It is singular that no portion of our domestic annals should be so
obscure as that which relates to the early history of our first of
National Sports. In the remotest ages of civilization (so far at least
as any existing records carry us back), a taste for horse-racing was
fostered and promoted as a social engine peculiarly adapted to rural
and political purposes. The Greeks--the wisest and most polished people
that the world has ever seen--carried their estimate of its importance
so far, that their chiefs not only took part in the sports of the
hippodrome, but acted as officials in the regulation of its details.
Philip of Macedon thought it not unbecoming the imperial crown, that he
who wore it should discharge the office of judge at the Pythian Games,
and his son repaid in gold every line written by Pindar in honour of
the chaplet of wild olive.[78] The verse of Pindar, and the prose of
Pausanias, have immortalized the names of Olympia and Elis. The latter
has left us the minutest particulars of the economy of racing in his
day. He describes the Olympian Hippodrome at Elis, and all its gorgeous
display of splendid embellishments and ingenious machinery, with a care
and prodigality of narrative that give assurance of the importance
which attached to the matter delineated. Of the perfection to which,
in that era, the science of the course had attained, we need no better
proof than the classification observed in the Olympic Games--where
horses were matched according to their ages, and prizes instituted for
races between mares only (called Calpe). It is needless, however, to
encumber our subject with ancient lore, by continuing these classic
references. Enough has, perhaps, been already adduced to establish this
point--that we possess more knowledge of the condition of racing three
thousand years ago, than we do of the state it was in three hundred
years since in our native land.
[78] The crown given to the victors in the Olympic games.
But because we are in possession of such scanty materials, it by no
means follows that the little we do know should be withheld. The reader
will therefore have the courtesy to look back with me to the tenth
century, and I promise to bring him again into the nineteenth with all
convenient speed. As far back, then, as the reign of Athelstan (925),
we read that a present of “running horses” was sent to that monarch
from France, the gift of Hugh Capet. As nothing however is known of the
character of those animals, we will pass on to the reign of William,
which affords better data. At that period a nobleman (the Earl of
Shrewsbury) appears to have imported several Spanish horses for his own
use. Now, as the Moors had had a footing in Spain for several centuries
prior to the Norman conquest, there is little doubt that the blood of
the Barb was, in the eleventh century, extensively diffused through
that country, and that a highly improved breed of the horse was at the
time extant there. Here we have a reasonable era from which to date an
amelioration of the indigenous race in our island. A little more than
a century later, in the reign of Henry the Second (1154), we come to,
as far as I have been able to discover, the earliest mention of racing
to be found in our national records. This refers to a barbarous sort
of running practised upon the plain now occupied by Smithfield, which
does not appear to have been subjected to any regulations of time or
method. Smithfield, indeed, was then the great horse-mart, and very
probably the contests, exalted by their chronicler (Fitzstephen the
monk), to Olympic honours, were nothing more than exhibitions, by rival
horse-croupers, of the mettle, speed, and action of their respective
“palfreys, hackneys, and charging-steeds.”
Still, that horse-racing was about this time a popular pastime, and
one in which the nobles of the land were wont to take pride, is fully
established by the allusions to it that abound in the many metrical
legends, yet in existence, composed in honour of Richard of the Lion
Heart. These preserve the names of the coursers, and speak of them as
being valued at sums that, allowing for the difference in the worth of
money, quite exceed any prices known in our day. The domestic troubles
which marked the reign of John, and the succession of wars in which we
were subsequently engaged, probably interrupted the progress of this
sport materially--at all events, we do not find any of our sovereigns
giving their countenance to it from Richard to the bluff Harry.
Henry VIII. was constitutionally disposed for manly occupations and
amusements--of his moral tendencies we speak not. We have it on the
authority of Challoner that he was much disposed to improve the breed
of horses, for which purpose he imported various descriptions from
Spain and Turkey. Fortune, too, enabled his daughter Elizabeth to do
much for our native breed; the destruction of the Spanish Armada having
supplied us with many barbs and Spanish-bred horses, their descendants,
found in the vessels of that fleet which fell into the hands of Lord
Howard of Effingham.
