A similar experiment in these enlightened days would require admission by parole and countersign and a squad of constables within measurable distance.
Perhaps the most unique individual that has ever risen to a prominent position on the Turf was Captain Machell, whose death occurred not long since.
Joining the 14th Foot some time in the fifties, he exchanged as a captain to the 53rd, and, retiring a few years later, invested his entire fortune—his commission money—in a pitch at Newmarket. It was during his earlier soldiering days that he had the good fortune to be stationed with the depôt of his regiment at Templemore, a desolate bog in the heart of Tipperary, where commanded as clever a judge of a horse—Colonel Irwin, of the Connaught Rangers—as ever came out of “ould Oireland.” The permanent staff of depôt battalions in those remote days retained their appointments indefinitely, a regulation that enabled them to settle down very cosily, undisturbed by anything more formidable than an annual inspection conducted on the most comfortable lines. Needless to add that Templemore was no exception to the rule.
The drill field adjoining the barracks was converted into a paddock for brood mares and yearlings; the entire stabling and any superfluous out-houses became roomy loose boxes; hens cackled, cocks crowed, and pigs grunted from every point of the compass, and any youngster prepared to purchase a promising hunter—“a bit rough, but likely to shape well”—from the Colonel need perform no more arduous duties than eating his dinner in uniform and chewing a straw all day.
This equine elysium continued till young men began to grizzle and two-year-olds became “aged”; it might, indeed, have continued much longer had it not been for the unfortunate Fenian scare and the military precautions that attended it. Suffice it to say, that in one single day, and without the slightest warning, the Commander-in-Chief—Lord Strathnairn—suddenly appeared in the Square, and within twenty-four hours the happy community was for ever broken up, the farm produce sent off to various auction rooms, and the battalion half-way across the Channel.
Machell, when he arrived at the depôt, was not long in ingratiating himself with the Colonel, and within a year the pair were joint owners of Leonidas, a chestnut gelding that beat everything at all the surrounding meetings at Thurles, Cashel, and Tipperary.
Machell, after his retirement, disappeared below the horizon till summoned to assist at the pulverisation of the unhappy Hastings in the spring of ’67, and it was after that, with £80,000 to his credit, that he loomed into sporting publicity.
A splendid judge of a horse, possessed of a wiry frame, an expressionless face, and a shrewd and calculating temperament, little wonder that he was more or less associated from ’67 to his death with every wealthy horse-owner aspiring to a career and every ass desirous of pilotage by the astutest man of his day.
Machell as a young man had few equals in all feats requiring agility; he could hop, apparently without effort, on to the mantelpiece in the smoking-room at Mackin’s Hotel, Dublin; he could out-run most men for any distance between 100 and 1,000 yards, and as a middle-weight could hold his own amongst the best of amateur boxers. It was not until years after, when he came to blows with Bob Hope-Johnstone, at the “Old Ship,” Brighton, that the scientific bruiser, hopping round his colossal opponent, caught a chance blow that felled him like an ox, breaking three ribs. “Here, take this carrion away,” shouted the Major, and the senseless Machell was removed to his rooms in a cab.
But the redoubtable Bob was, not long after, himself the victim of a cowardly mauling at the hands of two Bond Street Hebrews, who since have developed into the highest authorities on knick-knacks and articles of vertu generally. For even the rugged major, it would appear, had a weak point near his heart, and seeking on one occasion a fair seducer at the Argyll, he traced her to Rose Barton’s, and, attacking the two mashers who were entertaining her, was belaboured with champagne bottles by the cowardly Israelites, till, bleeding from a score of gashes, he was removed to the “John o’ Groat” in Rupert Street, a hostelry now known as Challis’s, after a waiter at Webb’s Coffee House who aspired to perpetuate his name.