Members of the literary staff of a newspaper were, in the far-off and half-forgotten days, deputed to write graphic descriptions of what are known as “the classic events” of the turf. A big newspaper would send as many as three special correspondents to “do” the Derby. One correspondent devoted himself to the journey down by road, a second described the journey by rail, and a third gave an animated pen-sketch of the course. Indeed, some journals whose motto was “Thorough,” were accustomed to send a man to potter about the course the night before the Derby—a writer with the James Greenwood touch, who might be depended upon for a dramatic and humorous column and a half. Ascot and Goodwood were the other “classic events” to which the descriptive writer would be despatched. Goodwood was always supposed to necessitate the employment of certain venerable clichÉs. And very old journalists used, therefore, to consider it a great privilege to be sent to that aristocratic meeting. Ascot naturally gave considerable scope to the journalist who flattered himself on an intimate knowledge of Society with a capital “S.” For a whole delirious week he never left Society. He watched its menials depart for the Thames Valley on the Sunday before the meeting, and on the Sunday after he was pretty certain to turn up at Boulter’s Lock, where some representative ornaments of Society should be on view. Out of all the men on the daily Press who have been commissioned to attend race-meetings as descriptive writers, I have never known one who became a victim of the betting This moralizing strain reminds me of the appearance of Robert Buchanan, the poet, as a backer of horses. Some graceless men were inclined to regard the contact of Buchanan with the Ring as something in the nature of a joke. To me it constituted a pitiful and sordid tragedy. Buchanan was another of those men who always wanted money, and who was ever on the lookout for some easy way of getting it. I do not know who it was that introduced him to the turf as a likely method of adding to his resources. But I should not care to be the man with that sin on my soul. If Buchanan knew a horse from a cow, it was about as much as he knew. As to the significance of the weights in a handicap he was entirely ignorant. He had got into his head that by luck and good advice large sums might be made out of the Ring. About twenty years ago I first came across him while he was thus engaged. It was at Epsom the day after the Derby. The grand-stand was but sparsely inhabited. In the interval between the last race and the last but one, I saw Buchanan coming across the course. I went down to meet him. He was in a flurried and excited condition. He had experienced a “rotten” day. Nor was I surprised when he proceeded to explain to me his modus operandi. It was this: He had a very strong tip for the next race, and he was anxious that I should share in any good fortune that might result from backing it. I looked at my card. Among the starters I saw a horse named Tandragee. I said, half in earnest, that, if I had a bet at all, I should back Tandragee. He inquired very anxiously whether I had heard anything. I assured him that I knew nothing whatever, but that the animal bore the name of “Kim” Mandeville’s place in Ireland. Buchanan looked at me reproachfully, as if to suggest that I was treating in a spirit of levity a very serious, and even tragic, business. I made inquiries about Tandragee, and a member of Tattersall’s ring laid me ten to one against it. My horse won easily, and Buchanan’s “certainty,” about which he had only got three to one, was not placed. With the most ordinary care Robert Buchanan should have acquired a nice little fortune. As it was, he lived in a series of financial straits, and when he paid the debt of nature he left all his other debts undischarged. My recollections of race-meetings will always be dominated by the figure of Caroline, Duchess of Montrose. I was young and impressionable when I first saw this formidable grande dame. I first beheld her on the lawn at Goodwood. She Caroline, Duchess of Montrose, was once in a towering rage over the defeat of one of her husband’s horses, which she had backed heavily, and, as was her wont, she was violently abusing the unhappy boy who had ridden. I rather think it was little Gallon, but am not sure. “You young rascal!” exclaimed the angry Duchess, “did I not tell you to get through and come right away before reaching the bend?” “Yes, your Grace, you did,” blubbered the boy; “b-b-b-but I couldn’t come without the horse!” When Sterling Crauford died, the Duchess selected as her third husband a youth who might have been her grandson. I have just mentioned Dick Dunn, the bookmaker. This redoubtable penciller was of Irish nationality, his real name being O’Donoghue. He was an extremely good-looking, well-set-up fellow, and, casually encountered, one would never have believed him capable of the heights and depths of picturesque objurgation to which he rose and sank. But he was really a good-natured chap, with a fund of quaint and characteristic humour. I once attended a smoking-concert promoted at Hampton for a charitable purpose, at which Dick Dunn had been asked to preside. Things went very well until a local celebrity—an octogenarian—was called upon to sing. The old man began to intone a very long ballad in very slow time. The audience were getting tired, and the chairman was getting very fidgety. At last the vocalist gave the chairman his opportunity. He was trolling out a fresh verse commencing with the two lines:
