-house, and we should rather think he 
had. When Major Pigot gave up his horses, Sam, 
at his mother's particular request, did a little in the 
yard-wand way, at Oxford and Worcester ; but he 
longed to wear the silk instead of selling it, and he 
went to Mr. West and old Sadler, at Bibury, to 
tuck up his cuffs in another cause, and carry out his 
great principle, that " any man may wait, but it 
requires a wise head to make running." 
But we must put him on Isaac, who 
made his start on the Turf at the York 

N 



178 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

August of ^33, as tlie '^ gr. c. by Figaro, out of Jack 
Spigot's dam/' and was beaten any distance in a 
two-year-old field, by Colonel Cradock's Emigrant. 
Like liis lialf-brotber, he had a pretty wayward tem- 
per, and paid the penalty of it. Sam first marked 
him in a Maiden Plate at Liverpool, two years after- 
wards, and took such a fancy to him, from the way 
he finished second to Luck's All, in the first heat, 
that he confided to Tom Speed, that he had got his 
eve on a treasure. He was sent bv Mr. Ord Powlett, 
in the autumn to lead gallops for The Potentate, at 
Doncaster, and bolted near the Neat-herd's House^ 
and took a little of " the bark off his leg.'^ He was 
put up on the Thursday, and Mr. Sharpe began to 
bid for him ; but stopped, under the idea that he 
had been fired ; and when Mat Milton took a turn^ 
Sam got close to him, and put it to him confiden- 
tially, whether ^' those great flat feet will ever suit 
the London stones." Hence " gr. g., by Figaro, 
46 gs., Mr. S. Darling," was the sale entry; and 
Isaac Blades, who then trained him, was so angry 
that " such a rip should be named after me," that 
he cut Sam, and never spoke to him again. 

The grey appeared in a Hack Stakes, winner to 
be sold for fifty, the next week at Liverpool ; but 
Sam agreed with Mr. Sirdefield, who was second on 
Aratus, about the cross claim. The race was run 
off by moonlight ; and near the Canal turn, ' the 
light-blue of Isaac was leading. " Is it over yet ?" 
said Sam to Mr. Sirdefield. " Oh! not yet, I think/' 
was the reply, and Sam set the grey going again. 
He repeated the question over his shoulder at the 
distance, and then it was, ^^ Oh! yes. Yes! Sam! it is 
all tip, noiv.'' When he next came to Liverpool, 
Harry his brother Sam Darling had taught him jump- 
ing with Lord Fitzhardinge's. He dwelt a little at 
his jumps, in consequence of being rather down 
in his eyes; but still he pulled off £176 over the 



TURF CRACKS. 179 

hurdles. He got ^30 more at a little Ellesmere meet- 
ings on his road home, after Sam had run half over 
Liverpool in search of a Shropshire paper, which had 
the conditions. Isaac Day begged a mount at Bi- 
hury, and returned liim with the assurance that his 
own back would never be itself again after the job ; 
but he was ridden by Sam in almost all his Hat races, 
of which he won forty-six. He went lobbing easily 
along, with his head out, and was great in dirt, as 
Caravan found to his cost, and went best when Sam 
kept shouting at him, " Come along, old ^wi," His 
victories at Warwick, when he belonged to its M.P., 
were looked at both from an electioneering and a 
racing point of view, and Isaac Day was sadly dis- 
appointed tbat he never could get Sam chaired. 
Amidst all his triumphs, he nearly died at Knuts- 
ford, and the guard of the coach went so far as to 
hail Sam, who was Newton-bound on his hack, 
and tell him that his horse was dead, and ail Knuts- 
ford talking of it. Lear arrived at the races with 
the intelligence that he was better, and in a short 
time he succeeded in walking, by seven-mile stages, 
to Kynnersley, near Croome. Two miles was his 
favourite distance ; but ?.t half-a-mile less. Modesty 
could always do him. Still, if Isaac was beaten over 
a distance of ground, it was by a pace which left its 
mark upon the winner. 

His Ditch-in race with the five-year- weighting him for 
old Fm-not-aware, in which he had the Audiey End. 
221b s. the worst of the weights, and made all the 
running, gave T Admiral) Rous such an opinion of 
him, that he put lOst. on him for the Audley End. 
^^ I shan't want you to ride him, Captain Rous/' said 
Sam, rather grimly, when they fell to chatting in 
front of the Rooms, next morning. ^^ What do you 
mean, notv Sam?'^ said the Admiral; " Oh ! I thought, 
Sir, you handicapped him to get a mount ; according 
to your iveights, there's 7iot been such a horse in New- 

N 2 



180 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

market since Sultan'^ However, taking the line 
through E/Oscius, there was hot much fault to find 
with the weighting. A hurdle race in the Novem- 
ber of '42, saw the last of him in public, and then 
Mr. Robins, of Stoneleigh Park, gave him a run out 
for four or five years, till he had to be shot for 
infirmity. Sam occasionally saw him in his retire- 
ment, but he '' took no notice of me for good or 
evil." His skin now covers a favourite chair, and 
his portrait adorns the old inn sign at Bourton and 
many a bar-parlour down the Warwick and Wor- 
cester way. 

The old Scottish Scotlaud^s fiucst sportsmcu seemed 
cracks. fated to die in their nrime. " Willie 
Sharpe^^ still relishes his coursing at Knockhiil and 
his training at Hambleton, with a zest which de- 
serves better luck; and Lord Glasgow is as kind 
and dauntless as of vore, when he sent Actseon to the 
post against Memnon at York, and kept half Paisley 
in food during the whole of a hard winter. Mr. 
Merry has crept quietly on since he was content 
with the little Paisley bouts of poor Edgar on Bea- 
dershin, till he has made his yellow jacket a name 
of dread across the Border ; but where are the other 
gallant chiels who were wont, year after year, to 
meet in the stand portals at the Caledonian Hunt ? 
" The Inches of Perth, girdled as they are by the 
bright and brimming Tay -, the- short but trying bit 
of green carpet on the Frith of Clyde, where you are 
within hail of ' the auld clay biggin,^ where the 
Ploughman Bard was born ; the base of that grim 
grey keep, round which Forth winds its silver links ; 
the fair regions of Tweed, or Musselburgh^s dead 
flat margined by the snell and gurly sea," hold high 
festival for them no more. Sir David Baird, the 
hardest man, not barring Assheton Smith and Dick 
Christian, that ever fought his unswerving way 
through the bulfinches of Leicestershire, and Sir 



TE'RF CRACKS. 181 

Frederick Johnstone, live only by Mr. Gilmour's 
side in the Melton Hunt picture. Sir James Bos- 
ay ell can never again tell of the pluck and bottom of 
his Pugilist over Amesbury, or banter '' The Gene- 
ral ^ in return, when he reminds him of General 
Chasse and his Avr dose of " Tincture of Mvrrh.^-* 
Lord Drumlanrig, '^ the doucest lad of them aV' 
no longer keeps the country side alive, and leads 
Joe Graham and his field across Dumfries -shire. 
William Hope Johnstone is no more among 
them, with an Era, a William le Gros, or The Re- 
turned, that winner of his two memorable four-mile 
steeple chases in succession at Eglinton Park ; and 
Mr. Meiklam cannot vrhisper his last order to 
" Simmv Temnleman," and then tell him how well 
the new biue-and- white stripes look, on which he 
has set a special loom to work, and bid them not 
mind the expense. 

'' The Turf, The Chase, and The Eoad," all 
drooped in Scotland when '^ Mr. Ramsay and the 
Hounds'^ ceased to be a toast in Mid Lothian, 
when his Lanercost or Inheritor were not under cup 
orders for Ayr, and when his mail-coach team, w^ith 
himself or his good friend from Ury in command_, 
no longer stepped gaily down Leith-street towards 
cannie Aberdeen. He had his summons when lie had 
barely lived out half his time, and only last autumn 
the crape on the Caledonian Hunt scarlet, and the 
words of sorrow to his memor}^, told that one still 
more radiant element vras Avanting in the great 
gathering of Scottish sportsmen. '' Eg- The lateLord 
linton^^ Avas one of them in every sense Egiinton 
of the word, and the thistle on his racing-jacket 
Avas no unmeaning emblem of his love for his " ain 
count ree.^^ No one enjoyed a game more heartily on 
the ice, tlie sward, or the racket-court; and there 
was scarcely a non-professional to beat him at bil- 
liards. '^ Major quo non major'' was the neat tri- 



182 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

bute on tlie monument of his favourite greyhound ; 
and old coursers will tell you exactly how his Wa- 
terloo took and worked his hare over the Flat ; and 
how that son of Dusty Miller beat Gracchus, the 
Ashdown crack, on his own ground, and was looked 
on, in Scotland, as the veritable champion of the 
smooth interest against the rough. The history of 
the " Eglinton Tartan^^ from the days when Queen 
Bathsheba first bore it, till Coroebus and Fandango, 
— that last great struggle between it and the Zet- 
land spots, gave us one more glimpse of old times, 
— needs no more recitals. Political duties claimed 
him, as they had done Lord George ; and he seemed 
to have quite forgotten his way to Doncaster. *^Nim- 
rod" declared that the late Duke of Beaufort was the 
most popular man in England ; but the Earl of 
Eglinton was the most so in the three countries 
combined. The Irish loved him for his frankness, 
his impartiality, his Vice-regal munificence and his 
nice turns-out -, the English reverenced him as the 
soul of honour on their favourite Turf; and his 
countrymen delighted in his hearty national feelings, 
whether he was playing golf at St. Andrew^s, or 
laying his chaplet with manly eloquence in the 
resting-place of Burns. 

Sir James Boswell had a sti'onsr dis- 

Sir James Boswell. -t-, . ->' • -i' -, 

like to dividing a race or a course, and 
on one occasion he ran three" No-goes rather than 
give in. He also disliked exceedingly to see his 
horses punished, and his last orders to his jockey 
were invariably to that efi'ect. In General Chasse^s 
case he was perforce obliged to be silent on that 
head. The GeneraFs Ayr defeat by Myrrha never 
seemed to be forgotten, and w^as married to im- 
mortal verse,^^ in which the mare " only gave 
her tail a wag,^^ and of course won as she liked. 
The " black and white stripes^-' men said with no 
little truth that they did not meet the mare on equal 



TURF CRACKS. 183 

terms, as their champion was quite stale with a 
twelve days walk from Doncaster. Fobert has never 
yet been weaned from his first love by any of his 
" Spigot Lodge" flyers, and quite believes that in 
these times of comfortable railroad travelling, Chasse 
would have been a wonder. No one understood his 
peculiar temper better than poor Jack Holmes, or 
managed it so nicely in a race. He never would 
make his own running, and liked to come once for 
all a few strides from home. All distances and 
weights were much the same to him, but he wanted 
a severe hill to bring the leaders back to him at 
the finish, which was the reason that Liverpool suited 
him so well. 

Myrrha was a low, cart-breasted j^^^^^j^^ ^^^ 
mare, by Malek (own brother to Velo- Pinnp. 
cipede) out of Bessy, whom Mr. Sharpe rode 
as his Edinburgh hack, and, as in EnamePs and 
North Lincoln^s case, there was quite a rush for her 
dam. She was traced, with some trouble, to a cab- 
stand in York ; but death had come to the rescue 
some months before. The people liked as much to 
see Sim (whom Mr. Sharpe first brought down to 
Scotland, when he was light weight, to Mr. Lamb- 
ton) in the Elcho blue and black cap upon Philip, 
as Southrons did Nat on Lady Wildair. Philip was 
the death of Ballochmyle, and stuck to him so reso- 
lutely in some four-mile heats, at Gullane, on a very 
warm day, that the bay died in less than five mi- 
nutes. The races had been removed that summer 
from Musselburgh to Gullane, on account of the 
cholera; and when that Caledonian Hunt was held 
at Cupar, in which Harry Edwards won his celebrated 
race on Terror, six or seven hearses went past during 
the afternoon entry ; and the races almost seemed 
like a death-dance round the plague pit. 

Gullane was once the Malton of 
Scotland, and half-a-dozen horses busy at 






184 SCOTT A^^D SEBRIGHT. 

their o shaped work in the '^myres" served last 
summer to keep up a faint association with Lanercost, 
Inheritor^ and Despot^ those knights of the straw 
body and green sleeves, who were once the pre- 
siding genii of the spot. The house where all the 
Davvsons were born and bred nestles at the foot 
of the hill, on which stands the rude Avooden light- 
house, keeping watch and ward over the deep blue sea- 
board of the German Ocean, and we could hardly won- 
der that PAnson has always kept his^^ Caller Ou 
impressions, as the breezes '^ fresh fra the Forth 
swept over us that July. On one side the yellow har- 
vest fields of East Lothian were waving ; and Dirle- 
ton^s woods grow green and fair down to the very edge 
of the beach. Following the " gently curving lines of 
creamy spray^^ to the right, the eye rests on the Bass 
Kock, — ever clangorous with sea fowl, and standing 
out blunt and bare from its wave-washed base — and 
the cone-like eminence of Berwick Law ; while the 
distant range of the Fife Hills takes us back to 
Johnnv \¥alker and his " dearies^^ before his View 
Halloo was heard at Wynnstay. 

Like Ambo, who revelled over the 
Mostyn mile, and Charity, the third 
Great Liverpool Steeple Chase winner, some of the 
best Gullane geldings took to the road at last. Wee 
Willie, Zoroaster, and Clym-o^-the-Clough, all came 
trotting out at the sound of the horn, to ta"ke their 
turn in the fourteen miles an hour Defiance ; and 
Pyramid, who led out of Edinburgh, when two bay 
and two greys, cross-fashion, was Mr. Kamsay's 
delight, worked himself stone-blind in the cause. 
The old Ury lion was roused once more in his lair, 
and horsing this crack coach from Lawrencekirk 
to Aberdeen, and driving it manj^ a stage, was as 
great a boon to him as getting up his dog Billyhs 
muscle for another fight, or going through solemn 
pedestrian exercises, for the same end, with " my 



TURF CRACKS. 185 

friend Tom Cribb.^^ Even the gravest Scottish coach- 
Edinburgh professors liked to see the ingdays. 
Ramsay coaches with their rich brass-mounted har- 
ness, and the scarlets and white hats, when the dash- 
ing young owner was on the box, and Alick Cooke, 
Jim Kitchen, George Murray, and Jamie Campbell 
vrere the reigning favourites. 

Mr. Kamsay hunted the Carnwath inheritor and 
country as well as the three Lothians, ^^^^ Ramsay 
and as he did not scruple to give 1,500 
gs. for Lanercost, 1,000 for The Doctor, and 850 for 
Inheritor, " Nimrod^^ might well find in him almost 
the only breathing embodiment of his memorable 
Quarterly Review labours. His Inheritor was an old- 
fashioned weight-carrying hunter, with very long 
quarters, and big ribs and gaskins, but with rather a 
light ewe neck, and thinnish shoulders. Blinkhorn 
the trainer alwa^^s compared him to old Walton, and 
said that his '' action spoke vengeance;^' and Harry 
Edwards, after he had won two Liverpool Cups on 
him in ''67, declared that he had not been on such a 
horse since Jerry. In The Trades' Cup (in 
w^hich he carried 9 sfc. 4 lbs. the highest weight 
it has ever been won with), he fairly kicked 
Snyders out of the race at the post, or as Harry 
phrased it in the weighing-house, '' We just 
gave Snyders one-two for iiimself, and settled him.'-' 
Vestment was a more chubb}^, but an unlucky sort of 
horse. He split his pastern, running with Queen of 
Trumps, and " turned over here and there," and 
finally received such a severe cut to the bone, that 
he died of a lock-jaw. Despot was long, low, and 
dark brown ; very honest, but with no great consti- 
tution ; and The Doctor, by Doctor Syntax, out of 
a sister to Zohrab, had especially fine qualitj^, with 
nice symmetr}^, and ability to carry weight. 

Tom Dawson considers Lanercost the 
finest-grown two-year-old he ever saw. 



186 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and wiieii he came ap at that age to Tupgill, he 
could hardly believe he was the same yearlings ^^ all 
belly and no neck/'' which he had seen at The Bush_, 
at Carlisle_, just after Mr. Ramsay had given ^130 
for him, because he was by his horse Liverpool. In 
fact^ his crest became so muscular_, that " we might 
have put a saddle on and fitted it.^^ As a two-year- 
old,, he was tried to do a good thing with Aimwell^ 
on the High Moor ; but forcing him on for the trial 
spoilt him, and he went all to pieces during the win- 
ter, and had no business to come out at Catterick. 
His defeat there by Jemmy Jumps was a sad disap- 
pointment to the Carlisle division ; but the spirits of 
his nominator, " Jim Parkin," never failed. 

This Cumberland Squire was a sino^u- 

Mr. James Parkin, i i i t n t • 

larly handsome man, oi a commanding 
height which quite carried off his bulk, and with 
a fund of mellow humour which never seemed to 
fail, whether in the hunting-field, on the coach -box, 
the 3^eomanry parade, or at his own table. When 
the great North Road was in its glory, and the Glas- 
gow, the Edinburgh, and Portpatrick mails used to 
be changing horses almost together in Carlisle each 
afternoon, and ^^ the little Glasgow mail," with its 
two horseS;, achieved its thirteen miles an hour, then 
was Mr. Parkin in his glory too. It was strange, 
indeed, if he wasn^t seen waiting at The Bush door, 
with his low-crowned hat, and- his hands in his capa- 
cious pockets, and a droll good-humoured word for 
everybody, from baronet to ostler, to work one of 
them to Penrith ; or if the night was peculiarly in- 
viting, as far as Lancaster. If there was a steeple- 
chase or a horse show, he would be in the thick of 
it, keeping every one on the grin with his quaint 
comments and suggestions. If a Cumberland 
Eleven had to be carried to Greystoke, or anywhere, 
to play a match, he would invariably get up a team 
of greys to take them ; and it was said that he was 



TURF CHACKS. 187 

SO sincerely disgusted when the rail was first opened 
between Newcastle and Carlisle, that, having busi- 
ness among the Black Diamonds, he went down by 
the coach to Borough Bridge, and got on to the 
Newcastle mail there, and home again the same way, 
thus nearly doubling the distance. In fact, he was 
so fond of driving, that there was a county joke 
against him, that when in London he sent in the 
driver and conductor one night to have a glass, 
and then, utterly regardless of passengers and time- 
keepers, drove the omnibus four miles to Hammer- 
smith without a check. 

His bachelor home at Greenaways was quite a 
curiosity-shop in the way of driving-whips and fox- 
brushes, and many was the quiet little party he used 
to have there in the days of the Inglewood Hunt. 
The hounds were then kept in kennels on the banks 
of Tarn Wadlin, where the pike and the cranberries 
flourished together, and on summer evenings we 
used to have drags right round the edge of the lake. 
The hunting field would have seemed as nothing 
without him and his grey ; and although his weight, 
which at one time was fully twenty stone, precluded 
his going across country, his knowledge of short 
cuts, and his power of knocking a padlock to pieces 
with the butt-end of his whip, or getting ofl" and 
fairly crushing his way at one shove through a fence, 
with the grey waiting on him, combined to make 
him a very rare absentee at the Whaw-hoop. For 
racing he did not care much ; but he nominated 
Lanercost for all his three ^year-old engagements, 
and made one of the Cumberland quartet, which 
used to book the inside of the coach or mail, and 
go to Catterick, Newcastle, and Doncaster, to see 
him run that year. They held the firmest belief that 
he would prove to be one of the best horses the world 
ever saw, and that Harry Edwards, who was then 
living at Carlisle as a vet., and getting occasional 



188 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

mounts from Alderman Copeland, or John Scott^s 
stable, was the only man who could get him out. 

And so he did at Newcastle, but The 

Lanercostiaiia. tt i i re a - ,^ i 

Hydra who was " not m the same day 
with him at home/^ got so near him that Tom Daw- 
son was far from satisfied. He began to come very 
quick after that, and he was tried very high with St. 
Andrew before the St. Leger. Flat, thin-soled feet 
were always his bane. Walking up and down in 
front of Belle Isle he got a stone the size of a bean 
into one of them, which nearly lamed him, and 
stopped him in his work for the Liverpool Cup ; and 
the next year at Chester (the scene of his daring 
attempt as an aged horse to give the fresh four- 
year-old Alice Hawthorne 511bs.), his soles were 
-quite festered, and he was nearly on his head 
at the Castle Pole. PAnson used to saj^ that his 
feet were as good as stable- barometers at last, and 
that he would fall lame as if he knew it was going 
to be hard.^-' He was gross and sluggish to a 
degree, but became less so with age, and " passed 
his life in great eating and great work.'^ The 
heavier the weight the better he liked it, as the 
three most celebrated Scottish geldings Zohrab, 
Potentate, and Olympic discovered at Eglinton 
Park. In fact, it seemed to make him much more 
lively, and Colonel Richardson always declared that 
^^with thirteen stone he would pull walking. ^^ 
Outwitting St. -^^ incident at Dumfries proves how 
Martin, Lord Exctcr's invariable plan of having 
a cut at the favourite for the off chance, is far too 
often neglected. Lanercost had beaten St. Martin 
twice at the Caledonian Hunt, and the pair came on 
to Dumfries and were both entered in the Fifty 
Pound Plate. In his gallop, Lanercost fell lame, and 
FAnson had only time to get to the boy, and tell 
him to slip him into Mr. Wilkins^s stable close by, 
before any one found it out. The leg was so big. 



TURF CRACKS. 189 

that it was quite thought that the back tendon had 
gone, but fomentations through the night reduced 
it sufficiently to let him just walk on to the course. 
St. Martinis party had not got wind of it, and 
brought their horse to the post merely to try for a 
compromise. Cartwright^s orders on Lanercost were 
to walk from the post, and pull up if St. Martin 
offered to make a pace. He was spared the pre- 
caution, as Lye turned his colt round, the moment 
the word was given, and left Lanercost alone in his 
glory. 

The rivalry for the Ayr Cup was then so great 
among the Scottish dons, that Mr. Ramsay dare 
not trust to The Doctor (although at 2st. he had 
upset a great Liverpool pot on Deception that year) 
when St. Bennett was to do battle for Eglinton 
Castle and Lanercost was accordingly prepared 
for it. 

His four-year-old labours that Sep- Labours of Laner- 

tember and October were equal to those *^°^*^- 

of a Hercules. On September 4th, he duly did the 
needful for St. Bennett at Ayr, tried Easingwold 
for the St. Leger at Catterick, the morning after he 
got back to ilichmond, and then walked off to 
Borough Bridge on his way to Doncaster. At 
Doucaster he won a Four-Year-Old Stake, and 
divided Charles XII. and Beeswing in that splendid 
Cup finish of two. The next week he was at the 
Liverpool Autumn, trying to give Melbourne a year 
and 41bs. in the Palatine, and Cruiskeen a year and 
39lbs. in the lleaton Park ; and running second 
both times. Thence he was sent back immediately 
to Glasgow by sea, and won twice against Bellona 
and Malvolio at the Caledonian Hunt. From 
Cupar, where he arrived the night before running, 
he was vanned to Kelso, where Zohrab and BeU 
lona were no use to him for the Berwickshire Gold 
Cup ; and then through Hawick to Dumfries, where 



190 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

St. Beimett and Malvolio met liini separately, 
but to no purpose, in tlie latter part of that week. 
Mr. Ramsay thought that he had gone to run for 
the Cesarewitch, but I'Anson dare not risk it, and 
with true Scottish caution preferred the certainties 
near home. This brings him up to October 18th, 
and as his five races had been mere exercise gallops, 
and he seemed to get tone every day, I^ Anson deter- 
mined to put his head Heath-wards for The Cam- 
bridgeshire on the 28th. 

Winning the Cam- Bctwcen Dumfrics and Annan his 
bridgeshire. troubics began, by the breaking down 
one of the horses of his three-wheel van, which 
was hardly big enough for him when he was 
travelling night and day. For the last seventy 
miles he grew so weary, that he stood on 
his toes with his heels up against the door, and 
propping his loin as he could. Hence when he 
reached Newmarket he was so paralyzed, that he 
*' could hardly be abused into a trot,^^ and to coax 
him out of a trot into a canter was quite out of 
Noble's power. There was nothing for it but to 
cover him up from nose to tail in his box, till the sweat 
fairly poured off him, and he was so fresh two or three 
days afterwards that he positively " wanted to go 
shopping on his road to the course, and not through 
the shop door either.'^ Still he settled down at the 
post, andif MickletonMaid had not mettled him up 
so tremendously by the pace she made for Hetman 
Platoff, to whom he gave 11 lbs.. Noble could never 
have driven him in a sharp finish with such a speedy 
customer as "Bowes's Bav-^^ This was the maiden 
year of the two great stakes, and although some 
high weights and those three-year-olds have run 
close up for them since, neither of them has been 
won by any horse at 8st. 9lbs. Lord George might 
well say, ^' What a wonderful animal he is ! he neither 
sweats nor blows V^ and it only proves that race- 



TURF CRACKS, 191 

horses will generally do tlieir best tiling, when tliey 
have been a little off. 

His career after that was as variable 
as ever. There was th^ft short-head New- 
castle Cup victory over Beeswing, with ^^ The Young 
^un^^ so handy at the finish, that it did not speak very 
his:hlv for either the Cumberland or Northumber- 
land crack. Then he was snapped by Jem Robin- 
son on Beggarman at Goodwood ; and then Beeswing 
set him a task twice over at Kelso. With the high 
weio'ht and The Doctor in attendance he 2:ave her 
no chance in the Cup, although Bob Johnson offered 
^20 to £10 on his mare and lost it to F Anson ; but 
she would have infallibly won after the dead 
heat, as the short preparation told in two miles, and 
there was nothing to help that time. Next year he 
was carried out twice in the Ascot Vase, first when 
Zeleta, and then when Miss Stilton bolted, and 
could never reach Satirist ; and then he won the 
Cup, making all his own running. After he was 
beaten ^' over the bricks" at Newcastle by Bees- 
wing, there was an order to sell for £2,500, which 
I' Anson did not think nearly enough. Even- 
tually Mr. Kirby gave £2,800, with some contingency 
(as Mr. Ramsay always maintained) about sending 
two mares gratis. No one expected to see him out 
again in ''42, but John Scott wound Mm up only to 
experience the same see- saw luck, a brilliant per- 
formance at Chester, and a poisoning at Ascot. His 
stud career in England tapered away to nothing, but 
we are beginning to think of him again in the even- 
ing of his days at Chantilly, and reflect on the folly 
of overdoing a horse when he first goes to the stud, 
when we see Cosmopolite winning under any weight, 
and note that the dam of Nutbush is bv him. 

Between Lanercost and his dog (for TheioveofLaner- 
which Goody Levy offered£50 and would ^°^^ ^'''^ ^ *^°^ 
have gone on), a most devoted friendship existed. 



192 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Lanercost and Cabrera walked half- way to Doncaster 
together from Swinton before the meeting of 1841, 
and then the former was sent by the Malton Road 
to Pigburn, to be delivered to JTohn Scott. The dog 
took no notice of the severance at the time, but 
during the Doncaster week he was missing. It 
seems that although he had never been there before, 
he went straight to Pigburn, found out Lanercost^s 
box among all the others in the different yards^ and 
rushed in at stable time. It was a question whether 
horse or dog seemed most pleased at the meeting, and 
although the latter was treacherously coaxed out 
with a cat, he would not quit the yard. During the 
night, he climbed to a loft above the horse, and after 
revenging himself for the cat cheat on all Jacobus fer~ 
rets, he departed for Doncaster, and met the bell- 
man, who was calling him, in French-gate. The 
fox, which a too confident hostler would pitch against 
him, and the gentleman who would have another 
peep at Lanercost in the van as the horse was cros- 
sing the Mersey to Chester, did not forget this sen- 
tinel very easily, and his dog opponents seldom sur- 
vived their engagements. 

It is a curious coincidence respecting 
Our Nell and Blue Bonnet, which won 
the Oaks and St. Leger in '42 out of Tom Dawson^s 
stable, that neither of them had ever run in public 
before, and neither of them €ver won again. Blue 
Bonnet broke down twice as a two-year-old, and was^ 
thrown up instead of going for The Ham. Dawson 
got her quite sound by the following August,, 
and as with The Biddy turned loose to make 
running, she beat the five-j^ear-old Charles XII. 
by a head at 2st., and scattered Galanthus, Mos& 
Trooper, and Aristotle pretty widely over the 
High Moor, Tom Dawson had every right not 
to be much frightened of Attila " with his Good- 
wood race on him,^^ on the St. Leger day. 



TURF CRACKS. 193 

Whitewal] never received a thinner- 
fleshed yearling than Cotherstone from 
Isaac Walker's hands^ and at two years old he was 
always amiss. He was very fat before Doncaster, 
and The Era beat him in his trial. Bill Scott said 
he went fast and tired, and when he did not get well 
off in The Criterion, which was alike fatal to 
*^ Daniel'^ and '' The West/^ and only ran a dead- 
heat for the Nursery, Mr. Bowes said, " /'// sell^^ 
and John Scott said " FU huyP No bargain was 
made, and after Christmas he went into work again, 
with All Fours, and as he Avas " always on the old 
horse's back, and he never deceived us," Bill was sent 
for, and so were Sim, and Nat, and Frank, and "all the 
swells." Bill srot on Cotherstone and 

„,, T,i 111 1 , • ,1 ^ 1 Cotherstone's trial. 

followed the old horse, but m the bot- 
tom he felt so satisfied that he had never been on so 
good a colt, and that it was a sin to show him up, 
that he swung him a little out of the course, and 
left the rest, Parthian, Armitage, Greatheart, Castor 
and Co. to finish as they liked. Sim was the only 
one who was up to it, but Colonel Anson was quite 
sceptical, even under Bill's assurance that " / 
could have won to York.'' However, Mr. Bowes got 
on at good odds to win £20,000, but then came 
the teething troubles. The horse Avas sent to New- 
market for the Biddlesworth, ''^ quite beautiful from 
fever," and in such pain that for a week he would 
only lick cold mashes, but the teeth came through 
just in time, and Lye lost £700 on his Pompey 
mount. 

The Two Thousand made him a hot Attempt to hocus 
first favourite for the Derby, and the ^""• 
effort to get at him at Leatherhead was worthy of 
adaptation at the Adelphi. The man with the little 
bottle of stuff" in his pocket who pretended to be 
drunk, the foray of Bill (who was quite a police-ser- 
geant on the occasion), and Markwell into a cockloft 

o 



194 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

under the pretence of wanting a bed, the squaring 
of the carpenter, the finding of poisoned oats in an 
old stocking on the top of a clock, and a packet 
of brown powders in the church porch, are all 
clearly part and parcel of a tremendous ^^ sensation 
drama/' However, it all ended well, and Bill de- 
clared that he could have won if necessary by fifty 
yards. 
A vi-'it at Aithorp We had uot sccu Cothcrstonc for 

Paddocks. sevcntecn years since the day he broke 
down so heavily at Goodwood. Hence we combined 
the coming-in of the new Spencer hound era and 
the going-out of the old blood stock one, into the 
same day; and when our Brixworth survey was 
ended, we drove off through Chapel Brampton, past 
Harleston Heath — so dear to Payne and his Pil- 
lagers — and very soon exchanged the flags for the 
foals. The paddocks are partly at Harleston and 
partly at Althorp, in the proportion of fifteen acres 
to eighty ; and the former were planned by Squire 
Andrew, after whom the sire of Cadland was 
named. 

They are delightfully roomy and comfortable, with 
^ sort of grey antiquity about them which takes one 
back insensibly to the old Grafton and Bunbury 
days ; and if these young occupants do not quickly 
learn to recognize and love Mr. Wilson, in his white 
hat, blue blouse, and extensive- beard they must be 
most deeply ungrateful for his care. His aspect was a 
little startling and Republican at first ; but we found 
his flow of animal spirits and quaint vocabulary per- 
fectly unimpaired under the coming parting from 
his brood mares. He has done a little jockeyship in 
his day, and it was on Helena by Bainbow from 
Urganda that, twenty-nine years ago, he won the 
first race ever run over Chantilly. Isaac Walker 
and he were originally at Bloss's together, and it is 
somewhat remarkable that the one should have had 



TURF CRACKS. 195 

the nursing of Cotlierstone in his foal-hood^ and the 
other in his old age. 

A noble avenue of trees leads from cotherstone in 
'' Cotherstone Hair' right down to Al- retirement. 
thorp House, and the sweet white Wicket, which was 
grazing with her Storm foal in the centre of it, gave a 
charm to the scene, which made us doubly regret that 
even the inauguration of the Pytchley era should en- 
tail the dissolution of the Cotherstone cabinet. The 
door of another shed bore a plate of Wryneck, which 
recorded in almost illegible characters how she won 
300 sovereigns for his late Lordship at the New- 
market Craven of '44. This mare was from Gitana 
by Tramp, and the first he ever bought. It is about 
nineteen years since Mr. Wilson took the head of 
affairs, and then Gladiator came for a season. The 
first Earl Spencer (the Shorthorn and Exchequer 
Earl ) bought Cotherstone for 3,000 guineas 
in '44, before he broke down at Goodwood ; and 
when he arrived in his van, his fetlocks almost 
touched the ground. He is '^ not much of a dandy 
now ;" but on seeing the well-known bit of blue, he 
came whinnying up for a recognition. As it hap- 
pened, he was quietly grazing ; but he is for ever 
•on the move for a regular set of constitutionals, 
which consist in walking round and round his pad- 
docks, or on the sunny side. Well may his friend 
observe that " he looks as if he was matched against 
Mountjoy, and had nothing to do but to make haste." 
His jumping up is his oddest trait, and he some- 
times greets Mr. Wilson by going off all fore-legs, 
just like a lamb. 

His blood colts and fillies have been 
about equal in numbers, but the first 
fourteen out of sixteen foals after the horse was 
thrown open to bond fide tenant farmers, all fell 
colts. True to his sire's charter, he has very seldom 
got a chesnut. His blood has hit well with Slane's 

o2 



196 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and Priam^s^ and Mr. Payne had no reason to re- 
pent his Althorp fancy in Glauca^s and Farthingale^s 
year. The old horse does not now reside in '' Cother- 
stone Hall/^ from which Stilton and nearly eighty 
more winners may be said to date, and the lamb 
must have claimed the major part of his nature, as 
he has not left a tooth-mark on the ledge of the 
wood. Stilton was quite his best, and if he could 
always have been wound up as he was for the Metro- 
politan, he would have fought Stockwell and King- 
ston hard for the supremacy of ^52. He gave 
Evadne and Paddy-bird, both of his year, 201bs. 
easily, but he never got off at Chester, and was not 
in the race till quite at the finish. The Chester Cup 
has always been an unlucky matter for Tom Dawson, 
as he has been second five times, and once second 
and third. 

Orlando's maiden Orlaudo^'s first Tacc at two ycars old 
race. -^^g ^ Producc Stake at Ascot, in which 

there was five to four on him, and great bet- 
ting. All the seven had orders to wait, and John 
Day Junior, who was on Wetnurse, considered that go 
or wait he would be out of it. Walking down to the 
post, he heard Nat, who was very cautious in money 
matters, propose to E-ogers to hedge rides, and he 
accordingly chimed in with, ^^ Wellj if ifs a good 
thing for Sam, ifs a good thing for me; you'd better 
let me dt) the same J' " A very likely thing/' said 
Nat',- " your little pony has no chance'' " Well ! 
well!" rejoined John; "never mind, I'll stay you 
up, though you are on such a grand one." Mr. Davis 
started them; three-quarters of a mile over the Old 
Course, but the only response they gave to his " Go" 
was to stop and look at each other. " Mind I've 
started you !" he observed, and left them ; and on 
they walked for a hundred yards. " This is a pretty 
thing! none of you seem inclined to take the lead ; 
shall I take it for you?" said Young John. Then 



TURF CRACKS. 197 

Hobinson struck in, ^'^ For goodness' sake, JoliTij canter 
or do something, or my horse will bolt.'' 

Thus encouraged, John led the phalanx, which were 
pulling all over the course, at a slow canter; but when 
his mare got her feet on to the road for the Brick 
Kilns, he struck the spurs in and stole fifty yards in 
an instant. The others had to begin then, and Nat 
upset his horse Avith following her. John stopped 
his mare at the distance, and let Orlando reach his 
girths, and when he heard Nat^s " Chick ! chick V 
he knew that the little man had begun to drive 
the crack. He could only sit quiet and hold his 
mare, and she just won a neck, tiring every stride. 
The Stand thought it was a false start, and when 
General Peel went to ask John about it, he thought 
it best to refer him to Jim, " the schoolmaster." And 
well might they call him that, and agree that for 
patience and fairness in a race he was unrivalled. 

One of John^s most tremendous races Young John Day's 
was on Wiseacre, who was a terrible ^in on wiseacre. 
horse to ride, and finally fell lame in his joints, and 
went to nothing. The Ham Stakes at Goodwood was 
a very remarkable finish, and the handling on that 
occasion was equal to Sam Rogers^s celebrated Fin- 
don win of last year on Caterer. John^s orders were 
not to be second, and he went and tried to catch, 
them at the distance. Then he suffered, and made 
another effort half-way up, and crept to the girths of 
the leaders, without asking his colt a question. Fire- 
brand and Barrier were beat on his right, and he 
just thought he might land him, and getting up inch 
by inch, he hit him twice and just won a head. Nat 
trotted back on Chatham under the firm impression 
that he had won, and it was in vain for Sam to try 
and undeceive him. " John Day ivon V he said; " he 
was heat off at the distance, and I've never seen him 
since ;'' John was so weary with the job, that he 



198 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

could hardly sit on Lis saddle, and after he won the 
Prendergast, the stirrup broke, and he made a second 
finish by going to grass. 
Death of Fran- Franchise was the first great winner 
chise. fQj. Alfred Day, and it was by the merest 
chance that she was trained at all. A purchaser had 
his offer of three in a straw-yard. He chose the 
other two, and left her, although she might have 
been his for £20, and hence her owner trained her 
in despair. At last, she broke her near hind-leg^ 
short off in a gallop near Sadler^s Plantation ; 
the leg spun round in the air, nearlj^ hitting her lad, 
and she was left staggering on three, till William 
Day galloped home for a pistol and shot her through 
the head, as soon as there was a moment's cessation 
in the plunging. 

"Running Rein" Of the fictitious hcro of '' The Eun- 
& St. Lawrence, ujug J^eiu year," a celebrated character 
still observes mqst feelingly, " What is the use of win- 
ning a Derby J if they don t let you have it V^ He was 
own brother, it is supposed, to one of our most 
celebrated runners ; and he got upset in his van 
on boardship, and died soon after he was taken off. 
Such at least is the legend of this dark offender. 
St. Lawrence was one of the Irish division originally_, 
and began by running second for the Madrid Stakes. 
No horse was nicer to wait with, and like Sweet- 
meat, a jockey could put him just where he liked. He 
never varied a pound from his form all the time that 
he kept the clock at Danebury, and save and except 
the yellow bay Spume, on whom he won fifteen 
races, there was none that Young John loved better 
to ride. Speed was his point, and he never showed 
it in a higher degree than when he beat Garry-Owen, 
who gave him only 51bs., over the T.Y.C. He arri- 
ved at Danebury when he was four years old, 
and became such "a calculating boy,''^ that if he 



TURF CRACKS. 199 

found he couldn^t reach home he would stop in 
the last hundred yards, and he did so in the 
Suffolk Stakes^ and again across the Flat in the 
Craven. 

The story of The Baron is somewhat 
on all fours with Touchstone^ s, but as 
the play-bills have it, '' a period of eleven years 
elapses.^^ John Scott was again on the Liverpool 
Stand with Earl Wilton and another nobleman, when 
he saw the chesnut beaten. He was as fat as a bull, 
and had bar-shoes and fearfully festered soles, and 
had been made twice the savage he was by muzzles. 
Still ^^ The Wizard" thought he had a St. Leger in 
him. And so he went to Malton, and a very rough 
snappish customer they thought him at first. He 
was well physicked and then rammed along behind 
old All Fours, and as John Scott says, " took more 
work than I ever gave a horse in my life, and re- 
quired more management.^^ He was tried at Pig- 
burn at the St. Leger distance to give As You 
Like It a stone, and did it with nearly a length to 
spare. 

lago, the Whitewall Leger horse of the 
next year, was quite as game, but he ^^'^' 

wanted speed. Still he would have outstridden 
the lazy Poynton at York, if Cartwright, wha 
was riding Sheraton, had not got at the brown's 
girtlis for the honour of Mr. Meiklam and the 
stable, and given him three such stinging strokes 
on the quarters, that the horse, although one 
of his sinews had been cut by a hoof-hit in the race, 
dare not dwell any longer. Templeman was hard at 
him at the time, little looking for such a Blucher to 
aid him. lago was rather short and high-legged, 
but for a horse of that make he stayed well. His 
head and back were beautiful, and his temper very 
good, but his stock were generally very short of 
temper and wind as well. 



200 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

The B. Green B. Green^s and the Grafton scarlet 
two-year-olds, "wrere in every one^s mouth in '47^ and 
Hambleton began at last 

" To raise its head for endless spring, 
And everlasting blossoming," 

till Voltigeur's Derby knocked it out of time. The 
party of which the ex-Manchester traveller was the 
ostensible chief had some thirty-five in training, and 
won thirty -two two-year-old races. In fact, every 
two-year-old they brought to the post that year con- 
trived to rub off his maidenhood. At Chester in 
^49, they won ten races, the Cup among the number, 
with the eccentric Malton, who would not go into a 
stable, unless the door was a very wide one, and 
would then canter right in. Sometimes they could 
manage him blindfolded, but to make matters all 
right at Chester, they hired a coach-house. Teddy 
Edwards and Winteringham did the riding part for 
the stable, and Bash am, who first rode as a feather at 
Stockton-on-Tees in ^45, on sister to Andover's 
dam, had a few light-weight mounts. 
Two-year-old The confcdcracy gave .€500 for As- 
triais. sault, the same for Chaff and Flatcatcher, 
£350 for Beverlac, and £150 for Swiss Boy ; 
and acting on the approved fashion, bought their 
own brothers the next year. They tried them in 
November, but B. Green did not care to go and see 
it come off. " It's no use my going to see it/' he used 
to say ; " you can tell me what's first, '^ and he com- 
forted himself at home witli his snuff and cigars. 
He also delighted in whist and billiards, and was 
very clever in watching the market, and managing 
his betting-lists. Before the trial, it was quite ex- 
pected that Beverlac, who wanted no spurs, was the 
best of the three, but Assault won by two or three 
lengths, and Beverlac was beaten as far from Flat- 
catcher. The second trial ended the same way, and 



TURF CRACKS. 201 

their forms never changed till Burlesque knocked up 
Assault, and he could never be got sound again. The 
trial was kept so quiet, that the public ratlier stood 
Beverlac, and 15 to 1 was taken about him at Ches- 
ter for the Derby, a year before the race ! Harry 
Steb])ings had always an immense opinion of Flat- 
catcher, but he overdid it with him, especially in the 
St. Leger, by not giving Robinson waiting orders ; 
and he refused, it was said, j83,000 from the French 
Government for him. 

Danebury seemed sadly down on its The purchase of 
luck in the early part of ^46, as Old cossack. 
John was very ill at the Gloucester Coffee- House, 
and there were only twelve horses in training. Such 
a remarkable lot never followed each other at exer- 
cise before, as five of them won two Derbies, two 
Oaks, a One Thousand, two Newmarket Stakes, and 
four of the great cups ; and Conyingham a future 
Two Thousand winner came later on in the je^r. 
Pyrrhus the First was bought as a foal with his 
dam Fortress for £300, after Old England was 
tried, and was half Mr. Gully^s. Cymba and 
Mendicant were also there, but Cossack was the best 
of the bunch. John Dav first heard of him from 
Dilly, when he was at Northampton races, and 
consented to accompany him to Mr. Elwes^s of 
Billing, and look at two Hetmau Platoffs for Mr. 
Payne. 

Dilly liked the brown, but thought the chesnut 
rather upright before, and too small as well. His 
companion was greatly taken with the latter, and 
after trying in vain to get him for £200 and a Derby 
contingency of £1,000, he sent a 200 guinea cheque, 
and sold the colt for the same sum to Mr. Pedley 
during the Gorhambury meeting. Mr. Elwes had asked 
Charles Marson to go and have a look at them, and 
Mr. Coape, who trained with him, would have bought 
them, but he did not just fancy the blood, and al- 



202 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

though he went past the very Park wall_, he did not 
even care to look in. Had he got Cossack^ the first 
and second for the ^47 Derbj would have been in 
his stable^ and the heavy War Eagle hit would have 
been averted. 

Valentine threw all her stock leggy, 
^^** and War Eagle was no exception, and 
fully sixteen-one. He pitched in his slow paces, but 
for a mile he was immensely fast, and if he was 
held, he would run on, but not go far when he was 
once in distress. His finest turn of speed was when 
he cut down Volley from the post at Doncaster. In 
the Cup he followed The Hero ^'^ just like clock-work,^' 
and came the moment Sam Mann touched him with 
the spur. Mr. Payne said of his Newmarket Stakes 
race with Cossack, that it was the fastest he ever 
saw. It was in fact like two races, as the pair came 
right away by themselves leaving a cloud of dust 
behind them. Mr. Bouverie would not hear of War 
Eagle waiting, but ordered him to ^' come away and 
beat them right out.^^ War Eagle had a little the 
best of the start, on the whip hand, but they were 
soon at it, head and head, all the way up the cords. 
Sim never moved, but " felt for him,^^ and when his 
horse answered his hand so truly, he felt sure that 
tjie Derby was over. 

Cossack was a delightful horse to ride, never pul- 
ling, and always as ready as ^ shot, when he was 
wanted. A strong pace was his delight, and he 
could make it for himself, and except when War 
Eagle headed him coming down the hill, he led in 
the Derby from The Warren to the winning-post. 

Hero was quiet when in front, and 
rather too free if he was behind, and 
liked to run big and above himself. He was rather 
shelly at three, but he thickened amazingly after- 
wards. In wet ground he could not move at all, 
and Footstool made a sad exhibition of^ him at 



TURF CRACKS. 203 

York in consequence. Young Jolin Day was on 
him in his first race, the Woodcote Stakes, and 
his last the Goodwood Cup, and he has used one or 
two good hunters by him. Nelson to wit, with his 
harriers. Still as a sire he was not very valuable, 
as his stock from thorough-bred and half-bred mares 
ran rather small, and when fever in the feet set in, 
and he could hardly move in his box, he was vanned 
down to Hermit Lodge, where his Grace the Duke 
of Beaufort stays during the Stockbridge week, and 
shot and buried in the garden. 

Chanticleer was a horse of great con- 

,', ,• 111 1 1 1 • ji Chanticleer. 

stitution, but always touched m the 
temper, and in fact ^^ a perfect mad horse,^' when 
PAnson first got him at Liverpool. Robertson stuck 
to his head in one of his frenzies, but he became so 
bad at last, that they were glad to get the lad out 
of the horse box by the window. He had thrown 
himself down in the box, and the stall had to be 
taken out before he would consent to go in it again. 
When he got to Hambleton, Harry Stebbings used 
to say, that he would just as soon be off the Moor 
when he was on; but FAnson gradually got him 
quiet, and in the next year he did all his best things. 
Still he would not go up a passage, but roar his 
dissent like a bull, and kick by way of variation fox 
a whole day. He was a free goer, and had fine 
pace, and if he was above himself he could stay 
with most of them, and go equally well on hard 
and soft ground. 

Two miles over the flat suited Canezou canezou and 
best, but still she could stay much fur- ^p^^"^^ '^*^^- 
ther if she had assistance. She always wanted much 
management in her training, and so did Springy 
Jack, a nice smart goer, but as heavy-fleshed as a bull, 
and quite competent and willing to eat up to his 
weight. There never was such a somnolent horse, as 
he would lie down and go to sleep for two or three 



204 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

hours, as soon as he had emptied his manger, and 
no training could keep his legs in order, with such 
an ever increasing top. Butler seldom rode a horse 
more desperately from the distance than he did him 
for the Great Yorkshire, and finished on him bare- 
headed : but Maid of Masham was not 

Maidof Masliara. .-, i • ~i n t n ' i -i , 

to be got rid ot. It a jockey only sat 
as still as Sim did that day, she was one of the 
sweetest mares to ride, but a great martyr to 
windgalls in the knees, which were so bad that 
Tom Dawson did not wish her to run. And 
well he might not, as she took nearly an hour bring- 
ing on to the course from Middlethorpe, and they 
had to knock her about most unmercifully to get her 
warm. 

For Ellerdale, who won this stake for 

the same stable the year before the 
York course seemed to have a hidden charm, and 
she never seemed so unsettled, when she had to run 
there, as she generally did during her absence from 
Middleham. She was a delicate, second-class mare, 
and rather lacking in speed. Tom Dawson always 
says that her^s is the only case he ever saw of a sinew 
slipping inside the hock. It occurred when she was 
at exercise, and she pulled up on three legs, and 
kicked so furiously from the pain, that he quite 
thought she had broken her leg. Full a fortnight 
elapsed before she could touch the ground, and she 
was trained no more. At the stud she threw winners 
to everything she was put to ; and in the first five 
seasons, Ellermire, who beat the speediest field that 
has been seen in modern days at York, Ellington, 
Wardersmarke, Gildermire, and Summerside came 
in succession. Never did anything look more 
thoroughly the type of an English brood-mare as 
she walked into the Grimston ring, with the well- 
nurtured 1 ,500 guinea Nugget, looking as big as her- 
self, at her side, and gazed round for the last time 



TURF CIIACKS. 205 

at lier Yorkshire admirers. It was 500 to 600 in 
no time, and so on to 1,120 guineas, but the untried 
Gildermire quite overlapped her, and got up to 1,260 
guineas. 

Such bidding quite petrified an old tyke, who was 
wandering round the outer circle. " Oh, dear ! it 
beats me !'' he observed, resting on his staff ; " these 
gentlemen — they get fuller of moneij at the latter end of 
the day ;" and could only account for it by saying 
that she was such '^« well performed mareJ^ 

The Yorkshire mind had been stirred «, i po. , n 

Saleof Stockwell 

to its utmost depth by attempts to solve and west aus-^ 
the great problem, whether Stockwell 
would sell for more than " Westy.^^ With true local 
pride they hoped he would not, but yet they felt 
sure he would, and the speculation in crouns and 
pots principally ran on the point whether or not the 
chesnut would touch five thousand, and the brown 
four. 

St. Albans brought the former gallantly up, and 
the thousand soon became four thousand five hun- 
dred. We never heard such a price bid in a ring 
before, and yet there was no apparent enthusiasm. 
All of it was reserved for "The West.^^ "Here 
comes the pick of England/^ said they, as he emerged 
from a gate behind, and strode with his beautiful 
white reach head aloft into the ring. There was 
quite a thrill as the biddings slowly rose to three 
thousand, and a sort of burst of suppressed im- 
patience and vexation when no one could beat Count 
de Morny. " He canH he released,^^ said a tyke close 
by us, in such a melancholy strain, and down went 
the hammer. There was quite a fond rush after him 
for a last view, but somehow or other he is only an 
ordinary horse to look at when his head is out of 
sight ; and his stock, considering the chance he has 
had, justify the dubious verdict passed upon them 
when they first came out five summers since at 



206 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Tattersa]ls\ And so this grand sale passed into 
history ; and when shall we see 20,689 guineas again 
made in one afternoon, twenty-three brood-mares 
averaging 409 i guineas, one brood-mare and her two 
brood-mare daughters making 2,990 guineas, and 
three St. Leger winners, chesnut, brown, and roan, 
standing up to the hammer in the self-same ring? 
The late Lord Wlieu all was ovor, WO strollcd quietly 

Londesboro'. across the Park — so fresh and beautiful 
from the rain, that leaving such a spot made death 
seem doubly terrible — and lingered for a few minutes 
near the house, among its rich ribbon borders, its 
laurel banks, and its grotto. 

The Armourer, with a skin as dark as Saladin 
himself, conducted us among his glorious collection 
of sword-breakers, thumb-screws, and coats of mail, 
and tried in vain to stir us up to enthusiasm upon 
horns of tenure and Damascus blades ; and anon we 
took refuge from positively the last shower of the 
evening, under the gigantic tree which shades the 
remains of the retriever Sal, the faithful companion 
of the late Lord "in all his changes of residence 
and fortune.^^ 

The paddocks joined the Grimston plantation on 
our left, and just above the wall we could see the top 
of the gilt coronets surmounting the private gate 
which communicated between the two. His brood- 
mares were his Lordship^s delight, and even his 
yacht Ursula, which won the Emperor of the 
French's cup, ranked second. In his days of com- 
parative health he was always in his paddocks, on 
his bay pony, chatting to Jack Scott, and watching 
the yearlings as they ripened for TattersalFs ; and 
when he could ride there no longer, he would be 
among them in his pony carriage. An accident in 
rook-shooting, which sprained or broke a small 
tendon in his foot, was the beginning of his last ill- 
ness, and with the consequent loss of active exercise. 



TURF CRACKS. 207 

his gradual break-up commenced, and no sea-breezes 
could fan him back to health. He left Grimston in 
September, and slept there but one night the follow- 
ing month, and then he bade good-bye for ever to 
the place which of all others he loved best. Grim- 
ston church is pulled down, and another has been 
erected on the site to his memory. The family vault 
is in an enclosure by itself, just to the right of the 
churchyard. Four small trees, cypress or arbor 
vitse, mark the corners, and at the upper end a honey- 
suckle, which had half-fallen from its hold on the 
wall, leant over, and pointed almost to the exact spot 
m the vault, which contains that pale, fragile form 
we all remember so well. 

Van Tromp was an exceedingly idle 
horse, and not at all deficient in speed. *^ ^°™^' 
The St. Leger day was his best, and he had won his 
race a mile from home. Marlow had backed him 
for the Derby for £200 after his race with Wanota in 
the Mersey Stakes, but he did not think him 
in his Liverpool form, when he saw him at the 
Derby post^ and felt most keenly that any slur 
in the public mind should have ever been thrown 
on Marson. On the St. Leger day, he was quite 
a different horse, and we can only summon up 
three or four during the last twenty-five years 
that seemed to our mind just so ripe on the day. 
Marlow always considered that ^^The Dutchman^' 
stayed better as he grew older, but that his staying 
arose rather from the fact that his speed was so tre- 
mendous that no horse could get him out, than from 
innate gameness, and hence for a really hard cup 
fight, when both were in their prime, he would have 
preferred being on Van Tromp. Never did horse 
win an Ascot Cup in such unflinching style as Van ; 
but if Nat had persisted in. waiting to the Stand, 
instead of trying to take up the running soon after 
the last turn, when he got nearly a length, Marlow 



208 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

would never have got a pull^ and Van conld never 
have answered to the whip as he did. Single-handed, 
Chanticleer ought always to have got the last run 
and beaten him, but still there was hardly 31bs. be- 
tween them either way. 
Mariow and The Marlow^s experience has been a pretty 

Dutehman. extcnsivc ouc. Hc lookcd after Water- 
witch when Lye rode her for the Oaks, and spurred 
her almost in the hips. His maiden victory was won 
when he was a lad at Lord Warwick^ s, on Gab at Chel- 
tenham, beating his beloved Waterwitch, who, how- 
ever, furnished him with win No. 2 before long. 
Still even his maiden win did not delight him so much 
as when he first got on The Dutchman (who was 
fully 2 libs, better than Elthiron), and followed Van 
Tromp up the gallop. They only went half speed, 
but he returned him with " Well ! Mr. Fobert, I was 
never on such an one as this before,'^ Mariow never 
rode him in a trial, and always with a curb, as 
hard pulling was one of his specialties, and he once 
took the bit in his teeth, and gave Jack Sharpe a 
rough ride of it on Middleham Moor, His stride 
was immense, and he always showed his fore shoes, 
but as a two-year-old, nothing could ever make him 
gallop except Escalade at Liverpool, and although he 
won by a length, Mariow smiled to himself when he 
read how '' cleverly^^ or " easily^^ it was done, and 
noted how the seers dwelt all winter on " the fact, 
that this magnificent son of Bay Middleton has never 
been extended.^'' 
The Dutchman's At the Dcrby, Marlow lay in the 

Derby race, middle of his hoTSCs up to the mile-post, 
and found that he could beat all before him. Round 
the turn. Hotspur came up so unexpectedly on the 
right, and so like a winner, that for the moment Mar- 
low could not make out what it was. Nothing was in 
the race after the turn, but the two and Tadmor ; and 
as the Dutchman seemed all muddled and confused 



TURF CRACKS. 209 

in the deep ground, and perfectly inactive in com- 
parison with his old self, there was but one thing, 
viz., " to sit and suffer." Hotspur went over the 
dirt like a swallow, and showed no signs of coming 
back till within three strides of home, when Marlow, 
who had a length to get, struck his horse twice (the 
only time in his life that he ever touched him), and 
the last stride gave him the short neck. He was 
quite sure he had won, as he said to the lad who 
was waiting for him, " Old felloiv ! it's a tight fit, 
but Pve just done it.'' Whitehouse is not certain 
upon the point to this day, but Marlow has no fur- 
ther remark to offer when he begins, than " You 
won at the wrong place, George ; you didn't win at 
Judge Clark." In the St. Leger, deep as the ground 
was, The Dutchman won all the way. The course 
exactly suited him, and he could have almost trotted 
in, if there had been a bet depending on it. He 
also won his match as he liked, and the Ascot Cup 
proved that Marlow had not overstated his hopes, 
when he said to Butler, who had a wonderful belief 
in Canezou that week, " You'll see what a mess I'll 
make of you to-morroiv." Arthur Briggs visited the 
great brown in France, and found him in what Eng- 
lish trainers call " the condemned cells," near The 
Baron and Cossack, but he looked quite down, and 
very unlike his old Middleham or E-awcliffe self. 
With such views as our neighbours entertain on 
stallion exercise, it could hardly be otherwise. Still 
they contrive to breed many of their racers, with far 
better substance than we do. 