We now come to her successor, James I.,[79] who must be considered as
the founder of legitimate racing in this country. He introduced the
first Arab into England of which we have any knowledge--that purchased
by Mr. Markham, and known as the Markham Arabian. The training system,
which has now reached such perfection, was then practised in its
various divisions of physic, work, sweating, and the etcetera of stable
economy; and the weight to be carried for public prizes arranged by
authority. The Roodee, at Chester, was an established course in this
reign, one of the prizes being a silver bell, of the value of ten
pounds or thereabouts, run for in five-mile heats. Similar prizes were
also given at Theobald’s on Enfield Chase, at Croydon, and Gatherly,
in Yorkshire, whence the popular term “bearing the bell,” no doubt,
had its origin. His unfortunate son Charles I. had little opportunity
of forwarding the social concerns of himself or others. In his reign,
however, the first races on record at Newmarket were held, and, by
a singular fatality, to Newmarket was he borne a prisoner to the
parliamentary forces. The “civil dudgeon” of the Protectorate of course
was not friendly to the amusements of the turf, but, though suspended,
they were not lost sight of. Mr. Place, the stud-master to Oliver
Cromwell, imported the celebrated horse known as the White Turk. He
was also the owner of some very capital mares, one of which, during
the search after Cromwell’s property at the Restoration, he saved from
destruction by hiding in a vault, whence she took the name of the
“Coffin Mare.”
[79] The palace at Newmarket was built by this monarch for the
purpose of enjoying the diversion of hunting--no races having been
held upon the heath till the succeeding reign.
With the Restoration came the palmy days of the Turf. Regular meetings
were established at Newmarket, and various other parts of England;
silver cups and bowls of the value of one hundred pounds were presented
as royal gifts, and, more than all, the light of royal favour shone
upon it in shape of Charles the Debonair and Mistress Eleanor Gwynne.
William III. had no taste for racing, and died by a fall from his
horse. Prince George of Denmark, on the other hand, was warmly attached
to the Turf, and promoted its interest by every means in his power. We
are indebted for many royal plates to his influence with his consort
Queen Anne. George I. was no sportsman; in his reign, however, the
alteration in the royal plates took place, by which a sum of one
hundred guineas was substituted in their stead. Shortly after George
II. ascended the throne, arose a morbid yearning after legislating
for the Turf. Some of the acts enacted were mischievous; very many
were very silly; one was good:--“That no plate or prize of a less
value than £50 should be run for, under a penalty of £200.” It was
during this reign that the Darley and Godolphin Arabians were brought
into this country,--two horses from whom have descended all the most
celebrated racers that adorn the annals of our turf. This is the period
at which the genealogy of our unrivalled thorough-bred horse then, was
_naturalized_, and it is the date whence I think it most convenient to
begin my notice of English racing.
Even a notice so confined as this is beset with obscurities that few
would conceive possible. As an instance, I will adduce the case of an
old and well-informed inhabitant of Epsom, who some years ago published
a very clever history of that place. He starts somewhere about the
Conquest, and never halts for want of materials as he goes on, till he
comes to the great stumbling-block, concerning which he shall speak for
himself:--“When the races on Epsom Downs were first held periodically,
_we have not been able to trace_; but we find that from the year 1730
they have been annually held in the months of May or June, and about
six weeks previous to which the hunters’ stakes are occasionally run
for on the Epsom race course, at one of which, in 1730, the famous
horse Madcap won the prize, and proved the best plate-horse in England.”
