The marquis de MacMahon, brother of the marshal, used to say that the gallop was the gait of happy people, the natural movement of women and of fools. "The three prettiest things in the world," wrote Balzac, "are a frigate under sail, a woman dancing and a horse at full run." I leave these opinions, so essentially French, to the judgment of Americans, and turn to another point of difference in the racing customs of the two countries.
In France the practice of recording the time of a race is looked upon as childish. The reason given is, that horses that have run or trotted separately against time will often show quite contrary results when matched against each other, and that the one that has made the shortest time on the separate trial will frequently be easily beaten on the same track by the one that showed less speed when tried alone. However this may be, it appears that the average speed of running races in France has increased since 1872. At that time it was one minute and two to three seconds for one thousand mètres (five furlongs); for two thousand mètres (a mile and a quarter), 2m. 8 to 10s.; for three thousand mètres (one mile seven furlongs), 3m. 34 to 35s.; for four thousand mètres (two miles and a half), 4m. 30 to 35s. The distance of the Prix Gladiateur (six thousand two hundred mètres or three and three-quarter miles one furlong)—the longest in France—is generally accomplished in 8m. 5 to 6s., though Mon Étoile has done it in 7m. 25s. But the mean speed, as we have said, has been raised since 1872, as it has been in America.
But let us come back to our Norman circuit, which this digression about time and trotting interrupted at Rouen. The sleepy old mediæval town on this occasion rouses itself from its dreams of the past and awakens to welcome the crowd of Norman farmers who come flocking in, clad for the most part in the national blue blouse, but still bearing about their persons those unmistakable though quite indescribable marks by which the turfman can recognize at a glance and under any costume the man whose business is with horses. Every trade and calling in life perhaps may be said to impart to its followers some distinguishing peculiarity by which the brethren of the craft at least will instinctively know each other; and amongst horse-fanciers these mysterious signs of recognition are as infallible as the signals of Freemasonry. As one penetrates still farther into Normandy on his way to the Caen races—which come off a few days after those at Rouen—one becomes still more alive to the fact that he is in a great horse-raising country. It is indeed to the departments of Calvados and the Orne beyond all other places that we owe those fine Norman stallions of which so many have been imported into America. In the Pin stud, at the fairs of Guibray and of Montagne, one may see the descendants of the colossal Roman-nosed horses of Merlerault and Cotentin which used to bear the weight of riders clad in iron, and which figure at a later day in the pictures of Van der Meulen. The infusion of English blood within the present century, and particularly during the Second Empire, has profoundly modified the character of the animal known to our ancestors: the Norman, with the rest of the various races once so numerous in France, is rapidly disappearing, and it will not be very long before two uniform types only will prevail—the draught-horse and the thoroughbred.
The race-course at Caen is one of the oldest in France, having been established as long ago as 1837. The most important events of its programme are the Prix de la Ville (handicap), with premium and stakes amounting to twenty or twenty-five thousand francs, on which the heaviest bets of the intermediate season are made, and the Grand St. Léger of France, which before the war took place at Moulins, and which is far from being of equal importance with the celebrated race at Doncaster whose name it bears. The site of the track at Caen is a beautiful meadow upon the banks of the Orne, very long and bordered with fine trees, but unfortunately too narrow, and consequently awkward at the turns.
By the rules of the Société colts of two years are not allowed to run before the first of August, and as the Caen races take place during the first week of this month, they have the first gathering of the season's crop of two-year-olds—an event which naturally excites the curiosity of followers of the turf. The wisdom and utility of subjecting animals of this age to such a strain upon their powers have been much discussed, and good judges have strongly condemned the precocious training involved, as tending to check the natural development of the horse, and sometimes putting a premature end to his career as a racer. In England these races have been multiplied to abuse. There are signs of a reaction, however, in France, where several owners of racing-stables, following the example set by M. Lupin, have found their advantage in refusing to take part in the pernicious practice. For, after all, these first trials really prove nothing at all. They are found to furnish no standard by which any accurate measure can be taken of the future achievements of the horse. In fact, if one will take the trouble to examine the lists of winners of these two-year-old criterions, as they are called, he will find but very few names that have afterward become illustrious in the annals of the turf.