His principal three-year-old rival, 
Vatican, was as full of quality as horse 
could be, but latterly quite the victim of temper. 
He nearly worried one lad walking from Ely, and 
savaged another in a corner. On a race-course he 
was very difficult to saddle, and once got loose at 
York, with his bridle off among the ditches. They 

p 



210 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

at last built a place at Hambleton., supported by 
pillars, where he could stand and hit nothing when 
he kicked. He was coy and very savage with his 
mares, and contrary to the usual rule, loved the 
satin-coated ones, and they had to use bluffs and all 
manner of double leading-rein expedients for ser- 
vice. As is often the case with very irritable horses, 
his stock were washy and small, and the fine cross 
of Slane and Venison was in his case quite thrown 
away. 

Among the ten St. Leger winners, 
"'^ ^^' whose plates keep off the witches from 
the stable-doors of the Turf Tavern, the home-bred 
Surphce must not be forgotten, albeit we have got 
him a year out of his turn. He was a very early 
foal of January 24th, and Lord George took some 
Derby double event bets about him at Goodwood that 
July, and liked him still better when he got his 
measure at the end of the next year. He was then 
fifteen hands and rather leggy, and had arrived at 
Accidents to sur- that maturity in the face of two acci- 
puce. dents, which made Cunningham tremble 

in his shoes. The first snow shower he was out in 
terrified him so much, that he dashed at a wall and 
performed a complete somersault into an adjoining 
garden. That did him no harm; but when he was being 
lunged he made a slip, and lay for a few seconds 
with his fore and hind feet right away from him, in 
such a perilous position, that it seemed all over with 
his back. Luck favoured him again, and he rolled 
on to one side and picked himself up unscathed. 
The roaring No colt had a swcctcr temper, and he 
humour. ^g^g g^^.]^ g, rare walker that he could 

almost get four times round the ring, when Load- 
stone and the other yearlings were doing it thrice. 
Nat and Butler paid him a visit when he was a year- 
ling, and informed Colonel Anson and Lord George 
that, from the throppling noise he made in grazing. 



TURF CRACKS. 211 

lie must be a roarer. His Lordship stopped at the 
paddocks on liis way from Welbeck to the races 
next morning, specially to listen ; bat as nearly all 
the other fourteen were similarly afflicted, he com- 
forted himself with the thought that " they canH 
all be roarers J ^ and listened to these augurs of ill no 
more. 

Siberia, the dam of Troica and Comfit, Beginning of the 
was Lord Zetland^s first racer, and he ^^^^ *^'^^- 
gave only <£35 for her, which was about the price paid 
for his Nickname by Islimael, the dam of Augur 
and Castanette, and the grandam of Fandango. 
This old mare was eventually given to Bobby Hill, 
who sold her to Mr. John Bowe of Richmond, the 
breeder of El Hakim. Mr. Jacques had her next, 
and in his hands, she bred Massaniello, for which a 
thousand was refused as a yearling. 

~ ^,»T,i •, i "•! Death of Comfit. 

Comfit s death was quite a tragical one. 
A gamekeeper had hung his white pony to the gate of 
the paddock in which she was grazing, and the mares 
became alarmed. Comfit arrived in a gallop at the 
gate, and tried to take it in her stride. She was 
within a month of foaling to Newminster at the 
time, and catching the top-bar with her fore-legs, 
she rolled over and broke her shoulder. Staggering 
on through the wood and holly bushes, she reached 
the door of her old stable and fell. She was carried 
to a short distance, and the foal, a fine colt, was 
taken from her immediately, but some little delay 
occurred in tying up the navel^ and it lost a pint of 
blood and died. 

Although the mares were pretty good 
and bred weU, the Voltaire colts did not ^ ^^^"^* 
rank very high when Martha Lynn threw Barnton 
and Voltigeur to him. They were generally heavy- 
necked and heavy-fleshed, and it was these pecu- 
liarities which made Lord Zetland and one or two 
more of the Jockey Club men dislike Voltigeur, when 

p 2 



212 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Bobbv Hill marked him as a yearling at Doncaster^. 
and begged his Lordship to have a look at him. Their 
verdict was pretty well confirmed, when the colt 
came up before Mr. TattersalFs^ and the " Take him 
away /" soon boomed forth, as not a soul there 
would give a hundred. And so he went back to 
Hart, to Mr. Stephenson^s great disappointment, and 
he might have been cut for the hunting field, if Mr. 
John Brown (a nephew of " British Yeoman and 
Black Diamond Blakelock^^) had not once confided 
to Mr. Williamson, when they were out coursing 
near Sedgefield, that if he could only have it 
trained by Robert Hill, who had once looked after 
his nucleus horses, he would buy a racer forthwith, 
and that he had something in his eye. 
Purchase and trial Lord Zetland conscntcd to allow the 
of voitigeur. ^jq]^ ^^ como to Askc, ou couditiou that 

he was lent to Mr. Williamson, and accordingly he 
arrived about the time of the next Catterick races. 
He was put along quietly till his Bichmond engage- 
ment drew near, and then tried to give Castanette, 
who had just won at Doncaster, 121bs. and a year 
over three-quarters of a-mile. His victory was so 
hollow, that they thought it could not be right, and 
tried them over again next morning with the same 
result. He had always thinnish soles, and ran these 
trials and his Richmond race in bar shoes, but Lord 
Zetland had him plated, and for the third time 
within the fortnight he was called upon to give the 
mare the same weight. His Lordship came to see 
the trial this time, and had Ellen Middleton put in 
to make a pace, and Cantab to scramble where he 
could with 161bs. less than the crack, who had a 
white hood on and positively came in alone. 

" This is awful I we ought all to be downright 'shamed 
of ourselves/' groaned poor Bobby when he saw his 
stable so completely cleaned out. It came ofi" over 
Richmond about tAVO o'clock in the afternoon, but 



TURF CRACKS. 213 

there was not a strange eye, save that of Mr. Rich, 
M.P., to see it, and his sporting constituents were 
not one whit wiser when the shades of evening de- 
scended. Their trial determined his Lordship to 
give the £1,500, which was asked, with a £500 con- 
tingency, on each of the great events, and the luck 
of " the spots^^ began. 

Bobby Hill, who had a very intui- Bobby mil's trainl 
tive perception of all stable matters, ing notions. 
went at him forthwith, and never had a man a finer 
bit of stuff to work upon, as he was never known to 
have a cough or a swelled leg. To keep u]3 a per- 
petual warfare against the latter was a great point 
with Bob, and his favourite elixir was turpentine 
and cream. He gum-bandaged nearly every horse 
he had. If a privileged person asked him his rea- 
sons on that head, he would reply : '^ They're a 
vast deal better forHJ' If a non-privileged individual 
presumed to do so he would answer short : " to keep 
'em reety to be surJ" He was not the man to let 
his horses be idle: but be his system what it 
might, the three-year-old Voltigeur throve under 
it. He could sweat week after week with twelve 
stone, lad and all on his back, and quite deserved 
his most glowing eulogy, '^ his legs and feet, my 
Lord, is like Mr on J' 

When he had fairly broken down voitigeur at 
Castanette, he was carried on by St. Epsom. 
Anne, but nothing came with him to Epsom. Job 
had not a regular engagement from his Lordship in 
^49, and did not ride in the trials, but he had been 
sent for, early the next spring, and seen enough 
to make him tell his Lordship and Mr. WilHamson 
at Catterick, that " I think iveUl be about winning 
the Derby.'' " HeUl never gallop again till he gal- 
lops for t'money," said Bob, when he gave his colt 
the wind up on the Friday before Epsom, and he 
kept his word. The touts put out a very different 



314 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

tale, and (althougTi lie liad never been at more than 
half- speed) it was all over London on the Sunday, 
that he couldn^t follow an Epirus gelding of Lum- 
ley^s^ which was lent to lead him up the gallop, and 
he went back to 30 to 1. 

The Eglinton party, who were strong in their Ma- 
yors faith, declared that he had no muscle, but other 
eyes scanned him before the Wednesday, and he came 
back to sixteens. He was within an ace of being 
scratched on the Monday from sundry heavy forfeits 
attaching to his nominator, and there was a doubt 
as to whether Job could be released from another 
engagement to ride him, but the right resolve was 
taken, and the Aske housemaid who stood him, simply 
because he had " such a nice dark satin coat,^^ won 
her money like a woman and a Briton ess. E,hadul~ 
phus worked him between the two events, and as 
Doncaster drew nigh, those who consulted Bobby 
received these words for their comfort : " He's fit 
for^t jobj" or " He's going tremendious slap J" 
Bobby's Lightfoot The latter expression was most freely 
fancy. applied by Bobby to Lightfoot before 
Chester next year. He observed at exercise one day, 
'^ Bedad, Mr, Williamson^ that coWs a nailer ; he 
stretched Voltigeur's neck as sure as I'm sitting on this 
galloway," John Gill thought he had got a Derby 
line for Neasham by trying him to give a Ked Deer 
colt of the same year ] 91bs. cleverly ; and the latter 
was accordingly borrowed and tried at the same rela- 
tive weight with Lightfoot. Yoltigeur was put in to 
secure a pace, at weights for age with Bobby^s de- 
light (who received Qlbs.from Bhadulphus,) and pulled 
it off by a length, and it was all that Rhadulphus 
could do to beat the young'un, while the Bed Deer 
colt cut up awfully. Job was on the young ^in, and 
rode him out severely to the finish. His trial seemed 
both to Gill and the Aske party to make him within 
3 or 41bs. of a Derby winner's form, but his Dee 



TURF CRACKS. 315 

Stakes exhibition was fearful, and he never could 
really gallop again. Hunting he managed fairly 
enough, and while Mr. Bell kept hounds, he per- 
formed very well with a whipper-in, and is still, we 
believe, at Thirsk. 

Voltigeur^s heart went next, and George voitigeur's de- 
Wallace and Hauxwell, who knew how ^^^*^^' 
gallantly he Avas wont to face that severe finish from 
the race-course, into the Aske grounds, found to 
their sorrow that he began to fail " from the Sweat- 
ing Gates.^^ It was all very well for poor Bobby 
to menace them with the pitchfork if they told 
any one -, the brown^s match fate was sealed, and 
when they tried him after his defeat, Hhadulpbus 
told them that he was fully a stone below his Don- 
caster Cup form. His stock, which are generally 
whole coloured, whatever the mare may be, inherit 
his tendency to be thick-necked (which he gets 
from Voltaire), with his very fine substance, moving, 
and temper. It is difficult to say, as it was with 
him, whether speed or staying is their especial forte ; 
but there is too often an unsound one among 
them ; and they take an immense deal of prepara- 
tion. 

His finest nick was with Mr. Chilton^s 

T-» • T / 1 T p • , Vedette. 

Bu'dcatcher mare, and irom it came 
Vedette, with Blacklock blood on both sides. See- 
ing that luck had attended Mr. Bowes^s nomencla- 
ture, he began the world as ^^West Hartlepool." 
Nothing could have been more unpromising than 
his yearling look, as his head was big, his middle 
like a brood mare^s, and his hocks very far behind 
him, and hence much as his Lordship liked the 
blood, he wavered for some time, till Mr. William- 
son used all his eloquence in favour of " the ugly 
one." At last the £250 went the right way, and un- 
promising as the beginning seemed, it is doubtful 
whether such a horse has ever been at Aske. He 



216 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

had quite as little notion as Fandango of leaving off, 
and for pace and staying as well, if the trainers and 
jockeys were polled_, he would have as many votes as 
Voltigeur. When the chronic rheumatism was not 
troubling him, few had such action, and as he went 
with his head down, he seemed to " get all he stretched 
for/^ 

He was the last horse that Job Marson ever 
rode in public, and Job told the stable that Voltigeur 
the second had been found at last. His first great 
trial was at Catterick before the Two Thousand at 
even weights, a mile and a-half, with Ignoramus and 
the four-year-old Gaudy, while Skirmisher received 
71bs. He just won it, but when he and Ignoramus 
were put together again over two miles of the same 
course, he gave Lord Fitzwilliam^s horse 161bs., and 
beat him half-a-lei:gth. This course proved fatal to 
both of them at last, as well as seven others from Aske, 
including Sabreur, Zeta, and Fandango, and in every 
instance it was the left leg which went. 
Waking up sa- Sabrcur did not run at two years old ; 
breur. ^t thrcc Ms actiou was odd; and the 
attempts to prepare him did not improve it. Bivouac 
gave him a stone, and did what he liked with him 
before Newcastle the next year. He was only pre- 
pared for a mile, and he showed no speed whatever 
in the Member's Plate; and as a forlorn hope, they 
decided to give him a gallop for " The Guineas.''^ 

There must have been an immense reserve of power 
about the horse, which he did not know how to use. 
As fate willed it, Ticket-of-Leave gave him a kick inside 
the thigh, just as they left the post. It might have 
broken his leg, but it did not, and mettled him up 
to such an extent, that he rushed through his horses, 
and the jockeys having no telescopes with them, 
sav/ him no more. In fact, he won by nearly half- 
a-distance, and although he was lame for a week 
after pulliDg up, he had his nerve fairly kicked 



TURF CRACKS. 217 

into him. He never lost it, and his form and stride 
€ver after were thoroughly altered. 

Between him and Bivouac this happy his trial at Rich- 
kick made a difference of two stone, °^**"^* 
and when he had. a rough Cup course gallop on 
Richmond race-ground, ten days before York, he 
cantered away from Volatile with 2 st.. Vanquisher 
with 181bs., and Bivouac with 141bs. less. The 
thing was done so openly, and so easily, that, 
although the public saw it, they had not the least 
idea what it meant. The Newcastle mode of cutting 
down the field did not answer at Doncaster, and the 
orders were given under the impression that it would 
be a false-run race, to suit The Wizard, who would be 
trying to stop the pace, if possible. It has, indeed, 
been singular ill-luck for " the spots," that after 
being disappointed of Rogers for Ivan, and just 
losing by a head — that neither Vedette nor Fan- 
dango should have been in the St. Leger, and that 
Sabreur should have cut himself down. 

Nunnykirk was ^' a fair horse — no- ^^ ^.^^^ 
thing more,^^ with slack loins, a sweet 
head, and still sweeter action. His brother New- 
minster was not so pretty, but better ribbed up. He 
was tried with the Exotic filly in the spring, and John 
Scott thought him a great horse, but he ran dead 
amiss for the Derby, and equally so at York, and even 
on the St. Leger clay, he was not really himself. In 
fact, he was never exactly able to show what he couid 
do. He went near the ground, with great leverage from 
behind, and his style of creeping along without any 
bustle was quite beautiful to see. We shall not 
easily forget watching him as he stole down from 
the distance in his canter, little as we expected that he 
could bring Aphrodite to grief. He was a bad walker, 
quite, in fact, one of the ^^kick up a sixpence school ;" 
and Sir Tatton thought his slow paces so bad, that 
he declined the offer of him at twelve hundred. He 



218 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

won no more after the St. Leger, and as a sire he 
has knocked Teddington quite into the shade. To 
our minds, Oldminster, who spent his yearling life 
in the Jervaux Abbey paddocks with Dictator 
and Stanton, is the most perfect model that he ever 
begot. 
„ _. Sir Joseph saw Teddinsrton at three 

Teddington. i i j j r 11 4. i 

years old, and was wonderiully struck 
with his action, and bought him with the mare from 
a blacksmith, at Stamford, for £260, and a thousand 
contingency. He was a trifle clubby in one foot, 
and had to wear a long shoe, but he very early 
wound himself into the afi'ections of Sir Joseph^s 
old groom, by the style in which he walked away 
from all the others, when they were in the breaking 
bridle, a test which is in nineteen cases out of twenty 
almost the only sound one, by which a yearhng'^s 
horoscope can be cast. 

Sir Joseph made no bad bargain 
IS year ng '^^™- ^|jgj^ ]^g took Femhill, Spougc, and 

everything else, at Fyfield, down to furniture and 
stable-fittings, from Mr. Parr, for £3,000. The 
place, with its church tower and straw-thatched 
buildings to the left, looks just like the snug home 
of a well-to-do rector, with a strong tendency to 
stock and white crops. There was only room for eight 
horses there ; but the bricklayers were soon set to 
work, and now the accommodation is multiplied 
eight-fold. Fourteen yearlings came up from the 
Leybourne Grange Paddocks in the autumn of the 
next year, and of these a Venison colt, from Haitoe, 
was the only one which did not win, or show some 
running form. Teddington, The Ban, Aphrodite^ 
and Merry Peal were the most noticeable among 
them, and The Confessor did not join company 
for a month or two later. Teddingon^s near 
fore foot was still rather of the donkey order, and 
although, by constant paring and attention, it was 



TURF CRACKS. 219 

got nearly right, there is a remarkable difference in 
the size of his plates, which remain as trophies on 
Alick Taylor's sideboard. As a yearling, he was 
always getting his head np, and running away with 
the boy, and hence his trainer was obliged to mount 
him for the first three weeks himself, at exercise, to 
get him a little into order. He had a rough gallop 
with the two-year-old Slang in November: but he did 
not seem up to his business, and was beaten a long 
way. In March they were tried again at 211bs., and 
Teddington won so easily, that they were put toge- 
ther at evens, and with nearly the same result. 

No jockeys rode trials at Fyfield in 
Sir Joseph^s day, and five boys never oidtr7a°s^with 
had a grander spin than when Tedding- ^p^^^o^^ite, &c. 
ton, Aphrodite, Storyteller, Confessor, and The Ban 
finished in that order, with little more than a 
length between the lot. Teddington had half a 
length the best of it ; but the very natural impres- 
sion followed that all five were moderate. General 
Peel then lent his four-year-old lone, which had 
cleaned out his two-year-olds at lOlbs. ; but at 71bs._, 
Teddington finished a length in front of her ; and 
when he tried her at evens, and three-quarters of a- 
mile, over again, he had just a head the best of it. 
He was short, and on high legs, the only form in 
which a short horse generally proves a clipper ; but 
unlike most short horses, he never began well. On 
the whole, his two-year old season, what with his 
tumble and his very close wins, was not a very pros- 
perous one. After Goodwood he was thrown up in 
a box till October, and with Bacchanalian to lead 
him, went on till laefore his Newmarket race, when 
he was tried to be better than Vatican at 2 libs. 
„. , Aphrodite, who was not remarkable 

His Derby trial. ^ , ' i • ^i 

as a staver, was never measured witn 
him after two years old, and in the great Derby trial 
on Middle Down, he gave 6 lbs. to Vatican, ran 



220 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

with Storyteller at evens, and gave Ban 211bs., and 
Gladiole 2st. Gladiole forced the running at her 
best pace, but Vatican and Teddington (who was 
pulling over him) caught her half-a-mile from home, 
and the chesnut won so easily, that Taylor might 
well tell Fobert, when they met at Epsom, that now 
he knew through Vatican that he had a second 
Dutchman at last. 

Derby anxieties. ^^ ^^Ct, Sir JoSCph thoUght the trial 

too good. A week before the Derby 
'^the quicksilver fell,^^ as the front of the shin of his off 
fore leg festered and filled all round. Stopping him^ 
perhaps, did him good in every way, and the leg 
came all right ; but he rather fretted with the change 
of stable at Epsom, and would do nothing more than 
pick the split peas out of a little corn, on the Derby 
morning. Still his heart was all right, and as Job 
said, ^' I had only to spur him once to get him out 
near the turn.'' He came with such vengeance, that 
he almost ran over Ariosto. *^ Where are you going 
to ?'' said Nat. 'Beg your pardon, I can't hold my 
horse," replied Job ; and he just heard Nat's ready 
rejoinder above the din of the thirty-two, " I ivish I 
couldn't hold mine." The chesnut was no great 
match horse ; being in a cluster seemed to give him 
double confidence ; and up a hill he was especially 
suited, as he was all hind action. Giving Little 
Harry 2st. 51bs., and beating him for the Warwick 
Cup, was a very great thing, and even after his last 
Cup at Ascot, when he gave 91bs. to a horse like 
Stockwell, who seemed fit to carry him, he was 
neither sick nor sorry. One of his back sinews 
began to give way that summer, and that he had 
not left his heart at Ascot was pretty well proved by 
the stvle in which he lived under 9st. 7ib. almost 
into the bottom in the Cesarewitch, for which he 
was only half-prepared. At the stud, the Vulture- 
part of his pedigree cut two ways, and although the 



TURF CRACKS. 221 

action and speed have been good, the courage has 
been lacking as it was in his dam, and no cross, 
however stout, could correct this tendency. 

Harry Stebbings never considered that 
Kingston was so fit as when he met Ted- 
dington for the Doncaster Cup. He had just been 
tried, to give Hungerford a year and 71bs., and yet 
^^ the canoe^^ carried 121bs. more in that race, and 
was only beaten a neck. The party were also deeply 
disappointed when he was beaten at Ascot by Grape- 
shot ; but sadly as the hill told against his bad hind 
action, Basham felt sure that he was beaten on his 
merits, and revenged himself when he was taken 
off at Newcastle by backing Grapeshot to win 
him £800, and leading him back to scale. From 
II to If miles was about his mark, provided he 
had something to come away, and as he grew 
older he began worse in short races. Both Defiance 
and Lascelles were before him in a great finish for 
the Craven Stakes at Epsom, but he just defeated 
himself by trying to make a pace, and by an alteration 
of tactics with Rataplan in the Cup, he pulled off one 
of his best, if not his best victorv. 

Both fetlocks touched the ground j^gath of King- 
after his Whip break down, and one of ^^°"- 
his legs filled as well. Sir Tatton liked the blood, 
and would have given 2,500 for him, but Mr. Blenk- 
iron, who never will be denied, got him for 3,000. 
He died at Eltham, just as he was commencmg his 
seventh season, within a fortnight of Omoo, whose 
post mortem showed that she was in foal with twins 
by him, one of which had begun to putrefy, and so 
caused her death. For his first two seasons, he got 
twice as many fillies as colts ; but for the last three 
the numbers were balanced, and he seemed to get 
them with more length. An oak tree shades him, 
and a harvest has waved over the spot where that 
beautiful Knight of the Silver-hair lies buried. 



22 SCOTT AND SEBEIGHT. 

The cawston ^^^ CawstoH stud owes its Celebrity 
stud. to the advice which John Nutting the 
Eaton stud-groom gave Hemming, to buy Phryne at 
the sale in ^45. He was sent to buy another, but 
she did'nt suit, and accordingly his lordship^ s 70 gs. 
was invested in the daughter of Touchstone and 
Decoy, which had just come out of training. Mr. 
Oldaker bid for her, and offered Hemming 10 gs. 
for his bargain, and ^^ pay all your expenses as 
well •/' but her purchaser was inexorable. It seems 
that he had met Bill Scott in the interim, and been 
solemnly assured on that almost infallible authority, 
that he had got ^' sl mare fit to breed you a winner 
of the three events if she^s only used right.^^ She 
broke to Pantaloon that spring ; but Elthiron was 
the result of second thoughts during the month that 
she was left. Pantaloon was also hired for the next 
season at Cawston ; and Lord John might well say 
to Hemming, as the white-reach tribe grew up 
round them, ^' That^s the best day^s work, Hemming, 
you ever did in your life, when you hired Pantaloon 
and bought Phryne.^^ 

Pantaloon and Pautaloou was hired the next season 
Phryne. for 150 gs., and then 200 gs. : and he 
never went back. The cross between this grand- 
looking chesnut and Phryne hit five years in succes- 
sion. He had a curious hatred to a boy or a dog, 
and a peculiar partiality to"" a grey mare. Irish 
Birdcatcher had somewhat similar notions ; but he 
extended his antipathies to pigs and hens, and 
turned quite savage if they crossed his path. 
Phryne had spasms when she was in foal, and 
seemed to get no permanent relief from them ex- 
cept she had a goat to go with her, which had tired 
of his first love in the shape of his lordship's old 
charger Helen. 

Thewindhound ^hc was always the pet mare, and 
rout. Qjj_ that eventful afternoon when Cathe- 



TURF CRACKS. 223 

rine Hayes won tlie Oaks, and Windhound broke 
loose aaiong the fifteen mares, to " get hold of 
Phryne'' was Mrs. Hemming's first impulse. There 
never was such a rout, and Cannobie, who was a foal 
at the time, jumped a hedge and high rails on the 
ofi^ side, and back through the gate to his little 
dam, Lady Lurewell. To judge from Avisittocaw- 
thc hoof havoc in Dunkley's Meadow, ^^*^'^* 

there had been a second Windhound rout among 
the mares on the afternoon of our visit, and it turned 
out that the North Warwickshire had brought a fox 
across it from Frankton Wood. The troupe were 
quietly grazing in the next paddock, after the morn- 
ing's alarm. Old Helen had long been laid with 
Pantaloon and Rasselas under the holly ; but the 
flesh-coloured nose of the old Camel mare, the 
crooked white reach of Miserrima, which knew no 
crooked way up the Ascot hill, and Pearlin Jean, 
with that white fore foot in rest, were all good to 
descry. But, alas ! the piebald pony, which roamed 
amongst them, knew its good master's voice and step 
no more ; the new cricket ground on which he had 
hoped that year to see D unchurch beat Kugby, 
was left half-sodded, and the roses and honey- 
suckles, which were clinging to the clay-walls of 
the '^ House that Jack budt, '' told sadly that 
another summer was fulfilhng its course, but not for 
him. 

All knew and loved Lord John, and The late Lord 
as a universal sportsman he was un- Johnscott. 
surpassed. Punt shooting, the leash, otter hunting, 
with his red-and-white Gyp (which killed a thirteen- 
pounder by herself, and then managed another, 
which stuck to its tail), a bit of racing, or a little 
patronage to " the lads of the Fancy" — whom he 
brought up in great force under General "Dick Cain,^' 
to look after " The Brums'^ on a polling-day— were 
quite in his line. His unfortunate lameness (which 



224 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

arose from "an injury to his ankle at a stone wall^ 
out hunting) debarred him from joining, but he felt 
great interest in cricket ; and one summer he took 
two Rugby men, at his own expense, right away to 
Scotland, to play in a match. In fact, he was 
always doing something, either out of doors or on 
paper, and he not only wrote an anonymous pam- 
phlet on the currency, purely as he said " to bother 
my old friend Spooner,^^ but he proved himself a 
hard hitter, when he had an occasional turn at 
polemics. There never was a more liberal landlord ; 
but he quite enjoyed the joke when one of his 
tenants, who paid twenty-five shillings a-year for a 
cottage, and got two substantial dinners at the audit 
as well, told him that he really ought to have his 
rent lowered. His farms were remarkably low 
rented ; and four or five years before his death, 
when he considered that the farmers were not em- 
ploying enough labour, he spoke his mind in such 
a Downright Shippen way at a Benefit Society din- 
ner at D unchurch, that the poor fellows had to hang 
about the cottage doors no more with their hands in 
their pockets. At the time of the railway mania, he 
kept, like Mr. Assheton Smith, a regular look-out 
for the ^' theodolite scamps. ^^ They did The Squire 
of Tedworth, and managed matters comfortably 
enough, to his intense rage, on a very wet Sunday, 
when he was at church ; but Lord John was too sharp 
for them, and when he and his watchers caught 
them at work for the Leamington line, they pitched 
into them, tore up their books, and sent them flying. 
He was, however, the last man to bear malice, and 
he got one of those he put to rout that day a most 
capital place. 

His old charger Helen was by 

Octavian out of Lady of the Lake, and 

the first he ever had in his life. Once he rode her 

for a bet up the stone steps of the Bank of Dublin^ 



I: 



TURF CRACKS. 225 

when he was quartered there^ to get a cheque cashed, 
and down again with value received. Her dislike to 
a jockey was extreme, and like Pickpocket, she in- 
sisted upon his getting up with a great coat on. 
Queen of the Gipsies, by Camel, was the best of her 
sixteen foals, and she went as a yearling for 90 gs.^ 
and turned out to be the speediest, bar Semiseria, of 
her year. Among his stud Lord John w^as very fond of 
Miserrima, " a good, fair mare,^^ and the only one 
except Cannobie that was kept, when Mr. Merry 
purchased the lot, with Phryne, Catherine HayeSj 
Lady Lurewell, Blanche of Middlebie, Folkestone^ 
Trovatore, &c. in it, for five thousand. 

Independently of his blood. Lord John , , , . 

, T / -n i-TTTii- Hobble Noble, 

had always specially noticed Hobbie 
Noble from a yearling, in consequence of his hermit 
habits. No one ever caught him in company; but he 
w^ouldcome to a whistle just like a dog, and his lord- 
ship would often take his friends out, after dinner, and 
call him up to the garden wicket to be looked at. The 
habit seemed to foreshadow " for the proud young 
porter" that a =€6,500 cheque was in store for him, and 
that Her Majesty would send for him a second time 
to the front of her stand at Ascot. He was tried 
with Miserrima, who had just been second for the 
Oaks, at IGlbs. for the year, and John Day and John 
Scott both thought it must be too good to be correct. 
However, the former was pretty well convinced, the 
next year, after he had tried him with Little Harry 
before the Cambridgeshire, that he was a very great 
horse. Windhoundwas never much, although there 
is little doubt that he is Thormanby^s sire : and The 
Keiver, who got very awkward in his temper, was a 
good stone below Catherine Hayes, when they were 
two-year-olds together. 

The lene;thy Cannobie, who was 

1 \- XT • f Cannobie. 

leit as a legacy to Hemming, was ot a 
cleverer stamp than many of the Melbournes, and 

Q 



226 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

could stav and race as well. He was cousrhing at 
the Derby when he ran third ; but the public had 
not seen the best of him_, and but for the severe 
strain which he gave his leg^ by jumping the road 
at Newcastle^ when he was following Heir of Lynne, 
two days before the Northumberland Plate, Mat 
Dawson quite believed that he would have ripened into 
a very superior Cup horse. Blanche of Middlebie 
seemed to be as lengthy for a foal as Cannobie was 
for a horse, and when we strolled to Cawston on 
our first visit with " Dick Over/^ and found her at 
Phryne^s side, we thought that she and the firing of a 
chesnut yearling^s hocks by the late Mr. Lucases hand, 
were two of the finest pieces of workmanship we had 
ever seen in one day. She did not belie her promise 
in her two-year-old season, and swept :€2,900 off 
the board. On the Friday before the St. Leger, 
she was tried on Weathercock Hill, at equal 
weights, with Sunbeam. Saunterer gave them each 
261bs., and came through from end to end, and 
Blanche, v/ho was slightly carried out at the bend, 
was just half a length behind him, and rather more 
in front of poor Luke Snowdon and his first St. 
Leger winner. The black, whose performance un- 
der 8st. 121bs. in the Cambridgeshire, and his 
reaching his horses like a flash at Chester, stamp 
him as one of the greatest wonders of the century, 
never lost his speed to the last; but his near fore 
leg gave way in the Doncaster Cup. He broke 
down hopelessly at Ascot the next year, and twenty- 
five hundred was his price to the Austrians. 
Pocahontas Beyoud bciug the sire of Miss Twick- 

enham (the dam of Teddington) Rock- 
ingham did no good at the Stockwell paddocks ; but 
The Baron, who came about the same time as So- 
rella, made a double hit m his second season, with 
Chief Baron Nicholson^s dam, and Mr. Theobaid^s 
own mare Pocahontas. The latter had been to Muley 



TURF CRACKS. 227 

Molocli for the three preceding seasons^ and was 
bought as a four- year- old for <^500, after she was 
beaten for the Cup at Goodwood. She ran G.Ye 
times afterwards without success, and her last per- 
formance was for a Plate^ at Chatham,, where she 
finished second out of nine. She was then five months 
gone in foal with Cambaules, by Camel, but this 
grand cross was lost to the world, as he took the 
influenza, and became a roarer quite early. 

Stockwell, her fifth, was a very fine Early history of 
colt; but every one assured Mr. Theobald stockweii. 
that he was too big. John Lowry was a most consis- 
tent admirer of him, and as he was determined that 
he should have " an honest race, ^' he begged 
his master, when he went to Brighton Races, to try 
and see Lord Exeter, and received as his answer, 
^^ Put it down in my book, my memory fails me." 
In due time his lordship arrived, and the white- 
faced chesnut was proudly displayed by John in the 
'^' burial paddock." His lordship thought him too big, 
but he went into committee with the old man, and 
after an hour of most anxious suspense, the latter 
strolled out to tell John, that he was to get his 
pet weaned as soon as he could, and that he was 
to go to Burleigh. The price was ^180, and a c€500 
contingency if he won the Derby. This information 
was clenched with a present of a ten-pound note, 
and the promise of being put on at £50 to at 
Epsom. The colt started in a month^s time, by the 
earliest train in the morning, and by way of having 
something to '' help him," through London, John 
hired a cab, and led him close behind it. Lord 
Exeter just made the purchase in time, as the old 
man died a month after the colt had left; and his stud, 
with the exception of Pocahontas and Sorella, was 
sold bv Mr. Tattersall. 

Pocahontas foaled Kataplan the t>- *t- <rT> i 

-^ ,f -^^ ^ Birth of Kataplan, 

morning that Mr. William Theobald 

Q 2 



228 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

died, and Rataplan became the property of Mr. 
Thellusson, who gave him to his father. Lowry^s- 
earliest recollections of Kataplan were symptomatic 
of the after-vigour of the chesnut. " He got up di- 
rectly,^' says his historian, with admirable brevity, 
" bleio his 7iose, and sucked his mother.'^ Luck at- 
tended the mare, and when she and Sorella went to 
Willesden Paddocks, and the choice lay between 
Don John and Harkaway,* the trustees chose the 
latter for the future Prunella, and King Tom was 
the result. Thus from the nicks of three succes- 
sive seasons, there came the respective sires of St. 
Alban^s, Kettledrum, and Old Calabar. Stockwell 
made little out during his first season, as, with all 
his fine speed, he never could be made fit enough to 
get home. Still those who were near the judge^s chair 
will have it that Mr. Clark over-looked him in the 
Prendergast Stakes, when he gave the race to Maid- 
stone. 

Rataplan's racing Rataplan always " went proppy^' on his 
and training Jong pastcms, and at the best of times 
was only a middling beginner. " Let 
him alone till he gets into his actio7i/' were the orders 
which his jockeysreceiyed,andhis ^^customof an after- 
noon^^ was to creepuptohis horses at the half-distance, 
and make one effort. His shoulders, and not his 
heait, forbade a long struggle. When Sim rode him 
strictly to Mr. Parr^s orders at Edinburgh, he thought 
at one time that he should never catch his horses ; 
but, perhaps,his most wonderful race waswhen he won 
the Manchester Cup at 9st. 31bs. Like Stockwell,. 
his back power was almost miraculous, and if he 
threw up his heels no boy alive could sit him ; but 
when he did get rid of them, he would walk straight 
off home to Ilsley. It was but seldom that he 
took these vivacious fits, and seeing that he generally 

* We find that we were in erroi' when we stated at page 83 that 
this horse was sold at Doncaster. 



TURF CRACKS. 229 

contrived to stumble about twelve times between 
his box and the Downs, it was never safe to take 
liim without knee caps. There never was a lazier 
one foaled, bar Lanercost and Springy Jack, as he 
would lie full length while they plaited his mane, 
and go to sleep after feeding, with unerring regu- 
larity. 

King Tom, or " Tom,^^ as he was ge- 
neraliv stvled in the stable, was first ^"^ *^™' 
trained by Wyatt, ai; Myrtle Green, near Findon. 
During the Doncaster meeting of ^53, when he had 
been beaten at Goodwood^ and had won at Brighton, 
Baron Rothschild finally agreed, after some highly 
involved negotiations, to give Mr. Thellusson 
j82,000 for him. William King brought him up to 
London, and so on to Gorhambury, where he 
gave the two-year-old Twinkle a stone with all 
ease in his trial, and on the next Wednesday 
won the Triennial at Newmarket. He was a 
good-tempered, light-fleshed horse, and with fine 
speed, and ready for any distance that was set him. 
Before the Derby, he was tried at 8st. 91bs. with 
Orestes 9st. lib., Hungerford 8st 21bs., and Middle- 
sex 7st. 21bs. The last-named just beat him by 
half a neck, and the others were nowhere. On the 
Monday week before the Derby, he fell lame in the 
off hock, or at all events somewhere in the off- 
quarter, and as he did not do more than take a cou- 
ple of canters between then and the race, it was 
no slight performance for him to separate Andover 
and Hermit. 

To carry a high weight for three- 
quarters-of-a-mile was Longbow's line, °"^ °^' 
as he showed so ably in the Goodwood Steward^s 
Cup, but his long distance running, especially when 
he met Stockwell in the most muggy of days for the 
Great Yorkshire, was most wonderful. Foreigners 
are in the habit of giving wet hay as a roaring anti- 



230 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

dote^, and before Larry McHale ran his matches^ 
John Scott gave him a ball of lard, with some shot 
in it, to try and keep down the lights; but with 
Longbow he used nothing but limed water. 

His dam, the sixteen-hand Catton- 
headed Miss Bowe, is still at the 
Knowsley Paddocks, in her thirtieth year, and as 
fresh and as shapely as many a mare of half her age. 
She has had no foal since Tom Bowline, and his 
lordship has ceased to send her to the horse since she 
missed to Paletot. Never did mare deserve better 
of an owner, or seem more likely to put in for forty, 

Daniel O^Rourke, whose departure 

Daniel O'Kourke. ,1 t it i i i • tt\ r> 

was thus solemnly heralded m a Turf 
paper, " Daniel slept in London last night, previous 
to his departure for Austria,' at 800 gs., was tried be- 
fore the Derby, to give Champion 7lbs., and beat 
Backbiter at evens. Songstress gave him a stone, 
and a beating after the Oaks ; and he first had 
his temper spoilt vvhen going in the van to 
Ascot. 

" The West^-' finished him, as he was always on his 
heels up the gallop, and made him turn coward „- 
At last he would kick and fly, and could hardly be 
got on to the wolds ; but Snarry^s soothing manners 
put him all right, when the scene was changed to 
Sledmere. During his seven seasons there. Sir 
Tatton has bred upwards of 17D foals by him, and 
fully two-thirds of them chesnuts. He was not 
very lucky in getting colts from the Pyrrhus mares, 
and although he suited with the Hampton blood, his 
foals from the Sleight of Hand mares had more 
power. 

Little Harry was just the reverse of 

arry. ]yjj[-,ricepie, vcry good when the ground 

was not deep, and John Day liked him so much 

after the Bedford Stakes, that he got on at fifteens 

and twenties to one to win an independency. If 



TURF CRACKS. 231 

Danebury had a sad disappointment,, Woodyeates 
had one of its grandest Ciiester triumphs that year, 
with little Joe Miller, who could get 
equally well through wet or dry. He 
was never fifteen hands, very sweet-headed like his 
sire Venison, but shorter and most beautifully 
turned. Mr. Sadler bred him, and Mr. Farrance 
bought him for 200 gs. at Newmarket. In the 
Metropolitan Stakes he got knocked over by Miss 
Anne ; but in the Chester Cup he got away in front 
from end to end ; and Stilton, after his bad start, 
could never reach him. Grosvenor, in the same 
stable, was all the go for the Cup that year, and 
Davis thought so little of Joe in consequence, that 
Mr. Parker " got him'' for £12,000, at 24 to 1 after 
the Metropolitan, and again for £6,000 over the 
Ascot Cup, at half those odds. Like most light- 
bodied and light-fleshed horses Joe stayed v/ell, but 
he was cut for temper, and shot very early in the 
day, and honoured with burial in the centre of the 
Woodyeates yard. 

The little wall-eyed Umbriel lured ^ |_ • , 
a few, including one of the cleverest 
men we have, into the belief that he was better than 
'' The West/' Sam Wheatley, who had ^, , , , ,. 

.. ^ - ."^ ' f. , West Australian. 

trained Haphazard and Agonistes tor the 
then Earl of Darlington, and been stud-groom at 
Cheveley as well, gazed at the son of Melbourne and 
Mowerina with intense delight, and declared that he 
had never put his hand on a finer yearling. He, 
moreover, backed his opinion by getting on first of 
any one, and never hedging a penny. 
Isaac Walker's annual iubilee com- 

. 1 , T T . 1 • 1 1 J 1 Isaac Walker's 

prises the ten days during winch he takes annual appear- 
the yearlings up to Whitewall, where he JJ^^f.^' ^^^^'^- 
stays Saturday and Sunday, after placing 
them at school, and then proceeds to Doncaster as 
a finish. For five-and-twenty years it has been his 



232 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

habit to deposit Lis charges on the Friday before the 
St. Leger. In old dsLjs, Tom Carter would show 
up on that evening, and so would Ben Eddison, 
full of dry observations on society, and ready, when 
his county recollections of the Caunt and Bendigo 
tournament were evoked, to show^ with appropriate 
gesture, how " Bendy felled him like a to-ad.'' Bill 
Scotc, who was never at the paddocks in his life, al- 
ways addressed Isaac on these occasions, as " Streat- 
lam/' and John would only recognize him officially 
as " Queen Mab.^' Frank was always full of his 
husky chaff, confiding to Isaac what Mr Scott 
had said about him, and vice versa; and so those 
merry days passed on. 
^ , , ^ , . The splendid ffrunt of Frank when he 

Frank's first in- ^ • ^ n nni -ttt ^ ^^ ^ i 

troduction to iirst caught Sight 01 The West, delighted 
John Scott and Isaac above all things. 
" What's that V he said. " That;' quoth John 
Scott, quite gravely, ^^ Oh ! thafs only a rough thing by 
Freedom ; we'd better pass him ;" but ^^ ivhat a pretty 
pair you are,'' replied Frank, as he w^ent up to in- 
troduce himself to his love at first sight. The trial 
with this colt and Longbow at 211bs. for the year, 
was run three-quarters of a mile in a very deep ground, 
and the young^un won it, hands down. There were 
never any proved attempts to get at him, although 
the betting before Doncaster betokened that the 
" black cloud^^ was going to descend, and the great 
difficulties in the way of training him were his heavy 
flesh, and his tendency to a sort of ofF-and-on lame- 
ness, first in his feet and then in his ankle. 
The West's Don- Frank and Isaac could never quite 

. caster Jubilee, settle how far thc Lcgcr was to be won ; 
and John Scott delicately said, that as Mr. Bowes 
would not be at Doncaster, of course Isaac must 
give the orders. Frank w^ouldhave it, that it would 
do '•^ if I ivin by the length of my arm;'' but Isaac 
did^nt see it at all. " None of your dodging," said 



TURF CRACKS. 233 

he; " I donH like these heads and half necks ; you make 
me shake in my shoes ; let him out at the Red House, 
and see how far he can win.'' Nothing seemed so 
absurd to Frank as the popular idea of his horse not 
staying ; " Stay, indeed P' he was wont to say in his 
fervour, " he'll stay a thundering deal too long for 
any of them ; the faster they'll go, the sooner it ivill be 
over-, they'll wonder ivhat's coming when I lay hold 
of them at ^ White Willie.' " It was of course grati- 
fying to him to hear from Isaac that he had ridden 
the horse to his mind; but he rejoined, " / ivas 
thinking of you all the ivay from the distance ; the 
beggars stood stock still, or I'd have put you in a 
nice sweat." Isaac accompanied the horse home to 
the Sahitation, and when John Scott and Hayhoe got 
there, they both saw that something was up. One 
might well say of the horse, that " he looks well ;" 
and the other that he was " as bold as a hero;" for 
Isaac, in the exuberance of his enthusiasm, at having 
at last reared a winner of the double event, had 
poured a bottle of Champagne into the pail. 

Catherine Hayes, who shares with 
Ellerdale the honour of being the best ^^'^'"''^ *^^^* 
daughter of Lanercost, has always been a great fa- 
vourite with Mat Dawson. She required drawing 
light, and is a particularly sweet-tempered, and 
wide-hipped mare, with her hocks close together. 
No action could be more easy and sweeping, and 
we have always maintained that to our eye nothing 
ever crept so beautifully up the Epsom hill. Her 
Nursery Stakes win at Goodwood, when looked at 
by the subsequent performances of the horses be- 
hind her, was a remarkable performance, as she won 
easily under the top weight, 8st. 7lbs., and gave 
Kataplan 141bs., Ethelbert and Pantomime ISlbs., 
and Dagobert 21bs. Mat Dawson never tried a two- 
year-old so highly, and as he knew her to be just as 
good at even weights as the four-year-old Kilmeny, 



234 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

who had won The Steward^s Cup that week at 6st. 
ISlbs., he had no Goodwood fears. After the Oaks, 
she caught cold across the loins, and had a heavy 
fringe of leeches applied on each side of her spine. 
Her action went sadly ; but still she made a game 
wind-up of it, by giving May fair half~a- stone and 
" a long head" beating for the Coronation Stakes. 
Goorkah's his- Goorkah claims a mention, but more for 
^°^^' the peculiar manner of his dam^s subse- 
quent purchase. She belonged, with a mare called 
Eairy Queen by Brutandorf, to a farmer and bone- 
setter in Lanarkshire. Once on a time, he dreamt 
that he sold these two mares, and that Mr. Sharpe, 
of Hoddom Castle, purchased them, and he wrote 
off forthwith to apprise that gentleman of his dream, 
and beg him to hasten its fulfilment. Mr. Sharpe 
did not exactly see it in that enthusiastic light, and 
as Fairy Queen was blind, he declined her at once. 
With regard to Fair Jane, he said that he liked her 
blood ; but that as she had been drawing coals from 
the station, and had been barren, he was only open to 
a swap for her with his filly Seclusion by St. Martin, a 
greyhound puppy (afterwards Cora Lynn), a couple of 
Dorkings, and a piece of plaid for trowsers. And so 
this novel bargain was arranged. She was in foal to 
Turnus, and as Goorkah showed some form, she was 
sent to Annandale again. At Kelso, Mr. Barber 
proposed to piu'chase her, and offered three hundred, 
but Mr. Sharpe would hear of nothing under five; 
and when another application came, he declared his 
ultimatum, by letter to each, and said that the first 
who gave that sum should have her. Both applica- 
tions, as it turned out, were from the same quarter, 
and by the time the letter arrived, enclosing the five 
^100 notes, Hamlet was dropped. 

Mr. Sharpe sold Butterfly and her 
Butterfly. ^^^ ^^^, ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Brothers Oatcs, and 

Mr. Eastwood took such a fancy to the former, when 



TURF CRACKS. 235 

he first saw her as a yearling, that he purchased her 
at once, and sold half to Culshaw, who stipulated 
most rigidly that she should be called after his '^ herd 
matron^'' — that rare prize mould in which both 
Master and Royal Butterfly were cast and quickened. 
The luck he predicted from this process followed in 
due course. In her first trial with Buttercup, 
she was beaten_, and although she won five times, 
she had some mischances as a two-year-old, getting 
knocked about at Beverley, and very badly off with 
Thormanby at York. Before she ran for her en- 
gagements at three years old, she had a rough gal- 
lop with Sparrow Hawk and Dilkoosh, and an Oaks 
win, and rare seconds both for the Ascot Cup and 
Northumberland Plate confirmed the promise which 
she then showed. 

John Scott firmly believes that^ ac- 
cording to his trial, Boiardo would have 
won the St. Leger in a canter. He was a rank 
roarer, and not a very taking horse in any way ; but 
he now ranks high in Australia. Holmes, on Dervish, 
made all the running in the trial, and Sim lay last 
with Boiardo, who lost a shoe, and beat Acrobat very 
cleverly at the finish. Still Sim did. not trust his 
leg, but chose Acrobat on the Leger day ; and the 
severe pace which Dervish made from the start found 
out the crack^s weak point. 

Their victor Knight of St. George Knight of st. 
grew into more after, and left a most George 
beautiful, enlarged likeness of himself in Knight of 
St. Patrick ; but when he won the St. Leger he was 
only just fifteen hands. There never *^vas a more 
difficult horse to ride. He took a long time to make 
up his mind whether he would try or not, and then 
nothing but easing and coaxing, which Basham did 
to perfection, would make him put his good resolu- 
tions in force. Spurs and whip were quite out of the 
question. He always hung to the left, and nothing 



236 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

but a very severe pricker and long cheek to the left 
side of the bit, could keep him straight at all. As 
an Irish two-year-old he bolted once, lost twice, and 
won once, and his education was still in a sad 
state when he came to Hambleton Avith Game- 
keeper. He was ridden all the winter by Basham 
in a yearling^s breaking tackle, and when he found 
that he could^nt bolt, going up the gallop, he went 
open-mouthed among the yearlings. His Derby trial 
was at lOlbs. with the five-year-old Kingston, and at 
evens with Eulogist, on the Saturday before Chester, 
and he won it cleverly. Kingston was, perhaps, 
not what he had been, although he fought out the 
Ascot Cup so well with " The West^^ that summer; 
but still the trial looked uncommonly hopeful. " The 
Knight,^^ hov/ever, contracted a ^^ gouty leg'^ before 
Epsom; his fore and hind feet caught, following 
Kingston up the gallop, and he cut his boot clean 
off", and into the flesh as well. Kingston was away 
on Her Majesty^s service, the week of his Doncaster 
trial, and not liking to try " The Knight" farther, 
they made him give the speedy Corin an enormous 
amount of weight over a mile, and brought it off. 

There were more nuorerets than Volti- 

V irago. . . ^ 

geur at the Hart Diggings, as Virago was 
foaled there the year after his double event. She 
was advertised for sale as a yearling, at Doncaster, 
when old John Day slipped down, and tried to buy her 
privately, but Mr. Stephenson insisted on her going 
to the hammer along with Epinician. John Scott 
liked her, but left off at 340 and the next ten 
settled the* job for Mr. Padwick. She was tried 
as a two-year-old in October, at 71bs., with 
Little Harry, and William Day, who rode in the 
trial, was so pleased with her, that he increased the 
two thousand offer, which he made on the ground, 
to three when they got into the house ; but Mr. 
Padwick was as firm as Gibraltar. After the Doncaster 



TURF CRACKS. 237 

meeting of '54 slie turned roarer ; still old John could 
not bring himself to believe that she was so changed, 
and when the little, jumped-up St. Hubert beat her 
at something under weight for age, he thought him 
a wonder, and never blanched when '^ my boy Wil- 
liam" assured him that at 181bs. Lord of the Isles 
could quit Nabob when he liked in a mile. 
This combination of Pantaloon and 

m ij I'lii'ii 11 Lord of the Isles » 

TouchstonCj which had nicked so well 
reverse ways in the Phryne stock, was a thin, deep, 
flat-sided horse, who did not require very much 
work. His winding up for the Two Thousand, for 
which no horse ever came to the post more 
thoroughly fit, must have told on him, although he 
repeated his performance with Nabob on 41bs. worse 
terms over the Derby distance afterwards. This was 
a great year for the threes, with Wild Dayrell, Ri- 
fleman, and Fandango also in it, and if the big and 
short De Clare's trial — to give Paletot 271bs. over 
Leatherhead Downs, and manage old Bracken at 
evens — was correct, he would have been very busy at 
the finish. However, his ankle went in the eftbrt,^ 
and he was seen in public no more till the Middles- 
boro' Show. 

With the exception of Lady Flora, ^iM uayreii's 
Mr. Popham had never had a thorough- history. 

bred mare, until he bought Ellen Middleton. 
Rickaby, his stud-groom, savr her advertised in 
The Life, and thought her Bay Middleton and 
Myrrha blood so good, that he was authorized to 
write to Bobby Hill for the price, and bought her 
nnseen for fifty pounds, in the June of '5L As there 
was no verv suitable horse near Littlecote, he was 
despatched the next spring on a little voyage of dis- 
covery among the stud farms. Harkaway, Bat- 
catcher, and The Libel were not to his fancy ; Enfield 
could only offer Bed Deer and the Earl of Bichmond ; 
and at last he came upon quite a seam of wealth 



238 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

at Barrow^s of "Newmarket^ in Birdcatclier, Don 
Jolin, John o'Gaunt^ and Ion, and clenclied matters 
with the latter, which was the last one brought out. 
Both the mares were sent to him, and after a month 
they were ordered home. Ellen Middleton had not 
been at Littlecote two hours before she turned to 
him, and was sent back that niglit. 

The arrival of the first blood-colt produced the sen- 
sation which those little matters will produce in quiet 
country homes, and they sat up with Ellen for at 
least a fortnight before the event. 

Birth of Wild When a colt appeared between 12 and 
Dayreii. ^ a.m., the butlcr was rung up and rushed 
on to the scene with his nightcap on his head, and a 
bottle of wine in his hand ; and as it was necessary to 
remove the little stranger into a warmer box, he got a 
wheel-barrow, and insisted upon " ivheeli7ig the ivinner 
of the Derby once in my life.^^ There was nothing in 
that speech; but when Rickaby got home to his 
cottage about five on that April morning, he assured 
his wife there must be something remarkable for 
good or for evil about the colt, as he had just seen 
the strange sight of a wild duck and a wild drake 
actually sitting on a quickset hedge, close by the 
high road. That morning was indeed a remarkable 
one in Littlecote annals. It hailed the first blood 
colt Mr. Popham had ever possessed, and the first 
that Bickaby ever trained, and the latter never was 
at Epsom in his life till he fulfilled his threat of 
^' bringing the money away.^-' 

His change of At this time, Mr. Popham had no 
hands. j^g^ q£ training, and advertised both 
the colt and his half-sister for sale next year. Sam 
Beeves used never to tire of looking at him, as " the 
biggest and the best, &c.''^ Jones, the Bockley trainer, 
bid money for him ; and when Dagobert had put 
the Goodwood stable in love with the Ion blood, by 
winning the Chesterfield Stakes, Kent arrived and 



TURF CE-ACKS. 239 

bid 500 gs. for the pair. As might have been ex- 
pected with so big a yearlings the filly beat him in 
his trials and Kent did not think that Lord Henry 
Lennox lost much when he was sent with the rest of 
his stud np to Tattersalls. Mr. Popham was in Scot- 
land at the time; but forwarded Rickaby a commis- 
sion to buy both back at 250 gs. and 50 gs., and he 
did so with, in both instances, very little to spare. 
And thus, as Lord George parted with a Surplice^ 
General Peel with a Kingston, Admiral Harcourt 
with a Summerside, and Lord Exeter very nearly 
with a Stockwell, for lack of waiting a little longer, 
" Mr. Gordon" got rid of Wild Dayrell. 

