THE BADMINTON LIBRARY.*
ANY one who will read these two volumes will be able to get a very good idea of what horse-racing in England is,—an idea, that is, not merely of the technicalities of the sport, and of the
system of breeding and training animals which ministers to it, but of its morale, of the tone of thought and feeling which prevails among its devotees, high and low, and of the code of honour by which it is supposed to be governed. Lord Suffolk deals with his subject systematically ; and Mr. William Day, most famous of trainers, supplements the account with a variety of interesting and suggestive reminiscences of some of the famous or notorious patrons of the art with whom he has been brought in contact. The idea, we venture to say, will scarcely be a favourable one. The affair is big enough, indeed ; horse. racing, as a speculation, has reached dimensions that are almost stupendous. He would be a bold man who should venture to estimate the money cost of all the machinery, so to speak, by which the trade is carried on. Compare it, for instance, with what is called the national sport of cricket, and its magnitude is seen to be enormous. Perhaps the most significant sign is the difference in the remuneration of its professional followers. A professional cricketer is a moderately paid person, whose ambition does not soar above a shop or a public-house ; a successful jockey receives remuneration such as falls to the lot of only a few of the ablest or most fortunate in the liberal professions. But then, it is a trade, and one of a somewhat ignoble kind. How poor it looks if we contrast it with the same sport as it was followed in ancient Greece ! Compare— for such differences are best seen in the concrete—a Hiero of Syracuse sending his chariots across the seas to race at Olympia for a crown of wild olive ; a Cimon of Athens, whose famous mares, three times winners at Olympia, were buried "right opposite their master's tomb ;" and even an Alcibiades, starting seven chariots at once in order to magnify Athens in the eyes of Greece—with, say, a Lord George Bentinck. Lord George was a personage ; he belonged to the haute noblesse; he was the leader of a great political party ; but he looks very small in Mr. William Day's personal recollec- tions of him. Lord George, for instance, owned a certain mare named Crucifix,' which, having won the Oaks, was of course a strong favourite for the Leger. She broke down, however, and her chance became nil. The secret, however, was so well kept that Lord George was able to lay large sums of money against her ; and so, after having made a good thing out of her success, made another almost equally good out of her defeat. But sometimes, it would appear, it is as necessary to keep the secret of excellence as it is to keep the secret of failure. A
mare called 'Preserve' won all her two-year-old engagements, and so became a favourite for the Oaks. Becoming a favourite means, of course, diminished chances of gain to the owner,—
gains not being the stakes, though these amount to several thousands, but the vastly larger sums which are wagered on the event. Mr. Day goes on :—
"To assist as much as possible to driving her back in the betting, some one hit upon the following novel and well-devised stratagem. Her nostrils were painted inside and oat with a mixture of starch, flour, and colouring-matter to resemble mucus, before going to exer- cise,—a perfectly harmless mixture in itself, which could easily be removed on returning to the stable. Then by giving out that she was suffering from inflaenza, whoever it was that did the trick, was enabled effectually to carry out his design."
It is true that Mr. Greville was the owner of 'Preserve;' but then, Lord George was, to use the expressive term familiar to the freqnenters of the turf, his "confederate." It is satisfactory to learn that the mare was beaten after all. These are tricks which, of course, are condemned by the public opinion of the racing world, though they do not seem to have been sufficient to put any permanent ban or stigma upon those who profited by them ; but the standard morality which that world accepts is of a dubious kind. A plain man, who knows nothing of the conventional ethics of the sport, would say that the owner of
* The Badm'aton Library : Racing and Stesplichasing. by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire. and Mr. W. G. Craven ; Steeplechasing. by Arthur Coventry and Allred R. T. Wat on. London : Longmans. Day's Reminiscences of the Tail. London : Bent'ey and Son. Mg.
a good horse should let him win if he can, and that the only legitimate reason for withdrawing him from a race is that running on a particular occasion might do him an injury which would permanently lessen his powers. Bat the Turf allows another reason. The owner is justified in " scratching " his horse if he cannot get sufficiently large odds against him to make his venture a profitable one. Lord Suffolk may be accepted as an authority on the subject, and he scoffs at the complaints which are made when an owner exercises this power :—
"Public rights ! The public have two rights as regards betting, and two only. The first is that an owner shall not directly or in- directly lay against his own horse, except for purposes of the most strictly fair and straightforward hedging ; the second, that if a horse goes to the post, be shall, so far as lies in the power of the jockey, be made to do his best and win if he can. Given these two conditions honourably fulfilled, the owner is perfectly at liberty to do what seemeth good in his eyes."
Here, we take it, is the root of all the mischief. Hoc fonte derivala clades. As long as this liberty exists, there will be abun- dant growth of all the dishonest practices on the part of trainers, jockeys, touts, and the vast crowd of miscellaneous hangers-on of which Lord Suffolk and other moralists of the turf loudly complain. No remedy is possible till the turf becomes a sport instead of a speculation.
Having thus delivered our mind, we can honestly praise the two volumes under review. The only chapter in Lord Suffolk's and Mr. Craven's book which seems out of place is one of a some- what jocose kind, entitled "Newmarket," which would seem to have been originally intended for a sporting magazine. Every- where else the writers' sound sense, as well as the thoroughness of their knowledge, manifest as it is even to an outsider, are conspicuous. Mr. Day's volume is, as we have said, of a more personal kind, and being so, shows more of the " seamy " side of the subject than is pleasant. But there is an abundance of good reading in it, which can be enjoyed without any arriere pensee. And if we do want to draw a moral, how can it be done better than from an account of the matter, written with perfect good-faith and honesty and excellent feeling, by one who has no doubt in his own mind that a great trainer of horses is a great national benefactor ?
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