With this attribute universally known, it is perhaps not difficult to explain the immunity he obtained from innuendo when his horse Kingcraft won the Derby in the memorable year that the Ring “approached” James Merry, despite the fact that he only ran third to MacGregor in the Two Thousand.
That Lord Falmouth was a successful horse-owner may be accepted by the £300,000 he undoubtedly won in stakes during the twenty years of his career; that no one begrudged it him is shown by the unanimous regret of the racing public when he practically retired from the Turf, and that even so “close” a man as Fred Archer, the jockey, should have subscribed towards a presentation silver shield speaks volumes for his popularity.
Lord Falmouth, like his grand old naval ancestor, is now a matter of history, and nothing remains but the two guns outside the family town house in St. James’s Square to remind the passer-by of two great men, who in their respective spheres were sans peur et sans reproche.
To Fred Archer, as a phenomenon of a later period, who was latterly Lord Falmouth’s jockey, it is out of the sphere of these annals of the sixties to refer, but seeing him as I often have over his usual breakfast of hot castor-oil, black coffee, and a slice of toast, it seems incredible that he should have lived even to his thirtieth year.
Constantly “wasting” to try and attain 8st. 7lb. his mind and body soon became a wreck, and then the sad end came by his own hand with which we are all familiar.
Bob Hope-Johnstone and his brother David (“Wee Davy”) were two as fine specimens of the genus man as can well be conceived; but like Napoleon—who, according to experts, ought to have died at Waterloo—Bob outlived the glory of his youth, and became a morose, cantankerous wretch, who spent half his time at the hostelry now known as Challis’s, which in the sixties was the resort of every jockey—straight or crooked—that held a licence from the Jockey Club.
Another shining light about this period was Prince Soltykoff, whose wife was one of the handsomest women in England.
It was after her death that he came into prominence as an admirer of beautiful women in general, and of little Graham of the Opera Comique in particular, and—later on—of goodness knows how many more. Many a time have I seen him at Mutton’s at Brighton, loaded with paper bags full of every indigestible delight, which the imperious little woman beside him continued unmercifully to add to.
Lord Glasgow, who was distinguished in the sixties as possessing the longest string of useless yearlings, was, in addition to other peculiarities, the most hot-tempered explosive that epoch produced. Kind of heart in the bluffest of ways, and throwing money about with a lavish hand, I remember on one occasion finding myself on the railway station at Edinburgh as his plethoric lordship was purchasing his ticket. Tendering a £5 note, the clerk requested him to endorse it, which, having been done with a churlish air, his temper rose to fever pitch when the clerk, returning it, said, “I didn’t ask you where you were going; I want your name, man!” A volley of abuse, in which he was a past-master, then followed, and the abashed official realised that what he had mistaken for a grazier was the redoubtable Earl of Glasgow.
The sporting critic of the Morning Post, who wrote under the name of “Parvo,” once felt the weight of his indignation for what, after all, was a fair criticism of the great man’s stud, and when, in ’69, an obituary article appeared in the Post, the incident and the exact wish his lordship had given expression to were conveyed in flowery symbolism as a hope “that he might live to water his grave, but not with tears.”