His early training was done in the most his training and 
rural style. Two miles principally on ^^'^^^' 
the banks of 

" The Kennet swift for silver eels renowned,'* 

were marked out in Littlecote Park, as the winter 
ground, and at it they went, Rickaby leading the 
gallops on the five-year-old Zegra, an old gelding 
of Mr. Drinkald^s, and his sons Tom and John on 
Wild Dayrell and the filly Creusa. The latter did not 
stand training long, and is now among Mr. Blenk- 
iron^s brood mares. In May the three adjourned to 
Lord Craven^ s, and had the use of his Lordship^s 
Ashdown Park stabling ; but still there was not time 
to bring out the colt against Bonnie Morn, at Stock- 
bridge. They had no line except through Zegra, 
who had been tried and beaten two lengths by old 
Inder, and in the trial, an exceedingly rough one in 
clothes, the colt gave him about a couple of hun- 
dred yards over three-quarters of a mile, and never 
quite reached his head. The Newmarket victory 
was a very easy one, and the horse was fully six- 
teen one-and-a-half before they began with him for 
the Derby. Lord Albemarle was bought to do fast 
work for him ; but he and Zegra were incompetent. 



240 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

as lie used to run over tliem^ kicking his heels, at 
intervals, into the air, so high that it was as much as 
K-obert Sherwood or his lad could do to stick on. 
He soon stumped up Lord Albemarle, and then six- 
teen hundred was given at Lincoln for Jack Shep- 
pard ; and early in March they adjourned to Ash- 
down once more, with a whole regiment of touts in 
their train. 

The stable of the two was like a fortress, and two 
dogs below, and Kickaby, who did the dragon, above, 
guarded the golden apple of Berkshire. It was 
thought advisable to keep Jack pretty fresh for the 
trial, and Gamelad was hired from John Osborne, 
and came with Robert Osborne in charge. Lord 
Craven and the house party used often to ride out at 
six o^clock, to see the gallops; but on the trial morn- 
ing, ten da^^s before the Derby, Mr. Etwall, Mr. F. 
Craven and Mr. Popham were also on the Weather- 
cock Hill. Wild Dayrell was asked to carry 8st. 
lOlbs. and give Jack, whom they kncAV to be in form 
after beating Orinoco at Chester, lOlbs., and Game- 
lad, for whose sake Osborne had faithfully subsisted 
on salts and animalculse for some twentv-four hours, 
about 2st. and a year. Zegra was nobody on that 
occasion, and like Gamelad was soon cut down ; but 
Jack Sheppard and the crack went a splitting pace 
for a mile, where Jack fairlv stood still. Mr. Etwall 
rode down to Charlton, to a'sk what had happened. 
Charlton, hov. ever, assured him that his colt was well 
enough, and added, "I thought Kwg loin's trial a 
good one last year, but I never rode against such a horse 
as this before.'' And so every one there thought, when 
they saw him come in alone, with Gamelad toiling a 
full distance behind him. 

The orders at the Derby were simply to ^^ get quietly 
up the hill, and then stride along,-*^ and Sherwood 
did not make the pace so strong afterwards as they 
wished. Perhaps in the hard state of the ground it 



TURF CRACKS. 241 

was as well, and either from that cause, or the 
horse hitting it when he ran into the quickset hedge 
in the paddock, before he could be pulled up, there 
was mischief in the near fore leg, half-way between 
the knee and the fetlock, by the end of that week, 
and for the first time in his life he was put into ban- 
dages. They went on mth him for the Goodwood 
Cup, but the other leg began to fill, and it was all 
that Rickaby could do to prepare him for York. 
After his Doncaster break down, they tried to patch 
him up no more, and he began the Buccaneer, Horror, 
and Avalanche business. His mate, Jack Sheppard 
passed eventually into Mr. Saxon^s hands, Mr. 
McGeorge got Lord Albemarle, and Zegra became 
Lord Craven^s hack for a season or two. His foals 
have been principally mouse-browns; but unfor- 
tunately Alice Hawthorne^s colt died quite early, 
and Rickabv has vet to prove if the same blood 
on both sides, but a degree farther off, will be as 
successful in his " Brown Dayrell" from a Cowl 
mare. 

Ellington, his successor in the Derby 
honours, was ridden about at Admiral ' ° 
Harcourt's after his two-year -old season, by the 
coachman, and made as handy at gate-opening as a 
hack,— the first time, perhaps, that a future " blue 
ribbon^^ has so passed the winter. One of those who 
won upon him got his hint in a curious way. His 
book was beating him, and in a half- desperate mood 
he sauntered down Piccadilly. Looking up at the 
clock above the Wellington Club, he saw that the 
hands stood at twenty-two minutes to eight, and just 
obscured the W. ; and in an instant he had his cue, 
and felt so convinced he was right that he took the 
odds about the colt, to win £500. 

Warlock was the most unlucky of 
horses the next year. He had sore shins 
at Epsom, he fell twice at Newcastle, and he was 



243 SCOTT AND SSBEIGHT. 

pulled up by mistake, after going once round, at 
Carlisle, where Caller Ou also distinguished herself 
subsequently by running against a post. The roan 
was game and slow, and wanted a wonderful amount 
of nice management, but still John Scott felt 
assured that if anything happened to Elhngton 
at Doncaster he had everything else safe enough, 
and so it proved. His finest race was when he 
beat Eisherman by a neck for the Queen^s Plate at 
York. 

Imperieuse was not regularly tried before the St. 
Leger, but had merely a rough gallop with Warlock 
and Forbidden Fruit, ridden by their boys, who were 
not weighed beforehand. The stable saved stakes 
with Blink Bonny; but though John Peart, who 
was at Newmarket, had orders to lay the odds to 
a hundred, he did not, and the telegram announc- 
ing the One Thousand success, bore the welcome 
postcript, " None of the money hedged.'' 
Horse eccentri- ^^^ ecccntricities of liorscs are end- 
cities. less. It was necessary to tie up Lucetta 
by a piece of twine, or she would have turned ner- 
vous and broken everything. Pickpocket would 
never let his jockey mount, except he had a coat 
over his white satin jacket, simplj^ because he had 
once picked his owner's pocket of a white handker- 
chief, and turned so frightened at the flapping, that 
he clenched his teeth and would not drop it. Bellona 
blemished her hip in a horse-box, and would only 
consent to stand loose in one after; and Lightning 
would never go into a stable unless he was bluffed, 
and then he would enter by himself. The love of 
compan}^ is also a great trait in horses. It was said 
of the Godolphin Arabian that when he had flat- 
tened out his own cat by mistake, he missed it so 
much that he pined from remorse, and savaged 
every other cat that was put into him. If little One 
Act had to make her own running, she would be 



TURF CRACKS. 243 

staring about on both, sides for her companions ; and 
Gemma di Vergy was so exacting that no cat would 
satisfy him for company^ but Joe Dawson was ab- 
solutely obliged to have a lad there with a book or 
newspaper all day_, and another sleeping close by him 
at night in a stall. The habit began when he was a 
yearling. He climbed over a partition, no man can 
tell how to this day, so as to get at the window, and 
was espied with his feet on the window-sill, gravely 
looking out into the yard. 

St. Giles was the first colt that made 
people remember that there was such a 
horse as Womersley, and the ten of them which 
started that season were all winners. He was skin 
and bone when he came to Sledmere, and Sir Tatton 
did not consider him ill sold at j£300, when he and 
Lanercost were exiled together. His stock were the 
first that ever went up from Sledmere to meet Mr. 
Tattersall at York August ; and St. Giles, Greyling, 
Companion, and another, all came back unsold. 
Por St. Giles, there was not a solitary bid, and Wil- 
liam Day thought he was giving quite enough, when 
he drew a 240-guinea cheque for the four. When 
St. Giles had satisfied him, he came direct from 
Chester to Sledmere, and not only bought his dam in- 
foal with the 500 guinea St. James, and a filly foal at 
her foot, but hired four Womersley fillies at 100 gs. 
a-piece. The mare paid well, but the quartett were 
duly returned as incapables in the Woodyeates sense 
of the term. St. Giles was a big sixteen-hand 
horse, who " did not come to hand easily,-'-' with 
no great pace, but a glutton at a distance. Lord 
B^ibblesdale took him at the Sledmere price, and his 
yearling trial was remarkably good. His race with 
Skirmisher at Northampton was a very great one, 
but the party were never more confident, and the 
commissioner began his operations a fortnight be- 
fore. 

R 2 



244 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Queen Mary's Maiij of thc modem cracks have been 
blood. drawn out of the Doncaster lucky-bag, 
and Mr, Ramsay found himself wavering between 
Mendicant and Queen Mary on the morning of Foig- 
a-Ballagh^s St. Leger. Something put him against 
the brown, for whom Mr. Gully gave 400 gs, and he 
got the bay for a hundred less. Strange, indeed, that 
one of the pair should be destined to win the Oaks 
and throw a Derby winner, and that the other should 
be the dam of Blink Bonny and grandam of Caller 
On as well. Mr. Bamsay died five years after, and 
there was so little promise about the puny Haricot, 
that I^Anson heard a remark in the crowd to the 
efi*ect that "some madman has given twenty pound 
for her and the foal (Braxey)" (which is now 
in the Hampton Court Stud), and smiled to think 
that he had given the commission. Balrownie (a 
very good-looking horse), Blooming Heather, and 
Bonnie Scotland made abont £6,000 gs., in stakes 
and sales, and then FAnson w^as compensated for 
Queen Mary missing to Touchstone by the suspicions 
which ripened into certainty, when he had sent her 
Melbourne filly along for a few weeks. 

She was the first of the family he ever 

Blink Bonny. , - ^ , i i -, - 

tramed as a two-year-old, and ne never 
gave one more work, but a short T.Y.C. was not her 
line of business, and she was always a most mode- 
rate beginner. William Scott, Sir Lydston New^- 
man^s present stud-groom, took a great fancy to her,, 
both for her own and his old Melbourne's sake, and 
advised Lord Londesboro' to give the three thousand 
which I' Anson offered to take for her after the Bever- 
ley meeting. This price was contingent on his being 
allowed to train her, and when he found that such 
was not his Lordship's intention, he raised it a 
thousand, and the bargain went off; and at the 
Northallerton meeting he refused .£5,000 from Mr. 
Jackson. She throve pretty w^ell tilllate in the autumn^ 



TURF CRACKS. 245 

but then the dentition fever, which was always pecu- 
liarly severe with the Melbournes, came on, and she 
sank, as Blooming Heather had done before her, to a 
complete skeleton. She was always leaning to the off- 
side as if flying from sotne unseen fury on the near, 
and they only dare tie her up with a string to snap 
if she ran back in one of the paroxysms. New- 
minster^s teeth had punished him a good deal before 
the Derby, but his state must have been bhss in 
comparison. After the One Thousand, where her 
looks fairly shocked the public, I' Anson told his 
family that he wouldn't take £1,000 to Id. about 
her Epsom chance. Still on his return from Chester 
she seemed to have got some relief, and although 
she would seize her corn and then drop it as if it was 
red-hot shot, she ate grass greedily, started her work 
once more, and crept on very fast. 

She seemed to improve on the journey Her race for the 
up, and when she galloped with Strath- Derby, 

naver at Epsom, she drew away from him with her 
head down in her rare, old fashion. Charlton's orders 
were never to try and win till close on the post, and he 
did it without asking her a question. T Anson 
hardly knew what to think before they started, or 
when the race was running. He twice thought she 
looked like her old self at the whins, as she was 
setting her ears back and flinging up her tail 
as she always did when she meant vengeance. 
Then although he swept the thirty backwards 
and forwards witli his glasses, he could never find 
her yellow cap again, and when he did, he mistook 
it for something else, till they were close at home. 
On the Oaks day, her form was fully half-a-stone 
better, but Charlton as nearly as possible broke his 
stirrup iron, coming round Tattenham Corner. 

Balrownie was troubled with sand- „ , . „, 

, , , , , . Balrownie, Bloom- 

cracks, and was bad to tram in conse- ing aeamer and 

quence. T Anson thought he had tried f^X' "'''" 



246 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Mm high enoTigh to "vvin the St. Leger; but he in- 
jured his hock in his trial, and had to be stopped in 
his work ; and with a view to the Doncaster Stakes, 
he was not ridden out when winning was hopelesso 
Mr, Padwick gave .£2,000 for him ; and old John 
Day was delighted with his trial, and so was Wells, 
who rode him. He was a verv unfortunate horse. 
When he ran with Virago, at York, he was so se- 
verely kicked at the post, that the starter felt bound 
to give him a little time to recover from it ; and he 
got pricked in his shoeing before he met Kataplan, 
at Manchester. Blooming Heather shyed at a but- 
cher's cart coming through London, and was still 
quite stiff from slipping upon the stones, when she 
went for the Oaks. Bonnie Scotland nearly broke 
his leg at two years old, and never could be got 
thoroughly fit. He had the greatest constitution of 
the family, and was the most indolent at exercise 
that TAnson ever had to do with ; and the last 
heard of him was, that he had won the Great Prize 
for sires at Cincinnatti, Ohio, against Lexington and 
all comers. 

Beadsman, the son of Mendicant, 
ea sman. -j^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ actiou of his dam, and. 

if people did pronounce him " a rum 'un to look at,'° 
they were more confirmed in their opinion when 
his photograph appeared. There was not much 
promise about him at two years' old, and if he had 
not won a trial with a light weight on him at Dane- 
bury, he would have been probably put out of train- 
ing. i\fter the Two Thousand, he was tried to give 
Eitzroland 61bs., and won so far that Wells hallooed 
to his lad to stop, as the touts were about. 
Antonio, Anton, Of thc thrcc A's, Autouio, Anton, and 
and Actseon. Actscon, which Johu Day had in hand 
at one time, Anton was the smallest, and very neat, 
but sadly touched in the temper ; and if Vaultress 
and Maid of Orleans still divide the honours of the 



TURF CRACKS. 247 

speediest Danebury mare, Actseon could probably 
have beaten every thing of both sexes for half-a- 
mile. Antonys luck was beyond the average in his 
great tbree hundred-guinea match with Kent. His 
near hind-leg had gone months before, and wasL'ept 
in perpetual cold bandages, but it just stood out with 
the most careful nursing over the mile and a quarter, 
and he won a neck. Antonio^s A.F. match with Luff 
was also a most brilliantly ridden finish. Wells on 
Luff held the lead down the hill from the Bushes, and 
Alfred Day, who could not take any liberties on his 
roarer, got to him in the Bottom. Neither of them 
dared to do more than touch his horse^s mouth, and 
when Wells stopped Luff half-way up, in order to 
" reach home," Alfred drew up to his knee, and hold- 
ing his bay there till the last few strides, just got up 
and won by a short head. The old school, with all 
their Bobinsonian and Chifney memories, are bad to 
beat, but the patience and tenderness of this finish 
stamped it as a masterpiece on both sides, and none 
spoke of it more highly than General Peel. 

Marionette and Trumpeter were never 
put together at two years old, but tried ^""^p^ ^^• 
collaterally with Pinsticker, who made out Trumpeter 
to be lOlbs. the best of the two. On the Monday- 
before the Derby, they were measured, and John 
Day again considered that Marionette had lOlbs. 
the worst of it. The leg which had been hit at Bath 
went very badly in the Derby, and the other followed, 
suit the moment they tried to put Trumpeter into 
slow work again, and Harleston Paddocks has been 
his destiny since. Mr. Harry Hill bought him for 
220 guineas at the last ^' Corner" sale of the Boyal 
Yearlings, and it would be strange indeed if one of 
the Hampton anniversaries comes off, without some 
little jocular passage of arms between Mr. Hill and 
Mr. Tattersall on the subject of that memorable 
purchase. 



248 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Musjid was one of the Tickhill tick- 
"^*'' ' lers, and Ariadne, The Moulvie, and 
Cast-off were the other winners out of the lot which 
went with him to Doncaster that autumn. Their sire 
Newminster had two seasons there, and Langar, 
Tramp, Catton, Barefoot, Interpreter, Juggler, 
Cardinal Puff, Hetman PlatofF, and Rataplan have 
also flourished in turn under those ivied battlements, 
girdled with a moat, and above whose tangled mass 
of elm and sycamore, the gilt Tarrare stands out, 
to tell of the " blue stripe^^ days when poor George 
Nelson seldom missed a morning stroll to the 
Castle. 

Elis was foaled in the elder-tree box beneath it, and 
" a great, strong foal he was, " according to his accou- 
cheur, John Hornshaw, and Slane saw the light in 
these paddocks, when his Orville dam came to the 
handsome Langar. The saddle-i'oom box was Mus- 
jid^s birthplace, and he only contrived to save his 
year by six days. He was the finest galloper 
among them in the paddocks, but went so wide 
and awkwardly behind, that the buyers at Don- 
caster all thought that he was lame. Mr. Gerard 
Sturt first told Sir Joseph Hawley of him, and 
advised him very strongly to go and have a 
look. 

!No one would give the three hundred which Lord 
Scarborough set upon him; and the colt went 
home to Tickhill. Still Sir Joseph did not for- 
get him, and on second thoughts about the mid- 
dle of October the bargain was struck. 

His Derby trial. Ti-T\t,i-*il jj. 

In his Derby trial he was made to give 
21 lbs. to Gallus, and Wells on Beacon, and some- 
thing loose to make a pace, took what part they 
could. For a mile it was a tremendous splitter be- 
ween Musjid and Gallus, but the latter was told out 
in the next quarter, and Sir Joseph felt sure that 
he had the Derby again in his grasp. Wells 



xc 



TURF CRACKS. 249 

vowed forthwith that he had never ridden anything 
so good, and never expected to do again. The match 
with The Blacksmith the next year seemed a wonder- 
fully good thing, but the Derby winner went dead 
amiss before the day. 

Underhand^s finest two-year-old per- underhand and 
formance was at Ripon, where he stum- *^^ greyhounds. 
bled and ran Saunterer, who only gave him 2 lbs., to 
a head ; while Skirmisher, who received 6 lbs., was 
just beaten as far. He was a very small colt, and 
was foaled at the Consett Iron Works, from one of 
whose functionaries he derived his name. Mr. Fors- 
ter consigned him to Spigot Lodge, as a yearling; 
and one of his admirers from the works, who wanted 
a little outing, came shortly afterwards to see him. 
It was to him that Fobert and the world are indebted 
for a new wrinkle in the preparation of yearlings. 

This and another colt,^^ he said, "have run together 
from foals; but there never was such a promising 
galloper as this one, we know it, Mr. Fobert, for 
we\e set the greyhounds on them regular.''^ On 
cross-examination by Arthur Briggs, it was further 
elicited that Underhand had not altogether ap- 
proved of being made a hare, and had once 
jumped a wall with the long-tails after him, and 
dropped without injury, onto the thatched roof of 
a pigsty. 

^ His style of carrying his head very His Newcastle 
high impressed many with an idea that triumphs. 
he was not a stayer. This was a mistake, but still 
about a mile and a-half was his best distance, and 
his great speed enabled him to get up through his 
horses from the half-distance, under very high 
weights. He always ran best in Aldcroft^s hands, 
as his tender, patient way of nursing him pulled him 
throuo;h if it was at all on the cards. Dr. Syntax 
at Preston, and Beeswing at Newcastle, might be 
«aid to " farm the Cups^^'' and Vampyre nearly had a 



250 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

monopoly of the Ascot Stakes for tliree successive 
years_, yet no horse save Underhand ever ran in the 
same handicap for five out of his six seasons, and not 
only win it three times but finish bv beiner second. 
Well might the ^^ Black Diamonds^' be found cluster- 
ing round him like bees, year after year, waving their 
hats, and singing out excitedly from their platform 
stands, for minutes before the race began, " Unney- 
liand ivins ; Unneyhancl wins /" We never saw his 
muscle so splendidly up, as when he won the Great 
Ebor Handicap at 9st. 1 lb. He never had a day's 
illness in his life, and his legs were as sound to the 
last as when he fled from the greyhounds. 

St. Albans came to Fyfield about 
October, and pleased his Lordship and 
Taylor in a trial by giving Plumper 10 lbs. He was 
amiss all his two-year-old season, and so unAvell after 
running third for The Ham, that Taylor assured his 
Lordship it would be death to him to start again that 
week. In fact, he put him into the van in Cantine's 
place at Salisbury, as he was far too weak to walk 
across the country. At Newmarket that autumn 
he made out very badly, but he began to come rather 
later on, and in a two-mile trial with Compromise, 
who gave him 251bs. for the two years, the six-year-old 
Clarissa gelding 6 st., and the two-year olds Conscript 
and Gwellyan, he won just as he liked. He was 
tried at Stevens' of Ilsley in the spring, and was in 
Godding's hands for the Metropolitan, and Chester 
Cup. This severe preparation knocked his legs about 
so much, that it was some weeks before Taylor could 
go on vdth him for the St. Leger ; but he couldn^t 
have made weather to snit the immense work his 
colt had to do, more exactly; and a ^ rough gal- 
lop in clothes for the St. Leger distance with Plum- 
per showed him to be more than 2st. the best of the 
pair. Luke Snowdon had never been on him till the 
dav before the race, and his orders to come at the 



TURF CUACKS. 251 

distance resulted in tlie most decisive victory, since 
The Dutchman's day. The outside of the fetlock- 
joint of the off fore-foot had always been his weak 
spot, and he was so lame on the Friday, that he had 
to be blistered and thrown up as soon as he got 
home. The Ascot Cup w^as fatal, and the w^ak 
foot went hopelessly on that hard course as he came 
round the bottom turn. Although he seemed more, 
he was only fifteen-two when in training, of a re- 
markable rich dark chesnut, with a peculiarly proud 
way of carrying his tail, and always ramping and 
neighing about. His length and hind-quarters, 
and great thighs and hocks were all fine points with 
him, and his staying qualities most undeniable. 
Ashdown is rich in something more 

, T T ' 1 ' n ' Ti_ Ashdown Park. 

than mere historic lancies. It was 
here that Miss Ann Richards, the strong-minded 
virgin of Wiltshire, used to leave her coach and six 
on the hills, and do beater's duty close by her dogs 
all day, with her pole in her hand, and her kirtle up 
to her knee, till : 

" Poor Ann, at last, was view'd by death, 
AVho coursed and ran her out of breath." 

Here, too, met the renowned club who made such 
glorious matches, sang such merry songs, invented 
such luscious puddings, and found such a worthy 
chronicler in old Mr. Goodlake. 

We first saw it on a peculiarly lovely morning, in 
fact, the one which, after a dreary winter, seemed to 
herald in earnest the welcome spring-tide of '60. 
The South Berkshire hounds, passing under the 
railway-bridge at Reading, on their way to a distant 
meet, gave us a passing peep at country recreations 
as we swept along to the Shrivenham station ; and 
there, too, the very pointer, emblazoned as a trade- 
mark on a whole heap of returned corn-sacks, bore 



252 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

its silent witness to those sporting tastes which fairly 

permeate an Englishman's being. 

Ride to the cours- " ^ fricnd's liorsc was duly in waiting 

ing ground, foi^ us, and WO wcrc soon cantering 
along towards the hills, beyond which lay our cours- 
ing land of promise. An occupation road to the 
left led us past a farm, half hid in ivy, with rent- 
paying Herefords and juicy Devons lazily chewing 
the cud in its straw-yard, while the thrashing-ma- 
chine kept relentlessly " crushing the air, '' not with 
its " sweetness,^' but its beetling hum, in the snug 
stack-garth behind. The farmer was as mellow and 
pleasant as his holding, and with a '^ Good morning V 
and a few cheery words about Ashdown, we ride 
briskly on across the old pasture, and along the 
brook studded with willow-stumps, where the pike- 
fishers linger in the long summer days. A labourer 
with a waistcoat still deeper in its j^ellow than the 
straw-laden wain which rumbles along the ruts, re- 
calls us from the delights to the stern realities of 
l^ature, as his wife addresses him behind the fence, 
in anything but the tones of the turtle; and anon 
we are climbing the hill to the downs in the wake of 
a little slipper, who is recounting his triumphs of 
'^four j'^ears ago.'' 

Once at the summit, and the downs seem to stretch 
^way for miles in one vast, brown, rippling surface, 
with no sound to break their stillness, except the 
bleatings of the Hampshires, as they answer their 
newly born lambs ; and the bullock language of the 
white-smocked ploughmen. The Vale of White 
Horse, so dear to Tom Brown's heart, furnishes a 
delightful sunny panorama, rich with trees, and 
water, behind us. In front is a strip of table land 
flanked on one side by a woodland dell, where the 
fox lif'-s curled at the mouth of his earth, careless of 
V. W. H. horn and hound; while on the other is 
Compton Bottom, with its patches of stunted blushes 



♦% 



TURF CRACKS. 253 

and undergrowth, and peopled with countless gener- 
ations of " merry brovvn^^ and straight-backed hares. 
The plough, that gentle innovator, has stolen a 
march on those ancient solitudes at last. Teams of 
oxen toil along the furrows and scare the partridges 
in their track, while a group of farm- sheds and straw- 
ricks remind us of a store-house in a desert, and 
that civihzation and rats will gain a settlement every- 
where. 

Now, a dark mass of carriages, carts, Notabilities of 
and horsemen seems to be forming ahead, ^^^ fi^^^- 
round the " Rubbing House,^^ and we press on for a 
true and correct card. The word of command is 
given when the Earl and his party arrive, and the 
tvjev and slipper, both in scarlet, move down into the 
Bottom to begin, while the foot people and the com- 
missariat carts linger on the hill. The Ashdown 
Cavalry are there, at least four hundred strong ; and 
when a hare does take the hill, and they all sit down 
in their saddles and catch fast hold of their horses' 
heads, the very ground seems to start and tremble 
under them. Three or four daughters of a noble 
house are in the throng, and one of them especially, 
with a simple white feather in her hat, steers her 
beautiful grey to the front, each time, with a grace 
and dash that makes many a rugged courtier ex- 
claim, that 'Mt^s worth coming to Ashdown to see 
those ladies ride.'' A rigid costumier would have 
been puzzled among that motley throng. Even the 
two field stewards have no unity on the point. The 
one is still faithful to the trim velveteen which was 
in such vogue twenty years ago, while the other 
communicates lustre to a spruce overcoat of faultless 
whiteness, with cords and tops to match ; and knicker- 
bockers are all the fashion among the younger men, 
with, as lawyers were wont to say in the good old 
days of special demurrers, a little scarlet at the knee 
and wrist, to " give colour." 



• • 



254 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

' Grave Scotclimen are there in plaid^ from head to 
foot ; while the rough shooting-coat and unshackled 
Doric of the East Riding mark the Yorkshiremen, 
who have come many a mile to back Glengarry in 
vain. Smart young jockeys leave Lambourne for 
the day, and are easy to pick out from their clever 
hand and seat; some of them on two-year-olds, to teach 
them to face a crowd and harden their confidence for 
future contests. There, too, conspicuous from his tall, 
active figure, is Grantley Berkeley, the mighty hun- 
ter and rifle-shot of The Field, fresh from the buffa- 
loes and the other spolia opima of the Prairies. 
*' Stonehenge," too, looks on, and gathers material 
for new chapters in his mind^s eye on the sport, 
which he has made his own ; while the editor of The 
Life, scorning to call horse or pony to his aid, 
be it hill or be it plough, is always in his place, 
near the judge, and scanning every turn with 
an ardour worthy of '^ The Sleepless Eye.^^ 

Their talk is all of do^s, distemper. 

Coursers' talk. t ^ • • j? t 

and line young puppies coming lorwarcl 
or lost for ever to the slips ; and a joke about a 
Macclesfield man, who advertised "a low-bred grey- 
hound,^^ seems to be keenly enjoyed. One takes up 
more general ground, and details plaintively that 
there were only three • waiters to forty-five diners at 
Lambourne over night, and that fears of coming 
frost had deterred the cautious landlord from specu- 
lating more extensively in his brother-man. Then 
there is a slight dispute between a little ancient 
courser on a pony and a young farmer, as to the 
whereabouts of the White Horse Hill. Neither of 
them will bate one jot of his opinion. One says that 
he has coursed up to it for 30 years, yea, even before 
the other was born ; and the elderly infant 
doesn^t at all see the overwhelming force of 
that argument, as he ^^ came from the hill this 
morning.^^ 



TURF CRACKS. 355 

And now tlie great match of sixteen The two blacks 
dogs of " The World" against sixteen of ^' ^°^■^• 
Altcar Club_, is renewed. Sixteen courses have been 
run off the day before^ and the former has ten stand- 
ing to the latter^s six; but still Altcar does not de- 
spair, and the crowd predict that Rosy Morn, thanks 
to the Chadbury training, will come out as fresh as 
ever to-day. "There she goes" soon passes from lip 
to lip, as the first hare gets up in the Bottom, but it 
is not much of a course. The judge takes off his 
hunting cap and waves it to indicate that he will 
give no decision as to merits, and the flag steward 
waves both red and white flags accordingly. Some- 
how or other the white flag seems to win every 
course in the early part of the day, and people be- 
gin to follow luck instead of judgment, and, to try 
and back every dog on the " white" side of the card. 
Rosy Morn, however, does all that is expected of 
her ; the brown and white crack from Yorkshire toils 
after her in vain, and there is no hat off that time. 

But the course of courses is to come, " one of the 
old sort,^^ as the white-haired Nestors affectionately 
say. In vain the hare makes for the hill, and the 
cover on the other side, which she has known of old. 
The two blacks won^t be denied, but thev have the 
problem of perpetual motion, to solve this time. 
'^' There's a picture of Ashdown V^ says Mr. McGeorge 
as at last, after watchinsr them work her for nearly 
three miles on the hill side, he sees them both lying 
down on the brow, near the Rubbing House, and the 
hare scampering away towards her old form in the 
Bottom. A painter might have followed the slips 
for inspiration all his life, and never lighted on such 
a beautiful " bit." Alas ! poetry soon fades into a 
hard reality when the trainers "take up^^ their 
wearied charges; and then is heard the sad homily 
on the cunning Patience, that she^ll " not get over 
such a towelling this season." 



256 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Beating the plan- There is another pretty picture to 
tations. hand, as a small plantation is drawn. A 
few beaters go in, and the slipper crouches behind a 
hedge with his dogs, while hare after hare scampers 
towards him over the vacant space, with their heads 
straight for the City of Refuge over the hill. In. 
not one instance is it reached, though the hares are 
nothing loth to charge the foot-people. One is 
picked up in such dashing style that the crowd in- 
voluntarily raise a cheer, and a winner bears another 
proudly back in his mouth, as if yearning for his 
ovation as well. From the style in which he grips 
it, it looks at the distance like one of those troop of 
white mountain hares, which a bewildered Southron, 
(better read in the Pilgrims of the Rhine than British 
Rural Sports), mistook for an elfin crew, as the High- 
land gillies drove them up to him, and, throwing down 
his Manton, fled on his lordly legs. Another is so dis- 
inclined to quit his hold, that it is only by the aid of 
three men, one of whom pinches his ear, that his 
fangs can be forced open at all. But the day wears 
on, and the hares begin to wax troublesome, and get 
up by threes and fours, three hundred yards ahead 
of the beaters. Sometimes twenty or thirty are on 
foot together, and they look nearly as big as foxes 
against the horizon line, as they move restlessly about 
in or stand derisively on their hind legs to listen. 
But it is not for us to 

" Sing in venturous guise 
Of ricks and turns, and falls and byes, 
And all the courser's raysteries." 

Suffice it to say, that when the ties of that day were 
run ofi*, the antagonists stood 4 to 4. The next 
day^s post told of evens for the last time; and, be- 
fore Saturday's sun had set. Rosy Morn, daughter of 
Black Cloud and Riot, had vanquished the game 
Sweetbriar ; and thus Altcar gloried in a double 
victory. 



TURF CRACKS. 257 

But Effort, Riot, Sackcloth, Mocking over the hiiito 
Bird, and even our old Cumberland Russiey. 
neighbour Truth are out of mind, as we skirt the 
Bishopstown field, on another winter daj^, and thinks 
as we are obliged, from stress of ruts and mire, to 
put into the fallows, that such a name as Trip the 
Daisy is only a delusion and a snare. Ashdown 
Park and its ancestral avenue of limes lie away in 
the homestead-dotted valley to the left, and just 
above it is seen the quaint old Rubbing House upon 
Weathercock Hill. St. Lawrence, the two " Blacks^-' 
— Tommy and Doctor — and Pretty Boy knew it well, 
and it was there poor Luke Snowdon gave Brown 
Duchess many a breather for the ^^ Green and Gold/'' 
when Kettledrum cleared his pipes behind Dilkoosh 
along the White Horse Ridge, and Dundee strode 
his defiance on Bishopstown Hill. Never before did 
three such flyers hold three neighbouring heights. 
Their grave and potent senior Thormanby is on the 
Bishopstown side, and there too Leamington, Saun- 
terer, Sunbeam, Hungerford, and King Tom were 
sent along in their day, over the one and a- half miles 
from the Craven Cricket Ground, to the Two o^Clock 
Bush. 

Once over that velvet turf, and Russ- a peep at russ- 
ley Park is below us, with its mysterious ^^^ ^^'^• 
vista of beeches, which leads to nothing. A St. 
Leger and an Oaks winner are roaming under them, 
and the neat stable-yard on the left holds not only 
a Derby winner, and the mightiest second that ever 
made the Scots " cock their bonnets '"' so boldly, 
but the first favourite for the next year as well. A 
white reach and foot mark tell the tale of the mas- 
sive sixteen-one Sunbeam, as she grazes quietly in the 
distance with the weight-carrying Miss Anne, both 
of them due to Lord of the Isles. Little Lady 
Lurewell carries her Wild Davrell burden bravely, 
and so does Russley^s dam, and the whole-coloured 

s 



258 sccTr and Sebright. 

Catlierine Hayes, as she loiters affectionate] v round 
the house away from them all, and raises her SNveet, 
mild h^ad for her Avonted pat, as Mat Dawson comes 
up. One of the very first Fisherman colts is in a 
paddock beyond the yard, and, true to his Scottish 
ownership, Newhaven is his name ; and we find a 
memento in-doors of his aunt Rambling Katie, in 
the oxydized black duck inkstand, which tells its 
own tale of York, and a kind-hearted owner dead 
and gone. 

Thormanby forms a pleasant link for 
orman y. ^^^ Dawson bctwecn his old service and 
his new. He thought "Old Alice," as we did when we 
saw her at Cawston, a very hopeless subject, but the 
spring brought strength, and she did not turn from 
Windhound as she had done at the end of three 
weeks from Melbourne, who got no foal that season.. 
It was in Sunbeam's year, that Mr. Pluaimer en- 
countered Mat, and begged him to come and look at 
'' one of Alice^s, which will suit Mr. Merry." Off 
they went to the Turf Tavern, and Mr. Merry struck 
a bargain at .€350 for him on the Friday, thus carry- 
ing away as it were a Derby and St. Leger out of 
the town at one stroke. Northern Light, Trovatore, 
Lady Falconer, and Apollyon were in the yearling- 
lot that autumn, and he squandered them so de- 
cidedly when they did have a brush, that it was 
thought advisable to hire the old mare. She foaled 
a filly to Wild Dayrell, and it died, and then she was 
barren to him again, and died herself, a mere steed of 
Old Mortality, with an enormous gathering in her 
udder, at Saunterer^s paddocks. 
Thormanby's early Ncvcr did a two-ycar-old work much 
labours. harder than the chesnut, as he was out 
no less than twelve times between Northampton 
and The Criterion, in which his 3 lbs. to Thunder- 
bolt stamped him. A severe course like Ascot and 
the Newmarket finish always suited him best. When 



TURF CRACKS. 25^ 

Northern Light was beaten by Cape Flyaway (who 
was a first-rate tryer) at Bath, John Scott thought he 
had got the line, and sent Mat Dawson a friendly 
warning that he had a tremendous horse in The 
Wizard, and Mat sent back his compliments and his 
''^ Who's afraid?" The trial with INorthern Light a 
week before had been high enough to allow of a 
margin, and as the chesnut had not a drawback, 
both trainer and owner considered that the Derby 
cheque only wanted Mr. Weatherby's signature. 
Twenty-four hours after the race their champion had 
a bad swollen gland, and as he required a great deal 
of preparation, it was not all plain sailing up to the 
Leger, where the infallible sign of turning a little 
awkward on going down to canter, was as fatal to 
the favourite as ever. 

Mat Dawson had never heard of 
Dundee, till- Thomas Winteringham 
begged him at Doncaster to come to the ring^ 
side directly, as "They^re just going to bring in Mr. 
Cookson^s, and there's one by our horse." Strange 
as it may seem, Kettledrum was No. 1 on the list, 
and Dundee No. 2, and as Mat Dawson thought the 
latter a well-grown colt, and knew that Mr. Merry 
wanted a bit of Lord of the Isles, he put him in at 
150. 

E-eeves of Epsom got one or two bids, and 
when the colt was knocked down at 170, he re- 
pented his lack of ardour too late, and begged Daw- 
son to give up his bargain. Mr. Parr had one bid, 
but he did not go on, as his mind was rather 
set on taking home a Rataplan. He quavered be- 
tween Kettledrum and Parasite, and got the one he 
wanted at 400 gs., but found that he could only act 
in dirt, and was infirm in his hocks, and a roarer as 
well. 

Dundee bullied Russley, Folkestone, Starlight, and 
Sweet Hawthorn in his gallops in quite the Ti:or- 

s 2 



260 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

manby style, and altliougli very backward,, he Tvas 
tried very highly before Liverpool. A finish with 
Lady Clifden, Big Ben, Dundee, and Little Lady 
and not three-parts of a length between, is one 
Liverpool may not see again, and Folkestone's defeat 
of ^' The Lady" at Epsom Spring kept the stable 
right. Once in form, and Dundee ruled for the season. 
Brown Duchess certainly extended him at Liverpool, 
in a splendid finish, for which the mare never got 
sufficient credit that year, as he walked away from 
her and Nemesis so completely in the Eindon Stakes. 
On paper, the Stockbridge race was a great one, but 
the dead- heat with Maggiore at York weighed more 
with the pubhc than the stable. A young one 
was not likely to improve with heats, but Mr. 
Merry and Mat thought so little of Maggiore^s 
form, that they would have tried their colt higher 
at home. 

Dundee is rather a coltish, liaht-fleshed 

His break down- , ... , ,•r^ -i 

horse, with a l)eautiiul wmd, a very 
blood-like head, and fine thighs, but, like his sire, a 
little upright on his fore joints. Cu stance always liked 
to bring him eight or ten strides from home, and to 
feel him " come like a steam-engine.''^ Thormanby 
left it to Sir William, Bussley, and Folkestone to 
tr}'' him among them, as he was almost too idle a 
horse to do so satisfactorilv. Dundee did all thai was 
desired, but there were indications tAvo or three days 
before Epsom, which made them watch the pointer 
of the weather-glass very jealouslj^ and wish them- 
selves and the horse well out of it. Of his standing 
another preparation, they had not a hope, and the 
lower part of the suspensory ligament in the near 
fore-leg went so badly, that after the Derby the fet- 
lock touched the ground, and it was nearly forty 
minutes' labour getting him back to Sherwood's. 
Then it was another week before he could be got 
into the van; three months of cold-water band- 



TURF CRACKS. 261 

ages hardly put him into a walking gear, and Habena 
was his first consort at Elthara. 

A few miles over the downs, and we j^ peep at Ben- 
are among Tom Parr and his lot, which ^^"^^' 
do their long summer work on the Seven Barrow 
or Sparsholt Down, and in bad weather on the 
Charlton range. '' Puce and ivhite ivins/' has now 
been heard from "Weymouth to Kelso, for ten long 
years, and gradually the parchments of Letcombe 
ilegis and Bowers, Benhams and the Manors of 
East and West Challow have given a solid signifi- 
cance to the crv. The Goodlake crest linorers in 
almost undecipherable characters above one of the 
gable ends in the most venerable of yards, where 
the green moss and the house-leek still cling to the 
thatch. The highly conservative corn chamber in the 
centre, whose stores have enabled so many thorough- 
breds to face the hill, is still faithful to its wooden 
steps and rusty staddles, and gallantly defies all 
change. The ancient kennel of Glider and the 
other G.^s of the King of Wiltshire coursers is 
there, close by the box of Wyon and Toiurno, but 
nothing ])ut a fir cone arch, round which the ivy 
is clinging, and an armless statue of Neptune among 
the wild fiowers on the edge of the swan lake, tell of 
the old man's home. Kildonan was in Fisherman's 
barn, ripening (as it was then hoped) by a long 
winter's rest for Mario w's hand, but the Heron 
brown is not forgotten. 

Mr. Parr still loves to tell how he 

T IT- •,^ 1 11 Fisherman & Co. 

humoured him with a long gallop or a 
short one, but " never left him many days together,'' 
and points to the 651bs. and the head-beating which he 
gave Misty Morn (the winner of thirteen races that 
season) at Derby, as the greatest triumph among 
his sixty-eight. The deceptive Lupellus has 
already died out of Benhams memory; but, wonder 
as he might seem in his day, he was never so fast as 



263 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

his little Puncli of a brother Lupus ; and it was 
the style in which Kildonan gave hiin 3 st._, and 
Avalanche 9 Ibso over the D.I. which made Mr. 
Parr feel sure that Imaus would beat his half-brother 
no more. 

Avalanche was one of the pots of 
treasure which Mr. Parr is ever turning 
up. Captain Oliver met him in the train_, and 
begged him to take her for her forfeits, which he 
did, but she seemed so unpromising, that at first he 
only rode her as a hack. When the work on Spars- 
holt Down was over one morning, he rode her to 
Bowers Farm, where he intended to shoot, and her 
action in a brisk gallop across the plough at once 
decided him to train her. Her turn soon came, and 
she had to take Rattlebone^s place in the Newmarket 
Biennial, when he fell amiss, and the trial at a stone 
with the four-year-old Indifference was so good, that 
her owner got on at 2,000 to 200 about her. And 
well he might, as whatever beat Indifference in a 
trial won its race. Still even Fordham, who can 
communicate his fine confidence to a nervous horse 
beyond almost any jockey of the day, could make 
but little of Indifierence in public. In a trial at 
home, he gave Gaspard a stone, and a year cleverly, 
and yet at Stamford he was himself beaten by Wal- 
lace in a walk. According to this truest of tryers. 
Avalanche took the horrors after Ascot, but " The 
shooting pony" won between .€4,000 and £5,000 in 
bets and stakes, and went to Belgium for 800 gs. 
more. 

lAnson had almost made up his mind 

Callfir Ou 

to send Queen Mary to West Australian 
in ■'57, but he changed his mind and chose Stockwell 
for her. He gave effect to his first fancy the next sea- 
son, but she returned from Grimston with Caller Ou at 
her foot and barren. Scott told him by way of com- 
fort that the little brown filly was a clipper^ and that 



TUUF CRACKS* 263 

no foal in the paddock could come near her, when 
she galloped. She never lost a trial either at 
two or three years old ; and nothing in the stable 
could take more work, provided she was allowed 
to do it by herself. 

In point of action it was Blink Bonny Trials and pecu- 
for choice, but their head notions were liariues. 
totally different. If Blink^s jockey pulled hers up, 
she would have it down again, whereas if Caller Ou 
got excited and pulled about, up it went, and she 
would fight and wear herself out. Her first two- 
year- old trial was half-mile at even weights with the 
four-year-old Donati. Her victory was so hollow, 
that FAnson tried them over again, and found it to 
be a true bill. Soon after that, a friend came 
through the stable, and casually remarked as they 
passed, ^^ If she could knock over Donati at evens, 
I'd give a thousand for her y' but FAnson never 
answered a word. After Beverley, he began 
to think that Donati was a deceiver, and the 
post-breaking feat at Carlisle did not improve 
matters. 

On the Oaks day PAnson had not discovered her 
mouth secret, and as Challoner did not ride her ten- 
derly enough, she summarily shut up at the turn. 
Before York, she allowed Prologue to lead her in 
her fast work ; but backward as she was. Starlight, 
whose heels were full of humour, never made her 
gallop there, and H. Grimshaw liked his mount so 
much, that he backed her to win him three hundred 
in the St. Leger. FAnson^s Doncaster hopes re- 
vived on Knavesmire, but still he offered her to 
Mr. Robinson of Australia for fifteen hundred. 
At Stockton she ran out two or three lengths, 
and the world did not know how good Old- 
minster was; and Derby did not at all convince 
her owner that there was going to be a Saucebox 
encore. 



264 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Her St. Leger The arrangement tliat Grimshaw should 
race. como down for a week to Malton to ride 
in her gallops^ was abandoned, and Avhen she did 
come to Doncaster, he met I' Anson at the station and 
begged to give up his mount. In short, the night 
before the race, Lord Stamford had the refusal of her 
for £1,200, and if it had not been " all the money^^ 
she would most probably have never started. Chal- 
loner^s orders to let her do what she liked with her 
head were carried out to the letter, and at the Red 
House she was going so well that he felt sure of a 
place. At the distance she was still going, and w^hen 
Kettledrum came away, he felt that there was just 
one thing for it, and that Avas to tackle him and never 
let Luke have a pull. He found he had the best 
of the speed the moment he placed her alongside of 
the crack, who was running as game as a bull-dog 
in his difficulties, and there he sat, till the post was 
passed, not daring to move on her and touch her,, 
and expecting every instant that she would cut it. 
The youth of I^ sccms but ycstcrday that we saw 
Kettledrum. Kcttlcdrum for the first time at Mr. 
Cookson^s paddocks, in that imsatisfactory transi- 
tion state of a yearling in January. He was short, 
and not the most elegant, but the strongest 
limbed one we ever met with at that age. 
Rataplan had been chosen for his dam HybJa, 
who was never broken, purely- for the sake of the 
double cross of Whalebone, through The Saddler and. 
The Baron. It has always been this celebrated 
breeder's theory, that whatever may be the best 
strain the mare has, a horse should be selected with 
the same. It was on this ground that Marmalade 
was sent to Lord of the Isles, that the double cross 
of AVhalebone might unite through Waverley and 
Touchstone. The same end might have been effected 
by choosing Chanticleer, who also stood at Croft, 
but Dundee's sire got the preference on account of 



TURF CRACKS. 265 

his Pantaloon strain, ^vliich always nicks well with 
"Whalebone, either through Castrel, Selim_, or Buz- 
zard. 

At Doncaster, many took against Kettledrum, as 
having far too heavy a top ; but still he had a strong 
party, and it was then written of him, that " with 
that strong neck, and those wonderfully springy 
pasterns, it will be strange indeed if he does not race 
or stay, or both.^^ Poor William Oates felt no 
peace of mind till Colonel Towneley consented to 
purchase; and if he had got his way, nothing would 
have stopped him for Dundee as well. The heavy top 
made the biddings languid. Messrs. Robinson and 
J. Dawson were " in^"* a few times ; but Mr. East- 
wood's nods came from the dangerous left with the 
regularity of a piston, and the crack fell beneath 
them for four hundred. Three times before had Col. 
Towneley nearly drawn a great winner in the yearling 
lottery. Oates had said a great deal about not going 
past Thormanby; and on the advice of Heseltine^ 
who looked after his dam Peggy as a boy, money 
had been bid for Musjid ; and Gladiolus was pre- 
ferred ; and but for Mrs. PAnson and her daughters 
begging their father not to part with the blood, the 
joint otfer of £500 for Haricot and the yearling 
Caller Ou would have been accepted. A.s it was, 
Mr. Eastwood bid 300 gs. for Caller Ou herself on 
the very Doncaster Thursday that he bought Haricot 
and Kettledrum for Colonel Towneley. 

To get the young Kettledrum reduced Trainir-g Kettle- 
in bulk was rather a snail-like process, '^^■"™- 
and his first gallop was about December with Doe- 
foot, who received 7lbs., and fairly danced away from 
him. At the next time of asking he was some 
lengths nearer ; but he was a delicate feeder, and 
never took regular work till a month before the 
York August. His preparation had been so short, 
that although he got a bad start in the mud. 



266 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

and regularly cut up the Lincolnshire regiment 
of Dictator Volunteers, who crossed the Hum- 
her next morning in the direst dismay, he did 
badly over the same course on the Friday, and 
ran some pounds below his form in The Cham- 
pagne. His dentition was tedious, and hence the 
intention of coming through with him in the Two 
Thousand was abandoned. On a straight course he 
can make his o^ii running, when he has had a little 
time to settle, but he gets his head up and crosses his 
legs immediately if he tries to do it on a round one. A 
tremendous pace is what he wants, and the style in 
which he stole along on the Derby day from Tatten- 
ham Corner, — ever handy with Dundee, when the bay 
came down the fatal hill into the straight like a flash; 
or flew up the Doncaster one as if he fairly revelled in 
the design of Rising Sun to break The Wizard^s 
heart, and heeded nothing of lOlbs. to an Oaks win- 
ner, — was not a sight to be forgotten. The five-year- 
old Diikoosli, who never told them wrong yet, was 
the stable baromxeter, and he was fully 51bs. the 
worst of the two before the Derby. He was laid 
up with plaisters on his legs, long before the St. 
Leger ; but from a collateral trial, they believed 
Kettledrum to be fully 7lbs. better than he was at 
Epsom. Perhaps, to our eye, he was not in such 
perfect bloom, but Yorkminster's flat refusal to 
help him up to the Red House was fatal, and instead 
of taking the fifth double first, he had to cast in his 
lot with Cotherstone, Coronation, Thormanby, and 
the baffled fifteen. 

Col. Towmeiey's His Doucastcr and Epsom guardian 
paddocks, j^ad returned to his velveteen fellows, 
and their guns were echoing in chorus among the 
plantations on Beatrix and Middle Knowe, when with 
Wolfinden Crag as our beacon, we followed the wind- 
ings of the trout-haunted Hodder. Above us were 
Staple Oak, Brennand, Whitendale, and Whitmore, 



TURF CRACKS. 267 

links in the chain of those everlasting hills^ and 
sponsors to Newminster and West Australian colts, 
over which Heseltine, the Dr. Caius of the glen, 
watches so tenderly. The " Black mutton/^ as the 
Monks of Whaley and the Robin Hoods of the dis- 
trict delicately termed it in the davs of the '' Bold 
Bnccleuch/^ has departed for ever and aye since 
the fiat of disparking went forth. Those who re- 
member the killhig of the last buck have long since 
grown into greybeards, and when antlers were ex- 
tinct, the curved horn of the Lonk King reigned pa- 
ramount on the dark heather sides, and up the ash 
and sycamore gullets of the Forest of Bowland, of 
which Mr. Richard Eastwood is the Bow-bearer. 
Two counties unite close by the Root Stud-farm, 
mid we might well ponder Avhether we should stop 
in the West Riding to look at the Beeswing-like 
style of the yearling Stella, as she stood ready to 
greet us with the Voltigeur-necked Lamb Hill, and 
the well-grown Nugget in their polished boxes of 
home-forest oak, — or cross the elder-shaded stream, 
to give her spotted namesake with Faith, Emma, 
and Rosette, of Royal fame, a hearty Lancashire 
greeting. It was well to be off with the old love 
first, so we chose the Yorkshire side. 

The old matrons Florence by Veloci- ^n hour with the 
pede, and the hollow-backed Boarding broodmares. 
School Miss still remember their Grimstone Pad- 
dock days, and enjoy an undying nine months^ 
friendship, when they meet again each spring. 
Nelly Hill (on which Luke Snowdon won his 
maiden race), Honeydew, by Touchstone, and the 
white-faced Haricot, have nearly as great a bond 
of union in Langdon Holme, and the little white- 
nose tip of Ellermire reminds us that the quickest 
starter in England, a daughter of old Beeswing, the 
dam of the St. Leger winner of the year, and the 
mare who beat off the flying squadron of King of 



268 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Trumps, Hospodar, Kingston, and Epliesus, in a mile 
at York, are all confederates now. Rosaura, by Don 
John the germ of the stud, is there, with " fifteen or 
sixteen pure crosses, and yet one hair in her tail not 
right,^^ as Heseltine observes in his fervour ; and so is 
her daughter Hesperithusa, the first foal and the first 
Cup winner that Col. Towneley ever owned. Her half- 
sister Passion Flower waits for an audience close by 
the edge of the pheasant brake, which fringes the 
holme, and Heseltine tells triumphantly how Doe- 
foot, their Liverpool Cup winner, went as a yearling 
to Doncaster with old Rosaura, and how they re- 
turned without a single bid. Two white hind 
legs marked a second slice of Touchstone in Ame- 
thyst, and the blood of Windhound and Melbourne, 
which lays rival claim to the honour of Thormanby'S' 
paternity, is united here in the whole brown Be 
Quick. 

Patience, whom William Gates never failed to 
have a word with, and the old steeple-chasing Velo- 
city, another of the h. b. brand, consort with the 
white-legged Evadne in the Smithy Paddocks, and 
Nightingale, who has nothing but " three event 
blood in her veins,^^ gives back an answering note 
as the white Velocipede face of King of Trumps is 
seen approaching across the bridge from Holme 
Head to give us a meeting on the knoll. Pom- 
padour, who could boast of nearly as proud a lineage 
as Repartee, had just joined the ranks from 
Middlehara, and Castle Hill, Rappel, Deerfoot, and 
EUerby fill up the boxes, which Stella, Lamb Hill, 
Goldfinch, and Campanile have left. And so year 
quietly succeeds to year, and yearling to yearling; and 
perchance a third bonfire may announce the Epsom 
telegram from the summit of Staple Gak, and a 
cheer may be heard at last for a St. Leger winner, 
and ''the white and black sleeves,'^ in its own sweet 
valley of the Hodder. 



269 



©[Mi^iPTiiKi m. 



ira 



§ 




" I was lately in a company of very worthy people, where we had the Plea- 
sure of a small Consort of Musick ; a good Hand on the Violin, and a Young 
Lady (esteemed atop Mistress), sung and play'd on a very fine Harpsichord. 
'Tis the Fashion (you know) for every one to commend ; and the most insensi* 
ble Auditor, for fear of discovering his own Ignorance, must seem to be in 
Rafttures. The Lady performed to Admiration; one stared, another talked 
of Angels and the Spheres, a third wept, a fourth was ready to drop into a 
Trance. At last a vei*y honest Gentleman that sat by in a musing Posture, 
having his Ears shaken with a longer and louder Quiver than ordinary, look'd 
abroad, and gave me a Nod and Wink, with this ingenious remark ; ' By Jingo, 
I never heard anything better h tit a Cry of Bogs; she draics out her Note like my 
old Toler.' The Lady herself was not unacquainted with the Attractions of 
Hunting, and (as she told me afterwards) she was more proud of this sincere 
compliment from ^oZer's master than all the rest she received on the occasion." — 

A CotiNTKy Squibe's Essay on Hunting. 

SO spake Old Toler' s master^ tlie sworn ow hunting 
liegeman of tlie Prince of Orange, ^^"^®^- 
witli all the freshness of the time when it first became 
the highest family ambition to have "a member for the 
county, a lad for the living, and a fox from the family 
gorse.'' An earlier generation had found pleasure in 
chasing the yellow-breasted marten, and the bustard. 
'^ Thick woods also extended from the village of St. 
Giles westward towards Tybourne ; and Mary-le- 
bonne was then also a great Black Forest, into which 
the Queen used to send the Muscovite ambassador to 
hunt the wild boar.'' How and where the last acorn- 
eater was run into is involved in historical gloom ; but 
no fox was found in Kensington Gardens after 1798, 
when the gardeners combined against two litters in 
the sewer " for carrying off water into the fosse 
under the upper bastion," and shot one of their own 
body in their undisciplined ardour. 



270 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

The first Master Oyer fox-huntiiig, wiicther London or 
of the Rojai provincial^ the old Master of Hounds to 
the King of Wales did not much care 
to preside. He busied himself more about beaver, 
marten, and float, and it was ordained by Forest 
law, that his hunting clothes should be bordered 
with their skins. His bugle was the horn of an ox 
valued at ^1, and his protection extended as far as 
its note could be heard. He could only be cited to 
a court of justice early in the morning, before he had 
put on his boots, and whenever he had to be sworn, 
it was by his horn, his hound, and his leashes. Such 
was the Charles Davis of antiquity. 

There are records of a tremendous run of seventy 
miles in the Merrie King's reign, and the Duke of 
York with five others rode it from end to end. Thev 
took theu' stag near Lord Petrels in Essex, and lay 
there for the night, and on the earliest opportunity,, 
the Duke repaired to Court, to give an accurate 
account of his saddle labours. 