The audience broke into laughter, and the abashed warbler sat down. They tell me that the present is an uncommonly bad time for bookmakers. At the Albert and Victoria they are betting with each other—a tame business, and comparable only (as one of the fraternity recently put it to me) to “kissing one’s sister.” The occupation of “Oh, yell, oh!” is gone. But in my early Press days he flourished like a green bay-tree. In the early seventies Steele and Peach of Sheffield were the magnates of the Ring. Steele was a big, heavy-faced, sleepy-looking man. He commenced his commercial career by hawking fish through the streets on a barrow. Peach, who was far smarter in appearance, was of equally low origin. The two leviathans of the Ring were closely related by marriage, and ended up by becoming owners of one of the richest steel-works in Sheffield. I can well remember Olney of Manchester and Steve Mundell of Durham. Olney was a stout, white-haired, red-faced man, who would have been a little one but for the extra weight in fat he carried. He was grumpy, but straight, and his prices were simply awful. Mundell was known as “the Durham Ox.” He was, as his sobriquet may suggest, a big, beefy man. His Durham acquaintances were very proud of him; and, indeed, he was not half a bad sort. He was fond of coursing, and kept a few greyhounds of his own. Our old friend the Daily Telegraph, writing about some meeting in a flamboyant style, indulged in an allusion to “the genteel pencillers in the velvet costumes.” This chance allusion was the making of Fred Fraser. He and his brother—who clerked for him—always appeared dressed in brown velvet coats, cord breeches, jack-boots, and sombreros. At one time he ran a few horses, but his favourite sport was fishing, and his record exhibition of objurgation was given in connection with the pursuit of this comparatively innocent pastime. This was at Staines. He had left Billy Nicholls of Nottingham was a wealthy man and a “character.” He was a member of the Town Council of his native borough, and a rather good yarn used to be told of his action in this capacity when a certain matter of great local interest was brought up before the Patres Conscripti of Nottingham. The burning question of “the town pump” had come up in another shape. Public opinion was divided as to whether or not a wall should be built round the cemetery; and, as the municipal elections were at hand, the members of the Council were also much “vexed in their righteous minds” as to how they should vote on the recommendation of the committee. It remained for Billy Nicholls to settle the question by a speech which was brief, to the point, and absolutely convincing: “Muster Mayor, Haldermen, an’ gen’lemen hall,” he said, when he rose in his place, “it’s like this yer: the pore chaps inside can’t get out, and them what’s outside don’t want to get in. So I says, ‘No wall.’” And “no wall” it was. Charlie Head was a bookie of a different type. He was dapper, well dressed—in fact, a bit of a dandy. The waxed ends of his moustache were a source of general joy to his friends at a time when this mode of treating what Mr. Frank Richardson would call “face fungi” was comparatively neglected. I first met Head, not on the course, but at the theatre. He was a devoted supporter of the drama, and it was only reasonable that he should look to the drama to Tom King, the well-known champion of the prize ring, was also making a book in the seventies. King was a splendid chap, tall, and well set up as a guardsman. His nose was slightly out of drawing—the result, no doubt, of a professional misadventure. When he left the prize ring Tom cultivated a beard and moustache, which were always carefully trimmed. Anything more unlike a “bruiser” it would be impossible to imagine. His “book” was not his only source of income: he enjoyed large profits as a barge owner. King was a remarkable raconteur, and had a practically inexhaustible collection of yarns, none of them quite suitable for spinning in pages intended for general circulation. Waterhouse was one of the best of his class. He was a short, fat man, with a funny little mouche on his lower lip. With the exception of this spot, his chubby face was clean-shaven. He was a hot-tempered chap, but as straight as a gun-barrel. He had made a hobby of pigeons, of which he was a well-known and eminently successful exhibitor. Waterhouse was commissioner for Lord Bradford’s stable, and won, I believe, a lot of money when Sir Hugo, at 40 to I, beat La FlÊche in the Derby of 1892—a date, I should recollect, which lands me two years beyond the chronological limits of these memoirs. But, to my way of thinking, Charles Brewer was far and away the best of the old bookmakers. He had his offices in Charles Street, St. James’s. He was joint owner with Charles Blanton, the trainer of that famous racehorse, Robert the And a curious consideration, not altogether unconnected with psychological ramifications, appeals to me here. When I have been deputed to go to a race-meeting for the purpose of making a column or so of descriptive “copy,” the Ring has always presented itself to me as a modern Inferno packed with raucous, foul-mouthed demons—rapacious, brutal, sordid. Again and again have I reeled off impressionist descriptions of what I conceived to be a very brutal exhibition. Yet, in looking back to those old times, the picture of the betting ring does not come back to me as a complete and vivid impression. Faces gaze out at me one by one, and they are all the faces of men who have made their last settlement. One becomes more charitable with the passing of the