FULWAR CRAVEN. (Licensed Victuallers' Gazette.)

Otago Witness, Issue 1971, 21 November 1889, Page 25

FULWAR CRAVEN. (Licensed Victuallers' Gazette.)

There are still old turfites living who will remember Fulwar Craven, "the Squire of Chilton," as he was called ; not in his heyday, but as a survival of a past sporting generation- one of those elderly lions that the initiated love to point out to the novice, who, maybe, has heard of him, maybe has -not, and who is interested in the personage indicated in proportion to his " points " of interest. No man who had once seen Craven, whether in his prime or his decadence, could ever forget that remarkable figure. In the early days of Queen Victoria's reign he was always greatly en evidence at Ascot. Could we summon up the living picture of those old Ascot days, people the Eoyal Heath with the dead-and-gone forms that crowded it 40 or 50 years ago — why, the people would seem almost as strange to us as the beaux and belles of Queen Anne's time. ;: There is "Yickey" herself, as she was familiarly

called, young, bright, smiling—oh, what a change is there I— presenting a marked contrast to the impassive face of Albert the Goody-Goody, who is beside her ; there, in blue frock-coat buttoned up to the- chin, with tightly-strapped white trousers, onhorseback as usual, is " the Iron Duke," one of the last of the grand old English rape; and there, in their bright green chariot, decked with gorgeous liveries, are the Apollolike figure of Comte d'Orsay and the beautiful Countess of Blessington ; and there is the spare form and eagle nose of Louis Napoleon, special constable, by-and-bye emperor ; and there is Sir Robert Peel, whom the cartoons of Punch have rendered familiar to every one, and — but we might fill a column thus. And after all it is not so much the people as the dress they wear that would astonish us. What dowdies the women look —all except the lovely countess, who is perfection — not excepting her Majesty, who, whatever her virtues may be, has never included taste among them — the hideous bonnet, the banded hair, the stomachered gown, the bunchy shawl, the sandalled shoe. Bufc what butterflies the men are 1 What a gorgeous figure is D'Orsay's, the leader of the iashion, with his claret-coloured coat, ,his two or three waistcoats of various colours, one showing just above the other, the blue satin scarf fastened with brilliants 1 Ah, he was something like a dandy 1 Among the throng, however, might be discerned a figure that divided attention even with that cynosure of every eye, D'Orsay the Dandy, and everywhere he went there were nudgingsand pointings and whisperings ; he was a man past his prime, but. with a handsome; devil-may-care face and defiant eye, reddish whiskers and reddish flowing hair—gentlemen were not addicted to imitatiug a convict tonsure in those days— surmounted by a white hat of abnormal height carelessly cocked on one side ; he wore a brown coat with brass buttons, from the breast pocket of which hung a gaudy, bandanna, light drab breeches and gaiters, the latter pulled down at the calf to show 2in or 3in of pink silk stocking, and a frilled shirt with a huge ' jewelled brooch set in it, As he sauntered by towards the paddock, sometimes with a purple jacket, his racing colours, hanging over his arm. you would hear a running fire of whispers, " That is Fulwar Craven." Few people there had seen more Ascots than he, for Craven was a turfite in the reign of her Majesty's grandfather, and ran his first horse, Picnic, at Reading in 1807 ; he was a youngster then,