The Royal Stag- Towards tlic closc of thc eighteenth 
hounds. century His Majesty George III. was in 
the zenith of his stag-huntiug. Earl Sandwich wore 
the golden dog couples ; Johnson was the huntsman, 
and six yeomen prickers, with French horns, wound 
the reveille on Holyrood day. The fern-cutters never 
put in the sickle before that morning, and His 
Majesty seldom failed to givfe the field his greet- 
ing of the season, at Charity Farm, or Billing Bear. 
'^ Farmer George " met his hounds twice a week 
when he was at Windsor, clad in his light-blue coat, 
with black velvet cufl's and top-boots buckled up 
behind ; but as he rode nearly nineteen stone, the 
hounds were very often stopped to bring him on to 
Reverence of the tcrms. The couutry pcoplc lovcd dearly 

country people, -^q ^qq j^\^q{^ Kiug amOUgSt thcm. Wc 

cannot cap the story which Bill Bean (who was 
hunting six years before the present century) once 



STAG, DRAG^ AND FLAG. 271 

begged permission to tell to the late Prince Consort, 
when fchey were taking the deer in a cellar, that a 
rustic of that Georgian era believed his sovereign. 
to have a lion for one arm, and a unicorn for the 
other. Still we saw pleasant traces of the feeling 
in an old workhouse dame, who told us how, 
when quite a girl, she had seen the deer killed near 
Leatherhead. Years had evidently created a little 
confusion in her mind, between the gayer dress 
of the huntsman, and the simple insignia of the 
King, and so she spake 'on this wise. ^' His Majesty 
had a scarlet coat and jockey cap, with gold all 
about ; he had a star on his heart, and we all fell on 
our knees.^^ 

The runs were long, and the stags The King out 
^^ Moonshine" and " Starlight" earned hunting. 
their title from the time at which they were taken. 
An own brother to " Sir Henry Gott" (a line old 
sportsman, whose hunting-groom always wore a 
green plush coat down to his ankles), gave them the 
severest day from Aldermaston to Reading, and as 
His Majesty^s horses were both knocked up, he was 
seen returning to Windsor in a butcher^s taxed cart, 
and talking of crops and stock by the way. The 
only emblem of royalty on these occasions was the 
yeoman pricker riding on either side. At first, these 
guardians of the night merely had their hunting- 
whips ; but when we were at war with all the world, 
and a spy or highwayman had shot down Mr. Mel- 
lish, the Master of the Epping Forest lemon pyes, 
on his return from hunting, two boys ( of whom 
Charles Davis was one), each with a brace of horse 
pistols, were added to the hunting corps, and as soon as 
the chace was over, they handed their pistols to two 
yeomen prickers, in exchange for their horns. The 
horse for His Majesty's statues was modelled from the 
white Adonis, or the Hanover-bred Arrogant, which 
were strictly kept as chargers. Perfection was a 



272 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

favourite hunter, for many years, but the bay Hobby 
was His Majesty^s last, and best. By tlie royal 
order, no hand but Mr. Davis^s was permitted to 
shoot him, and his ear is still kept among that great 
huntsman^s treasures, with the first hare (a white 
one) that he ever saw killed. 

The original staghound pack, the 

e ongina a . ^^j^^j^ ^q gouplc of wllich WCrC boUght 

by Colonel Thornton to go to France, were lemon 
pyes, and black- and- whites, from 24 to 26 inches. 
Their skins were rather thin, and their ears " as big 
as cobblers' aprons,^' andia fact thej^ seemed all head 
and throat. For half- an-h our they were very fast, 
and gave tongue like '' Big Ben;^' but after that 
they sobered down, and never thought of racing like 
the present foxhound pack for their deer, when it was 
sulking. Kennel lameness was the Ascot scourge. In 
vain did Sharpe adjourn to Brighton for a month in 
the summer, and astonish " the languid bathers on 
the Sussex coast,^' by taking a boat, morning and 
afternoon, and making them swim after him till he 
looked a sea-god among attendant Tritons, or rather 
sea-dogs. They were as bad as ever before they had 
been back at Ascot for a week, and until Mr. Davis 
had a false flooring put, so as to admit a free current 
of air, the effect of the sand upon the bog substra- 
tum was never wholly neutralized. The Goodwood 
pack were given to His Majesty in 1813, and sadly 
the Sussex men grudged their departure. Their old 
The Goodwood kcnncls wcTC considcrcd a model at that 
kennels. time, and one Sporting Mayazine poet 
had been inflamed into writing a copy of verses in 
the architect's praise. It is only the other day 
that we turned aside for a minute under their ivied 
archway, to have a look at such a memorable spot. 
Two stone foxes guard it yet ; but the South- 
downs in the meadow beneath told how truly Good- 
wood had found a new love, before which, even the 



STAG, DRAG, AND FLAG. 273 

horn and the '^ red cap with golden tasseV* had to 
bow : and all those pleasant hazel copses, across 
which old Tom Grant rattled the cubs so often 
in the dew of the autumn morning, invite him and 
his badger-pyes back ni vain. With this pack a new 
state of things began at the kennel. Mr. Davis, 
whose father was '^ the hare-huntsman^^ to royalt}^, 
left the harriers to become first whip, the Duke of 
Richmond's men going on second and third, and 
Sharpe blew his first blast on a Robin Hood, instead 
of a French horn. 

The Prince Regent, who used to draw George iv.'s 
his deer supplies from the New Forest 'i^mting. 
each August, left stag for fox about '93, and with 
Mr. Poyntz, their ex-master, as his manager, and 
Sharpe as his huntsman, he took the H. H. 
country and Albury Park, whose ale cellar alone 
was valued at five hundred. His Royal High- 
ness met the staghounds no more, either in his 
royal father's reign or his own. Once he thought 
of coming out again with the harriers, and had 
his breeches and boots duly ordered, but he 
never put them on. Mr. Davis's appointment 
as huntsman in 1822 was quite after his heart. 
^' It delights me," he wrote, after it was gazetted 
^' to hear that you've got the hounds ; I hope you'll 
get them so fast that they'll run away from every- 
body." Such was the handsel of that ever memora- 
ble career. 

Mr. Davis was then thirty-four, and Mr. Davis's best 
had been exactly the term of a mi- '^""^• 
nority in the royal service, and spent a third of it 
with the harriers. It needs a Bill Bean to truly 
tell his triumphs ; of his stopping hounds when they 
had a slow deer in front of them, and of the daring 
talent of those casts, which none but the old stag- 
hunters can fathom till they see the hounds again 
striking the line. Mr. Davis's own ideas of his 

T 



274 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

fastest things centre upon two. The fi?st was from 
Salt Hill to the '' Oldaker liennels/^ fourteen 
miles within the honr^ and he remembers it too well 
from the fact, that his rat-tailed Nimble broke down. 
Mr. Harvey Combe, who was then the master of the 
Old Berkeley, happened to be on the flags that day. 
They took out their watches to mark the time before 
any one came np. Lord Alvanley was placed 
second at the end of ten minutes, but he jocularly 
claimed to reverse the yachting rule, and claimed. 
" some minutes to the good over Davis for my extra 
tonnage.^^ 

Fun in the Vale Riclimond Trump gave them such a 
of Aylesbury, trcmcndous twcuty miles from Ayles- 
bury to Trvyford Mill, that he was re-named *^ Twy- 
ford;^^ and he seemed so anxious to deserve the 
name, that he took them in his next run to Twy- 
ford in Oxfordshire. The first was a white stone 
day, in Lord Lichfield's first year of mastership; 
and Mr. Davis rode The Clipper, so called from being 
the first that was ever clipped for royal use. He had 
been originally in harness, and as he was up to six- 
teen stone, and his rider, even with a 71b. -coat, did 
not ride above ten stone, he went through from end to 
end over grass in little more than an hour and a 
quarter. The hounds never checked for bullocks or 
anything else; and as Mr. Davis lay in the ditch 
with one arm round the deer^s^ neck, he took out his 
watch with the other. For twenty minutes he had no 
companions, save the miller and his men, who were 
not a little astonished at the position of affairs ; a 
gasping huntsman, ^^ a h.Qr-ned stag,^^ and a pack bay- 
ing like mad. 

The Marquis at Still Mr. Davis felt his position much 
^'^^- more perilous when Earl Errol had es- 

tablished a club at Aylesbury, and went for a week 
into the country. The Marquis of Waterford came 
to see the fun, and a merry time there was of it at 



STAG;, DEAG, AND FliAG. 275 

the White Hart. Mr. Davis slipped away early, and 
they determined to be revenged. When they had 
conducted one of Mr, Osman Hicardo's handiest 
liorses into the big room, and made him jump over 
the chairs and tables, the next proposition was to 
*^ unearth the old badger."''' E/Ccognizing whom they 
meant by the expression, Mr. Davis was out of bed 
in an instant, and almost before he could get his 
door locked, and a table and a chest of drawers thrust 
against it, he heard the horse coming up stairs, a-nd 
the men of war with him. A fearful attack was 
made on the entrenchments, but they were not to be 
carried. Mr. Davis stood well to his guns within, 
and the landlord, whose patience had been exhausted 
by the horse's ascent, fought like a Trojan without, 
and " the old badger'^ lay curled in his earth till 
morning. 

Ascot Heath seemed drear and visit, to theRoyai 
strange, as we lately walked across it, Kenneis. 
to pay our annual May visit to Mr. Davis aud 
the hounds. Two or three horses were slowly canter- 
ing round in their sheets, but even quite a summer 
sun overhead could not light up the scene ; and it was 
one desolate expanse of brown ling and bracken, witii 
here and there a solitary gorse flovfer. Time has 
dealt very gently with tlie veteran himself, as all the 
field allow that th(fy never saw him go better or 
enjoy the sport more than during these two last sea- 
sons. His parlour is rich in picture history. Mr. Far- 
quharson and Jem Treadwell, by Mr. Davis^s late 
brothf3r, occupy the post of honour over the chim- 
ney-piece, and, in fact, the great majority of the 
engravings are from paintings by his well-known 
hand. Old Hermit, who loved nothing more dearly 
than the doubles in the Vale, is there in no less than 
seven positions, and Columbine, who finally went to 
the Duke of Beaufort's and bred some rare coach- 
liorses, is not forgotten. The little chesnut Sepoyis 

t2 



276 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

happily still ripe and ready for the Bucks side ; but 
poor Pioneer's seven seasons among the stiffer fences 
of Berks are ended. The light-bodied and light- 
hearted Comus, who was ridden for a season by 
the Prince of Wales, after Mr. Davis had made him 
perfect, has been presented to the latter by his royal 
pupil, for a hack, and roarer as he is, the pair 
niay do a great thing yet. 

Pictures and tes- Thc carlicst picturc of Mr. Davis him- 
timoniais. gg|£ (^^yj^Q j^g^g riddcu everything in a 

simple snaffle from that day to this) represents him , 
as a lad of eighteen, whipping-in to his father 
with the Royal Harriers ; and beneath it hang the 
series of English Hunt Pictures, which preserve so 
vividly the fine outline of the head of Tom Goosey, 
and the thunder and lightning features of the re- 
doubtable Jack Shirley. The Silver Testimonial of 
^59 is in the dining-room, with Lord Maryborough's 
bust on guard. Lord Chesterfiekrs mastership is 
commemorated by a silver stag-group, and tributes 
of the same character are ranged daintily below it, 
and flanked by two horns, one of them the gift of 
the present Duke of Beaufort. Not the least among 
them is the hoof of a hunter The Miller, whose 
white fore hoof was selected in preference to his 
black, to show that popular prejudice as to sound- 
ness may err. Badiant, Byron, and Landscape of 
the beautiful skulls, are foremost among the 
hounds; and the Ripley Deer twice over claims 
his place, both in his paddock and going like great 
guns with his head quite low. The Miller ran 
for thirteen seasons; and went for eleven before he 
became cunning and useless. They seldom used to 
uncart him more than three times a season, and then 
Mr. Davis always put an extra guinea in his pocket, 
as he knew it would be a case of sleeping out for his 
men. This noted deer was a hero of Ldrd Marybo- 
rough's time, and looked such a rough unprepared 



STAG, DRAG_, AND FLAG. 277 

thing, that Mr. Davis could hardly persuade his 
Lordship to hunt hira. He knew his lines of coun- 
try so well, that if he got a few hundred yards wide, 
he would invariably right himself; and at times he 
would swim a river, dodge down the opposite bank, 
and lie with his nose just out of the water. 

In the kennel we begged to have The Hound ten- 
Waterloo, of that rich-grey tan family "^h 
by Woodman from Eife Wishful, and his sisters. 
Wanton, Waspish, and Widgeon [inij ^' Little Lady,'^ 
as Mr. Davis terms her), drawn together. Then 
we had out the Rockwoods seven-couple strong — 
Relish, liakish, and Rally on one side of the rails^ 
and Ringwood, Rifler, Random, and Rasselas on 
the other. There they stood, almost a pack by 
themselves, and yet it was a mere oversight, which 
Mr. Davis sadly deplored at the time, which 
brought the first lot of them into being. The old dog 
was of course there, looking as meek but as yet sly as 
a Quaker, and runs well in his sixth season. He 
is from the old Goodwood sort, which Mr. Davis 
always finds to last the longest ; but he is now the 
victim of kennel lameness, which has stopped him a 
good deal in his regular work. The lady pack go into 
Berks, and the dogs^ Avhich have more nerve for the 
crowd, take their tarn across the Thames in Bucks. 

A walk of two miles over the common, om swiniey re- 
past the edge of the heath, and finally veines. 
up a pleasant avenue found us at Swiniey Pad- 
docks. The house, where the Marquis of Cornwallis 
and divers ancient masters of buck-hounds kept such 
state, and where huntsmen and foresters drained 
horns quite as often as they blew them, has long 
since disappeared, and there is nothing save a large 
indentation in the ground, under the shade of some 
noble limes, to mark the tomb of all such revelry. 
High holiday was kept there when George III. was 
king, and each fourth of June came round. The 



278 SCOTT AJJD SEBRIGHT. 

Master of tlie hounds gave a great dinner to all the 
foresters^ and farmers and twice or thrice the lloyal 
party drove over_, and watched them while they 
danced upon the green. 

The Deer Pad- The Cottcrill family live in a solitary 
docks. house close hj, and the present man^s 
father and mother discharged the duties of deer- 
keeper for 79 years. George Cottcrill, the son, has 
now held it for four, and passes quite a simple forest 
life, without even a badge or livery for high daj-s. 
He knows no special festival of St. Hubert; but 
sundry trophies of departed favourites hang round 
his walls. Wild Boy^s head is there, and judging 
from it he may well speak of him as " the largest 
deer I ever saw.^^ There, too, in due array are the 
four feet of Sepoy, of whom Cotteriil has a vivid re- 
collection as being not only a first-rate, but " a most 
amiable deer.^^ His herd consists of about 21, and 
stags were once all the rage ; but the difficulty of get- 
ting them to run well between October and Christmas 
has determined the question in favour of the haviers 
and hinds. Many of the former are caught, and 
cut as calves at ten days old, and then they never 
have horns; while those which are selected Jater on 
for their style of going, throw up one set of antlers 
with soft tips after the operation. The Windsor 
Little Park and Richmond Park stags have not done 
well, and the best have come from the Great Park, 
which may be owing to the breed having been more 
crossed. The red deer from \\'oburn were the finest 
strangers, as instead of the usual cat-hams, they had 
quarters more like a horse, with rare backs 
and gaskins to match. In Lord ErroPs mas- 
tership, the hounds went each April to the 
New Forest ; Lord Palmerston used to meet 
them there, and Mr. Assheton Smith and nine- 
teen other masters of hounds were once in the 
field together. 



STAG^ DRAG; AND FLAG. 279 

l^early all the sta2:s are born inWiDdsor 

' . . Deer diet 

Great Park, and the ill-luck which at- 
tended four that were bought for <£80 from Chilling- 
ham in Lord Kimiaird^s time, decided them to keep to 
the home-breds. Of this quartet Percy and Douplas 
did not run particularly well; and the other two, Kobin 
Hood and Hob Roy, met with tragical deaths — one 
of them being spiked on some palings, and the other 
jumping over a railway bridge. Three runs in one sea- 
son is a good allowance, and they have to be kept in 
tip-top condition to achieve that. Clover hay of the 
second crop, as the first is rather too coarse for their 
teeth, is given them at the rate of about 7 trusses 
per week for the 17, and to this are added 2 bushels 
of the smallest and heaviest old beans that can be 
got, with carrots, to vary matters in the winter. The 
deer-cart stood in a shed in the first paddock, on 
the door of which was nailed a foot, of apocryphal 
age : and the sick-house was in another corner, but 
with only Whimsy and her puppies in possession. 
We were quite sorry to disturb a most „ - 

, . 1 • , j^ £' 1 Paddoek exercise. 

narmonious and picturesque party oi deer 
and cock pheasants in the next paddock. The for- 
mer will come warmly enough round Cotterill at 
feeding time, but they would not fraternize with 
strangers at all, and we took care that they should 
show their action in three or four smart gallops. 
E/ichraond, with his fine antlers and great length, was 
far the most imposing among them, and he derives 
his name from having been dropped in the park of 
that ilk, to which he does the highest credit. He 
and The Doctor raced for the lead in the first heat, 
and in the second Sulky, who earned that unenvia- 
ble name from his performance, or rather non 
performance, at Hawthorn Hill, took the lead and 
kept it throughout. As to the third, Y^e have an 
indistinct idea of Lightning, a very small but 
nicely-made hind, cutting well in at the turns, and 



280 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT, 

getting the lead from Jack Tar_, the biggest there, 
but with not an inch of apology for horns, and of 
Eed Eover finishing close up. 

On the day before hunting, a well- 

Carting the deer .'ni ^ • ni-f^ 

trained sheep-dog is called m to separate 
the chosen pair from the rest, and they are driven 
across paddock No. 3, to the enclosure in the corner, 
and so into a little house just big enough for a brace to 
fast in all night. It is very dangerous to go into them 
tliere, except with a large board for a shield ; and the 
pieces of hair strewn about prove how fierce some of 
the anti-Cotterill conflicts must be before he gets 
them righted. King Cole was quite a savage ; but as 
Cotterill used to say, " I ivouklnH care about his 
fighting the shield if he'd only fight the country,'^ 
One side of this house has a moveable window, 
against which the door of the van is backed, and as 
the deer of the day has been adjusted, by dint of 
shield- fighting, into the half of the house nearest 
the window, he gets the first leap, and running up 
one side of the partition-board in the van and round 
the space at the end, naturally settles with his head 
ready for ^^ putting himself on the country.^' The 
partition-board is then pushed up to the end, and 
the reserve deer has to jump in, and ride wdth his 
head to the horses. 

Peculiarities of ^ ^^^^^ from Famliam Common on 
great btags. Marcli Ist, 1861,' was the last great 
thing that the lamented Sepoy (who first showed his 
form on the morning that news of the fall of Delhi 
arrived) ever gave them. He was out once more on 
Easter oSIonday, and was taken, after a run from 
Maidenhead Thicket, six miles beyond High Wick- 
ham, among the junipers at Mapple Common, where 
very few were left to see him dodging like a beaten 
fox ; but he never lived to come back, and broke his 
leg that night, fretting over his captivity in a barn. 
They had hunted him four times a season since 1857, 



STAG,, DRAG, AND FLAG. 281 

and he is quite embalmed in Mr. Davis^s memory, with 
Woodman, the Ripley:, and the Hendon deer. He 
was not a very large deer, but good in any country : 
of ^' the straight bang-away sort,''^ no sulkiness or 
subterfuge, never letting a hound see him till he 
was fairly tired, and invariably taking some distant 
hill for his point. He was originally bred in Wind- 
sor Park, and there was not a bite upon him after 
all his perils. 

Red Hart was also a marvellous deer, of about the 
same size ; but, unfortunately, when he got to a spot 
where he had been before, he never would leave it, 
even if he had another half hour in him. Occasion- 
ally he would make an honourable compromise, by 
running a short circuit and back again ; but this was 
rather the exception than the rale. Cashiobury 
Park was a very favourite spot with him ; and it was 
beautiful to see the hounds pick it out when he 
got among the fallow-deer there ; and when Harry 
joined the red ranks once more in Windsor Great 
Park (where he is now enjoying himself tor the sum- 
mer) they actually stopped, and looked up tO' 
Mr. Davis for counsel, at the point where he en- 
tered the 1 erd, after holding it for a few hun- 
dred yards over the foiled ground. The flints in the 
fair fields of Bucks play havoc with them ; and Jack 
Tar, who has made the hounds sleep out two or three 
times, came to grief in consequence at last. 

The specialty of the ten-year-old Harry 
of fis^e season renown, is that he likes to ^^^^' 

finish in a house, and will never leave a wood if he 
is once there ; and that he must have one particular 
run and that the Bracknell one. In fact, " Harry 
and BreckndV acts quite like a charm upon the 
London men, and thev would be loth ii.deed to miss 
it. They knew the length of his foot to a nicety 
that morning ; and his temperament must be changed 
indeed, if he sends them back without seeing Bin- 



282 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

fieicl. Billing Bear, Haynes Hill, Ruscombe Lake^ 
Hare Hatch, Park Place, "then down the hill to 
Medenham Abbey^ and there we are^^ three times a 
season. 

Commodore is very great in deep ground, and 
Cranbourne^s forte is in a hill- and- wood country, 
as he never dwells in it by any chance; and once 
gave Mr. Davis nearly forty miles home of it, from 
Garsington, near Oxford. Woodman, who was 
then in his eighth season, would not be taken at 
all, and went on jumping, at the end of a very long 
run, among the fields near High gate, till he broke a 
blood-vessel and died. Two jumped over a railway 
bridge, thirty feet into a cutting ; and the renowned 
Kit-Kat was hopelessly lost in his fourth season, and 
no doubt became the prey of some venison-stealer. 
He got into a large cover ; and the heavy rain from 
the boughs destroyed the scent so completely, 
that they gave him up. Tom Wingheld sent 
word, in a month^s time, that he was in a cover near 
Mr. Drake^s ; but he was no where to be found when 
the hounds arrived. 

The great Leices- The late Marquis of Waterford im- 
.ershirefctagnunt. pj,Qyg(^[ j^jg Aylcsbury rccollections when 

he was at Lowesby, and the " Great Leicestershire 
Stag Piunt^^ was the earliest result. The prepara- 
tions for the meet at Twvford were on a remarkable 
scale. The stag was trained Tor days before in a 
large walled kitchen-garden, and the Marquis with. 
a horn and a whip and a couple of little dogs kept him 
in exercise for hours among the gooseberry bushes. 
The hounds had one of their best pipe-openers by 
running the drag of a clerical visitor, whose horse^s 
feet had been secretly aniseeded, and all seemed ripe 
for action except the huntsman. He was a stranger, 
and the grooms and second horsemen had got at him, 
and made him so low-spirited by their geographical 
sketches of the probable line of country, that his 



STAG_, DRAG, AND FLAG. 283 

pack was doubled in. his eyes before he was told to 
lay them on. The stag made his point for the Queni- 
borough-road, between Barsby and South Croxton, 
and then bent to the right_, through Barsby vil- 
lage, leaving Gaddesby on the left. Up to this point 
the huntsman had gone well, and hallooing like a 
maniac; but his right foot was seen to fly up 
as high as his own head, crossing a ridge and fur- 
row, and he was heard of no more. The Marquis 
on Saltfish was then left in command, and the 
hounds ran well for Brooksby, and dovvn the turn- 
pike road for llearsby village. There the stag bolted 
into a farm-yard, and finally into a cellar, with his 
lordship and Tom Heycock after him, and kicked 
the spigot out of the ale barrel, and flooded the place 
before those eminent specials could secure him. 

Riders were lucky who could find their ..^^6 Marquisv 
way home, as the precaution had been freaks. 
duly taken of sawing the guide-posts in that part, and 
turning the arms the wrong v/ay. Those between 
Lowesby and Leicester especially sufi'ered, and are 
still braced with iron as a token. At all events it 
was a great day ; and how the Marquis once rode 
to Melton and iDack, thirteen miles in the hour by 
moonlight, and jumped all the stiles between Twy- 
ford and Lowesby on his way back ; how he fastened 
his horses into the fishing-boat from Lowesby Pond, 
and enjoyed the locomotion along the frosty road, 
till they took fright at Tvt^yford Windmill, and 
leapt the hedge; how he and his friend Sir Frederick 
Johnson bought a gipsey baby for £5 (as a salve for 
having overset an encampment the night before, by 
means of a rope tied round each of their horses^ 
necks), and in order to get rid of it, stuck it on to a 
hedge to shoot at, as they told the mother, till that 
nut-brown dame crept up behind, and nipped off 
with it ; how he stopped a pulling horse, by riding 
him at a hedge, on the other side of which he had 



284 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

made a deep hole full of water^ and exclaimed 
^' There, old fellow, I have you now;" and how he 
missed buying Mr. Hodgson^s lady pack, from look- 
ing too long at the dogs — will long be told at the 
midland fire-sides, along with the Great Leicester- 
shire Stag Hunt. 
Baron Eoths- Most of thc principal herds in the 
child's deer, kingdom havc furnished deer for the 
Barons of "The Yale,^^ but with very varied success. 
The five brace from Stowe failed, but two out of a 
trio from the Cheltenham Hunt went most famously. 

ft- 

The Berkeley deer were middling, and the Knowse- 
ley ones were too tame, and lacked jumping qualities. 
One of the stags was, hoAvever, a brilliant exception, 
but after his first run from Pitch cote over The Vale 
to Tring Park, the hounds got him down in a muddy 
pool, near Lord Lonsdale^s kennels, and Tom Ball 
on Bilh' the Beau could not get up in time to save 
him. Mr. Drax^s were out of condition when they 
came, and were killed off very quickly before they 
were thoroughly fit. Those from Biclmiond Park 
went in j)retty good form, but Sir Clifford Con- 
stable's, — which strained back to some of the originals, 
that did such service to the Hon. Grantlev Berkeley 
when he kept staghounds at Cranfield Bridge, — 
showed, along with the too few which could be got 
from Woburn, the finest sport of all. Sir Clifford's 
were larger and lighter in the"ir colour, but hardly 
so strong in their loins as the AYoburn deer, and re- 
quired very careful picking. Of the two breeds, 
they were the larger and the better scented, and were 
all sent as haviers with cropped ears. 

" Burton Constable'^ was the wildest 

Sir Clifford's deer. i . • i -_ <_ • l .-t 

and straightest going amongst them, 
and once when he was turned out at Wing, Lord 
William Beresford was almost the only man at the 

ft' 

take near Oaklej', in Mr. Drake's country, after 
eighteen miles by the Ordnance map. " Pipe- 



STAG, DRAG, AND FLAG. 285 

•^maker/^ another of these Holderness flyers, was apt 
to run a riiig for the first mile, but when he did get 
his head straight, ten to fifteen miles was his regu- 
lation allowance, and if he had the chance he was 
sure to point for the Claydon or Doddershall country. 
From Perren's Farm over a very rough country on 
to the hills near Checquers Court, was another of 
his great things. 

One of the hinds was, we believe, the heroine of the 
run of nearly twenty-four miles over the Brill Hills, to 
the turnpike on the Thame Road, close by Oxford, and 
she never hung for a second, in the Wootton House 
Woods. E/oftey, the huntsman, killed his Little 
Billy on this day, and Baron Nathaniel on Foscote, 
and Mr. Crommelyn beat all the field out except 
Tom Ball on Paddy, who had no second horse to 
assist him. The shade of Little Billy was avenged 
the next time she was uncarted, and great was 
tlie lamentation over her. The Chesterton Hind 
was also killed, but it was remembered in connection 
with her death, how Tom Crommelyn went on Non- 
sense ; and how the Hon. Robert Grimston and Bill 
Oolby jumped the Ptousham Brook. Not content 
with that, Mr. Grimston when only himself and two 
others were left in the run, charged the Eythrop 
river, brimming full, and swam out on a different 
side to his mare 

The best Woburn stag survived all his four sea- 
son perils, and after giving them an infinity of good 
runs, became so infirm in his joints, that he was 
sold as a stock deer. His greatest eftbrt was from 
Golby^s Farm to Dunstable, when only three rode at 
the brook near Blackgrove Wood, and Mr. Oldaker 
and another got in. One of the Woburn hinds was 
drowned in the river below Thame in a run, which 
told out all the gentlemen except Young Baron 
Nathaniel on Peacock, and Baron Alphonze, and 
they could not get nearer than Wootton ; and Ribston 



386 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Pippin dropped dead under Tom Ball, a hundred 
yards after he had laid the hounds on to another of 
the hinds, which ran from Cublington to Hanslope. 
The Dnke could only spare a brace of these jewels 
each season. They inherited immense speed from 
the large, wild park where they w^ere dro})ped, and 
their dark-red coats, smutty faces, and fineness in 
the single, induced the belief that they had got some 
high-bred foreign cross originally. 

Harvey Combe the biggest havier 
arvey om e. ^-^^^ Barou Bothschild cvcr had, earned 

his name from having been taken in the old Berkeley 
country. He never waited or hung, and made up 
for his lack of pace by his eternal bottom. His 
grandest run was from Aston Abbotts through Eythrop 
to Thame. He was brought out as second deer, and 
by mere chance Baron Lionel, who was going home 
with the hounds, met the deer- cart, which had mis- 
sed its mark. This havier was particularly adapted 
for the Vale, as he did not care for being mobbed by 
^'^the carrion,^'' who pretend to hunt with the Baron, 
and carry out their boast by starting off as their 
only chance along the roads the moment the deer is 
uncarted. Still true to a favourite's fate, he died at 
]ast in d cess-pool near Ledburn. Another havier met 
a rather more tragical death. He was uncarted at 
Wing, and w^ent right over the Vale to Shardloes, 
where everyone was beaten off except Tom Ball on 
Economy, and Tom was obliged at last to leave his 
mare on the road, and run over three fields to Mr. 
Grove's Earm at Amersham, just in time to find him 
impaled to his very back -bone on the iron palisades 
near the house. The white-faced havier must not 
be forgotten. He had strayed into the grounds of 
Combe Abbey, and Boffey w^as sent down with ten 
couple to catch him, and he proved himself worthy 
of the toil in his first 1 hour 10 minutes without a. 
check. 



STAGj DRAG, AND FLAG. 287 

The Barons Kothscliild commenced 

-1 • 1 • j^i • /» ). /-v ^ The Baron's pack. 

their pacK m the spring oi 69, and 
Bill Roffey, who was great on the Carbonaro mare, 
hunted them till the gout; gave him warning. Bar- 
wick, Tom Bali, and Fred. Cox have held the horn 
in turn. Fourteen or fifteen couple of Sir Charles 
Shakerley^s staghounds, which were almost entirely 
of Cheshire blood began the pack, and they were 
strenorthened with a draft from Mr. Harvey Combe, 
whose Osbaldeston^s Tapster was used pretty freely. 
Gunnersbury by Osbaldeston^s Falstafi' from Cheshire 
Guilesome was one of the first and best that they 
ever bred, and was the sire of Dairymaid. Cheshire 
also sent a draft, and Berkeley Castle did the same 
for two seasons. Among the latter was old Paradox, 
who contributed Primrose and Princess, and some 
other beauties to the lady pack, but never bred a 
dog-hound straight enough for Baron LioneFs fancy. 
Fitzwilliam Marmion suited her best, but still it was 
the Feudal and Bluecap blood, the former especially, 
which made the Mentmore kennel so indebted to the 
Milton. 

The smutty-faced Feudals were quite staghounds 
by nature. They broke themselves, and one word 
was sufficient to stop them. Sebright always 
declared that the old dog was one of the most sen- 
sible that he ever cheered. At one time there were 
five or six couple of the sort in work, and although 
his sons did not get their stock with quite the same 
substance, the taste for the slot did not dwindle. 
Fitzwilliam Bluecap was also represented by eight 
couple at one time, but their beautiful noses were 
rather counteracted by their head-lonor style. There 
were also a few in the kennel by Belvoir Bally wood 
(when he was at Brocklesby), and of Belvoir Jianter 
as well. With their introduction to *^ The Vale,^^ 
they seemed to forget all about fox, and when 
one jumped out of a hedge-row and ran up a 



"288 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

farrow in view, close behind the deer_, they let it 
bend to the right without even noticing it, and went 
straisfht over the fence. There are now no hounds in 
' the kennel except Tvhat have been bred there, and, as 
the Rothschild farms in Bucks have multiplied, about 
SO couple of puppies are put out to walk. 
Limits of The During October, an old deer or two 
Vale. r^YQ turned down on the Ivinghoe and 
Chiltern HiJls, on the Dunstable side, to give the 
hounds a good half-hour or three-quarters with 
blood at the end ; and very early in November they 
descend into The Vale, which is all doubles and 
grass. Winslow to Marsh Hill below Aylesbury, 
and Mentmore to the Clavdon Woods are the 
limits of this splendid country. Golby^s Farm 
is its Kirby Gate ; but Aston AbbotL^s is its queen 
of meets, as it generally secures them a run for 
Hardwicke, or over the endless acres of Creslow Big 
Ground. The Rousham, the Hardwicke, the Cres- 
low, the Winslow, and the Hulcoat Brooks have all 
brought grief to heroes, and heroines as well, who 
will try to be even with the huntsman, '^ even if he 
goes through a canal.''^ Black Grove and Quainton 
^re the deepest countries, and there is scarcely a 
hedge in them without a back brook to it. 
The Rothschild Barou Mcycr hunts on both, but Mon- 
ciacks. f[^j jg gij. Antonyms, and Thursday 

Baron LioneFs day. Baron Lionel has gone best 
on Rachel the old bay steeple-chaser, who was won- 
derfully clever and steady among the doubles. A 
grey was another of his favourites ; and he rode 
Grouse latterly, till the black injured its coffin bone 
-on landing over a brook, and had to be shot that 
■day. Sir Antony has been most at home on Pea- 
cock and Topthorn ; and Sir Nathaniel's delights be- 
fore he went to reside in Paris, were Foscote and 
Scotsfoot. As a proof of their good going, they 
fetched a thousand guineas when they were sold 



STAG^ DRAG, AND FLAG. 289 

and the latter won the Cheltenham steeple-chase. 
Baron Meyer^s peculiars have been Hornsby, King- 
Charles, and Squib, and it was on King Charles be- 
fore he received his knee accident, that he popped 
over the very high post and rails by the side of a 
gate, at which a whole crowd were waiting, and got 
cheered for his style of solving "the real jam^^ diffi- 
culty. 

Grouse, Kinff Pippin, and Harkover ^_ ^. ^. 

o rr ' Or rouse, King Pip- 

were the elite of Tom Ball's lot. He had pi", and Hark- 
won a steeple-chase on Grouse, a big 
horse by Muley Moloch, at Aylesbury, and run 
second to Dragsman at Chelmsford. Waterloo was 
Grousers original name, which was intended to point 
attention to a wart that had been cut out of his ear, 
and as he gave RofFey one or two falls, he thought 
that he was rather blind. However he soon became 
a top sawyer, and " galloped everything blind''' on a 
great day from Whaddesdon Windmill to Hudnall 
Common ; and Mr. Crommelin, who stayed the 
longest, was glad to give in, four miles from the 
finish, at the foot of Ivinghoe Hills. The chesnut 
Harkover, who had won a steeple-chase near Oxford 
with Bob Barker upon him, was a wonder through 
dirt or at a brook. During their four seasons toge- 
ther, he never gave Tom a fall, and if there were not 
too many casts, and he was not " rifled about" early 
in the day, he was not to be beaten. He carried his 
head up like a deer, and was ridden in a double- 
reigned snaffle and a martingale, and although he 
never seemed to see them, he " went at the doubles 
forty miles an hour, as if he was going to eat them.^' 
Still at this branch of science, he was not such an 
artiste as the little King Pippin, whose praise was in 
all The Vale, and who never required of Tom Ball 
to open any gates. If there was no landing in a 
double, he crashed through it, and out like a shot, 
and once on a time, he jumped six or seven yards 

u 



290 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

over some trees and a saw-pit^ which were ensconced 
on the other side of one of them. Such have been the 
trio of leaders in their dav, and when Lord Petre was 
on ]ns chesnut, the Hon. Eobert Grimston on All 
Serene, Mr. Oldaker on Pilot, James Mason on 
Willesden, Cheslyn Hall on Brutandorf, Sam Baker 
on The Corporal,' Mr. F. Knight on The Tory, Mr. 
Crommelin on Nonsense, Mr. Dawncey on a little 
chesnut mare as good in her way as his Alderneys, 
Mr. Lee on an old ^un of Charles Payne^s, Mr. Lear- 
mouth on Jerry, and Will Golby, Will Eustace, and 
Morrice on their best, they have had to meet a field 
which it was a glory to cut down. 

Bill Bean the arch- ^ ^^'^"^^ ^U Bill BeaU and the drag- 
trespasser of Eng- hunt. "What stable mind^^ in and round 
the metropolis is not cognizant of that 
arch-trespasser, once the very Apollyon of the far- 
mers in the Harrow and Stanmore country — that 
ancient youth who was stag-hunting nearly ten years 
before the century began, and ready yet, in his dis- 
gust at the degeneracy of the steeple- chase age, to- 
^'^jump my old pony Bean Stalk blindfold over a 
fence," which had been denounced at Hendon as 
presenting a premium on coroners^ inquests. Still, a 
service of seventy years in the saddle has had its 
disadvantages. There are the books of doctors ex- 
tant and deceased, whose testimony welded together 
would furnish some little account as follows : 

" 1792-1862. 
" Mr. WiUiam Bean. 

" To Messrs. . 

" Attending you wlien you broke both your thumbs, fractured the 
near leg (twice), broke the near ribs, injured the near knee, dislocated 
the near shoulder, ditto off shoulder, scalped your head, broke your 
nose, and other severe falls, £ , &c." 

^' ActcBon Nimrodj Esq., Tyho Paddocks , Hunting^ 
donshire" was tlie name which his deer-cart bore. 
The yokels used to stare at it, and say, " See, Tom ! 



1 




Bill Bean (the Arch Trespasser of England), p. 291. 



STAG_, DRAG, AND FLAG. 291 

what a long way they^ve corned'^ At one time he 
purposed inscribing on it, '^ William Bean, Land Sur- 
veyor/' but the conception was too grand and too 
dangerous. With the hounds he was more open, 
and duly branded them with a B. Hence another 
identity-puzzle arose among the rurals. Says Jack 
to Tom, '^ What does that big B mean on the hounds?^' 
says Tom, in reply, *'' Why, Jack, you ain^t half 
sharp this morning : it manes ^ The Baron's/ to 
be sure.^^ 

The deer-cart inscription was but a The perils of the 
very faint index of the mission of that ^'^^s* 

remarkable M. S. D. H., after whom so many tax- 
gatherers toiled in vain. When the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer's fangs were almost in him, he would 
" fold his tent like the Arab, and as silently steal 
away" into another district with Splendour , and the 
rest of the five couple, old Will White and the three 
brace of deer. Sometimes he would be at Wlllesden, 
then at Finchley, and anon at Golders Green. Be 
the kennel where it might. Captain Nesbitt and the 
guardsmen and a dozen or two more of '^^the upper ten 
thousand," &c., always had the office, but whether it 
was to be stag or drag, they never exactly knew. Five 
or six years ago the pack was given up, and Splen- 
dour, that meekest of hounds, who could carrv half a 
belly-full of victuals, and three pounds of shot round 
his neck, and yet hold the lead, was given to Mr. 
Tom Mason, with whom he lately died. He had 
stood by his master in perilous times ; and when 
farmers would vindictively house the deer, and he 
" ran heel" to tell him they generally knew that 
their trespassing was over for that day. Bill was 
more fortunate when he merely drove his deer 
into a china closet, or when he coaxed a farmer, 
(who had been previously breathing out pitch-forks 
and slaughter against him) into a public-house, 
while his barn lock was being wrenched, and actuall}^ 



u 2 



292 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

getting him to put on his coat and cap to see how he 
liked himself in the character of a British sports- 
man^ left him at last to pay the score. • But 
the drag was the thing after all, and in the trusty 
WilFs hands, it became an engine of the deepest 
agricultural oppression. 

Will White and ^^^^ White had been originally an 
his successor officer^s scrvaut in the Tenth, and when 

Kit • ... 

he was no longer in commission, his fine 
eye for country recommended him to Bill Bean. 
When he had duly fastened the aniseed cloth to his 
shoes, he would be told to come out at a certain mile- 
stone nine or ten miles away, and even if he had never 
been over the line before, he was certain to hit it to 
a half or a quarter of a mile. His finest perform- 
ance was starting on Hampstead Heath, and going 
as straight as a pigeon to the ninth milestone on the 
Bomford Boad. ^'There's London, Will, and there's 
Romford,^' said his master, pointing with his Avhip, 
and Will touched his cap, and waited to hear no 
more. He got over the widest brooks by making 
for a reclining pollard, and jumping with a sort of 
double-jointed spring from the top ; and the hounds 
ran into him on the BulFs Eye night as he was 
snugly seated, after his toils, in a public-house at 
Hanwell. The customers were more tolerant of his 
aniseed flavour than the farmers. One of the latter 
went so far as to say that "Ws a regular nuisance ; 
he injures our implements ;'' and when he was asked 
to explain his dark speech, he replied, '^ he goes and 
sits on them in the fields to rest himself, and leaves 
such a smell of aniseed that our men wonH go near 
them.'' On another occasion, he was taken up before 
a magistrate for trespassing. The complainant swore 
that he was only on the foot-path, but that he ^' knew 
he was trespassing by the smell,^^ and was exceedingly 
surprised at the dismissal of the case. Dulwich 
Park was a great country for him, as it was in Chan- 



STAG, DRAG, AND FLAG. 293 

eery at the time, and no one looked after trespassers. 
The perpetual lieats and colds killed the poor fellow 
at last, and " Kit/^ his Irish successor, was generally 
too drunk, either to run or drive. In his private 
account of this malady, he threw the whole onus on 
to the deer cart. " Kitj my boy, one of them says 
^ Ifs a could morning for ye.' ' Faith and it is, says 
I.' ^ Kit, my boy, will you have a nip of anything ?' 
So I couUVnt be off refusing, ' Kit, my boy, says 
another, ' What deer have you got to-day V ^ Faith, 
and ifs not iligant in me to tell ye.' ' Pll stand ye 
a little drop if you will.' So I had a little drop wid 
him. Faith, and that deer-cart ivoidd make any boy 
drunk'' 

The two " Gunners" and Red Deer biu Bean's 
did well, but " Chunee'' was one of Bill ^«''s«^' 
Beanos best, although he did give him thirty-seven 
falls in a very limited space of time. He was the 
biggest and the stupidest of hunters, and received 
his name from the elephant, which attracted so many 
visitors to Exeter Change. A noble lord, who was 
not averse to the drag, gave 200 guineas for him, 
and declared that he would now '^ serve out all the 
white gates in Yorkshire." In due time his lord- 
ship reported from his bed to Bill, that he had, in an 
incredibly short time, run up his fall score to seven- 
teen on him, and despairing of stopping him, when 
he took the bit in his teeth, he had sent him at a hay- 
stack, in which Chunee had buried his head eight feet, 
and then tumbled backwards. Knowing his locomo- 
tive antecedents. Bill replied that he could believe 
all that and a great deal more of Chunee. His lord- 
ship also bought old Bag o^Nails, alias ^' Old Bag," 
who had lamed himself by jumping with Bill into a 
gravel-pit. He could shuffle along very well in spite 
of it, and it used to be said that ^^ he was so lame that 
he could^nt get up in time for the foxhounds ; but he 
was always ready for the drag at one o^ clock. ^' 



294 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Persecution of ^^^6 farmers said that they did not 
the farmers, jn^uid John Elmoro as he was always so 
polite^ and would stop when they told him; but " as 
for that Bill Bean, when we^re ordering him not to 
go over one place, he only pops over another/^ In 
vain did they lock up their gates, pile hurdles on to 
them, and lie in ambush with pitchforks and other 
missiles, when they saw the avant courier of the 
Aniseed sweep by like the storm. One of them 
watched till nearly dusk, and then heard the hounds 
go past, as he sat triumphantly at his tea. He was 
in fact so astonished that he found himself reduced 
to asking Bill in confidence how he did manage in 
the dark, and was admitted to his confidence in re- 
turn. '' Did)i't you see us ?"" said Bill ; " we ride 
with a buWs-eye on each stirrup, and a hulVs-eye on 
our breast-plates, ive can go just as well by night as by 
dayP Well might the persecuted ones say ever 
after that when they heard the cry, ^^ There goes 
Bull's Eye Bill ! it's no use trying to stop him." He 
was not always so good to know. The legs and the 
seat might seem like his, but as often as not there 
was an enormous false nose, a fierv red moustache 
of fearful size, and red wafers on the cheeks, which 
utterly destroyed his upper-part identity. 
The great indig- Noticcs uot to trespass arrived by 
nation meeting, every post, and tlic Uxbridgc ordinary 
resolved itself almost weekly into an Indignation 
Meeting. " BulFs Eye BilV^ must and shall be put 
down. The day for striking the blow arrived, and 
as the arch-trespasser sat under his own fig-tree at 
Willesden, a clatter of horses'' hoofs down the road 
broke on his guilty ear. In a few minutes a phalanx 
of farmers presented themselves, and the very air 
seemed whitened with notices. Keeping his seat he 
received the " patent fulminators '' from his foes with 
the most baffling courtesy. He marked and num- 
bered each with a pencil as he received it. His 



STAG 



J DRAG,, AND FLAG. 295 



countenance was nnmoved^ and wore tlie very 
slightest shade of contrition to be in keeping with 
the crisis. When the several notices were delivered a 
scroll containing their substance and all the names, 
was presented by a deputy on a sheet of foolscap. ^^ I 
can^t read it in your presence, gentlemen F^ said Bill, 
'^it would not be respectful/^ and it was docket- 
ted with the rest of the papers. The situation 
seemed an alarming one^ but ere another sun had 
set his line of action was taken. 

Calling his first lieutenant to him, he how bui cttended 
made a masterly sketch of a drag-hunt ^° ^^® notices. 
for the morrow, which went through the very heart, 
or touched every farm in the round-robin. That 
afternoon he scorned all disguise. Once only lie 
drew rein, and once more the oppressor bearded the 
oppressed. ^^ Why do I come here ?'' he said -, ^^ I 
come here, Sir, on purpose to be pulled up f and 
then he poured it out just like a leading article. 
*^ The time had noiv arrived, when further concession 
became impossible, and forbearance a crime. If you 
begin, I'll begin. Fve got all your sigjiatures. You 
donH know what you^ve signed. I do, Fve had 
counseFs opinion on it. That's why I was'nt here 
yesterday ; Fve been to my solicitors with that paper, 
I'll indict you all for conspiracy.'' And so saying 
he magnificently rode away, and he had rest from 
notices for nearlv half a season. 

Then the commissioners set at him, jjjg graceful man- 
and he was charged for a whole pack, ners with the Tax 
For once his spirits gave way, as he knew 
the chairman to be a man of wrath and endless 
notices, and that he and Splendour had not spared 
him. In fact Bill had never been off his place, 
and kept him, rushing wildly forth into his 
flower garden, in an attitude of protest, and once in his 
dressing-gown only and his slippers. It may be that 
those were nose or moustache days, but at all events 



296 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

he did not recognize him till the case was called on. 
Then a flood of light gradually broke on him, 
" William Bean,^^ he said, as he put his nose down on 
the paper. ^' Whafs your business ? about dogs, I see ; 
Ah! hounds! Oh! stags. — Why! you're the man who' se 
always over my place. I've sent you several notices, 
I think." One of the other commissioners, who wasn't 
altogether guiltless, and who keenly enjoyed the fun, 
winked at Bill, as much as to say, ^'^Now Master 
William, he^s regularly tT^dgged you -," and then 
folded his arms and placed his eyes on the ceiling to 
hear the end. " / admit it, sir ; I admit it," said the 
crafty culprit, in his most unctuous tones, " but really , 
Sir, your's is such a sweet, little, inviting spot, on the 
top of that hill, that I don't wonder at the deer always 
making for it." Bill scored four by that slashing hit to 
leg. The prospect, as the chairman felt, was certainly 
very pretty, it was well that his brother commis- 
sioners and the public should hear that confirmed, 
and he was mollified as to the first point. Still justice 
must have its way. " But Mr. Bea7i," he continued, 
^' you have a jyack, I see, and you don't 2^ ay for them." 
^^ A pack, Sir," said Bill, more blandly than ever, 
^' / have only five couple. Mine is stHctly a minia- 
ture establishment ; I have a miniature pack ; every- 
thing is in p7*opo7^tion. Woidd you favour me by 
coming to see it ? My benches are only made for five 
couple ; they could'nt hold five~-and-a-half ; I am at 
your service any day, if you will favour me with an 
inspection." And so point No. 2 was got rid of. 

Oddly enough, the assessors had overlooked the 
'^ Actceon Nimrod," ^c, and only rested the third part 
of their case on the name not being behind as well as 
on the off'-side of the deer-cart ; but Bill had quite 
got their range by this time. He accordingly went for 
the in-fighting, and involved them in such learned 
discussions upon stick-doors to admit air, a "thing 
absolutely necessary for air in the heated state of an 



STAGj DRAG, AND FLAG. 297 

animaVs blood /^ " might have difficulties with the 
Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals ;*' 
^^ the impossibility of painting a letter on each stick ;" 
that they gave him up as a bad job, and all the 
points as Avell. He returned gracefully to his friends 
and retainers, and he and Splendour trespassed worse 
than ever. 

In 1833, Wiltshire had its first steeple- jem hiiis's 
chase, and Jem Hills won it. It had steeplechase. 
its origin in a match which Mr. Horrocks made with 
Lord Ducie after dinner at Mr. Thomas Goodlake's, 
to match himself on one of his own horses against 
the whole of his Lordship^s stud, one to the post, 
and Jem, who was then the Vale of White Horse 
huntsman, to ride. There was to be no mistake 
about it, and the conditions specified that it was to 
be " four miles straight a-head, neither to ride more 
than 100 yards along a road, every gate to be locked, 
and no fences cut." Mr. Robert Codrington, picked 
the ground from Tadpole Copse to Lyssal Hill, near 
Eyworth, all over the Water Eaton Vale, with bul- 
finches, gates, and two brooks to boot. The only guide- 
posts were a flag in the Cold Harbour Road, and another 
on Lyssal Hill, and they were to get to them as they 
could. The adventurous pair met in scarlet coats 
and caps at Cold Harbour, Jem with five horses, and 
a goodly allowance of shot to make up the thirteen 
stone. As soon as they had been taken up to the 
top of the brow, and learnt the line, Jem knew that it 
was the " old chesnut mare^s" day. The history of 
that steeple-chase is one of Jem^s finest bits of re- 
citative, and we heard it last November to peculiar 
advantage, when he was warmed to his work by 
the deep sympathy he had just received from the party 
on the grubbing up of Lyneham Gorse. Sometimes^ 
in his energy he fairly walked away from our pencih 

" The first fence," he alwavs begins, 

*^ The start 

" was a double post and rails. We both 



298 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

stood and looked at it. You see I wanted to find 
out whether heM take his own line or follow me. I 
saidj " This wonH do. Come, you have it first P He 
said, ^^No I if yuu canH have i't, I canH^ We might 
have been there ail day, so I turned the old mare^s 
head and popped in and popped out. He followed, 
and came over very prettily. The next was a great 
bulfinch, with a ditch ; Vv'e got over that. I said, 
'^ Mind your next fence, ive must both faW (we chat- 
ted all the way.) It was a stiff fence — post and rail — 
hedge and bank to clear. When we were coming to 
it, he said, ^' Don't let zis kill one another, Jem ; I 
won't ride on you if you won't ride on me." I said, 
^^ Give me plenty of room, and give him pepper." My 
mare cleared twenty-nine feet, and his horse twenty- 
nine-and-a-half. We sent them at it with such a 
swing, I never saw a man so high in the air before, 
I looked round and saw his horse^s shoes glittering 
the height of my shoulder. Then came the gate 
into the Cold Harbour road. I said, '^ Mr. Horrockg, 
which of us shall have it first V he said ^^ You do," 
and we went over it side bv side, our boots almost 
touched. Same way through the bulfinch out of the 
lane, like a bullet. 

Then we had some very small en- 

The plot thickens. ^ ^.^ i • r ixt 

closures with very big lences ; wnat i 
call creepers ; my old mare, she could go the same 
pace all the way; the country was tremendously 
deep. When I found that he intended to wait on me, 
I knew how to deal with him. Then we came into 
a dirtv lane, with a tremendous fence towards us, 
I tried the old mare at it ; it knocked her backwards 
into the ditch, but without getting a fall ; she re- 
covered herself. I said, '^ Now, Mr. Horrocks, you 
have a try." We were very friendly all the way. 
He said, " No, Jem, if your old mare can't bore a 
hole, my horse can't." So I put her at it ; I could^nt 
help myself; and I got through. Well, he attempted, 



STAG; DRAG, AND FLAG. 299 

and his horse floundered, and he nearly got off, 
and there he huuo;. I looked back for mv com- 
panion, when Vd got half-a-field a-head, and when I 
saw him. in his saddle, and coming full tilt, I eased 
my mare. We had two miles to go then. It was 
up rising ground; I kept pulling, and he kept press- 
ing till he caught me, bulfinches all the way not so 
big, we got very well over them, and came to a 
barn. 

Then there was a very large field down 
to the last brook. Lord Ducie and all the 
gentlemen were there. I was a hundred yards a- 
head, when 1 passed the barn. I knew devilish well 
that neither of our horses could jump the brook 
(you know they always laugh at me about the 
brooks.) The gentlemen kept hollering at him, 
" Now, Horrocks, come along, Jem^s heat f and 
he came down past me at the brook, as fast as his 
horse could go. Believe me, the horse jumped right 
into the brook, pitched upon his head, and turned 
with his rump on to the other side, and there he lay. 
I rode quietly down to the brook ; Lord Ducie was 
there on a fresh horse. He said, " Jem, Jem I jump 
it, the mare will bring you over, P II give you a lead,'' 
and over he went and jumped it beautifully. I pulled 
up and sat looking at Mr. Horrocks in the brook. It 
was quite a study. He was standing on the bank, 
and the bridle came off; he fell backwards^ bridle 
and all, and the horse went sideways. Lord Ducie 
was at me all the time, '' Come, come, Jem! heHl get 
out.'' " I said, " No, no, my lord ! There' s plenty of 
time." Then I saw a ditch, which led from the 
brook into the field at the opposite side. I stood as 
long as I could to let the mare get her Avind ; the 
pace had been strong all the way. When I thought 
she^d had sufficient time, I let her down very quietly, 
and waded her across the brook, to go up this ditch. 
She made a plunge or two, and I went up it twenty 



300 SCOTT AND gEBRIGHT. 

yards^ and into the field. I had still three fences to 
jump^ and a gate at the finish. My mare was so 
beat, I scrambled her on to them, and then we 
scrambled out. The gate was locked, so I crammed 
her round the gate-post between the gate and the 
hedge. She was just like my old horse Bendigo, 
jump anywhere, where he can get his head. So I 
got to the winning-post, and into the farm-house, 
and had a glass of brandy and water before he was 
out of the brook. It was the only steeple-chase I ever 
rode. I was to have ridden another the next week 
at Cheltenham, only the horse broke down, and very 
glad I was, I never care to ride another. Such is 
the defendant's account of the great Wiltshire case 
of Horrocks v. Hills, 

First stee le- ^^ ^^ ^^^ somc scvcuty ycars since the 
chase in Lei- firststeeplc-chase was runoflfinLeicester- 
cestershire. -t • rrn T i • 1 i •! 

smre. The distance was eight miles 
from Barkby Holt to the Coplow and back, and Mr. 
Charles Meynell, son of the great M. F. H., won it; 
Lord Forester was second, and Sir Gilbert Heath- 
cote last. There is very little oral tradition respect- 
ing it, except that Sir Gilbert's horse was rather fat, 
that Lord Forester was the favourite, and that Mr. 
Needham of Hungerton said to his lordship, " I'll 
save you a hundred yards, if you'll come through 
my garden, and jump the gate into the road." 

From Noseley 'Wood to the Coplow, 
ap am ec er. ^^^ ^^^ -^.^^ ^^ couutrv ou March 12th 

1829, when Clinker's bridle came off, to Tom Hey- 
cock's great discomfiture, in a fall at the second fence 
from home, and Field Nicholson won on Sir Harry 
Goodricke's Magic. Capt. Becher (who made one of 
the lot on Bantam) wasentered to harriers in his native 
Norfolk, as a copper-bottomed infant, on a pony which 
no other boy could hold. A better berth thanthe saddle 
was soon found for him in the Storekeeper's General 
Department, and at sixteen, he was one of the staff 



STAG, DRAGj AND FLAG* 301 

in charge of the field equipments to the Peninsula, 
and spent two or three years with the army of occu- 
pation. Ramsgate was his first scene of action after 
the peace, and his horse-flesh yearnings had the 
fullest scope in landing the troopers and mules, 
which " Champagne Tommy,'^ of Pimlico, had fur- 
nished by contract, and making them swim a shore 
with the guy-ropes. 

