THE PURCHASE OF BILL OF PORTLAND.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VIII, Issue 407, 12 May 1898, Page 6

THE PURCHASE OF BILL OF PORTLAND.

Some few years ago (writes the “ Special Commissioner” of the London Sportsman) Mr W. R - Wilson, the well-known Australian breeder and owner, did me the honour of consulting me as to the purchase of a St. Simon stallion in this country. Banks were breaking just then in Australia with utmost recurrence, and no one felt like spending much money, since he never knew how soon his available balances might be locked up in reconstruction schemes, so it was to be no fancy price for a horse, nothing touching even the border line of the sensational. I thought of Dunure, whom Mr Houldsworth was willing to sell for 3,000 guineas, and whom, when offered by me for that sum, the Austrian Government refused as not good enough, and then within a fortnight gave 6,000 guineas for him to another seller. Verily, the ways of these Governments are inscrutable! Dunure, however, had not done enough for Mr Wilson, and then came the idea, which has always been a leading one so far I am concerned, that it is better to get a really first-class horse with a “ crab ” about him than a mere bourgeois commoner whose chief merit is that he is undeniably sound. So it was that I fixed upon Bill of Portland, whom most of us remember as creating a tremendous sensation the first time he came out and won. The least estimate of his value at that time was 10,000 guineas, and writing at this distance -of time, I unhesitatingly say that he is the finest horse ever sired by St. Simon, always -excepting Persimmon —and Bill of Portland surpassed Persimmon in one way, viz., that big-boned- and powerful as he was, he was notin the slightest degree gross or bulky. A trouble in the respiratory orgens had suddenly run down his value* Of all the follies of the

British breeder and owner there is none greater > than their fear of this things which to my mind is the least important, and the least hereditary of all the infirmities which horseflesh is liable to be troubled with. Be that as it may, Mr Combe gave the refusal of Bill of Portland for a month at a reasonable price—at tenth of his value but for that trouble—and it is so happened that the month expired a day or two before the tardy vessel bringing Mr Wilson to these shores arrived. His first act on landing, however, was to make tracks for Newmarket, and the first horse he saw in the paddock there was Bill of Portland, and though Mr Combe cavilled a bit at the extension of time, he ultimately sold the horse to Mr Wilson.