A Cornet in the 10th Hussars, which royal regiment he had entered at 15. In the following year, 1808, he won his maiden race at Newmarket with Fly-by-night, Charley Goodison up, and two years afterwards he tried for the Oaks with Janette. But Captain Craven— he was captain now — was many things by turns but nothing long, and disgusted perhaps with his several failures, he quitted the turf for a while, to marry. He could not have committed a more ill-advised act, at least for the unfortunate woman upon whom he bestowed his name. Craven was a true child of his age, a worthy representative of the Regency set, and consequently a rake and a libertine. Most ladies of the period accommodated themselves to the habits of their lords, sometimes in more senses than one ; Mrs Craven was not sd pliable, and a separation soon ensued. But it was not until 1824 that Craven returned to the turf, when, satiated with hunting, fishing, and other kinds of sport, in all of which he was a proficient, he came back to his first love. He now started ownership in earnest, engaging John Dilly, of Littleton, to train for him some half-dozen horses, Sam Day, then in his zenith, to ride them, and assumed the purple jacket and orange cap, which soon became familiar on all the fashionable racecourses. It was his great ambition to win an Oaks, and' in the year of his return he started Miss Jigg, who was regarded as a certainty, and backed to a good tune by royalty itself ; but Cobweb, the winner of the One Thousand Guineas, took the pas, and Cap Cain Craven was again disappointed. There was trouble in the swell camp that day, and when the Duke of Gloucester presently met the owner, he remarked, with a melancholy smile, " Well, Craven, you see your filly has ruined us all." He had a capital horse in Longwaist;, one of Whalebone's progeny, who won for him in Gloucestershire Stakes at Cheltenham, then the best thing in the west country, as well as the Craven and Oatlands at Newmarket, and gold cups at Winchester, Cheltenham, Oxford, Burderop, and Warwick. Ridden by Robinson, Longwaist contested for the Ascot Gold Cup, but was beaten by Bizarre; while for the St. Leger, 1825, with Sam Day up, he strove hard to win the great Northern event in one of the most exciting struggles ever witnessed over Doncaster Moor, but was defeated by Memnojc ; another splendid race was for the Doncaster Cup, when he— Sam — was again defeated, this time by George Nelson on the famous Lottery. Curious to say, though it is by no means uncommon, Craven never had much belief in Longwaist, and used to say that he was not as good a horse by 71b as the public believed him to be; nevertheless, Jack Mytton was content to give £3000 for this son of Whalebone, when horseflesh did not fetch quite so much money as it does at present. In a number of the old " Sporting Magazine " there is a capital engraving of Sam day mounted on Longwaist, who seemed to have every point of a good horse, with Dilly beside him. Another notable horse of the Squire of CbiKon's was Pastime, with which, in 1825, he again tried for tho Oaks; but Pastime fell lame at the post, and Day was besides

ttut-joclteyetl by Sam Chlfucy. on Wings, who, though- only a thud-rate animal was steered to victory by that consummate equestrian. And now Fulwar Craven's enthusiasm for the turf once more began to wane, probably through the aforesaid disappointment, and in 1827 we find him with only ono horse in training, El Dorado, who won the Gloucestershire Stakes ; and ia the next year Captain Craven's name is again missing from the Calendar — perhaps a quarrel with Dilly had something to do with his disgust — and 10 years elapsed, wibh the exception of running a horse for a hunters' stake before the gallant captainagain took any active part in the national sport. Not that his eccentric figure was less pro*

i minept in the' places where sporting men most do congregate ; the red Sewing locks and rakish white- hat and bit of pink silk stocking were still to be seen at every fashionable race,,' and his money was won and lost pretty well as before. For 10 years he sulked with the stud and the stable, then suddenly the fit again came on him, and in 1838, engaging Treen to train and ride for him, he once more blossomed as an owner For the third time he took the Gloucestershire Stakesj on this occasion with Barnacles, and in 1839 his great ambition was at length achieved, when John Day, on Deception, tpok the Oaks. And in the same year on the same horse "honest" John won both at'Stockbridge and 3-oodwood. By 1840, when he had only Deception, and Benedetta at work, this fickle sportsman was again growing tired of the game of racing, and in 1842.that part of his career closed for ever. Craven in all his dealings was a careful man, and never, lost mnch reohey_upon the turf, though in other ways he greatly .impoverished the handsome patrimony he had inherited from his father, the Reverend .John Craven. Ifc was at the period at which we have arrived that he sold Qhiltbn and bought Brockhampton, tho estate on which he was born. , As we have intimated, Fqlwar Craven was an all-round sportsman. He was also

