Part 25

This animal, whose wonderful powers as a racer have won him unparalleled fame, was got by Marske (a son of Squirt) out of Spiletta, a bay mare foaled in 1749 by Regulus, a son of the Godolphin Arabian. Eclipse was foaled in 1764, during the great eclipse of that year. When, at the death of the Duke, His Royal Highness's stud was brought to the hammer, Eclipse was purchased as a colt by Mr. Wildman (who appears to have had some insight into his value), under very curious circumstances. Mr. Wildman, who had, it was reported, been put into possession of the extraordinary promise evinced by a particular chestnut colt when a yearling, adopted the following questionable measures in order to make sure of him. When he arrived at the place of sale, he produced his watch and insisted that the auction had commenced before the hour which had been announced in the advertisements, and that the lots should be put up again. In order, however, to prevent a dispute, it was agreed by the auctioneer and company that Mr. Wildman should have his choice of any particular lot. By these means, it is generally believed, he became possessed of Eclipse at the moderate price of seventy or seventy-five guineas. Eclipse did not appear upon the Turf till he was five years old, and so invincibly bad was his temper that it was for some time uncertain whether he would not be raced as a gelding. It is by mere accident, indeed, that the most celebrated of English stallions was preserved to adorn the Calendar with the glories of his descendants. In the neighbourhood of Epsom Downs there lived a man of the name of Ellerton, who, however, was better known by the sobriquet of Hilton, and who united the occupations of poacher and rough-rider. To him, after all else had signally failed, Eclipse was handed over as an incorrigible, and he had recourse to the kill-or-cure system. He was at him day and night, frequently bringing him home at daybreak, after a poaching excursion, with a load of hares strung across his back. Twelve months of this regimen brought him sufficiently to his senses to fit him to be brought to the post, and once there, he ran because it was his pleasure to do so. Still he never could be raced like any other horse. Fitzpatrick, who rode him in almost all his races, never dared to hold him, or do more than sit quiet in his saddle. All through his Turf career his temper was wretched, and very seriously interfered with his value as a racer. His extraordinary superiority was also so palpable that latterly no odds could be got about him save by stratagems. One of these was very clever. For a race in which there were several horses engaged, when O'Kelly failed in getting any money on no-matter-what odds, he took them to a large amount that he placed every horse in it! This he did by naming Eclipse first and all the others nowhere, winning by his horse distancing the field. In 1769, Wildman and O'Kelly were joint-owners of Eclipse, the latter, however, soon after becoming the sole owner at the price of 1750 guineas. At a late period of his life, when an offer to purchase him was made to O'Kelly, these were the terms demanded--£20,000 down, an annuity of £500 for his (O'Kelly's) life, and the right of having three mares every year stinted to him as long as he lived.

This "horse of horses" was short in the forehand, and high in the hips, which gave elasticity to his speed. Upon dissection the muscles were found to be of unparalleled size--a proof of the intimate relation between muscular power and extraordinary swiftness. No horse of his day would appear to have had the shadow of a chance against him.

Eclipse died February 26th, 1789, aged twenty-five, at Cannons, in Middlesex, to which place he had been removed from Epsom about six months previously, in a machine, constructed for the purpose, drawn by two horses, and attended by a confidential groom. When his owner, old O'Kelly, died at his house in Piccadilly on December 28th, 1787, he bequeathed Eclipse and Dungannon to his brother Philip.

