It is Monday—the Monday before the Derby Day, and a railway takes us, in less than an hour, from London Bridge to the capital of the racing world, close to the abode of its Great Man, who is—need we add! the Clerk of the Epsom Course. It is, necessarily, one of the best houses in the place; being—honor to literature—a flourishing bookseller's shop. We are presented to the official. He kindly conducts us to the Downs, to show how the horses are temporarily stabled; to initiate us into some of the mysteries of the "field;" to reveal to us, in fact, the private life of the race-horse.
We arrive at a neat farm-house, with more outbuildings than are usually seen appended to so modest a homestead. A sturdy, well-dressed, well-mannered, purpose-like, sensible-looking man, presents himself. He has a Yorkshire accent. A few words pass between him and the Clerk of the Course, in which we hear the latter asseverate with much emphasis that we are, in a sporting sense, quite artless—we rather think "green," was the exact expression—that we never bet a shilling, and are quite incapable, if even willing, to take advantage of any information, or of any inspection vouchsafed to us. Mr. Filbert (the trainer) hesitates no longer. He moves his hat with honest politeness; bids us follow him, and lays his finger on the latch of a stable.
The trainer opens the door with one hand; and, with a gentleman-like wave of the other, would give us the precedence. We hesitate. We would rather not go in first. We acknowledge an enthusiastic admiration for the race-horse; but at the very mention of a race-horse, the stumpy animal whose portrait headed our earliest lesson of equine history, in the chapters of the "Universal Spelling Book," vanishes from our view, and the animal described in the Book of Job prances into our mind's eye: "The glory of his nostril is terrible. He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted. He swalloweth the ground with the fierceness of his rage." To enjoy, therefore, a fine racer—not as one does a work of art—we like the point of sight to be the point of distance. The safest point, in case of accident (say, for instance, a sudden striking-out of the hinder hoofs), we hold to be the vanishing
point—a point by no means attainable on the inside of that contracted kind of stable known as a "loose-box."
The trainer evidently mistakes our fears for modesty. We boldly step forward to the outer edge of the threshold, but uncomfortably close to the hind-quarters of Pollybus, a "favorite" for the Derby. When we perceive that he has neither bit nor curb; nor bridle, nor halter, that he is being "rubbed down" by a small boy, after having taken his gallops; that there is nothing on earth—except the small boy—to prevent his kicking, or plunging, or biting, or butting his visitors to death; we breathe rather thickly. When the trainer exclaims, "Shut the door, Sam!" and the little groom does his master's bidding, and boxes us up, we desire to be breathing the fresh air of the Downs again.
"Bless you, sir!" says our good-tempered informant, when he sees us shrink away from Pollybus, changing sides at a signal from his cleaner; "these horses" (we look round, and for the first time perceive, with a tremor, the heels of another high-mettled racer protruding from an adjoining stall) "these horses are as quiet as you are; and—I say it without offense—just as well-behaved. It is quite laughable to hear the notions of people who are not used to them. They are the gentlest and most tractable creeturs in creation. Then, as to shape and symmetry, is there any thing like them?"
We acknowledge that Pretty Perth—the mare in the adjoining box—could hardly be surpassed for beauty.
"Ah, can you wonder at noblemen and gentlemen laying out their twenty and thirty thousand a year on them?"
"So much?"
"Why, my gov'nor's stud costs us five-and-twenty thousand a-year, one year with another. There's an eye, sir!"