604 Ifcfnas ot tbe 1Rob, IRtfle, anfc <&utt 



deer-stalkers of his time, and the long array of splendid 

 heads in the morning-room at Bradgate proved his 

 prowess among the " tall stags " of Aviemore. 



It is, of course, mainly with Lord Stamford as a 

 " King of the Rifle and Gun " that I am concerned here, 

 but to the general public he was best known through his 

 connection with the Turf. Both his grandfather and 

 great-grandfather had bred and run racehorses, and the 

 seventh Earl inherited their taste for horseflesh. It was 

 to accommodate his lordship's string of racers that 

 Joseph Dawson, acting as his private trainer, moved in 

 1863 from Heath House to Bedford Lodge, where a 

 range of stabling had been built with paddocks, loose 

 boxes, and a home farm adjoining, the like to which, for 

 perfection of arrangement and magnificence of outlay, 

 neither Newmarket nor any other training quarters in 

 the world could show. Lord Stamford was not such a 

 reckless plunger as his contemporary the Marquis of 

 Hastings, but he did mad things sometimes, as, for 

 example, when Joseph Dawson brought out his first two- 

 year-old a filly named Cellina for the Althorp Park 

 Stakes, and just as the flag fell his lordship calmly told 

 Dawson that he had backed the filly almost at evens 

 against the field for 10,000. Joe was aghast at the 

 news, and his heart was in his mouth till, after a 

 beautifully ridden race, Edwardes, who fortunately knew 

 nothing of Lord Stamford's bet, steered Cellina first past 

 the judge's box by a head. He began his Turf career well 

 by winning the One Thousand with Lady Augusta, but, 

 though he had at one time as many as fifty-eight horses in 

 training, Lord Stamford was never lucky in his racing. 