Another famous horse was Highflyer, which received his name from having been foaled in a paddock, in which were a number of highflyer walnut trees. He was named by Lord Bolingbroke at a large dinner-party at Sir Charles Bunbury's. The horse in question was the cause of considerable jealousy between Colonel O'Kelly, the owner of Eclipse, and Mr. Tattersall, the founder of the celebrated institution at Hyde Park Corner, whose prosperity was greatly increased by the purchase of Highflyer. "The Hammer and Highflyer" indeed became a favourite toast of the day. Both owners felt the necessity of crossing by the blood of their respective stallions, but each was afraid of increasing the celebrity of the other's horse thereby. The two men were widely different in character. Colonel O'Kelly (of whom an account has already been given) piqued himself upon being descended from the first race of Milesian kings, although he had served for the greatest part of his life some of the humblest offices. It was his boast that he bred and ran his horses for fame. He certainly sacrificed many thousands of pounds in aspiring to the glory of being the Jehu of the day. Mr. Tattersall bred for profit. The former never sold anything before he had trained and ran it at Newmarket; the latter never trained anything, with the exception of one mare early in life, which was of no note. The Irishman matched everything--the Lancashire man sold everything. The one was hasty and impetuous in betting upon the descendants of Eclipse. The other was cautious, and left it to those who had bought them to risk their money upon the progeny of Highflyer. In a word, they resembled each other in nothing, except, it was wickedly said, their total ignorance of horses and extreme good fortune. Mr. Tattersall in the decline of life was more than usually anxious that his son should persevere in keeping stallions and breeding race-horses. O'Kelly directed by his will that all his stud should be sold as soon as possible after his death. Mr. Tattersall's son and heir sold the whole stud after his death. O'Kelly's nephew and executor was obliged to sell under the direction of the will, but he bought most of the horses for his own use. He was a cultivated man, and had been well brought up by his uncle.

Mr. Tattersall used to say that there was no part of Colonel O'Kelly's conduct which he wished he had imitated except that in giving an excellent education to his heir.

Mr. Tattersall was a very economical man. When Highflyer died, many suggestions were made that the horse should be skinned and stuffed, as had been done by Colonel O'Kelly in the case of Eclipse. Mr. Tattersall, however, replied that he did not see the use of stuffing him with hay after he was dead, as he could no longer cover; he had stuffed him full enough with hay and corn when he was alive and producing money. Mr. Tattersall had very practical ideas about such things, and when inspecting his cattle whilst they were fattening, was often overheard to say, "Eat away, my good creature! eat away, and get fat soon. The butcher is waiting for you, and I want money."

Mr. Tattersall's prosperous career arose in a great measure from a successful speculation in Scotland. Having heard that a Scotch nobleman's stud was to be sold there, he applied to a friend to go his halves in the purchase. "If you will find money, for I have none," said he, "I will find skill, and you shall have a good thing." The sum was deposited, and he went to the sale, partly by coach and partly on foot, buying nearly all the horses for a trifle. Upon his return, he sold a few at York for more money than the whole of them had cost, making several hundred pounds out of the rest from purchasers at Newmarket and in London. Mr. Tattersall used often to say this was the first money he ever possessed above a few pounds. Having thus acquired a little capital, he soon increased it by similar means, and also, of course, by his business at Hyde Park Corner.

At that time, though sales of horses by auction were occasionally held, there was no regular repository or fixed sales at stated periods, the lack of which was much felt in the sporting world. Perceiving that a golden opportunity lay ready to hand, Mr. Tattersall, who was well-known to the gentlemen of the Turf and to the horse-dealers, offered his services as an auctioneer, and solicited their patronage. Lord Grosvenor warmly espoused his cause, and built for him the extensive premises at Hyde Park Corner, where Mr. Tattersall died. His success was astonishingly rapid. He soon enlarged the premises and built stands for carriages, which were sold by private contract; as well as kennels for hounds and other dogs, which were sold by auction. He converted a part of his house into a tavern and coffee-house, and fitted up two of the most elegant rooms in London for the use of the Jockey Club, who held their meetings there for some years. He allotted another apartment to the use of betting men. This was supported by an annual subscription of a guinea from each member, and was called the betting-room. Here prominent Turfites assembled every sale-day to lay wagers on the events of future races, and here they met to pay and receive the money won and lost at what were called country races, in contradistinction to the races at Newmarket. His sales were not confined to Hyde Park Corner; he constantly attended the Newmarket meetings and the races at York, where he had considerable employment, and thereby kept up his connection with the jockeys in different parts of the kingdom, who sent their horses to him from all the various districts.