To return, however, to the reign of George II., though we find little
bearing on the business of the Turf to be gleaned from its records,
it introduces us to the great forefathers of our thorough blood,
and stirs one of the most interesting questions in our domestic
natural history--the problem of the seed or origin of the English
thorough-bred horse. A brief search through the stud-book will convince
the inquirer that, almost without exception, our great racers were and
are descendants of the Darley and Godolphin Arabians: I use the latter
term merely because its conventionality now identifies those celebrated
animals. They were both, as has been stated, imported in this reign:
the question that I would here investigate applies equally to each,
but, for the sake of simplifying it, I will treat it with reference to
the latter only. “That he was a genuine Arabian,” says the stud-book,
“his excellence as a sire is deemed sufficient proof;” a little further
on we read, “It is remarkable that there is not a _superior_ horse now
on the Turf without a cross of the Godolphin Arabian, neither has there
been for several years past.” The probable date of his arrival in this
country was 1725, or thereabouts. Hundreds of Arabs had preceded him as
sires, their introduction for that purpose having been a very general
speculation from the time of Charles I. That the indigenous island
breed had thereby been rendered good service, there can be no doubt;
but that the Turf derived any signal advantages from the importations
is more than problematical.
Are our celebrated strains of racing blood derived at all from an Arab
source, and, if so descended, are they excellent _consequently_, or
of accident? As regards the first moiety of the inquiry, a work has
just appeared in Paris, the production of a gentleman of some literary
celebrity[80], relating to the genealogy of the horse so long known
to us as the Godolphin Arabian. His statements go to show that he was
a pure _Barb_, presented, with seven others, by the Bey of Tunis to
Louis XV., _about_ the year 1731. All the portraits I have ever seen
of him certainly go to strengthen this reading of his descent, and
proclaim him not of Asiatic origin. The date is an erroneous one, as he
was a sire in England in the year in which he is said to have reached
France; but we must be content with very vague data in all that
concerns our subject a century ago. As to the second division of the
question, after-time must furnish the means of replying to it, if it
be ever answered. My bias is to a belief that there exist families of
the horse in the East possessed of a perfection infinitely surpassing
any generically inherited. This I have attempted to demonstrate in a
work upon which I am at present engaged, some portion of which has
been already published.[81] The fact (of which I was made conscious
by authority beyond question) that the Imaum of Muscat, one of the
most powerful sovereign princes of India, expended ten years of active
search, backed by the enormous bribe of ten thousand pounds, before he
could procure a descendant of a line sufficiently pure to present to
King George IV., seems to establish the truth of the theory to which
I profess being inclined. All that we learn from our knowledge of the
almost religious veneration with which the genealogy of the horse is
treated in the East, goes to the like confirmation. “It is remarkable
that there is not a _superior_ horse _now_ on the turf without a cross
of the Godolphin Arabian,” I leave the reader to interpret as his own
reflections may lead him.
[80] M. Eugene Sue.
[81] Annals of the British Turf, from the Introduction of Eastern
blood to the present Time. The first century concluded in the Old
Sporting Magazine.
Shall I venture, at the hazard of pursuing my theory “ultra fines,”
to offer one more example in support of it? That no structural
organization available to the eye, no individual excellence in the
parents, influence, in our raising stock, the performances of their
offspring, are truisms taught by every stud in the kingdom. All that
exist among us, descended from the great forefather of the Turf, are
capable of producing offspring of equal pretension, as regards the root
from which they are sprung. Far different was the result in relation
to the importations of Eastern blood contemporary with the Godolphin,
and the same it has been with all more recently introduced. Enough, at
all events, has been adduced, if not to _prove_ my position, to warrant
me, at least, in its assumption, as well as for offering it to the
consideration of those who hold the subject to which it relates of
sufficient interest to engage their attention.
