THE "PLUNGING" MARQUIS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 346, 25 July 1885, Page 11

THE "PLUNGING" MARQUIS.

By Argus Eye.

In" no other world do we find the ups and downs of life so constant in their motion and so rapid in their movements as that of the turf. Even in short experiences of the life, how many men do we know whose change of position has been remarkable ? Some make fortunes, others lose them, and as long as the ball is rolling money never stands still. Melancholy in their phases, and tragically sad at the close, have been the careers of many men who spend their lives on the turf; but it is a question whether, any have been equal to that of the late Marquis of Hastings. We have heard of many nobleman who have lost their whole fortunes at the game of racing, of vast estates that have belonged to the same families for generation after generation that have been squandered ; but it is a question whether any man's career was so quickly spent as that of the nobleman who passed away in that dark, dull autumn a little more than sixteen years ago. It was for the attendant excitement rather than the actual love of it that the Marquis of Hastings was fond of sport, and in this he differed greatly from his father before him. In fact, he and his father scarcely had a taste in common except for the family roans, which they liked to breed and drive. The Marquis' father was a true sportsman, and he never was so happy as when he was strolling down to the kennel to have a chat with the huntsmen and whips, perhaps, to discuss the sketch of a foxhound's head which he had dashed down on paper. His heart was essentially in the woodlands, and whilst the father was for the chase, for the love of the horse and hound, the sou was passionately endeared to the turf for the excitement to be obtained by speculation. Money was at once his bauc and its antidote, and there was no indecision about him in his turf dealings. He would have his thousands on the smallest handicap, or selling race, and he was so mad in his speculation that he would oftentimes accept one-half the proper odds in the excitement of the moment. The ring flocked like vultures to the carcase, and at Epsom he might be seen on the private stand balcony, with quite a crowd of them below all straining their lungs, anxious to do business with him. It was an old boast of his that he could ' make £20,000 a-year by his wits,' and so good was his luck at one time that it seemed likely to be realised. Many of those who go racing now-a-days can remember the whole of his career. Some who are as yet but middle-aged men, and whose locks are not marked too plentifully with the silver streaks of time, can well remember the days, before he came on the busy scene, and when he was, perhaps, either playing in the meadows with his companions, or taking his pull upon the Thames under the stately towers of Windsor, or along the Shakespearian pastures of Datchet. Not a few can remember that afternoon the First Spring Meetiug of 1862, when he came down to Newmarket, quite unknown except to John Day's stable, and they got him to take the long odds to a great tune about one of their winners. Garotter was the first horse that ever carried the Danebury scarlet and white hoops, colours that are now known on the turf as belonging to Tom Cannon, who curiously enough wou his first great race in them, when lie steered Ackwortli'to victory in the Cambridgeshire. Garotter carried the colours for the "first time in the Althorp Park Stakes, 1863, and the Marquis' first win was a Maiden Plate at Newmarket with the same horse. One of his earliest purchases was the two-year-old Catalogue, a very clever filly to carry weight and win selling races. The Marquis claimed her at Doncaster for 200 guineas, and he bought her back on one occasion for 520 guineas. Her wins that season (1864) amounted to twelve races out of twenty-one, nearly all of them being in his lordship's name. This season was only his second year on the turf, and yet his stake winnings with the Duke and thirteen other horses °were ten thousand pounds. During five seasons, 1863-67, his "stake- winnings amounted to £62,155, of which £30,353 belongs to '67, and of this £9,185 was won by Lady Elizabeth. If I add The Earl's winnings in 1868, the sum total is upwards of £71,000 ; one of his most fortunate investments was Ackworth, whom he purchased for | £2,000. With her he won almost £30,00). He gave Tom Cannon the then unprecedented large sum of £500 for riding her, and this commenced the fashion of giving jockeys large presents after being successful in a big event. This was the stepping-stone to Cannon's fortune. It gave him a status in the sporting world, and consequently put him iuto a position to marry John Day's daughter. From that day to this fortune has smiled on Cannon. After Ackworth's victory his lordship's next great move was to fall in love with Kangaroo's performance in the Craven Biennial (when the Duke had thrown out all his calculations by taking influenza that spring], and he purchased the colt for. it was said, £12,000 and contingencies. Mr Padwick did a good day's work when he got rid of that interesting bay, who was coughing his heart out on the Derby Day, and never won a race again. His Derby hopes in Gladiateur's year with The Duke, ended in nothing, and although this horse came to the post all right for the St. Leger, he could only get third to Regalia and ' The Frenchman,' After a disastrous season in 1866 (during which The Duke, then grown into a very fine horse, won the Goodwood and Brighton Cups with great ease, and Repulse