years, I suppose, and Time teaches us to differentiate. I fail altogether now to recall the Ring as a raging, seething pit. I only recall, with feelings not estranged, some of its members whom I have known, and with whom I have done a little business from time to time. Their manners may not have been those of a Chesterfield, but their principles of commercial morality were more commendable than those of the nobleman whose “Letters,” according to honest Samuel Johnson, inculcated the morals of a monkey and the manners of—well, of something even less respectable than our simian ancestor. But, having said so much in favour of the personal qualities of certain members of the betting ring, and having admitted that the transactions of the fraternity are as a rule honest and open, I venture to suggest that the institution itself is capable of considerable improvement—that, indeed, Mr. Lloyd George might talk the matter over with ‘Dr.’ Clifford, Mr. Silvester Horne, and the President of the Methodist Conference. The predominant partner—Mr. John Redmond, to wit—would, I am confident, give his consent to an experiment the object of which would be to give some movement to treasuries which have long since ceased to be “flowing.” I once spent some hours in the house of a bookmaker, and had an opportunity of studying the penciller’s mÉnage. I had often had a bet with Andy Anderson. His prices were a trifle short, but he was an agreeable man to do business with—jovial, good-tempered, and amusing. After a day’s racing at Hurst Park, he overtook “Boris” of the Referee and myself, and suggested a “lift” as far as Surbiton—without consulting us as to whether or not Surbiton was on our way home. “Boris”—who in private life was Mr. Harry Bromhead—accepted the invitation. We were given the We were shown into the drawing-room, where we found Mrs. Anderson—a remarkably fine woman, with much of her husband’s easy good temper—petting a remarkably uninteresting mongrel. Then occurred one of those incidents which illustrated a strange boyish side of Andy’s character. Having formally introduced us to his wife, he gazed at the dog on her lap with an expression of amazement and admiration, and asked, with great seriousness: “Where did you get that dog, my dear?” “Bought him off a man on the tow-path,” replied Mrs. Andy. “What did you give?” he inquired. “Five shillings.” “Good heavens!” exclaimed Andy, “you’ve had a better day on the tow-path than I’ve had on the course. Why, that dog is worth fifty quid. You take great care of him, my dear.” “What breed is he?” asked Mrs. Anderson. “He’s a tripe-hound,” answered Andy, without moving a muscle, and still regarding the wretched animal with the satisfied air of an expert. Mrs. Anderson accepted the legend in deadly earnest. The next day, as I afterwards heard, she went into Kingston, purchased a silver collar with her name and address engraved thereon, obtained a lead, and appeared every afternoon on the promenade by the river with her priceless pet. When asked about its pedigree by friends, she explained that she was obliged to take great care of him, as he was a From the drawing-room, furnished in the most crowded fashion of Early Victorian period, we were conducted to the dining-room, to have what just at that time was becoming known as “a bottle of the boy.” Meeting with a bookmaker socially always meant in those days a bottle of champagne. The pencillers seemed to swim in it. It is different now. The simple and less expensive whisky-and-soda is regarded by the majority of the Ring as an excellent substitute for the exhilarating vintages of Ay and Épernay and Grammont. In his own house Andy was the soul of hospitality. He pressed us to remain to dinner. But we both had duties in town. However, we sat listening to his anecdotes and experiences for an hour or more. The most surprising of his reminiscences was that he, Andy Anderson the bookmaker, was the son of a Baptist minister! At first I was inclined to rate the confession with the legend of the tripe-hound, but the statement was one of fact. I commend it to the consideration of Nonconformist Turf-haters; they can take it either of two ways—as an inducement to regard charitably a calling which provides fine openings for the bright sons of Baptist ministers, or as an argument in favour of the Paris Mutuels, whereby the temptation to become bookmakers would be for ever removed from the precocious progeny of the “unco’ guid.” The mention of Bromhead naturally reminds me of the paper which he served so well for so many years. The Referee was established by Henry Sampson some few yew after Mr. Corlett found the continuous-paragraph method so sudden and so triumphant a success. But the founders In the seventies the doyen of the racing Press was Comyns Cole, of the Times and the Field. In whatever society he might be found Cole was always a striking personality. He was not only an accomplished journalist, but he was a typical English gentleman of the school even then becoming regarded as “old.” He possessed all the gracious courtesy of a more formal age. At the time when I made his acquaintance he was well over sixty, but he was erect in carriage, slim in figure, always carefully dressed to suit the occasion, and impartially polite to Dukes and jockeys. His carefully-cultured grey moustache gave him something of a military appearance. His greatest charm was, perhaps, in a voice of unusual sweetness. And on the Turf he was liked and respected by everybody, high and low. Not merely was Cole a gentleman in thought and act, but he spoke and wrote like one. He