The races of Caen over, their followers take themselves some few leagues farther upon their circuit, to attend the meeting at Cabourg, one of those pretty little towns, made up of about a hundred villas, four hotels, a church and a casino, that lie scattered along the Norman coast like beads of a broken necklace. Living is dear in these stylish little out-of-the-way places, and this naturally keeps away the more plebeian element that frequents the great centres. About the fifteenth of August begins the week of races at Déauville, the principal event of the Norman circuit, bringing together not unfrequently as many as a hundred and sixty horses, and ranking, in fact, as third in importance in all France, the meetings at Longchamps and Chantilly alone taking precedence of it. It is to the duc de Morny that Déauville owes the existence of its "hippodrome," but the choice of this bit of sandy beach, that seemed to have been thrown up and abandoned by the sea like a waif, cannot be called a happy one. It may be, however, that the duke's selection of the site was determined by its proximity to the luxuriant valley of the Auge, so famous for its excellent pasturage and for the number of its stables. The Victor stud belonging to M. Aumont, that of Fervacques, the property of M. de Montgomery, and the baron de Rothschild's establishment at Meautry, are all in the immediate neighborhood of Déauville; but even these advantages do not compensate for the unfavorable character of the track, laid out, as we have said, upon land from which the sea had receded, and which, as might have been expected, was sure to be hard and cracked in a dry season. To remedy this most serious defect, and to bring the ground to its present degree of excellence, large sums had to be expended. The aspect of the race-course to-day, however, is really charming. A rustic air has been given to the stands, the ring, even to the stables that enclose the paddock, but it is a rusticity quite compatible with elegance, like that of the pretty Norman farm in the garden of Trianon. The purse for two-year-olds used to be called, under the Empire, the Prix Morny, but this name was withdrawn at the same time that the statue of the duke, which once stood in Déauville, was pulled down.
Our Norman circuit comes to a close with the races at Dieppe, which finished last year on the 26th of August. Dieppe was celebrated during the Empire for its steeple-chases, which were run upon a somewhat hilly ground left almost in its natural state—a very unusual thing in France. The flat- and hurdle-races which have succeeded to these since the war are not of sufficient importance to detain us.
Returning from this agreeable summer jaunt, in which the pleasures of sea-bathing have added a zest to the enjoyment of the race-course, the followers of the turf will seek, on coming back to Paris in the early days of September, the autumn meetings at Fontainebleau and at Longchamps. But they will not find the paddock of the latter at this season of the year bustling with the life and fashion that gave it such brilliancy in the spring, and the "return from the races" is made up of little else than hired cabs drawn by broken-down steeds. It is just the period when Paris, crowded with economical strangers, English or German—the former on their return, perhaps, from Switzerland, the latter enjoying their vacation after their manner—mourns the absence of her own gay world. The haute gomme—the swells, the upper ten—are still in the provinces. They have left the sea-side, it is true—it was time for that—but the season in the Pyrenees is not over yet, and Luchon and Bigone will be full until the middle of September, and not before the month is ended will Biarritz give up her pleasure-seekers. The opening of the shooting season on the first Sunday of September has scattered the sportsmen throughout the twenty-five or thirty departments in which there is still left a chance of finding game. But the best shooting is in the neighborhood of Paris, in the departments of Seine-et-Marne and Seine-et-Oise—at Grosbois with the prince de Wagram; at St. Germain-les-Corbeil on the estate of M. Darblay; at Bois-Boudran with the comte de Greffuhle; or at the château of the baron de Rothschild at Ferrières; and the numerous guests of these gentlemen may, if they are inclined, take a day to see the Omnium or the Prix Royal Oak run between two battues aux faisans. The Omnium is the most important of the handicaps: it is the French Cæsarewitch, though with a difference. The distance of the latter is two miles and two furlongs, that of the Omnium but a mile and a half. The value of the stakes is generally from twenty-five to thirty thousand francs. As its name would indicate, this race, by exception to the fundamental principle of the Jockey Club, is open to horses of every kind, without regard to pedigree, above the age of three years. A horse that has gained a prize of two thousand francs after the publication of the weights is handicapped with an overweight of two kilogrammes and a half (a trifle over five pounds); if he has gained several such, with three kilos; if he is the winner of an eight-thousand-franc purse, he has to carry an overweight of four kilos, or one of five kilos if he has won more than one race of the value last mentioned. The publication of the weights takes place at the end of June, when the betting begins. Heavy and numerous are the wagers on this important race, and as the prospects of the various horses entered change from time to time according to the prizes gained and the overweights incurred, the quotation naturally undergoes the most unlooked-for variations. A lot of money is won and lost before the real favorites have revealed themselves; that is to say, before the last week preceding the race. The winner of the Omnium is hardly ever a horse of the first rank, and the baron d'Étreilles undertakes