Racing as carried on in the eighteenth century was on a very different scale from that of the present day. Our ancestors were contented with very small stakes and but few races in a day.

In 1755 there were but three meetings at Newmarket, which gave fifteen racing days. Thirteen stakes were run for, the gross amount of which was £1255. There were twenty heats.

Besides the stakes there were twenty-nine matches, which made the daily average of races something over three.

In those days noblemen and gentlemen met to enjoy each other's society and test the merits of their horses rather than for purposes of gain, the stakes being, from a pecuniary view, a matter of comparative indifference.

At the small country meetings the racing was spread over a greater space of time than at present; all of them lasted three days and many a week. Dinners and balls were the order of the day, the race meeting being an event which was looked forward to throughout the year.

A number of the more aristocratic spectators were mounted, and followed the horses as they ran. So great, indeed, became the disorder caused at race meetings by this riding with and after the horses during racing, that the Chief Magistrate of one provincial town (who, it should be added, had Irish blood in his veins) caused a placard to be posted up just before the races, intimating "that no _gentleman_ would be allowed to ride on the course, _except the horses_ that were to run."

Racing was formerly a very rough-and-ready affair, and much was tolerated on a race-course which would be sternly dealt with to-day. Gambling-booths and E.O. tables were easily to be found, whilst little order was maintained on the course. At Tavistock Races in 1815, a sailor with one arm, who had just been paid off, exhibited his skill in horsemanship, to the no small annoyance of everybody, till at length, checking his Bucephalus at full gallop, he was thrown with great violence, by which his right leg was dreadfully fractured.

Cocked-hat races and other eccentric contests were not infrequent features at race meetings. At Hereford races in 1822 a race between three velocipedes, commonly called hobby-horses, created much mirth. They were ridden by three men, dressed in scarlet, yellow, and white jackets. Much skill was displayed, and every exertion used, with the result that white won, scarlet and yellow being both upset, and the riders each receiving a hearty bump, to the great diversion of all the spectators.

The Turf of former days eased the aristocracy of a good deal of money, and many a fine estate changed hands owing to the vicissitudes of racing. Fox of course lost very large sums. He used to declare after the defeat of his horses that they had as much bottom as other people's, but that they were such slow, good animals that they never went fast enough to tire themselves! Occasionally, however, he was lucky. In April 1772 he won nearly £16,000--the greater part of which was the result of bets against the celebrated Pincher, who lost the match by only half-a-neck, two to one having been laid on him. At the Spring meeting in 1789 Fox is also said to have won about £50,000; and at the October meeting next year he realised £4000 by the sale of two of his horses--Seagull and Chanticleer. In 1788 Fox and the Duke of Bedford won eight thousand guineas between them at the Newmarket Spring meeting. Fox and Lord Barrymore had a match for a large sum; this was given as a dead heat, and the bets were off.

On taking office in 1783, Fox sold his horses, and erased his name from several of the Clubs of which he was a member. In a short time, however, he again purchased a stud, and in October attended the Newmarket meeting, when a King's messenger appeared amongst the sportsmen on the Heath in quest of the Minister, for whom he bore despatches. The messenger, as was usual on these occasions, wore his badge of office, the greyhound, and his arrival created quite a stir on the course.

In 1790, Fox's horse, Seagull, won the Oatlands Stakes at Ascot of one hundred guineas (nineteen subscribers), beating the Prince of Wales's Escape, Serpent, and several of the very best horses of that year. The Prince was much mortified at this, and immediately matched Magpie against the winner, two miles, for five hundred guineas. This match, on which immense sums were depending, was, four days later, won with ease by Seagull. At this time Lord Foley and Mr. Fox raced together.

