94 FAMOUS KACINCf MEN. 



vowed by all his gods, that they had ruined his horses. Every trainer 

 did that. Still his cheque was always there to the moment, arid that 

 was like balm of Grilead to the wounds which his tongue inflicted. 

 He hated, above all things, naming his horses. He always said that 

 a horse should not be named till he had earned a name by winning a 

 race, and as his horses rarely, considering their number, achieved 

 that distinction, they were for the most part shot unnamed. Half the 

 evenings at the Jockey Club, when Lord Derby led the revels, with the 

 Earl of Strafford, Greneral Peel, Admiral Rous, Mr. Cfreville and INIr. 

 George Payne — friends who could always touch the right chord in the 

 testy old Scot — were spent in trying to name his horses for him. 

 Once, and once only, they succeeded in getting his lordship to name 

 three of his horses himself, and the result was the registration with 

 Messrs. Weatherby of the following names — " He-has-a-name," 

 " Give-him-a-name," and " He-isn't-worth-a-name." The last was 

 too true of most of his stud, for no man probably in the history of 

 the turf ever brought out so many bad horses. A strange, cross- 

 grained character, he was not exactly, as Aytoun said of Lord 

 Eglinton, " one of the heroic stamp of Montrose and Dundee," but 

 still a grand turf patriarch, whom no defeat could quench ; and 

 when he died on the 11th March, 1869, at his Renfrewshire seat of 

 Hawkhead, the sporting world missed and mourned him sincerely. 

 Even in his very dress one could trace the prevailing eccentricity 

 of his character — he never wore an overcoat in the wettest and 

 coldest of weather until within a few years of his death. He 

 never appeared in such modern innovations as knickerbockeis. 

 "To the last," says "The Druid," " he stood by the side of the cords 

 with low shoes a world too wide, white trousers in which T. P. Cooke 

 himself could have conscientiously danced a hornpipe, and not 

 unfrequently in a blue coat with gilt buttons. See him when you 

 might, there was the same nervous irritation, which ruined all 

 natural rest, and made his span of nearly seventy-seven years, eked 

 out as it was nightly by chloroform or laudanum, very little short 

 of miraculous. . . . The more they jeered at his stud tribes, 

 the more he stuck by them and the more assiduously he matched 

 the produce. He cared nothing what he spent out of a reputed 

 £60,000 a-year. If a privileged queen of the card-women hit him 

 a little too hard with her chaff, he would rub his neck or back, as 

 was his nervous way, a little more vigorously than usual, and throw 

 her a sovereign to get rid of her. He liked having his racing blood 

 to himself, and therefore he put the fees of his sires at a pretty pro- 

 hibitive figure. In fact, he would rather lend than let, and infinitely 

 sooner shoot than sell. He has been known to go down to Middle- 

 ham out of the season, summon four or five resident jockeys over- 

 night to ride a score or more trials for him the next morning, and 

 finish up by shooting half-a-dozen of the worst twos and threes, 

 without benefit of clergy. Stern of mood as he might be when 

 crossed, ' his hand was ever open, his heart was ever warm.* It 