the One Thousand), when the Marquis seemed to have hardly a handicap horse in his Danebury lot, a trump card turned up for the Cesarewitch in little Lecturer, 3ys. 7st. 31b. When the weights first appeared, his lordship thought that ' the Colsterdale pony,' and all the rest of his team, had been handicapped out of it by the Admiral, and some sharp exchanges took place when next they met. The Marquis had bought Lecturer from Alfred Day for £500 just previous to the horse running in a Selling race at Stockbridge. Lecturer won this race, and the Marquis took an immense stake out of the ring. John Day entertained a high opinion of Lecturer as a three-year-old— so high that he counted him capable of winning the Derby. Uufortunately, Lecturer's action was very peculiar and totally unlike that of most stayers. He had a nasty habit, when galloping, of cutting him- j self with his plates, so that it became a matter of j considerable difficulty to train him. Day at last managed to get over this by training the horse without shoes. In his Cesarewitch trial, Lecturer was tried at even weights with .Ackworth. Lecturer was then three and Ackworth five years old. The trial took place very early in the morning, so early j that even John Day did not care about being \ present. Ackworth was then a real good horse, possessing both speed and stamina. When Lord Hastings returned to Danebury after the trial, and told John Day the particulars — namely, that Lecturer had beaten Ackworth easily over the Cesai'ewitch distance, both carrying the weight that Lecturer was allotted in the race — the trainer refused to believe it, remarking that some mistake must have been made in the management of the gallop. They Avere tried together again on the following morning, John Day himself being present this time. The two horses again carried the same weights as before, and the result was again the same, Lecturer winning easily. 'Now,' said John Day to the younglord, 'you can go and win £50,000.' As a fact, it is generally reported that his lordship won about that sum. A peculiarity of his lordship's character was that he had a way of fixing his own price on anything that he wished to buy, and it was almost by accident that he became the owner of Lady Elizabeth. He originally intended to buy Miss Bowzer, the dam of that notorious filly, but when shown the mare with a strapping filly foal by her side, he cried out, ' I will give you so much for the two.' I forget the exact sum at the present time, but I happened to know that Sam Eogers, the vendor, wovld have taken about two-thirds of the figure. In all his purchases, Lord Hastings gave very high figures, as prices went in those days, but still the Duke of Hamilton and Mr Henry Chaplin would stay longer for a lot. Most of bis lordship's best horses were obtained at Hampton Court and Middle Park, and The Duke and The Earl were both bred at the Eoyal stable. His principal yearling purchases were The Duke (oOOgs.), The Earl (•ioOgs.), Inez (950g5.), Lady Cecilia (750 gs.), King Charles (1,500g5.), and Eobespierre (1,650g5.). Three others averaged more than SOOgs. At another time, in 1566, he gave 10,000 gs. for all Mr Naylor's yearlings, and he bad the bad luck to lose Loudoun, the finest looking of them all. Still, Athena was left, so that if be could have stood the latter, her winnings would have pretty nearly brought the whole back. An anecdote is told about the Marquis when in Andover one day, on the road to or from the Stockbridge races. He was shown a rare-bred bulldog, Captain Little, Captain Bulkeley and others being present. 'Do you want to sell him ?' asked Lord Hastings. ' Yes, my lord,' was the reply. ' I'll give you a tenner for him.' ' He's yours, my lord,' was the answer. Captain Little asked the dog's name, and on being told that it was Gabriel, his lordship cried out : 'My God I what a name for a bull-dog — why it is the name of an angel !' With Athena, Lady Elizabeth, the Earl, Lecturer, and The Duke in his string of thirty or forty, he commenced the great season of 1867 which decided his fate. Passion and prejudice had, from motives it is not requisite to allude to, strongly stirred him against Mr Chaplain's horse Hermit. The folly and danger of being prejudiced against a horse from consideration other than the animal's demerits were never more strikingly exemplified. To get money out of Hermit for the Derby was his prevailing idea, and when ' the chesnut barebones ' passed the post his lordship knew that he was J £103,000 out in his reckoning. This great wheel of turf speculation would have stood still had he shown any signs of faltering, but he found the money to the day, and those who saw him driving with his friends to the Oaks, apparently as unconcerned as if he had only dropped ' a fiver,' felt that such hardihood or fortitude — call it what you like — was worthy of a far better cause than trusting in the strength of a horse. Hermit's victory, though, entailed a great sacrifice — the selling of his Loudoun estates to the Marquis of Bute. At Ascot, after this disastrous settling, the bookmakers were fairly delighted with him, and some of them cheered the young lord vehemently, or ' jollied ' him as they expressed it in their vocabulary, for his promptitude. It is often the case that foul weather is followed by fine, and by piling it on to Lady Elizabeth and Lecturer, at the Eoyal Meeting, he revenged himself on the ring for nearly half his Derby losses. Still Lady Elizabeth was not his darling, and he always believed in The Earl as the star of his destiny in 1868. He was rather anxious