To use his own words, he " never had The paimy days 
such a lark in mv life/^ and when ^^ ^'^- ^^^^s. 
steeple-chases and hurdle-racing became all the 
fashion, under the auspices of Tommy Cole- 
man, of St. Albans, he entered on such an amphi- 
bious existence for nine or ten seasons, that quiet 
householders who read of him almost weekly for 
six months of the year, began to have grave doubts 
whether he was an otter or a man. Tommy gave 
him a mount in the first hurdle race, which was got up 
specially to please the ladies, when races were esta- 
blished at No Man^s Land. George lY., although 
within six weeks of his death, took such an interest in 
their success, that he requested Mr. Delme Radcliffe 
to enter the Colonel and Hindostan, and beat 
Tommy^s mare Bunter by a head, for the Gold Cup. 
Figurante was as simple as a young turkey, in hur- 
dle matters, and Becher's orders were to get her be- 
tween two others, so that she would find the hurdles 
(which had no stakes, and were separately fixed), 
^' the easiest place to get away.^'' Under this pilot- 
age, she jumped in such stjde, that Lord Verulam 
told her owner " that^s a deep fellow youVe got on 
your mare ; her feet were higher than our carriage 
when she went over.^^ The first St. First st. Aibans 
ADjans steeple-chase came off in that steepie-chase. 
spring of ^30. Sixteen started from Arlington church 
to the Obelisk in Wrest Park, near Silsoe; and Coleman 
so managed the line, that he could start them, and 
then by making a short cut, judge them as well. Lord 



302 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT, 

RanelagVs grey horse Little Wonder^ with Colonel 
Macdoweli up, won the stake, which was worth 
about 300 sovereigns. The Coloners orders were tO' 
watch nothing but Lord Clanricarde, who was on a 
little Irish chesnut ; and one of the Berkeleys was 
third. The rest found their way into the Park from 
all quarters ; with the exception of poor Mr. Stret- 
field on Teddy the Tiler, who had a fall in jumping 
a gate back on to a bridge after he had missed his line, 
and died in consequence. Coleman^s general idea of a 
steeple-chase was two miles out and two miles in, 
and " keeping the line quite dark.^^ Hence he con- 
cealed men in the ditches, with flags, which they 
raised on a given signal, as soon as the riders were 
ready. Other managers liked four miles straight, 
and after erecting scaffold poles, with a couple of 
sheets to finish between, they left the riders to hunt 
the country for their line, with no further dii'ections 
than " leave that church on your right, and the 
clamp on your left, and get to the hill beyond.^^ 
Tommy Cole- ^hc March of ^31 saw the St. Albans 
man's voiun- Steeplc-chase in real form: and the car- 
riages and horsemen poured in so reso- 
lutely for hours, that there was a regular block on 
the outskirts of the town, till Tommy gave the word. 
The horses came a week before, to train in Gorham- 
bury Park, and other places about, and Moonraker 
created great excitement among the inhabitants, by 
jumping the Plolloway lane in the course of an ex- 
ercise canter. Beardsworth, of Bir- 

Moonraker. ., iii lii- ,p i 

mmgham, had bought mm cut oi a water- 
cart, and sold him, with his sinews quite callosed 
from work, for ^18 to Sirdefield, who borrowed the 
crimson St. Leger jacket of the pre^dous year for 
Mr. Parker to ride him in. The bay was fully 
seventeen at the time, not fifteen three, and with 
quarters as good as his head was ugly. Coleman in 
his blue coat and kersey breeches proclaimed mar- 



STAGj DRAGj AND FLAG. 303 

tial law among the riders tliat day. They saddled 
at his bugle-call in the paddock of his Turf Inn 
(then called The Chequers), came out of the yard 
three abreast, like cavalry, and marched up the town' 
behind. If their general caught any of them peep- 
ing over the hedges, he was down on them at once, 
and declared that for a repetition of the oflPence, he 
would sentence the culprits to " run as a dead let- 
ter.^^ Mr. Delme Radcliffe was judge, and Bill Bean 
on Chunee rode with them, as umpire, and had a fall 
at a brook. The line began on the St. Alban^s side of 
Coombe Wood, leaving Haddons on the left, and 
Colney on the right ; but it was not nearly so for- 
midable as the Aylesbury or Market Harboro^ line, 
and the finish was between two trees in Coleman's 
Paddock. Moonraker beat eleven cleverly, and Wild 
Boar, with Captain Becher on him, fell close at home, 
and was bled so severely that he died next day. 

The Captain had very nearly a share 
in further bloodshed. A London law- 
yer claimed his bed after he had retired to rest, in a 
double-bedded room with his father, and as he 
stoutly refused to evacuate, the other thrust his card 
under the door, and announced himself through the 
keyhole as ripe and ready for the cofPee and pistol 
business next morning. However, Coleman reasoned 
with him, and informed him in such strict confidence, 
that the Captain had shot three men already, that 
discretion and economy proved the best part of his 
valour, and he disappeared so mysteriously from his 
sofa, in the course of the night that Coleman ^^ hunted 
the country^' in vain for his bill. Jack Elmore, who 
made an admirable chairman, had, as Lord Palmer- 
ston observes, a similar '^ invitation.^' He settled 
it very summarily, by saying that he knew no- 
thing about cards and pistols, but he understood 
punches on the head ; so it too fell to the ground, 
and as he had already put one man bodily out of a 



304 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

window of that very inn, it was perhaps well for 

society that it did. 

" The Squire" as Twcnty camc to the post the next 

steward. year, and Moonraker, with SeflPert on 
him, disposed of them once more. He and Corin- 
thian Kate jumped the last fence together, and 
Grimakli, who came in a different direction to avoid 
it, closed in with them at that point. Mr. Osbaldes- 
ton was umpire, and after lecturing them all in his 
raciest style, led the way on horseback to Ellenbrook 
Green. The troop would have been almost too 
much for Coleman that day, and, he might well 
say, '^ Do face them for me, Squire, hold up your head 
like a Colonel, and be very decisive f' and indeed he 
was. 
Griraaidi v. Moon- " The Squirc" was SO dissatisficd with 

raker. Grimaldi^s defeat, that he offered Elmore 
^50 to make a five hundred match between the two, 
over his own farm, near Harrow. The referees, ac- 
cording to the custom in those days, carried the 
stakes in bank notes, sewn up in their pockets, and 
Elmore gave a capital spread to the Marquis of 
Abercorn, Colonel Anson, and several others at 
his farm. " The Squire^^ had a very slight opinion 
of Seffert as a rider, and requested to have " a bul- 
finch to begin with, that I may shake this fellow 
off ;^^ and when some friend told him that he himself 
was in a flurry, he poured out' a glass brim full of 
sherry, and held it out as steady as a rock at arm^s 
length, to reassure his backers. There was only one 
thing, he said, Avhich he did fear, and that was being 
^^ridden against by those London dealers.^^ Plowever, 
the only clashing was between him and Moonraker, 
but Colonel Anson ruled in his favour; and the 
course, which was a very light one, and without 
brooks, suited his fast grey exactly. Water was the 
grey^s great bane, and in a race from Brixworth to 
Cottesbrook Cow Pastures, in 1833, the two brooks 



STAG^ DRAG, AND FLAG. 305 

quite brought him to grief, and men had to get into 
one of them, and hold up his head. 

Nothing daunted by this disaster, o^i^aidi and Na- 
"^^ The Squire" determined to go on with poieon. 
his thousand-aside-match against Colonel Cliarritie^s 
Napoleon, a slow half-bred horse, but a magnificent 
jumper. In the St. Albans Ste'eple-chase, Napo- 
leon had been nowhere to him : but now there were 
two brooks and the Lem to be got over. The first 
two miles of the six was on a curve, and the last four 
straight; and the line was chosen from The Wharf 
to Gibraltar Farm, with the Windmill as the great 
land-mark . The Pytcheley, of which " The Squire" 
was then master, met at Dunchurch, and a perfect 
regiment of scarlets lined the Lem side, which was 
the thirty- eighth jump, and six from the finish. 
Said " The Squire" to the Captain before the race 
{for it was especially stipulated that they were not 
to address each other while running)—" / donH like 
water, I canH swim like you,'' and when they did 
charge it, they both went in headlong. It was 
thought that Napoleon would come up no more, 
but at last Becher^s cap was seen, and then his 
horse^s ears, and the pair floated a hundred yards 
down stream, the bay " fighting like a bad swim- 
ming dog." Napoleon got a himdred yards the best 
of it on landing ; but he was fairly overhauled and 
beaten, and then a tremendous wrangle commenced. 
' An envoy was sent back to see if The Squire had 
gone on the right side of a flag, before they would 
let them weigh in the granary, and Becher was so cold 
after his bath, that he told them they might send 
another man to look up the coroner. Eventually the 
stakes were withdrawn, and after being rubbed down 
and dressed, both of them went out hunting, and 
had the Lem again. 

Bill Bean, who rode two dozen 

, , , T , Viviaaa. 

steeple-chases, and won seventeen, was 

X 



306 SCOTT AND SEBKIGHT. 

on Grimaldi in the first Aylesbury race the next No- 
vember year. The bold Field Nicholson was there, 
but so was Becher, on Vi^vian, with both his wrists 
bandag'ed. He fell over a gate, and got ducked in a 
river ; but got first past the winning flags notwith- 
standing. This grandson of Swordsman was great in the 
Yale, and as Becher said, he seemed to '''gallop open- 
mouthed over the doubles/^ Hence he was a most 
dangerous horse if he made a mistake, but he very 
seldom did. The present Lord Vivian bought him 
for £S0 from Dycer of Dublin, who had selected him 
at one of his Repository sales for the Hon. Colonel 
Westenra, M.E.H., hj whom he was, we believe, re- 
turned, as unfit to carry his men with hounds. He 
had been previously in harness, but he did^nt enjoy 
leather, and had kicked a most respectable family 
out of an Irish car. Lord Vivian rode him for one 
season and part of another, and made him a perfect 
fencer. He was so fond of his new business, that 
after gi^dng his Lordship a fall early in his first sea- 
son, he got away, and went to the end of a brilliant 
run by himself, and was one of the few, if not the 
only horse, which reached Charlton Park with the 
hounds. 

In consequence of illness, his lordship gave 
up hunting for a time, and sold Vivian to a 
clerical friend, who resold him to Captain Lamb. 
The Captain thought so lightly of his purchase,, 
that shortly afterwards when Lord Vivian had- 
gone to Leamington for his health, he pressed 
the horse on him at .£130, the same price that 
his lordship had got for him ; and the bargain only 
went ofi", because the latter declined to consent 
to his starting for the Debdale Stakes at Warwick. 
Soon after that Captain Lamb discovered the full 
truth of what Lord Vivian had told him, that the 
bay was one of the best weight-carrying hunters ever 
bred, and began to profit accordingly. His future 



STAGj DRAGj AND FLAG. 307 

^' orange cap^ and purple" ally had never seen Mm be- 
fore Mr. Osbaldeston challenged all the world with 
Cannon-ball ; and he came in fact from Market Har- 
bro^ expressly to ride Vanguard. At the eleventh 
hour^ the owner^s own son decided to take the mount, 
and Becher was put on Vivian. The horse^s coat was 
very long, and as Captain Lamb concluded that 
Becher had brought his own saddle with him, he 
was not provided with one, and there was a regular 
borrowing of a leather here, and a stirrup there, on 
the ground, to get one fitted up of the exact weight. 
The finish was up a tremendous hill, on which the 
gentlemen of three hunts assembled five hundred 
scarlets strong, and Becher by jumping a ver}^ great 
fence came up the ascent on the slant, and con-^ 
trived to keep more in his horse to finish with. 

A month after he had won at Ayles- vivian v. cock 
bury, Becher found himself once more Robm. 
putting his saddle on Vivian, to meet ^^ The Mar- 
quis" and Cock Robin from Shankton Holt to tlie 
Rams Head cover. Cock Robin and Monarch were 
two of the best hunters that ever drev»' breath in. 
Ireland ; and the defeated hero of this day, a smart 
brown, fenced so well and went so fast, that he got 
nearly three hundred yards in advance. For once 
in his life The Marquis, who was always in a hurry, 
was suddenly seized with a prudence fit, and in try- 
ing to avoid two tremendous jumps, vt^hich Becher 
was obliged to have, he got stuck in a dingle. The 
Captain savf his difficulty, and following some wheel 
ruts to the left, closed with him against the hill at 
the finish, which is quite as steep as " The Prim- 
rose." The Marquis always stood in fifty with The 
Captain, one to win, and was as good as a small 
annuity to him, as while the arrangement lasted, 
the former had only once the pull of him. On this 
occasion his lordship was rather wrath about hi& 
defeat, and said that he was " beat by the best 

X 2 



308 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

horse /^ so Beclier offered to run him back again 
and change the horses, feehng sure that Vivian 
would disagree with him before they had gone over 
four fields. 

„ . ^^ ,, , February found The Vale in its srlory. 

Fun m The Vale. , ., *■ , n .t 

and tnere were two races, one lor the 
Light and one for the Heavies, the first of which 
was set for half-past nine. Bill Bean was on Bo- 
chelle, but he made too close a shave of it between 
two trees, and was knocked out of his saddle, and 
'^ left sitting.-'^ They were close at home at the time, 
and Bill believes that, but for his accident, which 
partially lamed one leg for life, he could not have 
lost. He had not been over the ground like the other 
riders, and not knowing the exact course of the river, 
had to jump it, and a gate on a bridge as well. 
Powell on Saladin got the better of Vivian this 
time, and the Marquis on his Yellow Dwarf, 
who looked exactly like a dun coach -horse, just 
beat Mason and Grimaldi for the third place. Powell 
did not win the light race on Lauristina, though 
he distinguished himself quite as much by jump- 
ing over a treble, consisting of Grimaldi, Seffert, 
and the fence ; but the grey got up in time to be 
second to Vivian. It was a great day, and Mr. 
Davis who gave the starting signal, brought out the 
staghounds as soon as the chases were over, and 
uncarted one of his flying haviers. 

Early in the ensuiner year, Becher was 
death of Grim- again ou the snaffle-mouthed Grimaldi, 
among the brooks near Waltham Abbey. 
This time he was more unfortunate than usual, as 
he threw his rider on to some stubbs on his stomach, 
and destroyed his powers of articulate speech for 
hours, but still he contrived to steal to them and 
catch them at the last fence. 

The March of ^36 witnessed the death of this me- 
morable grey at St. Albans. He had hurt his back 



STAGj DRAG, AND FLAG. 309 

and kidneys in a grip at Uxendon a few days before, 
and Becher thought that he was dull, although he 
jumped as steadily as ever. Three hundred yards of 
deep meadow finislied him, and he was scarcely past 
the post before he reared and died. How he got 
through his work was a marvel, as his kidneys were 
proved on a post mortem to be one mass of congealed 
blood. He was a perfect fencer, and if there was a 
bit of sound ground he never missed it, but to the 
last he would never do more or less than walk into 
water, and all that the facetious Bill Bean could 
suggest as a cure was to "water him well before he 
started.'^ 

" The Marquis,^^ Lord Clanricarde, piaciow and the 
Lord Macdonald, Sir David Baird, and Leamington. 
the Hon. Mr. Villiers were all in '' the Leamington^^ 
of that year. Mr. Coke would not ride Flacrow, "be- 
cause I should be beaten long before the horse,^^ and 
Tom Hey cock, who was his deputy, was rewarded with 
a golden shield for his side-board. Vivian with 71bs. 
extra "went as if his head was on fire,^^ to the 
lane before the last field, where he fell over a faggot, 
which had been kicked out of the hedge, and could 
scarcely rise at the last fence. Flacrow had gone like 
a stumped-up horse, when he came out of the stable, 
but he soon got his legs at liberty, and Tom was 
cheered by the Marquis, when he caught him and 
passed him in the lane. " Who is Hey cock V^ said 
some Warwickshire men to Captain White. " Who 
is he ?'' replied the Captain, " Lord Heycock of 
Owston, to be sure ; a very old title.'' 

In the same spring, Vivian literallyLottery's begin- 
walked over at Worcester, where every- "^"°^- 
thing else fell, and as the walk-over included a 
flight of five feet rails done with hoop-iron, and a 
ditch of four or five yards on the other side, it is a 
mercy that he ever landed on to the Pitchcroft 
meadows at all. His new rival. Lottery, appeared at 



310 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the end of this season at Barnet yrith young Heniy 
Elmore on him^ and one of the strange, towering 
jumps at a road in Vvhich he then indulged, brought 
him over with a complete somersault. 
Fun in the Mid- St. Albaus closed its Career soon after 
lands. this, as the crowds were very unmanage- 
able, and farmers began to be rusty about lending 
their ground. To its last •celebration but one, Prince 
Paul Esterhazy gave a 100-guinea cup, in order that he 
might see one more steeple-chase before he left 
England. His highness and Coleman had it all over 
again when they met at the Hampton Court Pad- 
docks last year, and there was the Prince at 74 and 
^^ as fond of riding and horses" as when he summoned 
Mr. Anderson to present him with the cup, which 
his Splendour had won. Although the tap-root was 
dead at last, the sport blossomed every where in the 
Midlands, and there was a match or two per week in 
the Plarrow country. Vivian carried aload of penalties, 
and had Jerry and Cock Robin behind him at Dun- 
church, but he could only contrive to repeat his 
second at Leamington, vv^here he di^dded Jerry and 
Elacrow. Jerry was a tremendous horse for a 
severe race, but with his 121bs. penalty he was 
only second to Conrad soon after at Northampton, 
which furnished a line of the biggest fences and 
brooks that living man had ever ridden over, in the 
country about Wootton HilL Milton Brook was 
unusually swollen, and Mr. Payne lost a bet of ^100 
to half- a- sovereign, that all the horses did not get 
over, and only one of them fell on landing. The 
Marquis had got another of his tremendous leads 
on Yellow Dwarf, but the shoemakers fairly blocked 
him in at one of the brooks, and he had to pull his 
horse into a trot. It was not done ill-temperedly on 
this occasion, but it was a common trick of the mob 
to dictate the line, by " the pressure from without," 
and they always set their faces most decidedly against 



STAG^ DKAG, AND FLAG. 311 

skirting, if there was a good stiff place which they 
wished to see negotiated. 

Nothing more was heard of St. Albans 
after the December of this year, and ^^^^"^" ° ^^' 
Midnight appropriately closed the scene. Her pros- 
pects were, however, completely obscured, when her 
rider went to scale, as he could not draw his weight 
to half-a-pound. It was objected that the cart swayed 
about during the operation, but Bob Barker was not 
allowed to descend, and was solemnly carted in pro- 
cession to Coleman's, only to try his weight once 
more with equal ill success. Mr. Anderson got the 
stakes, with Performer, and Lottery very much out 
of form, and ridden, for the first time by the renowned 
Jem Mason, was third. Six weeks after " Elmore^s 
horse^^ beat a good field at Barnet, and then Mason 
jumped a flight of bullock rails extra with him on 
their route to the weighing place. The McDonoughs 
and Oliver came out about this time ; Cannonball, 
Charity, and Railroad were heard of in the West, 
and the Nun began to be a familiar word in War- 
wickshire. Lottery had not quite come to his form, 
and Vivian was not quite done with, and for the last 
time the great rivals met in April 1838, from Dray- 
ton Grange to Flecknoe, and the one very big fence 
settled the question in favour of the junior. 

Liverpool be^an its Great National „ . . 

i. i-l, i. 11 m Beginning of the 

m earnest the next year, and when True Liverpool Grand 
Blue and Bob Barker had done Charity ''^''"°"^- 
over the hurdles, both of them with Lottery, Seventy- 
Pour, three of " Harkaway Ferguson's," Railroad, 
Cannonball, and The Nun were among the seven- 
teen which answered the saddling-bell. Becher was 
on Conrad, and went first to get him to settle down, 
up to what was then a fence with double rails, and 
a large ditch dammed up on the off-side. The 
horse made a mistake and hit the rails, and in a 
second, the gallant Captain had ^' formed to receive 



312 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

cavalry^^ by croiicliing under the bank. As for his 
charger, he got back on the wrong side, and he lost 
him, and the place, although sadly degenerated, is 
called Becher^s brook unto this day. 
Leicestershire to The Whisscndinc was the last jump 
^'^^- that spring in the steeple- chase, which 

marked Lord Suffield^s mastership of the Quorn. 
Mr. Villiers was first on Gipsy, and as the last horse 
had to pay the second horse's stake, there was a fine 
rear finish between Sir David Baird and Lord Cran- 
stoun. Lord Desart was not satisfied at being behind 
Lord Waterford and his 600-guinea Sea, and attri- 
buted it entirely to his fall : but a match of 100 
sovereigns from Shankton Holt to Ram^s Head, that 
favourite old battle ground of Leicestershire, con- 
firmed the first event. 

Lottery's zenith Thc Nuu held hcr owu pretty well in 
and finish. i}^q Midlands, Lottery bullied every^ 
thing when he had the chance ; and when Gaylad 
did the same, and no penalties seemed to stop them, 
the handicap era gradually loomed. Lottery began 
as Chance, and was licked into fits by Fop in a mile- 
and-a-half trial ; and then he was a performer at 
Jackson^s Grounds, where The Mite and Columbine 
were heads and tails with him. He was a very 
peculiarly-made horse, short in his quarters, deep in 
his girth, but flight in his middle and back ribs ; 
with a perfect snaffle-bridle mouth, fine speed, and a 
Tcry "trap to follow/^ When others could hardly 
rise at their fences, he seemed to jump as if from a 
spring-board . His jumping muscles were first brought 
into such high play by putting him in a ring, with 
flights of rails round it, and a man in the middle to 
keep him moving, and he perfected his jumping edu- 
cation mth Mr. Anderson^s stag-hounds. After 
his mistake at the Liverpool wall, he refused the 
first fence, a post and rails five times at Faken- 
Jiam ; he showed his finest speed soon after that,, 



STAGj DRAG, AND FLAG. *313 

when he caught Seventy-Four on the post at Lea- 
mington; and he was scratched along with Jerry, 
Seventy-Four and Peter Simple in the 100 sov. 25 
forfeit steeple-chase, which was made up at Horn- 
castle Fair, and which fell to Mr. Anderson^s lot 
with his blood-like Cigar. When Peter Simple and 
Gaylad came out from Lincolnshire, his reverses be- 
gan. He was third to Peter at Boston, and was 
leading at Chelmsford when he came down in a 
ploughed field, and left Gaylad who had 141b. extra 
like himself, to win it. Fit or not fit, Mr. Elmore 
would have him out, despite all that George Docke- 
ray could say, and it was o.wing to this determination, 
that he was enabled to pay off Gaylad soon after at 
Newport Pagnell. Later in the year he was beaten 
a length in this country by Lucks All, who was rid- 
den in most daring style by Tom Goddard. He was 
giving away 291bs., and the meadows were so flooded 
that no one exactly knew where the brooks began 
and ended, and five out of the twenty were all swim- 
ming together. 

From ^35 to ^49, the Brocklesby men ^ ,,. , 

^.^^ ■, ... . -i . -, "^ Establishment of 

did the legitimate thing, and never BrockiesbyHunt 
" drooped and turned aside" either for ^^eepie-chases. 

a fence or a handicap. Their annual steeple-chase 
was for maiden horses, open to all England, and a 
victory or a good performance added so much to the 
value of their young horses, that they fetched very 
high prices at Horncastle. The Brocklesby Hunt 
Union Club was formed at Caistor in the November 
of the first named year, and it got under way very 
shortly at Bigby Slingsmere. 

Tom Brooks of Croxby was its president, William 
Bichardson and William Torr its secretary and trea- 
surer; and old Will Smith blew his horn, as the 
starting signal. Lionel Holmes won the first race on 
a mare of Mr. Hargreaves^s, and was so determined 
to lose no time after a fall, that he got on to her 



314 * SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

back when she was rising, and so to work once more. 
Flying Billy fell at the last fence but one, and lived 
to run for the Doncaster Cup against Touchstone, 
who beat him with nearly two distances in hand, to 
the infinite astonishment of " The Squire of Limber/^ 
In *36, the course was parallel to Barton Street, and 
Cannon-ball the winner jumped a sheep-fold in a 
corner as his last fence but one. A lot of men were 
sitting there to see the finish, and they " dropped 
like rooks off a rail/^ when thev found him thun- 
dering among them. Captain Becher had a mount, 
and fell clean out of Laceby into Aylesby Lordship, 
but some one lent him a fresh horse, and he got 
close up with the leaders again, and sung a tremen- 
dous song about Grimaidi that night, and '^ the stile 
at the top of the hill.^^ " Fd staj^ longer, gentle- 
men, '^ he said in conclusion, '' but a mount on 
Vivian is too good a thing to give away," and to 
Egham he departed forthwith. The Old Granby at 
Grimsby had a still more roystering party the next 
year, and George Skipworth was duly congratulated 
on coming all his length into the winning field, and 
being first after all. 

Valentine an old grey, which had been lame and 
drawn a harvest waggon, had to thank Loft^s steady 
riding for his win in ^38, against a field of twenty- 
one ; and Gaylad was nowhere to Ormsby the next 
year, and Peter Simple second. Better luck 
attended Gaylad the second time, but Peter Simple 
bad a mischance some distance from home. As 
the maiden clause had been abolished ere this, 
Gaylad went in a third time, but he only won by 
the quickness of Captain Skipworth, who saw that 
the winning- wagon had been moved, and wheeled his 
horse round so as to go on the proper side of the flag. 
The owner of Croxby by Velocipede had to refund, 
and this little affair cost the fund ^8140. One 
county never sent out two finer steeple-chase cham- 



STAG, DilAG, AND FLAG. 315 

pions than Gaylad and Peter Simple, but still neither 
of them could be said to be of the Lottery mint. 
Peter, for whom John Elmore offered seven hundred 
in vain, was a most beautiful horse to look at, and 
when he " paced he seemed fit to carry a king/'' He 
could go up to his knees in dirt ; but his mouth was 
not first-rate, and. he was far too impetuous at 
his fences. Gaylad, on the contrary, was not 
the horse to catch the eye, and had a forbidding 
head, and was rather light through his brisket. He 
went fast, and flew his brooks and fences magnifi- 
cently, but he was not particularly clever at timber. 

There is nothinsr connected with ^42, „ , , , 
except that Loft^s Creeper won, and a pie-chases i842- 
cream-coloured colt called Paul Pry was '^^' 
the first entry in the mortuary tablets of the Club ; 
and then for three years the fine, patient riding of 
Charles Nainby in the scarlet, had its reward on 
his own and his father^ s horses, the clever Crocus, 
and the two grey Tommies, Newcastle, and Northal- 
lerton. Crocuses was the last race which the second 
Earl of Yarboro^ attended. His lordship delighted 
in seeing the thing done in good orthodox style, and 
hence the riders were all solemnly taken by way of 
prelude into a deep chalk-pit, to receive their in- 
structions as to the line. Both the Tommies were 
sold for .£200 a-piece, and but for a storm which 
prevented ^° Northallerton^^ from crossing the Hum- 
ber to Beverley fair, he would have been sold for 
thirty some months before. In '46, Captain Skip- 
worth did one of his best things on the hard-pull- 
ing Dubious ; Lamplough crossed the Humber the 
next year with Salivation, and stole the race for 
the first time out of the district ; and Mr. Old- 
aker wound matters up at twice, first by winning it 
with his Jenny Lind (when Pilot, whom Lord Gard- 
ner is riding yet, ran third), and lastly b}^ a winning 
mount on K-achel. Twenty-two tried their hand 



316 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

against the hay mare in vain_, and then the silk 
jackets were laid aside, and for thirteen seasons no 
red flag has waved, to show the line to the lads of 
the Brocklesby. 

The horse world of London could boast during 
this time of two men both equally great in their 
line ; to wit, ^^ Old Tilbury" and Jack Elmore, the 
hunter dealers. The former lived to nearly eighty, 
and although he had signed no pledge, and received 
no pewter medal as a signet of his allegiance, there 
was not such a rigid tee-totaller, in the length and 
breadth of Her Majesty^s dominions. He never got 
his full credit in this respect, seeing that the smell 
of ale or spirits was quite as exhilarating in its effect 
upon him, as if he had been in the Docks, and then 
he could be handicapped to give weight to most men 
in a story. In later life, he was generally black and 
all black in his attire, save and except his white 
neck-tie ; and to the last his whole talk was of horses. 
Mr. Tilbury the The convcntional pun upon the first 
dealer. syllable of tlic word had peculiar signi- 
ficance in his case, as, barring a little water when he 
could get nothing else, tea was the only fluid that 
ever passed his lips. He was always very neat in 
his dress, but short, and of the heavy-sternius build ; 
and it was this peculiarity which used to call forth 
some funny remarks from " The Squire,^^ when they 
were going from covert to covert, in those merry 
days when the two Georges, equally great in their 
line, ruled at Windsor and Quorn. 

His class of Hc was ncvcr much of a rider across 
horses. couutry, and perhaps not a first-class 
judge of a horse. As a general thing he seemed to 
go for horses of a certain power and substance, 
which would either frame into hunters or machiners, 
or as he used to put it, '^ if there was not one there 
was the other. ^^ When he first began, he had a little 
wheel- wright^s shop in Bryanston-street, Edgeware- 



STAG, DRATG, AND FLAG. 317 

road, and let out buggy horses. From this humble 
• spot, he went on to South-street, the scene of his fine 
tilbury trade, and rising at last into all his glory in 
Mount-street, began to let out hunters, and took a 
farm at Elstree, three miles beyond Edgeware. After 
that, he took 200 acres at the Dove House, Pinner, 
which afi'orded plenty of exercise and larking ground, 
of which his aid-de-camps, Newcome and Jim Ma- 
son (whom Bill Bean claims to have led over his first 
flight of park palings), and Jim Payne availed them- 
selves to the full. Mat Milton, who was wont to 
say, that if he did lose his horse in the hunting- 
field, he could always ^^ pay five or six stout fellows 
and run him down,'' was then at the head of the 
crack hunter business in Piccadilly ; but Tilbury^s 
stud, many of which were purchased from the El- 
mores, was never under seventy. He would let them 
by the day or the season, and Count Matuschevitz 
and Mr. Harvey Combe opened very paying 
accounts with him. In fact, many of his sixty-pound 
horses would earn their fifty guineas per season, and 
if any accident happened, he had always another 
ready to send down. They were picketted out every- 
where, all over the Midlands, but principally at Mel- 
ton and Northampton ; and he would ride enormous 
distances, week after week, looking them up and 
making arrangements about proxies. 

He also did a little in the steeple-chase line, with 
his Culverthorpe, Prospero, and Tomboy, when 
Vivian, Cigar, and Lottery had brought up matters to 
a white heat ; but he left off* on the wrong side, both in 
this and his hunter deahng. The latter sadly dwindled 
a, few years before his death in 1860. Mount-street, 
and a few common stamp horses still remained^ with 
a small farm at Thatch End, adjoining the Pinner 
acres of his more glorious days, but the younger 
generation knew him not, and went elsewhere for 
their hunters. 



318 



SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 



On the box it might truly be said of him that 

" Difficulties prove a soul legitimately great." 

As a four-in-hand whip he had no 

His coachmanship. i-i , • i.t-tti, 

particular pretensions ; but his delight 
was to have two raw young things in a break or a 
curricle,, and drive them in and out of places, and 
along thoroughfares, which hardly any coachman 
with the most metallic nerves would have dared to 
essay. " Such hands/^ — as a good Vt^hip once said to 
us — ^^ never let them begin kicking ; knew just when 
to stop them to a yard.'' If a young horse would 
not go on, he would sit as calm as a Mohawk Chief, 
biding his time. To take his tilbury into a fields 
and turn it neatly over, and step out of it, with- 
out the horse falling, was another sleight-of- 
hand diversion with the ribbons, to which he was 
peculiarly partial. He had all the quiet man- 
ner of the old school, and was verv full of anec- 
dotes, which of course grew on as his life-shadows 
lengthened, till one or two of thei^i became per- 
fect sea-serpents. To the last he was faithful 

The two French- ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^* *^® }^^ foreigners, 
men and the who hired liorscs from him to meet Her 

Three Pigeons, jyf^jgg^,^.^ ^^ cc rJ^^^ rpj^^^^g Magpics" OU 

Hounslow Heath. Their horses were so beaten when 
they left ofiP near Bed Hill, that they were obliged 
to leave them, and get a post-chaise. Then came 
the difficulty, which Mr. Tilbury told with appro- 
priate action and streaming eyes. They had for- 
gotten the name of the inn where they had left their 
hacks, and they only knew that it had to do with a 
bird. *' Drive us to the Pigons, '' they said, 
" de birds of colour ; you do know — de black 
and white Pigons, '' till they had utterly be- 
mldered and exasperated their post-boy, and 
were only helped out of the dilemma by a friendly 
scarlet. 



STAG, DRAG, AND PLAG. 319 

William Elmore, the father of the 
three brothers^ George, John, and Adam, 
settled in Hampshh*e, and came up to town only 
once a week latterly. He was a very big man, so much 
so that he used to tell a story of a countryman, who 
could not be persuaded to tell him and his fat friend 
which way the hounds had gone. ^' You don't want 
the hounds,'' he said, forking the dung into his cart 
all the time, with the most provoking coolness, ^^ you'd 
better both send your guts on by the waggon afore you, 
go after them'' Upon the subject of dressing, he 
was particular and sensitive, and equally so upon 
having a beef-steak pudding always ready for him 
on his return from hunting. Once when he did not 
appear till twelve o^ clock, it had been disposed of in 
the household supper, but his peremptory orders 
from that day forth were, to this effect, "i/' I'm 
away fov a week, never take the pudding out of 
the pot !'' 

The Eimores as His SOU Johu was like him, rather a 
hunter dealers, j^q^ vivant, and inherited many more of 
his ways. George, the elder brother, and the master 
of the concern, was a quiet man, and hated steeple- 
chasing, but left his brothers to do pretty much as 
they liked. He simply said that the more they 
spent, the less there would be for them at his death. 
John was a better driver, but not such a good rider 
as Adam, who had wonderfully fine " show hands,^^ 
and an imposing figure on a horse. Still he was not 
equal as a salesman to his brother, but quite the 
best buyer, so that their special talents blended ex- 
actly, and for many years they had quite a first-class 
business. Their head man. Old John Haynes, with 
his bent leg and top-boots, went hopping about to 
all the country fairs, and knew every likely farmer 
and breeder in the Midlands. He also took Wor- 
cestershire and Shropshire in his rounds, with all 
the sagacity of a truffle hunter; and never seemed 



320 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

to think that his masters could purchase enough. It 
was no argument in his eyes that the cheque-book 
could stand no more. In those days, before the rail, 
George Odell, Catlin, Sam Wilson, and the Drages 
used to buy up young horses in Yorkshire, and place 
them out with the Northamptonshire and Leicester- 
shire farmers, for a year or two to be got handy, and 
it was on these fives and sixes, that the Elmores 
pounced at the Midland county fairs. Now, they 
are bought in Yorkshire as threes and fours, and 
railed up at once ; and all the grand middle educa- 
tion is lost. The firm removed from Duke- 
street, Manchester- square, to John-street, Edge- 
ware-road, and after George's death in 1845, 
Adam stayed on there, and kept on the foreign 
trade, while John exchanged Neasdon for Uxendon, 
which he soon fitted up with a steeple-chase course, 
and cared very little more about business. 
John Elmore at I^ ^^^ ^i^yday, hc was fully sixteen 
home. stone; but a slow consumption had 

gradually worn him down to about nine-stone-eight; 
and those friends who remembered so well his once 
florid and portly presence, hardly knew him again 
towards the close. He once farmed nearly a thou- 
sand acres, but latterly he held only one farm of 
about half that amount. As a judge of horses, and 
steeple-chasers in particular^ he had no superior. 
A clever pony he dearly loved ; and even the rough, 
hairy-heeled ones, which he did his farming on, had 
a character peculiarly their own. One of them 
would get over a fence, and regularly wait for him 
to follow and seize it by the tail, so as to be dragged 
up the bank on the " off-side.'^ Like many of the 
old school, he was also right fond of a bit of cock- 
ing, and fought many a quiet " in-go^' during the 
London season. 
John Elmore's He was the best of companions, and 
stories. ^i^]i some good story to tell of every 



STAG^ DRAGj AND FLAG. 321 

horse or sporting man that could be named. One 
of Carlin the steeple-chase jockey especially delighted 
him. " Where have you been to V^ he said when- 
that worthy did not arrive till some minutes after 
the ruck. " Been to, Mr. Elmore?'' was the reply; 
'^ I had a fall, and a fellow called me an old brick- 
maker , and asked me ivhere I was taking all the clay 
away to with me ; so I stopped and had a fight 
ivith him, and so would you'' Carlin was equally 
ready to account for his absence on another occasion. 
" You told me," said he, " to leave it all to the horse, 
and I trusted to his honour, and he imt me down — 
that's a pretty thing, '^ One about Bob ^ * * >!< ^ * 
pleased him still more. Bob had sat up too late 
with his friends, after ordering himself called early 
next morning, and before putting him to bed 
they had amused themselves with shaving his 
head. Not being very particular in his toilet, he 
never got a view of himself till he came to break- 
fast, opposite the pier-glass in the coffee-room. 
He had the presence of mind to grasp the bell- 
handle and summon the waiter. " Waiter, " he 
said, '^ Where's that fool of a boots ? he's gone 
and called the bald-headed old gentleman in the 
next room; and he^ s never called Bob "^ * * * * jJ« at 
all \" This story has been told in a variety of 
ways, but Bob was, we believe, the great original 
of it. 

It was always " m.y dear boy,'' when sta.?-hound 
John Elmore Y»^anted to impress an diplomacy. 
opinion on you; and to disbelieve him seemed 
treason. It was said of an eminent manager, that 
he had a voice which could lure a bird from a tree ; 
and, as a friend of John Elmore's once said to us, 
"7/" John had done me out of ten thousand, I coukVnt 
have found it in my heart to blame him." The far- 
mers, during the time he kept his stag-hounds, would 
occasionally arrive at the farm, boiling over with a 

Y 



322 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

sense of injury to their crops; but the interview 
generally ended in their stopping to make an even- 
ing of it j and then assuring him^ at partings that 
they would take it as a personal insult if he 
did not continue to pursue the very same line 
of conduct they had come to protest against. 
He was a great favourite with them, and was, 
in fact, almost free to hunt his stags for miles 
round Harrow without being harassed with trespass 
notices. 

" The stag-hounds'^ were half-blood and half-fox- 
hound,, and perfectly indifferent as to whether they 
had deer or hare in front of them ; and he took to 
them the season after Mr. Anderson gave up his. 
He seldom kept more than half-a-dozen, and a brace 
and a-half of stags ; but they went at it the moment 
the hay was off the ground, and would often be seen 
tolling along through crops of standing beans. He 
was a good horseman, but very excitable in a run ; 
and the time to see him go best was when he turned 
out his second deer for a lark after luncheon. 
None went better with Mr. De Burgh^s ; and occa- 
sionally he would have a day with the Queen's, or 
change to fox Avith the Old Surrey and Lord 
Dacre's, and then spend a month at a time in Hamp- 
shire. His last hunter was Paddy, a very excellent 
horse under his weight, but a great savage in the 
stable. 

Some years ago, when he had quite ceased to take 
a fence, he would go wonderfully on his fourteen- 
hand ponies, always the very best of their kind, 
whenever The Queen's came into the Harrow and 
Barnet country, and dash down lanes, however rough, 
with an energy which the most inveterate road-pro- 
fessors could only envy, and not dare to imitate in 
its integrity. If any of his horses had a thorn, he 
did'nt care how big the leg got ; but he sent them 
hunting, to make it suppurate and come out. 



STAGj DRAG, AND PLA6. 323 

Nothing pleased him better than to set five or 
six of his friends larking as they rode back from 
hunting by the side of the road, and to halloo 
at them all the way. Those were days, when 
he was in full health : but for the last few vears one 
lung had entirely gone. When he wanted his horses 
trained, he would invariably put his stable lads on 
them in red spencers, and watch them while they 
jumped everything before them with hounds ; and 
it was thus that The British Yeoman '^'got into a fine 
practice.''^ 

Grimaldi, Lottery, Jerry, Gay lad. Larking with 
The Weaver, Sam Weller, and British lottery. 
Yeoman bore the ^^blue and black cap,^' in 
turn ; but Lottery w^s the only one he cared 
to talk much about. His friends used to laugh 
at this " Horncastle horse, ^' who was lamed with 
larking the day he got him, but he always said, 
" You may laugh — youUl see it come out ;" and 
well was his patience rewarded. When the horse 
had ceased to defy creation with Jem Mason under 
thirteen-stone-seven, if ever a friend went down 
for an afternoon, with ^' Jack '' to Uxendon, he 
would order him to be saddled. " Hang it F' he 
would say, " have you never been on the old horse ? — 
get up F' and be the ground ever so hard, or the 
fences ever so blind, he would insist on their back- 
ing him, one after the other, if there were half-a- 
dozen of them. He would turn him over anything; 
and occasionally it would be the iron hurdles be- 
tween the garden and the paddock, or, for lack of a 
handier fence, he would put the rustic garden-chairs 
together. 

He was in his sixty-sixth year when he 
died j and with him and " The Marquis^^ — the two 
original props — professional and amateur — of the 
steeple-chase have gone from amongst us. In these 
poor-spirited days, when too many owners think " the 

Y 3 



324 



SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 



grasshopper a burden^^ in the shape of lOst. 71b., 
and rope away till they can blind the handicapper 
into a stone less, we may well wish for a par- 
ticle of the spirit which brought the Uxendon and 
Curraghmore blues into "the tented field/^ and 
made even St. Albans a place of real spirit and 
renown. 







A.I. 1861 



Mr. Masters, p. 325 . 



325 



©L^^^TH^ ^= 



I nii n 



" And Alvanley, too, sliall Meltonia forget thee, 

Oh ! never while wit and wine have a charm ; 
Thou, too, wilt return, blithe as ever we met thee, 

And with joke, fun, and glee still old Sorrov/ disarm ; 
And Chestertield too, and our honoured De Wilton, 

With Plymouth and Stanley shall come in their train ; 
And the Lord of the Chase and the Monarch of Melton 

Shall be Harry of Eibstone — Success to his reign !" 

ou should go and see my old friend visit to joe 
Joe Hewitt/' said an M, F. H. to Hewitt. 
us, " I hear he^s been giving them a capital lecture 
on foxhunting at Mexborough." The advice was 
too good to be lost, so away we strode from Doncaster 
on a January afternoon, down the short cut through 
that hazel cover, under the Conisboro' cliff, past 
the British School, whose rafters, on the testimony of 
the villagers, had rung again on that memorable night 
when Joe found his fox therein, and killed, after a 
brilliant burst of iive-and-thirty minutes, from 
" The Platform Wood,'' and on to the lecturer^s lair. 
He was full forty when he went to hunt Sir Jacob 
Astley's staghounds, in Norfolk, and that is more 
than forty seasons ago ; but age has told but little 
on his tall, active frame. The walls of his snug little 
home reflect the triple phases of his hunting life. 
Two stags' heads hang in the ante-chamber; Joe 
himself is on Paddy, with the Badsworth Watchman^ 
and Ranter, Cottager, and Glider from Lord Scarbo- 
rough's at his side; and a stout man, in a bufl' waist- 



326 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

coat_, with, gaitersj and a dog-whip, is neither more 
nor less than the Mr. Frank Fawkes, of his harrier 
days. 

Service under Mr. I^ "^^S jUSt 5 tO 1 On JoC in Ms gOOd 

Frank Fawkes. master's mind, and he was butler, groom, 
gamekeeper, valet, and huntsman to him. They 
had not many horses between them; but still the 
stable cleared .£500 in seven years. Scarlet was the 
livery of the liunt, and they used the privilege to the 
full, by never whipping off if they crossed the line of a 
fox. They gave one such a dusting from Hickleton 
Spinneys, that Lord Darlington expressed a lively be- 
lief to Joe, ihat '^you'll come into my dining-room, at 
Bilham, next'' And Joe did arrive there shortly 
after. His lordship had run a fox to ground at 
Barnboro' Grange, and asked Joe to dig him out 
and bring him to Bilham. Late in the evening, 
Joe was duly announced, with " Charley '^ in 
a sack, and after showing his prisoner to the 
Duchess and the family, dismissed him from the 
front door to his old head of earths. Colonel 
Mellish cared quite as much, if not more, for the 
harriers than the Darlington and the Rufford ; and 
mounted on the brown Lancaster, he kept the field 
alive. And so for seven seasons " Joe'^ used to make 
the hares tender on Mexboro' side, with old Master 
Franky's harriers, and " prepare them for the spit 
by the inflammatory process of an hour^s run, with a 
ten minutes burst at the finish.'^ 

Joe stag-hunting Two ycars aftCT this merry little pack 
in Norfolk, .^^g g^ygjj^ ^p (j^ conscqucnce of Mr. 

Fawkes's death in ^18), Joe departed to Sir Jacob 
Astley's staghounds, with Bill Turpin and Jim Shirley 
as his whips, and half the country came to see his 
first day. The stag took at once to a creek, and 
Joe's jump over it on Paddy, eight yards, and rotten 
banks on both sides, " put him right in Norfolk.-" 
Still they never expected to behold him again. He 



HORN AND HOUND. 327 

wound his way over quicksands^ where horse and 
rider had never ventured before, on the beach be- 
tween Morston and Weils, and only just got back 
with his hounds when he had seen the deer picked 
up by a boat, before the creek filled again. In 
token of his jump, and his restoration to them, after 
their terrible suspense, the field filled his pockets 
mth silver, till he could hardly button his coat. 
Mr. Coke went specially to see the place, and intro- 
duced Joe to the Duke of Sussex and Sir Francis 
Burdett at the next Holkham sheep-shearing, with 
^^ There's a fellow who's clone such a thing as has 
never been done in this county before.'' 

After a couple of seasons Sir Jacob Foxhunting 
turned to fox-hunting and did it well for ^" Norfolk. 
ten seasons, four days a week. The Burrow Kennels 
soon had seventy couple in them, and a hundred and 
fifty foxes were got together, in paddocks near Mel- 
ton Constable, and kept there for four months. 
Mr. Coke was very friendly, and told Sir Jacob to 
quarter any quantity he liked on Holkham, so they 
took him at his word, and turned down ten brace at 
his front door. Still well disposed as the great land- 
lord might be, they were '' taken care oi" by some 
one, and scarcely two brace were ever hallooed away 
again. 

The steward at Gawdy Hall, which is a new ught on 
just on the Sufi'olk border, was well dis- fox-hunting. 
posed ; but had only been entered to pheasant and 
rabbits. Trusting to his natural instincts, the first time 
Sir Jacob met there, he rode furiously down the road 
the moment he espied Joe and the hounds, and called 
out, " You're too late, huntsman, I've got all my men 
together to beat the cover, aud we've found such a 
beautiful fox." He seemed to feel that he had acted 
so prudently, and so strictly with a view to sport, 
that as there was no help for it, Joe swallowed his 
feelings, and did not care to undeceive him, but 



328 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

simply inquired the line. It seemed a nice one over 
grass to a wood, and there was comfort in the hope 
that the fox might wait there. Sir Jacob and the 
officers from the Norwich barracks did not dwell much 
at breakfast after the startling news of that morn- 
ing, and they were soon out of the Hall, and into the 
saddle. Luck was on their side ; one or two hounds 
feathered, and spoke to their fox when Joe held 
them on the line; they dressed him for five-and-twenty 
minutes in the wood, and ran into him over a fine 
open country almost without a check. 
Fox-hunting lee- Still, cvcn this anccdotc of the dark 
t"^"^- ages of Norfolk did not satisfy us. We 
had come specially to hear the lecture, and as we 
had been duly told that he had " a most humour- 
some voice in drawing covers,^^ we persevered till the 
horn came down. When the lecture did begin, and 
Joe was finding and then breaking up his fox, we 
sat aghast at the pent-up volume of sound, the per- 
fect cave of CEolus, whose blasts we had let loose on 
that quiet street, and hardly dared to calculate the 
efifect upon " rurals^^ and passers-by. Clogs seemed 
to come with measured steps as far as the garden- 
gate, and then become suddenly spell-bound. 
Joe^s own head was his manuscript, and always has. 
been, and a mere skeleton abstract was the only re- 
sult of our pencil attempts to follow him. 

" If I had a piano,^'' he said, " I could make a 
devilish good run of it, and give plenty of music to 
it ; the piano should do the hounds. I begin with 
a single hound, then two, and so keep increasing, 
That^s " The try'" we don^t find ; then we try another 
cover. Yooi iUj yoicks, yoicks! Push him up I one 
hound speaks. In that case, I should give the piano 
a single tap. I shoiild then call, if it was a hound 
we could depend upon. Hark ! hark ! to such an 
one ; if it still continues, and there's a fox on foot. 
Hark ! hark ! to Watchman ! Hark ! There I 



HORN AND HOUND. 329 

want the piano for the body of the hounds. Hark ! 
Get together ! Push him up ! Hooi ! that puts their 
mettle up. 

There's a view halloo [and indeed it was 
one^ more clogs seemed to be arrested in their 
course, and we heard voices] — this is just the way, 
only shorter, that I gave it them in the British 
School; if there's a view halloo, then comes Gone- 
away ! Hark forard ! Now, you must begin with 
the piano, it should make the hounds ; now I carry 
a great head. Bless you,^ gentlemen ! Hold hard I 
Yoi Gaurt ! Come back I You see the hard riders 
have pressed the hounds too much, and theyVe over- 
run the line ; as soon as you see your dashing hounds 
taking the lead, and your best hounds slackening you 
may depend on it things are not all right. El-loo 
back ! 

Noiv, gentlemen, do hold hard! You try back, and 
generally make it out if well up ; Yokes ! there^s a 
chirrup; now I want the piano; there's another 
chirrup ; I want two strokes ; the whole body are 
sensible of it. Have at ^em, my little felloivs ! what's 
leading ? I say Hark to Ranter, or such an one ; 
then the whips and the piano go to work, and I carry 
a great head till we kill. We're in a wheat field 
now. Bless you,, gentlemen, do keep furrows I Now 
we view — thaVs a Dead Halloo; [and thankful indeed 
we were that the whole village did not turn out at 
the summons] . I get the fox, and keep him up, 
hollering to get stragglers together. Then I told 
them about Madcap ; she was keen, she jumped up 
and got hold of my ear ; don't you see the mark ? 
you can feel a little knob there ; I could have kissed 
her to see her so anxious. That's the way the lec- 
ture goes on, I can draw it out any length that's 
desirable. I gave them another lecture about my 

* According to tlie accounts in the Old Sporting Magazine, a more 
courteous huntsman never blew up a horn or a man. 



330 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

visit to Raby Castle. I saw tlie Duke ; his Grace 
remembered that fox and sack business at Bilham, 
though I had'nt seen him for fifty two years.^^ 

So much for Mexboro^ and its cheery lecturer ! 
Fox-hunting Thc closiug and opening decades of 

1790-1810. ^]jg ^^YQ centuries found hunting sound 
to the core. Meynell was " King of Quorn.^^ Tom. 
Oldaker, of " Huntsman's Hall/' in his yello\y plush 
coat almost to his ankles, woke up the beech woods 
of Chilton and the wild ridings of Easthamstead, 
with the three sharp bugle notes, which told that he 
had gone away, and the still more tuneful La Mort. 
The lady of Hatfield was first in the field, and last 
at the ball. Mr. Coke's hounds hovered between 
Castle Hedingham, Holkham, and Epping. The 
Duke of Grafton's dwarf pack were busy in Salcey 
Eorest and the vast Whittlebury woodlands. Dick 
Knight^s cheer was heard in Sywell Wood, and 
foxes were dying an honourable death of old age in 
Bedford Purlieus, despite all the talent of Will 
Dean. Petworth, Woburn, Brocklesby, and Belvoir, 
had each a family pack ; and Cheshire mourned for 
its Bluecap, to -which it subsequently erected an 
obehsk. Tom Grant was getting up and down the 
hills of Sussex like a flash on his chamois-footed 
steeds. Mr. Chute took everything that was too 
small for Tom, and kept up the glories of The 
Vine, which " The Iron Duke " nurtured so well in 
after years, and three times saved from grief. Lord 
Stawell was in the Holt Forest country, and Mr. 
St. John gradually changed back from hare to fox. 
Mr. Poyntz looked upon the killing of a May fox 
and a dance round the May-pole, when the Prince 
was at Albury Grange, as two vital points before he 
returned to Cowdray. The hounds and Tom Crane 
were always kept on the right of the line, when- 
ever the army changed quarters in the Penin- 
sula; and later still with Burdett, Whitbread, 



HORN AND HOUND. 331 

Canning, and E/Omilly, as tlie line-hunters in St, 
Stephens. 

" The sport of all sport was reserved for the day, 
When out of a bag they turned Lord Castlereagh.'* 

The Earl of Darlington was long the TheiateEariof 
Nimrod of the North, '' with his chin Darlington. 
sticking out, and his cap on one ear. Many of 
the old hands slill speak of him as always having 
his finger in his ear, or his cap in his hand, and 
consider that his hunting was conducted on no 
especial system. ^^ He was all for riding, and 
four couple of hounds in front, and the rest 
coming as they could was the general order of 
things.-'^ The stud, which was headed by the grey 
Ralph, whose skin still covers an arm chair at Raby, 
was first-rate, and worthy of their master. His Lord- 
ship came into the Badsworth country each spring 
and autumn for six weeks at a time, and as he 
had finished his own cub -hunting before the autumn 
visit his hounds, which had been well blooded, pulled 
down the foxes wholesale. 

Squire Draper of Beswick and King's 
Huntsman for the East-Eiding, has stiU. "*^"^^^ ^^^^^' 
a strong traditional fame in Yorkshire. Foxes were 
destroying the lambs to a great extent in 1726, 
when he began his operations, and Sir Mark Con- 
stable was one of his chief supporters. He had 
only j6700 a year wherewith to keep up his old Hall, 
and was blessed with three daughters and eleven 
sons. Kickshaws he eschewed, and once a month 
he killed an ox for roasting and salting. " All the 
brushes in Christendom" was his chosen toast, after 
he had drunk " King and Constitution," and a 
leathern girdle round his drab coat and a rusty 
velvet cap were his royal insignia of office. The 
general eftect could not have been impressive, as a 
tailor who had come over from York to measure the 



332 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Miss Drapers for new liimting-liabits^ did not guess 
him at his front-door, and he most rigidly exacted 
two-pence for holding the horse. On another occa- 
sion when one of the same order came over equipped 
for riding, and said that he had left his horse else- 
where, he insisted on accompanying him to it, and 
made him confess at the end of a two or three miles 
walk, that his boots and whip were a pious fraud. 
He was a little caustic in his humour, and considered 
from what he had seen in his visit to the metropolis 
that ^^ a Yorkshire haft^^ could at least hold its own. 
The drains of Hoiderness also suggest how he de- 
clined to assist a sufferer, on the short ground that 
he was a " whipper-in, and not a whipper-out.^^ His 
daughter Diana, a regular " Di Vernon^^ in her way, 
had a rare voice and eye to hounds, but died after 
many perils in her virgin bed, at a good old age 
at York, and she is buried with him at Market 
Weighton. 
The Yorkshire Ash, " thc wced of the Wolds,^^ had 
Wolds. 52ot begun to flourish in the old man^s 
time. Beyond a few solitary elms and beeches, and 
an occasional belt of firs, there was hardly a tree to 
be seen on his vast hunting grounds of hill, valley, 
and morass. Except roimd the village garths, there 
was not a gate between Market- Weighton and 
Beverley. The Wolds wera covered with ling, to 
which the bee-wives carried their swarms in order to 
reflect its perfume and dark colour in the honey ; 
but there was not cover enough for ten miles round 
Sledmere, to hide a goose, much less a travelling 
fox. The land was worth two-and-sixpence an 
acre, and had hard work to pay that. Barley 
for future *' Haver Cake Lads" was its only 
white crop, and big-boned, and flat-sided black 
and whites very faintly fore-shadowed the era of 
" The Driffield Cow, ^' which was almost as won- 
derful in its generation as the guinea-hen which 



HORN AND HO¥ND. 333 

hunted running and flying with the Castle Howard 
hounds. 

