Modern Newmarket is typified by that showy giant barrack-hotel, the “Victoria,” not long since completed, and in its glitter and electric light an ostentatious sign of these thriving times of new-made wealth and new-born social ambitions. The older Newmarket, of days when wealth alone could not purchase rank and the entrÉe to society, is represented by the “Rutland Arms,” appropriately staid and severe in its architectural style, and perhaps, like the older order it embodies, a little under the cloud of neglect. The great “Rutland Arms” has, any time these one hundred and forty years past, been the resort of the more aristocratic patrons of Newmarket, and, looking back upon the town from the Bury road, it is still the chief feature of the place. Built around a courtyard, on solid early Georgian lines, of dull red brick and with high-pitched roof, it makes no pretensions to beauty, and yet does succeed in giving an impression of majesty and repose. Its noble rooms are large enough to permit of walking exercise, and instead of the exiguous cubicles, miscalled bedrooms, of modern hotels, you have sleeping apartments whose dimensions might almost be expressed in the measurements of a surveyor rather than in the less generous formula of the foot-rule. The “Rutland Arms’” sign owes its existence here to the fact that the manor of Newmarket came into the Manners family in the reign of George II., by the marriage of the daughter of the sixth Duke of Somerset with John Marquis of Granby in 1750. This was that famous “Markis o’ Granby” who earned such military distinction in Germany and such popularity at home that his name became for many years one of the most popular of inn signs. The Manners family until recent years owned the property, together with the neighbouring park of Cheveley, and their coat-of-arms on a gigantic scale, blazoned in blue and gold, still decorates the pediment of the hotel in aggressive manner. There are some who freely, very freely, translate the proud motto Pour y Parvenir as “For the Parvenus”; but the “Victoria” is the hotel for them, and that legend really means “To attain,” or, as an American might say, “To get there.” What the choice of that determined sentiment originally meant, who shall say? but as the Manners family long since obtained a dukedom, they may be said to have duly arrived, and it is difficult to see what else they can want.

Much might be written of the old-time visitors to the town, but very little anecdotal matter exists. For unconscious humour there is nothing so good as the diary of our greatest entomologist, who was here in 1797. On his tour he had found, with delight, a golden bug basking in the sun on his window-sill, but with less delight a something of the same genus, “new to me,” on his stocking, in a little country inn.

On the evening of July 3rd he and a friend drove up to the “Ram” at Newmarket, as he duly records:—

“Arrived at Newmarket 6 p.m., where the “Ram,” wide-opening its ravenous maw, stood to receive us. We regale ourselves, after an expeditious journey, upon a comfortable cup of tea, and then take a walk to the racecourse, as far as the stands. By the way, we observe Centaurea calcitrapa plentifully. At some distance we see the Devil’s Dyke, and, terrified with the prospect, retreat with hasty steps to supper. Soham cheese very fine. July 4th.—On going into the quadrangle of this magnificent inn I observed a post-chaise with episcopal insignia; it belonged to our worthy diocesan. On the panel of the chaise door I took a new Empis.”