From such speculations on the origin of the British racehorse, we will
turn to the annals of his exploits,--a theme more generally attractive,
though intrinsically less important. Here, to begin with the early
worthies of the turf, all is as obscure as is the genealogical
problem with which we have been already engaged. Of the performances
of Childers, detailed, as they are, with all apparent microscopic
observations of the seconds’ hand, I am convinced that we know rather
worse than nothing. In a recent work of more than an ordinary character
on the subject to which it addresses itself (Lawrence’s History of
the Horse), Childers--Flying Childers, as he was designated _par
excellence_--is stated to have been a chestnut, whereas he was a rich
bay with four white legs. The same slovenly style, no doubt, attaches
to the records of the early performances, as well as to the more recent
attempts of equestrian historians. Again, the only criterion by which
we can estimate them is, when we can refer to a timed race, because,
knowing little of the principals, we cannot be supposed to have a
better knowledge of the pretensions of their contemporaries. Now, even
in our day, when all the appliances for chronometrical accuracy are so
vastly improved and multiplied, we rarely hear of the time of a race
being kept at all, even accidentally: it is never done by authority, or
on a principle deserving of confidence.
We know that the taste, in the middle of the last century, inclined to
long distances, and repeated exertion--six and eight-mile heats being
events of constant recurrence; and yet we are required to believe that
there existed at and previous to that time a flight of speed unknown
to our degenerate days. Moreover, by far the greater portion of the
early racers were undersized, Galloways as the old Calendars have them
in every page; and stride is, save in rare exceptions, indispensable
to a high degree of swiftness. In the absence of any actual data as to
speed, worthy being confided in, it may not be inconvenient to relate
a performance of one of the first-class horses of that period; and,
by contrasting it with a match against time, done by a contemporary
hackney, some deduction may be drawn of the qualities of the racers of
that era.
Gimcrack, a grey horse bred in 1760, by Cripple out of Miss Elliot,
was considered one of the best of his day. In consequence of his
superiority, he was sent to France, where he was matched for a large
sum to do a certain distance against time. Whatever it was, he was
the winner, having accomplished twenty-three miles in fifty-five
minutes. This was probably in 1770. In 1778, a foundered hackney, aged
twenty-two, belonging to a Mr. Hanks, did twenty-two miles within the
hour, upon the high road in the neighbourhood of London. Gimcrack
carried eight stone: the weight on the hackney is not given, but there
is no reason for believing it less than eight stone; so that one of the
best race-horses of that day could only beat a broken-down hack a mile
and five minutes in an hour!
It is a conventional fallacy to attribute to past days virtues superior
to those in which were live. Every thing, from the seasons to the
flavour of home-brewed, was better, if we credit the popular voice, “in
the good old times.” To examine the application of this rule to the
matter before us, I may perhaps be permitted to borrow a leaf out of my
own book, seeing that I could scarce make my argument stronger in any
other form of words.
“After a careful examination of all the best authorities bearing upon
the condition of the Turf in that so emphatically called its palmiest
era--the middle of the last century--I find nothing to warrant the
belief that, as a species, the contemporaries of King Herod, Imperator,
Eclipse, Florizel, and Highflyer, possessed either speed, power, or
symmetry, unknown to the racer of our day. At the very date to which
this extraordinary excellence is ascribed, we find the degeneracy of
that particular breed the subject of legislative consideration; and
in 1740 that an Act of Parliament was passed, denouncing the Turf as
the cause of the growing debasement of the breed of horses all over
the kingdom, and fixing the weights to be carried in all plates and
matches at ten stone for five-year-olds, eleven stone for six, and
twelve stone for seven-year-olds and upwards, on pain of a penalty
of £200, and forfeiture of the horse. It is true that this Act was
repealed soon afterwards, through the intervention, as it was believed,
of the Duke of Cumberland; nevertheless it is manifest that there
must have existed strong grounds for complaint against the system of
breeding and racing before the consideration of its economy would
be made a subject of Parliamentary interference. Let us turn to the
weights carried by two-year-olds fifty years ago, and those common to
the present period,--the former averaging from six stone to six stone
six pounds, the latter from eight stone five pounds to eight stone
seven pounds, and what evidence of degeneracy does that furnish?”
Racing, wherever we meet it existing as a popular sport, is the growth
of a root indigenous to England. All the appliances of civilization
are carried to a higher degree of perfection among us, in the present
day, than at any former period of our history: the Turf, and all its
_materiel_, it cannot be doubted, has attained a comparative condition
of excellence.