Lord Foley died in 1793; he entered upon the Turf with a clear £18,000 a year, and some £100,000 in ready money--he left it without ready money, with an encumbered estate, and with a constitution injured by cares and anxieties which embittered the end of his life.

Many other patricians were practically ruined on the Turf at about the same time, some by continuous ill-luck, but more owing to the machinations of the many doubtful characters who were experts at what was then known as "throwing the bull over the bridge"--a cant phrase formerly used by frequenters of the race-course to indicate a sporting swindle.

The phrase in question, it may be added, had its origin in the cruel pastime of bull-baiting. When such an orgy of cruelty was over, and the militia of hell which had witnessed it surfeited with blood, the carcass of the bull was dragged to a bridge, over which his quivering remains were thrown into the water beneath!

Many were the queer freaks and fancies of the great pillars of the Turf of the past. Sir Charles Bunbury, for instance, who trained his horses privately under his own eye, made the lads who groomed them wear his colours whilst at their task, in order to accustom the animals to the racing jackets and prevent all chance of nervousness in public. His horses were never allowed to be sweated or tried on a Good Friday, on account of an accident which had on one of these anniversaries happened to a couple of his racers, who had both fallen and broken their backs, each jockey having got a fractured thigh.

All this, however, has been written of time after time; indeed, the fascinating story of the Turf has found many admirable chroniclers. Nevertheless, these have hardly touched upon some of the more obscure figures, who seem to have escaped notice.

Such a one was Major Leeson, a well-known sporting character at the close of the eighteenth century, who may be taken as typical of the sharp racing man of humble origin, and who, having by astuteness attained a certain prosperity, was eventually reduced to beggary by the allurements of gambling. An Irishman of obscure birth, Mr. Leeson originally obtained his commission through the patronage of a Scottish nobleman, by whose munificence he was sent to school at Hampstead, and afterwards to the French military academy of Angers. Whilst at this seminary he fought a duel with a well-known baronet, and both combatants displayed great courage. Leeson was soon after appointed a lieutenant in a regiment of foot, in which he conducted himself as a soldier and a gentleman.

During his military career, Leeson was especially popular with his men, whose liking for their young officer almost amounted to adoration, owing to his ardent championship of their interests. While they were quartered in a country town, one of the sergeants, a sober, steady man, was wantonly attacked by a blacksmith, who was the terror of the place. The sergeant defended himself with great spirit as long as he was able, but was obliged, after a hard contest, to yield to his athletic antagonist. This intelligence reached Mr. Leeson's ears the next morning, and without delay he set out in pursuit of the victor, whom he found boasting of the triumph he had gained over the "lobster," as he called the sergeant. The very expression kindled Leeson's indignation into such a flame, that he aimed a blow at the fellow's temple, which was warded off and returned with such force that Leeson lay for some minutes extended on the ground. Leeson, however, renewed the attack; and his onslaughts were made with such rapidity and success, that the son of Vulcan was eventually stretched senseless on the ground. In order to complete the triumph, Leeson placed him in a wheel-barrow; and in this situation he was wheeled through all the town amidst the acclamations of the populace. Soon after this, Mr. Leeson exchanged his lieutenancy for a cornetcy of dragoons.

He now began to be attracted by the seductions of gaming and the Turf, both of which exercised a fascination over his mind which he was unable to resist. Fortune was kind, and an almost uninterrupted series of success led him to Newmarket, where his evil genius, in the name of good luck, converted him in a short time into a professional gambler. At one time he had a complete stud at Newmarket; and his famous horse Buffer carried off all the capital plates for three years and upwards, though once beaten at Egham, when 15 to 1 was laid on it. Major Leeson's discernment in racing matters soon became generally remarked, and he was consulted by all the sharpest frequenters of the Turf on critical occasions.