The title deeds of the Middleton hunt 

T.ii T 1 n,r\ T The Wold hunts. 

date back nearly 100 years,, and seven 
separate masters, and a triumvirate consisting of 
Earl Carlisle, Lord Middleton, and Mr. Crompton 
owned them till Sir Mark Sykes purchased them 
from the first Lord Feversham in 1804, and hunted 
them for two seasons at his own expense. The coats 
of the club had light blue collars with a silver fox, 
and " Sykes, Goneaway !^^ on the buttons ; and Sir 
Mark mounted his men on Camilluses and Scri- 
vington^s, many of his own breeding. The hounds 
were valued at 300 gs., when Mr. Watt and Mr. 
Digby Legard formed a second triumvirate with Sir 
Mark, and after a Middleton interregnum. Sir Tat- 
ton took them in 1811, and held them with only a 
two-season break for two-and-forty years. Old Will 
Carter and his son Tom Carter were huntsman and 
first whip, and as Mr. Bethell and his successor had 
given up Holderness, Sir Tatton^s country extended 
from Coxwold to Spurn Point. They always hun- 
ted on the AVednesday in the York country ; and 
Sir Tatton (who was laying in a hunter stud from 
four Camillus mares), used to leave Sledmere in the 
dark, get on his hunter at Eddlethorpe, and often 
ride forty miles home. 

Every March and November Sir 
Tatton went to the Brandsburton ® ^ ®^ ^^"" ^• 
Kennels to work the Holderness side, which he 
held for four seasons, till the present Holderness 
Hunt was established, and Martin Hawke and 
George Osbaldeston, who then lived at Hutton 
Bushell, were the very life of the Hunt Club at 
Beverley. The election spirit, which ran so high in 
those days, did not penetrate within the walls of The 
Tiger. It made no matter to the Club, that a hare 
with a blue ribbon and ^^No Popery^^ round its neck 



334 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

was sent to every one of the plumpers on one side ; 
or that a fair electioneerer, who had expressed a wish 
to be a man for a moment_, that she might pull a 
rubicund opponent's nose^ received as her answer_, 
" You are welcome to do so, Mam, but it will burn 
your fingers P' The young " Squire" was fresh from 
Brasenose, and if some clever cork-cutters had not 
lived near the bridge at York^ and by their joint 
efforts promptly put in his neck after a tumble,, that 
greatest and most versatile of all sporting careers 
would have been quenched very early. 

Bad th '^ season under Mr. Musters and two 
under Sir Bellingham Graham, brings 
the Badsworth up to the era of Mr. " Tom Hodg- 
son/' about 1817. Sir Bellingham left him twelve 
couple of hounds and three horses as a nest egg, and 
he purchased several couple of hounds from the 
Duke of Leeds, and kept the pack at Thorpe. Will 
Engagement of Dauby had bccu withtlic Badsworth dur- 
wiiiDanby. |jjg ^^j,j^ q^ -^/[y Hodgsou's mastcrship, 

and Jack Richards, Mr. Petre's huntsman, was so sure 
that he was just the man to work Holderness, that he 
wrote him to go over to Snydale, and apply for the 
place. Will was then with some harriers near Hali- 
fax, and on the first non-hunting day he set off at 
three a.m. in his top-boots, and at nine he stood 
before Mr. Hodgson. The energy of the man de- 
lighted him, and when he heard Will declare that 
'' the distance mattered nowt, it was a bargain at a 
guinea a week/' and Will walked back again the two- 
and-twenty miles, but '^ with a much lighter heart," 
to give his week's notice. 

Waifs and strays To get the houuds togctlicr was the 
for Holderness. j^g^^ objcct. Beforc hls draft was ready, 

Mr. Foljambe sent to say, " I know you'll take waifs 
and strays, so you're welcome to a young hound which 
has come to my kennel." It was duly sent in the boot 
of the coach and lost, and yet, utterly strange as it 







^^"^ ' /^^>^^^^ 







t=>^ 



Old Days in Holdemess, p. 335- 



HORN AND HOUND. 335 

was to the country, it came straight to Snydale, and 
was called Sensible in consequence. Young Will 
Carter happened to see it, and the moment his 
memory was confirmed by the earmark, he chai- 
lenged it as " Sister to our Driver.^^ Still he 
begged Mr. Hodgson to tell his brother Tom 
nothing about it, as he has '^ far more than he can 
work/^ E-anter and Rosebud were all that Tom 
could spare in addition; but Sir William Gerard, Mr. 
Foljambe, and The Badsworth sent in some fourteen 
or fifteen couple. Ranter was rather undersized, but 
a rare hound ; and although Badsworth Reginald 
could hardly crawl into Holderness, from kennel 
lameness, and was nearly hung on the road, he 
gradually worked himself sound. 

In his time, Mr. Hodgson has built ^^^^^^ buUdin 
six kennels, and the lady pack of twenty 
couple which ho- sold to Lord Ducie for 1,000 gs. at 
his Quorn sale, were kennelled for a whole summer 
in a transmuted hovel at Snydale. It does not look 
worth as many pence, and has since then been the 
birth-place of Prologue and Virgilius, and the shel- 
ter of the old grey hunting mare Twilight. The 
last kennel he had a hand in was at Whiston, near 
Rotherham, in conjunction with Sir George Sitwell, 
who was " Master of the horse.^^ Mr. Foljambe gave 
up part of his country to him; but Lord Scarbo- 
rough took the whole, and bought the pack from 
Mr. Hodgson when the veteran became the West 
Riding Registrar of Deeds at the end of his second 
season after leaving the Quorn country. 

During Mr. Hodgson^s sixteen sea- Life in Hower- 
sons in Holderness, the hounds changed °®*®' 
their kennels three times. Their first was at the 
Rose and Crown, Beverley, and then they were re- 
moved to other kennels in the town, and finally to 
Mr. Wattes, at Bishop Burton. The subscrip- 
tion never exceeded a thousand a year, and for 



336 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the first two seasons, it was barely .£800 for four 
days a weelv. At one time the work was so hard, 
that Mr. Hodgson and Will between them had only 
two horses that could get out of the stable at all. 
As Will said, they were " never bet yet ;'' but when 
a bye-day was asked for as vrell, Mr. Hodgson stood 
firm on the ground, that it took '' horses of cast-iron, 
hounds of steel, and men of India-rubber" to 
achieve what they were doing already. There were 
never more than 36 couple of hounds in kennel ; and 
although the horses were only thirty-pounders to 
begin with, two of them sold for .£130 and c€160 at 
Quorn, after Mr. Hodgson had got five or six sea- 
sons out of them. Comical by Comus, and the gift 
of Mr. William Maxwell (the present Lord Herries) 
carried him for ten. Once he was scarcely off his 
back for fifteen hours, and when his master's reign 
in Holderness and Leicestershire was over, the old 
black found honourable burial under an oak tree in 
Everingham Park. 
Will Danby's Will stipulated on going, as he did 
sayings, -^y^en he joined the York and Ainsty as 
huntsman, that he was not to wear gills ; and the 
sport did not suffer ia either case by his resolve. 
His speeches were not so caustic as that of a 
celebrated brother-chip, who sat on his horse in the 
middle of a heavily top-dressed field, and observed, 
" Pve had fourteen boiling-house lectures, and I 
shall now proceed to hunt my way out of this 100- 
acre field on purely scientific principles ;" but they 
were always straight to the point. On the legiti- 
mate duties and responsibility of the Legislature, 

his views were not expansive. ^^ Mr. is to be 

a Member of Parliament, Will I" said one of the 
hunt, as he Avas riding home with the hounds. ** Is 
^er,'' replied Will. " Well, he's good for noivt else,'' 
Again, when a black coat, whose horse was rather 
staring in his coat and hips sought counsel with him 



'*i 



HORN AND HOUND. 337 

upon the matter, he clenched it with, " / think Mr. 
— _, you must keep your horse on chopped sarmons.^' 
Nothing could induce him to have his portrait taken, 
and when the ladies asked him to sit, he put the 
question by, and said he was not handsome enough. 
At last Mr. Hodgson conspired against him on this 
point, and having decoyed him into treeing a fox, 
he held him so long, and gripped him so fast as he 
sat astride of his shoulders, that he got into a sketch- 
book irrevocably in this highly-favoured position. 

Master and man often rode live- and- Dreams of the 
twenty miles to cover, and early in the ^^^s^- 
spring. Will hallooed a fox away from Wassand 
Wood, as the church clock was striking seven. Mr. 
Hodgson called to give Mr. Constable notice, but 
found the soup and fish on the table, and retired 
without him to the enjoyment of a merry kill by 
moonlight. This was nothing either to him or Will, 
as they invariably " hunted in dreams/^ and Mr. 
Hodgson had one of the most remarkable import at 
Bishop Burton. Will had drawn sixteen couple of 
the best dog hounds, to go into the Brandsburton 
country as usual ; when to his surprise, his master 
appeared at day-break, and said, " FTe must take 
old Melody with us, Will. Fve had a dream ; she 
must go, or we shan't get our fox.'' '^ She'll disgrace 
us, sir," replied Will, in the blankest astonishment, 
as her toes were all down, and she was so nearly 
worn out that she had not hunted five days that sea- 
son ; but Mr. Hodgson stood firm. A fox was 
found in Dringhoe, and was lost beyond Wassand, 
after running across the finest part of the coun- 
try. Melody came on the line as she could, and 
was of course missing when they checked. They 
could make nothing out, and Will had held them 
forward past a drain, where a fox had gone 
to ground two seasons before, when Mr. Hodgson be- 
thought himself to trot back. In a minute or two 

z 



338 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

he heard Melody^s short yap in it^ and digging up 
to her, they found that she was baying their fox, 
and almost touching him. Lavender was another 
of Mr. Hodgson^s handmaids, and so resolute, that 
when her master saw his pack carry a tremendous 
head to the top of Bempton Cliff, his heart quite 
failed, and he knew that she must be over. His 
prophetic mind was so convinced on the point, that 
he pulled up, and went sadly home, dreading to 
hear the end. Luckily only six went over, but she 
was one. The late Ned Oxtoby, the first whip, 
and a very valued servant of Mr. Hodgson^s was 
equal to the occasion. He peeped over the edge of 
the cliff, and saw three hounds lying dead near the 
fox, and the others bruised, and yelping on the 
most remarkable crevices. By the aid of a rope, he 
brought up Lavender and another, but a ledge pre- 
vented him from getting at Eomulus, and he left 
him with an aching hearty for the sea-gulls. When 
he looked at the place afterwards in cool blood, he 
declared that £100 a-year for life would^nt have 
tempted him to go down. The reward was worth 
the risk, as a couple of Lavender^s eight puppies 
lived and at the end of twenty miles, Will Webb, 
who was then huntsman, saw the hounds swagger- 
ing over a new arrival, and guessed that it was E.o- 
mulus, who had backed himself up a cliff almost as 
steep as a house side. 

The Holderness foxes of that period 

Holderness foxes. ni tit i -i 

were generally long, and dark- coloured 
in the low country, while those on the wolds, which 
Mr. Hodgson handled with his lady pack, were 
rather bigger, and lighter in their coats. Five 
were found in a rape-field, near Boos, which 
they drew four times that day. One was chopped 
to begin with, by being caught in a sheep-net, 
and the four others furnished runs of different 
duration from five and-twenty to ten minutes. 



HORN AND HOUND. 339 

As regards foxes^ habits^ Mr. Hodgson was a 

perfect Buffon. On one occasion he sent his horse 

to a farm house, and lay '^ stretched many a rood" 

in a dry ditch for hours, to see the vixen come 

and move nine cubs, which had been disturbed. 

When she did come, she proved to be the largest he 

had ever seen; but two magpies were chattering above 

lier, and discomfited her so much, that she would not 

go up to them that night, and that long vigil was 

void. However, a sentinel was found, and his report 

was that she moved them to the opposite side of the 

field before daybreak, in lots of three at a time. 

Again he was summoned to a consultation by a 

farmer at Lowthorpe, to come over and see thirteen 

cubs. His man had disturbed them on ploughing a 

headland, and taken seven out of one angle of 

the earth, and six out of the other, both of which 

had only one common entrance. They were put 

in a stable with a half- door, and a lad sat up all 

night in the opposite granary, to pull the top part 

to, in case the dams came to them. Although the 

stable was half-a-mile from the earth, he had not to 

watch long ; but the tarred string with which the 

door was tied, seemed to make them suspicious, and 

after scratching for nearly an hour at the bottom 

of the door they departed, and never came again. 

Strvchnined-rabbits and traps were ,, „ , 

then happily unknown in Holderness, scurry stakes at 

and farming men, with ^^ master^s com- ^^^^ ^^' 

pliments," and consignments of stub-bred foxes and 

cubs were perpetually arriving at the kennels, to 

await further orders. On one occasion a litter was 

dug up at Sigglesthorne, and the farmer came with 

them himself. "1 will show you what I do with them," 

said Mr. Hodgson, and when Will had mealed them 

well, the trio adjourned from Bishop Burton to the 

bottom of the T.Y.C. at Beverley, with their 

burden in a couple of saci^s. All four foxes ran 

z 2 



340 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

together up the course, head and head, to the stand, 
as straight as if they Y/ere going down a furrow at 
Dringhoe, and then the old fox drew away from them, 
and straight to Bishop Burton Woods, while the 
others bent to the right. 

Mr. Hodgson would never bolt a fox till he had 
been made safe, but on one occasion, he felt specially 
glad to let his fox have a second chance for its life. 
He had run one to ground in Sir Tatton^s country, 
and was taking his hounds away, when the ladies 
and the gardeners arrived armed with pick-axe 
and spade, and full of complaints about peacock 
and guinea-hen slaughter. In vain did Mr. Hodg- 
son propound to them, in his most chivalrous tones, 
the whole law of hunting on the point. His learn- 
ing and sophistry availed him nothing. The fox 
was a regular ticket -of-leave offender, and they de- 
clared that if the digging occupied all night they 
would have him, and "■ the imminent deadlv breach 
began.^^ There was only one chance of foiling them 
politely, and Mr. Hodgson descending from his 
horse in his legal agony and leggings, commenced 
stamping wildly on the top of the earth, and suc- 
ceeded in bolting him, and then bolted himself. How- 
ever, he was enabled to send back the brush and 
mask to his fair persecutors, at the end of an hour ; 
and his treachery was condoned. Still, as the 
ground had been opened he felt bound to lay their 
conduct before Sir Tatton. The baronet had deftly 
apologized for his hunter^s rudeness in jumping 
away when the lady of Thorpe Hall came out to 
speak to him, by saying that " it had never seen 
anything so handsome before ;" and his dictum in this 
equally difficult case was as follows: — '' Dear Hodg- 
sonj — IVhenever the ladies tempt you to do anything 
wrong ^ get out of their wayP 

Practical jokes Thcsc wcre uot Mr. Hodgson's only 
in Hoiderness. difficulties. An East Kidiug veteran 



HORN AND HOUND. 341 

remembers why he did not care to sleep at The 
Tiger again^ when its merry club were having a 
night of it in the next room^ with Sir Bellingham 
and Mr. Hodgson at their head_, but the latter was 
the victim of many plots in turn. They stuffed 
his horn so full of eg^ and buttered toast_, that he, 
although he showed them a capital run from Kilnwick 
Percy, he could not give them a note on finding. 
Again, with Mr. Foljambe as the principal, they 
disappointed him most grievously when he looked 
for blood. A Bessingby fox had gone to ground in a 
head of rabbit holes near Carnaby, and as it was 
rather a dragging day, a few scarlets agreed to stop 
and dig him out, when Mr. Hodgson went to draw 
elsewhere. '^ We've got him/' shouted Mr. Fol- 
jambe, when he returned, " in that sack ; I know you 
don't like much law, I'll take the sack myself, and go 
into the middle of that grass field, and give you a 
famous start." The sack was accordingly held up, 
shaken, and emptied. Alas ! the hounds were still 
more disgusted than Lord Middleton^s, when they 
were racing half a century ago for their fox from 
Kexby Wood, and threw up at a stuffed one, which 
was put to frighten carrion, — as they ran for no- 
thing but an empty pie-dish, some j)lates, and a 
mutton bone. The party had sent for a capital 
lunch from Bessingby, and had never dug a yard. 
On another occasion Mr. Hods'son „, , . 

The biter bit 

went to bed at eleven after a verj^ hard 
day, and forgot to bolt the door. He was in his 
first sleep, when he suddenly became conscious of 
what seemed like a hairy pillow at the foot of the 
bed, and waking out of a sweet dream of Dringhoe 
and Blacksmith Gorse, viewed a party of his friends 
dressed in hats and scarlets for the occasion, and 
with spades and pickaxes in their hands, just putting 
in a terrier at the foot of the bed, to draw a tame 
fox. ^' I know he^s here, Will; I saw him go in," 



343 SCOTT AND SEBraGHT. 

said one in true Hodgsonian tones; but their victim 
waited to hear no more_, and in an instant the Gen- 
tleman in White dashed out into the passage, and 
tried the first head of earths he could get to. The 
•wife of one of the scarlet conspirators, who had been 
listening for the " Goneaway /" just got her bed- 
room door bolted in time, and he went to ground 
in Lord Hawkers earth. In vain did the unhappy- 
bachelor beg to be let in. The key was turned 
for the night, and '^ A'o, no ! go on ivith the digginy ; 
there's clean litter in the Badsworth Kennel, and 
fold in the Holderness ; Fll stop ivhere I am till 
morning^' was the only response. And so he did, 
and the pie-dish and the horn business vrere amply 
avenged. 
Captain Percy Two troops of the Ninth Lancers 
Williams. ^erc at Beverley at that time, with 
Captain Percy "Williams among them. It was under 
Mr. Hodgson, to whom he often whipped iu, that 
the Captain first began his hunting career, and he 
subsequently took charge of the hounds at the Oadby 
Ivennel during Mr. Hodgson^s second season with 
the Quorn. The first time he ever handled them 
was when they had a bye-day from the willow 
garths, near Loughboro' and killed after an hour and 
forty-five minutes in Stamford Park. No one at 
that time could beat Mr. John Bower 

Mr. John Bower. i • i i -^ ;r • • a i. 

on his chesnut jNlarquis, or m lact upon 
anything, made or unmade, even when at last he 
could hardly hold the reins. One of the finest 
proofs of his horsemanship was in a very peculiar 
run from Gransmoor, after a poacher with a lur- 
cher. His horse stuck fast in Barmpton drain, 
and was utterly exhausted when he got him out. He 
then hailed some ploughmen, and asked them if 
they had seen a man, and learnt that one had just 
fastened a dog to a gate, and run off. ^^ Can any 
one of your horses get over a fence ?^^ said he, and 



HORN AND HOUND. 343 

liardly waiting for a reply, and feeling sure of his 
friend Duggleby, the owner, he jumped on a raw 
young four-year-old, bare backed, vv^ith chains 
and collar, just as it was, and loosing the dog to 
run the scent, handed the filly over the fences, to 
the utter astonishment of herself and the plough- 
man, and ran into his game five or six fields be- 
yond. 

Mr. Ralph Lambton was one of the Mr. Ralph Lamb- 
keenest disciples of Hugo Meynell. His *°"- 
brother, the father of the late Lord Durham, was 
one of the earliest of the sojourners at Melton, and 
kept a pack of harriers there as well. After leav- 
ing Cambridge without a shilling of debt (a rare 
feat which he loved to dwell upon), Ealph was 
a frequent visitor to Mr. Meynell at Quorn, and occa- 
sionally hunted with Sir Carnaby Haggerston, who 
was manager of the Belvoir during the late Duke's 
minority. His father General Lambton always said 
ihat he would leave his boy " enough to live upon, 
and keep a pack of fox-hounds with any squire in 
the county of Durham,^^ and well he kept his word. 
For upwards of forty years did that son keep a pack 
nearly at his own expense, and infuse a Meynellian 
freshness into Northern hunting such as it had 
never known before. After the death of James 
Shelly, who came as huntsman to Lambton Park, 
with the Talbot pack (which were of Vernon, or 
rather Meynell blood), Mr. Lambton always hunted 
them himself, until he was in his seventieth vear, 
when The Kitten fell with him in the middle of 
a grass field near Long Newton, and literally broke 
his back. He had injured the vertebras in 1825^ 
and made matters no better by a second fall, 
but there was no hope now, and for six years and 
four months, he faced without a murmur all the 
weariness of a sick room, with the calm heroism so 
peculiarly his own. A harder man or finer rider 



344 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

has scarcely ever crossed a country. Once or twice 
he was picked np for dead^ when he had been 
riding some raw four-year-old; and at last Mr. 
George Baker of Elemore became so impressed 
with the behef of his having an invulnerable body, 
that he would not hear of his being called an iron 
man^ but carried the comparison a point further to 
'^ those stub heads they make gun barrels of." 

He Avas a remarkably hi^h-bred man, 

His habits of life. • i • t i ^ ^^ '' °n ^ • -r» 

m ms look and address^ and sat m rar- 
liament several years for Durham. Boodle's was his 
great resort when in town, but with the exception of 
a few weeks in the season, he was rarely absent from 
his hounds for a day. Pew were more abstemious 
and sparing in their diet, and he used to tell young 
sportsmen, " You^ll be lucky if you^ve no more din- 
ner-bag at my age. He touched nothing from 
breakfast till dinner, and rarely tasted any liquid 
but wine. It was his boast that he was never 
hungry or thirsty in his life. He always kept his 
weight eleven -four to within a pound, and barring 
his grey- head, he stripped quite young at sixty. 
Such a Nestor in the field or in the coffee-room could 
not fail to command respect, and the younger mem- 
bers of the Sedgefield Club always addressed him as 
^^ /Sir.^^ Scarlet with a silver button, and black with 
a scarlet under-waistcoat, were the field and dress 
livery, when the club was in its bloom ; and Lords 
Durham, and Kintore, Sir Hedworth Williamson, 
and his son, Sir M. White Ridley, Sir David Baird, 
the Messrs. Lambton (bis nephews). Admiral Dun- 
das, Mr. Spiers, Messrs. Shaftoe, Mr. Harland of 
Sutton, &c., &c., are names well remembered at 
Sedgefield, where it was duly held in November 
and February. Of horses he was no very great 
judge, but liked to buy thorough-bred young ones ; 
and Volunteer, Firebrand, Undertaker, Doctor, 
Zephyr, Hermit, and Hannibal were among his 



HORN AND HOUND. S15 

best. No one was a more regular hunter of a coun- 
try ; no matter how rough it might be, ever}^ cover 
heard his boxYfOod horn in its due proportion, and 
that cheery '^ Yi, Haro ! Forrard. Yi, Haro !" 
which came booming out in all its melody when his 
hounds had settled to their scent and seemed in- 
clined to run hard. 

Mr. Lambton went to very few ken- Mr. Lambton on 
nels j but when he did go to Belvoir, he *^® ^^2^- 
told Goosey that he had quite spoilt him for home, 
and that he should return perfectly downhearted. 
He hated a short-necked hound, and made an im- 
mense point of good shoulders, as the best preventive 
of lameness, but for legs and feet he cared less than 
hound breeders generally do. They seemed to lose 
their nerve entirely during their Quorn season. Old 
Talisman, Whipster, and Forester would look round, 
and when they saw the Melton Cavalry coming, 
they never stopped for a scent, and in one instance 
went nearly three miles across country without one, 
at tip-top pace, and no Treadwell or Tom Ball could 
stop them. Sometimes they did not taste blood for 
three weeks together ; but when they and Treadwell 
fell on quieter times in the Berwickshire country, 
and they coald run away over the bogs from the 
horses till they seemed like little terriers on the cliffs, 
they soon got back their old form, and rendered a 
capital account of the Cheviot Hill foxes. 

Of a stale hound, Mr. Lambton had 

1 TT 1 , 1 His nound feeding. 

an immense horror. He kept a large 
pack, and gave those that were not hunting long, 
steady exercise, and brought them out as fit as 
fighting-cocks. It was a saying of his, that if he 
saw a hound tire, he felt as if he could hang himself. 
Fresh pudding and flesh, and none of the latter on 
the day before hunting, were the great points of his 
feeding system, which he nearly always superin- 
tended in person ; and Fenwick Hunnam his feeder, 



346 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

wlio had scarcely ever seen a hunt in his life^ 
quite coincided with his master, and was most 
oracular on the subject of condition. '^ When 
hounds ar^nt done to/' he used to say, ^' as hounds 
should be done to, they neither do credit to them- 
selves nor them that's consarned with them. They 
may kill a fox in a shabby short of a way, but when 
they have to work for a second fox, and he's a strong 
'un, they disgrace themselves, and them that's con- 
sarned with them ; I'll not have my hounds treated 
in no syke way." Fenwick was a most faithful fix- 
ture, and so were all Mr. Lambton's servants. He 
did not give very high wages, but he knew how to 
inspire their loyalty, and his butler, and house- 
keeper, his second groom, and several others lived 
with him from fifteen to fifty years. His head 
man, John Winter, was with him at Cambridge, and 
never left him till his death. 

Mr.wiiiiamson's Whcu hc was at last laid to rest, Dur- 
mastership. \\2iVQ. was aghast at the blank, but the 
Marquis of Londonderry headed the subscription, 
and came out in scarlet again, and charged the 
fences, as he had done the Cuirassiers at Waterloo, 
and Mr. Williamson became master for two sea- 
sons of the ^' Wynyard and Durham Foxhounds." 
The Lambton hounds had been sold to Lord 
Suffield, and Mr. Williamson had to put together 
such odds and ends as he could get, late in the sum- 
mer of '38. Mr. Foljambe, who has so often been a 
friend in need on such occasions, sent a draft, and so 
did Sir Tatton Sykes, and Sir Matthew White 
Ridley, and others, Mr. Williamson was his own 
huntsman, and steadied his wild, young pupils most 
wonderfully before the season was out. His wood- 
land labours were well repaid, and in his second 
season, although he had to bring an unusual number 
of young hounds into the field, they carried a head 
and went the pace. Those who had played with the 



HORN AND HOUND. 347 

drafts of the previous .season^, began to be reminded 
of " tlie flying ladies*'' of old Ralph Lambton^s 
heart. 

Once again the old Sedgefield country was in 
peril^ bnt as the renowned yeoman-farmer, Dickey 
Wood of Close — who was always in front on Buck- 
ram or Bagsmau, or a raTv fonr-year-old, or an 
^' auld gunner^^ out of the plough — expressed him- 
self, my Lord Londonderry came forward once more 
and " kept the tambourine a rowling^^ without any 
subscription. His Lordship bought the hounds, with 
a rare stock of old meal, and brought them to 
Wynyard, and with John Glover, a pupil of Walker^s 
from The Fife, as huntsman, and a friend of Mr. 
Williamson^s as field-master, soothed the shade of 
Balph Lambton once more, with the most remark- 
able run that the country has known. 

"The morniug" (Feb. 16th, 1841), says its clironicler, " was cahn 
and dull, and the little wind that was blowing was from the South- 
West. The field was not numerous, as the Wynyard family were 
abroad for the season. Our meet was at Newbiggin, and before the 
hounds had been in the old cover at Foxy Hill (our first draw) three 
minutes, and ahnost before they had time to find him., Tommy Arrow- 
smith the whipper-in hallooed him away at the south-west corner of 
the Ten Acre Gorse. The field were stationed at the other end, and 
the hounds were away and half over the first field v^ith a blazing 
scent, before the leading men could get to the Halloo. Facing as fine 
a piece of country as hounds ever ran over, we were evidently (barring 
accidents) in for a run of the old sort from Foxy Hill, and so it 
proved. After pointing for Newton Grange and Sadburge, he turned 
north-wards over Newbiggiu Bottom, which was very deep, and the 
' stell' brim-full of water, crossed the water by Dales House, leaving 
Barmpton a little to the left, and then straight for Byers Gill, to the 
south-west of Great Stanton, crossed the Sedgefield road, sank the 
hill to Little Stainton, and had another turn at the ' stell,' rather 
broader, and quite as full of waiter as we had found it above, and so 
straight to Bryan Harrison earths. 

" Up to this point the time was 45 minutes. The hounds were on 
the earths for two or three minutes, but the body of them (18 couple 
as it afterwards proved) came out of the small plantation round the 
south side of the earths, and settled to a fair holding scent, and away 
across the Darlington turnpike road near Newton Grange, and the 
Yarm Koad near Oak Tree, where they had their only clieck of im- 
portance, and had slow hunting down by Traffick Hill to the river 



348 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Tees. We liad tlien run 1 hour 25 minutes in Durham, the first 45 
minutes as hard as we could split over about 17 miles of country. 
Then the river Tees, swollen nearly up to the top of the embankment, 
and sweeping down with a volume and rapidity which might have de- 
terred any fox, brought us all to a stand. Such as were left of the field 
and the celebrated ' black coat' of the country concluded that the day 
was over, when up came John Glover, who naturally, after such a run, 
was anxious to account for his fox, and cast them along the embankment, 
not thinking that the fox had crossed. After holding them along it 
for a few yards, every hound dashed in, having winded their fox from 
the opposite side, and in an instant the torrent was carrying them down 
at twenty miles an hour. After being carried down about 300 yards 
every hound landed, and they quietly east themselves back exactly 
opposite to the spot where they had taken the water, struck the scent 
into Worsell Gill, and away up it, with as fine a cry as if they had 
just found. Now ! Mr. Glover, a pretty business you've made of it ! 
It's a 100 to 1 against their being got home to-night. Worsell Gill 
is full of wild Cleveland hill foxes, and the chances are the hounds 
vidll go straight to the Hills. ' Wliere is the nearest bridge ?' says 
poor John. ' Yarm or Dinsdale,' is the reply, ' and neither of them 
nearer than three miles,' chimes in our friend of the black coat, and 
with a countenance as black with despair at the thoughts of the hounds 
out all night. John Glover is an entire stranger to the Yorkshire 
side of the Tees, and An-owsmith almost as much, and the notes of 
hounds going direct south from the Gill, is dying away from the ear 
in the distance ! Horses are nearly cooked, as well they might be. 

" Fortunately the manager was able to get a fresh horse at the 
Dinsdale Hotel, and with John and the whip crossed at Dinsdale 
Bridge, and held on towards Pickton, in the direction of which the 
hounds seemed to be bending from Worsell Gill. Between Pickton 
and Appleton, the cry Avas heard again, and at Appleton we found 
them still ahead, and at Enter- Common they had crossed the G-reat 
North Eoad about ten minutes before us, going straight down for 
Lord Alvanley's Plantation in the Bedale country. At Cooper House, 
near Cowton, and at least twelve miles from Worsell Gill (where the 
hounds entered Yorkshire), we heard a halloo, and found a countr}-- 
man Avith the fox and eighteen couple of hounds baying round him. 
Every hound took the river at Traffick Hill, and they were all up at 
Cooper House, and had killed their fox according to the countryman's 
account in about 1 hour 20 minutes from crossing the°river. The reis 
no doubt that they had changed foxes at Bryan Harrison earths, 
the only hounds wanting at the end of this extraordinary run being 
those Avhich Avere recovered at Foxy Hill, Avhere they had run their 
first fox back to cover, and some still think it was a fresh fox from 
Worsell GiU. And so ended this wonderful day." 

Sir Harry Main- Cheshire is truly faithful to the 

waring. memoiy of the venerable father of 

its huntiBg field_, Sir Harrv Mainwaring. He was 



HORN AND HOUND. 349 

hale and vigorous to the veiy day of his death ; 
and^ although the glories and hospitalities of 
Peover had ended, he was as cheerful as ever at 
seventy-six, and fond of a little quiet cub-hunting 
when Sir Watkin^s or the Cheshire came within 
reach of his quiet village home at Marbury. He 
assisted the late Mr. Heron for many years before he 
was Master himself; and his dynasty, which lasted 
for nineteen seasons, came to a close in '37. Will 
Head was his huntsman for several of them, and 
then came his favourite Joe Maiden, who bore such 
a distinguished part in those memorable days whose 
memory is embalmed in the Warburton songs. Sir 
Harry was a capital judge of a hound in kennel, or in 
his work, and made a tour of the best kennels every 
year. However promising might be the stories he 
heard of a hound^s work, he never would breed from 
him, unless the kennel used him themselves ; and the 
excuse '' we have a good deal of the sort^^ was wholly 
lost upon him. He liked a large hound, and was 
most particular about legs and feet. Bedford, Glou- 
cester, Gulliver, Bangor, Why not, and Marquis, of 
the direct blood from the first introduction of hounds 
into Cheshire, were his favourites ; and when he gave 
up the pack, it would have been difficult to find 
many superior to them in England ; w hile the hunt 
had three or four men among its first-flight dozen 
who would bow to none. The day was never too 
long for Sir Harry in hunting, and no man ever kept 
a country better together, or hunted it more fairly. 
It was his boast that during the whole of his master- 
ship he was never five minutes late at the cover side, 
and yet he had sometimes immense distances to 
reach from Peover. When there, he would never 
allow more than five minutes' law. He always wore 
flannel, never drank spirits, never had a rheumatic 
pain or headache in his life, and was always an early 
riser. 



350 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

His best hunters "u^ere Brown Bess_, an eighty- 
pound one-eyed mare called Alice Grey, Virgo, De- 
lamere Lass, and a little chesnut from Shropshire, 
which he bought for £50, and sold to the Roths- 
childs. He had also a wonderful long-tailed brown 
hack, called Sweetbread, from the fact that she was 
purchased from a Knutsford butcher for j^lS, which 
always kept up a perpetual-motion canter to covert, 
whatever the distance might be. Across country he 
was a good performer, when the day was not too misty ; 
but being very short-sighted, he carried his eye- 
glass in the handle of his whip, and required a horse 
to pull at him a little, so as to keep him straight. 
The Vale of Chester and the Nantwich country he 
liked best; and Seighton Gorse in the former, and 
Ravensmoor Windmill, Warmingham Wood, and 
Bradiield Green in the other parts were the principal 
places and meets in his day. 

Tom Kance's Tom Eaucc was bom with the cen- 
. history. tway, and lived full a third of it with the 
Cheshire, as first or second whip, under seven mas- 
ters and six huntsmen. His ambition was never 
stirred to be more than the successor of Zach Goddard, 
the ^' Father of English Whips,^^ and he uniformly 
declared that he would as soon break stones as hunt 
a pack of hounds. The family seems to be subject 
to coincidences. His father and grandfather both 
died at sixty, but he has safely passed that age, and 
goes out with his spade on long-earth stopping ex- 
cursions, with all the zest of youth. Again he is one 
of ten, and he has begotten ten in turn. He began 
by whipping in to harriers, near Yarmouth, and came 
on from there to Mr. " Dick Gurney,^^ of Thick- 
thorn, near Norwich. 

This stout gentleman first '^ broke 

urney. q^^;:' ^y^^h tcu OT clevcn bracc of gery- 

hounds, and Tom had to lead them gallops, and act 

as slipper on field-days. He then kept six or seven 




A.I. 1861. 



Dick Gumey, p. 351- 



HORN AND HOUND. 351 

hunters for The Puckeridge and the Pytcheley, and 
said that he only weighed sixteen stone. Tom rode 
second horse for him^ and he led home the great slap- 
ping Sober Robin, when his near fore-leg gave way in 
the Ware country. Robin was fully sixteen- and-a-half 
hands, with remarkable couplings, and rather a hot 
temper of his own; and in his hey-day, Mr. Gurney 
refused a thousand guineas for him over the dinner- 
table. Clinker was another of his best, and so was a 
thickset chesnut mare. Tom always gave his master 
five-and-twenty minutes before he brought up the 
second horse, and delighted to watch him crashing 
away with no spurs, and nothing but a dog- whip. 
If a horse did refuse, he would " cut a life-time out 
of him ]" and he would discharge the best groom he 
had if he found him putting his horse over a leaping- 
bar. Six of them fetched upwards of 1,300 gs. when 
they were sold off at TattersalFs, and Master Fray was 
bought in. When '^ Dick^^ was not hunting, he had 
plenty of time on his hands, and had abundant con- 
solation in his snuff=box, the contents of which he 
used to fling about so profusely in church that he 
would set the pews behind him off sneezing. 
It has been well said that — 

" The EtliioiD Gods liave Etliop lips, 
Bronze eyes,' and woolly hair, 
The Grecian Gods are like the Greeks, 
As keen-eyed, cold, and fair ;" 

and perhaps it was on this principle, that the great 
Pytcheley welter-weight set up as his idols, an 
enormous pair of twin Scotch bullocks. Once, if 
not twice a day, he pondered fondly over them, and 
when they had been feeding for three years he had a 
van made to take them to Smithfield. The best 
died before the day of departure, and the other 
never went after all. Southdown rams, one of which, 
Thickthorn, he hired from Mr. Webb, for 200 gs. a 



352 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

season, were another of his fancies, ancl_, taking him 
all in all_, Tom considers " he was a i^ight ^un" 

From his service, Tom departed to 

Tom in Cheshire, t, -dj-II'II i ce r 

±>aron Kotnschild, as pad-groorn ^^ for 
two months, as near as a toucher,'^ but the Baron 
released him at Lord Delamere's request, and 
in 1830 he met Sir Harry at Vale Royal, and 
accepted the seals of office, which he held to the 
end of the ^61 season, till his eyesight became too 
dim. There was no finer characteristic of the man, 
than his genial tone and polite manner of steering 
his hounds at the end ot his drooping whip lash, 
through a crowd of horsemen in a narrow lane. 
^^ Jest stand a one side, gemmen, if you please ; beg 
yer pardon ; a little mossel, to let the 'ounds jjaass ; 
thank ye. Sir; noiv gemmen, be so good; thank ye, 
Sir;" and the feat was accomplished. Stimulated 
by these gentle blandishments, every one felt proud 
of the room he made, and quite a party to the safe 
conduct desired. Conciliation was the key-note of 
all his addresses, except to a transgressing hound, 
and there Tom was not forgiving, and rigidly in- 
cluded any previous conviction for riot in his sen- 
tence. 

Of course we wandered off to have a 
om s . a . ^Q^^ ^^^-j^ Tom on the Forest, and found 

him most communicative, on the few little points we 
had to ask. ^' We had four horses a-piece,^'' he said, 
'' when I came ; we had no second horse that time of 
day. We lost the Wrenbury and Wickstead coun- 
try ; that^s all done away with ; we used to go to 
Wrenbury, and stop the week. 

Head, Maiden, & '^ Will Hcad was hcie whcu I Came j 
Markweii. ]-^g ^r^g ^ good little huutsmau, a deter- 
mined little fellow, but not so much so latterly. Joe 
Maiden came from the North Warwickshire ; they 
were great times, few could go with him ; resolute, 
determined chap was Maiden across country ; so 



HORN AND HOUND. 353 

persevering; never liked to lose a fox. No one 
knew better how to handle a pack of hounds than 
poor Markwell. 

"The foxes are sadly changed ; so many poxes and their 
of ^era turned down ; very few straight troubles. 
forward foxes at all now ; keepers level the old ^uns 
off, and the young ^uns, a hignorant lot of little 
devils, they know no country; theyVe no parents 
to show them, or yet larn them the country, and it 
ai^nt likely they can find it for themselves. We had 
very straight-forward foxes in the Wrenbury coun- 
try; the Chester country was never the same 
as the Wrenbury country for good foxes ; the}^ 
might chance about Saighton and Waverton to pick 
up a good one, and take it to the hills. We had 
two devilish good runs from Wharton Gorse to The 
Willingtons; time Maiden was here; one fox from 
Beech House cover, Hurlestone Gorse thev call it, 
used to go away regularly, at the lower end for Rad- 
nor, and on for Peckforton Wood, up by Ridley. We 
ran him three seasons, and killed him at last. He 
was a greyhound fox ; regular leggy one. They 
used to send me to the old corner at the lower end of 
the gorse. He knew us — before the hounds got there, 
you^d see Charley Avalking off quickish. These 
foxes on the hills, bless my heart and body, they 
don^t half rouse them. We want two or three days 
amongst them, then we^d get some better foxes in 
the country; they want well rousing; that was a 
great point with Captain White ; he made us stick 
to the hills and drive them down. 

•^I have had a ffoodmany accidents; I 

b^ ° " T 1 1 Tom's disasters, 

eg your pardon, gemmen ; i lost my 

eye, when I was twelve, — with a gun; it^s given me a 

deal of trouble ; the first time I felt the other so bad, 

was at feeding time, the hounds and everything 

looked like a cloud of sulphur. The Manchester 

doctors have been trying their hands on it ; I think 

A A 



354 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

tlieyVe cleared it a little ; fire seemed to come out 
of it; and then something like a bottle screw, a 
black wavy thing from the eye to the ground. I 
could hardly see a fox at last ; I dare say I missed 
some of them my last season. My horse once ran 
away mth me, and broke the bridge of my nose against 
a bough ; I couldn^t blow it again for weeks ; then 
a stub got into the blind eye, and I pulled it out ; 
but when I broke the corner of mv rib, I was in 
furious pain all the day. I still never gave in. 
Sir Harry Main- " Sir Harry, lic was a good ^un, coming 
waring. ^p ^ith his glass in his whip-handle ; 
never a rattling rider ; his two greys and a bay horse 
Briton I liked best to see him on; he would come 
on his hack be it where it would, and his hunters met 
him from the kennels. He liked General of the old 
Galloper sort, and Hannibal and Hotspur ; the best 
we had we lost in the madness ; we put eighteen- 
and-a-half couple forAvard after it ; we had the 
sweetest pack before the malady. 
The Cheshire '' I ^Bg your pardou, gemmen ; talk 
green collars, about riding, I saw Mr. Wilbraham 
Tollemache take the river Weaver brimming full 
close by Nantwich : he had a black, snaffle-bridle 
mare ; she slipped back again, and he jerked himself 
clean over her head on to the bank, and pulled her 
out. " Tliafs xvell done, Tollemache I'' said Lord 
Delamere, and in the next field but one they ran to 
ground. Mr. Tollemache stripped, and met us 
going on for Aston Gorse, in an. old farmer^s clothes, 
and rode the run; he rode little thorough-bred 
things ; he was a neat horseman, and had a deal of 
nerve. Sir Richard Brooke was a very good one, as 
long as he could last ; heM go as long as he could 
go ; never nursed his horses. Mr. Glegg would 
take a line to himself, wide, always with the hounds, 
not as some of these youug^uns do; if they see the 
hounds a little at fault, they go by them and make 



HORN AND HOUND. 335 

the fences crash again. Mr. Smith Barry was a 
fancy rider, he rode to his horse ; he was rather on 
the larking system, jump off and make horses come 
over gates and stiles after him. Vve seen Mr. 
Warburton go along pretty well; he has his glasses 
on ; he's obliged to take them oflP and polish them 
a bit, when we get to slow hunting. Colonel Chol- 
mondley bruises along, Fve heard him make these 
wire fences rattle a bit ; Captain White he was a 
clipper ; he could ride and keep them in first-rate 
order too. 

I beg your pardon, gemmen; there are great 
changes; men and country; they were all small 
fields, ditches never cleaned out in that Saighton 
country ; now it's like a garden ; for two miles round 
these cops are kept high and narrow, cut sharp as 
the ridge of your hand to keep the harriers off; 
they're getting a little flatter, horses get their hind- 
feet on them ; there's a deal of bone-dust about this 
country now ; it alters scent ; the hounds stop and 
peck at it, it's a bad fault these bone- dust fields ; 
and there's so much of this goano used. I beg your 
pardon, gemmen, but I must go, I've some earth- 
stopping." And so all the richer not only by these 
notes, but by a fox's head, and some teeth which 
Tom considers a worthj^ breast-pin for the highest 
earthly potentate, we parted from the worthy old 
fellow, and watched his thin, upright form disap- 
pearing through the mist on his midnight errand. 

One word for varmint '' Old Zach," 

j-i _ ^ T 1 • 1 • • - Old Zach Goddai-d. 

tne great link, m wnipper-m succession, 
between Tom Moodv and Tom Ranee — who died 
some six or seven years since, in his seventy-second 
year. Like Jem Morgan, he had four sons who all 
followed his profession. Besides Jack, the inventor 
of " Tailby Thursdays," and Ben late of the Bices- 
ter, there was Jem, a very determined fellow 
who died when first whip to Ben Foote with Mr. 

A A 2 



356 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Villebois; and Tom, who was very distinguished 
as a steeple-chaser and first whip with the Pytche- 
ley, but he too died young, and is buried near Jack 
Stevens and Jack Woodcock at Brixworth. Zach 
was onlv five foot six, and never much above nine 
stone ; and it was when some one said to Mr, 
John Warde, " If I had hounds I should so like 
to get all men like Zach,^^ that he made his much 
quoted answer: " Oh ! you should. Eh ! fond of light 
wei(jlits ; I donH knoio much difference between heavy 
and light iveights, except that the one breaks horses' 
backs, and the other breaks their hearts." Zach 
had a large fund of natural humour, and many 
a tale to tell of tlie days v»'lien he was second 
whip under Nevett to " Glorious John,^^ who made 
their place no sinecure during cub-hunting. The 
men slept over the stables, and he would often wake 
them with the thunders of his stick at three in 
the morning, to "come and give those foxes a second 
touch." Hov/ever, they were of Billy Lackaday's 
opinion on bell-ringing, and never got up, unless he 
'^ persewered," and came at the door pannels a second 
time. 
The snooze in Ouc slccp hc ncvcr foTgot to remind 
the Park, them of. It was a hot summer''s day, 
and the three agreed to taive a copper of ale, and sit 
out Avith the hounds in Westron Park. Zach vowed 
that he could keep awake, if ^o one else did, but 
they slept well on into the evening, and when they 
awoke, there were only two hounds left. One by 
one they had slipped off home, and the old gentle- 
man had let them in. It was quite a matter of dis- 
cussion who '^ dare and go face him first,^^ when they 
saw him hovering in the distance, about the kennel, 
but he put them out of difficulty by meeting them 
and ironically asking after his hounds. Another 
day he dropped on to Zach on the hat question. 
Once a year he allowed eacli of his men a dng-skin 



HORN AND HOUND. 357 

hat, and ZacVs had been ordered a month. Not 
seeing him at church, he asked Zach the reason, and 
he at once laid it on to his shabby hat. " Oh ! thafs 
your excuse, Zach?" he said: " a very poor one, Zach; 
if you had the best hat in England the parson would 
not let you wear it ; you^d have to pull it off." Zach 
didn^t quite see his way out of this argument, so he 
simply told his friends, '^ Squire had me there; old 
man done me again/^ It was on a hat too that Mr. 
Warde's great New Forest story turned. " I never 
knew the nature of a bog/^ he used to say, '' till I 
went to Hampshire. I saw a good hat on the top of 
one, and there Avas a head in it, and the head said, 1 
don^t care for myself, but do help to get my horse 
up, he's in a bog below.^^ 

Zach was with ^' Gentleman Smith'^ 

n . • 1,1 1 i 1 ^ Old Zach's career. 

tor a time, but he was best known dur- 
ing his seventeen seasons with Lord Middleton 
in Warwickshire. His scream was almost un- 
earthly iu its shrillness, and he trusted to the 
natural organ under all circumstances. Once, 
when Harry Jackson had broken his thigh he was 
in command, and Lord Middleton told him to blow 
his hounds away from Woolford Wood. He put 
the horn to his lips, and then he said, almost in a 
passion, " Hang it, my Lord ; you know I never could 
hloiv a horn," and he flung it away in the mud. 
In his latter days he became kennel huntsman to 
Mr. Bradley, in whose service he remained, much 
respected, during the time that gentleman kept stag- 
hounds, and he turned out the pack in excellent 
condition for their celebrated runs with '^ The Nob," 
and " Water Witch,'' &c., over the pastures of War- 
wickshire and Northamptonshire. When his days of 
service were over, he would come to Heythrop, when 
Jack was there. His ankles were weak from rheu- 
matism and a number of severe falls, but he 
would often come out on a mule and see Jim and 



358 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Jack rattle the cubs about. In the evenings lie 
would take liis pipe out of his mouth to give them 
a "Southerly Wind" or "Tom Moody," and a series 
of those view halloos which the Woolford and 
Earnboro' sides of Warwickshire knew so well. 
Itchington was a horse he liked to talk of, and the 
mention of his Grassiui^ which died when his Lord- 
ship lost so many, was enough almost at that lapse 
of time to bring out a second flood of tears. He 
swore by " Mr. Shawe " as the best huntsman, and 
Woodman the best hound he had ever seen, find 
the picture of the last, and Grassini^s foot were the 
only memorials of his wood-craft, which he cared to 
keep. 
Celebrities at The Biccstcr couutry had the good 
Bicester. fortuuc to bc held, with the exception, 
of Lord Sefton^s one season, by only three masters 
for nearly seventy years. Early in the century there 
was not a chimney corner to be let in its little 
capital, and upwards of a hundred hunters were 
stabled there. It kept its prestige amidst no small at- 
tractions elsewhere. The Billesdon Coplow day, than 
which the late Lord Jersey used to vow that he had 
never knoY»^n a colder, had sealed the fame of The 
Quorn country years before ; and it was not suffer- 
ing in Mr. Assheton Smithes hands. John Warde 
was with the Pytcheley, and " Mr. Shawe" with the 
Belvoir. Still the Bicester men were quite content 
with Stephen Goodall and Sir Thomas Mostyn^s 
four days a week, and the choice of Tom Rose and 
the Grafton, or Philip Payne and the Badminton 
on the other two. Sir Thomas, with Mr. Griff 
Lloyd, as his factotum, lived at Bainton, close by 
the first set of kennels. Lord Jersey hunted with 
them when he was not at Melton ; and when he was 
not on Gipse}^, he generally rode the Hon. Mr. Van- 
necVs second best horse, and as generally beat him. 
Mr. Vanneck (who gave 700 gs. for two to Mr. Lloyd, 



HORN AND HOUND. 359 

*of Aston) was far below liim as a horseman, and John 
Warcle used to say of him that he had seen him ride 
all round a field, and come out at the same place. 
This statement was rather qualified by its invariable 
conclusion. " If lie had not been a Melton man Pd not 
have shown him up.'' 

Sir Harry Peyton went straight on Spartacus, 
and Mr. Harrison of Shelswell would give any 
money so that the twins Lindow and Rawlinson 
(who was great on Spread Eagle)_, might not have a 
pound the best of him in a fast thing. Sir John 
Cope and Mr. John Moore both joined the throng. 
Lord Stamford^s nephew, Mr. Booth Grey, lived with 
Mr. Drake, who was very regular at the cover side, 
but he never rode hard ; and the walls of '^ Hetters" 
or " The Cocked Hat,^^ as it was termed, witnessed 
the good fellowship of Sir Charles Knightley, John 
Tremayne, twenty years member for Cornwall, and 
" Mr. Tom Pennant,^^ from Wales. The latter was a 
yQrj fair horseman, but Mr. Tremayne was more for 
hunting than riding. Sir Charles united the two, in 
an eminent degree, and although Guidepost had a 
high character, and was named to correspond, his 
Consol and Tilton (which he purchased for 250 gs. 
from Mr. Harrison) were far better. Baron Robeck, 
the Swede, backed himself for 20 gs. when the Pytche- 
ley found at Holderby, to follow Sir Charles on the 
latter over the three first fences, and came to grief 
at a bridle gate. Tilton surprised Mr. Assheton 
Smith when he came over occasionally to reconnoitre, 
and he said of him that " he pulled for two hours 
after he seemed beat.^^ It was remembered as cha- 
racteristic of the man during one of these visits, that 
on a Clay don Woods Day, when he could not get 
his horse to face his fences, he got off" him at last, and 
flogged him away in his fury up a lane. Lord An- 
glesey's " winter officers,'^ as the hard riders of the 
Seventh were called, were often at the cover side, and 



360 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

SO was Jacob Wardell, one of the Billesdon Copiow 
men. As bis friends dro})ped off, Jacob gradually 
gave up fox-hunting for wife- hunting, and set up a 
regular agency-office for the purpose. His latest 
report of himself upon the subject was, that he ^'had 
married no end of people.^' 

Sir Thomas ^^^' Thomas was nearly as fond of his 
Mostyn and four-iu-haud as his hounds, and nothing 
pleased him so much as to get behind 
a team of old hunters, which had only been in harness 
for a day or two; wait till they had done their 
shindy, and drive them for their first lesson 150 
miles to his house in Wales. He was one of the 
B. D. C. Club, which preceded both " The Whip'' 
and " The Four-in-Hand^' Clubs ; and Squire An- 
nesley, with his strawberry roans; Mr. Harrison, 
with his bays ; and Sir Henry Peyton with his greys 
used to delight in doing their twelve miles from 
Oxford to Benson, down the Henlev Koad. Sir 
Thomas was not a keen fox-hunter, and if he felt 
any great enthusiasm he never showed it. Stephen 
Goodall used to say that he was a good but a most 
provoking maa, as " you never could judge from 
his face, whether he was pleased or angry with 
the day's sport.'' He was, in fact, rather idle, and 
a sufferer from gout, which kept him out of the 
saddle for the last five vears of his life. All his 
horses had short tails ; and if he was regularly put 
up, he would go very straight on the chesnut Mar- 
cus, or Park Keeper, which had graduated in Leices- 
tershire. He drove down punctually from Londop. 
every April to make the draft, and generally looked 
over them in the dining-room. A feu^ were put 
back the first day, the final })ick was made on the 
second, and the naming came off on the third. As 
he then said, he had them thoroughly in his eye, 
and he could have drawn them without a mistake, 
when he saw them again in the autumn. 




Stephen Goodall, p. 361. 



HORN AND HOUND. 361 

Stephen Gooclall came from Quorn, 

1 TT T'" 1 1 • '^1 Stephen GoodalL 

and xdarry King, who was whip, with 
Will Lepper, and afterwards head-groom, rode many 
hundred miles iD search of suitable horseflesh for 
him. Cyclops formed part and parcel of his 
Leicestershire baggage, and Prince, Trinket, Con- 
vention, King Charles, and Chawbacon, were picked 
up in Harry's rounds. Ragman latterly became 
Stephen's cover hack, but he never had more than 
four hunters at the beginning of the season. Al- 
though they lived in a perpetual state of sore back, 
he never lamed them, and really tired them less than 
men of half his weight. When a horse suited him, 
it generally lasted him till it was worn out. 

Ragman was too often disposed to put him 
down, and wallow wdienever they went through a 
stream. " Coom up ! coom up F' was his constant 
adjuration, ^' I donH want a toast in the water 
to-daij.'^ Trinket would also watch for an oppor- 
tunity of favouring himself, and he would sometimes 
lie down when they were breaking up their fox. 
Stephen made it a point never to get on King 
Charles till they had found, and then there was a 
pass word in the hunt, " Are you all ready ? Yes, 
my lord ;'' in allusion to what Buckle had said (touch- 
ing his cap) to Lord Jersey, when his lordship once 
acted as starter at Newmarket. There were verv few 
rides in Stephen's day, and the paths in Clay don 
W^oods were such an utter bog from end to end, that 
if they kept changing foxes his horse soon got beat. 
If any one asked him his weight, he generally replied 
rather angrily " About a quarter of a tow, but the 
best gauge of him and his five-foot-five, is his scarlet 
hunting-coat. Poor Will Goodall, who was always 
a great pet with him, and just eight years old 
when be died, used to produce it solemnly from a 
cupboard, on state occasions, for his friends to try 
on, both for warning and encouragement, and 



362 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

accompany the ceremony with a tune on the vete- 
ran^ s horn. 

