ASCOT ROT
Simon Blow finds that the
Queen's own meeting has become socially absurd
ROYAL Ascot is the Queen's own meet- ing. The ground it is held on is royal ground, following an Enclosure Act in 1813. It was Queen Anne who began racing there, and King George IV who started the Royal procession up the course. 'The King's equipage afforded a great treat,' wrote a witness, and Royal Ascot's theatrical touch was under way. 'In place of a Grand Stand stood a row of some 30 to 40 towering booths, in which were gathered the flower of English nobility, beauties of the first distinction, and the most celebrated personages in the king- dom.' Snobbery and exclusivity followed hard at heel.
The most exclusive patch was where the monarch watched from. To be in the Royal Enclosure was de rigueur. This was no problem until, after the last war, Society lost its strict identity as part of the Royal Court. Forms and referees became neces- sary to ascertain that applicants carried no social blemish. The structure began to disintegrate with the admittance of di- 'I'm sure other palmists don't bring their work home with them.' vorced women — and there had been many a Society beauty who had had to sacrifice this little patch for her flightiness — in the early 1970s. By the 1980s people of no particular background were being let in, so long as their sponsors had been Royal Enclosure members for a minimum of seven years.
The Queen has had pressure put on her over the years to relax Royal Enclosure standards. For the Queen would doubtless like to dream that the Royal Enclosure is still an extension of Court, as once it was. Yet the Queen's representative is ready to grant Enclosure badges to more or less whoever comes. This is doubtless all very fair in John Major's classless universe, but does it not rather invalidate the reason for an enclosure where 'the flower of the English nobility' are meant to display themselves? Apart from the presence of grandees at the Windsor Castle Ascot house party, when the Queen inspects her Enclosure now she must wonder where her Court has gone.
The opening of the social floodgates has made Royal Ascot a contradiction. The television cameras zoom in on the latest skirt length, hat folly or other sartorial madness, while the Queen sits sedately in her box determinedly seeing the event as a private occasion. There is talk of having the races at the Royal meeting sponsored, my dear, by commerce. This would double the prize money of handicap races like the Royal Hunt Cup and Wokingham Stakes, giving more money to jockeys and trainers in hard times. But the Queen does not want commerce tagged before the tradi- tional name of each race. She does not want Royal Ascot to be in any way tainted by trade. And yet of the 285 boxes at Ascot only a third are in private hands.
When I went to Royal Ascot on Tues- day, though sporting binoculars, I was intent on reappraising this human element. Like Proust before entering that final Guermantes party, I stood on the Enclo- sure doorstep and watched. The green and white Enclosure badges swept past me, each dutifully bearing a full Esq. after the name, but they struck no chords of Landed memory. But I did see what I knew to be some true racing people, but they were mainly of an older generation and well outnumbered. Definitely the day was for the young, professional, semi-gent, whether from town or country, with wife or girlfriend beside him. Almost the only familiar face for me was that of the Senior Steward himself, the very reserved and, usually silent Lord Manton. And walking fast towards the Paddock I did glimpse The Hon. Bobby Corbett, not in mid-delivery of rapid upper-class talk, but studying his race-card, and quite alone. The elegance of Royal Ascot, which so many must think of in terms of Cecil Beaton's thoroughly stylish Ascot gavotte as devised for My Fair Lady, was certainly not there.
But does it really matter that elegance has gone out of the Royal meeting? The world of country house parties — and up until the war every Enclosure member would have come from one — that pro- duced unstudied, casual elegance does not exist. Nothing is worse than poor imita- tion. Coincidental to the collapse of Royal Ascot is the alteration in English racing over 25 years. In the mid-Seventies Robert Sangster turned English racing into a com- modity and others, seeing the profits to be had, soon followed suit. Syndication fees and yearling prices rocketed. The gentry and aristocracy — apart from the very few — were knocked straight out of the game. Look through the 16,000 horses listed in the current Horses in Training and you will find barely a mention of such great racing names as Derby, Rosebery, or Norfolk. And where are all those modest English Esquires who had a horse or two here and there? They are either dead or cash- extinguished, or have retreated to their diminished estates to quietly hunt the fox. The high profile commercial glamour of today's racing they can neither afford nor feel at ease with. As that honest country gentleman John Berkeley, hereditary own- er of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, said to me with well-bred understatement, `One tends to stick to friends of a similar background, because it's simpler that way.'
So the Queen, on her own racecourse, is surrounded by only the thinnest of ranks. But, unless she is doing a Nelson, she cannot fail to see beyond them into a largely brash and unsatisfactory milieu. How she must cling to the tail-coats of the Earl of Halifax or the Marquess of Hart- ington as beer-swollen company execu- tives, dolly-bird flappers and Gulf poten- tates stride by her. She must feel an outsider on her own land. Gone even are the days when her friends won races. Now almost every good race is scooped by a potentate — take this year's Derby. And at Royal Ascot, which was meant to give the Court pride in its racing prowess, it can only gaze at its utter defeat. But the Queen and her surviving courtiers must live out four days of daily swallowing this bitter draught.
Socially, then, Royal Ascot has become four days of make-believe. True, it always had prestige from the excellent racing, but it drew its exclusive prestige from the kind of people who would be there. The annual escalation of fashion pandemonium and the clamouring for Enclosure badges in search of a society hardly there make Royal Ascot a farce. This should not be the case. What is the answer? First, for those who wish to draw comfort from the fact that a bit of old England might still be here, it would be better to race at Newmar- ket in July or at York in August. Second, the only chance of Royal Ascot regaining honour is to drop all pretence of social distinction. It should become a plain race meeting again. The Queen may indeed preside, but top hats and tail-coats should on the instant be abandoned and a sensible suit be normal attire. And the nonsense of the Royal Enclosure should be changed for a straightforward members' one. With this dressing down, Royal Ascot will cease to be a counterfeit — and serious racegoers will cease to have the embarrassment of mocking a thoroughly dead, but respected tradition in racing society.
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