“Ah, the Chester Cup was the race for getting money on in those days,” remarked the genial Swindells. “I once ’ad a crock called Lymington; ah, a rare useful one, too. At the October Meeting I put ’im in for an over-night race, the stable lad up, with orders to pull him up sharp soon after the start, jump off and wait. The ’orse was dead lame, of course, and for why? The lad ’ad slipped a bit of ’ard stuff into his frog.
“‘Bad case; breakdown,’ everyone said, so we took ’im back to the stables in a van. First the local vet. saw him, and then a big pot from London, and we humbugged ’em both. Not long after I entered ’im for the Chester Cup, but told everybody my d— fool of a clerk had made a bloomer of it, as the ’orse could never be trained, and so when the weights came out he was chucked in at nix. My eyes! what a cop! and, my Gawd, didn’t he win! Oh, no; only as far as from ’ere to nowhere!”
At Doncaster, too, the hospitalities were even of a more lavish style, and all the principal owners gave dinner parties nightly to their various friends.
The name of Sir Robert Peel recalls many episodes in the career of that most blustering baronet.
Beginning as an attaché at Berne, the first performance that brought him into prominence was an outburst of temper at a local Kursaal, when, seizing the rake, he belaboured an innocent croupier as the cause of his run of bad luck.
The Foreign Office, deeming change of air desirable, we next hear of him following the noble sport of racing, when I had the distinction of coming within the sphere of his amiable influence. It was in ’69 that I found myself on one occasion travelling to Newmarket in the same compartment as Lord Rosslyn and Sir Robert Peel; in the same train was Lord Rosebery, making his début as an owner of horses, and still unknown to fame as the most brilliant of orators and one of the best Foreign Secretaries England has ever had.
“What kind of fellow is young Rosebery?” inquired Lord Rosslyn; to which the most opinionated of men replied:
“He looks a fool, but I’m told he’s a bigger one than he looks.”
And this was the verdict of a man whose claims to celebrity were based on being the son of a brilliant father, on one who, in addition to a most successful racing career, is universally admired as a sound politician, a genial friend, and the most versatile of living public men.
It was about the same period that the fates again destined me to be within measurable distance of the over-bearing baronet, when young Webb, the jockey, had lost a race through no fault of riding. As he was fuming and abusing the unhappy youth, Mr. George Payne, who was present, protested against the unjust charge, adding that although he had lost considerably by the race, he in no way blamed Webb, who had carried out his instructions implicitly.