Captain 3ohn Mbite i57 



Eton, where he proved himself a very lively youngster 

 indeed. But, even before he went to Eton, John White 

 had shown that the love of horsemanship was born in 

 him. His first essays in riding were on a pony, so 

 small that, to quote his own words, ' with the saddle 

 on him he used to walk under a leaping bar at home 

 and be afterwards galloped over it.' At football and 

 cricket young White soon made his mark at Eton, but 

 of scholarship he acquired no more than w^as absolutely 

 licked into him, which was probably about as much as 

 the average healthy, athletic English schoolboy carries 

 away with him nowadays. 



From Eton, John White went to Christ Church, 

 Oxford, and it was significant of his ideas as to what a 

 university curriculum should be that he took three 

 hunters up with him as a freshman, and it was said of 

 him that, during his three years a.tA//na MaUr, he never 

 once missed a day with hounds when they met within 

 anything like riding distance of Oxford. 



When he finished his career as an undergraduate in 

 1811, John White took his small stud to Lincoln, where 

 he had the good luck to drop in for George Osbaldeston's 

 mastership of the Burton, and shared in all the splendid 

 sport with which the squire signalised his five years' 

 tenure of the horn in that country. 



I think it was about this period that John Wliite rode 

 his first match on the flat. He had been dining in the 

 company of Mr Walker, who then owned Mitchelgrove, 

 where Mr Gratwicke afterwards trained, and that gentle- 

 man, after the wine had gone round merrily, talked so 

 big about, a certain horse of his, that White was irritated, 

 and offered to match a hunting mare of his own, got 

 by Patriot, against Mr Walker's wonderful horse for 



