RACEHORSES.* WE believe it was the late. Rector of Lincoln
who complained that there was hardly a man in England who would spend fifty pounds a year in buying books. It might perhaps be said nowadays, in addition to this, that if any enterprising person did care to go that length, he would probably divide his literary fund among a few very expensive books, rather than equip himself at a cheap rate with a complete library of classical works. At any rate, we have the constant testimony of retail booksellers and railway bookstalls, that if they can sell a book at all, apart from shilling dreadfuls and a few rather dearer books, to which the caprice of popular favour has given a great momentary reputation, their best market is for the costly illustrated works of which the supply is increasing with every succeeding year. There is much worldly wisdom shown by the buyers in these cases ; for a well-illustrated book, with all the most elaborate accessories of paper and print, is a safe investment, and, especially if the issue is limited, as is almost always the case, can generally be relied upon to realise at least the cost of purchase if it is sold again. Besides, we can put a book of this kind on our table to display its magnificence to all our neighbours ; and even in its exposed position it is not so liable to be subjected to the deleterious process of reading—which the real book-lover dreads as much as the more superficial amateur of costly bindings—as 'a mere work of literature would be.
Whatever may be the reasons which guide the investor who purchases M. Touchstone's splendid volume, he may at least congratulate himself on having got his fair money's-worth. The book is admirably got-up in every respect, and the illus- trations—by MM. V. J. Cotlison, Le Nail, and others—are in most cases excellent. Special praise must be given to the vignettes scattered through the volume, representing various scenes connected with racing and training, which are really of exceptional merit, and as a whole, we should say, superior in class to the portraits of particular horses which form the real
• Racehorses Pedigree, Description, History.—Thoroughbred Stallions, English and French. By S. F. Touchstone. Translated by C. B. Pitman. London : John C. Ninamo. 1890.
body of the book. Many of these portraits are excellent, but others have pleased us less than those contained in the some- what similar work published some time ago by Mr. T. H. Taunton. The portraits in the book before us have, however, the advantage of colour, and attain in general a sufficiently high standard of average merit.
The plan of M. Touchstone's work is well arranged. We are given in all sixty full-page coloured portraits of the most celebrate racehorses and stallions of the English and French turf ; each picture is faced by a scheme of the horse's pedigree showing his sixteen quarterings, and accompanied by a page or two of letterpress giving an account of his performances, and, in many cases, those of his progeny. The horses are arranged more or less in genealogical order, each strain being traced down from some remarkable ancestor to its most dis- tinguished representatives of later days, so that we may follow the various peculiarities of the race as they are transmitted from one generation to another. For example, we begin at the very beginning with the Godolphin Arabian,' who is per- haps selected in preference to other renowned Arab stallions of his day, because tradition will have it that he once ran in France,—between the shafts of a Paris water-cart. A portrait of Eclipse ' follows, as a matter of course, and from him we are taken on with a bound over an interval of nearly a hundred years to the first of his French progeny who distinguished her- self in England,—' Jouvence,' the winner of the Goodwood Cup in 1853. The same cup went twice again in the next four years to French-bred horses= Baroncino ' and Monarque '—who thus laid the foundation of French successes on the.English turf. M. Touchstone has, therefore, judiciously chosen Jouvence' and Monarque ' to inaugurate his record of famous French horses, for of such his book chiefly consists, few English horses being included except those who have had remarkable French descendants. Monarque ' is followed by his distinguished sons Gladiateur '—who, after his extraordinary performances on the race-course, proved of little value at the stud= Trocadero,' and Consul,' and the sons of these latter ; after which we hark back to a very much earlier period in the line of Eclipse,' and begin a fresh strain with Whalebone,' the Derby winner of 1810. To make this arrangement more clear and convenient, M. Touchstone has added an elaborate genealogical table at the end, in which the descent of almost all his characters is traced back through Eclipse ' to the Darley ' and Godolphin Arabians,' or through Herod' to the Byerly Turk.'
