70 FAMOUS RACING MEN. 



sudden and premature death caused a most painful sensation through 

 the country, and may indeed be said to have cast a gloom over men 

 of all ranks and opinions — for Lord Greorge was but forty-seven 

 years of age, and from his striking talents and the influence of his 

 remarkable personal character, it was thought that he had a singu- 

 larly brilliant political career before him. But it was not to be, and 

 we can only say of him, that Fate ruthlessly cut him off in his 

 prime, before promise had time to ripen into performance. 



One who knew him well has left the following graphic portrait of 

 Lord George's personal appearance when he was at the height of his 

 fame as a sportsman. " A tall, high-bred man, with an air peculiarly 

 his own, so distinguished yet so essentially of the country did he 

 seem, even amongst the galaxy of patrician sportsmen with whom he 

 was congregated. He had all the eye and complexion of the pure 

 Saxon, and the indescribable boon of the air noble to perfection. 

 His dress at this time greatly added to the charms of his appearance. 

 Dressed in buckskin breeches — none of your Norway does or West 

 Kiding imitations, but in the hides of his own stags — with exquisitely 

 made boots of the true orthodox length and antique colouring in top ; 

 a buff waistcoat and reddish brown double-breasted coat, ornamented 

 with the buttons of the Jockey Club; a quiet beaver, placed neither 

 at a right angle nor yet a left, but in the juste milieu of gentlemanly 

 taste, on a well-formed head of auburn hair, with large whiskers of 

 the same colom- ; a starting-fiag in his hand, and followed by eight- 

 and-twenty racehorses, stepping like a troop of old Franconi's 

 bearing a tulip-bed aloft — so brilliantly shone the silken jackets of 

 the riders in the sun — the observed of a hundred thousand eyes. 

 Lord George Bentinck, as steward of the races, undertook to start 

 the immense field for the ' Great Yorkshire Handicap ' on a plan of 



his own special invention His lordship's plan for starting 



horses in a race was as simple as effectual, and was carried out in this 

 wise. In the first place, it needed a starter whom the jocks, instead 

 of daring to disobey, had, as in their feelings towards Lord George, 

 an enthusiastic desire to please : hence he undertook to illustrate 

 his own mode of securing the horses and the public from the ever- 

 occurring disappointment of a false start, and, flag in hand, marched 

 in the van of the quivering phalanx, quite unattended, to the starting- 

 place on the noble course of Doncaster, in full view of the tens of 

 thousands, regarding him with admiration from the Grand Stand 

 and the rising part of the ground. Hitherto, the functionary who 

 had performed the office of starter, after doing his best, or rather his 

 worst, to put the horses in line, simply ordered the jockeys to ' go !' as 

 frequently having to recall them by a distant signal, after they had 

 galloped over three parts of the distance, by reason of some obstinate 

 brute — man or horse — refusing to obey the order and remaining 

 fresh for the next essay. Lord George rectified this very inefficient 

 plan by an equestrian trigger of his own invention, viz., the posting 

 a man with a flag directly in view of all the jocks — on whom they 