In a nation peculiarly attached to rural sports, that, as matter of
course, becomes entitled to the place of honour which diffuses the
greatest portion of enjoyment to the greatest number of people. In this
view, racing is well entitled to the pre-eminence which it has so long
claimed, and had conceded to it; but it prefers demands of a higher
nature than its mere pleasurable results. In a political sense, it is
an engine of no mean importance. A state must benefit largely from an
agency which exhibits its nobles promoting, at great individual cost,
a sport in which all classes can participate equally with themselves,
and which brings together all the divisions of society for one end and
purpose--social recreation. Where shall we seek the great moral of
England’s power and station?--In the wealth which commerce pours upon
her shares?--In her wooden walls?--In the skill, learning, and valour
of her sons? We can scarce study it in a more impressive page than that
yearly spread before us at the great popular re-unions of Epsom, Ascot,
and Doncaster. Let such as love such lore, then, search after it where
the examination will surely reward their industry: we will take it up,
abstractedly, as a pastime, and in that character look into the nature
and influence of its present economy.
As a treasury of art, an assembly of learning, ingenuity, and pleasure,
our metropolis has many rivals--some superiors: in our rural life we
stand alone. Mainly this has been brought about by--is the consequence
of--a general taste for field sports. Whether the cause of morality is
served by horse-racing, it is not our province to inquire. An inelegant
but most _apropos_ salt-water axiom says, “every man to his post, and
the cook to the fore-sheet.” Mankind, since the creation, has set its
face against all work and no play, and will do so to the end of the
chapter. We are of the disciples of Democritus; and, feeling in the
vein, will just touch in here, merely in outline, a faint sketch of a
DERBY DAY.
Perhaps, with one exception alone, none of the realities of life come
up to the anticipations of them; and what, you ask, is that singular
deviation from the general rule?--It is a DERBY DAY. Imagine a
conglomeration of two millions of souls stirred to its _penetralia_,
shaken from its propriety, morally earthquaked, because of the
necessity which annually requires that a certain portion of the mass
(say a fortieth) should rendezvous in a neighbourhood where certain
horses are to contend some two minutes and sundry seconds for certain
monies, and you arrive at a general idea of something by no means
in the ordinary course. The scene of this commotion is London, the
majority of the actors automata that make yearly one solitary diversion
(in both the word’s interpretations) from the regular cycles of
their orbits. But such a Saturnalia demands a word anent its note of
preparation.
As soon as the month dawns, big with the catastrophe of Epsom Races,
straightway from Belgrave Square to Shoreditch, from the Regent’s
Park to uttermost Rotherhithe, forth the sackage goes that guts, from
garret to cellar, every Pantechnicon, Bazaar, and Repository of all
and singular the wheeled conveniences and inconveniences peculiar
to each. Anon the horse, in all its infinite gradations, is had in
requisition, from Newman’s choicest specimens of blood, that devour the
Surrey highways, to the living quadrupedal skeleton redeemed from the
knacker’s knife at the last Smithfield show for fifteen shillings, and
a “drop o’ summut for luck.” The day arrives, and lo! a mighty chain
of carriages, “in linked grumbling long drawn out,” extends from the
Elephant and Castle to the merry Downs of Epsom, whitherwards we will
suppose thy anxious way hath at length been achieved. The moisture of
travel encumbereth thy brow: searchest thou for thy best Bandana to
relieve thee of the damp? Luckless wight!--
“----That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian from thy pocket prig.”
Is not the tide of humanity at the flood of spring? Ten deep do
vehicles of all kinds, definite and undefinable, line the course.
Opposite and around the stand all is high-bred and aristocratic:
lower down, leading for Tattenham’s classic corner, you haply take
your curious path. What lots of pretty girls you encounter as you
go!--each so lady-like and _bien mise_, you would never dream of their
metropolitan whereabouts, were it not for those awful mortalities that
cluster around them; brothers, cousins, lovers it may be--pale shadows
that haunt the glimpses of Bow Church--horrible illusions from Ludgate
Hill and the Ward of Cheap, with prickly frills to their linen, swallow
tails to their coats, green velvet waistcoats, or, still more shocking,
similar habiliments of black satin, whereon the indecent chain of
Mosaic grins ghastly, like the gilding on a coffin!--faugh!