A Real Country Gentleman of the old type, and nothing pleased him better than to take a day's rabbit shooting with some of his tenants, who could not have desired a better landlord, and then adjourn to some inn and have a jolification. -He regularly attended Hungerford Market, dined at the farmer's table, and sent the whole company home glorious and uproarious. Craven had a taste for society beneath him, and after attending races would gather together a party of rough 'uns and entertairi them to their heart's content, amusing them at the same time with stories that might have made the great Baron Muncbausen grow pale with envy, songs, jests, recitations, at all of which the captain was a past master. A friend of Jack Mytton's, he more than once assisted that worthy in his pranks, and there is a story told how he and the Squire of Halsfcon on one occasion threw an inebriated stranger clean through a shop window. But his favourite pal was John Ramsey, the inspector of the Abingdon police, and at the Lamb at Abingdon many stories used to be told of the pranks carried on by these two bans vivants. All sorts of eccentric wagsrs were made between the pair ; once it was as to who could tell the greatest number of lies, and the Ananias Stakes were taken by the squire. On another occasion it was which could sing the greater number of songs in the shortest time with the fewest verbal • mistakes. The tradition of the Lamb saith that Craven, after achieving 120, was declared the winner, his opponent drying up at his 110 th. Many a wild orgie was perpetrated between the magistrate — for Craven was a Gustos Motulorum, and report says a very good one— and the police inspector, who one might imagine sadly neglected his duties in consequence. But Ramsey had a dog who was educated to put the vagrancy laws in force; whenever he saw a tramp he never left him until he had quitted the town. He did not bark and rave and chivvj like an ignorant cur, but he fixed his eye upon the ragamuffin, who, 'not feeling comfortable under the glare, would retreat ; doggy would follow very quietly, doing nothing, but looking unutterable things until the intruder had passed the boundary. Then he would return to watch for the next unfortunate, to whom he would politely point the way as before, so that there was not a town in England so free from beggars as Abingdon, thanks to this' four-legged constable. There is nothing surprising in the fact that both These Reprobates Took a Serious Turn

in the last years of their lives. When their constitutions became too much impaired to enjoy the pleasures of this world they thought they would hedge for the next; and drunken Jack Ramsey became a Methodist preacher, and, mounting a tub, howled hymns and descanted with great unction upon his unregenerate days; while in all outward forms Captain Craven became strictly religious. He did not die until 1860. A sporting writer a few years afterwards gave the following graphic sketch of the Captain in his latter days : — " About the last time we ever saw him in public was when, some summers since, he was wont to sit on a good-looking bay mare at the top of Rotten Row — still, even in the full flow of that high tide, as much a man of mark as ever. But, elieu! quantum mutatiis ad Wo Hectore, from him, who as Captain Craven of the Royals, curvetted down the line on his stallion charger, or even, how altered in a few short years, from ' the thorough varmint and swell ' who stood ' Sam ' for everybody in the booth, and got up a shindy as a moral duty bj& owed to himself! Let us try and sketch him once again as he sits under the shade of the Achilles, with scarcely a man of his own day left to greet him. There is the white hat and ths brown brass-buttoned coat still, and above all the great gold-enamelled horsc-and-jockey brooches in his shirfc— th& one a memorial of Longwaisb and the other of the Oaks filly. The kerseys, though, are gone, and in their place are a pair of short, broad, banjo-pattern plaid trousers and drab half-gaiter?. He is yet a character, and the well-dressed mob still stare and whisper as they pass, * That's Fulwar Craven.' But it is only the wreck of him. Stay a minute, and remember how all the dare-devil, audacious look of the dark eye has died away. Watch the nervous, almost imbecile, play about the firm, full, and decisive mouth. See how the hair colour has run. off from that poor remnant of whisker on to his shrunken cheek. Take heed of this, ye knowing youngsters, as you swagger in all the pride of health and manhood,, with a laugh on your lips at the old swell ! Bear in mind what he was and what you'll be! Think of the pace he has gone, and how that in his prime there was hardly one of you could have lived alongside of him."

There is no danger to human life more to be dreaded than that which arises from vitiated blood. Dyfpepaia, rheumatism, headache, and general debility, all result from ifc, and are cured by the use of Ayer's gartaparUta.