In later years, however, Major Leeson experienced the ill-fortune which is too often the lot of gamblers. A long run of ill-luck preyed upon his spirits, soured his temper, and drove him to that last resource of an enfeebled mind--the brandy bottle. As he could not shine in his wonted splendour, he sought the most obscure public-houses in the purlieus of St. Giles, where he used to pass whole nights in the company of his countrymen of the lowest class. Overwhelmed by debt and worn-out body and soul, he was constantly pursued by the terrors of the law, and alternately imprisoned by his own fears or confined in the King's Bench, till, a broken and miserable man, he welcomed death as a friend come to relieve him of an almost insupportable load.

An eccentric supporter of the Turf, who died in 1799, was Councillor Lade. It was his highest ambition to be thought a distinguished member of the sporting world; but in this, as in the more contracted circle of private life, he was not destined to cut a conspicuous figure, being by nature much better calculated for an obscure place in the background. During the last twenty years of his life he kept a miserable lot of spindle-shanked brood mares, colts, and fillies at Cannon Park, between Kingsclere and Overton in Hampshire--a place which, owing to its barrenness, was quite unsuited for breeding horses.

His successes on the Turf were insignificant. During the last twelve years of his life he hardly ever brought less than six, seven, or eight horses annually to the post for country plates (never till the last two or three years presuming to sport his name at Newmarket); nevertheless, few of them, if any, ever realised his expectations, or paid one-third of the expenses in the way of breeding, breaking, training, running, or sale. Councillor Lade's almost constant sequence of disappointments originated in one single cause strikingly palpable to every eye but his own, which was their breeder's parsimony. His mares were in a wretched and deplorable state of emaciation during the whole time of bearing their foals, whilst a systematic starvation of both dams and offspring when foals, and a miserable sustenance barely enough to support life when weaned, totally nullified his chances of success upon the Turf.

It was no uncommon thing to see the Councillor's favourite brood mare, Laetitia, and many others with their foals, in the fertile months of May and June, upon the side of a barren, burnt-up hill, with barely pasture sufficient to keep even the dam in existence, without even a possibility of affording half the nutriment necessary for the unfortunate foal. Owing to these highly injudicious and cruel methods, his stud, even when of superior blood, was always inferior in bone and strength to its rivals, there being in it never more than one horse in every eight or ten with constitutional stamina sufficient to bear the training necessary before going to the post.

When after his death the Councillor's wretched stud were on their way to be sold by auction they excited universal pity from the humane in the towns and villages through which they passed. Many of the horses sold for the trifling sum of two or three guineas each, owing to the wretched condition of the poor animals. Councillor Lade, in his Turf transactions as elsewhere, was so consistently parsimonious even to those whom it would have been good policy to conciliate that every man's hand was against him, even that of his own servants.

One of his manias was to run his horses as much as possible at race meetings near his home, in order to avoid the expenses of travelling.

The years 1797 and 1798 were the most prosperous of his Turf career. Seven of his horses went to the post for twenty-four plates and purses, of which Truss, Will, and Grey Pilot won seven fifties--two at Ascot, two at Abingdon, and one each at Reading, Winchester, and Stockbridge.

Councillor Lade was in himself a singular and unsociable man, seldom seen in company, upon the race-course or elsewhere. Cynically cold and innately parsimonious, few cared to sojourn beneath what might be justly termed, in more senses than one, a habitation without a roof. Hospitality was alien to the spirit of Cannon Park, and the building itself was one entire mass of chilling frigidity which betokened a total lack of good cheer. The owner was constantly involved in pecuniary disputes and lawsuits with his dependents, in which he was usually worsted.

It was not infrequently his practice to drive his curricle and greys without a servant the fifty-seven miles to Cannon Park, not even taking them once out of the harness; a handful of hay, and two or three quarts of water at Salt Hill, and Spratley's, the Bear, at Reading, in addition to the turnpikes, constituted the entire expense of the journey, it being an irrevocable opinion of his that servants on the road were more troublesome and expensive than their masters.