M. Touchstone is nothing if not patriotic. The successes of French horses on English ground, or against English com- petitors in their own country, and the right of France to rank as the equal of any other country on the racecourse, are favourite themes with him. His blood boils within him at the recollection that, not so very many years ago, the authorities of the English turf, " in their infatuation," were wont to give every French- bred horse who ran in English races a seven-pound allowance. We rejoice with M. Touchstone that this unmanly outrage on the feelings of a brave nation is a thing of the past merely : we can sympathise with him in the enthusiasm excited in his mind by the famous struggle between Vermont' and Blair Athol' for the Grand Prix, in which the English Derby-winner was beaten ; or the more recent defeat of St. Blaise ' by Frontin' in the same race. But we regret that there appear to be times when our author's imagination takes the bit in ita teeth, and bolts with him into a wild and dangerous country, abounding in inaccuracies of the most alarming type. It is in one of these moments that M. Touchstone, after recounting the triumphs of Plaisanterie ' in the two great autumn handi- caps, exclaims against the illiberal conduct of the Jockey Club in passing a rule, at the suggestion of Mr. W. G. Craven, " excluding French horses from running in handicaps in
England. Plaisanterie,' " continues our author, in a tone of mingled exultation and contempt, " had not only as- tonished English sportsmen, but had fairly frightened them, so that they were forced to acknowledge that contests with such adversaries were impossible." The despair of the English is explained by the statement that " no horse had ever won both these handicaps at such weights" as 'Plaisanterie ' carried. As a matter of fact, however, Foxhall ' had achieved the same double victory four years before, carrying 4 lb. more than the French mare did in the Cesarewitch, and 2 lb. more in the Cambridgeshire; so that the Jockey Club were not so absolutely prostrated as they might otherwise have been, and did not think such severe measures necessary. All they did, in fact, as the translator points out, was to pass a regulation
a foreign horse entered for a handicap must have run twice in England within the previous six months, so that the handicapper might know something of its form, and assign its weight accordingly. M. Touchstone will probably think it appropriate that this enactment should be known as "Craven's rule."
But we cannot wonder if our author's patriotic exultation at the really remarkable performance of his compatriot leads him into what Mr. Gladstone might call an occasional devia- tion from accuracy. We might still regard him as a careful historian, were it not for the extraordinary maze of blunders in which he entangles himself when he attempts the biography of Tristan,' who, as he tells us, with characteristic modesty, " was purely an English horse during his racing life," though he belonged to a Frenchman, and ran two or three times in France in the few races in which our liberal neighbours will admit the competition of English horses. We have noted the not unfrequent opinion current on the other side of the Channel that one English name is about as good as another, and that it does not matter much which one uses; so that when M. Touchstone states that "at the Windsor Summer Meeting, Tristan' won the Harwich Stakes," we are prepared to accept this as a sufficiently clear indication that be won the Hardwicke Stakes at Ascot,—just as the fact that the English horse ' Ishmael ' won the Ascot Stakes in 1883 is a good enough reason why M. Touchstone should assign that victory to a French contemporary named Ismael.' But we think that the habitués of Newmarket will be surprised to hear that the Great Challenge Stakes, usually an ornament of the Second October Meeting, was run in 1881 at Croydon, and in 1882 at Four Oaks Park. Perhaps the Jockey Club may have made some changes for the'personal convenience of Tristan,' who appears, from this account, to have been an eccentric horse ; certainly, if it is true that he ran for the Jockey Club Cup at Worcester, we cannot wonder that the judge gave the first place in that race to Chippendale,' who preferred to compete for it according to general usage, over the Cesarewitch course at Newmarket. These are trifling mistakes, perhaps, but they are to be regretted, if only for the extra trouble caused to the conscientious translator, who, after some pages of gentle, even-tempered correction by footnotes, is moved to exclaim rather testily at last : " Any one ought to know that the Great Challenge Stakes is run at Newmarket." And certainly any one who writes a book about it should.
The main body of M. Touchstone's work is supported on either side by a prologue and an epilogue. In the former, he gives us an interesting account of the rise of racing in France, and the struggle required at first to prove that this new form of sport was anything more than a particularly objectionable species of Anglomania. The immense progress made in racing and rearing thoroughbreds in France is certainly most remark- able, especially when we read our author's account of the incessant opposition encountered by the advocates of the English system of racing. Fifty years ago, the added money of the French Derby was only £200, and in these days it has grown to £3,000. Other evidences show the same increase of the popularity of racing throughout the country. It is still the fashion with a certain school of Englishmen to sneer at French sport; but we have generally found that the most censorious of these critics have extremely hazy notions of racing in any country. To such of these as really take any interest in the subject, we recommend the reading of M. Touchstone's introduction. The general philosophic reader will also find entertainment in our author's ingenious contention that patriotism is intimately connected with betting,—as it is the duty of every citizen to see that his national army is in a high state of efficiency. For this purpose good chargers must be provided for the cavalry; and therefore breeding should be encouraged, and especially the breeding of thorough- breds, through whom good half-bred horses can be procured. Now, the breeding of thoroughbreds is not profitable where there is no racing, and racing cannot be made to pay without betting ; therefore—. M. Touchstone does not put it exactly in this way, but we can see that it is what he means. The same theory (with the suppression of the last article) is put forward in the terse and pithy letter from the Duke of Beaufort, which does duty as preface. The epilogue on breeding and crossing is only interesting as expressing M. Touchstone's own views regarding the various strains which he considers most valuable for breeding purposes.
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