30 FAMOUS KACma MEN. 



Derby from fifty-one subscribers and thirteen starters, and with 

 Mineral, another daughter of Waxy's, he took the Oaks, eleven out 

 of the forty-eight subscribers starting, and Groodison piloting the 

 winner in both cases. Whisker was as near perfection, according 

 to that able and accomplished writer, " The Druid," as a horse 

 could be, having all the excellences of his sire, of whom the same 

 turf authority remarks that " high quality, so to speak, came into 

 English bloodstock very much with Waxy." Before speaking further 

 of Whisker and his elder brother, it will be as well to record briefly 

 some more of the Duke of Grrafton's principal turf successes. In 

 1819 he won the One Thousand Guineas with Catgut, and thence- 

 forward seemed for a time to have secured the fee-simple of the race, 

 for he actually won it five times in succession. In 1824 he lost, but 

 in the following year made up for his defeat by being allowed to 

 walk over with Fortune, and then won also in 1826 and 1827 with 

 Problem and Arab. To win a great weight-for-age race eight years 

 out of nine in this fashion m.ust be considered the most remarkable 

 run of luck in the entire history of the turf. In 1820, besides 

 winning the One Thousand with Eowena, he had a colt good enough 

 to win the Two Thousand, Pindarrie to wit; in 1821 he secured the 

 same race with Reginald, and in 1822, when Whizzgig carried off 

 the One Thousand she was only his second string, his best filly 

 being Pastille, who won both the Two Thousand and Oaks. In 1826 

 and 1827 the duke was again credited with the Two Thousand by 

 the aid of Dervise and Turcoman. In 1828 he won the Oaks with 

 Turquoise, and again, for the last time, in 1831 with Oxygen. 



That is a wonderful list of triumphs, but from the illustrious roll 

 there is wanting the name of one great race which is second only, if 

 even second, to the Derby itself. It will hardly fail to strike the 

 modern reader that there is in this long catalogue of successes 

 no mention of the St. Leger, which neither of the racing Dukes of 

 Grrafton ever won, if indeed they ever tried to win it. For in the 

 eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, the racing 

 circuits had little to do with one another, and there must have been 

 some very great end in view to tempt the horses of the North to 

 Epsom, or those of the South to York or Doncaster. Newmarket 

 was, to some extent, neutral ground on which both schools met, for 

 the Northern men would make their way to the famous heath, either 

 by a weary post or a long jolt with their saddle-bags through the 

 fens of Lincolnshire or the Isle of Ely. One of these North-country- 

 men, by the way, managed to persuade the Duke of Grrafton to part 

 with Whisker, and when they had got him among them truly the 

 Yorkshire and Durham breeders gave him plenty of employment. 

 And no wonder, when one reads "The Druid's" ecstatic description of 

 him : " He was," says that graphic writer, " as near perfection as 

 could be, with the exception of being a little calf-kneed, and he 

 seemed equally likely to get a racer, hunter, machiner, or hack. If 

 a departed horse-dealer I wot of had seen him he would once more 



