Letters from England, Volume 2 (of 3)

LETTER XLVII.

Newmarket.—Cruelty of Horse-racing.—Process of Wasting.—Character of a Man of the Turf.—Royston.—Buntingford.—Cheshunt.—Return to London.

Three leagues from Cambridge is the town of Newmarket, famous for its adjoining race-ground, the great scene of English extravagance and folly. They who have seen the races tell me it is a fine sight:—the horses are the most perfect animals of their kind, and their speed is wonderful; but it is a cruel and detestable sport. The whip and the spur are unmercifully used. Some of the leading men of the turf, as they are called, will make their horses run two or three times in as many days, till every fibre in them is sore, and they are disabled for ever by over exertion. Whatever pleasure, therefore, a man of clean conscience might lawfully have taken in beholding such sports, when they were instituted (if such was their origin) for the sake of improving the breed, and were purely trials of swiftness, is at an end. The animal, who evidently delights in the outset, and ambitiously strains himself to his full length and speed, is lashed and gored till his blood mingles with his foam, because his owner has staked thousands upon the issue of the race: and so far is this practice from tending to the improvement of the breed, that at present it confessedly injures it, because horses are brought to the course before they have grown to their full strength, and are thereby prevented from ever attaining to it.

It is hardly less hurtful to the riders; their sufferings, however, would rather excite mirth than compassion, if any thing connected with the degradation of a human being could be regarded without some sense of awe and humiliation. These gentlemen are called jockeys. Jockeyship is a particular trade in England;—I beg its pardon—a profession. A few persons retain one in their establishment, but in general they go to Newmarket and offer their services for the occasion. Three guineas are the fee for riding a race; if much be depending upon it, as is usually the case, the winner receives a present. Now, in these matches the weight which the horses are to carry is always stipulated. Should the jockey be too light, he carries something about him to make up the due number of pounds; but if unhappily he exceeds this number, he must undergo a course of wasting. Had Procrustes heard of this invention, he would have made all travellers equal in weight as well as in measure, and his balance would have been as famous as his bed. In order to get rid of this supererogatory flesh they are purged and sweated; made to take long walks with thick clothing on; then immediately on their return drink cold water, and stew between two feather beds, and in this manner melt themselves down to the lawful standard. One of the most eminent of these jockeys lately wasted eighteen pounds in three days; so violent a reduction that it is supposed he will never recover from it.

Our friend here once heard the character of one of the great Newmarket heroes from a groom. Mr —— , said the man, was the best sportsman on the turf; he would bet upon any thing and to any sum, and make such matches as nobody else could ever have thought of making, only it was a pity that he was such a fool—he was a fool to be sure. It was difficult to say whether the fellow was most impressed by the absolute folly of his hero, or by his undaunted love of gambling; the one he could not speak of without admiration, and he laughed while he was bemoaning the other: for certain, he said, there was nobody like him for spirit,—he was ready for any thing; but then unluckily he was such a cursed fool. To be sure he was losing his fortune as fast as it could go. But his comfort was, he used to say, that when all was gone he was sure of a place, for his friend Lord —— had promised to make him his whipper-in.

The pedigree of the horse is as carefully preserved as that of the master; and can in many instances be traced further back. In general the English horses are less beautiful than ours, and they are disfigured by the barbarous custom of mutilating the tail and ears. Dogs suffer the same cruel mutilation. It is surprising how little use is made of the ass here; it is employed only by the lowest people in the vilest services; miserably fed and more miserably treated. Mules are seldom seen: in Elizabeth's days a large male ass which had been brought from France into Cornwall began a fabric of them, and the people knocked them on the head for monsters as soon as they were foaled.

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Had it been the racing season I should have gone to Newmarket; the ground itself, celebrated as it is, did not tempt me. Our friend was going to the immediate vicinity of London; so having his company we travelled by chaise, the expense for three persons not materially exceeding that of going by stage. Royston was our first post. In this neighbourhood there was a man lately who believed himself entitled to a large estate which was wrongfully withheld from him; he worked at some daily labour, and his custom was to live as penuriously as was possible, and expend the savings of the whole year in giving a dinner upon his birth-day at a public-house upon the estate, to which he invited by public notices all persons who would please to come. D. remembers in his childhood a man, who, under the same feeling, had vowed never to put on clean linen, wash himself, shave his beard, comb his hair, or cut his nails, till he had recovered his right; a vow which he kept during the remainder of his life, and died in his dirt. They called him Black John, and he was the terror of children.

At Buntingford is a mansion built about two centuries ago, of which they say that when the house was built the staircase was forgotten; a common story this of all those old houses which have the winding turret staircase: something more remarkable is, that it has a room to which there is no entrance. By Ware we saw the New River: a canal which begins there and supplies great part of London with water,—sufficiently filthy it must needs be, for it is open the whole way, and as it approaches the suburbs is the common bathing-place of the rabble,—yet the Londoners are perfectly contented with it! We passed through Cheshunt, a village memorable as being the place where Richard Cromwell lived in peace and privacy to a good old age, and died[12] as he had lived,—a happier man than his more illustrious father. Here also was the favourite palace of JamesI.; it has been demolished; but a moss walk under a long avenue of elms, a part of his gardens, is still preserved. Near this is a cross at Waltham, one of those which EdwardI. erected at every place where the body of his excellent queen halted on the way to its burial. It is a beautiful monument of pious antiquity, though mutilated and otherwise defaced by time. Nothing else worthy of notice occurred on the road, which lay through the province of Hertfordshire. The country, though tame, is beautiful; far more so than any which we had seen since our departure from the land of Lakes.

Widely different were the feelings with which I arrived at J—— 's door from what they had been that evening when it was first opened to me. Then I came as a stranger; now I was returning as if to my own house. My reception, indeed, could hardly have been more affectionate in my own family. J—— and his wife welcomed me like a brother, Harriet climbed my knee, and John danced about the room for joy that Senor Manuel was come home again.

[12] The tomb of Richard Cromwell is at Hursley, near Winchester.—Tr.

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