to tell us why. The object of the handicap, he says, being to equalize the chances of several horses of different degrees of merit, the handicapper is in a manner obliged to make it next to impossible for the first-rate horses to win; otherwise, the owners of the inferior animals, seeing that they had no chance, would prefer to pay forfeit, and the harmony, as it were, of the contest—the even balancing of chances, which is of the very essence of the handicap—would be lacking. On the other hand, the handicapper cannot bring the chances of the really bad horses up to the mean average, no matter how much he may favor them in the weights, and thus it nearly always turns out that the Omnium, like every other important handicap, is won by a horse of the second class, generally a three-year-old, whose real merits have been hidden from the handicapper. This concealment is not so difficult as it might seem. There are certain owners who, when they have satisfied themselves by trials made before the spring races that they have in their stables a few horses not quite good enough to stand a chance in the great contests, but still by no means without valuable qualities, prefer to reserve them for an important affair like the Omnium, on which they can bet heavily and to advantage, especially if they have a "dark horse," or one that is as yet unknown. Otherwise, to what use could these second-rate horses be put? If one should run them in the spring they might get one or two of the smaller stakes, after which everybody would have their measure. Their owners, therefore, show wisdom in keeping them out of sight, or perhaps, as some of the shrewder ones do, by running them when rather out of condition, and thus ensuring their defeat by adversaries really inferior to themselves. In this way the handicapper is deceived as to their true qualities, and is induced to weight them advantageously for the Omnium.
Many readers but little conversant with turf matters will no doubt be scandalized to hear of these tricks of the trade, and will be apt to conclude that good faith is no more the fashion at Longchamps than at the Bourse, and that cleverness in betting, as in stockjobbing, consists in knowing when to depreciate values and when to inflate them, as one happens to be a bull or a bear in the market. The truth is, that no rules can be devised, either by Jockey Clubs or by imperial parliaments, that can put a stop to these abuses: they will exist, in spite of legislation, as long as the double character of owner and better can be united in the same person. If this person should not act in perfect good faith, all restraining laws will be illusory, because the betting owner has the cards in his own hands, and can withdraw a horse or make him run at his pleasure, or even make him lose a race in case of need. If the thing is managed with skill, it is almost impossible to discover the deception. In 1877, at Déauville, the comte de Clermont-Tonnere and his jockey, Goddart, were expelled from the turf because the latter had "pulled" his horse in such a clumsy and unmistakable way that the spectators could not fail to see it. This circumstance was without precedent in France, and yet how often has the trick, which in this case was exposed, been practised without any one being the wiser for it! It ought to be added that the betters make one claim that is altogether unreasonable, and that is—at least this is the only inference from their talk—that when they have once "taken" a horse, as they call it, in a race, the owner thereby loses a part of his proprietorship in the animal, and is bound to share his rights of ownership with them. But one cannot thus limit the rights of property, and as long as the owner does not purposely lose a race, and does not deceive the handicapper as to the real value of his horse for the purpose of getting a reduction of weights, he can surely do as he pleases with his own. There will remain, of course, the question of morality and of delicacy, of which each one must be the judge for himself. M. Lupin, for example, and Lord Falmouth, when they have two horses engaged for the same purse, always let these take their chances, and do nothing to prevent the better horse from being the winner, while the comte de Lagrange, as we have had occasion to observe before, has acquired the reputation of winning, if he can, with his worst animal, or at least with the one upon whose success the public has least counted. This is what took place when he gained the Grand Prix de Paris in 1877 with an outsider, St. Christophe, whilst all the betters had calculated upon the victory of his other horse, Verneuil. So the duke of Hamilton in 1878 at Goodwood, where one of his horses was the favorite, declared just at the start that he meant to win with another, and by his orders the favorite was pulled double at the finish. The same year, in America, Mr. Lorillard caused Parole, then a two-year-old, to be beaten by one of his stable-companions and one decidedly his inferior. When this sort of thing is done the ring makes a great uproar about it, but without reason, for there can be no question of an owner's right to save his best horse, if he can, from a future overweight by winning with another not so good. Only he ought frankly to declare his intention to do so before the race.
The autumn stakes that rank next in importance to the Omnium are known as the Prix Royal Oak, open, like its counterpart, the St. Leger of Doncaster, to colts and fillies of three years only, with an unloading of three pounds for the latter. On this occasion one will have an opportunity of seeing again in the Bois de Boulogne the contestants of the great prizes of the spring. The Royal Oak is nearly always won by a horse of the first class, and in the illustrious list may be found the names of Gladiateur and of four winners of the French Derby—Patricien, Boïard, Kilt and Jongleur.