Drawing near to the lines, hark! from glass coach, britscha, jarvey,
phaeton, proceed various sounds of discontent.--“Cold chickens, veal
pie, lobsters and _no_ salt.”--“Half-a-dozen bottles is all very fine,
and never no corkscrew.”--“Sir, I’ll set that right if you’ll only
accommodate us with the loan of a glass; really it’s too provoking.”...
Ascend the hill, approach the Ring, and hear what sums are jeopardied
on the coming event!--enough to purchase half-a-score of German
principalities; but the warren is open, and thither you are borne by
the countless thousands who throng for a glance of the coursers on whom
hang the hopes and fears of all.
No spot can be better adapted for the purpose to which it is assigned
than the so well-known warren; but all that nature has done man takes
especial care to frustrate. Instead of its cool quiet alleys being
kept for the tranquil preparation of animals peculiarly disposed to
excitement (their most dangerous foe at a moment when the entire
possession of every faculty is of such vital consequence), every
“dingle, nook, and bosky bourn” is invaded by a horde of ravenous,
sight-seeing cockneys, of all beasts of prey the most reckless
and perverse. Amid this restless crowd of babbling, cigar-smoking
untameables, the process of saddling is effected, and, with graceful
steps, the fiery-footed adversaries depart for the lists.
You reach the place of starting, and what awaits you there? Order,
decorum, and all fitting arrangement for the important essay of
which it is the arena? A second chaos!--all the human elements
thrown together in a moral whirlpool. A score of men in buckram
suits (blue linsey-wolsey), attempting to dispose of twice as many
thousands--something like barring the gates of a beleagured town with
boiled carrots! They draw together for the start--infinitely the
most influential point in the great game to be played. Here all is
confusion worse confounded: the multitude opens its thousand throats
of brass; the steeds are frantic; the jockeys (born and bred devils
from their cradle) practise every conceivable stratagem ever hatched
in Fiendom; and there stands one nervous old man to front the pitiless
pelting, and produce from such materials a result with which all are
to be satisfied. “They are off!” and the old gentleman, in his agony,
pronounces “go,” and the fatal signal has gone forth. Over the hill,
adown the fall, there is a meteoric flash, as though a rainbow had
borrowed the wings of the lightning, and all is over!
The Derby is decided--the steeds turned round--the jockeys approach
the scales--Holy Mother of Moses! has it entered the heart of man (even
an Irishman) to conceive the tearing and swearing, the howling and
screeching, that instant rends the empyrean! Quick as thought a circle
of bludgeons and constables is formed, into which the horses as they
arrive are received, and against which a roaring ocean of humanity
is dashing as fiercely as the vexed Atlantic. Look towards the grand
stand--behold whole acres of countenances uplifted to the sky, wedged
as closely as a crate of French eggs, and resembling nothing as yet
discovered but a monstrous dish of opened oysters! The round earth is
shaken, and echo gives up the ghost--the thunder hides its diminished
head, as with the bellowings of ten thousand volcanos myriads of
furious lungs crash forth, “WHO HAS WON?” Thus whilom did I sing of
this scene; and with better experience, save in the episodes of flying
voltigeurs, men “with never no back-bones at all, only a slip of
gristle to hold head and heels together,” and epicures in cutlery, “who
swallow knives and forks for all the world like gingerbread nuts,” I
can add nothing to the _beau ideal_ of a DERBY DAY.
