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 It is true that this Act was repealed soon afterwards, through the intervention, as it was believed, of the Duke of Cumberland; nevertheless it is manifest that there must have existed strong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!