Stephen in Ken- From old association, Stephen used the 
°^^- Quorn sires in his kennel, and liked a 
large hound. Seventy couple came in from quar- 
ters in Wales his first season, and the first draft of 
fifteen couple was sold to the Duke of Beaufort for 
150 guineas. Lady was sent to the Quorn, Sul- 
tan soon after Stephen came, and then to Quorn 
Ranter, and five-and-a-half couple, Lucifer, Liber- 
tine, Lexicon, Loyal, Lydia, Lovely, Lazarus, Lictor, 
Lashwood, Lightning, and Lawless formed the two 
litters. All of them were entered ; and some of the 
best hounds in England sprang from them. Lady 
generally ran hare till the fox was found ; but she was 
beauty itself, and her head among foxhounds was much 
what Rosy Morn^s is among greyhounds. Madness 
came into the kennel through a bite from a strange 
dog, as they were trotting along the road from one 
cover to another, and nearly 12 couple had to be put 
away. The rest were chained up in a large barn, 
and after watching them carefully for three months, 
Stephen signed a clean bill of health. His whips 
were alwavs at the kennels at six in the summer, to 
feed and clean out the puppies ; and if they were not 
there at the moment, they would hear the well- 
known clearing grunt, which preceded : '^ Young maUj 
you must have had fish for breakfast j and you've 
stopped to pick the hones.'' For the whipcord he 
was a most vigorous advocate, and used to take 
the pack once a week to Stowe Park, to show them 
the deer and hares. His great talk was of Quorn, 
and his proudest remembrance was pulling down a 
hedgerow fox in the Loughboro^ country, after three 
hours, with a few couple of old hounds, and a 
most ticklish scent. He was wont to represent him- 
self on that occasion as a perfect deliverer of shep- 
herds and hen-wives. 



HORN AND HOUND. 363 

Of his old Shropshire lieutenant, Tom 
Moody, he seldom spoke, except to say, °"^ °° ^' 
that he thought him fonder of fishing in the Severn 
than hunting, and fonder of ale than either. One 
of his stories about him was that they went 
into the servants^ hall for an hour or two at the 
meet, to wait till the frost had got a little out of the 
ground. " Now, Tom, thei^e^s something to do to- 
day,'^ said Stephen ; " donH be too free with the ale.'' 
^' Right, I won't, master'' replied Tom. '■^ I'll sit 
opposite you and you tread on my foot if you see me 
getting on too fast," So far so good; but a New- 
foundland dog, which had crept in unobserved, 
pressed Tom^s foot when it shifted its position, and 
Tom mistaking the signal, called out in the most 
injured tone, " Oh! hang it, master! I've only had 
one horn yet !" Tom Sebright^s father made one of 
this memorable group of huntsmen and whips. 

Stephen lived two or three years after leaving 
Sir Thomas Mostyn, and had the use of old K-agman 
till his death, and a man, from Mr. Villebois', for 
one season, and then Tom Wingfield the elder 
reigned in his stead. Ben Eoote helped to carry 
him to his grave in Hethe church-yard ; and Griff 
Lloyd was rather disappointed at not being asked 
to read the funeral service. 

This curious character and fellow of 
All Souls was the rector of Christleton, " °^ * 
near Chester, and curate of Newton Pur cell, in 
Oxfordshire. He made no sermons, but said that 
he was a better man who knew how to make a good 
selection, and, like old John Day, he generally 
fell back upon Blair. He read them in a low 
impressive tone, and never pitched his voice. 
They did say that he would put oflP marriages and 
burials to suit the hounds; but only once was 
he caught napping, and then he preached a Christ- 
mas-day sermon in February, and never found 



364 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

it out till he got to the words " The anniversary of 
this clay." He lived with his cousin at Chesterton, 
bought the hay and corn, and well earned his title 
to be called the '' Black Whipper-in/'' when he went 
to work on his rat-tailed Ascham (which delighted 
him by throwing up its heels whenever he mounted) 
in the woodlands. He w^as very faithful to the 
family jacket, and whenever it won at Holywell 
he would wave his stick, and hit his hack and shout 
right lustily " YeMow one first J' Liverpool races he 
seldom missed, and made one at the annual race 
banquet of the " Double Dandy, " who was 
several stone heavier, and in fact so big that he had 
to wait a day when his servant mistook the tenor 
of his order to take two seats in the mail, and re- 
turned after securing one in and one out. 

Griff i/oyd's ^0 ouc could go through such an 
fnTfaVue^^^'"' ^^^^^^ ^^ fatiguc as " Griff.'' He 
would come by coach and chaise from 
Christleton to Swift's House during the cub-hunting 
season, get there about twelve o'clock at night, and 
be up and off at four, ten miles to cover ; and he has 
been known to go back to Cheshire, always on the 
outside, the same night. If he was at Bainton or 
Swift's House he thought nothing of riding thirty 
miles to Shuckborough Hill, home again, and then 
out to dinner on a pony. Chaises on such occasions 
he regarded as the merest delusions. With hounds 
he was very persevering, and always fond of getting 
a nick in a run. If they were in a narrow dirty lane, 
he would call to the man before him in the 
blandest spirit of inquiry, " Where did you buy 
that horse of yours, sir?'' and before he had time to 
answer. Griff would go to the front of his victim, and 
give him the dirty reversion of his heels. His voice in 
covert was magnificent, and when the hounds were 
slack in drawing Stratton Audley Gorse, which was 
unusually thick, the field would look round for Griff 




Jem Hills, p. 365. 



HORN AND HOUND. 365 

to aid them, and after a few of his stentorian cheers 
they would make it shake again, and the fox was 
hallooed away in no time. The joke he liked worst 
to hear of, was that of the young polecats, which 
Stephen Goodall did not fail to treasure up against 
him, and produce at all seasons. His terrier worried 
a nest of four, as he thought, near the Bainton Ken- 
nels, and he was so proud of Vixen^s exploit, that he 
nailed them up, and called Stephen to look and com- 
mend. Alas ! the clearing grunt that time again 
heralded the words of doom, " Well! Mr. Lloyd, 
you have done a pretty morning^s work, you've killed 
four cubs for us!'' It was rather a bad job, as that 
same season a farmer^s dog scratched eleven out of a 
bank, and killed them, and the farmer^s tribulation 
was such, that he kicked the lad who was wiMi the 
dog clean out of his yard, and declared that he 
" would sooner have lost a flock of sheep.^^ When 
Sir Thomas Mostyn died. Griff took a house at Ches- 
terton, and lived there in the hunting season, till his 
health began to go. At last a groom rode hunting 
with him, or he might hardly ha,ve known his way 
back. Hunting was still the theme of his discourse 
to the last, and he only survived his absence from 
the field for two seasons ; and there never will be his 
*' marrow ^^ again. 

Jem Hills was born with the century, 
which thus did a good thing early on ; 
and he whipped-in when he was ten, and marked his 
pig-skin jubilee in 1860, by not having a single fall 
that season. The fine weather, and the pleasure of 
slipping down the fifty-three miles to Didcot in 
some two minutes under the hour, determined us 
lately to go and have a quiet afternoon with hira, at 
the kennels. On a July day, when the sun lights 
up the market-hall, and those nice old-fashioned 
houses, there is no pleasanter little town than Chip- 
ping Norton; but from its high position, no winter 



S66 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT, 

residence could be desired more exactly in keeping 
with " the man who could^nt get warm/"* Failing to 
find Jem at the old spot, we turned to the left 
through the church-yard, where old Zach lies ; and 
skirting the station, we found ourselves, after a walk 
of a mile, at the new kennels. They are more in the 
centre of the country than Heythrop, whose ruins^ 
after so many decades of ducal revelry and hound 
entries, are handed over bodilv at last to the rats and 
to the owls. Tar Wood is sixteen miles distant, and 
Jem and his men only sleep out for New Barns. 

View from the Although thcro is a pretty steep road 
kennel. j-q mount from the station, still when 
you are fairly at the kennels, you seem to be in a 
sort of bason among the hills. Jem, looking re- 
markably well, but with his right hand tied up in 
consequence of an attack of the old chalk-stone 
enemy, swept the horizon for us, with the eye of a 
general, as we stood by his garden wicket. " Boulter's 
Barn,'^ of happy memory, was in front of us, in the 
shape of a clump of trees, clinging unobtrusively to 
the side of a hill ; and beyond it we were requested 
to believe in the existence of Churchill Heath, on 
the principle of the groom who accepted the artist's 
explanation, that although he might be invisible in 
the picture, he was coming up the other side of the 
hill. 

The Heythrop ^or tlic gazcr ou Churchill Mount 
covers. j^^q chain of covers which have long since 
prompted the saying, " Better by half shoot a child 
than kill a Heythrop fox,'' take up the tale, as the 
eye sweeps into the opposite valley, and rests on 
the three hundred acres of the Brewin, where the 
long and white-legged foresters have their earths; 
on Churchill Heath, which is too damp for lying; 
the oaks and the ashes of the Norrells ; but, alas ! 
on no Lyneham Heath. Well may Jem bewail that 
extinct gorse in the ^^ Give me back my Legions" 



HORN AND HOUND. 367 

vein. ^^ None of your grubbing,'' as he invariably 
says to Mr, Langston^s agent^ when that gentleman 
tries gently to lead his mind to the great subject of 
agricultural improvement, with axe, steam-plough, 
and tile : ^' You've grubbed enough : I'm afraid of 
you," Then he will propose his annual compromise, 
which was repeated again that day : ^^ You may grub 
up Churchill Heath and The No? rells, and Sand Pits, 
if you'll give us back only twelve acres of Lyneham 
Gorse." Over these past and present battle-grounds 
the eye roams off once more to Merry Mouth, and 
up a fine hunting vale to Gawcombe Wood, looking 
like two globe-shaped hollows, then leaving Odding- 
ton Ashes (the noted hermitage of wild outlying 
foxes) to the left, and so on to the spire of Stow-on- 
the-Wold, the village of the noted May and October 
horse fairs. There, too, is Seisingcote Wood, creep- 
ing up the valley towards Evesham, and there too, 
almost in front of us, are the quiet groves of 
Daylesford, to which, " when under a tropical sun 
he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, the hopes of 
Warren Hastings, amidst all the cares of war, finance, 
and legislation, still pointed,^' and to which he at 
length retired to die. Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, 
Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire all meet hard 
by the Four Share Stone to the right of the Park ; 
and between us and it, as we wrap up that stirring- 
Mount panorama, is the expanse of Kingham Field 
still bearing all the signs of recent enclosure, and 
alive with double fertilizers and ploughs, in which 
the Herefords and a few "doubtful" Shorthorn heifers 
are contented^ toiling together. 

The stables, like the kennels, are ^, , 

, ., f, ---, . . _-. ^ ' The kennels near 

built 01 Cnippnig JNorton sand- stone, chipping Nor- 
with rooms above for the grooms and 
the whips. The geological formation of the ground 
changes at this point, and the stables are on 
clay, and the kennels within twenty yards of them. 



368 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

on sand. Save and except four clever-looking 
hacks, one of which Jetn considers to be the best 
£25 bargain he ever made, there were no horses to 
be seen, as the whole eighteen were at Little Comp- 
ton, in yards and other loose places. Mr. Charles 
Siminond's contract with the hunt ceased some four 
or five years ago, and ever since then it has horsed 
itself. Pamela and her litter of Hector puppies 
were the sole tenants of the loose-box of Bendigo, 
a great horse, but not more loved than Sailor, Betsy 
Baker, and the yellow bay. The field is on a slope, 
and a very beautiful one for hounds to spread them- 
selves over. At the bottom is a small orchard, where 
they lie under the apple-trees with Jem in the sum- 
mer, and dream of rich red foresters past and to come. 
In the snow, sucli is the confiding or rather chaff- 
ing nature of those foxes, although Jem has brought 
about a thousand brace to book in a quarter of a 
century, that they sometimes come to meet hinij and 
a brace played such antics close up to the kennels a 
fcAV winters ago, that the whole pack was in an 
uproar till Sam got up and view-hallooed the in- 
truders away. 

There was no maiden nurse about, and we merely 
heard the stor}^ of Dairy Maid, who brought up five 
cubs and a puppy in days when Goosey and Shirley 
both adopted the system. We thought that there 
would be some music in the Nathan key, after the 
clouds of chaff which have descended upon Jem^s 
devoted head bv reason of him : and accordinglv it 
soon burst forth, " falk about horses ! that's a 
daughter of ' the clothes horse / 1 was never to get 
Nathans with short legs. ^' Welcome, her si5^ter, 
was not of her stamp behind the shoulders, 
but it is an unspeakable comfort to Jem that she 
wanted no entering. She always joined the pack, 
when thev came to Tacklev Heath, and made 
a hit down a field of swedes, which will be men- 



HORN AND HOUND. 369 

tioned in connection witli her to the end of her 
days. 

Jem had then hardly set his house in order^ but 
there in full array was the fox which got drowned in 
the trap. " Two dog foxes like wolves/^ preserve 
his race^ as far as size goes, in the Forest. One of 
them had already licked Jem two or three times, so 
that he breathed vows of vengeance on the smallest 
allusion to the case. Still, amid this warfare, he is 
not neglecting more peaceful pursuits ; and although 
he has no Young Chipping Norton eleven in training 
to take the shine once more out of the crack Forest 
Club, the cricket spirit which he acquired in Broad- 
bridge^s and Wenman^s day has not died out, and 
he has recently been umpire in a match at Ded- 
dington. 

He claimed to have four hundred 
foxes at that moment within his pro- *^ ^^^ °^^' 
tectorate, and barring one with white toes, which he 
killed at Worton Heath, he has seen no approach to 
hereditary white pads lately. He rather thought of 
getting some Scotch grey-hound foxes for a cross, 
bat did not succeed. This failure does not seem to 
weigh upon him, as, contrary to the generally re- 
ceived horse and hound notions, he attributes the 
stoutness of his foxes to the fact, that the blood has 
been kept intact for generations. One of the patri- 
archs which had baffled him most rancorously for 
two or three seasons came to hand at last, after 1 
hour 45 minutes from Langley to Wroughton. The 
crafty old foresters of Will Long^s day would hardly 
recognize Wychwood now, as, with the exception of 
four hundred acres at each end, the whole of the 
forest has been stubbed up, and the consequence is, 
that the cub-hunting, which once began on the 1st 
of August, is now delayed till the middle of Sep- 
tember. Some of Jem's best runs have been after 
a frosty morning ; and when other people did'nt 

B B 



370 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

hunt^ the Heythrop would have their fun if they 
threw off at two o^clock, and, to use his 
energetic expression, '' fairly fetched it out of the 

Making-iip forty The last great Tackley Heath day of 
brace. 1859-60 began at half-past one. Hunt- 
ing had seemed an impossibility, and, in fact, they dare 
not draw the Great Tew country, but a clipping one 
hour and thirty-five minutes rewarded them for their 
pluck. Up to February 20th it was a capital sea- 
son, and they killed 39J brace, and then for their 
last six weeks, do what they might, they had not 
scent enough to complete their 40 brace. However, 
their last day produced an old dog fox, who broke 
twelve times from the top of the forest, and at last 
went a four mile gallop straight along the turnpike- 
road, and brought Jem to a complete stand-still at 
the cross roads. Things looked so critical that Jem, 
as a last hope, proposed to Mr. Hall to go and chop 
a lame fox which had been hanging for some days 
about a little spinney. Still he felt sure that his 
hunted fox had gone round towards Chorlbury, and 
that, if he came back, he should hit him over the 
wall ; and so it turned out. Keeping along the wall 
en route to the lame-^un, he heard a view halloo at 
last, and ascertained that his fox had just gone into 
Boinall, so beaten that he had to jump three times 
at the wall before he could get over. The hounds 
could just hit it on the grass, but could hardly speak 
to it in cover, where a vixen did all the work for 
half-an-hour, till at last Helena dropped across the 
beaten fox, and pulled him down. 

Of course, we had a cup of tea and a little con- 
versation ; and of course, we found Jem in a most 
'^ affable^^ mood, in every sense of the word. We 
discoursed of the forest and its changes, which seems 
a very delicate subject. ^^ Its nearly all grubbed 
up/' he said, " and the deer killed, red and fallow ; 



HORN AND HOUND. 371 

we used to go through hundreds of them on the drives. 
Lords Churchill and Redesdale have left only a bit 
of it at the top a.nd bottom^ where the foxes must 
fly. The old foresters get puzzled, and they can^t 
dwell; they get lost, and dare not touch certain 
covers and go down wind. It^s a black thorn and hazel 
cover, with grass. They used to put a six-foot 
hedge, with thorns outside, to keep the deer out. 
The foxes smeased, and the hounds vrould jump at 
the fences, and lose their eyes or get staked and 
drop into the ditch; that^s done away with now, 
that^s one little comfort, but there^s no badger 
hunting.''^ 

Debarred as we were from seeing Jem jem and the 
at this game, we pressed him to set it badgers. 
before us, which he did as foilovvs : " Twenty couple 
are useless, if vou w^ant to kill without the brisket 
dodges, they can^t smother or bite him to death. 
Eive couple which really like it,^' he went on to say, 
" will stick to it and catch a badger, where there are 
lots of cubs about. Lord Dillon and Mr. Webb 
didn't believe me, so Lord Vaux came and had a 
night of it with them ; hot supper at Ditchley. We 
sent a man at twelve to sack the hole. The run of 
a badger is very odd IJIJ^UT, and so on. We got 
on to it at the bottom of the Park, and picked it 
out into the Oak riding. The cubs were up, and 
the vixen came squalling across the rides, after the 
badger and the hounds, a hundred yards behind. 
We gave him an hour-and-a-half in the Park, and 
then to ground, and brought him home at three. I 
used to be with the hounds under a tree, and put a 
man to sack the hole, and watch. They^d be out 
eating beans like a pig. Three and four season 
hunters did it best. The Kocket sort were good at 
that game, and. Platoff was very great. If another 
hound spoke to a fox, heM come back to me. His 
note for a badger was short and deep, and for a fox 

B B 3 



372 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

« 

light and clear. He'd bay them, but he'd not turn 
them up. Harlequin knew the brisket dodge, and 
we dare not take him out. Badgers and foxes go 
very well together. They tell me that they killed 
nearly all the badgers in one of the woods in Sir 
Tatton^s old country, and that there was one found 
next day, and it was lying curled up in the earth 
with a fox. They're friendly enough, but the 
foxes are the lazy ones, and the badgers do the 
digging, and right they should. I killed nine bad- 
gers the first season I came here, and some of them 
with terriers. Once I turned one out in the frost 
with a couple of my terriers, Cribb and Fan, and they 
shuffled along well. They held him till I walked a 
couple of miles and got a sack.'^ 
Glories of Cribb " Cribb would fight a red-hot poker till 
the terrier, [f^ becamo cold ; his jaw-bone was quite 
bare ; there was not a bit of under-lip, and he'd put 
out a fire with his feet. That's why they called him 
^ The Fire Eater.' You had only to say ' Kill that 
cat/ and it was done. Still he would bear any 
amount of teazing, and never fought till I told him. 
I kept him two years after he was blind ; he would 
make his bed at the badger's door, and get in next 
morning, and go creeping along by the wall to find 
his head. He was a biggish eighteen pound dog, 
and he'd draw a cover beautifully. They would go 
to his cry. I have got Jack, a great grandson of his 
now, and he'll draw and find foxes with any hound. 
Never speaks to riot. Jack threw his tongue last 
season, and out came a hare. Mr. Hall was there. 
' Oh I Jack, Jack ! ' he said, ^ You've made a 
mis-take." Then out came a fox close under the 
hedge." 

We then tried back a little for Jem's 
Jem s ear y ays. g^^^.j-gj, days, whcu " grubbing" troublcs 

were unknown. It seems that he whipped in to 
Bob Bartlett and the Duke of Dorset's harriers at 



HORN AND HOUND. 373 

Noel House, near Seven-oaks in Kent, while Tom 
whipped in to the Surrey. The Duke was a fine, 
tall, young fellow, of nearly six feet ; and he was 
killed larking a horse over a wall near Dublin. 
'^ I did a little whipping-in when I was ten,^' said 
Jem, " but his Grace would have it ; — he was 
all wrong — that I was too little to be trusted for 
fear of accidents, so I was left at home with the little 
grey hack, and precious savage I was about it. I 
had four brothers with hounds, we were by an 
earthstopper from a huntsman^s daughter, so we 
couldnH be better bred. My father was a quarry- 
man and stopped earths as well. My Avord, what a 
hand he was, stopping all the old quarries about 
Godstone ! I was with the Duke three seasons, and 
wore a green coat. After that I was pad-groom, 
and whipped-in to Tom with the Surrey for seven 
seasons, then to Colonel Wyndham, then to the 
Badminton and Lord Ducie, and so on here. I 
knew this country well when I was with his Grace 
and Will Long, and the hounds used to come to 
Heythrop on September 16th, and the Duke on the 
first of November, and we carried ou the game till 
Christmas. Then we had six weeks in the Bad- 
minton country, till February 16th, and then back 
again here till April. 

" I had the present Duke here in '57. 
I had told him how fast Harlequin was, the Duke of 
and his Grace said he should like to see ^^^"fo^'*^- 
me prove my words. Mr. Hall had a special meet 
for his Grace at Bradwell Grove, and we had the 
largest field I ever saw out, focJt and horse. I like 
to see foot people, they enjoy it so, and they never 
interfere with me. Fve got them in pretty good 
training. We killed a brace in Bradwell Grove, 
then we found in Winrush Poor Let, and ran to 
Aldsworth Village into a coal-hole. His Grace said, 
* I should like to see this Harlequin of yours catch 



374 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

a fox in six fields/ We turned liim np^ and the fox 
came back to tlie top of the wall, and all the hounds 
viewed him. Then he ran a mile along a green 
lane near Aldsworth, and we had a regular lay on. 
Harlequin led a hundred yards out of the pack, the 
fox went under a wall and Harlequin over, up a 
hank to a plantation, he wrenched and turned twice 
all by himself, through the fence into the next fields 
and pulled him down. ^ His Grace said, that he 
^ never saw such pace in a hound before.^ It was 
a rare day^s welcome to the present Duke, and the 
hounds were as steady as beagles. Fast hounds are 
the thing, give him what old Philip Payne called 
' palpitation of the heart^ in the first ten minutes 
and you^ll do. LordValentia says Pve '^no business 
with more than two couple ;^ and Captain Anstey^s 
only for allowing me one hound. He says, ^ Jem 
Tznows exactly where the fox is going with all this lifting 
and telegraphing. ■' Captain Anstej^ was the only 
one who followed the Duke of Beaufort into his two 
countries, and he's going yet. 

Blooding future ''' ^ bloodcd thc prcscut Dukc at Hey.. 
masters of throp in the deer park, close beside an 
elder tree, and I did a good day's work. 
The Duke was only speaking of it the other day ; 
he remembered all about it ; he said, ' I got a good 
scolding for giving you a slap on the face, but you did 
put it on so very thick.' I blooded Lord Granville, 
he was master of the buck hounds then— he'll be 
leader of the Lords now ; he was a good deal older, 
so I got no slap that time. He quite enjoyed it. 
When the meets were at Heythrop, the two Mr. 
Baileys, from Bath, the two Mr. Worralls, Mr. 
Bawlinson and Lindow, Mr. Webb of Kiddington, 
Mr. Evans of Dean, and Mr. Holloway of Chorl- 
bury, were the cracks. The Sixth Duke Avas among 
us then on his horse St. George. Will Long had 
Bertha, Gimcrack, and Milkman then. I rode the 



HORN AND HOUND. 375 

first a little wlien she was five years old. I liked a grey 
mare Tiiberena best. His Grace bred lier_, but slie 
was a wicked one — the grooms could^nt ride her, so I 
begged to have a try. I made conditions, mind you, 
that if I killed her I was not to be blamed ; and the 
Duke told me I might kill her if I liked. She was 
a devil certainly at first, but I got her to carry me 
as quiet as a dog horse. She was one of the best 
looking ones I ever saw, and a rare galloper and 
jumper, I never rode anything like her. She 
knocked them about right and left when I had gone^ 
so they sent her to the stud. In ^26 we hunted the 
Forest only spring and autumn. There were 8,000 
acres of it then ; if they cut a place, they put a 
large fence to keep the deer out ; it was well rided, 
and the hounds pressed the deer hard if they got a 
scent. Ditchley Wood^s only half what it was, Fll 
tell you what, there^s only one-third of the cover left 
in the country to what there was then. We used to 
pay M160 a-year for gorses, which are gone Cooper^s 
Gorse, Hilbury Gorse, and Dunster Gorse, all stub- 
bed up. 

" The scent is twice as good from 
Brewin to Northleach as from Brewin "^^ ^^™^ *^"^^" 
to Aston, and the fleeces of the Cotswolds are bet- 
ter. You know pretty well how the scent is by the 
hounds. If there is a nasty blue mist, there is no 
scent. Even in Gloucestershire where the scent is 
far better, they^il not go into cover, make any excuse. 
A little black cloud will stop them in the middle of 
a field ; when you can hear well, there^s a scent ; if 
it^s bad hearing, it''s a bad scenting day.^^ 

Then we had the great story of the The south war- 
Warwickshire killing their fox at last, wickshire's 
v/hich despite any delicacy towards Jem ""™^ 
must be given in all its details. '' Well, you will 
have it,^^ said Jem, " so you must. I had always 
been teazing them about never getting across the 



376 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

turnpike-road, whicli divides our countries, and they 
sometimes got quite riled, when I offered to have it 
sodded. Well, Mr. Henlev Greaves was master 
then, and poor George Wells — a sterling good fellow 
and huntsman, was George — lived with him. Thej 
found at Woolford Wood, and carried agood head over 
Larches-on-the-Hill, down by Cornwell, over the 
hill by Boulters Barn, Sarsgrove to left, Sarsden 
Village; they were astonished to see a pack of 
hounds there, and Jem not at the head of them. 
Then on to The Norrells, through it, and killed him at 
Puddlicote Quarries. That was enough. Mr. Greaves 
and George Wells, and all of them, — it was our Hunt 
Meeting that day, — the}^ came to the White Hart 
and regularly had me up before all the gentlemen, and 
Mr. Greaves presented me with the brush. \)em 
wouldn't sod that lane as he promised, from Stow to 
Bloxam, and so he's quite entitled to this brush.' 
George A¥ells stood there grinning, poor fellow. 
Then the gentleman said, I must of course not re- 
ceive it without a speech, and they said I ought to 
have a white sheet on. So I took it, and I said, 
Fll have it mounted in silver, with an inscription, 
' This is the brush of the fox which took the South 
Warwickshire five-and-twenty years to kill.' So I 
gave them it back pretty well. Mr. Greaves said, 
' Well, George ! I think we'd better not have brought 
it, — Jem's down on us harder than ever.' I tell the 
South Warwickshire men now, that I know it was 
only a three-legged one out of The Norrells, and that 
Fve missed one since. The real truth is, if I can 
find a fox on these hills and get him over that road, 
and sink that fine scenting vale of theirs, when he's 
half beat, I can hook him, but if they find a fox in 
that Vale and bring him on to our cold hills, its 
a good reason why they lose him. 

"They say I don't like water, and 

Dislike to water. ,-\ i " • " • . n i 

they ve got a picture ot me steppmg 



HORN AND HOUND. 377 

into it. There was a huntsman's dinner at 
Banbury to Wingfield^ Stevens_, and myself, the 
farmers gave it, first-rate fellows ; and they were all 
on me about it. I said very well, when we're at 
North Aston, and the fox goes over the brook, 
ril pound you all. Going down from Doddington 
next time, 1 called up my second horseman ; he was 
on the grey mare Julia. I said, go and stand under 
the thick hedge on the opposite side of the bank from 
where we draw. We drew first on Dean Hill. 
Cooper and Selsby were great at water, and they 
said, '' Come along doivn this field. ' There was a 
tree across, I turned my black horse loose and ran 
across it, and got on the grey, and George went 
back for the black. I said I should go across the 
brook at a place where not a man in England dare 
jump it, and I was right. I always go in and out. 
Another time when I got to a brook I kept hallooing 
them on, forty or fifty of those Oxford boys, and I 
popped down to a ford, 100 yards below, and crept 
up the other side of the hedge ; the hounds checked 
on a fallow, and I heard them say, ^ TVe've done 
him, — we've left the old ^un behind.' ' Have you V I 
said, and I peeped through the hedge, ^ The hunts- 
man's here, and he don't want you to hunt them.' 
So I did them again.'' 

" Poor Will Goodall was so fond of the cricket remini- 

brook business. Such a carpentering scences. 
he used to have the day after they had been at 
Melton Spinney with those rails at the fords, ^ to keep 
the tinkers out,' as he called them. He was very 
fond of cricket : he went and fielded for a friend, 
when The United came to Grantham. He jumped 
about so in his white cord breeches ; I had great fun 
watching him. I used to play a great deal ; when 
the game went against me the better I liked it. Old 
Jem Broadbridge used to make me go in first, when 
things looked odd. When Brown came to play with 



378 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

the Brighton Club, we practised a fortnight throwing 
balls at each other^s wickets, to be ready for him. 
I was one of the Petworth Club, and we went to 
Brighton to play them. 

Broadbridge said, ^ Do go in first, Jem, they're all 
afraid of these shootersJ I got three runs off 
Brown, and twelve runs in all ; Lillywhite bowled 
me. Brown was a great fellow, six feet high, his 
balls came like bullets ; they were all over the place, 
three long-stops could^nt handle them. I never 
lost my wicket with a catapulta, I knew how to 
watch the machine ; I was in with a catapulta up 
at the Forest, and I went and fetched seven off it. 
I watched where he set it for leg-stump, middle or 
near stump. Once I took a young Eleven to play 
this grand Forest Club, and dressed them. I lasted 
them out each time, and made 130 runs, We 
wanted five to win. ' Don't you move your bat,' I 
said to the last man ; they shouted, ' Thafs not 
fair, Jem' I got the next over, and I got seven, 
and we regularly chaffed the Club. Pve not played 
them since. I always leave off a winner. Once I 
shot a pigeon match for £10 a-side ; I won that, and 
Pll shoot no more. Pve played one single-wicket 
match, and beat my man, and they^ll not catch me 
at that again. IVe ridden this steeple-chase and I 
won, so I may say that Pve never been licked.^^ 

With an idle afternoon on our hands, 

Clarke's sanctum. -, -, -, tt ^ n. l.^ j_ • 

and a clear sky overhead, we ieit the tram 
at Chippenham, and faced the 101 miles, heel and toe, 
to Badminton, to see that first Wonder and Span- 
gle entry, which united the scarlet and black collar 
of Tubney, with the green plush of the Duke. The 
road is nice, but too fiat to be interesting; and we 
were right glad to find ourselves in Acton Turvile, and 
then among the pretty cottages of Badminton, one or 
two of which seem perfectly clustered over with vine 
and ivy leaves. We found Clark almost roofless, as his 



,',•■'; 



HORN AND HOUND. 379 

house was being enlarged^ and he was living in the 
village pro tern. ; but still he stuck to his snuggery, 
which seemed like a sort of oasis in a brick-and- 
mortar wilderness. Mr. MorrelFs well-known print 
occupied the place of honour above the fire-place^ on 
each side of which hung the heads of Vigil and Ade- 
line. Old Trumpeter, who was put away soon after 
he came, looks out of canvas, in company with the 
young Harlequin; and beneath them was Trouncer, a 
relic of darkens service with Sir John Gerard. Sham- 
rock and Grimaldi, two Old Berkshire friends, Hor- 
lock^s Statesman (sire of Friendly and Filagree), 
poor Will Goodall, Hercules, and Philip Payne, found 
their place as well ; and there, too, was Clarke him- 
self on Topthorn, cheering Forester and Bobadil of 
Tubney renown ; while Farmer, who died under 
his first whip after a great Craven run, at Lam- 
bourne, has left him his foot as a forget-me-not, 
for the side-board. 

The "blue andwhite^^ scalp-board with ^, , 

^ , The kennel beau- 

its Iringe oi pads, pleasantly keeps up ties ofBadmin- 
the connection with Kingstown, who 
stands near the kennels, and the yearhngs which 
were coming forward for John Day. During the 
last four seasons, the average of noses has been 73 
brace, and in the last they reached 91, the largest 
number, we believe, on record. His Grace can 
generally count on five hundred head of foxes in a 
country, which is about forty square miles in extent, 
and from 14 to 15 brace are killed each season off 
Mr. Holford's property, which abounds with game. 
So much for true-hearted and industrious keepers, 
and an owner who has not one face for the master of 
the hounds, and another for his own men ! This year 
(1860) was the first of the Tubney cross, and the 
result was to be found in twelve out of the twenty- 
one litters, from which the entry had been selected. 
Nearly 38 couple of dog hounds were on the flags. 



380 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

ranging from 23i to 24 inches, with Hengist even 
slightly over that standard. The half-faced Fleecer, 
Clarke's friend of seven seasons, w^as there, by Eitz- 
hardinge Furrier from Heroine, and so back through 
Fitzhardinge Flourisher, and Beaufort Fairplay to 
the Furrier fountain head of honour. There, too, 
was the gay-coloured Forester, Wonder worthy in 
looks of his mate, and Wrangler, Sailor, and Sports- 
man of Warwickshire Saffron descent. Termagant 
and Tenderness had spoken up elsev/here for Harle- 
quin, who was with his sister Honesty, the prize 
Tubney Cup holders in "the Hercules year,'' and blest 
with a remarkable head, which marks him among 
ten thousand. 

Limner had been put away, but his Legacy and 
Loyalty were left, and so w^as his Paragon, strain- 
ing back to Beaufort Warlock on one side, and from 
a dam the very last of the Beaufort Poten- 
tates. Sportsman, Prodigal, Sparkler, and Why- 
not were among the particulars, and Trimbush, who 
had been in training for the hound match. Spangle 
the fifty-guinea matron of the Tubney sale prospered 
in her generation after she came to Badminton, and 
did her work well as an eight-season hunter. Her 
rare Wonders inherit her somewhat smutty face, and 
Wolds man in his work exactly resembles her. Jack 
Jones bred her, and Clarke entered her, and looked 
forward to raising a pack from her when she died. 
She leaves eight couple of them in work, and a 
couple of handsome ones coming forward. 

Among the matrons were Vistula and Vestal, 
Sanguine, and Vigil of the Warwickshire Saffron 
sort, in Avhich Clarke delights, as " there is no end 
of them ;" Wisdom, too, of the old badger-pie sort, 
Harriet, Hasty, Pleasant, and Pastime, and Coun- 
tess, with Skilful, who has a deal of the old Sunder- 
land head and crown. It would never do to forget 
Friendly, the yellow-pied Handmaid, or Caroline. 



HORN AND HOUND. 381 

There, too, was the ^rey face of old Spangle, and the 
very handsome Fallacy. Honesty and Toilet, both 
Tubney Cup winners, were in the throng, but as yet 
they had bred from neither of them ; and so were 
Earity and Playful, to tell of old Remus, who had 
been recently put away in his tenth season. Faithless 
by Flagrant, and Woful by Belvoir Comus, were 
there with Baroness; Seamstress was the least among 
that fair and good-tempered array, and never did two 
sisters show better than Waspish and Woodbine, as 
they passed side by side through the wicket. 

If you ask Will Long about his old Recollections of 

Badminton pack, he will generally reply wuiLong. 
that he would lay his life down for Prophetess by 
Plunder, and Tuneful by Warwickshire Tarquin. 
Still Dorimont is the burden of his discourse. The 
day when the sixth Duke ordered him to draw 
Stowe-on-the-Wold, fifteen miles away from Bad- 
minton, only twenty minutes before dark, or when 
the seventh requested him to bring out Milkman in 
a frost, and lark him over some flights of hurdles in 
the straw-ride, are still specially marked in his 
memory, but not more than the work of the old dog 
in Ditchley Woods, when he had been for months 
on the retired list. His blood comes up in all the 
best strains in the kennel. Rufus and Remus have 
it through their dam Rarity by Rutland, a capital 
son of his, and it can be traced in Wonder through 
Fearnought to Gaiety. Remus was the cleanest in 
his fore-hand, but Rufus had most power, and was 
nearest the ground, and decidedly the best of 
the two, and the Duke of Rutland and Sir Richard 
Sutton used him freely. 

Mr. Child e of Kinlet first began hard- The dawn of Lei- 
riding in Leicestershire, to Mr. MeynelFs cestershire. 
great disgust; and after Lords Forester and Jersey 
eame with " the splittercockation pace,^' he declared 
that he '' had not had a day's happiness.'^ He and 



382 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Tom Tit l^new no troubles till then, and his 
horses used to rear on their hind legs^ and jump 
gates and stiles standing, in the most sober and 
comfortable way. In fact^ it was the regular Mus- 
ter^s regime ; getting through a country^ and not 
over it. The BulPs Head and the George at Lough- 
boro^ were the head-quarters, and a hundred horses 
would go past the window in the morning to cover. 
Mr. Meynell hunted the whole of the original Quorn 
country, from Clifton Gardens near Nottingham 
to Market Harborough, thirty miles away and the 
Leicester harriers, whose patrons met once a week 
at The Bell, enjoyed themselves under his wing and 
got his small draft. Mr. Cholmondley, Sir Stephen 
Gljnine, Sir Harry Featherstone, and Prince Boothby 
were great at Loughboro^, and Brooksby Gate was 
the first meet of the season in November. Gra- 
dually Melton was discovered to be more central, and 
the attractions of the Belvoir and ^^ Lord Lonsdale^'s 
Tuesdays" brought Loughboro^ to grief, and the 
opening day to Kirbj^ Gate, which for sixty years 
never lacked Mr. Sheldon Cradock^s presence on 
horse-back, and at last in a chaise. 
The auorn Fourtecn masters — Sefton, Eoley, 
country. Smith, Osbaldcstou, Bellingham Gra- 
ham, Osbaldeston, Southampton, Goodricke, Holy- 
oake, Errington, Sufheld, Hod^'son, Greene, Sutton, 
and Stamford — have reigned since. Still through 
all the changes of tillage and draining, Sixhiils, 
Shoby, Widmerpool, and Willoughby held the 
best scent then, and hold it still. The Forest 
still continues to be what Mr. Meynell said of 
it, "the finest scenting country in the world ;^' 
and the best for breaking young hounds. The only 
part of the old enclosure is Charley, which remains 
the same as it did sixty years ago. All was then an 
open sheep-walk of heath and stone, and without 
any fence or even a tree, save a few hazels and 



HORN AND HOUND. 383 

oaks_, for miles. The foxes were as wild as hawks, and 
were generally found among the Whitwick rocks near 
the present Monastery, Avhere Mr. Meynell and his 
men would dig for hours. The four M^sof the Old Club 
and Mr. Cradock of Loughboro^ gradually took the 
management of the covers, and the subscriptions when 
Mr. Assheton Smith had the hounds and about 
j83,500 a-year, were paid as punctually as a bank 
dividend. " The Blue Coats^^ were in their glory, 
and among them " Gamboy Henton^^ who spoke to 
his own nose down a drain, when MevnelFs Gamboy 
could not. These flyers would '' hardly open 
their mouths under two hundred /^ and Jonathan 
King of Beeby would take a horse out of his 
stable for no one. '^ Come and ride liimy^ he used 
to say, " and if you like him, three hundred's my 
priceJ'^ 

For his tackle, Mr. Smith still stands Mr. Assheton 
confessedly the first man across Leices- smith. 
tershire, and except Sir David Baird, very few at- 
tempted to go so straight. The fences were higher 
then, and no caps were worn, and both of them 
would have their clothes torn off their backs, and 
their flesh from their faces, rather than not go every 
inch of the way with hounds. As Tom Heycock 
used to observe of Sir David, " If he did get a fall, and 
you thought he was out of the run, he would always 
pop up by your side/^ Mr. Smith brought his little 
horse Benjie into the country, and as he said then^ 
so he said to the last, that his present horse was his 
best. 

It was another of his axioms, that the Huntmg-fieid 
great secret was " learning how to gal- hawts. 
lop,''^ and he had to put out his highest proficiency 
on the Mondays ; when Messrs. Rawlinson and Lin- 
dow would invariably come to ride against him. 
" He would often ride for a certain fall, when he 
wanted to make a cast,^^ and no one knew how to 



384 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

fall off better. He studied it as a science, and when 
his horse was at all blown, he always sent him at 
timber a little aslant, so as to get free of him 
easier if he made a mistake. People knew what 
unmade, uncertain -tempered brutes he rode, and 
when he did something quite out of the common, 
they cheered him. This made him very tenacious, 
and if any one followed him over any of those ^' sen- 
sation jumps,^^ he was quite crabbed and seldom forgot 
it. One man he was never jealous of under any 
circumstances. Speaking of the finish of a run he 
said, "No one was there but myself;'^ and when 
some one suggested Tom Gamble, he replied, '^ Oh, 
Ae'.9 7iohody ; he's always there !'' 

He once rode against Sir James Musgrave, near 
Clawson, in the days when hunter pairs were all the 
fashion at Melton Thorns, but Sir James changed 
his black without his observing it, and jumping the 
locked gate at the bottom, left him pounded and in a 
fearful passion. From Broderip Oak over the Vale to 
Lydiard Wood, was another of his great rides, when 
Lord Kintore had the V. W. H., and he was gracious 
enough to say to his Lordship, " TVell ! old friend, 
you had just the best of it P' Be the country what 
it might, he never gave it a thought, and Mr. Davis 
always says that he was " the best stag hunter of us 
all," when we went into the New Forest. 

The Biiiesdon ^"^^ ^^ l^is grcatcst Leicestershire 
Brook leap, leaps was tlic Billcsdou Brook, which he 
leapt in a place where it was a regular ravine. The 
bank had rather curved in, and it required at last 
thirty-four feet to cover it, and a plashed hedge on 
the opposite side. The field saw him coming up the 
turnpike from the Coplow to Biiiesdon ; and for the 
first time in his life nursing his horse. He knew 
what was before him, and then rushing through the 
crowd like a bullet, he went at it determined to do 
something tremendous ; but Lord Aylesford followed 



HORN AND HOUND. 385 

him, and got over with a slight scramble on the other 
side. Dick Christian jumped the same brook, on 
Mr. Maxse^s grey King of the Valley in his steeple- 
chase, and the measurement from hind foot to hind- 
foot, was thirty-six feet. All Mr. Smithes escapes 
were as nothing compared to one of his friend 
Mr. Cokeys when he went to stay with him in 
Hampshire. Seeing a nice practicable fence, he 
charged it, but not only found himself dropping all 
in a heap into a deep lane, but right in front of a 
horse and cart. This vision so startled the horse, 
that it dashed forward, and drew the cart right over 
the legs of Mr. Cokeys hunter, as it lay on the ground, 
and lamed it for many a week after. 

Mr. Smith seemed to relax towards no Training iittie 
one so much as Mr. Greene, whom he ^^"ii^urton. 
considered his best pupil, and there was also an excep- 
tion in favour of little Will Burton. He determined 
to give Will his first lesson, when he was little more 
than four stone. Putting him on one of his steadiest 
hunters, he observed by way of prelude, '^ Boy ! if 
you donH stick close to me, you'll never see your 
mother again ! '■' Having made this first and last 
appeal, he proceeded to give him a lead over some 
hog-backed stiles, and chose one so close under a 
tree, that the little fellow's hat was knocked off. In 
a minute his master was down picking it up. "Rare 
fun this, boy, isn't it T^ " Yes, master, ^^ said Young 
Hopeful, " hut if ive donH look sharp, we won't see the 
hounds again" The retort suited his grim humour 
to a nicety, and he chuckled at the thoughts of it 
long after poor little Will was in his grave. 

At that time, the hounds spent alter- -^in^s hound 
nate three weeks between Quorn and education. 
Eowden Inn, where Lord Plymouth, Mr. Maxse, and 
Mr. Maher also sent their horses, and Mr. Smith told 
the stor}^ of the hat so well at Serlby, that the hero of 
it was summoned to be looked over and tell his weight. 

c c 



386 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

This occurred so often afterwards that Will began to- 
think that " master will never have done showing 
me to the ladies/^ In other respects he was a pre- 
cocious pnpil_, and in his leisure hours he clipped his 
master^s cat. It came up as usual to be stroked by 
Mr. Smith at stable hour, and an enquiry soon fixed 
suspicion on the culprit, who said he '^ thought it 
would make her handsome.^^ We do not know 
whether the punishment, blended as it was with the 
deepest instruction, would suit the authors of the 
Eevised Code, but it simply consisted in writing out 
and then spelling over to his master, twenty of the 
hardest hound names in the pack. 

Old Tom W ingfield, who had a peculiar habit of 
always catching his horse up, before he took a fence^ 
never got on with Mr. Smith in kennel. Tom 
smoked morning, noon, and night, and we have no 
doubt does so still at eighty-seven. Hence " Send 
that fellow to me, when he's sure he's done his pipe/' 
was the general form of cabinet council summons. 
There is a good deal of truth in what Dick Burton 
always says to George Carter, " I had the lion, you 
had the lamb,^^ as Mr. Smith grew much milder 
latterly, and he took the dog-hounds into the open, 
and George the lady pack and the puppies into the 
woods, without at all interfering with each other. 
There never was a better man to get away from a 
big wood. He would not speak a word after they 
found . There was no " TVhey ! confound the horse ;" 
as with Mr. Codrington (when it wasn^t stirring an 
ear), but he kept quietly moving in the ridings ; and 
when they broke he was at them like a shot. 
Mr. Hames of I^^ Leicestershire, Mr. Hames of Glenn 
Glenn. -^^g jj^g great hound secretary. He would 
put out twenty couple of puppies for him, and go 
round twice a-week to shepherd them. " If you 
don^t keep the one well," he used to say, ^^ Fll send 
you two ; and if you don^t keep the two well 1^11 




Dick Burton, p. 387- 



HORN AND HOUND. 387 

send you the dam and the whole litter/^ His good 
humour had its effect^ and they came in from quar- 
ters like bacon pigs. Mr. Hames^s enthusiasm did not 
die out, and they used to say in Mr. Osbaldeston^s 
day, that if he heard Dick Burton crack his v^hip as 
a signal on passing through the village, he would 
have run out of church from a wedding or a funeral. A 
fox with a mangy brush and loins in Shankton Holt 
was a great card with him, and he named him 
^' Jack.^^ " 1^11 back old Jack to-day^^ was his offer, 
directly they found ; and they never could succeed 
in killing him. 

It was in Lincolnshire that '^ The » The squire" in 
Squire/^ after a capital season up to Lincolnshire. 
Christmas Eve, underwent all the agonies of " the 
great frost," which never broke up again till past 
the middle of February ; when hunting men felt 
like the exiles of Siberia. After that, he had 
three things good enough to make the fortune of a 
season, one of them with scarcely a check seventeen 
miles from point to point, with Jim Wilson and Tom 
Sebright cheeking him all the way over Tower Moor, 
to keep him out of the Heath. It was all grass and 
no plough in Lincolnshire then ; drains have now 
made the top of the soil light ; and sheep no longer 
rot almost up to their hocks in water, so that the 
labours and difficulties of those days must not be 
judged of by the standard of the present, when 
there is a stable of 70 or 80 hunters to pick from, and 
sometimes 120 couple of hounds out at quarters. 

The picture of Dick Burton and the The osbaidestoa 
hounds is the key, as far as sires go, to ^^^^^^ biood. 
the finest Osbaldeston blood. Dick is not on the 
Big Grey, which ^' had always one spur in him, and 
the other never out of him," but Cervantes, one of his 
own making. Walton Thorns has just been drawn 
blank, and Vanquisher by Musters^s Proctor, always 
one of the last out, comes up flying a stile. He 

CO % 



388 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

was one of tlie most iDeautiful dog-hounds at Quorn, 
not so fast as Furrier, and_, like him, he never, 
smeused. The farmer who walked him at Hutton 
Bushel, sent him in with the comment, that he ought 
to be a very good hound, as " he had eaten the mis- 
tress^ prayer-book one day. '' The old black and 
white Vaulter lies down near the yellow-pied Pil- 
grim, " such a dog for ribs and thighs, and eight 
inches round the arm,''"' who looks wistfulh^ up in 
Dick^s face, waiting for the word to move on to 
Mundy^s Gorse. His sire Rocket by Vernon^s 
Kallywood also shows those grave, long features, 
which were such a type of his road wisdom, and 
Eurrier comes cantering up to the group, in which 
Mindful, his companion in the Bel voir draft, 
bears part with Nabob " an owdacious stinger, 
with a true Brocklesby head/^ The yellow-pied 
Hermit bears testimony to a Beaufort draft, and 
there, too, are Primrose, and Rosebud the faithful 
consort of Furrier and one with Rocket in the Ver- 
non pack purchase. The little terrier Nettle is 
almost the "" dearest of them ^a^^ to Dick. Her dam 
used to ride to cover in Lord Micidleton^s carriage, 
butNettle despised all such help. Dick often tells 
how she was somehow or other always first, second, or 
third over the rides for an hour and tyvcnty minutes 
in Martinshawe Wood, and then pitched in to her 
well earned fox for the first time; how she went in at 
a badger with her legs under her, when she bad 
hardly a cheek-tooth left, and how she honourably 
retired w^hen " The Squire^^ had jumped upon her 
at the last fence but one before the fox went to 
ground after a very fast thing. 
The Squire's Blood Tathcr than size was '' The 
hound tastes. Squire^s^^ aim in kennel. Four couple 
and a half of Rockets, none of them less than four 
season hunters, three couple of Vanquishers, and 
26i couple of Furriers were the cream of the pack^ 



HORN AND HOUND. 389 

wlien lie went to the Pytcheley. Over the great 
grass-fields of Kelmarsli and Oxendon^ the "Fur- 
rier ladies " for two seasons especially, were in 
their greatest glory. He had made them, so handy, 
that at a signal they would divide in their cast, but 
latterly they were always flashing over the scent, 
when their fox doubled back, or dodged ; and four 
or five scarries with different foxes, too often made 
up the journal entry at night. When they did settle 
to one, and blew him up in the open, " The Squire'^ 
might well say "^they don^t fly like pigeons, they fly 
like angels/^ 

Never was he known to go in a car- The squire's scom 
riage to cover ; and he never seemed to °^ fatigue, 
know what fatigue was. " If you will have two 
horses, you shall have two packs a-day,^' he said to 
the Quornites, and as he never went to sleep after 
dinner, he wouldn^t have objected to a turn with a 
third by moonlight. Tommy Coleman, who often 
cut in for a half-mile gallop at his side during the 8 
hours and 40 minutes of his great Newmarket match, 
declared that he could see no difference in him at the 
20th and 200tli mile ; and yet some of his horses, 
old Guildford especially, pulled hard. He rode it a 
race all the way, standing up in his stirrups. There 
was always quite a set-to at the end of each four 
miles; and he would blow any one up if they at- 
tempted to help him on to his fresh horse. When 
all was over, he insisted on riding into the town, 
and Mr. Gully was so grieved at seeing fine training 
and stamina so fearfully taxed, that he said " Really, 
Squire, you ought to have a whip over your shoulders 
for taking such liberties with yourself V 

An acre of manuscript might be filled 

•jT ,T • IT- /'ill 1 Meltoniana. 

With the sayings and domgs of the hard- 
riding men of Melton, back to the days when Ealph 
Lambton was treasuring up for Durham County use 
every waif and stray that fell from the lips of his 



390 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

St. Hugo; or wlien Lord Sefton set the whole 
country talking, by jumping the Decoy Brook near 
Bunny on his grey. He carried top weight about 20st._, 
and won in a tremendous fast thing of 20 minutes, 
" a stone a minute/^ as he afterwards said. 
General Gros- Thcu thcro was General Grosvenor 
venor. equally quaint in his way at Newmarket 
or at the meet, where he would sometimes arrive 
from Brooksby, with a perfect cloud of grooms after 
him, by way of giving his hunters exercise. ^^ You 
ride no more for me/*^ he said to " The Vicar^^ after 
he had ridden Doedalus, " you lay so far out of 
your ground, you nearly frightened Mrs. Grosvenor 
to death." A dislike to sleeping out was another 
of his leading features. A bed was at his service 
after he had dined out in the Cottesmore country, 
but he could not make up his mind. At last he 
sent for the housemaid, who was a woman of short 
stature, and asked when it had been slept in ? "I 
slept in it, General, only last night," said she. 
^' You slept in itj'^ he replied, looking her well over, 
You'i^e not big enough to air a bed : order my car- 
riage.^^ 

Mr. Moore wielded well the power of 
the Old Club, and did " the coffee-house 
part of the business" by keeping men together, and 
gathering in the subscriptions ,quite early in the sea- 
son. He was a thin man with long legs, and " day- 
light knees" in his saddle, and always a quiet rider. 
Like most of the men of that period, he never liked 
to be asked too little for a horse. Wright of Sys- 
sonby offered him one in the spring at rather a low 
figure, but he returned him after a trial, and a dealer 
bought him. The next season Wright espied his 
old friend at Thorpe Trussells ; and it was a perfect 
bit of news for Mr. Moore, when he was told 
'^ You^re sitting. Sir, on the same horse you 
were on at the end of last season; I suppose I 



HORN AND HOUND. 391 

asked you a hundred too little.'^ He was also 
a little of an epicure^ and his friends used to 
tell him that thev had heard his Shorthorn solilo- 
quies at cattle shows : " I should like to have a 
rump-steak out of jou." Once he was regularly 
taken in when he was yachting abroad. He 
found, as he thought, a young lamb tethered to a 
stake, and gave five shillings for it. He had, as it 
seems forgotten the size of the sheep of that country, 
and only thought of the Bakewells, and it turned 
out, as he said, with disgust, to be '^ an old tup, and 
as strong as a Billy Goat.^^ 

" Harden your hearts and tighten your 
girths,^^ was Lord Alvanley^s great watch- ^^ ^*" ^^* 
word at the " View Halloo,^^ and it was magnificent to 
see him go over the first half-dozen fences. Twenty 
minutes was his allowance, or about five more on an 
average than Lord Sefton. He butchered his horses 
along when they would go, spurs well home and reins 
slack ; and Prick Ears understood him best. Once 
when he was on his white horse, they found at Whis- 
sendine Pastures, and as all the steam was in him, he 
came right out of the crowd, and had the brook first. 
The horse got in, and plunged his Lordship's hat to 
the bottom, and to the end of the day he persevered 
on bare-headed, and with his horse perfectly black, 
or rather pyebald from the slush. He had a skew- 
ball, but the weight did not suit him, and his Lordship 
announced after one ride, that he was sure that 
^' the horse would commit suicide rather than carry 
him again .^^ 

A woodland day he abhorred. " What sport have 
you had to-day, Alvanley?'^ said one of his friends 
when he met him coming home rather glum. '' Oh ! 
beautiful, we've been up Tilton Wood, and down 
Tilton Wood, and through Tilton Wood, then we 
went away from Tilton Wood, and back again to 
Tilton Wood, and they'll very likely finish at Tilton 



392 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Wood/^ On another clav, lie declared that he had 
been quite beaten in the ^'^ Whole Art of Riding 
made Easy/^ by a Circus man from Leicester, who 
came out to see the fun in a property scarlet, and 
on an old grey trick- horse. Near Quenby Hall, the 
man pretended to ride at a gate, and when the horse 
stopped short, he threw himself over his head, and 
made such a series of somersaults that the field 
thought that he and his top-boots would never come 
to earth again. Spending, his Lordship termed 
" realizing,^^ and defied any one to give a more philo- 
sophical definition of it ; and when his servant told 
him that he was sorry to say that the corn-factor 
had turned awkward at last, he asked what was the 
state of his confectioner^s mind, and on learning that 
it was favourable, he said, ^^ Oh 1 that will do : give 
'em biscuits I^' His finest stroke of policy was when 
he gave away a whole boat-load of coals to the poor 
of Melton, and the inference from this liberality was 
so favourable, that he had a roaring credit for 
months, at the expense of the Navigation Com- 
pany. 

Mr. Maher's Be it Eriu-go-Bragh or Shugaraoo, or 
•' Old Tommy." anything else, Mr. "Paddy" Maher never 
used anything but a snaffle. Mr. Frank Forester 
introduced a great change into the cover horse 
system, as he generally rode ,his own there, and 
this prevented the grooms from running riot as of 
yore. Li Old Tommy, Mr. Maher had a veritable 
treasure, as he seemed to have a private key 
to the run of every fox. He was such a wizard 
that Mr. Burton ordered his lad never to keep his 
eye off him, and go exactly where he did. Old 
Tommy was indignant at this, and when he could 
not shake him off, he pulled up, and sitting down on 
a gate began to read the newspaper. The lad 
thought that Tommy would be lost that day, and 
rode on ; but when he was wanted, the veteran was 



HORN AND HOUND. 39S 

tliere to a minute^ and Mr. Burton had to look into 
space for his second horse. The lad explained matters, 
and acted so rigidly in future up to his directions. 
'• If Tommy gets on to a gate to read the paper, get 
up beside him, and ask him to edify you as well as 
liimself/^ that Tommy and he became fast friends. 