could never have become contaminated by the baleful influences of the Press-room. In my early days there were a lot of small race-meetings in the vicinity of London which have ceased to exist, their suppression or extinction, owing to natural causes, being a Not all those who were attracted to the meeting came down for the sport. Many of them hired skiffs and went on the water. These greatly daring adventurers had but the most rudimentary use of the sculls, and their immunity from accident can only be traced to that watchful Providence which is believed to look after drunken men and infants. On one occasion I happened during these races to be at Hampton, which is, of course, on the other side of the river. I there saw a rather cranky skiff let out by a local boat-owner to a party of a dozen happy Cockneys, male and female of their kind, not one of whom could row and few of whom could swim. As they zigzagged their way to midstream, I thought it my duty to remonstrate with the boat-owner. “I shouldn’t have let a boat to that lot: they’re sure to capsize,” I ventured to suggest. “It’s orright, guv’nor,” answered the man cheerily; “I’ve ’ad a quid deposit!” Funny thing, the point of view. I was solicitous about the safety of the Cockney excursionists. My boat-hiring friend could only imagine that I was anxious lest his skiff At Kingsbury there was another of these classic events. It was never my proud privilege to witness the racing at Kingsbury; but the suppression of that meeting was a never-ceasing cause of regret to Warner, of the Welsh Harp, Hendon. I made the acquaintance of that illustrious man when I was sent down to interview Mrs. Girling on the part of a daily paper “whose name shall be nameless,” as a villain of melodrama once put it. The name of Mrs. Girling, I imagine, will call up no memories in the present generation. The poor lady, although she made a wonderful commotion in her time, has failed to write her name with any legibility on the page of history. Mrs. Girling, then, was the president, or high-priestess, or boss of the Shaker community, which at one time thought to establish itself in the country of a hundred religions and one sauce. Notwithstanding all that has been alleged to the contrary, the English still possess a certain sense of humour, and their knowledge of the new sect was chiefly derived from the writings of Artemus Ward, who had devoted a chapter of “His Book” to the more salient eccentricities of the Shakers. One of the sect he described as looking like “a last year’s bean-pole dressed in a long meal-bag.” The corybantic religionists who had come across the Atlantic with Mrs. Girling in the pious hope of converting the islanders had been evicted from their quarters in the New Forest, and had encamped on, and under, the grandstand on the Kingsbury racecourse. The expulsion of the Shakers from their Hampshire Eden became the subject of a great deal of comment in the Press, and Warner, who was above all else a showman, at once saw his way to make some money out of the eccentric exiles from the States. So he philanthropically offered the evicted evangelists such shelter as the Kingsbury grand-stand afforded. Mrs. Girling was grateful. Half London flocked to Hendon to inspect the high-priestess and her faithful following of Latter-Day Saints, and, incidentally, to partake of refreshments at the Warner appeared to spend most of his time sitting in a wooden armchair of Brobdingnagian proportions. When in an anecdotal or reminiscent mood, he could be extremely entertaining. One of his reminiscences may be worth repeating. The Welsh Harp pleasure-grounds had become a favourite arena for the managers of Sunday-school treats and high jinks of a similar character. During the summer months thousands of children were carted down from the lanes and alleys of the town to pick daisies in Warner’s fields, to wander by the margin of Warner’s lake, and to “wolf” Warner’s buns and ginger-beer amid delightfully rural surroundings. Consternation, therefore, seized this particular section of Society when there appeared in the papers the report that the pet bear of the Welsh Harp had escaped from its den, and had taken refuge in some neighbouring thicket. In vain did Warner write solemn disclaimers to the daily papers. His pathetic denials of the existence of any bear on the estate were received with frigid scepticism. The rumour had been sown broadcast, and had taken root. The crop was accepted as first-class fact. The more strongly did Warner protest, the more picturesque became the newspaper reports of the bear-hunt, the methods of the trackers, and their failure to trap their quarry. Meanwhile the outlook was becoming serious for the owner of the famous pleasaunce. Every post brought the poor man letters from the promoters of bean-feasts and Sunday-school treats cancelling their dates. In moments of desperation the brain sometimes becomes superactive. At such a moment Warner was the subject of an inspiration, or, as he himself put it, “an ’appy thought struck him.” He drove off to Jamrach’s, the famous dealers in wild animals, in the Ratcliff Highway, and there he purchased the cheapest Time has been kind to the old Welsh Harp, and I fervently hope that the day is far distant ere even a garden city shall be established by the shores of the wonderful lake whereon the Cockney sailed and fished in the summer, and skated—and was periodically immersed—in the winter months. For a little while at least its memory will be kept green by Chevalier’s “Coster’s Serenade”:
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