How little can they, who first give existence to a principle, foresee
how it will operate, and what may be its results. The pastime of
horse-racing, fostered and promoted simply as a channel of amusement
by the gay and thoughtless Charles, called into being the strongest
impulse of man’s nature--emulation, and thus entailed upon this
country a race of the noblest of all existing animals, of a character
apparently superior to that originally destined by nature. This may
be an erroneous theory, but as yet we are unacquainted with any
variety of the horse comparable to the artificial stock known as
our thorough-blood. The very general efforts that were made from
that period by the nobles and great landed proprietors to improve
by lavish outlay, and all the appliances which it can command, the
best strains of the recently imported Oriental blood, towards the
middle of the last century, seem to have carried the race-horse _as
a species_ as near to perfection as his generic organization will
admit. True, every year produced some few infinitely superior to their
contemporaries, but they were phenomena,--indebted to no individuality
of parentage for their excellence, and unpossessed of the faculty
of endowing their descendants with similar gifts. As a race, when
opposed to the indigenous horse of any quarter of the earth, the
English thorough-blood is universally victorious; among the various
families into which it is divided at home, no _constant_ succession of
superiority has ever discovered itself.
I am aware that those who only take a superficial view of the economy
of our racing system will at once pronounce against this position.
They will adduce the sons and daughters of King Herod, Eclipse, and
Highflyer; in our day, of Sultan and Emilius, as far surpassing the
ordinary run of their contemporaries. But they do not bear in mind
that not only did and does the progeny of these justly celebrated
sires greatly outnumber that of their less favoured brothers, but that
the best mares of their respective eras were and are exclusively put
to them. Not to travel beyond our own day for proofs, did excellence
ensure its like, what chance would have remained to those who now and
then breed a solitary nomination against the gigantic studs of Hampton
Court, Riddlesworth, or Underly? To confine the question to the present
year (1838), we had evidence that not all the wealth, skilful training,
Sybarite care and treatment of the best of England’s blood could
produce a match for the son of one of our indifferent racers,--the
despised of an Irish tenth-rate stable,--the wonderful and the
basely-abused Harkaway.[82] I may be told that he was defeated here,
and by second-raters, too,--but under what circumstances? With ordinary
care, without having been subjected to actual ill-treatment, at weight
for age there was nothing of the year in England that could have stood
any chance with him.
[82] This extraordinary animal is now (December 1838) advertised for
sale, his price six thousand guineas, with this strange addition,
“that his owner (Mr. Ferguson) rides him hunting once or twice a
week!”
From these premises the deduction at which we arrive bearing upon the
economy of the turf, its nature and influence is twofold, and admits
of a very brief solution,--the first being that the day is long passed
since the means of winning upon the race-course were to be obtained
by breeding; the second, that the vast advantages still to be derived
from a proper application of our thorough-blood is most strangely
neglected. Mr. Bowes began his racing career by breeding a winner of
the Derby, while the late Duke of Leeds, the most extensive breeder of
blood stock in the north, toiled in vain for the Leger till he won it
with a colt bought from the tail of the plough. Lord George Bentinck,
the best winner on the turf of modern days, if the Calendar be any
criterion, regards breeding racers as an expedient no man in his senses
should dream of, and, acting upon his theory, has put money in his
purse. A first-class racer, a colt of extraordinary promise, are each
productions of chance-medley, only to be come at by being secured where
and when they can be found.
But if the Turf be thus restricted in further profiting, save as matter
of hazard, by the means which securely ministered to the success of its
first speculators, it furnishes materials from which may be moulded
other distinct races, as valuable, each in its province, as the flying
family of the modern race-course, now the sole representatives of our
thorough-blood. The ragged regiment of cock-tails will, it is devoutly
to be hoped, speedily be disbanded; the day soon arrive when no
gentleman shall be seen bestriding the mongrel of a base-bred hackney,
scarce worthy the shafts of a costermonger’s trap. And first, as is
befitting, such reform must commence with its next of kin--THE FIELD.
Shall this, assuredly the second--nay, the twin-sport of racing, in the
esteem of Englishmen, long continue dependent upon chance for a supply
of horses for its service? Impossible; the period cannot be far distant
in which the British thorough-bred hunter will be as distinct a race,
and of as high renown, as his progenitors were the pride of the Turf.
[Illustration]