There was a story against Mr. Maher j^^. Mauer out- 
of the way in which he tried to trick witted. 
Old Tommy, who was on a horse with about the same 
walking pace as his own. He held that going 
on one side of a wood was much shorter than the other, 
and sent Tommy to come along it with the strictest 
injunction not to break from a walk ; but (seeing from 
an opening in the wood that he was making as 
good time as himself), stealthily started to can- 
ter. Tommy saw it and did the same, and got to the 
ineeting place first. Mr. Maher was exceedingly 
angry, and was not at all satisfied with the explana- 
tion, that Tommy had seen him canter just after he 
came to the wood corner, and saw no possible harm 
in doing the same. 

Many compared Sir Francis Burdett^s sir Francis Bur- 
seat on Sampson to a pair of compasses ^^"• 
across a telescope. He cared little for personal com- 
forts, and his Westminster and provincial supporters 
who believed (after they had seen him seated at 
a window teaching it to his boy), that he did no- 
thing but study Magna Charta all day, would have 
hardly known '^ Old Glory ^^ as the fox-hunting de- 
votee in those two little rooms which had once been 
part of the stables, at Kirby Hall, or dining out 
after hunting, and stopping all night in his dirty 
but historical top-boots. He had a soul for sub- 
scribing as well as hunting ; and he and Lord Pl}^- 
mouth each gave £400 to the Quorn. In fact, if he 
only hunted once in a season, he gave £200, and 
Mr. Sheldon Cradock tells no story with more zest 
than how on hearing of cover wants, he asked for his 



396 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

if anything came upon him suddenly, he as often as 
not put his foot in it, and his rider down. 

Captain White srraduated with " The 

Captain White. ^ . ,, . -j- . ii- t ,•, 

bqmre m JLmcoinshire, and was the 
friendly go-between, who arranged that he should 
purchase Quorn from Mr. Assbeton Smith His 
first day in Leicestershire was on " The Widow,^'' 
at Scraptoft, and they had eight minutes from The 
Laurels, very sharp, to ground. They went back and 
found again, and had eleven miles. Mr. Smith saw 
the mare, and her young rider so forward, that 
although his temper went from being bogged almost 
immediately after, he did not forget it. The next 
time they appeared was in a very fast thing from Bil- 
lesdon Coplow to Slawston Windmill. Only five 
were left in at last, and when Mr. Smith saw his 
brook acquaintance down, he caught his mare for him, 
and only gave him a warmish exhortation to be 
quick, as with scarcely a breath left in him, be 
staggered over a fallow. 

Putting up hun- Putting up horscs for auction at the 
tersattheoid Old Club was quitc a business each 

Club . . 

night. Parties were often made on pur- 
pose, and after a couple of bottles of claret, business 
becaaie quite brisk. Each owner had one reserve 
bid, and it was quite a sight the next morning to 
watch the different horses change stables, to the 
great bewilderment of the grooms. Several were 
very sweet on The Widow the first day she came out, 
and '^ four hundred" was put under the candlestick. 
The Captain^s reserve bid was a hundred above that 
sum, and after the Billesdon Coplow day, Lord 
Middleton did not scruple to close for her. Mis- 
takes frequently arose Irom the habit of having 
hunters of the same colour and style. Sir James 
Musgrave, who would give good prices at the end of 
the season for horses he had seen go well, had three 
greys, by Fitzjames, (for which he paid a thousand 



HORN AND HOUND. 397 

guineas to a Siiropsliire man), so alike that the grooms 
and their owner only knew them; and Captain 
White had two equally " winsome marrows, " in 
liis dark chesnuts. The Quorn had had a very fast 
forty minutes, and The Captain had been in the front 
rank as usual with one of them, and come a tremen- 
dous cropper into a green lane. Luckily his groom 
was close at hand with the other, and as not a 
soul knew of the change, it was sold for four hun- 
dred at night. 

Harlequin, by Sir Oliver, was the best 
horse venture The Captain ever made, ^^ ^'^^""' 
and was bought out of a Derbyshire team, for ^100, 
when he was four years old. He had two splints 
his first season, but the bone grew up to them, and 
his action and blood made him quite equal to fourteen 
stone. He made his debut at Easton Wood, and a 
few of them had two miles over the plough and back 
before the field knew what was going on ; and they 
then changed foxes, and ran to Woodwell Head. The 
style in which the horse had jumped on and off 
a little bulrush island, during the run, got so bruited 
about, that when Lord Plymouth heard of it, cou- 
pled with Mr. Standish^s report of his action across 
ridge and furrow, he determined to have him at any 
price. It was eventually agreed that he should give 
Pedlar and a j8900 cheque for him; and as The 
Captain sold the latter for £250, he made a 
clear thousand guineas of his horse. His lordship 
had got four falls off his 400-guinea Assheton, the 
first time he rode him, and was glad to sell him to 
Mr. Holyoake ; but he never repented buying Har- 
lequin, and vowed after riding him for seven seasons, 
that he was the only one he ever liked^ He was a 
perfect snaffle -bridle horse, and the only instructions 
The Captain gave with him were, ^' Don^t bully him, 
my lord -, hold him nicely for three fences, and then 
sit down on him, and send him along.^' From hip 



398 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

to tail he was all muscle, and Mr. Gilmour said of 
liim, that he ^'only seemed to gallop over an ox- 
fence.^^ There is_, however, always a set-off to luck, 
and his brother Jupiter met his death, by a stake 
running into his chest, just as the hounds were 
killing; and General Grosvenor insisted on giving 
him honourable burial in the centre of the middle 
riding in Stockersten Wood. 
Mr. Maxse pound- What Harlequin or Merry Lad might 

ing a couple, j^avc Said to it is a different thing, but 
even The Captain and Admiral Berkeley* confess 
that Mr. Maxse with all the weight fairly set them 
over four oak rails, at the corner of Harlesdon Wood. 
Cognac, who took them with his chest, and drew 
the stumps right out of the ground, and his rider 
looked back when the crash was over, and said, 
'^ Ah I I alioays thought you were a pair of soft ones !'' 
This was the third or fourth flight of rails which 
Cognac, who was very fresh after a frost, and in one 
of his rushing humours, had served out that day. 
Mr. Campbell, of Saddell, had introduced him into 
his Melton song, and therefore he was more 
talked of; but Mr. Maxse was quite as fond of 
Treacle and the Baron, both of which he purchased 
from Sir Bellingham Graham ; and it was for the 
latter that Captain Boss, who yearned to be the 
steeple-chase champion, offered him a thousand 
guineas in vain. 

Captain White bought Merry Lad from 

Merry Lad. ^^ Tilbury, for J200 ; but although he 
did not go the length of Lord Cardigan's Dandy, 
who danced about on his hind legs, and flew at every- 
thing at the cover side, till they ' were obliged to 
bring him in blinkers; he was very restive at firsr, and 
required to be flogged out of the yard. His great 
day was one from Thorpe Trussells, by Great Dalby 
to Bolleston, where they killed in a ditch. He 

* Now Lord Fitzliardinge. 



HORN AND HOUND. 399 

played first fiddle with, the Captain for some twelve 
seasons_, when Alice Grey took his place, and he was 
used in harness at last. 

To see The Captain starting for the 
Scurry at Croxton or Heaton Park, and croxton ^ and 
calling the young ones to order at the ^^^*'''' ^''''^• 
post was a very grand sight, and often in the middle 
of the race, a series of most sonorous Tally-hoes were 
heard from the same quarter, to make the impetuous 
ones go a little faster. Dick Christian has already 
told of the Waste Walk on the Kettleby Road ; but 
the Captain had harder work than that when he had 
to get off lOlbs. in two days for Theodore, when he 
was staying at Heaton Park. During the last two 
miles of one walk, he was so beat, that in order to 
have something to force the running, he picked up 
a bag-piper, and was marching in state behind him 
up the flower-garden, on his return, with a face like 
a furnace, when the house party encountered him. 

Besides profiting by the countless ^r. Greene of 
riding hints, which he received from Roiieston. 
Mr. Assheton Smith, when he first came out, 
Mr. Greene went into strong practice on off days, 
over his own Rolleston estate. He would in- 
vite parties to course there, and mounting one of his 
best hunters, ride so close up to the dogs, that at 
times their owners would be a little nervous lest he 
should jump on to them. He negotiated the ox- 
fences and wide ditches with which the estate 
abounds so brilliantly, that dog owners often said, 
that to see him at work was worth all the sport 
among the hares. 

His hand and seat were so light, that 
he went by the name of " The Fly,^^ and *^ ^ ° " '°^' 
he seemed to tell his horse more by knee-pressure 
than anything, exactly what he expected of him. 
When he came out cub-hunting within the last two 
or three seasons, on a little chesnut ^^ Nat ^^ (which 



400 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Mr. Richard Sutton had bought from its name- 
sake at Newmarket), the finest horsemen thought 
it quite a head-and-hand lesson to watch him 
gradually soothe the little gentleman, w^hich 
would ^j and kick about in every direction, 
into a quiet canter. Horse handling was a science 
he had quite thought out, and we remember w^ell 
his delight when we sat with him, the last tim.e we 
ever met, at the Alhambra, and saw Mr. Rarev have 
his first interview^ with King of Oude. He always 
said that he endeavoured to make his horses take 
their fences a trifle aslant, and he " came up to them,^^ 
as a first flight friend writes us, '' with bounding 
strokes to the last, when he slackened his rein, and 
allowed them to exert their full power, the fling 
almost invariably bringing him safely into the next 
field.^^ 

The riding of his Latterly hc huutcd about two or three 
later years, days a-wcck, in a quiet sort of w'ay, but 
enjoyed it as much as ever. In fact, he said that in 
one or two runs he had " never ridden more up to 
the mark v/hen he was one-and-twentv,''^ and no- 
thing gave him greater pleasure than a remark of 
Lord Gardner's : ^' I say, Greene, you're cutting the 
young hms down.'' He had a great " eye forward"' 
for hounds, and stoutly carried out the maxim, never 
to take timber if you can avoid it. He repeated 
this to Goddard (who was riding side by side with 
him in a fast thing by Holt two seasons ago), and 
Jack often tells how beautifully he suited the action 
to the word, and popped his horse through the hedge 
close by the gate-post and into the front rank in an 
instant. 

The white Glanagyle, which was given 

to him by Mr. Otway Cave, was his cover 

hack for nearly fifteen seasons. He always rode it 

in the Park when he came to town, and it is now 

finishing out its days with Sir Frederick Fowke. 



HORN AND HOUND. 401 

He seldom kept more than six hunters, and was not 
given to change. "The bay mare" never had a 
name ; and after her_, Muley of whom he records in 
1835, " I was never carried better in my life," 
and Don John "very clever," were in force some 
five-and-twenty years ago. Fanny, Asparagus, and 
Symmetry were in his stables together ; Syssonby 
stood very high with him ; Phantom, who was 
out of one of his own mares, won a Hunters Stake 
at Northampton ; and Alice Grey, little Piccolo, 
and the water-loving Mrs. Caudle carried him to the 
front, during his memorable mastership. The first 
was given away to a tenant, and Mrs. Caudle was 
bought in for 230 gs., when half worn out, and car- 
ried him for some seasons after that. 

He kept a rough journal of every day His hunting 
he was out; a little limp-backed red Journal 
book, tied with a red ribbon. The entries till he be- 
came master seem very slight, and those who expect 
to glean much of what took place in 1835-39 would 
search in vain. With Mr. Hodgson^s two seasons, 
his writing ardour seems to have been quickened, 
although once or twice we detect a mere pencil en- 
try, the gist of one of which is, ^^ rode Norton, a 
fallJ'' " Rolleston, lots of foxes,'' occurs several times, 
but the great Assheton Smith day of 1840 has merely 
these three lines : " Assheton Smith, met at Holies- 
ton, we had about two thousand horses and thirtij 
carriages, Pi'ince Earnest present, rode Don John.'' 
However, a Leicester newspaper extract, pasted into 
each end of the book, puts the flesh on to this 
skeleton entry. Among the more varied entries are 
" stopped the hounds in consequence of a mad dog;" 
" Laughton Hills, excellent day, was on my horse 
twelve hours ;" " Coplow, only our old fox, plenty at 
Barkby Holt ;" and then comes " Kilby Wharf, 
found one of the best foxes I ever saw." " Water- 
ford's hounds at Somerby, turned out a stag, 

D D 



402 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

rode Norton^ ^^ shows that steady and orthodos 

as he waSj he could not resist a peep at " The 

Wild Huntsman^ " and '' 1 hour 45 minutes ^' 

was his reward. Two runs with Mr. Hodgson's 

seem to have delighted him most in the whole of the 

seven years' chronicle, which we have glanced at. 

One of them, January 20, 1840, is described as " a 

great run, two hours from the Coplow, killed, one of 

the finest runs I ever saw, carried brilliantly by 

Harlequin." To the other, of December 9, 1840, he 

applies the terms, " best run I e^er saw ; ran from 

Thorpe Trussells to Spinney at Rolleston Brook, 52 

minutes. From Halstead to Rolleston not a horse 

within half-a-mile of them, 22 couple, and all up ; 

rode my grey mare, and she had decidedly the best 

of it, and not beat.'' 

His great Thorpe Latterly he rather leant to the belief, 
Trussells run. 1}^^^ ^ j,^jj j^ j^jg Q^rj^ mastcrship from 

Thorpe Trussells to Rolleston Gorse, was perhaps the 
best of the two, and Tom Heycock is with him on 
the point. There were twelve horses in Twyford 
Brook, and full fifty per cent, of the remainder were 
beaten off in Tilton Bottom, Mr. Greene on Betriever, 
Tom Day on Cossington, and only five or six others 
being able to get up the Skeffington Vale. How he 
and Tom Day ever got such a pack put together, 
astonished all Leicestershire ; and not one blank 
day went into the diary during his six seasons. 
He took great j)ains with his foxes : one of the broad- 
backed, short black foxes which Captain White sent 
him from Derbyshire went, like the celebrated Man- 
ton Gorse ones of two seasons since, and gave him 
three runs from John Ball, before Tom could bring 
him to book. As an M.F.H., none were more 
energetic or popular both with the gentlemen and the 
farmers. If the meet was thirty miles off", he would 
never miss it, and he would saunter down to the 
kennels at Billesdon on every non-hunting day. It 



HORN AND HOUND. 403 

was at that village that Mr. Grant had his studio 
while he was engaged on the Melton Hunt picture, 
and spent some weeks at KoUeston while it was in 
progress. 

It was beautiful to hear Mr. Greene Mr, Greene at 
talk of huntings especially at the head of ^<'°^®- 
his own table. He was all animation^ and you hardly 
knew whether n^ost to admire the conciseness 
and spirit of his descriptions, or the delicate 
grace with which he kept self so completely in the 
back-ground, — giving every first-flight man his due, 
and hitting off his peculiar style. He was tenacious 
of his old friendships and early predilections o 
'*' Holyoake/^ for whom he acted during his master- 
ship, Goodricke and Bellingham Graham were ever 
on his lips ; and the riding of Lords Wilton and. 
Gardner, and Mr. Gilmour, a theme which never 
grew old ; but still he did not grudge the younger 
men their laurels. Fairness and kindness were great 
features in him, and no one had finer tact in settUng 
a vexed question, or putting two men together, when 
they had begun to fight a little shy. To give ano- 
ther chance was the great rule of his magisterial 
life, and young offenders might well say appealingly, 
" Take me to '- The Squire P ^' He delighted in a 
little farming, and never seemed happier than v»^hen 
he had his tenants round him at the rent dinners, 
and invited Sir Frederick Fowke and Mr. John 
Marriot, and perhaps one or two of the neighbour- 
ing clergy to dine with them. Latterly he was a 
good deal in London, and loved dearly to meet his 
friends Sir Bellingham and Mr. Maxse (who had 
been at University College, Oxford, with him) iu 
his daily visits to Boodle^s, or to have a chat with 
Mr. Payne and " The Squire,^^ at the Arlington. He 
often dropped in at Tatter salFs on a Monday, and if 
he did not care to accompany Lord Berners, who 
always came to dine with him in Upper Baker-street 

DD 2 



404 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

on tte evening of the Private View^ each Christmas, 
he amazingly enjoyed judging the hunters at the 
Leicester Agricultural Show. Up to the last winter 
before Mr. Smith died he was a regular visitor at 
Tedworth, and it was there that he renewed his 
acquaintance with Mr. Coke. 

An affection of the heart had given 
His latter days. ^^^ infallible wamiug some ten years pre- 
viously, and he should then have given up hunting. He 
would stop for breath at the bottom of Bushy Close 
Hill between Billesdon and Rolleston ; but it was 
not till his grey Top thorn gave him a fall at a hedge 
and back-dyke*^ between Norton Corse and Barkby 
Holt, about twelve months before his death, that he 
really began to fail. He had never recovered the 
loss "^of his nephew, who was to have inherited 
Eolleston ; but when the shadows began to thicken 
round him at last, he was enabled to look more 
steadily into the future. Last October he took 
a friend into his stables to show him Topthorn and 
Crinoline, and his eyes filled with tears, when he 
said " There they are, '^ I shall neve?' ivant them again.^' 
To many he seemed wasted, and he thought so him- 
self ; but when his groom Shield weighed him just a 
fortnight before his death, after a lapse of two years, 
he was within a pound of what he had been in 
1855. "Eight stone one, Shield'' he said, '' /^ 
that all you can make it ? that was exactly my 
weight tvhen I was at college'' He seemed to take 
heart from this, and not only ordered a new whip 
and scarlet, but rode over to Leicester the day be- 
fore his death to try a horse at Hames's. 

The meet at Thc ncxtmoming was the first monthly 
Roiieston. -^qq^ of thc houuds at Rolleston. He 
was in more than his wonted spirits at seeing so large 
a field, and Sir Frederick Fowke, Captain Baily, 
Mr. Tailbv, and so many of his friends round him. 
It was quite a summer day, and the servants said 



HORN AND HOUND. 405 

they ^^ had never seen the sun shine so brightly on 
master before," and thought sadly afterwards of the 
old country omen, when they knew the end. While 
th-e second breakfast was going on, he sauntered 
down to the sunk fence, to have a word with the 
master and Jack Goddard. " I never saw a nicer 
lot," he said, when Wildboy and Welfare, the cup 
winners, and two couple more from Sutton^s Lively, 
had been pointed out to him ;" you're just getting 
them the size I like so much.'^ 

Shield had taken the fine edge off 
Crinoline when they had looked them ^^ ^^^ ^"'^^* 
through, and there was soon a view halloo on the 
Tugby side of the gorse. The fox bore away by the 
keeper^s house, leaving Loddington Village on the 
right, and so on to Launde Park Wood. Jack God- 
dard's horse hit him a sharp blow on the muscles of 
the back in a somersault over some rails near the 
Uppingham lload, but he picked himself up in 
fearful pain, atid on his Poet once more ; and Mr. 
Greene caught his last glimpse of the chase as Mr. 
Tailby led the field up Skeffington Vale. He had 
got a good start, but he jumped no fences, and be- 
tween Rolleston and Skeffington Wood, he suddenly 
turned quite pale, and said pressing his side, " / feel 
very ill, Shield ; I canH ride to-day. " A little 
brandy rather restored him, and he cantered and 
trotted along homewards. " Shield, Fve done ivitk 
them^^ were his last words to his faithful groom as 
he gave him his mare, and he never crossed that 
threshold again. 

He sat down in his arm-chair in the 

J-* jii 1 iir* and his death, 

dming-room, and had scacely asked for 
a little brandy, and said that he thought he had 
ridden too hard, and felt "that odd sensation again," 
when he bowed his head and died. The thoughts of 
a lingering death had always possessed a peculiar ter- 
ror for him, so much so, that he often declared that 



406 SCOTT AND SEBllIGHT. 

he would rather be shot down in a battle or a battue. 
His wish was fulfilled^ and a mere lad took him up 
in his arms, and laid him just as he was, in his 
scarlet coat and boots, on his bed in the east 
room, which he had specially chosen as his bed- 
room, so as to see his hunters go out for exercise 
each morning. 

The coat of arms keeping their grim 
ay. ^^^ ^^^^ 1^^^^ guard in the entrance-hall 

with " Love and Loyalty^^ to the last, stood out sad 
and unchanged amid the dreary havoc of the sale 
day. The billiard-table was blocked up with the 
claret-warmer, the china, and the books. The chair in 
which he died was on the terrace, waiting to be car- 
ried away by its new owner. The Billesdon Coplow, 
" The Whissendine appears in view, '^ " The Melton 
Hunt,^^ and the pictures of the hunters were ticketed 
on the floor, and turned with their faces to the wall ; 
while a crowd were pressing round the gay, sweet- 
topped Topthorn, and the slashing,* hard-pulling 
Crinoline in the meadow, or following the auctioneer, 
all eager for a relic if it were only a spud, into every 
nook and cranny of the yard. 

It was indeed, " after me the Deluge.^' RoUes- 
ton was there still ; the silver firs with their quaint 
rectangular branches near the knoll once so dear 
to the Quorn ; the deep claret shade on the fish 
pond in front of the house, from which genera- 
tions of foxes had filched the ducks and swans 
and received a free pardon ; the cross by the 
old grey church worn on the south side with pil- 
grim^s knees ; and the dark boat-shaped arbour at 
the top of the dark yew walk, where Mr. Assheton 
Smith and his pupil so often sat and gathered inspira- 
tion from the view of the top end of Kolleston Wood 
and Goadby with its "tremendous^^ vale, — they knew 
no change, but there was now another lord of the 
soil, and the heart of the place was gone. 



HORN AND HOUND. 407 

Sir Sichard Sutton's style of going sir Richard sut- 
was rather slow, but straight. He was *«"• 

never anxious to be first and did not seem to ride for a 
place, but took the fences just as they came. Even 
when quite a young man, he never cared to go beyond 
a certain pace. Hedge and ditch he liked, but to 
timber and water, the latter especially, he was not 
very partial. He liked Emperor quite as well as 
Whitenose, who gave him six or seven falls in one 
day, and he went well on Snowdrift, which he pur- 
chased for 250 guineas from Sir Tatton, and named 
from the circumstance of his being obliged to return 
to Sledmere that day, to borrow a snow-plough so 
as to enable him to get on to Mr. Osbaldeston's 
at Ebberston. 

Thrussington Gorse, Barkby, and Scraptoft were his 
most favourite Quorn meets, and he always said that 
he was not sure that he had done a wise thing in 
gravelling the Burton country wood rides, during 
his long mastership, as instead of the field being 
left fetlock-deep in them, they could get away and 
interfere with his hounds. If he was pleased after 
a run, he had a peculiar way of putting his v»^hip- 
hand on his hip, and holding his horn against the 
pit of his stomach, and snapping his little dark 
eyes. 

Nothing perhaps delighted him so 
much as Daphne the grandam of Dry- ^^^''^^ '^<^''^'^''' 
den, of whom Will Goodall said that no hound 
^^ brought so much intellect into our kennel.^' On 
this occasion. Sir Eichard ran his fox from Shoby 
Scholes to Lord Aylesford^s covert, and Grimston 
Gorse, and right up to Belvoir, and to ground again 
in the middle of a field near Shoby Scholes. Daphne 
rushed right into the drain in her stride, and was work- 
ing there up to her shoulders when Ben Morgan came 
up, and on hearing of it from Ben, Sir Richard got 
ofi* in his delight to clap her. He enjoyed no 



408 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

hunting-field joke more afterwards, than that of a 
labourer waving to him at a check. When he got 
to him, and asked how long the fox had been gone, the 
man scratched liis head, and replied, seemingly in 
all sincerity, ^' / seed him at five o'clock, when I wur 
a foddering the beasts^ Well might he say to Lord 
Wilton, " that man must have a great opinion of my 
hounds/^ He did not care for hounds being very level 
if they worked well ; but he never forgot it, if any of 
them were too free of tongue. Giving away the 
old and young draft, generally about five-and-twenty 
couple, was a great fanc}^ of his, and the huntsman 
was allowed £70 in lieu. He was going very deep 
latterly into the Belvoir Guider blood, when he had 
done as much as he cared to do with Trueman, whose 
dam Pastime came, like Wildair, in a Brocklesby 
draft. No one exactly knew why he took such a 
fancy to Trueman, but he and old Bluecap were the 
only ones which shared his carriage to cover, and 
stood in with him for the lunch of cold chicken or 
pie, with which it was always stored. Trueman was 
a fair dog, but never ran to head, and crossed well 
with the Brocklesby blood, and Affable by Vine 
Grampian. 
Early days of ^iH Goodall was placcd in Mr. Drake's 
Will Goodall. gtablcs uudcr his father, when he was 
eleven, and after three seasons as cover boy for 
Mr. Tom Drake, he Avas put ' on as second whip 
under Wingfield. Dick Simpson was first whip, and 
judging from the style in which he had seen Will 
from a boy "jumping the church walls like a hare,^' 
he knew that he should have a lively colleague. 
Will had had his early perils, as Flounce dragged him 
fully twenty yards across the stable-yard at Shardloes 
before his father's eyes. As he grew older, he "had an 
aching tooth to be with Jem Hills,-'-' who had just 
then come to the Heythrop. His father, who had 
been a hunting- groom for eight seasons in the Belvoir 



HORN AND HOITND. 409 

coantry, wrote to Tom Goosey, but there was no 
answer, and tlie lad still pined for change. Nothing- 
might have come of it, but Mr. Cox once said to 
him before Lord Forester's brother in the hunting- 
held, ^' I am told vou want to leave, Bill : thev tell me 
the Duke of Rutland wants a whip/^ Mr. Forester 
hearing this, struck in and said he was not aware of 
the fact, but promised to write, and in ten days, 
which Bill described as a life-time, his Lordship sent 
for his weight, and ten stone was the reply. Another 
letter arrived from Belvoir to say that he was to go 
down directly, and he saw the ^37 season out, begin- 
ning on his first morning at Woolsthorpe Cliff Wood. 
Goosey received him in a very candid way. ^^ You must 
not mind,^^ he said, " if I give you a good blowing 
np in the field ; Fm as likely to do so if you're right 
as wrong.^^ This great huntsman told his mind to 
his whips without circumlocution, but to the field it 
was generally prefaced with " I beg leave to say.'^ 
^' You jumped on that hound, Sir, at the fence, and 
I beg leave to say, Sir, you buried him as ivell, '^ 
was his ironical remark to one of them. 

WilFs was latterly a very forced voice, ^yin Goodaii at 
and summer and winter he generally said '^^^^ Beivou-. 
he had a cold. He was broad across his shoulders, 
and big in the legs, and seemed at least two stone 
above The Emperor's mark ; but he always nursed his 
horse, and this added to his immense quickness of 
eye, brought him where he was He also rode Light- 
heart, Knipton, Swing, Multum in Parvo, Nimrod, 
and Melton during his last season. The two first 
were his best, and it was Lightheart by Greatheart 
from a mare of Mr. Frank Grant's, and bred by 
Lord Forester at Willey, which carried his successor 
Jem Cooper so well on the Hose Gorse da}^, which 
first marked his maiden year. The end of Will's 
ambition was to get his fox'^s over the Nottingham 
turnpike by Lord Plymouth's Lodge, from Melton 



410 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

Spinney, and so by Goodricke^s Gorse into the grass, 
but it was scarcely once in a season that he had this 
felicity. 

Two runs on February 15th and 21st of his last 
season pleased him, so he wrote us, more than any 
he had ever known. In the first they were hallooed 
forward to a fresh fox, when their old one had crept in 
somewhere near Culverthorpe, after ^^ 1 hour 50 
mins. of regular blazing/^ "From DemblebyThorns,^^ 
he adds, " they went away like pigeons in flight, the 
horses, and even many of our good men melting 
away like snow in summer ; they ran from scent to 
view; and killed him by themselves (with the ex- 
ception of 15 minutes from Culverthorpe), as hard 
as ever they could split, for 3 hours 22 minutes. I 
was first into the last field, and the only person who 
saw them course him, and his Grace was in the field 
when they caught him. We were the only two, but 
Mr. Frank Gordon, Mr. Hardy of Grantham, and 
Mr. Housen, Mr. Brooksner, and Jem came up to 
see them eat him. Sir Thomas Which cote^s horse 
stood stock-still one field away.^^ We had no fur- 
ther particulars of the run of the 21 st, than ^^ We 
had a regular trimmer ! Oh ! such a trimmer, which 
few men Hve to see. The hounds did not get home 
till one o^clock the next morning. With their first 
fox they had 2 hours and 10 minutes to ground 
nearly in view, and with their second 1 hour 50 
jninutes. They tired every one out and ran into him 
\yY themselves charmingly ; it was all over our best 
country with both foxes.^'' 

Goosey had a story that he was never driven but 
once from cover by a foggy day ; and " then I beg 
leave to say I had done my best, for I drew a turn- 
pike-road, and thought that the trees on the other 
side were the cover.^^ How^ Will's genius would 
have dealt with this emergency, it is difficult to divine, 
but he used to declare that when a Humby Wood 



HORN AND HOUND. 411 

fox beat him in the morning, he went back again in 
the evening, and had a lot of old men and women with 
lanterns in the rides, and so worked on till he had 
just time to get home, and save Sunday. He con- 
sidered that he had kept all Goosey^s quality in the 
kennel and that he had got length with Rallywood ; 
and he swore by Trusty by Folj ambers Forester, and 
in fact all the sort, as such close workers and steady 
hounds for an afternoon. Almost his last piece of 
advice to Ben Morgan, when he told him, "Tve 
had many rough falls, but none like this,^' was, to 
use one of the sort, Alfred from the celebrated 
Nightshade, and he had one more word ere they 
parted for the glories of Comus and Guider. 

Tom Sebright was wont to say, that 
he first learnt to be so fond of hounds, ^"^ ^ ^^^ *' 
hj running after the late Mr. Villebois' pack, when 
he hunted the B/Omsey side of the Old Hampshire 
country. Time scored him on its page at Stowe-on- 
the Wold in 1789, and it dealt very tenderlj^ with him 
to the close. His father, Tom Sebright, who died 
there in his eighty- sixth year, was quite a huntsman 
worthy in his day. He showed all the science of a 
^' master forester,^'' when he hunted the New Forest ; 
and nearly to the last, he would trot out on his pony, 
to meet Jem Hills, when he came to Heyf or d Village. 
No wonder that such a keen hand wished his lad to be- 
gin early ; and at fifteen Tom was duly entered with 
Mr. Musters, who soon observed his fine hand and 
quick eye to hounds. He went from the Annesley 
kennels, to Sir Mark Svkes, who was then master 
of the North Hiding Hounds, in conjunction with 
Mr. Higby Legard, but his style of riding was too 
tremendous. Hence when " The Squire" came af- 
ter the drafts which he wished to add to his new 
purchase of the Monson pack, Mr. Legard said to 
him, '^ You may take the whip as ivell : we've tried 
him three seasons, and he kills all our horses J' And 



412 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

SO this brilliant pair crossed tlie Humber, and liun-^ 
ted the Burton country, and the South wold wood- 
lands, and worked their way round through iSot- 
tinghamshire to the Quorn. 

Tom in Leices- ^^ ^^^0 dwclt SO oftcn bcforc ou Tom's 
tershire. Leicestershire career, that we are not 
going to " run heeP^ now. He never hunted the 
hounds except when " The Squire^^ was away, and 
that only happened twice, to speak of — when his 
mother died, and when he broke his leg. Tom^s 
day had very nearly ended in the canal near Strag- 
glethorpe. They had found at EUa^s Gorse, and 
away by Widmerpool, into the Vale ; and the fox, 
after running the towing path a short distance, took 
the water. He was viewed over, and as some one 
must go. Captain White SAvam it on Pilot; and 
Tom tried to follow. Half way across the horse 
sank like a stone, and was drowned, and Captain 
White had no little difficulty in rescuing Tom, by 
fishing for him with the lash of his hunting- 
whip. 

First day in the Mr. Johu MooTC recommcndcd him 
Milton country, ^q j^^rl Fitzwilliam as successor to 
John Clark, and he headed this celebrated pack for 
exactly forty seasons. He came in March, and 
the first meet was at Bedford Purlieus; but the 
hounds kept changing their foxes, and his lord- 
ship decided to have a turn at Sutton Wood. Tom 
rode Thorney that day, and the decision with which 
he lifted his hounds for five hundred yards over the 
plough, and did not allow his fox to dwell for an 
instant in Abbotts Wood, made the old hands say, 
that " there's no mistake about our new man.''' 
Monk's Wood and Bedford Purlieus were latterly 
very different to what they had been in the dyke- 
less days of Will Dean, when horses had fairly to 
skip from one sound bit of ground to another in the 
ridings, and Tom found no better places for making 



HORN AND HOUND. 41S 

hounds steady. Aversley Wood foxes had always 
an honourable mention, and he looked upon them as 
quite the wildest and the best. The Soke of Peter- 
boro' with its Castor Hanglands and Upton Wood, 
was a very favourite place for his infant school in 
the autumn. "^ When there was a scent/^ he used 
to say, '^ hounds run as well there as anywhere ;" but 
taking the season through, he leant to Barnwell 
Wold. Of Morehay Lawn he was also very fond, 
and it was there that he entered George Carter to 
the country, three weeks before the season closed, 
in the April of ^45. 

We loved to stroll out with the old scenery about 

man and the hounds into Milton Park, Muton. 
and by judiciously leading up to her, induce him to 
talk of " lielish, '' a name which he used to pro- 
nounce with as much unction, as Robert Hall was 
wont to throw into " Mesopotamia ;'' and we mis- 
chievously got him to say it for the last time, just 
before we bade him good-bye on the show ground 
at Yarm. He was one of those fine, sterling cha- 
racters which well repaid the study ; and the whole 
place and its accessories seemed so exactly in keep- 
ing with him. The rick-backed church, with its 
crooked wooden belfry, the Fox Hounds sign nailed 
to the elm, the straggling thorn clumps at the edge 
of the park, over which, under a cold December sky, 
the withered clematis was hanging in rich tracerv, 
like the veil of a bride, the Nen creeping on its 
'^ lazy Scheldt^^-like course along the broad mea- 
dows of Overton, the white sun-dial on the wall 
of the steward^s house, and the quaint intermixture 
of the raartello tower, with the thatch and the ivy 
at the kennels all blended so thoroughly with him, 
and his honest pride of being part and parcel of an 
old English home. 

During the summer he spent nearly 
all his time among " my lambs,'^ and ^'" **" * '^ *^^* 



414 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

cared very little to wander afield. The Yarborough^ 
Beaufort^ and Belvoir kennels were what he prin- 
cipally used; but during his last two seasons he 
dipped deeply into Mr. Selby Lowndes's Royal, 
an old-fashioned-looking dog, and rather wild in his 
work. " Ah ! my lad, the dam is the secret/' was his 
constant remark to young huntsmen. Like most 
reserved men, he was tough in his opinion, both in 
the field and the kennel, and no one but the boiler 
knew what the puppies were by, till they were 
ready to go out to quarters. He hung very much 
to the notion that in breeding two negatives would 
make a positive, both in style of work and make_, 
and enforced it pretty generally in all his corres- 
pondence. It was delightful to hear him tell, almost 
under his breath, when you asked after the cream of 
entry, that they were " perhaps just the most beau- 
tiful I ever had,^^ and believing himself most 
implicitly, summer after summer. " A thing of 
beauty'"^ was most truly his '' joy for ever.'^ If he 
was showing one of his hounds, which he thought a 
a little out of the common wav, he would indicate his 
delight by thrusting his hands deep into his breeches 
pocket, and kicking out his little right leg. He 
would then draw his hand over the hound from the 
head to the stern, and remark, in his gentle tone 
that " it could^nt be more beautiful if it had been 
spoke-shaved.^^ 

The kennel af- ^o stroU amoug the houuds, as they 
ter his death, lay cub- dreaming on their benches 
was quite like entering a congress of woodland 
senators. Old Hardwicke, the winner at Yarm, had 
ended his line hunting, after his sixth season, and 
was there no longer to tell. of the Harper sort though 
eleven couple of his puppies may. One of them was 
the last that Tom gave any directions about, and he 
requested George to call him " Hardwicke,^^ and send 
him to Mr. Strixon's. Foreman sat up, showing in 



HORN AND HOUND. 415 

Ms wise countenance ail the intelligence of the Feu- 
dals^ which enabled him to be pilot so often ; and 
near the one-eyed Fugleman, was Bachelor, who 
^^ kept Greenwich time" for Tom, and Rasselas^ 
with that ancient grey-dished face, which always 
made him remark, without any disrespect to dig- 
nitaries, that he " had a head like an archbishop." 
Friendly of the Feudal sort, for which Milton 
has to thank Badminton, and repaid its debt with 
Hermit, had also devoted her best years to the 
pack; and with his paw on her, and his bro- 
ther the line-hunting Bachelor^s white-face on his 
own quarters, old Bluecap takes his snooze. Susan, 
and Shiner with his long tan features, speak up well 
for the Shiner sort ; and the Feudals are here again, 
with Finisher, v/ho lies with his smart head over the 
ledge. The badger-pied Ferryman, from Hardwicke's 
sister, which Tom was always quoting as " the 
neck and shoulders to keep in your eye,^^ is also in 
the group, full of honourable scars, and with a split- 
up ear, which show that he will have his cub divi- 
dends in full. 

Tom^s manner was rather phlegma- Tom in the 
tic; and he' never wearied of enforcing ^®^<^- 
the trite maxim, ^' that so much mischief is done 
by being in a hurry." When a fox was found, 
his scream '^ made you shake in your saddle ;" but 
still his View Halloo was hardly so musical as his 
predecessor's, John Clark. In hound language and 
horn bloY^dng, none could excel him, even when he 
was long past the thirty to sixty era, which he spoke 
of as " the prime of a huntsman-'s life." His lan- 
guage to the field, was remarkably courteous and 
guarded, even under deep provocation. If a fox was 
headed right into his face, he seldom got beyond 
^' Odd Rabbit it altogether /" and if a whip did not 
put hounds to him immediately, or mistook orders, 
he appealed most forciby to " Rags and Garters T 



416 SCOTT AKD SEBRIGHT. 

to aid him. Perhaps he tried too high for the 
majority of whips, and not only expected great excel- 
lence too earl}^, but was a little impatient if he did 
not find it. Although very kind in his nature, he 
was decidedly chary of his professional praise. He 
would listen to some eulogy on a whip or hunts- 
man whom he knew^ to be far below proof, and 
observe as a closer, with his little, short laugh, 
that he " might have made a good boiler if he 
had been properly brought up to it ;^^ or else " he 
can halloo and blow the horn/^ Then, perhaps, 
he would put down his lip, and sum up a horse 
with, " when the wind was in him he was good 
enough. ^^ The fast talkers he alw^ays dismissed 
with the comment, that thc}^ were ^' not always so 
fast over the country, when it came to the contest." 
„ , „ In the 2:reat woodlands, where he 

style of hunting. .®, , , ,y 

was so quiet, and always there, it was 
beautiful to see the hounds fiv to his horn: and 
nothing pleased him so much as " to give him a 
rattling good turn round, and get them close at him 
before he goes away.-'^ His broad bald forehead, of 
the Old Noll mould, was a treat to look at, when he 
lifted them to their fox, which he never did till thev 
had made their own cast first. He was not fond latterly 
of long casts forward. " Odd Babbit it! let them 
hunt, gentle-men," was all his desire ; and then came 
his cheery " Catch them, if you can now.'' At the 
death he was almost nervously anxious lest the horse- 
men should tread upon his darlings; and then, if the 
master was out, there came the fine retainer- like 
courtesy and touch of the cap: "^4 dog fox, my 
LordP^ Never but once did any one of his three 
Milton masters speak a word of reproof to him. 
'' Tom I Tom\ " said his late lordship, in his quiet 
way, when he had been left behind at Washingley 
Wood, " you rode aivay from the master of the 
hounds J' " I blew my horn three times, I assure you. 



HORX AND HOUND. 417 

my lord, before I left the cover, ^^ was the answer. 
Nothing more was said, till his lordship broke the 
silence, as they rode back to Milton, with ^^ Tom I 
donH let the sun go down upon my wrath ;'^ and Tom 
often said afterwards " This was the first and last 
scolding I ever got at Milton/'' 

Along with this story and the deeds j.^,,...„ , ^„„ 

o «' , , , Descrioing a run. 

of Thorney, Patriot, and " The Squire, 
he generally got in a word for Mr. Hopkinson, 
his hero of that great day from Barnewell Wold, 
when they killed in the ploughed field, near Pap- 
ley Gorse. Hounds and hunting were his unvaried 
theme, and latterly he had rather a curious habit of 
exaggerating the distance of a burst when he was 
giving the points of a run. " Then right awaxf was 
his mode of delineating it, with a triumphant wave 
of his right hand into space.' His friend John 
Payne used often to quiz him about it, when he went 
to smoke his pipe with him in the evening, and tell 
that octogenarian sportsman what they had been 
doing. ^^ Hight long way that ivas, Tom ; rare long 
round I should Ihink ; about two or three miles, Eh ?" 
and then, if Tom added that they " went as straight 
as a pigeon,^^ he would good-humouredly drop on him 
again, with " a pretty pigeon thai would be I" and 
being thus duly cautioned, Tom had to begin 
again. 

He considered the season of 1847-48 as his best. 
Eor the first ten seasons at Milton he kept a diary 
of the sport, and then he tired of it. His hound- 
book, on the contrary, was a perfect Talmud in his 
eyes, but it was not till within the last three seasons 
that he began to entrust its treasures to print. He 
stuck to his few old cronies whom he 

111 1 1 r« , 'I Tom at borne. 

naa known when he first came into 
the country, and as he saw them dropping off 
one by one, he could cheerfully say that he '-' had 
had a very good innings,^^ and tell George Carter 

E E 



418 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

that they would ^' soon be changmg houses/-' Frank 
Euckle used to hunt with him, and they were, of 
course, acquainted ; but Frank was " on the other 
side of the question/^ and came very little to Milton ; 
and Tom felt sure that ^^ he cared a good deal more 
for bull-dogs than hounds/^ Shirley and Goosey 
were his earliest friends among the huntsmen, 
and when they or any of their juniors came over, he 
would solemnly take his pipe out of his mouth, to 
announce that he was " loomb-proof, " and then 
'^puzzle out the sort^'' with them into the short hours. 
One or another of his neighbours ploughed up his 
close for him, and helped him in his few farm- 
ing operations ; but his heart was in the gorse and 
not in the granary. He hardly ever went near a 
race-course, till Ignoramus became too much for his 
philosophy, and then he not only timed a visit to Old 
George Carter, in order to see the colt run at Stock- 
bridge, but duly appeared at the Grove Kennels on 
the eve of the St. Leger. 

He once only had an impulse to shoot at a private 
pigeon-match, and scored with the best of them. 
The joke of his beating Lord Fitzwilliam^s 
game-keeper Avas much too good to be lost, and 
he found himself promptly figuring in a true and 
correct list of the crack shots on that occasion. His 
mingled dismay and disgust when he got hold of 
the paper, and found himself and his deeds gazetted 
in full, as if he had been some Professor of the 
trigger, is remembered by his family yet. Except 
for a little fun with his grand- children, he never 
took a bat in hand, although as a young man he was 
a very fair player. His early veneration for " The 
Squire" was not unconnected with his powers in 
that line, as when Lord Frederick Beauclerk broke 
his finger at Nottingham, there were few all round 
players who could cope with " the little wonder." 
" The Squire^s" bowling was as rapid as his riding, 



HORN AND HOUJsD. 419 

and when he played two of the best of the Notts Club 
for fifty guineas aside, he made eighty- four, and 
howled them both for seventeen. 

A likeness of him, in cricket cos- 
tume, with his bat under his arm, used ™ ^ snuggery. 
to hang above Tom^s fire-place ; and his driving- 
match was equally honoured. The wails of that lit- 
tle chamber presented a curious, unpretending med- 
ley. A Sporting Magazine print of his father, 
holding sweet converse over a half- door with New 
Forest Jasper, was kept in countenance by the blue 
and white prize tickets from the Yarm Show. An 
old mare^s hoof w^as grouped with the late Lord Mil- 
ton^s spurs ; and The Billesdon Coplow, '^ Reynard^s 
last shift,^^ and " An Earth- stopper'^ comported well 
with the rusty high-crowned hunting cap, which had 
its peg on one side of the writing cabinet. Patriot, 
with the hounds Hardwicke, Marplot, and Rasselas, 
from his son George^s hand, some portraits of the 
Eitzwilliam family, and his two horns (about the 
disposition of which he left special directions in his 
will), adorned his drawing room; and he never 
wearied of telling of the old black, which carried 
him so well over Kimbolton Park palings from 
Leighton Gorse. In his prime no man was more 
determined, and be it timber or water, he was in his 
place as quick as lightning, whether he was on Re- 
former, Blucher, Clipper, Zara, or the fidgetty Mar- 
tingale. He liked also to tell of Mr. Osbaldeston^s 
Orange, which won the Cup at Lincoln, and carried 
him over six gates in succession on one day ; and 
his best water jump in Lincolnshire, was on a Scriv- 
ington horse, with a middle like a cow, and carrying 
the saddle on his shoulders. He liked big well-bred 
horses ; and Hellaby exactly suited him during his 
last season, as he could sit down on him, and let him 
go along at a nice lobbing pace when the hounds be- 



gan to run. 



E E 2 



420 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 



Sport of his last The cub-hunthig in his last season 
season. (1860-61) did Hot begin until the mid- 
dle of September, which was later than he had ever 
known it ; and before the woodlands were " regu« 
larly stripped for business/^ he attended the plea- 
santest meet of his life at the Huntingdon Town 
Hall. His Grace the Duke of Manchester was in 
the chair, and handed him, with many kind words, 
the 800 guineas in a silver cup, to which 293 of his 
friends had subscribed. The old man could hardly 

Mi 

speak his thanks when he received " the treasured 
heir-loom,^-' and sketched the past very briefly, but 
he " came again^^ IfCter in the evening, and told 
them how, when he could cheer hounds no longer, 
he trusted to fill the Cup, and bring it to his cottage 
door, when the hunt went past, and drink " Success 
to Foxhunting,^^ with them once more. 

The next season began nicely, and he soon wrote to 
tell us of a day from Farcet Fen, which had greatly de- 
hghted him. They found in some coleseed, and the 
fox took a ring in the fen, &c., " then right away to 
Washingley Woods/^ and was eventually killed near 
Buckworth Great Wood. He added, ^' It was about 
eighteen miles straight ; time a little more than two 
hours. This was one of the old-fashioned runs I 
have seen in this country some years ago. I do expect 
this season to be one of sport, the country is in such 
good condition for hounds ; and the greatest advan- 
tage will accrue from the hard riders not being able 
to ride over them, which is a great pleasure for me to 
see.^^ One of the principal events of his last March 
was the clashing with the Pvtcheley in Oaklev Pur- 
lieus, and packing with them up to Boughton Wood, 
where the forty couple divided, Tom and Charles 
Payne going away with one lot (which was, oddly 
enough, made up nearly half-and-half from each 
kennel) and running their fox to ground; and the 
four whips with the other, which lost their fox near 



HORN AND HOUND. 421 



Brigstock. Thirty-five brace was the return of the 
seasoiij which " was altogether a satisfactory one/^ 
and his last day was at Laxton Hall_, on April 24th, 
when he unfortunately killed a brace of cubs. 

A fail from his grey mare near Vv^in- First symptoms 
wick, in March, was the first cause of ofiuness. 
the mischief which gradually brought him to his 
end ; and it was strongly suspected that he had 
broken a rib. For a man of his age and weight the 
fall on the side of a bank was a severe one. He 
hunted the hounds again, but his cough never left 
him, ^nd it became so troublesome to himself and 
the congregation, that for the first time for many 
a-year, his wonted seat at church was vacant for 
Sundays together. The summer brought no ap- 
parent change in these symptoms, and going to the 
Hound Show at Yarm increased them. These 
shows were latterly quite a bright spot in his life. 
He looked upon them as a little private bout be- 
tween himself and Ben Morgan, and after he had 
beaten him with Ilardwicke and Friendly, he never 
failed to tell that " they were rattling good fellows 
at Redcar.'"^ Ben had beaten him in his turn with 
Warrener and Languish at Middlesboro^, but Tom 
was most philosophic under such reverses, and in- 
stead of railing at the judges, he forgot all his rivalry 
in '' the social cloud,^^ and hoped on for another year. 
The next August he was ready for another trip 
North, with three-and-a-half couple and a terrier, to 
Yarm, and he said for weeks before, ''' Fll drink their 
good healths that can lick me with my Bachelor 
and Hercules." 

To get up Old Tom after dinner, and Tom at Middies- 
cheer him till they got a short burst out ^«^°' ^"'^ ^'^'^' 
of him, was quite a tent feature of these meetings ; 
and the respect which was shown to him both by 
masters and huntsmen gratified him not a little. 
Others might go in mufti, or unorthodox hats, but he 



422 SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 

always attended in full costume as the professional 
Premier of the Noble Science^ and those hound shows 
would have seemed to lack solidarHe if he had not 
been there. He looked quite a link between the wood 
and the woodlands, as we met him in his scarlet 
with the green plush collar and his dark corduroys, 
strolling along the dock side at Middlesboro^, and 
a forest of masts bristling in the back-ground ; 
and there was a still more remarkable link be- 
tween Yarm and Leicestershire, as the Quorn 
huntsmen of ^19, ^39, and ^59, himself and the two 
Treadwells, stood side by side. His son JSarry 
was whipping in to him that day, when he 
brought up his Friendly and Bachelor before the 
bench for the Champion Cup, and from the whispers 
which went on, and the notes which were made by 
the Bench, it seemed morally certain that Tom would 
be there or thereabouts again. Then came the 
pause, and Mr. Tom Parrington as clerk of the 
council stepped np for instructions. Poor Will 
Boulton was beckoned to, and once more he and 
Bonny !Face were on the boards. Then " Ben^^ got 
the office, and Captain Williams taped Middleton 
Languish, and cast a very longing eye on her as she 
retreated. Tom seemed to have gone to ground for a 
space, but he did not peep out in vain from behind 
the half door. Por him too came the welcome sig- 
nal, and he darted forth leading Bachelor, and then 
handing him over to Harry, positively made a run of 
it back for Friendly. ^' fliaVs all you want,'^ said 
Sir John Trolloppe, the last entries were made in the 
books, and Tom stood second. However, there was 
balm for him in the other classes, and when the 
cards of victory, red, white, and blue, were placed 
in front of the compartments, Mr. HilFs, Lord Mid- 
dleton^s, the Bramham Moor, and the Milton all 
bloomed like a bouquet, and nearly twenty pounds 
was Tom^s value received, when he marched amid a 



HORN AND HOUND. 423 

perfect chorus of view halloos up to the chair- 
man. 

He might well tell his doctor that he 
had been at rather a gay party at Yarm. ^ ^^ ^^^ ^' 
His cough grew worse after the journey^ but he 
thought that ^' one of my old doses would set me 
up again /^ and he was anxious to invite a few of his 
friends,, who were not able to come to the testimonial 
dinner^ and get that off his mind before the cub- 
hnnting began. That wish was fulfilled, and Mr. 
Percival of Wansford, the Goodliffes^ John Core, 
and two or three others sat round his board once 
again, and noted how cheerfully he spoke of what he 
hoped to do for them the next season on the Thrap- 
ston side, and how he dwelt on the kindness of 
Mr. Fitzwilliam, when he gave his health. 

He generally required a little pressing, but he 
was no laggard that evening, when " A Southerly 
ivind and a cloudy sky, '^ was called for accord- 
ing to custom. Although his cough fairly broke 
him down when he had got through two stanzas, 
and he was excused the rest, there was all the wonted 
animation in his '^ Have at him my boys,'' " Hi 
wind 'em !" and his face shone again as he spoke 
to his hounds in that chorus^ and found them 
doing everything he told them. There was such 
character about him and the song, that when you 
had a chance, you didn^t like to lose it. Then 
George Carter and his father dropped in nnexpectedly 
at night, and the horns were got down, and Tom 
talked like a composer upon Chase music in general, 
and fairly beat old George out of the field, when he 
challenged him to a tune. A stroll down to the ken- 
nels before tea, and a little more chat about the cubs 
and Yarm closed the evening, and only one or two 
of those old friends ever saw him again. It was a 
meeting he had long set his heart on, and it proved 
his farewell. 



424 SCOTT a:nd Sebright. 

„. , , ... A few days after, he took the hounds 

out tor tneir Tuesday's exercise as usual, 
intending to give them a long trot round by Upton. 
He had scarcely gone three miles, when he pulled 
up, and told George Carter that he felt very sick, 
and ill with a pain in his side, and that they must 
cut it short. '^ If I had had any further to go, I 
should have dropped,^^ were his v/ords when he got ojQT 
at the kennel door, and gave Carter the list of the 
hounds to draw for hunting next day. He was in such 
pain and profuse perspiration, that his daughter, who 
met him near the wicket, fancied that he must have 
had another fall, and he required no pressing to go 
to bed. For the first part of his time he dozed a great 
deal : his efforts for breath could be heard all over 
the house : and he was so restless that he hardlv 
knew night from day. On the Friday he was better, 
but the pain returned next morning, and the action 
of his heart was so feeble, that the doctors dare not 
grant his request for leeches. He thought but little 
of kennel matters, but merely sent for George 
Carter to tell him about Mr. Strixon^s puppy, and 
asked him on leaving after his " little Georgy, 
poor little boy,"*^ whom he had always liked to see 
among the hounds. George told him that he had 
taken out six-and-forty couple into Thistle Moor and 
killed a cub, but he made no comment. 

His son Harry and his son-in-law helped 
' to nurse him by turns, and sat up with 
him the night before he died ; and fresh water from 
the pump was all he longed for. They saw that there 
was no hope, but still his appetite seemed suddenly 
to return, and when his dinner was brought him next 
day he did think it ^^ looked like business.'^ Once 
more he hoped for life : " See what a dinner Fve 
eaten, I shall be up in three weeks ; I don^t want to 
leave you yet.^^ He then insisted, as it was Sunday, 
on having two glasses of wine as usual, to drink his 



HORN AND HOUND. 425 



}j 



time-honoured toasts, " A good health to you all, 
and " The master of the hounds/' " That's not 
enough/' he said, ''to drink Mr. FitzvAlliam' s health in, 
Winifred/' when she only poured out half a glass, 
but he could do little more than taste it when it 
was given to him. The toast he had drunk Sunday 
after Sunday, for those forty seasons, made him 
wander back to the hounds; "Don't you see them ?" 
he said to his daughter, " they're all round my bed; 
there's old Bluecap, and Shiner, and Bonny Lass 
wagging her stern." " No, no, father,^' she replied, 
'^you're mistaken/' " Ah ! they're gone now; 
strange, isn't it, I should see them so plain ? Oh, dear ! 
my eyes deceive me ; they're only flies." 

The window was open, and the sound of the church 
bell floated into the room. In his days of health it 
had never struck on his ear in vain, and he spoke to his 
little grandchild and told her not to be late. " Are 
you dressed for church, Harry ?" he said to his son, 
who sat and watched him at the bed-side, but he 
was hardly conscious of the answer, and almost be- 
fore the bell was down, his own last summons had 
been given and obeyed. 

They laid him at Thorpe, by the side 

and burial. c a • -r\ ,1 ^ i ' tt 1 

01 his Dorothy and nis son. Her loss 
two years before, had almost bowed him down. 
^' She helped me through many a hard trouble ; 
nothing but her tender care made me the man I 
have been, but God's will be done." It was thus be 
told the grief, which in his quiet nature sank so 
deep ; and those who knew him best, knew too how 
truly he had spoken through the lines, which he 
selected for her head-stone : 

" Restrained from passionate excess, 
Thou bidst me mourn in calm distress, 
For those who rest in Thee." 

And there the old man sleeps ; and as we passed 
away from the spot, and lingered for a mo- 



426 



SCOTT AND SEBRIGHT. 



ment by the grave of Will Dean " aged 79," and 
read how " all fall alike, the fearfull and the brave/' 
we might well think how long and brilliant had 
been their career, and what pages might have 
been added to the annals of the Chase, if " The 
Master of the Donnington,'' Will Good all, and Sir 
Harry had not died in their prime. 




rrinted by Rogerson and Tuxford,246, Strand London. 



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