that this colt should represent his interest, in preference to the filly in the Middle Park Plate, but the Danebury powers ruled differently, and the mare was in one of her mad tantrums, and only ran fifth. This Black Second* of October week" sealed his doom, knocked down all his Ascot gains, and something more, whilst the brilliant feat of ' The Lady' beating Julius, when they met over the Bretby Stakes course at only 91b for the year, was but a set-off. Then it was that it transpired that he was in the hands of the finance agent, and the 'poor fly 'was in the web of ' the spider.' It was determined to sell off all the Marquis' horses, and on Saturday, November 23, 1867, the lots were disposed of on a cold, cheerless day on Stockbridge Eacecourse. Lady Elizabeth and The Earl, by whom the young lord had stood to win enormous fortunes for the Derby, were bought in, unluckily for the owner, who might have been spared endless annoyance, torture, and loss had he allowed the Phantom mare to go, and accepted Captain Machell's bona fide bid for 6000gs. for The Ear]. In a season when he had won the magnificent sum of £30,000 in stakes, he was compelled to part with nearly all his horses, and shortly afterwards Mr Padwick had everything at Donnington nailed down under that detestable instrument —a bill of sale. At this time the Marquis was so harassed by money matters and turf creditors that he seemed to lose his head, and much of that judgment which sometimes astonished his own stable when he was in the vein vanished. Next to The Earl and Lady Elizabeth, he believed in Blue Grown, and jDlaced him second in that famous Derby prophecy, which was set up in type and printed off at his private press at Donington. During the winter he only went over once to Danebury to see Lady Elizabeth, and he was satisfied with what he saw. In the following spring he did not visit a racecourse, and the very bookmakers who had cheered him, vehemently at Ascot ten months before, and were loudest in their praises and glorification, would not permit him to go to Newmarket Heath to see his horses run, and he wrote pathetically to a friend after the famous Earl and Blue Gown Biennial, 'To tell me something about my poor Earl!' As a wellknown writer remarked at the time, 'he had coimnited the sin of losing all his fortune, and some men had resolved to ridicule, hate, and persecute him for the offence.' Flatterers and, sponges,' too, who had fattened upon, his purse and luxuriated upon his hospitality, talked of him in that tone of mock-sympathy and commiseration which in reality amounts to contempt and insult. It is needless to reproduce here the miserable story of Lady Elizabeth's disgrace, and the Earl's scratching for The Derby, or the scandal of the Earl's ' nobbling' for the St. Leger, which have been discussed in public time after time, till most people are familiar with the most shameful racing swindle of the last quarter of a century. Full particulars of the ' spider and the fly ' episode are known but to few people. Those immediately concerned were men accustomed to keep their own accounts — men whose minds were as sealed books to their ordinary associates. The leading characters in that melancholy business are now all dead. The Marquis of Hastings, Harry Hill, and Henry Padwick, and the shrewd and fearless commentor on the proceedings, Admiral Bous, and the man who felt most aggrieved by the Admiral's comments and strictures, namely, John Day — these two men have also passed away. It is curious how his luck was sandwiched, good and bad, until the last. The brilliant victory of The Earl at the Craven Meeting was followed by the Epsom exhibition of Lady Elizabeth. Then came the great trumps in the Grand Prix de Paris and at Ascot with The Earl, and then the scratching for the St. Leger. During these last summer months the Marquis of Hastings was away from the scenes he loved so well. From June till September he sojourned in Norway, and returning brimful of confidence of The Earl's success for the St Leger, he found himself deceived, and his third and and last great three-year-old favorite lame and incapable. Distracted with pain of body and mind, there was little left to please one who in health enjoyed the world so thoroughly. Just another flicker on the turf and then the Lord of Donington and Loudoun was seen no more. He managed to get the Newmarket, First October Meeting, where he drove himself about in a little basket carriage, no longer surrounded by throngs of parasites, or entreated him to bet'in monkeys.' Although neither Fordham nor Cannon was saddling for the red and white hoops in ' the Birdcage,' and his once busy pencil was at rest, except when he couldn't occasionally resist backing something fora pony,' he seemed full of spirits as he drove about in his carriage. "When Athena won, he left his basket for a few moments and patted the filly fondly on the neck for 'auld acquaintance sake.' He never saw the Heath again, as before the expiration of the week's racing ihe was seixed by sudden illness. It was ' subsequently arranged that he should proceed to Egypt for the winter, but on the second Tuesday iv November, 1868, he died at his town house, in Grosvenor Square at a quarter past one.—Sporting Mirror.